Bandersnatch Hunt

Jaizsur

I don't know if things have changed in regards to this event since last I wandered the lands corporeally but I was curious if the Quinquagenary Bandersnatch Hunt had been overhauled.

Specifically, are Bandersnatch hunts still open-pk? The rules put in place with open-pk Bandersnatch turned what should be a test of individual skill into a popularity contest, pitting the largest teams (usually divided into city allegiances) against one another. I noticed this trend start to begin around the Year 450, got particularly egregious come year 500, and can only imagine the absurdity since then.

Perhaps this is intentional but, for me, it detracted from the spirit of the Hunt and of the Championship Games in general-- determining which adventurer was truly the most skilled with a Banderbow?

Feel free to ignore this as the insane ramblings of an old troglodyte but thought I might bring it up.

Sarapis

The Staff of Nicator is meant to go to the most dominant player, and thus it is fitting that the ability to enlist the support of many other competent people is part of some contests within the Championships I think. Being a leader is harder than being a loner.

Tesha

I'd be a lot more excited about it if it was single player or no-pk, yeah, there are a lot of things for which there just aren't any defense against (I'll name them afterwards so I don't give anyone ideas :P). 

Jaizsur

Sarapis said:

The Staff of Nicator is meant to go to the most dominant player, and thus it is fitting that the ability to enlist the support of many other competent people is part of some contests within the Championships I think. Being a leader is harder than being a loner.

Perhaps, but I don't think you have to be influential, necessarily, to enlist the help of your city. Typically a city will end up backing their most likely candidate to win. This seems to favor the larger cities! Makes it a little harder for a Mhaldorian to triumph at the games, for example.

Nim

Sarapis said:

The Staff of Nicator is meant to go to the most dominant player, and thus it is fitting that the ability to enlist the support of many other competent people is part of some contests within the Championships I think. Being a ashtani is harder than being not-ashtani.

Fixed the content. Can't do much about its validity.

Dunn

Quite the opposite. We all know what happens during PK world events. Don't we @Nim?

Anedhel

Just the most dedicated Cities. I doubt, for instance, that Cyrene or Hashan's huge numbers will correlate proportionately to the number of people PKing the champions of other Cities (I may be wrong).

The closest-knit, most experienced (and artefact-rich) groups will have the biggest advantage (also whatever City happens to have the most people on during the game).

Aepas

Jaizsur said:

Sarapis said:

The Staff of Nicator is meant to go to the most dominant player, and thus it is fitting that the ability to enlist the support of many other competent people is part of some contests within the Championships I think. Being a leader is harder than being a loner.

Perhaps, but I don't think you have to be influential, necessarily, to enlist the help of your city. Typically a city will end up backing their most likely candidate to win. This seems to favor the larger cities! Makes it a little harder for a Mhaldorian to triumph at the games, for example.

we triumph at worldwide games?

Xer

Well, a larger city will always have an advantage - carrying that over into other things isn't what I'd call 'unfair'. And there are other events in which individuals/pairs can dominate in, regardless of city. But it can skew a few events that way simply by city affiliation, and less so as a result of more individual skill. Shrug.

@Aepas - If you count Quizzes, then Mhaldor definitely had a good showing

Nim

Dunn said:

Quite the opposite. We all know what happens during PK world events. Don't we @Nim?

Event who showed like two or so Ashtani. It didn't show all the super artied ones with gems. T_T @Kross can attest T_T

Jaizsur

Here's a possible scenario that can play out.

Ashtani Blujixapug has 20 Championship Points
Eleusian Delphinus has 30 Championship Points

Delphinus is a better Banderbowman than Blujixapug.

Blujixapug's Ashtani Death Squad overpowers Delphinus' pitiful tree-dwelling band of free-love pacifists. Blujixapug gets first place in the Bandersnatch hunt, Delphinus receives 0. Blujixapug wins the event and the games with a total of 32 points even though he trailed by 10 coming into the match.

I think it should be noted that a highly skilled Bandersnatch player could end up with 0 points by the sheer misfortune of having less defenders in his/her gang.

Dunn

Nature of the game. Has been since inception. Delphinus made a run for the Staff and just needed a Twins victory to get it in 600, but was stonewalled because there were better fighters. Is that a fault of the system or is that a sheer misfortune of having a lesser qualified partner?

Jaizsur

Dunn said:

Nature of the game. Has been since inception. Delphinus made a run for the Staff and just needed a Twins victory to get it in 600, but was stonewalled because there were better fighters. Is that a fault of the system or is that a sheer misfortune of having a lesser qualified partner?

That's completely different. In the Twins combat it will always be balanced by the fact that you're going to be facing only 2 opponents. The decided factor there is the combined skill level of the pair. The Bandersnatch hunt being open-PK takes away the individual element from the event because the teams could be 10, 50, 100?

Dunn

But it's not an individual element. It's almost common place now that a city backs an individual (in the larger cities for sure. Can't speak for Hashan). The nature of the semicentennial games has evolved to this point and I feel the current landscape and PK status of the games reflects this.

This all being said... they won't make it non-PK the day of the event because of any points you have raised.

Tesha

One could hope!

Jaizsur

I understand what's now common place but I reject the notion that the Bandersnatch hunt shouldn't be based on an individual element. The Winner of the Championship Games is supposed to be the player with the most individual skill across the 5 events. I contend that 1 of the events does not accurately reflect the spirit of the Games.

Edit: I demand a Council of former Staff Winners!

Dunn

Fair point. Maybe in 700!

Cooper

Jaizsur said:

Here's a possible scenario that can play out.

Ashtani Blujixapug has 20 Championship Points
Eleusian Delphinus has 30 Championship Points

Delphinus is a better Banderbowman than Blujixapug.

Blujixapug's Ashtani Death Squad overpowers Delphinus' pitiful tree-dwelling band of free-love pacifists. Blujixapug gets first place in the Bandersnatch hunt, Delphinus receives 0. Blujixapug wins the event and the games with a total of 32 points even though he trailed by 10 coming into the match.

I think it should be noted that a highly skilled Bandersnatch player could end up with 0 points by the sheer misfortune of having less defenders in his/her gang.

This is literally what stopped me from winning the year rangor won. His 30000 person group overpowered mine, causing a 24 point swing in the events.

Jaizsur

Exactly my point! Although I would still wager that it may not have necessarily been a 24-point swing considering Rangor would likely have received some number of points regardless.

It's not just the PK, either. It's the fact that you can just give the fruit that you find to someone. You could have 100 people PK-ing on your behalf and 100 people searching for fruit while you twiddle your thumbs.

I'm not sure if Rangor even moved at all during the Y500 Bandersnatch games.

Tesha

ANNOUNCE NEWS #4074                                     (03/19/2014 at 19:07)  

From   : Tecton, the Terraformer

To     : Everyone

Subject: Bandersnatch changes

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coming up to the Championship Bandersnatch this evening, we've made some small tweaks to 

make the contest more enjoyable. The details are as follows:

* Participants can no longer enter the wilderness while playing the game.

* Dropped tumtum fruit will now randomly reset to a new room (similar to CTF flags).

* Tumtums can no longer be VEILDELIVERed or FALCON DELIVERed.

Penned by My hand on the 9th of Miraman, in the year 650 AF.

Jaizsur I love you.

Dunn

I'm not sure Rangor ever moves.

Eld

Jaizsur said:

I understand what's now common place but I reject the notion that the Bandersnatch hunt shouldn't be based on an individual element. The Winner of the Championship Games is supposed to be the player with the most individual skill across the 5 events. I contend that 1 of the events does not accurately reflect the spirit of the Games.

Edit: I demand a Council of former Staff Winners!

Is it stated anywhere that the Games are meant to be tests solely of individual skill across the board? If that were the case, why would the combat tourney be 2v2 instead of 1v1? I don't see the problem with a couple of the events testing how well you perform in group settings, be it by rallying/leading the best group out there, or dealing with the fact that you're a loner in a world of large organisations and finding ways to perform in spite of that; those things are part of the Achaean experience, and it's reasonable to include them in a competition that covers all (or at least most) areas of Achaean life.

You certainly could make the Games more of a test of purely individual skill by removing open pk for the bandersnatch hunt and xp event and switching to a 1v1 combat tourney. I don't think that would be clearly worse or clearly better than the current setup - there's obviously some personal preference in there. But I think the statement that that would better serve the purpose of the Championship, as constructed, is unwarranted.

Dunn

I think that uh...

Coming up to the Championship Bandersnatch this evening, we've made some small tweaks to make the contest more enjoyable. The details are as follows:

* Participants can no longer enter the wilderness while playing the game.
* Dropped tumtum fruit will now randomly reset to a new room (similar to CTF flags).
* Tumtums can no longer be VEILDELIVERed or FALCON DELIVERed.

the bolded point is a hit to the PK nature of the game. Now killing someone won't gain you a lead necessarily as it would have if you killed a high scorer and they dropped a ton of points before. Now you'll kill them and they will lose their lead, but you won't gain anything from it since there won't be fruit on the ground. I think that's cool. May embolden the 'this group PKs, this group gathers' meta, though.

Unless dropping due to death and dropping due to DROP 50 FRUIT are distinguished. Then I'm wrong as balls.

@Tecton?

Adioro

Sorry if this is an ignorant question, but why do you call it the 'this group PKs, this group gathers' meta, @Dunn? I've only read the thing on it and never been part of a bandersnatch game, but that just seems like a tactically sound way to play it, is the method frowned upon for some reason?

Dunn

Wouldn't say frowned upon generally. There will always be people PKing because it's an open PK game (during the year 50 games anyways) and there will always be people gathering points. Just is how it is. It is tactically sound, but the point of this thread was to gear the games more towards an individual skillset rather than what I referred to as a metagame.

Makarios

Fruit doesn't disappear on drop. It will randomly move after a short amount of time if left on the ground. Its to prevent having an army of your minions hiding fruit somewhere without allowing for other participants to potentially get at your stockpile. (If you want to gather fruit for someone else, you're going to need to wave your red fllag for the swarm to see, and hopefully it should motivate people to be proactive about gathering their own fruit as well.)

Dunn

You're not Tecton, @Makarios, but THANKS MAKARIOS!

Makarios

Tecton has you snubbed, I'm pretty sure. Too tag happy for your own good.

Dunn

Tag is a game of love.

PS it's called IGNORE now, you heathen.

Blujixapug

Jaizsur said:

Here's a possible scenario that can play out.

Ashtani Blujixapug has 20 Championship Points
Eleusian Delphinus has 30 Championship Points

Delphinus is a better Banderbowman than Blujixapug.

Blujixapug's Ashtani Death Squad overpowers Delphinus' pitiful tree-dwelling band of free-love pacifists. Blujixapug gets first place in the Bandersnatch hunt, Delphinus receives 0. Blujixapug wins the event and the games with a total of 32 points even though he trailed by 10 coming into the match.

I think it should be noted that a highly skilled Bandersnatch player could end up with 0 points by the sheer misfortune of having less defenders in his/her gang.

Please don't... don't bring up my name in connection to bandersnatch hunts. The memories have been purged. DO NOT BRING THEM BACK.

Makarios

You being ignored was never up for question. I felt that went without saying.