Like a Rolling Stone (RB)

Scott Hardie | May 30, 2010
The 2010 tournament has begun! Like last year, this is designed to pit all players against each other over the summer, and give us a new way to play the game.

The objective this time is simple: Defeat all players consecutively. If you can pull it off, and win the Final Challenge at the end, you'll join Steve West in the ranks of the game's best players. This will be very difficult, but you have one advantage: You can specify your preferred play rules, which will occur with more frequency when you're the challenger.

As with last summer's contest, I'm launching this tournament with a rule set that I think will last us for a few months, but I'll make adjustments to the rules if it becomes necessary.

A new concert is generated every few minutes, as needed. Please stand by after you finish one concert for the next one to begin.

You can only play one concert at a time as the challenger. There is technically no limit to how many concerts you can play at a time as the defender, but there are only so many possible opponents, so this shouldn't become a problem. We should have no repeat of the glut of dozens of simultaneous concerts that happened to some players last summer.

I'm pumped about this tournament, and I hope you are too! May the best player win!

Steve West | May 31, 2010
You promise, you deliver. Awesome. Good luck to every participant and I look forward to welcoming the winner into the Hall.

Scott Hardie | June 1, 2010
There's likely to be some confusion over the nature of this tournament, that the challenger is the one who advances his or her boulder across the field, while the defender is merely trying to stop that progress. This only gets more confusing if a concert goes into overtime and the original challenger becomes the defender.

In an effort to keep things straight, I have renamed the concerts to indicate which player is advancing and which is blocking. I also added extra code last night (which is why concerts were inaccessible for an hour) to make sure that the original challenger is the one who advances by winning in overtime. I was very sleepy when I wrote it all, so here's fair notice if anything weird comes out of the results that I need to adjust tonight. :-\ 

Matthew Preston | June 18, 2010
Just a thought:

There's a stagnation for advancement with some players not participating in the tournament. Any chance of lowering the amount of time it takes until forfeit? For normal games, one week seems fair, but this is a tournament. I really don't look forward to having to wait 2+ weeks or longer for a real game when I get knocked back to the beginning again.

Again, just a thought. I don't want anyone to think I'm not having fun. I am really enjoying this!

Matthew Preston | June 18, 2010
Or maybe incorporating an "I forfeit" button?

Steve Dunn | June 18, 2010
We sure don't play many concerts in this format. Kinda the opposite of the last tournament, where it was hard keeping up with them all.

Just to make sure I understand this correctly... to win, a player has to defeat all the other players consecutively without losing?

This one's taking until 2017, people.

Scott Hardie | June 18, 2010
Matthew - I've been thinking about that too. When the tournament started, there were a number of "active" players who weren't really participating in the game. I figured they would drop out soon enough. They're still going to drop out, but it's taking longer than I thought. I'll give it another week and then see about lowering the threshold for inclusion in the tournament. One week of inactivity may be a better cutoff point; some people visit the site less often than that, but that's as long as concerts can last.

I've thought about adding a "forfeit" button since Rock Block began. I ran out of time for it in the original build, and since then I've sort of figured that it's too tempting, something that people would hit out of frustration or charity or other impulses more often than they probably should. If they're serious about throwing a match, they can just play badly (click submit without choosing a proper play first) until it's over, right? So I haven't considered it a priority to add to the game, but maybe it's time to do so.

Steve - Fewer concerts was one of my goals with this tournament after the last one. It's working pretty well so far. You do understand the terms correctly, and it's supposed to be daunting. Like last year, I have some plans to speed it up if we don't have enough traction after a few months, but I want to give it time to play out as intended first. Justin has made it the furthest so far with five consecutive wins under his belt.

Chris Lemler | June 19, 2010
Scott if I may make a suggestion maybe you ought to move the boulder back space instead of taking them all the way back the start...If anyone want to make a comment on this please do so.

Scott Hardie | June 26, 2010
That's a good idea, Chris. I look forward to seeing how the tournament unfolds. I have just made the first change to the rules, which is that people enrolled in the tournament are those who have played Rock Block in the last two weeks, instead of within the last month. Everyone is still welcome, so if you find yourself out of the competition and want back in, just play a regular concert and you'll be right back in again.

Matthew Preston | July 1, 2010
Just out of curiosity, what is the longest winning streak a player has had since the game started (excluding theme concerts)? As the rules sit today, someone needs to win 14 straight to get to the final challenge. Of course they can lose the blocking rounds and still be safe, so it's potentially not a streak. Maybe I mean to ask, what is the longest winning streak for only challenges?

Regardless, I'm still curious about my first question. If this info is available elsewhere on the site, it's safe to assume I didn't scrounge very hard to find it.

Scott Hardie | July 2, 2010
If you count both themed and regular concerts, and you count outcomes as both challenger and defender, the top winning streaks are 18 (me), 17 (Sarah), and 14 (Russ).

If you count regular concerts only, and you count outcomes as both challenger and defender, the top winning streaks are 15 (Justin), 13 (Russ), and 12 (me).

If you count both themed and regular concerts, and you count outcomes as challenger only, the top winning streaks are 39 (Steve West), and 12 (Aaron, Elaine, Justin, Russ).

If you count regular concerts only, and you count outcomes as challenger only, the top winning streaks are 39 (Steve West), 14 (me), and 11 (Eric, Justin).

In the above totals, forfeits were counted as wins, and draws were not counted either way. Practice concerts against Angel and Devil were also not counted.

To my knowledge, in none of the above instances was anybody specifically trying to win a certain uninterrupted number of concerts, save for attempts at the five-in-a-row achievement. What I mean is, I try a lot harder to win when it's a tournament concert and I'm trying to extend that streak, and I think I'm not the only one. So if this is how many consecutive wins we can pull off without trying, we should be able to do better with trying. Then again, we had three years to achieve the streaks above, not six months.

This data is not available anywhere on the site because the code has to crunch a huge volume of data to arrive at the results, and because there are a lot of factors involved that change the results, as you can see. Someday I'd like to create a page on the site that shows all of this stuff, with code that crunches the data in the middle of the night or something. In the meantime, please continue to ask if there's some stat you wonder about.

Scott Hardie | July 16, 2010
The tournament rules will be changed on August 1. Depending on their progress at the time, some players will benefit more than others from this change. I could reset all scores to zero at the time to make it fair, but that would just be wrong. So instead, here's choosing an arbitrary date for the change so that whoever happens to benefit will do so by chance, and here's announcing it well in advance so that you know I'm not doing it for the benefit of any specific player who I can tell is ahead at the time.

Scott Hardie | July 31, 2010
Beginning August 1st, losing a concert no longer erases your progress to date. You must still defeat all opponents to win, just not consecutively. This change does not retroactively apply to losses before August 1st.

Scott Hardie | August 19, 2010
Beginning August 19th, each player can take on multiple defenders at once, defeating them in any order to advance.

Scott Hardie | August 19, 2010
I manually launched a bunch of concerts just now. Another concert will be randomly generated every five minutes throughout the day.

Scott Hardie | August 20, 2010
No amens or hallelujahs? Not even a bout time? Are you too overwhelmed by the avalanche of new concerts to muster any enthusiasm? :-)

I had been planning for a while to speed up the flow of concerts, perhaps three or six at a time per challenger. But I did some math and decided to go all the way with it: Everybody challenging everybody else at once, minus the prior victories. That's a lot of concerts at first, but the initial wave will give way to smaller and smaller returns as victories occur. Besides, our lead competitors are more than halfway through their lists, so the days in the tournament are numbered. Here's looking forward to the final weeks of the contest.

Steve West | August 20, 2010
Yeah, I was a little overwhelmed at first by the avalanche of concerts. I was too busy thinking of 12 different moves in 12 different concerts to take the time and appreciate how much fun I was having.

Ryan Dunn | August 20, 2010
Too busy in epic overtimes with Steve West to post...

Matthew Preston | August 20, 2010
Loving it! You should see the pile of scrap paper I have trying to keep track of each concert.

Steve Dunn | August 20, 2010
Too... many... concerts...

No... time... to... post...

Scott Hardie | August 20, 2010
If you're not using it, the "Pause Between Turns" subscription on Dashboard can help in times like this. Without it, I would find myself playing non-stop all day and not getting anything else done. But setting that option, and then only playing a turn only when Dashboard shows concerts waiting, helps me be productive on other things while still keeping up with RB. It also helps me focus my strategy if I'm only thinking about one turn at a time.

Justin Woods | August 20, 2010
This is getting hard to keep up with on a iPhone...

Scott Hardie | August 29, 2010
When the tournament opened up to multiple simultaneous opponents, my initial approach was to play people in lowest-to-highest order. Every 15 minutes or so, I would play whoever was at the bottom of the chart, regardless of whether I was advancing or blocking.

After a few days, everybody was passing me by. I decided to get more aggressive: I would play my own advancement concerts first, and only play other people's advancement concerts if there were none of my own (or if they were about to time out), and even then, I would still play lowest-to-highest. This is a mean thing to do, and Scott the site administrator would never do something like that out of fairness and keeping the game fun, but Scott the player was trying to win.

Now, I'm ready to throw in the towel. This tournament will not be mine, so I'm just playing whoever has been waiting the longest, regardless of the rankings. I want to thank those of you who were good sports and kept playing my advancement concerts while I sat on yours for days; you play fairer than I do. Good luck, everybody.

And yes, I know that my 15 minutes between turns is the biggest reason I'm out of the running. I have no regrets.

Aaron Shurtleff | August 30, 2010
Scott, I've only been playing the longest waiting concerts from the beginning, and only sporatically at that. I think you are still in the running, since I am holding most everyone up anyways! :)

Aaron Shurtleff | August 30, 2010
Not purposely. Just how I am. Just to clarify...

Matthew Preston | August 30, 2010
Yes Aaron, you are holding everyone up. Chris Lemler got lucky beating you early.

Now stop posting in TC and go play us already!

Aaron Shurtleff | August 30, 2010
OK, I did all of the important concerts, so give me a break, would ya! :P

Matthew Preston | August 30, 2010
=break given= I know you aren't holding us up on purpose. It felt good to vent though. Not quite like Steve Dunn saying you hate America, but still good. :-)

Aaron Shurtleff | August 30, 2010
OK, I actually was holding up Steve Dunn, but I relented on even that.

Steve Dunn | August 30, 2010
Aaron Shurtleff is a clear and present danger to puppies and morality.

On the contrary, he is no danger in the Rock Block tournament.

Amy Austin | August 31, 2010
Omg, can we please have some kind of a grudge match at GOOCON??? I nominate mud wrestling.

Chris Lemler | August 31, 2010
LOL

Scott Hardie | September 2, 2010
Congrats, Justin! Now, the countdown begins...

Scott Hardie | September 3, 2010
Same to you, Steve. :-)

Steve West | September 3, 2010
Sweetness.

Justin Woods | September 3, 2010
I am kinda glad I won't have to play you Steve in the final challenge, I think I played you the longest during the tournament.

Thank you Scott.

Justin Woods | September 14, 2010
Congrats Scott! perfect timing for the R10 promotion polling to extend the tournament and congrats again to Steve.

Scott Hardie | September 14, 2010
I'm pretty embarrassed that I didn't foresee that the R10 poll was going to introduce new names into the tournament, and I should have. I felt kind of dumb when Erik, and Dave, and Amy started taking on everybody all over again. Dave asked out of the tournament this morning, so he's already been cleared from the list. The whole "active player" definition clearly needs to be altered.

Erik Bates | September 15, 2010
[hidden by request]

Dave Stoppenhagen | September 16, 2010
I noticed this morning that I have another game waiting. I don't want to mess w/ the tournament at all and really have no time to play it.

Scott Hardie | September 16, 2010
It's all good, Dave. Deleting concerts from the database after they're begun requires a lot of totals to be adjusted, so I prefer not to do it. I had gone through all of your tournament concerts where it was your turn and set them to a 1-second time limit, forcing forfeit. If I did it for the concerts where it wasn't your turn, that would have counted as a loss for the other player, so I left those alone... but of course, they're becoming your turn again as those players play their turns, faster than I can keep up with. So I just bit the bullet a minute ago and deleted all of the concerts like I should have the first time. Either way, none of the above affects anything in the tournament standings, since you have opted out. Sorry for the trouble. There should be no others.

Dave Stoppenhagen | September 16, 2010
No worries at all Scott I can only imagine how much work it is. But thank you.

Scott Hardie | September 21, 2010
This is going to be one crazy finish. Good luck, fellas.

Steve Dunn | September 21, 2010
What is going on? I do not understand who's still in it or how it's working at this point. Forgive me if I am missing something obvious.

I would have liked to have been competitive in this competition, but oh well.

Justin Woods | September 21, 2010
Me too so confused!!!

Steve Dunn | September 21, 2010
OK, if Justin's confused that makes me feel better about being confused. If Steve West is confused I'll feel like a genius. Steve, a little help here?

Steve West | September 21, 2010
I may know but I've been banned from the championship so you guys are on your own. You're welcome. And Good Luck!

Matthew Preston | September 21, 2010
Looks like several of us completed the necessary requirements to get to the final stage after Amy's concerts timed out (finally). But not sure exactly what the final stage is...

Justin Woods | September 21, 2010
Well the way I read the part in the rules stating "winner of that concert" means only two can make it to the final challenge, but I am sure I could be wrong and if I am then that means we still could have more in the final challenge in the next few days.

Matthew Preston | September 21, 2010
Last year I remember Steve West and Scott battled for the final challenge. And I seem to recall Scott mentioning that if anyone else made it to the end before they finished, they would be part of the challenge as well. Really not sure how that would have worked, especially with an odd number. Unless of course, we all have to beat everyone else in the final, much like we did to get here.

Scott Hardie | September 21, 2010
Current status shows Justin, Matthew, Russ, Ryan, and myself eligible for the Final Challenge by defeating all other players. Steve West has also done so, but his prior win makes him ineligible for the Final Challenge. (Whoever wins this time will be ineligible along with him next year, and so on into the future. I impose this rule because there are so few chances to win RB, compared to the goo game. For what it's worth, winning an RB tournament online does not preclude you from winning an RB tournament at GooCon.)

The first player to win a Final Challenge will be the tournament champion. I will say nothing more about the Final Challenge, except that I had intended it to take several days, and because of so many players becoming eligible at once, it will probably be over quickly. This brings back unhappy memories of last year...

Justin Woods | September 22, 2010
"Current status shows Justin, Matthew, Russ, Ryan, and myself eligible for the Final Challenge"
"I will say nothing more about the Final Challenge"

Hey Scott, you going to give us anytime strategize?

Amy Austin | September 22, 2010
So sorry, but... between the private messages from certain folks on the subject and other things, I just really don't have it in me to participate in concerts or discussions anymore.

Scott Hardie | September 22, 2010
Congratulations, Justin! Great victory! As with last year, the buildup was long, and the ending was swift. I know how Russ feels right now. :-)

Besides Justin's repeated dominance of the tournament, I am impressed with all competitors for giving it such a good run all summer, and especially with Matthew, Russ, and Ryan for getting to the end. I am also especially impressed with Steve West, who fought to the top twice despite being ineligible to go further (and who kicked my butt much longer than anybody else). It was a very tough competition, and there's no doubt that Justin's victory is well earned.

No new tournament concerts will be generated, but I'll leave the existing concerts alone to finish on their own. They all count for credit towards defeating that theme.

Scott Hardie | September 22, 2010
In case anyone is curious about the Final Challenge mechanics: The site was programmed to issue a concert in "The Rolling Stones" to every pair of eligible competitors at midnight, randomizing who would be challenger and defender. This theme doesn't have the Overtime rule (although it probably should if you think about the crazy longevity of that band), so a draw would have just resulted in another concert the next night until someone won.

Like I said, it was conceived as working ideally well for two competitors, then gradually introducing more if they kept drawing. Five players becoming eligible at once made such a swift victory on the first day all but inevitable. What I wondered was whether anybody would play dirty - knowing that your competitor has beaten you, do you hold back your final play on Turn 8 or Turn 9 that would allow him to win, or do you make him wait? If we all make each other wait to prevent a win, do we not all lose? John Nash was coming to mind. I decided to say nothing about what kind of fairness was expected, and let the game take its course. The outcome that happened (someone winning before I even woke up in the morning) was the one I figured was most likely.

Steve Dunn | September 22, 2010
Congratulations Justin!

So, ahhhh, what happened? I still don't understand how the final challenge worked. It's not still a secret, is it?

Suggestion for next tournament: either no overtime concerts or shorter turn times. Maybe both. Filibustering should not be a factor.

Steve Dunn | September 22, 2010
Ooops, just missed Scott's post...

Scott Hardie | September 22, 2010
The 2009 tournament was a little clumsy, but we worked around it in a satisfying way. The 2010 tournament was way too clumsy... everything that I left up to chance went badly. I have no idea what form the 2011 tournament will take, but I intend to remember this year's lessons and construct a rule system that avoids long droughts of inactivity and such a swift ending after a very long buildup.

Steve Dunn | September 22, 2010
Score it like a tennis tournament.

Seeded brackets, with seedings based on RB user rank.

Random rules and cards. No overtime. Draws are discarded.

Each pairing plays one "set" - first player to 6 wins, but you have to win by 2.

Final two play a full "match." Must win three sets in head to head competition to be the champ.

Matthew Preston | September 22, 2010
OK, first let me say: Congratulations Justin! You are an awesome competitor and certainly deserve the win.

Now let me rant: Whoa, wait, what? I woke up this morning to 4 new final challenge concerts only to find that Justin had already won. Is this karma biting me in the ass for complaining so much about the loooooooonnnnng wait times between plays during the tournament? The final challenge was merely who won ONE of their final concerts first? I really wish you would have mentioned this before hand and I would have stayed up until midnight to play. I feel really cheated. I worked my ass off to get to the final challenge, waiting and waiting for non-players who refused to play, but also refused to just abstain from the tournament.

I was certain the final challenge would work like the rest of the tournament did. Defeat all players who made it to the final challenge... not just one of them. If I'd have known that my months long dedication to this tournament would end up with not even having a chance to play in the final challenge, I would have abstained. I know I'm sounding like a whiny bitch, but I dedicated so much of my free time to this and I feel sick right now.

Matthew Preston | September 22, 2010
And to clarify, I know Scott mentioned "The first player to win a Final Challenge will be the tournament champion." however, I took that to mean the overall final challenge, not just one concert.

Steve Dunn | September 22, 2010
I feel really cheated. I worked my ass off to get to the final challenge, waiting and waiting for non-players who refused to play, but also refused to just abstain from the tournament.

I feel your pain, but look at the bright side. At least you were permitted to make it to the final challenge.

Matthew Preston | September 22, 2010
Yeah, I should definitely also be reflecting on the positives. I did make it to the end and I did have a lot of fun these last few months. There were some epic concerts throughout all of this.

The whole lack of participation thing really irked me throughout the whole thing though. I still feel 24 hours is a long enough time between plays in a tournament. It weeds out those players that don't really want to play, but also don't want to just abstain. This is a tournament after all.

Scott Hardie | September 23, 2010
I wish I had time tonight to answer in full, but it will have to wait for tomorrow, sorry. Short version:

- Love the tennis idea.

- I'm mad at how this tournament turned out (nothing to do with Justin). I put a lot of work into this, players put a lot of work into this, and it had a very unsatisfying endgame. I'm sorry for not handling it better.

- Keeping the Final Challenge terms secret was another bad idea. For what it's worth, I intend to share the terms of the GooCon RB tournament shortly, rather than wait until we play. I still won't divulge the Mystery Activity though. :-)

- You don't sound whiny, Matthew. You have every right to be pissed. I felt an intense, burning dissatisfaction last year when I went all that way for an abrupt loss, so I know how you feel, even though it was my fault then and this is not your fault now. Vent, please.

Aaron Shurtleff | September 24, 2010
I guess that was probably me screwing everyone up. I'm sorry. For what it is worth, I will abstain in the future. My availability is so wonky that I should have just abstained to begin with.

Put the blame all on me. I can shoulder it.

Just to save time, it's also my fault U2 didn't make it through to be the next R10.

Scott Hardie | September 25, 2010
I'm not ready to think much about what form next year's tournament will take, but I like the tennis idea, a lot. Bracketed tournaments appeal to me because they preserve drama until the very end, unless they're seeded very badly or something. I will give that a lot of thought.

While I don't know what I'm going to do next year, I know what I'm NOT going to do, and that's structure a tournament so that there can be such long droughts of activity all summer, and then a lightning-quick finish at the end.

First, about the droughts: I was asked by several players to speed up the tournament by not allowing players to take more than 3 days or even 1 day between turns. It would have been easy to program, since the expiration time limit is just a number in the database, but it didn't strike me as fair. As a time-challenged player myself, I know that several days at a time go by before I can give proper thought to a tournament concert. I can only imagine how players with other demands like kids or school can keep up. So, I don't think it's fair to ask people to play faster, or to abstain if they can't.

What created the conflict, obviously, is that you had to defeat every player to advance. In last year's "Stairway to Heaven," it didn't matter if player X took forever, because your concerts against players Y and Z would eventually be enough to get you to the finish line. Here, you had to beat everyone, and that put busy personal lives in conflict with the game in a regrettable way. I consider that a big mistake that I won't make again. Let me say for the record to Aaron and everyone else who couldn't play often: You did nothing wrong. The system was set up in such a way that people were mad at you for something beyond your control, and the problem was in the system.

About the fast finish, one thing that went wrong was not giving everybody a chance to play everybody at the end, as Matthew expected. In hindsight, that would have been the right way to finish with so many players becoming eligible at once... but I clung to what I had planned from the start, which was based on the expectation of only two players being eligible. The "first person to win a Final Challenge" idea was held over from last year, and I find it unlikely to repeat again in the future.

The other problem with the fast finish is that I didn't give players time to prepare by sharing the terms in advance. I should have. I'm drawn to contests where you have to figure out the terms as you go, and adapt to new conditions as you learn them. Survivor may have helped to inspire me on that point, but I've also read about studies of the gaming experience that back it up. The pleasure centers of the brain light up when you're first figuring out how a game works and how to win. Once you've solved the game, the pleasure diminishes rapidly, and you might continue to play it forever out of addiction to the low-level return, but you never derive as much pleasure from it again.

I'm much more interested in complex games like Rock Block that have many different objectives and keep introducing new rules and new features to play with, than the majority of online games that are far simpler and easier to master. I think this philosophy makes me a better designer if you prefer that kind of ever-changing game too, but it does lead to some lousy decisions like not giving you a chance to prepare before the ending of a tournament that we've all been playing very hard for months to win. This has been a paradigm-changing experience for me.

Part of the problem may simply be that the stakes here are as big as they get on this site. You have many chances to win the goo game, but this only comes around once a year. The Oscars contest goes by in a few weeks and requires very little work, but this lasts for months and requires a great deal of effort. It occurs to me that Survivor players rarely like it when the game surprises them with a rule change, because they're not just playing some friendly game of Fluxx for an hour; they're playing a million-dollar contest that they're going through agony for weeks in order to win. Even setting aside the problem of my not spelling out the terms in advance, it seems to me that the high stakes of this summertime tournament are inclined to make any weakness in the plan become a major nuisance. Whether that means I should run it more often and with less intensity, I do not yet know.

I'm mad as hell about the way this tournament played out. I completely understand the frustration that Matthew and other players feel. You have my sincerest apologies. There's nothing I can do to make it better but learn the lessons for the next time.

Chris Lemler | September 26, 2010
I really like the tennis brackets but, what if we had like college basketball brackets....Go by rankings and see how that works out. If enough people play there can be player ranking in each bracket like an example (Steve West could be ranked number 1 in the first bracket) Then Scott can start ranking players on the RB record and place that they are in. Please feel free to respond to this suggestion