Poll: A new/different challenge?

[timmermac]

I'm thinking about adding a second challenge to the one I have going. The ruleset would be similar to the current challenge but with the following changes.

2 or 3 zeros would be added to all rewards figures in quest.preferences (example: REWARDS_BASE would change from 25 to 2500 or 25000)
WINS_RANKUP would be set to 8, with MEDIUM/HARD/EXPERT AI settings remaining at 3x/6x/9x.
Precon decks are NOT allowed
After every 10 matches, you may buy as many booster boxes as your credit balance permits.

[serrasmurf]

Hi Tim,
getting a bit overwhelmed with all your challenges

Is it an idea to create a poll where people can vote of which kind of challenge they like most?
- only main world/ other worlds
- fantasy/ non-fanatasy
- normal matches/ quest draft/ quest challenges/
- when do you think your ready to meet some hard opponents: 25/50/75 matches
- do you like to start with: 10 rares/25/50/99?
- achievements as (sub)goals of the challenge? which?
- how much matches do you expect to play? 25/50/100/100+ (when you knwwo the average you also het a feeling for setting some parameters)
etc. etc.

You could also structure the challenges a bit, so people know what to expect. E.g.:
- Every 1st day of the month, a new challenge starts (or you could align with new releases)
- every last day of the month a "winner" is announced

[friarsol]

Yea I agree with serrasmurf's sentiments. The rules changing every few days with the last two challenges were rather off-putting for me. I think the idea of everyone running the same subset of rules and posting how they are doing is neat, but the rules shifting so quickly (sometimes multiple times between play sessions) make it feel much less structured than it seemed like it was going to be at first.

I definitely think having a time structure (1 month challenge, 2 week challenge, etc) would be a better format, since it'd be more predictable when one challenge is finishing up and another one is starting (rather than Tim having played many more matches than anyone else, and wanting to switch it up).

[lujo]

There's many more aspects to it that could be offputting or owerwhelming to players, too.

- Having to edit files which actually need quite a bit of searching (application data is an obscure hidden folder for most people)

- Unlocked starting sets being chosen so that one person can get one particular card like with betrayers of kamigawa last time (or unlocking a ton of basically random sets just because they have slivers in it, same thing)

- Sets being chosen to suit a highly unusual preference for having 100 card semi-highlander decks (it's fine to play mtg the way anyone personally wants, but if you want to have a public challenge there's got to be at last a tiny bit of overlap between how you approach magic and how most others do or what most of the cards were designed with in mind)

- Same for the intention of making a highly specific deck, for example slivers

- Blocks being chosen with key sets missing so that a player who decides to pursue some inter-block sinergy is left a set short which could mean key archetype cards missing.

- An assumption that players would participate in a 300+ matches challenge.

I mean no offense, but if you want more people to play challenges the whole approach probably needs to be different.



For example, instead of textwalling parameters that need be changed, don't textwall them but instead make the adjustments to the relevant file, and post it or the code up with clear instructions on how to find the folder or file and paste it in.

A good idea would be to also instruct people to make a shortcut to this folder in the main forge folder so that they can always find it.

Instructions on how to post a decklist would also help people join in.

A more clear set of intentions behind the challenge, rather than just a set of necessary tweaks to the files would do a world of good. What does "set rankup to 8" even MEAN?

The previous challenge basically had a set of obscure instructions on how to set up the necessary parameters but an average player couldn't tell to what end, and an above average player could, except that end was... highly specific and not necessarily too appealing (making a pile of slivers, which I didn't do because I didn't catch the challenge specifying it and if it did specify it I wouldn't have participated).

EDIT: However, if the goal was broader and better defined you could get people to participate in it as a challenge even if it's not what they usually do. For example, a 40 match easy opponent Ice Age block + Fallen Empires and minus Coldsnap could be fun and challenging. Most people never played Ice Age, and it's loaded with bad cards, but finding strong ones and exploring the block could actually be fun - or at least properly challenging so that people could compete and compare results. Such a challenge would be easy to limit to easy opponents as Ice Age Block (no core sets, only FE) probably couldn't stand up to more difficult decks anyway.

Wins/matches:

I'm not sure you could get people to not get bored with more than 75 matches. Medium opponents are a bit all over the place in terms of power, but for those which are balanced these are you're meat and potatos, so you might want to cut easy opponents to 15 wins in any case.

25 easy opponents basically means that anyone who can play magic and isn't horseing around will have 22-25 wins. 15 gives 3 opportunities to draft and tweak the deck a bit.

[lujo]

Oh, and in case anyone'd actually be interested in a 30-40 Game Ice Age Challenge, I've been playtesting that and it actually works really well with Coldsnap (as you draft Homelands and Fallen Empires separately, and Ice Age, Alliances and Coldsnap as a block, and for that Coldsnap needs to be allowed).

It's challenging and you get to see cards you've never played with if you're new, like the origins of so many later mechanics ^^

Also, Homelands and Fallen Empires aren't really so bad as sets for drafting once you figure out how they work. Their drafting AI, however is terrible as noone must've drafted them on the site where they take the data from, so the AI passes you heavy staples and stuff decks with off-color playables it can't cast. The overload of activated abilities in FE also messess with the AI and there's some bugs, but if anyone took a took at it and sorted it out it'd be pretty cool to draft.

If the card prices were more sane, adding The Dark to the mix would probably be fine, chronologicaly it's The Dark - Fallen Empires - Homelands - Ice Age - Alliances.

[timmermac]

Some of the changes were my fault. I neglected to specify aspects of the rules, and I felt that resets were necessary. As far as time limits are concerned, I wanted to make it so that the challenges would end after no record updates were posted after 30 days because people don't necessarily play at the same pace. As far as deck construction for the challenge is concerned, it is not my intent for participants to have to play Slivers. Play it your way, within the parameters of the challenge. Also, both challenges are still active at the moment, though if enough people insist, I might end them and combine features of both into one challenge. For instance, the first challenge with the reward structure of the second. I don't really want to do a time limit challenge because of the reason mentioned above.

Edit: One of the things I like about quest mode is that, theoretically, it can be never-ending. However, that unending quality with certain preferences left at default values means that people are playing the majority of their matches against very hard opponents without getting to play all of the easy decks. That's why my own personal quests usually have wins to increase level set at a triple digit number, that way I'm guaranteed to play against every opponent deck multiple times. I was kind of hoping that the challenges that I set up would include that aspect, which is why I wanted the wins to gain a level so high initially in my challenges.

I'm going to think about this tonight. Tomorrow morning, it is possible that the first posts on both of my existing challenges might look considerably different. It's also possible that I might lock both challenge topics and start a new one with a new format. I thought about it and decided to do it this way.One thing is for sure, though. I don't plan on setting arbitrary time limits to determine when challenges will end. Edit: Oh, hell with it. There are going to be quarterly time limits on my challenges. I prefer letting a lack of updates from participants determine when a challenge is done. Also, if I do elect to continue the existing challenges, I will upload an attachment with the quest.preferences file that I want used for the challenge.