Prisoner's Dilemma - Rules

[DrunkDestroyer]

Prisoner's Dilemma - Rules
Original idea by: DrunkDestroyer   |   Developed by: DrunkDestroyer   |   Organized by: TStar

Teams of Three will be fighting for their freedom, working together without even knowing one anothers name.1. HOW TO SIGN UP?
Anyone with a forum and a chat account can sign up for this event. Start by reading the rules very carefully. Then sign up by posting on a separate sign up topic. If you cannot find a sign up topic, or if it is locked, this event is not currently active, and you will have to wait for it to restart. Maximum amount of participants for this event is 18. If the event is full, you can still sign up as a reserve player, and  will get a chance to join the event if any of the 18 players doesn't show up during round 1, or at any other point in the game. (Reserves in this event are likely to be chosen for the game itself)
This event may have a brief selection process to choose initial players and reserves, because activity and reliability will prove to be very important for this event, and for the organisers who will already have lots of work.2. GETTING READY
The organiser will randomise teams, and create brackets. You do not know who is on your team, or where you are in the brackets.

Twice a week, you will be contacted by the event orgainisers. The first time (beginning of the week) will ask you to choose one element for your team to use, and pick 3 cards (any element) to ban from your opponent's deck. No reply from a player will result in a random element chosen for the team, and no cards banned. Any repeated banned cards will not count as any cards (encouraging inventive thinking).

The second (3-4 days into the week) will tell you all of the elements your team has chosen (you must make a trio using only these elements- a trio here is defined as at least 5 cards from each element, where 0 casting cost cards do not contribute) and all the cards your team has collectively banned from your opponents team. You will also be given one name, who is on the opposing team. You are to play them. Record all decks, and send them to the organisers after the game, win or loss. (First to 3 wins)

See the duels subsection and the example round for further details and explanation. (Once subsection is created, example battle results will show how the organisers have processed the information and displayed it)

For the Final duels, individual players will chose one of the elements the other team will use, and there will be no ban cards.
3. BRACKETS
This event is a double-elimination tournament and uses two kinds of brackets: winners brackets and losers brackets. Everyone starts out in the winners brackets. When you lose the first time, you will drop down to the losers bracket. When you lose the second time, you will be eliminated from the event. These brackets will not be made public to the forums, however, it should be easy to figure out where you are in terms of wins and losses. This is to prevent people finding team mates. The final match will be between the winner of winners brackets, and the winner of losers brackets. In short, if you lose two times, you are out. If you don't lose two times, you win. However, the operation of the final duels may be done differently, with the best team playing each other for the final prize, or the top two having a different styled match - where you choose the opponent's elements, but no ban cards are present.4. DUELS
Players have 5 days to make the fight happen. They must contact their opponent using a PM, and try to find a time that suits both. If the fight doesn't happen, both players lose by default, unless one player is clearly more active in trying to find a suitable time. Event organizer will determine who the most active player was, and his or her word is final. Matches are best-of-five. The first player who wins 3 individual duels, wins the match. If someone didn't play one match, they will likely be replaced, unless the organisers are informed of exactly why. You are allowed to change your deck (and mark) by swapping cards, still following the elements you have been given and the ban cards. However, 3 minutes is the maximum allowable time for deck changing, it is suggested that one should plan more than one if they wish to play completely different strategies for every game, however You may only use up to three different decks in the duels.  It's a good idea to either record the matches, or take screenshots as proof, in case something weird, like a desync error, happens. A player who gets caught cheating, will be permanently banned from all Elements community PvP events, so please play fair.5. AFTER DUELS
Both the Winner and the loser are required to send their decks for all matches to the organisers (Codes /must/ be kept). They will not show their decks to anyone else. The decks and scores will be posted anonymously with all the others to give an idea of teammates deckbuilding style, preffered elements, and whatever else you can get out of it. Ban Cards and Elements chosen will be known, however players will be forbidden to contact about who made which deck, and no attempts to tell people what team they are on is tolerated.
If it appears obvious to organisers (who bear in mind, know the teams) it will be considered trying to find teammates. They have discretion to do what they want with the circumstances.6. WINNER
Winner of the Prisoner's Dilemma event will be the winning team. Even if one player let his team carry him the whole way. Even if all the other competitors dropped out. Even if they just suck.7. REWARDS
The winner of the event will receive the following forum award icon:
All players who follow rules, complete duels and make their best efforts throughout the tourney will be recommended in War Auction/to specific masters if they wish. (Also for any other selective events, and possibly other things which require some sort of commitment)


Further Reading
Please see both the Typical Round for Player and Organiser (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,25269.msg344658.html#new) and Example Battle Results (http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,25238.msg344229.html#new) for further expansion, clarification and examples of how the event will be run.

[Ekki]

Placeholder: Looking forward to see how is this related to the prisoner's dilemma, this really interests me.

[MyNameIsJoey]

This does look interesting, and if there is any extra work to put to it as an organizer and nobody else wants to do it i can do it.

But now, to the event.

How many people can join?

Im not sure I understand, but you said only reliable players can join... Is there a way to tell which player is reliable or not? Is there a line of reliability you need to cross? is there a % or reliability?

If we were to end with a number of players that is not dividible by 3, what happens?

how are the matchups? are they best of 3's?

Once you know about your team ( from deck images and stuff) are you allowed to communicate with them?

[DrunkDestroyer]

This does look interesting, and if there is any extra work to put to it as an organizer and nobody else wants to do it i can do it.

But now, to the event.

How many people can join? I have no idea. In my mind, I see 5-6 teams of 3. However, in an event like this, droupouts need to be corrected quickly, so 3-7 reserves would be pretty awesome.

Im not sure I understand, but you said only reliable players can join... Is there a way to tell which player is reliable or not? Is there a line of reliability you need to cross? is there a % or reliability? Honestly, it sucks that I would have to do this, but in an event like this where you have zero choice in team building, I want very reliable people. High post counts and activity in other events are awesome, however, if someone just straight up tells me that they want to play, will do everything on-time and stay for the entire event, (all in PM obviously, initative wins here) I would almost definetely choose them, regardless of post count or prior activity.

If we were to end with a number of players that is not dividible by 3, what happens? Selection process, and reserves. Both IMO are necessary for this event to run smoothly anyway.

how are the matchups? are they best of 3's?  First to 3. So up to 5 games. (Deck changing is allowed between games) - this was mentioned above?

Once you know about your team ( from deck images and stuff) are you allowed to communicate with them?
In theory, you should never be able to find out who is on your team. The decks posted are all done by the organisers, with anonymous names. You will be able to recognise your own deck among them, and the elements of your team-mates vs their opponents, but without names or anything. In theory, you will play against a fixed opponent from each team (think team order in 3 Man PvP) so not too many people will be revealed. If your team ends up known, then you are still forbidden to communicate.

Thanks for all this btw. I have no idea what I would miss when writing this, and hopefully you pointed a lot of it out. My responses are in my fav chat colour

[Scaredgirl]

When I read the title, I knew that this would be a cool idea, and I wasn't disappointed.

Biggest challenge will definitely be the organizing part. Other than that, looks great.

[DrunkDestroyer]

Almost completely forgot about this. Positive comment from SG relit the burning desire inside of me to make an actual interesting event.

The organising is a /huge/ issue. Like Mafia, it will be really hard to make sure everything works correctly, and I could see people getting upset over a mistake on the organisers side. (The plus side here is that most of the mistakes won't be revealed till the end, and hopefully the player's wont realise at all - Ignorance is bliss)

If it was decided that this event was worth the trouble, I would personally suggest an entire section for the organisers, so they can edit and modify as PMs come in. 2-3 organisers would be ideal - or one super-awesome one.

I'll take another look over the rules and see if I can make anything clearer/work, however, even the creator (I) would only reccommend this if the PvP event section is needing a 4th, "pro" event, since it isn't that accessible to everyone else

[kobisjeruk]

first of all, there wont be overlap of bannings and element chosen right? what i meant by that is that the way i understand it, each team member will choose a unique element / card(s) to be banned
what this tells me is that the pick/banning phase will be much, much longer (a lot of communication between participants and organizer(s) to ensure each element/banned card is unique)
this can lead to a whole lot of problems...

secondly, 9 cards banned (3 from each team member) is too much imo
the problem is that we currently have a relatively small cardpool
9 cards banned could essentially take out measures of counter to any particular deck archetype and considering any able-minded deckbuilder will try to force some weakness unto their opponent...
i played out this event in my head and it would be better just to show an example so here goes :-

I ban deflag, steal and pulverizer, taking Aether
<mailed the host with my pick/choice>
my team member (whom i dont know of course) decided to ban butterfly effect, deflag, steal, going for Aether himself
(great minds think alike and all that jazz)
but since element/bans are supposed to be unique, he'll know another teammate has already chosen Aether with deflag and steal as banned, so now he has the choice to pick something else to synergize with my picks (knowing i already picked Aether) so then he chooses Air (for example) and ban BE, pulverizer, momentum
notice theres yet another copy of the same ban (<insert another sequence of communication between this dude and the host>)
say he finalized his ban as BE, momentum and charger
so now you're looking at a potential dim shield/wing stall with heavy hitter that your opponent cant get rid off (wings can still be breached but thats not the point) and this is just between 2 elements and 6 banned cards!
<insert another sequence between the third member and the host and you got a big pile of oh my god, are you kidding me?>

my point is :-
make element unique (each team member wont end up choosing the same) but not bannings (if you happen to ban the same card as your teammate(s), tough luck)
and reduce the ban size, i'd say 1 per team member or AT MOST 2 per
thats it

<insert some newfound shenanigans here (to be continued)>

[DrunkDestroyer]

I'll show what I would expect to happen with these helpful diagrams.

Player  of Team X chooses  , Momentum, Deflagration and Reverse Time
Player  of Team X chooses  , Antimatter, Deflagration and Steal
Player  of Team X chooses  , Reverse Time, Miracle and Ice Shield


---These results are sent individually to the organiser with no discussion between players---

---Organiser posts this in helpful thread, for organisers eyes only ---

Team X :      .
Duplicate Elements become random elements. In this case,  -> 
Team X:      ( was chosen twice and was the randomised replacement)

Team X ban cards: Momentum, Deflagration, Reverse Time, Antimatter, Steal, Miracle, Ice Shield.
(Reverse Time and Deflagration were chosen twice - no replacements are chosen)

Obviously, the same elements will provide advantages, so a replacement must be found - while the same cards will provide disadvantages, so that players will be encouraged to think differently.


---The elements chosen will be sent to the team, and the ban elements from the opposing team will be sent with that, so that there is time for deckbuilding---


And seriously? Even if they get some kind of  combination and ban all forms of permanent control, decks do not have to be 30 cards. Deck them out, poison them, fire bolt,  buff chargers, improvise. There is no undefeatable combination.

[UTAlan]

This is a great idea. Looks like there are some kinks to work out (I agree that 9 ban cards seems a bit much, at first glance), but I would love to see this come to fruition!

[kobisjeruk]

Duplicate Elements become random elements.

-Cards- were chosen twice - no replacements are chosen

you know what, it would be very helpful if you include this in the OP

[DrunkDestroyer]

I've been trying to change it into that fancy table form, and while I think it has all the needed information, it still seems pretty confusing, even to me.
Any advice from anyone telling me what is/isn't included in the rules and needs clarification would be greatly appreciated, because it's hard for me to not already know my idea.

[Scaredgirl]

I like the idea of Prisoner's Dilemma very much. I think that the main problem here is the fact that so many things happen behind the closed doors, using PM's. But I guess it's impossible to have an event like this one any other way.

Also, might I suggest you write a small example of what a typical round would look like. All the steps the players has to do etc. In its current form, the rules might look a bit scary.

Anyways, I'd like to see this even happen soon.