5th Trials - Suggestions and Feedback

[mrpaper]

Just so everyone knows, that little detail is what made Sevs pass in the final and not me.

Just so everyone knows, that's not true.  As I explained in my PM, the rules say "If there is a situation where rounding up would mean more than 10 points given, the player with the most votes gets the advantage", so the 11th and disputed point was taken from CCC rather than Sevs.

If I had mistakenly taken the 11th point from Sevs rather than CCC, (if I'd ruled the opposite of what was written in the rules thread,) you'd have tied with Sevs.  But because Sevs won in your head-to-head matchup he'd have the tiebreaker and he'd still be the one to face Terro.

Sry If I misunderstood, I thought of ALL my matches against him, lost 3-2 and won 3-0 in the tiebreaker ( I understand that one wouldn't have count which is fine).  I still stand by the point that CCCombobreaker should have had a point by all fairness.  It is too late this time around of course, but it can be changed for next time around.

[kev]

I'd love to see more feedback on

• Phase 1 taking place before registration.
• Overseer-issued 'bonus points' (as we had in the 4th Trials)

Allow me to play devil's advocate a little with some of the Phase 1 suggestions that have been made (in hopes of finding more discussion):
-Wiki / Design Theory Article - Any specific ideas?
-PvE challenge (FG, halfbloods and/or Arena) - It's all been done and respective S&F threads are seldom positive.  Ideas to keep it fresh?
-write a tutorial or strategy guide. - Any specific ideas?  60 new tutorials springing up sounds bonkers
-Mentor a newbie. - Can't think of a way to make this feasible within a week
-Quiz - Implementation ideas?
-Wakka wakka - Any other task ideas?



I strongly considered Final Battle rules that included 30 bans per player.

[~Napalm]

*dies*

*Suddenly... majofa*

No srsly now. Phase 1 taking place before registration is great! Most importantly it allows for a better prioritizing system for registration than just score/posts/blahblahblah. But it also helps prevent some of the no-shows that have to disappear after signing up, pushing people out of their desired trial (obviously not a problem this time around...). Another thing is that it allows for a longer period of time in which people can decide whether or not they want to join, however, they might be joining with a disadvantage for being late to the party.

As for ideas... still working on it. Though somebody had an interesting idea about posting a deck and discussing its ins and outs in detail.

[majofa]

*dies*

Spends 1 .. oh good ~Napalm is back.

[Higurashi]

I, like many others, enjoyed Phase 1 starting before registration. In retrospect it seems to make ALL the sense!

One individual handing out bonus points never seemed fair to me. As always, positive discrimination mostly serves to make other people feel less speshul.

[majofa]

While I'll wait to give feedback on the Trials as a whole, I will note, that I never liked the •Overseer-issued 'bonus points'. If you could hand it out to more than one challenger/Master it would be better, but 'one' could come down to just a flip of the coin.

[YoungSot]

I agree the bans seem like a lot, but let's reserve judgement until we actually play the matches.

I'd love to see more feedback on

Phase 1 taking place before registration.
 I support this.

Overseer-issued 'bonus points' (as we had in the 4th Trials)
 I definitely wouldn't mind some sort of quality control. Having the organizer do it would be easiest, though it might be even better if we could have an independent panel of judges with a variety of expertise. For example a panel composed of members such as Old Trees (CIA), Gyrodiot (Wiki), Majofa (pvp/events), etc could together bring an informed opinion on most relevant topics. The judges could either be chosen by the council, or by the Trials Organizer, or even just elected by popular vote. They could also post a topic giving their criteria and standards before phase 1 starts, so that participants will have an idea what to expect.

[YoungSot]

Double post time starts now.

-write a tutorial or strategy guide. - Any specific ideas?  60 new tutorials springing up sounds bonkers

Well this is only a good option if it's one among several choices so that not everyone is creating a guide. The easiest solution would be to limit the total number of players allowed to take this option, and let participants sign up on a first come first serve basis, giving a description of the guide they intend to create in their signup to help prevent redundancy.

-Mentor a newbie. - Can't think of a way to make this feasible within a week

Before trials starts, create a sign up topic for those who wish to have a trials mentor. Include some restrictions for mentees so that they are hopefully neither too new (likely to disappear) or too experienced (won't benefit from instruction). Next create a guideline for a few simple tasks that the mentor helps the mentee accomplish. Perhaps come up with 5-7 such tasks, and the mentor chooses 2-3 to complete with their protege based on what would be most helpful. Some task ideas off the top of my head:
- learn to farm AI3 with a deck the mentee enjoys.
- learn how to build and submit a good arena deck.
- participate in a tournament.
- build a FG farming deck.
- submit a card idea to the crucible.
etc.

[OldTrees]

Phase 1 happening before registration increases the average quality of applicants that register.

Overseer issued bonus points:
This can help with quality control. However it should be structured to reflect that standard.
1) The Community should directly or indirectly select the judges.
2) The points given should be available to all participants, provided all participants display sufficient quality.
3) The standards of the overseers should be communicated as clearly as possible before participants begin the judged task.
4) This can be improved by removing subjectivity. (Ex: Bonus points to all participants whose Card Suggestion entries were all above 4 stars) However most objective standards are less accurate than expert guided subjective ones. So there is pros and cons either way at times.

Allow me to play devil's advocate a little with some of the Phase 1 suggestions that have been made (in hopes of finding more discussion):
-Wiki / Design Theory Article - Any specific ideas?
-PvE challenge (FG, halfbloods and/or Arena) - It's all been done and respective S&F threads are seldom positive.  Ideas to keep it fresh?
-write a tutorial or strategy guide. - Any specific ideas?  60 new tutorials springing up sounds bonkers
-Mentor a newbie. - Can't think of a way to make this feasible within a week
-Quiz - Implementation ideas?
-Wakka wakka - Any other task ideas?

Wiki / Design Theory Article: Leaving it as a vague general topic lets the participants show their creativity and bring their interests to assist. Obviously there needs to be something (probably someone) that checks to see if an article in on topic (Not about koalas). (Ex: Someone might write/update card cost theory in a new thread. Another might investigate the design restrictions a new mechanic would impose on cards that have it. A third might dive into Thematic theory.)

PvE challenge (FG, halfbloods and/or Arena): Restricted deckbuilding vs an evolving foe (Arena). That category has a lot of ideas to keep it fresh and the opponent will adapt to any success. Possibly include a focus on the current most feared Arena deck (SoSac, Ghostmare, ...).

[xdude]

-Mentor a newbie. -

Don't want to lose points in case a newbie doesn't show up, don't think it's feasible.

As for the PvE, maybe:
Make a counter (or more) to a specific FG (or more) using mostly your element (50%? 66%?) for Oracle prediciton purposes (maybe make them have to be unupgraded).

[MyNameIsJoey]

Here comes my feedback and suggestion for trials.

First of all, I loved the phase 1 before registration due to inactivity.

Second of all, I would like to say I was for the bonus points given by the trials overseer. Because right now, phase 1 is more about quantity than quality. What i mean is the only goal of phase 1 is to reach the quantity that was asked, there is no need for people to do good stuff.

Third of all, while I first loved the idea of facing opposite element, I prefer an idea that Napalm talked about in chat. No idea if that was posted here, but I'll re-post it. The idea is that we have to face all the trials people. This way, people that are inactive and very hard to join are penalized.

Fourth of all, hmm, I think I have pretty much said all that I had to say. If there is anything else, I'll repost

[xdude]

we have to face all the trials people

You seriously expect a challenger to play 47 bo5's in a week while having decks prepared for each element? It is absurd to demand a challenger to have that much free time (it can take up to an hour to play a bo5 - meaning you require each player to play for almost 7 hours a day not including deckbuilding). Ridiculous.