Hi Bandwagon

Here is the DC I was talking about in the PM. July 27

http://www.triplechain.net/challenges/262338

You and I both got careless with the 3 in rack 5. This is a common spot and the 3 always goes SW center and we put it NE center. arjun placed it correctly and won and we ....well.......didn't win.....lol

I just find it odd in this spot that we both goofed, because if we were asked where the 3 goes we both know that NE is a blocking cell for 6s and SW is not.

I'll send Zac an email about this game and he should be able to credit you with a win. It is clear the missing number is a 5, and you can see it there in replay.

Here it is and the missing number is a five.

I need as many wins as I can get.

Thanks! How many majors are there?

I still think it would be better if there was just 2 icons next to a player's name - a trophy and a number, where the number is the number of majors they have won. An added benefit of this is that it does not mess up the formatting like it does now. The trophies go into the next line in a few different pages on the site. There could always be a majors page with the current display.

I credited you with a win in the stats, as I'm sure Zac will correct it at some point. Plus, if I don't do it now, I'll forget about it.

It is neat to be tied up at 5 but tbh I would like to see some more regs winning. The majors started out nice with 2 x dogfloss, Dynasty, Paul101. me, and then wafflesobv... But since the first major of 2018 when velourfog won, no active player not named Bandwagon, SubArcticK or arjun has won a H2H trophy tourney. That is 11 tournies in a row.

I am not sure this is great for growing the site and player pool and tourney participation. But, maybe it is not an issue for people, and it just is what it is.

I don't think changing the Summer Match Play to random will help much, but maybe changing the 4 majors to random might? I changed the monthly to random a couple of years ago, and while it has not seemed to change the winners much, it did help get away from some of the repeat first round matches (ie cherrycin vrs arjun and I swear Dynasty and Hg80 always got each other...lol). The shake-up of first round matches alone might make it worth it.

Thoughts on going random seeding for the majors starting in 2021???

There are 4 majors. I think we would want to track all 7 possible trophy wins though. In the chart below I have the 7 trophy tournies in two categories: 5 H2H tournies and 2 FFA tournies.

Zac is going to try and rework the site and trophy display is going to be something addressed, but personally I would like to keep the different colours visibly in play. I realize that it creates double lines in cases for 4 players right now, but the game space is the same size. Plus, 7 is the max for trophies, as duplicates are not displayed. And, all the monthly tournies and the 7 trophy tourney results are logged in the link below.

http://www.triplechain.net/tourney

But, I get it arjun that you would like a cleaner more compact look on the side lists and less trophy clutter.

I am sure Zac can come up with something workable that will take into account everyone's input if he has time to get to this.

Firstly, thanks sub for running the majors and monthly championships. I'm sure everyone appreciates it.

Having said that, we definitely need to shake things up and introduce more variance and more formats. For me personally, it's getting a bit stale. I've had a quick think and here are some potential ideas, with perhaps more to come later.

1. Keep the Battle Royale (100 games), FFA (50) games and summer matchplay (50 games) the way it is. There would thus be 3 majors with less variance.

2. Keep one major as it is, but random. So best of 19 and random.

3. One daily challenge major, perhaps in January to get more people involved in the points race. Everyone who plays is automatically in. First 7 days is qualifying and the top 8 qualify for the knockouts. You can then have a best of 3 QF (from jan 8-10), best of 5 SF, and best of 7 final. 21 days and no need to create a single tournament as all the knockouts are from the daily challenge.

4. One FFA major, but divided into groups of 4. So say there are 20 entries. Random seeding, 5 groups of 4 free for alls. The winners all play another free for all to determine the winner. Perhaps 10-15 games each?

5. One black widow/jackrabbit major. Best of 3 or best of 5, random. Lots of variance!

6. Perhaps another DC major, but in league format. You announce it and have people enter. If there are 16 entries, the league takes 15 days. Everyone plays each other once. 2 points for a win, 1 for a draw. No finals, it is a true league. Top of the league and you win. This sounds the most fun to me as every match is a best of 1.

I think I count 8, but I was just brainstorming. Using DCs for 2 of the majors means you eliminate the headache of creating 100s of matches since the site doesn't support different kinds of tournaments. It would require very little work and would be a lot of fun.

It was a little bit intimidating when I first started playing seeing how dominate the top 3 players were at the time (Arjun, Paul, Sub) but that just made me want to learn/get better at the game to try and compete with you guys. That's just my experience though and I think I've come some way to breaking into the leader boards.

I'd really not like to see random seedings in a standard format tournie if I'm honest, the way it is at the moment feels like an official tournament. It would be really interesting to introduce some of the new formats that Arjun has suggest though, with FFA brackets and such or a daily challenge.

With regards to the trophies, although a more compact and simple format would be nice, I like seeing all of the different coloured trophies on peoples names. I would like to see some recognition of people that have won the same tournament multiple times though.

Not sure how you'd achieve all of this but it would be nice.

Some interesting ideas Arjun and I can see where some of them would be quite fun to play in and follow.

Right now we have 7 trophy tournies and 4 of them are majors. They are all important obv, as the winner gets a trophy. That said, one thing I would like to stay is the 4 majors staying as named majors ( The Masters, The World Cup, The TC Open and The Winter Classic). They were the first trophy tournies and modeled on the 4 golf majors. There is one played every quarter . I know this is a group decision and not my decision, but I don’t want to see any of the 4 majors disappear or lose their collective status as a subset within the 7 trophy tournies.

But, you raise a good point Arjun. It does not mean we can’t change the game format. These 4 majors all have the same format and that is a weakness. There is no reason we could not change the structure of two or even three of them. For example, the Masters and TC open do not have to be a 19 game single knock out matches. These two could each take on the structure of one of your suggestions (perhaps suggestion 3 and 6). We then get the best of both worlds. The 4 original majors stay as named tourneys, and people can try to get all 4, but to increase variety and variance two of them take on a brand new formats. Of the remaining two majors, one could be tourney rated seeded 19 game matches, and the other could be random seeding.

As far as the other ideas, Arjun, several look neat. We could add a trophy to make it 8, and/or we could change the Battle Royale format into one of the FFA tourny options you suggested (like suggestion 4, which sounds neat and more fun).

Right now I am in a mode where other interests pretty much have me in the zone of playing the DCs and any Trophy tournies and that is about it. I am fine with moves that make the tournies more inclusive and result in a broader group of people getting some wins. I am probably not interested in running anything new myself if there is much planning and stats-keeping involved, but if a suggestion is good and people want it I can schedule it, document the results, etc and maybe the person advocating it can announce it, keep the stats, do any scheduling, etc. (in other words, run what ever needs running). But, we can work that out later.

So, my 2 cents is I am with arjun for more variance, more variety and more opportunities for the whole player pool. If that means changing some tourney formats I am open to that.

Bandwagon. With respect to keeping the seeding not random I would be on the same page as you if we were getting 3 or 4 new “Bandwagon’s” each year and these new players got hooked on the challenge, getting better, et al. If that was the case there would be more people playing, studying games, practising, etc, trying to get their tourney rating as high as they can. That just does not seem to be the way our player pool is right now though. Most people have been around awhile and have settled into to their strategies and tactics. So, I am kind of pro random for some new things, but am ok with Summer Match Play and at least one Major staying as tourney rated seeding.

Am looking forward to see what others think about some changes..

I'll post on chatroll that there is a discussion ongoing here.

I guess after further thinking about the "majors" distinction, it might be pretty arbitrary now. The Summer Match Play is probably the most comprehensive test, and it is not a 'major" as such. Maybe I need to stop using that distinction and just frame things as we have 7 Tournies with trophies or 7 major tournies.

Anyway, I would still like to keep the tourney names and colours of trophies, even if any of them (as noted above) get a new format so that we don't have 4 of the 7 tournies all with the same 19 game H2H format.

The bold is modest. You are killing it in trophy tournies. You won 4 majors in your first 10 tries.

There are no active players close to your tourney win %. I think you have an extra gear for tournies....or you are on steroids or something... pee tests may be instituted...lol

If it's not a tourney game I tend to play them all at the same pace I play timed at, if it rewards a trophy I tend to play a lot slower and think about what I'm doing, although I've been struggling not to blitz those games too lately.

I think that if a significant amount of trophies move over to random seeding. Tourney rating will become even more irrelevant than it is now and the stat might as well be removed from the game and have everything random. Currently there is little impact on who I play regardless of my rating, I'm going to have to play both you and Arjun at some point in a tourney whatever my rating is.

Previously I was motivated to try and achieve/maintain the top active spot but now that Arjun has pulled ahead there's little point in me trying to do this just to try and avoid playing one of you.

This meant I was signing up and playing a lot of games but recently there just doesn't seem much point and random seeing would just make that worse.

I'm not sure what the solution to this is, perhaps the vast majority of tourneys being random but having a select few where having a higher rating nets you a tangible benefit.

2 cents from someone who hasn't played a lot of majors: I think going diverse is never a bad idea.
Random seeding probably best for the second tier of tournament players to win some, and for the rest to more often win 1 or 2 rounds, so would certainly solve the problem of always having the same people win. I do play the monthly from time to time and am glad I don't always have to play the same people (low rated tourney player).
The DC majors Arjun proposes sound cool. You will obviously play your daily challenges a bit differently during that month but maybe the non-competing players have a bit more chance to get a win in which might be fun for everyone involved. (Except maybe the ambitious players who both aim to win the tourney and keep up their high DC win percentage, but this might make for an interesting dilemma for them).

I like arjun's ideas and I'm open for pretty much anything. other than the Majors/DC/Monthly championships I don't go on the site much anymore. Adding more variance could definitely make things more interesting. One idea I don't think anyone's thrown out there is guillotine. Finish last in a league game and you're eliminated. Last person standing wins. Don't play and score a 0. Could work in DC or FFA

This is an great idea warped, a DC style tourney where the lowest score gets eliminated every round until there is only one champion. It would introduce an interesting new style of gameplay where you're not trying to achieve the highest score, instead playing in a way to try and avoid getting left with completed chains or bonuses left over.

Guillotine sound tourney-worthy and with enough chaos to make it fun for everybody.

Suggestion

We could maybe take one of the Majors (maybe the Masters) and pick a month like Feb and run it. To set the field we don't even really need to ask people to sign up. We could just post here and on chatroll something like the following.

Masters (Green Trophy) DC Guillotine tourney.
Feb 1st to 4th is qualifying period. Anyone who plays at least 1 DC between Feb 1 and 4th is in.
Game starts Feb 5th.
Elimination priority.
1. If you qualified and don't play the DC you are out
2. If all qualifying players play then low DC score (and ties) among remaining non-eliminated players are out.

The game ends when there is only one player left?

The first couple of days might end up just eliminating some people who play sporadically (but who did play at least once in Feb 1 to Feb 4 period), but after that it would get so that at least one reg is gone everyday...

In fact, I wonder if we could do this in October 2020 for the TC Open (Red Trophy). And then same thing annually?????

hmmm...

I'm all in favor of variety. The only difference between the four golf-like TC majors is the time of year and trophy color; other than that, they're all essentially the same. So I like having one of them remain a "traditional major" (seeded by rating, 19 H2H games, etc.) and the others having something that differentiates them -- like the elimination/guillotine idea for the TC Open.

Trophies, majors, or not, anyone who wants to run a different type of tourney should absolutely do it. If it can be done within the current tournament function on the TC site, great; if not, post here and/or in the chatroll, recruit some entrants (if necessary), and figure out how to make it work. I'm in favor of anything to increase both interest in the game and the amount of fun we have playing it.

I would go for tournaments that go for best score rather than playing for the outlier win. If that makes sense.

For me, I always play for best score rather than best chance to get a DC win.

That may be a fault in my gameplay, but it is what it is.

I love it!

Most people seem open to variety. Sub wants to keep his golf names, so we could just change the format of them. Here's what we could do:

Battle Royale - stays the same. 100 game FFA
Holiday FFA - changes to FFA tourney style. groups of 4, winner moves on.
Masters - stays the same. best of 19, seeded
World Cup - guillotine by waffles, played in DC
TC Open - league format, played in DC
Winter Classic - 1 week of qualifying in DCs. top 8 qualify for a 10 game FFA. some sort of reward from the qualifying (such as winner starting with 3 wins, 2nd starting with 2 wins, 3rd and 4th starting with 1 win)
Summer Match Play - stays the same, except random?

Liking where this is heading!!!

We are seeing mostly pro-variety and pro-random feedback.

On Arjun's proposal above I put up the projected 7 trophy tourney schedule (below) for the rest of this year and into next year (this was based on status quo, prior to these discussions). I removed the word "Major" after 4 of them. Until we agree to change it, we have 7 trophy tourneys or 7 majors or 7 whatevers…lol. Less confusion.

On the names of what used to be the first 4 majors, I do think they are generic enough just to keep them. Things like World Cup, and Triplechain Open, Winter Classic, and even Masters.. well you could plug any format in there, as the names are all nondescript. Plus, for recordkeeping it is much easier for me to explain in notes somewhere that the World Cup was a H2H 19games per match tourney from 2017 to 2020, but the format changed to a XYZ Tourney in 2021.




Another thing that might help all this.

I circled the help section in the screenshot. I could ask Zac to add a Google Doc page called Tourney News to the drop down. He could give, me, arjun, nails, waffles, whoever..... editing privileges.

So, for example, if Arjun is running the Winter Classic under a new format involving DCs and FFAs, then he can put the details in the "Tourney News" doc and then simply post in chatroll for people to check the Tourney News tab for details. That same doc could also be used to update ongoing tourney stats. It would be really handy in a Guillotine tourney for daily updates on who is out and who is left. We just date our posts and put them above previous entries and everything moves down and stays on record there.. At the end of any tourney I can log results in the tourney summary tab.

This is also a good way to address nails’ point about anyone who wants to run something should do so. If anyone wants to a run a tourney that needs some explanation, then we have a place for that. Just announce it chatroll and explain it in the Tourney News. All this would be a huge plus to streamlining info, as not everyone checks 2+2 but we can all see chatroll.


One sequencing thing on Arjun’s proposed list. I had thought the Guillotine one might be a good fit for the 2020 TripleChain Open as that is the next tourney up on the schedule (it could run in October).. Plus, it seems simple enough that I could run/track/update it daily if waffles could not. Just seemed like an easier one to start as far as getting people into to some new variety/formats. So, maybe the World Cup and TC Open can flip formats from Arjun's proposed list and the World Cup can be the “league format, played in DC.” Also, I would advocate for Masters (19gm H2H) being random, as the majority of feedback has been pro-random.

I never though much about it before but am looking forward to us clearing out 3 of 4 of the “same format” tournies in favour of some new stuff…

As for commitments, I can continue to do stats for the Battle Royale, and run the Summer Match Play. The Masters is just clicking a few buttons. I can be back-up for waffles on running guillotine.

Some of the stuff Arjun has proposed have FFA’s. Right now Zac has it so I can make FFAs, but that was for convenience as I could respond to requests quicker than him. I see no reason why every TC player should not be set up to make an FFA (unless it is a big programming headache for Zac).

Thoughts on

1. Me asking Zac for a Tourney News tab in Google Doc with editing ability for anyone who has the link?

2. Asking Zac for FFA tourney creation ability for everyone?

3. Having the Triplechain Open run in October under the Guillotine format to get things started?

Thumbs up on all of it from me.

Congrats to arjn13 on setting the monthly DC wins record, with (as of yesterday) 10 wins. And we've still a got a week or so still to go in August!

Yes. Well done! Believe or not, there were also a couple of misses in there where he had a ton of win equity going into rack 9.

He's also going to put a scare into a Ted Williams magic number and Paul's insane 411 pts in a month..

Looks good to me. I should be able to keep track of the Guillotine if needed as long as the first few people who play each don't mind waiting till my morning for official updates.