ARC Community Atrophy

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BEES
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Post by BEES » Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:44 am

So I'm starting this because I'm very concerned about ARC collapsing, with a number of teams ducking out of the next round of tournaments this year, and Monsterworks leaving (and leaving the fate of CBC uncertain, and the smaller tournaments likely dead).

I want to hear people's suggestions how to make this more fun, so that people don't leave. The underlying theme I'm hearing from many people lately is that they just aren't having fun. I myself have been pretty 'meh' about the tournaments lately and have mostly competed because I like the community. I do want to keep doing this though. And I want to find a way to make the tournaments more fun, but that's tough to do.

Someone out there might have some good ideas, so feel free to share them.

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Venice Queen
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Post by Venice Queen » Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:56 am

RPs in general are kinda brutal. I feel like people are not trusting in Writer's bullshit detectors and are therefore writing long dissertations about the quality of their opponent's robots in which they nitpick every tiny detail. I know this is a problem perpetuated by me, and see it in other RPs as well. If it's not a hard to notice flaw or something that plays into your strategy, you really shouldn't be writing about it.

also a short break might be a good idea. Alex kinda worked himself up in a frenzy of doing like 5 tournies at once and I think that really contributed to both his leaving and the kinda collective burnout we've been having
‽ ROBOTICS
CHAMPIONS: Lightweight//Ruination 4//Nick's Fuzzy Rules -- -- Hobbyweight//Bot-o-Rama//Buzzkill -- -- Arbitraryweight//D12//Listen Here, Grandad, This Is America, Everyone Here Eats Ass

Bots that I think are better than my actual champions: Chimera // Venice Queen // Cuddle Time!


V900? Wheres V1-899 ~NickyDustyOwl
fridge ~ V900

Wasn't Ted Bundy physically attractive though? ~Superbomb122
get a room ~Madbull
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V900
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Post by V900 » Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:58 am

Over on GTM we like to have a competition called "bot of the month" where people submit robots and the forum basically votes on which one looks the coolest. I think something like that (a contest based on design skill rather than going through a long-ass tourney process) could work out decently for ARC. Some months even have special rules that you have to work around, to keep things interesting.

...I might be a bit biased toward that idea though, considering I haven't done any of this RP stuff in years. ;)
Last edited by V900 on Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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BEES
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Post by BEES » Wed Jan 11, 2017 1:01 am

We could definitely do that. I think that's a great idea. We've done something similar in the past (ARC CAD Contests)...

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Cha0sFerret
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Post by Cha0sFerret » Wed Jan 11, 2017 1:08 am

Might as well throw my two cents in.

Smaller tournaments. Not necessarily fewer weight classes, but a hard cap on the number of participants would make each tournament shorter and less of a burden on the writers. I think we might see less burnout.

We also see a lot of people who pop up and play the first week or two of a tournament and then leave. This almost always comes off the back of a losing week. Honestly, the way we're set up, it's difficult for new players to succeed. Perhaps a newbies-only tournament whenever we get another influx from reddit, assuming that happens a third time. At least let them get some experience before facing down the people who've been here multiple years and getting crushed because of a design flaw they hadn't even considered. This does inherently split the community, though... maybe not the best way to go about it.
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Post by Badnik96 » Wed Jan 11, 2017 1:14 am

actually that isn't a bad idea. up in canada there's a group of roboteers who split the antweight class up into the masters and rookie divisions, so that the newbies had a chance to learn some stuff before being thrown to the lions, so to speak. i think it's something worth considering, at the very least.
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Venice Queen
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Post by Venice Queen » Wed Jan 11, 2017 1:19 am

it'd probably be worth letting people self-sort into these groups, so that people don't feel forced to conform to either group
‽ ROBOTICS
CHAMPIONS: Lightweight//Ruination 4//Nick's Fuzzy Rules -- -- Hobbyweight//Bot-o-Rama//Buzzkill -- -- Arbitraryweight//D12//Listen Here, Grandad, This Is America, Everyone Here Eats Ass

Bots that I think are better than my actual champions: Chimera // Venice Queen // Cuddle Time!


V900? Wheres V1-899 ~NickyDustyOwl
fridge ~ V900

Wasn't Ted Bundy physically attractive though? ~Superbomb122
get a room ~Madbull
I will NOT ~Superbomb122



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Badnik96
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Post by Badnik96 » Wed Jan 11, 2017 1:30 am

oh yeah definitely
Team Ignition
Redline: Robot Bastards 1 LW champ
Pyrite: FRR Backlash LW champ
The Debilitator: Cherry Bomb Classic 1 LW champ
Sling Shot: Bot O' Rama 2016 Sportsman champ
Doomerang: Robot Fight Night HW champ

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Post by British-Robotics » Wed Jan 11, 2017 4:32 am

I for one will not leave ARC, it keeps me entertained but at the moment I just got a trail job locally at Subway and I'm not sure if this will effect my time on ARC. However the monthly theme tournament is a wonderful idea since I enjoy designing some good looking robots. (Not only that but it's helped improve my art too ;)) I was thinking of maybe do Gauntlets and obstacle courses for future ideas.

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Post by patrickrowberry » Wed Jan 11, 2017 5:38 am

i feel fights shoud have more then 1 person judging them as only the writer desides the result i feel it should be 3 i mean 1 person can still write the result but as to agree with the other people o nthe result

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Post by NFX » Wed Jan 11, 2017 8:40 am

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>patrickrowberry</dt><dd>Jan 11 2017, 05:38 AM</dd></dl><div>i feel fights shoud have more then 1 person judging them as only the writer desides the result i feel it should be 3 i mean 1 person can still write the result but as to agree with the other people o nthe result[/quote]This is how it usually happened when a tournament reached the playoff/quarterfinal stage, but having a jury for every single fight, it would be incredibly difficult to both hand out which fights a person is responsible for, and then get their decisions all together.
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Post by NWOWWE » Wed Jan 11, 2017 9:37 am

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>The_Angry_Goat</dt><dd>Jan 11 2017, 12:56 AM</dd></dl><div>RPs in general are kinda brutal. I feel like people are not trusting in Writer's bullshit detectors and are therefore writing long dissertations about the quality of their opponent's robots in which they nitpick every tiny detail. I know this is a problem perpetuated by me, and see it in other RPs as well. If it's not a hard to notice flaw or something that plays into your strategy, you really shouldn't be writing about it.[/quote]I think this may be at least partially attributed to the large (by ARC standards) influx of new members over the past year or so. Prior to that we had a fairly consistent contestant pool for a pretty decent stretch with the occasional person hopping off or on. Everyone was familiar with everyone. People had a general idea of the tendencies and thought processes of the usual writers.

This was both good and bad in some ways. Good in that, for better or worse, you pretty much knew what to expect in terms of how designs and rules would be interpreted. Bad in that having the same smallish core of writers led to too much stagnation in thinking and caused creativity in designs to pretty much grind to a standstill. There wasn't much point in trying anything too new or experimental since you couldn't be sure it would get received too well.

Now with new members and fresh faces on the writing staff, you can pretty much flip-flop that narrative. There's been more experimentation (though definitely still a firm grounding in tried and true designs well to be sure), but less constancy on the way rules/designs are interpreted and fights decided.

Invariably, as time goes on this will normalize a fair degree, though now that we (theoretically) have a larger pool to pick writers from, and indeed the ability to have larger writing staffs when necessary I think it can help keep individual writers from having to do too much in any given week. This helps keep writers from feeling overtaxed from the days when they might have to do at least 7-8 results per week (if not more&#33;) and it also keeps any one writer from having too much influence on how any given week goes. So if a writer is just having an off week it's less likely you'll see a lot of crappy results.

Also, I've found that a larger staff makes it less likely any one writer ends up doing results for the same bots over and over. The benefit here being that if a writer has some kind of ingrained bias to a certain bot (maybe they just think it's super well designed or whatever), if they aren't writing for it a high number of times over the season, they aren't artificially influencing it's success. And I say this because I myself got trapped in similar behavior which led to me taking a well needed brake from writing during the first Robot Bastards tournament.
Area51Escapee,Jan 30 2011 wrote:
Spatula,Jan 29 2011 wrote: I should go 3-1 this week but it'll probably be something like 0-4 or 0-5.
It sucks going 0-5. You lose all 4 of your bot fights for the week and you also lose at life.

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Post by playzooki » Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:57 am

havent got time to do a big post but a lot of people seem to want to inject bullshit rules and stupid fucking gimmicks into tournaments. i intended to stop doing arc but since spatula is doing another robot bastards i might as well enter that

edit:
asbestosstar told me to say: Stopcbeing bias to Asbestosstar and unban him.
Last edited by playzooki on Wed Jan 11, 2017 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Venice Queen
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Post by Venice Queen » Wed Jan 11, 2017 11:05 am

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>playzooki</dt><dd>Jan 11 2017, 10:57 AM</dd></dl><div>

edit:
asbestosstar told me to say: Stopcbeing bias to Asbestosstar and unban him.
[/quote]Is this where we're supposed to bark at him :P
‽ ROBOTICS
CHAMPIONS: Lightweight//Ruination 4//Nick's Fuzzy Rules -- -- Hobbyweight//Bot-o-Rama//Buzzkill -- -- Arbitraryweight//D12//Listen Here, Grandad, This Is America, Everyone Here Eats Ass

Bots that I think are better than my actual champions: Chimera // Venice Queen // Cuddle Time!


V900? Wheres V1-899 ~NickyDustyOwl
fridge ~ V900

Wasn't Ted Bundy physically attractive though? ~Superbomb122
get a room ~Madbull
I will NOT ~Superbomb122



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Wolf51-50
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Post by Wolf51-50 » Wed Jan 11, 2017 11:21 am

I do feel that we need to have a type of pattern for writers so they can have a break if needed. Perhaps we can have a cycle of some sort where we have, say 7 writers, and we have 5 write for that week while the other two have their week long break. The next week, those two jump in and another two have a break for that week. It could have a bit of a cycle for when each time happens and might help prevent the burning out contagion that has been going around for writers
Alpha Robotics - Embrace the carnage!

Recent Tournaments:

ROBOT2
FW: Apocalyptic Peacekeeper (2-3)
LW: Backstab 3 (3-3) [Lifetime 11-8]
MW: Outrage 2 (4-1) [Lifetime 6-3]
HW: Tulta Munille (3-2)

Ruination: The Upheavel
LW: White Lightning (1-6) [Lifetime 4-8]
MW: Diablo Genesis (5-3) [Lifetime 10-5]
HW: Coup de Grâce (2-5) [Lifetime 13-9]
SHW: Fenrir (6-2) [Lifetime 7-3]

Reckoning: The Revival
MW: Vovoka (4-1) [Lifetime 10-3]

tune in next time on ARC when I one-up Boto by posting my vast collection of Thomas The Tank Engine hentai on the Discord :V -HFL

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