The Weakest Link 2010

[JellySlayer]

"Through me the way is to the city dolent;
Through me the way is to eternal dole;
Through me the way among the people lost.

Justice incited my sublime Creator;
Created me divine Omnipotence,
The highest Wisdom and the primal Love.

Before me there were no created things,
Only eterne, and I eternal last.
All hope abandon, ye who enter in!"

--Dante


April is now upon us, and it seemed to me to be the appropriate time to begin our preparations for the annual Weakest Link challenge. The challenge is an open competition of skill and wit that pits each player against each other, and against mecriless RNG. Our first and second Weakest Link challenges were resounding successes, with dozens of players competing for the glory of the title "Lord of Corruption".

The challenge rules are as follows:

-Players will be divided into roughly equal numbers per "league". Last year we had about 5 leagues of 8 players, give or take.
-Each league will be given a randomly generated character, who will start on ID:1.
-Each player will have 2000 turns to descend at least once with their league PC. Ascending is not allowed under (almost) any circumstances. Players who fail to descend are counted as dead and are eliminated.
-If a player dies, they are eliminated from contention except...
-If a player creates a situation in which no player on their team is able to successfully able to descend, the player who created the situation will be eliminated and all player who died there will be revived. In addition, once such a situation has occurred, dead players from other leagues are also allowed to attempt to pass the "impossible" challenge. If successful, the dead player will be resurrected into the new league and allowed to continue. Previous challenges include the Trial of Rust (2008) and the Trial of the Dark Orc Tribe (2009).
-For the first two complete rounds of play, players must refrain from engaging in chaotic tactics. These are any tactic that results in direct harm to the next player(s) in the line. At the beginning of the third round, the Chaos Gate will be opened, and such tactics will be allowed (and encouraged).
-The most chaotic player will be awarded the Epythic trophy
-The top two players from each league will qualify for the (semi) finals. Winner of the finals takes all.

Competition traditionally begins on May 6.

A few other things:

-In the interest of fairness, we have developed the "river rule", which allows PCs who lack any means of crossing a river and who cannot locate the stairs to immediately respawn the river level.
-Players must give a complete report of all of their activities during their turn.

-We had some problems last year with exactly what constitutes a chaotic behaviour, particularly because we didn't really have any sort of a system set up to deal with marginal cases. I would like to propose the following resolution mechanism:
--If a player commits a behaviour that is deemed chaotic, they will be required to descend some number of levels (1-10 I was thinking) in Limbo
--Limbo is a randomly generated, cursed PC, who starts on ID:1, as with all other Weakest Link PCs. A player will be given 400 turns per level to descend. Once they reach the last level of their dive, they must stop playing immediately (ie. each player in limbo should always start on an empty level), but if they succeed, return to their league as normal.
--Players must complete their time in limbo before their next turn.
--Players who die in limbo or fail to reach the desired level within the turns alloted are eliminated from their league.
--Subsequent players who are sent to limbo pick up where the previous player left off. Thus each infraction is always more perilous than that last.
--Violation of any of the normal rules in limbo (eg. ascending) result in death. The Chaos Gate is always open.

Questions? Concerns? Suggestions? Comments?

[Soirana]

So i make quick start, put my team's char at ID10 go to limbo screw that char over before entering ID10 and get fine?

I like these years rules oh so much fuck the spirits of game

[Gheist]

I don't have the bloody slightest as to what this is.... at all.


What are we going to be doing, sending eachother .svg files, and hope that we're all using compatable versions, then clubbing our way down the ID with them to points, sending them back for verification, and repeating until all but one 'team' is wiped out?


Sounds like a bit of a hassle, to me.. =/

[lotuskip]

The whole concept of some not-so-well-defined "chaotic tactics" being forbidden calls for some kind of "referees". Perhaps a board of "trusted" (haha) players, all from different leagues, who vote whenever there is a suspected case of chaotic tactics being applied too early. (If a member of the board is suspected, he/she of course can't vote.)

The limbo idea seems interesting. But we'd have two savegames per league, then, right? One for the "actual dive" and one for the "penalty dive"? Like Soirana points out, this can affect the gameplay of the "actual dive" in undesirable ways. I would think it's enough that if the aforementioned board of "trusted" (haha) players votes against a player, that player is considered dead. Perhaps even permanently dead so that such a dirty, cheating-before-it's-time-to-cheat bastard player cannot be resurrected.

[JellySlayer]

The whole concept of some not-so-well-defined "chaotic tactics" being forbidden calls for some kind of "referees". Perhaps a board of "trusted" (haha) players, all from different leagues, who vote whenever there is a suspected case of chaotic tactics being applied too early. (If a member of the board is suspected, he/she of course can't vote.)

The limbo idea seems interesting. But we'd have two savegames per league, then, right? One for the "actual dive" and one for the "penalty dive"? Like Soirana points out, this can affect the gameplay of the "actual dive" in undesirable ways. I would think it's enough that if the aforementioned board of "trusted" (haha) players votes against a player, that player is considered dead. Perhaps even permanently dead so that such a dirty, cheating-before-it's-time-to-cheat bastard player cannot be resurrected.

Last year we had referees of a sort IIRC. Each league was administered by someone who backed up the saves and kept things moving, and dealt with these sort of issues--those people weren't playing in that league at all, and so were sort of impartial. Part of the issue that I'm trying to avoid is last year the only choices that the administrator had were either complete absolution of the offending player or killing them off. For somewhat minor or dubious cases we couldn't really justify killing off a player, so I thought that "limbo" might be a nice middle ground. In particularly severe cases, I suppose the admins could still enter a death sentence (or something like 66 rounds in limbo). For instance, if someone improperly uses the river rule--say they have swimming or think that a trap message is a river message--then rather than either ignoring it, or killing them, we could have them dive a few levels in limbo.

My plan was to make limbo savegame common to all leagues.

Honestly, my preference would be to not bother with the chaos gate at all and have chaotic tactics from the start, but that's very unfriendly to newbies. I thought that making marginal chaotic play a calculated risk for the player doing it might be a better option. As I alluded to above, though, this is just my thoughts on the subject and is entirely open to discussion.

Sounds like a bit of a hassle, to me.. =/

We've actually done several events like this in the past, and they've all worked pretty well. Ideally, we'd just use the server, but it's been down for a few weeks and I don't know if it will be back up in time. Otherwise, we just post a savegame on the forum thread as an attachment, next player plays it, then reposts new save. It relies on the honour system as far as people not savescumming or remaking levels, of course, but that isn't as much of a big deal as it sounds. People are usually pretty good about those sorts of things.

[grobblewobble]

The limbo rule for chaotic behaviour sounds unnecessarily complicated to me. Also, I agree with Lotuskip that it will be hard to judge objectively what constitutes chaotic behaviour.

Instead, I think the most effective way of enforcing cooperative behavior in the first two rounds is to eliminate the whole team if the character dies in those rounds. A brutal measure perhaps, but at least it will certainly prevent "chaotic behavior".

[JellySlayer]

The limbo rule for chaotic behaviour sounds unnecessarily complicated to me. Also, I agree with Lotuskip that it will be hard to judge objectively what constitutes chaotic behaviour.

Instead, I think the most effective way of enforcing cooperative behavior in the first two rounds is to eliminate the whole team if the character dies in those rounds. A brutal measure perhaps, but at least it will certainly prevent "chaotic behavior".

None of the teams would have survived to the third round in the last year's game. I'm not sure any would have survived the first round. The ID is not nearly so kind as that.

[vogonpoet]

Ha, limbo sounds like fun.

Before people get too flustered by debating the chaos rules, I think its worthwhile pointing out that damnit, the game is not fair, and diving the ID with a randomly generated PC is in particular not fair, this particular challenge game is not fair, and that is what makes it fun.

Right. So, let the what is fair / what is not fair rule flamewar begin
Does anyone have popcorn?

[Soirana]

Honestly, my preference would be to not bother with the chaos gate at all and have chaotic tactics from the start, but that's very unfriendly to newbies. I thought that making marginal chaotic play a calculated risk for the player doing it might be a better option. As I alluded to above, though, this is just my thoughts on the subject and is entirely open to discussion.

This would solve problems indeed. The only other solution is to have everyone play on server in case of problems rewatch segment - unluckily server is done and not everyone can play it anyway.

Comissions are very stupid thing believe me. I've been in them last year than all you have is written report and some misty explanations it is extremely hard to find firm ground to DQ anyone.

I will make some list of prior rule implementions [overdrives and a like] a bit later.

[Albahan]

I'm still a bit unclear on some parts...

1) What is the overall objective... to get the farthest down the ID?
2) Does the players turn end after 2000 turns or once they descend?
3) If a player fails to descend within 2000 turns are they considered dead?
4) What do you mean by chaotic tactics and why would you want to hurt the next player if they are on your team?
5) What do you mean by open the chaos gate? As in let corruptions begin or is it some sort of a metaphor?
6) Wouldn't limbo become unfair for players who start after others if they have to start where the last player left off therefore going deeper into the ID and thus generating tougher monsters?