Luck of the Draw

Scott Hardie | July 7, 2012
It's time for another competitive event in Pirate Paradise! Luck of the Draw is pretty simple in concept: Random opponents, random pirates, random techniques, three chances to survive, last player remaining wins. The better crew that you've developed and the more techniques that you've unlocked, the better your odds of winning, but luck will play a huge role no matter what.

There are big prizes for playing, a bonus every time you finish a battle in a draw, and another reward: Win any battle in the event and you'll permanently gain the ability to generate random battles, using the challenge form. For those of you who are too lazy to create your own battles in detail, this will come in handy. (If you finish Luck of the Draw without a single win, you can still unlock this ability later if someone challenges you to a random battle and you win.)

This should take a few weeks. Good luck and have fun!

Scott Hardie | July 7, 2012
Hmm, I launched this on the 7th day of the 7th month. Maybe I should have waited until 7pm.

Steve West | July 7, 2012
Awesome. Patience is not one of my strengths so I'm anxious to start so thanks for not waiting until seven. This looks like a lot of fun.

Chris Lemler | July 7, 2012
Good Luck to everyone that's in this Luck of the draw tournament. This could be very interesting to see how this is going to end!!!!!! Good name to give this little competitive tournament Scott!!!!!!!!! :D

Scott Hardie | July 8, 2012
Well, you already had to wait a month, Steve. This event wound up being launched much later than originally intended. But I guess it would have been hard to play in Barcelona anyway.

Thanks, Chris! :-D

Steve West | July 8, 2012
Sweet. Ignorance is bliss and all that... Thanks for making this happen.

Matthew Preston | July 9, 2012
Awesome! I was wondering when another event was going to happen. Point of clarification: Is there a gold coin prize for winning a a single event? Or just the ability to use random?

Scott Hardie | July 10, 2012
There is no coin prize for winning a single battle. What you get is a bigger prize in the end for having outlasted one more opponent, either by eliminating them directly or by weakening them for whoever does take them out. And you get the ability to initiate random battles in the challenge form (look for a link at the top).

I struggled with this matter during planning of the event (and I had extra time to plan). The title "Luck of the Draw" came to me early, and it occurred to me that I could create some kind of bonus for pulling off a draw, especially with such a chaotic blend of crews where one opponent in battle could wind up much more powerful than the other. If there was a bonus to draw and not to win, would players game the system by seeking draws to maximize their payout? Of course, and more power to them when they can pull it off. Would this break the game or cause the event to go on forever? I doubt it, maybe extend it by a few extra weeks. Some players, including me, are going to play each battle to win, because they want the big payday at the end for the grand champion, or because they just like winning this sort of thing. :-)

I also considered offering a bonus for each win, a bigger bonus for each elimination of another player, and a small bonus for each draw. But if players gaming the system for infinite draws would be a problem, that system wouldn't change it, and I wanted to stick with the title and concept that I had already devised, so here we are. I'll repeat some event ideas, but it's my intention to come up with as many new and varied ways of playing as I can; some will be successful and others will be a mess. Here's looking forward to having fun playing both kinds. :-)

Aaron Shurtleff | July 12, 2012
I'll ask the dumb questions! I have 2:

1) What happens if a new person wishes to enter? I assume you have a plan in mind to prevent someone from waiting until the tournament is nearly over, and then joining in to get the biggest elimination award possible, but I don't know... I just want to see what you're thinking, since I cannot benefit from it, and it is obvious from your previous post that you have considered "gaming the system" long and hard (heh hehheh) already.

2) What does the third person out get, gold wise? 1st out gets 25k, 2nd gets 50k... From this, the third out could get 75k (if it is going up by 25k every time) or 100k (if you are doubling it every time). It's a good pay day either way, but I want to see how the progression is being determined.

I had briefly considered being a turd, and arguing that this tournament favors the "haves" (who have better, highly promoted pirates to be chosen, as well as better techniques to be used) over the "have-nots" (who almost have to hope for the best random outcome possible), but really, I don't know that you can avoid that. I'll catch up one day! lol

Steve Dunn | July 13, 2012
I had briefly considered being a turd, and arguing that this tournament favors the "haves" (who have better, highly promoted pirates to be chosen, as well as better techniques to be used) over the "have-nots" (who almost have to hope for the best random outcome possible), but really, I don't know that you can avoid that.

This is clearly true and I don't think you're a turd for saying so. You are a turd for many other reasons.

Scott Hardie | July 13, 2012
There are no dumb questions, only dumb answers.

1) I've clarified the wording of this. If a new player joins the game in a few weeks when the event is almost over, they'll be under-powered and inexperienced, and likely to get beaten quickly, so I don't mind the big payout. Same goes for any former players who return after a long break. They're earning 25k more for each of the other remaining players, so we should want more people to sign up.

It's definitely not fair for veteran players to opt out of all game events and then reverse this "preference" late in the event, so that's not allowed. I'm tempted to disallow that for all events, but it's rarely an advantage to do so. Several players opted out of American Pie last year in Rock Block and later changed their minds, and it only hurt their chances.

2) I have also clarified the wording of this. Third out gets 75k, fourth gets 100k, fifth 125k and so on. My bad. The winner would collect a sweet 102,525,000-coin payday if it was doubled! :-)

This tournament definitely favors the "haves" by design. Some events will be balanced, others not. We've all had basically equal opportunity to get ahead in the game, except for our new player who just joined this week.

Erik Bates | July 13, 2012
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Scott Hardie | August 3, 2012
I'm really enjoying this competition, but that's easy for me to say, because I'm still in it. Being eliminated is no fun. This isn't necessarily the last time that we'll ever do it this way, but I'm thinking of ways to keep everybody engaged from start to finish in the future. If I could start "Luck of the Draw" over again, I would structure it so that eliminated players can keep playing and earning draws and knocking other players out even after their three flags are gone.

I'm looking forward to the future. There will be a small event in October for GooCon guests, already announced. I'm planning a large, multi-stage event that we can play all winter, hopefully beginning the day after Thanksgiving. And I have already worked out the details of the next small event after that, to be played in the spring. This is much better than the summer-only schedule that we used to have. :-)

Aaron Shurtleff | August 8, 2012
Yay! Another dumb question just came to me!

1) The winner gets 125,000 gold more than the person he defeated, right? Is that before or after the gold for any draws on the part of the 2nd place person? To illustrate, if I was the winner, and the person I defeated was to get, let's say, 200,000 (which breaks down to 150,000 + 50,000 for 5 draws). Would I get 275,000 (plus any of my draws) or 325,000 (plus my draws)? I suspect it would be the first, but what do I know?

Also, personally, I think it is a shame that someone who won matches, but had no draws, would only get the elimination gold, but someone who might have gotten only draws and losses would get extra money for draws. If I were to make suggestions, I would like to see victories rewarded in some way. I'm not sure how, but perhaps in the future that would be something?

Scott Hardie | August 9, 2012
Draws are bonuses, not part of the main prize structure. A draw doesn't affect anybody else's winnings except the two players who participated in it. In the scenario you described, your winnings would be 275,000 plus your draws.

Anything's possible, but for now I have no intention of using this event structure again. I'm specifically referring to the bonus for drawing not winning, which is unique to the "Luck of the Draw" concept, but really I don't intend to use any of it again. That's not because this event was somehow bad or broken; just that I have too many other fun ideas that I want to play instead. :-)

Above on July 9, I explained in more detail why there are bonuses for draws and not wins, if you want more information about that decision.

When I planned Luck of the Draw, something that I expected to see often was players intentionally ending with a draw when they could have won instead, as a way to boost their eventual winnings. That may have happened a little but it hasn't been rampant, which indicates to me that players really do want to win and winning is its own incentive, so perhaps bonuses for winning aren't important after all.

[EDIT: I originally wrote some observations about other strategies that players have used to boost their winnings. But I have learned my lesson about commenting like that publicly, since I can't be separated from my role as game administrator, so I'm removing those comments from the record. It then led into talk about future events...]

If I stick to what I'm currently planning: The winter event will be a multi-stage affair, where you must complete a series of tasks that challenge you to play the game in new ways, kind of like American Pie last year but more free-form (you will have to do some figuring out of how to accomplish the tasks). I also want to introduce a villain, in the form of a tough new AI opponent. Only one player will win in the end, but everyone will be able to keep playing from start to finish. The spring event will be simpler, based around a central idea, adding another element to the game like Random in this event. I'm not sure yet about elimination on that one, but you know where I now stand on elimination in general.

Scott Hardie | August 13, 2012
We have a winner! Aaron Shurtleff has triumphed over the entire field by vanquishing me in the final battle. He just became the richest pirate captain on the sea (technically he will tonight, when I input his prize).

Aaron, congrats on a very hard fought victory! I am impressed.

I played like hell to win this, and I know most other players did too. This was a lot of fun. I can't wait until the next event! :-)

Chris Lemler | August 13, 2012
Aaron congrats on your victory!!!!!!You were the toughest competitor in this round. Scott you played extremely well and took the fight to the end Kudos to you on that.. Everyone played very well in this tournament. We had some really tough competition this round. Everyone should be happy on they played....Me I still got to do something or I will be out early every time.....lol. Again hope to see everyone play tough in the next round and Kudos to Aaron for winning and very welled played Scott maybe next round you will be the one with the gold :)

Scott Hardie | August 13, 2012
The gold would be nice. Sooner or later, there will be a feat called "win an event," and that's what I'm really after.

Aaron Shurtleff | August 13, 2012
Not so loud! I don't want the Royal Navy comin' after me! :) Or, more likely, the onslaught of folks who want to "help" me get the 50000 gold achievement, which I imagine will be what whittles away all of my gold.

Thanks everyone! I had a great time, and I still can hardly believe I came out as the winner. Congrats to everyone, because I think we all had a great time (I know I did!). Can't wait for the next one!

And, as I look at the event page, I see my lone purple flag, all I can think is "Still flying". ;)

Now let's see if I can take this good fortune into the GOO tournament...

Steve Dunn | August 13, 2012
Congratulations Aaron!

Steve West | August 13, 2012
Woohoo! Congrats on your victory.

Erik Bates | August 14, 2012
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