Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

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That Kode Guy
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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by That Kode Guy » Sat Feb 08, 2014 1:31 pm

Okay, gonna start this thread early, since nowadays I don't have much free time for leisure work (except on weekends). But I want to get some ideas going for my next tournament some time in the future, affectionately named "Ruination: The Contagion" by the staff.

Omen was great, but there were definitely a few flaws I'd like to address.

1) The arenas. This was big because everything felt incredibly unbalanced. ARC: Arena was fine and obviously I'd like to continue using that. However Lumina Cloth was a flop. Yes, there were some spinners like Scarab and Frequency who were able to hold their own on it, but other than them it was rare to see a spinner manage to win here. This arena basically killed spinners' chances of actually accomplishing much and I'd like to scrap it. However, if anybody has any thoughts besides scrapping it, I'd be open to suggestion. Casino Night Zone and Land of Confusion balanced each other out, so I'd like to keep those. Maybe make them a bit less favourable towards one party though...

2) The schedule. Okay this was completely my fault. I let Random.org basically control the entire schedule and some people really got the short end of the stick here, mostly Badnik. However, manually drawing up the schedule itself is far far FAR too much work and simply organizing the work Random.org has done for me was effort enough. If possible, I'd like to have a few people help me with scheduling next time, or at least put down some ideas for it.

3) Stagnance. Other than arenas, it wasn't exactly different from the usual CFL tournament and I'd like to address this as well, while still being able to record it into the CFL Rankings. Now I'm not saying I'm going to rip off Reign of Steel or anything, but I feel there could be some changes to the tournament structure I could make. Again, if anyone's got any ideas, please feel free to put them here.

That's pretty much what's been on my mind as of late. Bear in mind this won't start for at least another half year (if that short of a time...) so please input as much as you can. :)

And no, no instant-kill hazards please. :P
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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by NWOWWE » Sat Feb 08, 2014 1:50 pm

With Cloth, the main issue was that it was laughably easy to get thrown off of it. Even with the spikes around the edge, they only prolonged the agony for about 10 seconds or so at best. If you wanted to keep that arena (or have an arena with an OotA capability) it needs to be tougher for a bot to get tossed.

I think Land of Confusion mostly okay, but if you wanted to balance it a bit more you could give it another kind of "passive" hazard (maybe an arena drum or something like that) for a rammer to use. It wouldn't completely allow them to use hazards for damage, but it would give them something else to work with.

Casino Night... I guess the only thing would be to make it a bit less cluttered. As it is now, the hazards are pretty tightly packed. Maybe remove one of the floor spinners and move the other to where it's not completely out there in the open. It still gives the rammers plenty to work with, but spinners and the like won't be tripping over hazards everywhere they go.

As for the schedule, sometimes randomness just doesn't seem random enough. When I did the Armageddon schedule I did it completely random though I was literally drawing names out of a hat rather than using a website and I randomized each weight class seperately. Not sure if that's what you did or not, but it seemed to come out fairly well. The only real way around it would be to let randomness do it's work and then maybe inject the human element into it a little bit if things look way unbalanced. Either that or just toss it and do a random draw again.

Tournament structure. Well the way I see it the only real options open are Round Robin like we have been or the old traditional style (double elim or god help us single elim). I'm not really sure what you could do otherwise. I definetly prefer Round Robin (and keeping the Single Elim playoffs). Otherwise I'm stumped.
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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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by NFX » Sat Feb 08, 2014 2:07 pm

I reckon The Cloth could be made harder to remove opponents from if there were a steep-ish ramp heading up to the edge or something like that. Maybe somewhere between 20 and 30 degrees or so, to slow rammers down and maybe have them lose control of their opponent, but not enough to prevent them dispatching of an opponent.
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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by V900 » Sat Feb 08, 2014 2:09 pm

If you made the spikes for LC much longer and had them always up, the fights would be more than "hurr durr i shuv u off".
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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by Badnik96 » Sat Feb 08, 2014 8:59 pm

I like Nick's idea, though No Patrol didn't have much trouble with Cloth at all XD If anything Slammer got screwed over more by the Cloth than any of my spinny things.

Also I could help with schedul- oh wait never mind, I'm shit with that. Remember the LoRE fiasco? XD

If anything I could help with balancing the two divisions for each weight class.
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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by GF93 » Sat Feb 08, 2014 9:08 pm

I say just stick to the ARC Arena, personally. It's not fair if certain designs are essentially given random chances at a free pass due to an arena being better-suited for them personally. Something that doesn't offer an advantage to any particular design would be much more balanced.
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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by That Kode Guy » Wed Apr 23, 2014 11:57 am

Bumping this again. It's been about 75 days and nothing's really been set in stone yet.

But here are the ideas I've had:

1) I may just use the revamped Casino Night Zone that I'm using on FRA, with one pulverizer corner, one spinner corner, and the two sets of paddles/springs. I mean, nothing against the ARC Arena but I'd kind of prefer my own thing. Maybe I could add a hazard or two, or replace one or two.

2) Most of the writers feel comfortable with the usual round-robin and single-elim format. I want to talk about this in more detail. What benefits and deficits would this format have, and would double-elim have? Double-elim seems to have garnered the second-most attention so...

3) Scheduling is fine.

4a) Writers. This is a big thing, not because of WHO but because of HOW MANY. I mean, me and Josh pretty much handled Ruination: The Beginning ourselves, with Chris, Lian, or Martijn writing the "me vs. Josh" results. Things I've seemed to have noticed, and I'm not going to throw any names out here, are that a lot of the time some writers are unable to write that week or they get results in late. Added to this is workload. Multiple writers in a tournament did help with people writing a lot of results (Ruination: The Omen) but then when one person holds up all the results with their set, that's kinda worrying. Also worrying is when people try to cover for them, and then that person submits results anyway, well... I can't say I don't feel a little guilty. Is this an inevitability? It might seem a little insensitive I suppose, my work revolves around being on a computer so I'm pretty much on ARC the most. I do apologize. But I'm just wondering.

4b) I want to "test drive" a few writing candidates, if they're up to it.

Okay I'm done. :wat:
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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by NWOWWE » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:04 pm

1. So just one arena in total then right? I'd be cool with that.

2.

Double Elim:

Benefits: The season goes by quicker and there are steadily fewer and fewer results to write.

Deficits: I throw my laptop against a wall when I find out I have to fight Kody in week 1.


4. In some shape or form I think this has been a recurring issue through a lot of ARC tournaments. I don't see an easy solution. :-/
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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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by playzooki » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:07 pm

1)Fine.
2)IMO, Round robin = less luck; double elim = less matches. We could also try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_tournament
4a)This is up to you, we could do what we did in lore iirc where the results were edited in.
4b)Fine.
3)you just realized this number is out of place :v:

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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by That Kode Guy » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:08 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>NWOWWE</dt><dd>Apr 23 2014, 12:04 PM</dd></dl><div>4. In some shape or form I think this has been a recurring issue through a lot of ARC tournaments. I don't see an easy solution. :-/ [/quote]I'm not there has to be a way to solve it immediately, but at least make it less of an issue, and that's what I'm primarily wondering.
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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by NWOWWE » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:09 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>playzooki</dt><dd>Apr 23 2014, 12:07 PM</dd></dl><div>4a)This is up to you, we could do what we did in lore iirc where the results were edited in.[/quote]Please do not cite LoRE for ideas. :P
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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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by playzooki » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:10 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>NWOWWE</dt><dd>Apr 23 2014, 12:09 PM</dd></dl><div><blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>playzooki</dt><dd>Apr 23 2014, 12:07 PM</dd></dl><div>4a)This is up to you, we could do what we did in lore iirc where the results were edited in.[/quote]Please do not cite LoRE for ideas. :P [/quote]Why? it was run well imo

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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by NWOWWE » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:12 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>KodeBreaker</dt><dd>Apr 23 2014, 12:08 PM</dd></dl><div><blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>NWOWWE</dt><dd>Apr 23 2014, 12:04 PM</dd></dl><div>4. In some shape or form I think this has been a recurring issue through a lot of ARC tournaments. I don't see an easy solution. :-/ [/quote]I'm not there has to be a way to solve it immediately, but at least make it less of an issue, and that's what I'm primarily wondering.[/quote]For one thing I would suggest someone not volunteer themselves for the staff unless they are very sure they can get their stuff done on time.
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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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by NWOWWE » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:14 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>playzooki</dt><dd>Apr 23 2014, 12:10 PM</dd></dl><div><blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>NWOWWE</dt><dd>Apr 23 2014, 12:09 PM</dd></dl><div><blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>playzooki</dt><dd>Apr 23 2014, 12:07 PM</dd></dl><div>4a)This is up to you, we could do what we did in lore iirc where the results were edited in.[/quote]Please do not cite LoRE for ideas. :P [/quote]Why? it was run well imo[/quote]The only reason it came to any kind of sensible conclusion is that Kody basically gave it the same life support that Philip had to give FRR 4.
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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Ruination: The Contagion - Ideas

Post by That Kode Guy » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:15 pm

<blockquote class='quote_blockquote'><dl><dt>NWOWWE</dt><dd>Apr 23 2014, 12:12 PM</dd></dl><div>For one thing I would suggest someone not volunteer themselves for the staff unless they are very sure they can get their stuff done on time. [/quote]For another, if possible, I would encourage getting matches that have been already RP'd fully for out of the way, so when Sunday does comes around, their workload is less and it doesn't seem like a giant task.

But yeah, it does seem like a toughie. =/
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