Peasant Tournament - Final Standings

And here I was waiting to see a tokenless tourney...

 

What have we done.

 

I've been thinking about running a short "no limit" tournament on the test server to see what happens. It would be highly automated with little to no rules. Just to see if a format with little control can work and still be interesting.

I still think you need to have "best of 3" simply because single elimination in a game like Card Hunter is problematic due to the high amount of luck. Not even the best players in the world win every match -- but they should win more than not.

As for organizing the matches it would probably either need to be held in at a specific time or have each participant work with their opponent to find at time to play. Matches would have no judge and would be verified by taking a screenshot before the match and after the match with the victory screen.

Would be interesting to see what team would come out on top with no restriction on items because you can just roll a billion chests on the test server to get what you want.

Maybe have two tournaments like this but split them 12 hours apart so people from around the world have a chance of attending?

 

I don't see best-of-one as that big of a problem. While it does increase the significance of luck, it also makes that one match much more intense, and gives new players a better chance at beating veterans. Also best-of-one happens in real life all the time. For example you don't see 100 meter dash being changed to best-of-3 just because Usain Bolt came in second. But the main argument for best-of-one is of course tournament duration.

Here's one way of doing a fixed time tournament that has worked in the past. We could have a tournament where each round lasted exactly 30 minutes, which would be divided between 20 minutes of fighting (best-of-one with 10-minute timers) and 10 minutes of downtime (extra time for technical difficulties, updating brackets, chatting about matches, preparing for the next match, using the toilet, taking out the dog, etc.). This way each round would be fast and it would be very clear to participants when the next round starts. Here's an example of a 32-player single elimination tournament that would last about 2 hours and 20 minutes:

-------------------------------------------------------------
8:00 pm
Round 1 - 32 participants

8:30 pm
Round 2 - 16 participants

9:00 pm
Round 3 - 8 participants

9:30 pm
Semifinals - 4 participants

10:00 pm
Finals - 2 participants (+2 if there is a bronze match)

10:20 pm
Event Ends
-------------------------------------------------------------

Now if you changed that to best-of-3, one round could last up to 1 hour, making the total duration 5 hours, which is way too long. Of course it would be nice to have best-of-3 matches, but it's just not doable without turning the tournament into a slow-paced grinder where half the spectators have left before finals even start. Closest thing you could do is to make only the finals best-of-3, which would increase the maximum total duration to 3 hours which is where I would definitely draw the line. Anything over 3 hours and we would probably start seeing a lot of quitters and general tournament fatigue. Quick and fast-paced tournaments are always more fun.

If we wanted to have a fixed time tournament, I think we should start with a 32-player single-elimination tournament. And if that goes smoothly, then maybe switch to double-elimination tournament. That would require one extra round of fighting, but is probably better for players because you don't get eliminated by that one unlucky loss.

 

Well, 100 meter dashes aren't hugely random events. It is hard to compare this to anything else, except for maybe Poker games or something. Even then it isn't the same, since in Poker matches the typical player folds more than not.

Would be interesting if Card Hunter came out with a mulligan system where you can cycle through your first turn or two for free.

It might make the tournament more intense to have single elimination, but I don't think it would be beneficial to the tournament as a whole. Maybe single matches but have a "round robin" type event instead of a simple bracket. This keeps everyone playing constantly for the whole time as there is no elimination at all.

Then you check and see the two who have the highest win-loss ratio and they are pitted against each other in a best of 3 or 5. That would be more climactic and interesting as well as people could spectate and watch the player's strategy develop.

10 minute match timers for each player is fine -- it worked well with the Peasant Tournament and while it is detrimental to heavy calculating builds like 3DC, I didn't feel it was too bad.

 

Swiss format for qualifiers would be interesting and probably the best bet.


The problem with limiting it to the Live server is that it would heavily favor those with good items. You'd need to have a restriction on it then, something like Peasant, which then adds more checks and balances. Without an API to check that people are conforming with the rules of item limitations you can't have it heavily automated.

Why limit items and why not only come with what they own? Well, isn't that what the current ladder already is? How would it be different besides being structured? I'd suspect the current best players on the ladder would simply win the match. There's no indication otherwise unless they were heavily unlucky. Pushing it to the Test server lets people (in theory) get any item they want and level the playing field. Granted, I've opened about 2000 purple chests and still haven't found a single Vibrant Pain (which is weird because I found a pair of Bohemian Ear Spoons right after each other... twice for 4 of them in total) -- which really makes me question the randomness of the purple chests, but whatever.

The only other alternative would require set up from Blue Manchu -- something like a "tournament server" where accounts have access to every item in the game. Legendary items are so vast in number with such low drop rates that someone who is lucky and gets a few amazing items will do better than someone with equal skill. That's not really something you want when running a tournament.

Tournaments are mainly designed for serious players who will dedicate time to play. Casual tournaments, that are fully automated and require little investment, are possible... but not without a huge change to current systems (think about how Hearthstone does their sealed deck stuff).

 

It would impose another kind of limitation: people who are ready to open chests for several hours. Not everyone is so patient and/or time-unlimited.

That's normal behaviour from a random loot system. See here. The chests are purely random. Anything can happen for a single person, even clustering like that. We notice it easily when this happens with one item out of the hundreds, but we don't even think about it when it doesn't happen with the hundreds.

 

So, erm...kinda late to this discussion and not quite up to date myself...shrugs. My question here is:

What do you mean by huge change ? These are what alr exist in normal MP:

a) queue + matchmaking algo.
b) insert 2 x players into a ranked game.
c) determine winner/loser and allocate new rating points.

The basics of a pvp game are alr there. What huge change would be needed ? Checking a party items ? I don't see any huge hurdles. Perhaps I'm missing the point here.

If the casual tourney was an 8-man single elimination peasant bracket and joining requires a valid party build + pizza entry fee + 1 mouse-click to join a private queue in MP lobby, it would be easy for anyone to participate in. No? If someone were eliminated in the first round, they could just re-queue for the next tourney. Everytime a private queue is filled, the players are locked in. Heck, I could even go a step further and make tourney rotations. Peasant tourneys for 2 mths , 2 mths constructed tourney, 2 mths limited tourney, 2 mths draft etc...

 

I'm enjoying following this discussion. Work on my end (both my freelance web stuff and my game dev stuff) has gotten a tiny bit busier over the last few days, but I'm watching and listening and I'll chip in when I can. There are definitely merits to every system proposed.

 

That's still less of a barrier to entry than on the normal server where it requires hundreds of hours of playing to get not even the best items.

Also, I don't think it is normal behavior from a random loot system for 2 of the same Legendary weapons to drop within a chest from each other... twice. What is the odds of that? Roll for a Legendary item, roll that it is a level 18, roll that is is a weapon, roll that it is X weapon... then have it happen twice in a row... and then have that ALL happen again.

Because simply leaving it up to matchmaking (MM) to determine who fights whom is prone to a number of problems. Time queuing, people queuing, randomness, etc. To actually make it work it would require a lot more than simply jury-rigging the existing system to fit the needs of a tournament system.

That's definitely a semi-viable solution. It would however make the game a bit boring and expected since you'd know what the enemy was running. Would be interesting to see how mirror match games go, but I think that would ultimately boil down to luck more than skill.

If there were pre-made characters you selected it might work, but unless there was a large pool of characters to pick from (20+ but preferably 40+) it would probably be stale and predictable. Plus, you'd have to work on balancing the characters so you don't always see X in every team comp. Definitely could be a long term project though that would be interesting. Something like a cast of characters similar to what League of Legends and other AoS ("MOBA") games do. Heck, I could envision a whole line of gameplay around that! :-P

 

That's not the right way to look at the odds. The chance of that happening is a lot bigger than seems intuitive. It's because the clustering doesn't need to happen to any particular one item, it could happen with any legendary item out of over 200 of them. That raises the odds to understandable levels. We'd notice the clustering the same way and wonder how it could happen, but it would very likely be another item, not the same one it happened to be for you. In my earlier linked thread I documented a thing happening to me with the Epic chests which required 1/1,000 odds. All kinds of weird things happen in single cases -- but they don't repeat. They don't prove the system isn't fully random.

 

Well, I've noticed it happen with a few other things. Like the same exact chests multiple times in a row... that is pretty fishy to me.

 

You're polling from a user-base of one, at the moment. There's no real reason or advantage to keep the chests from not being completely randomized.

 

I'm basing my findings on my own evidence from opening about 2000 purple chests... there is no reason that they shouldn't be random -- I was just questioning the actual random seed method they use. That's all. It seems weird that you can get the EXACT same chest in a row... right down to Rares / Uncommons / Commons. Just mentioned it because it might warrant looking into.

Chests in between matches would be problematic. Imagine someone getting lucky and rolling a VP or something in between matches. It is unlikely, but always account for extreme possibilities.

Having temporary items for the tournament and stuff works, as long as everyone is on equal footing. The game has enough randomness in card draws and die rolls (and WW/WWE/Maze placement) that every effort to minimize luck should be of utmost importance when trying to ensure a fair and competitive game. The problem with most of these suggestions is that it would require a lot of behind the scene work from Blue Manchu... I don't think there is any way to have the tournament fairly automated and fair without their help.

 

Are we making suggestions that require additional code or are we making suggestions that can be implemented by users immediately? The two discussions should probably be separate...