Adventurer In Training: Final results and feedback topic

[Acsabi44]

Adventurer in training: Results

Congratulations to all who participated in the beta-test of the very first unofficial miniPVPevent! Troughout the last few days, I saw very creative decks and skillful players. I am sure that all of you will have success if the idea of minievent goes official.
And now, tha final standings:

1. kev - 8 points
Congrats kev, for winning th event! You proved yourself yet again to be one of the best PVPers of the community!
2. Commandaguy, treebeard xiii, Laxadarap - 7 points
Also congratulations, you fell just one point short, and for some of you, this was the first PVPevent they participated in.
3. summerz88, Jenkar - 6 points
4. Elbrin, pervepic - 5 points
5. bjessee, Dragoon - 3 points
6. nensuru, TribalTrouble - 1 point

I think, everything considered, all of you did a pretty good job. For that, and for being so kind as to stay through the whole event, +rep for everyone. Sorry folks, this is the only prize I can give away.
Feedback
I'd like to hear a few words about the event from anybody who'd like to lay their 2 cents. Wether participated or not, I'd really like to hear your opinions.

Some questions to get the ball rolling:
If you didn't participate: Why? Was the event uninteresting? Were the signup and/or the rounds too short or too long? Was the scheduling messed up?
Were the rules unattractive/hard to follow/boring? Would you participate if there were real forum/ingame prizes? What would you do differently to ensure that the event is as interesting as it can be?

If you participated: Did you like the event overall? Which was your favorite round? Why? Which was the least favorite? Why? Did you find the round times to be long enough/too long? Were the rules clear/easy to understand? Were they interesting enough? What is your opinion about the "Rules of the round"? Was the organising okay?
What would you change to make the event more enjoyable?

If you want, you can post your thoughts here, or you can PM it to me if you want to remain anonymous.
I will collect the opinions about the event and give them to the council. After that, it is their role to decide what to do with the whole "minievent" conception.

Finally, my thoughts as an organizer:
- The event didn't take too much effort to organize, even though I messed up sometimes, but that was more due to my lack of organizing experience rather than the complexity of the event. I had more or less the whole ruleset in my head from day1, so I didn't have to make them up on the fly. Making the MUs and keeping track of the scores was easy with random.org and a single excel worksheet. I guess as the event grows, administration gets more complex as well, but with only 12 players it was pretty manageable.
- The thing I am most unimpressed with is the scoring system. Now, we had only 12 players and in the end, the winner only had a single point advantage, with 3 players coming in second. If there were more players, I think even more of them would've been scored exactly the same, maybe even for the first place.  Initially, I came up with the idea of "rules of the round" to reward winning with more creative/restricted decks, and thus, widen the gap between players. It also raised the maximum attainable points to 12 (well, 13 in the end, but originally R3 had 1 rule as well. I added a second one to even futher the gap.)
- Another thing I'm unsure of is the length of a round. It started with 2 days, then R2 was 1 day only because I sent the matcups to the players in advance. But for R3, I went back to 2 days since I thought "Hey.. this is the final round, and the one with the most complex ruleset.. Let's give them enough time to prepare." But for some rounds I seriously considered ending the round sooner or posting the next round before the last one finished, in order to keep the pace of the event. After all, originally this was supposed to be a 3-day event.
And in the last round, we had an unplayed match due to the two players unable to get a hold of each other. And since that was the final round, I gave a 12hr extension but maybe the round should have been even longer.
- I was also unsure about what to do if a match didn't happen. I figured I would create decks and then the player whose opponent didn't show up would play versus me as a "dummy" opponent. This happened once during the whole event. And in R3 when one match was not played, I gave an extension. (Which was a mistake IMO, since I either should have played as a dummy opponent or sticked to the regular "if the match doesn't happen then both players lose" rule. The biggest problem with the extension was that it was unfair to the other players who had only so much time to prepare their decks and play their matches.)

That's about all it comes to mind. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well.

[nensuru]

This was very fun to play.

The rules of day were creative and i have good/fun matches with them. Ty for hosting this Acsabi44.

My only suggestion is to run all the event on a single topic, announce the round via post/pm and put a link of the rounds in the OP.

Hope we can keep this player base.

[kev]

I thought this was a lot of fun.  Thanks again for hosting, Acs.

- Did you find the round times to be long enough/too long? Pretty perfect imo.  I know you agonized over whether giving an extension was the right course of action.  In the end the timing might have been more lax than some people would like, but this is just for fun after all.
- Were the rules clear/easy to understand? Were they interesting enough? Rules were great.  Any TO will tell you everything (i.e. Mark cards) needs to be spelled out in excruciating detail.  That comes with experience, though.
- The thing I am most unimpressed with is the scoring system. Now, we had only 12 players and in the end, the winner only had a single point advantage, with 3 players coming in second. If there were more players, I think even more of them would've been scored exactly the same, maybe even for the first place. I generally don't like scoring a 2-0 win more than a 2-1 win.  I think allowing players to work with a true best-of-three framework creates a better meta environment and de-emphasizes RNG.  I wouldn't want mini-event scoring to work this way every time, but I think it was fine here.  You're right that the bigger problem was ties.  You'd either have to have a playoff round (but that's a problem if 3+ players tie), or just live with multiple winners.  Meh.

[summerz88]

What nensuru said is true, but if this were an official event they would be in the events section atleast, and that would make them easier to find, the event was well run.

I felt going into it that the time limits would be hard to make match ups work, but the advance warning of your opponent made it quite manageable, potentially go one step further and post every match up in the first thread.

I felt some of the rules of the day were a tad unclear, IE on day 3 were you actually able to score 2 bonus points by winning with both special decks? And I also thought that the 3 of every card rule succeeded the 6 dragon rule, not that you needed 3 dragons from 2 different elements.

Day 2 was just completely my bad with not getting the bonus point, because I read the rule, made the deck, then modified it to make it "better" only to make it no longer qualify for the achievement lol.


If you're concerned about more score disparity, make the rounds best of 5ives with either bonus points for 3-0ing or 3-1ing, or without bonus points, either way, there will be more disparity, and a more clear winner.

[plastiqe]

I didn't play because I'm busy with other things but it looks like it was a fun event.  Acsabi44 you did a great job coming up with the idea, taking the initiative to just start it up yourself and then hosting it.  Kudos to you. 

The absolute worst part about organizing an event for me is dealing with no shows, walkovers, drama, etc.  It sucks logging into the forums when I'm trying to host an event for fun and then having to deal with that shit.  Acsabi I think we need tougher rules for these freeloading players who think they can just show up or not show up whenever they want.  1 year PvP Parasites for minor infractions and/or send them a computer virus.. amIrite?  : P

[Elbirn]

I loved this whole minievent honestly. I never really considered myself PvP experienced enough to bother with joining a league or an official tourney, nor do I ever feel that I would have the time to. This event was very informal, friendly, and accessible. It'd be great to see more "just for fun" events like these for people with little free time.

As far as scoring goes, I think if you wanted to create a wider gap in score, a way to do that might be to give the winner of the duel 3 points regardless of whether they went 2-0 or 2-1. That would also fit into Kev's suggestion that winners shouldn't be rewarded more for being undefeated, as that's essentially RNG at work. Losers who manage to win at least one game should still earn their 1 point.

I thought the rules of the day were a nice addition. They didn't FORCE a restriction on deck building, but they did reward any player that followed them, and prompted more thoughtful deck building. Kudos.

The only thing I didn't care for in the whole event was the inconsistency. Round 2 was shorter than all the others when it really shouldn't have been, the last day had an additional rule of the day, etc. Ideally, every round would have had the same time limit, same number of rules of the day, and same potential points to score.

EDIT: Also, I'd just like to point this out. My name is spelled I-R, not R-I. Those broken links for my name made me sad. ;P

Thanks again for the event, acs

[summerz88]

omg yes... i made 2 posts referencing you and sent 1 or 2 pm's and in all of them I screwed up your name lol, i went back and corrected the posts after i realised but you cant un send messages

[Shantu]

I loved the concept and would have loved to participate in it. I have but one suggestion (not really following the event itself much), but I have already told that to you in PM. It can't hurt to throw it out here tho so the future organizer can know:

Advertise on Kong. Lots of newer players there and participating in these mini events that have no prerequirements may bring some fresh blood from there. If they like it, they may even stay and try some other events.

These events would also be a good way to collect some initial posts so that the newcomer can start playing in tournies.

[pervepic]

I didn't see from my messages that we get 12 hours extension only, I saw that we got only extension and we should play asap. Otherwise we wouldn't have played today if time is over and I wouldn't have waited for an hour in chat for bjessee to play with me. There must be strictness in such things. What happens if my opponent doesn't have time to play with me? I didn't do anything wrong imo, I asked him to play in PM and in chat and just waited. Unfortunately he didn't have time and time was over (but we got extension, not sure how much though) What else could I do? Now our result just doesn't count, deckbuilding and waitining was in vain, leaving just a bad taste in the mouth.

[Acsabi44]

I didn't see from my messages that we get 12 hours extension only, I saw that we got only extension and we should play asap. Otherwise we wouldn't have played today if time is over and I wouldn't have waited for an hour in chat for bjessee to play with me. There must be strictness in such things. What happens if my opponent doesn't have time to play with me? I didn't do anything wrong imo, I asked him to play in PM and in chat and just waited. Unfortunately he didn't have time and time was over (but we got extension, not sure how much though) What else could I do? Now our result just doesn't count, deckbuilding and waitining was in vain, leaving just a bad taste in the mouth.

1. I know... I messed this one up. sorry.
2. On the other hand, you could have checked the R3 topic. The counter was there all along. I don't think it is too much of a strech to assume that one will check the R3 topic regarding R3 info.
3. With that said, I think the blame is rather mine than yours, and, as I said, I'm sorry.

[dragonsdemesne]

If you didn't participate: Why? Was the event uninteresting? Were the signup and/or the rounds too short or too long? Was the scheduling messed up?
Were the rules unattractive/hard to follow/boring? Would you participate if there were real forum/ingame prizes? What would you do differently to ensure that the event is as interesting as it can be?

I didn't participate, but it seemed like it would be an interesting event.  I typically pvp for prizes, though, rather than for the pvp itself, although I don't mind a little pvp once in awhile.  I'm just that way in a lot of games, my style is typically to prefer pve over pvp.  I definitely think that having this sort of unofficial event is a good thing for the community, though.  On a personal level, I'm just too lazy to play unless there's interesting prizes involved :p  I didn't look at the rules until just now, but after a cursory reading they seem pretty good to me.

As for what would it take for me to participate... basically nymph/mark codes, and that won't happen without Zanz's blessing, and so probably won't ever happen.  I could see myself joining once in awhile just for fun.  For example, I joined the draft event going on now because my two teammates invited me to be the third player on the team, and I accepted, although I hadn't had any intention of playing in draft until then.

[bjessee]

First off, I would like to take the lion's share of the blame for the issues in this mini-event.  Had I known that my availability would tank this week, I never would have attempted to take part.  My apologies for disrupting your first event of hopefully many.

Secondly, I would again like to say kudos for taking the initiative and executing on a fine idea.  I signed up to support your efforts; the irony is not lost on me.

Finally, I would like to recommend that more consideration be put into dealing with inactive players for future events.  Especially with the compressed time frame, any real-life need could cause a match or two to be missed.  Due to the scoring of this event, awarding a victory to the player that was most active is not a viable option.  Perhaps you could have extra people that signed up be able to step in and take over for an inactive player.  I do not know what would work best, but I would hate to see your efforts ruined again by another unavailable player.

I hope my severe time limitations did not leave too sour a taste, as I do eagerly look forward to your next event, though I will definitely be more cautious about taking part.

Thank you again for hosting it, and I am deeply sorry for the problems my absence caused.