Under Direct Orders from Zwillinger

So, yesterday during the Ustream broadcast Zwillinger first acknowlegded and semi-comiserated with me for the reset of my latest tournament. He then gave me my marching orders; I was... for reasons he didn't bother to explain... post what my tournament is all about and a description (abridged due to server memory limits) of its current mechanics.

He's either a glutton for punishment or he's the stalker who's been rooting through my garbage lately. (Honestly, I thought it was a raccoon but that Zwillinger's a tricksy one.... then again most hobbits are.)

SO...

For the uninitiated and therefor mentally unscathed among you who are not aware of what the heck I'm talking about... My Tournament is a highly structured and rigidly ruled way of playing the game. I have spreadsheets... hoo boy do I have spreadsheets... that track, dictate and control which character I play, how I play them and when I am allowed to create new characters. The spreadsheets also take all the little data bits (level, defeats, missions completed, enhancements slotted, temp powers, badges, and on and on and on) and apply complicated mathematical equations to them to come up with Measurables in the form of Power, Reputation and Team Work.

I won't get in to the equations... actually I pretty much can't... Though I have restarted my tournament over and over again (requiring the complete deletion of all my characters and their subsequent recreation at 1st level) I tend to keep what works for me while changing what doesn't. So, I literally have no idea what some of the background equations in my spreadsheets do anymore because it's been YEARS since I first stuck 'em in there. Suffice it to say I record the advancement data as my character grows and the spreadsheets are nice enough to do all the math and spit back numbers at me that I ASSUME mean something.

Rather than bore you with all the minutia rules, I'll just tell you what I changed for this last Tournament Reset.

Basically, I got rid of everything that was keeping me from enjoying the game. Anything that seemed more like "work" than "play" was tossed on the scrap heap. The first thing to go was my beloved Traderbots.

Now, don't get me wrong, I LOVED my Traderbots back in the day. I had one per server that did nothing but sit in the Market and buy and sell salvage, always at a profit. Before long I had over a billion influence per Traderbot; which I thought was pretty cool. Unfortunately, it also began to become a major chore. It took an hour JUST to play the Traderbots through and I forced myself to do the TB stuff before I even thought of playing another character.

So, out went the Traderbots. I decided to divide up their ill-gotten booty and give 150 million influence per new player I created until I ran out. When I ran out I would simply recreate the Traderbots and run them and only them until I'd bank rolled some good cash then continue the tournament.

Another problem was creating characters who were clearly support characters on low population servers. Now, before you all jump down my throat about "You can find a team on any server if you just blah blah blah..." I know you can. However, my play time is very rarely during prime time and when you can click on Find with no parameters set and STILL get less than 50 in your list chances are your Defender is going to be lonely.

In addition to this problem was how MANY teams and characters I had playing! I had a team on every flippin' server except for the German and French ones. At least 2 characters per server and I find myself juggling 24 characters with more on the way when every member on a team reached 30th level or higher. Basically, even if I played EVERY day I was still only playing my favorite characters roughly once a month.

Solution: Consolidate all my heroes on Freedom and all my Villains on Virtue. That took care of both my over-population problem and my low population problems. Sa-weet.

The other thing I have done with my latest iteration is brand new and... to my pleasant surprise... a great deal of fun! I have always had two accounts, both to house my Traderbots and also because I hate asking people to invite me to my own danged super group. I finally decided to use the second account in a more active role. Instead of server-wide teams of heroes or villains, I have created two man teams and level pacted them.

So, D'Shan Steelclaw (claws/regen scrapper) is on my first account on Freedom and he is teamed with Edie Wyldfire (fire/devices blaster) on Freedom of my second account. I had been concerned that the slow pace of a single player level pacted would be more drudgery than fun, but it turned out the opposite is true.

For one thing, the slow place allows me to actually run ALL the level appropriate content in a level range without having to miss out. I've played story arcs since restarting that I haven't touched in ages because I always picked the most "profitable" (ie- most reward points, etc). Another thing is what I call the "Birthday" effect.

Nothing is cooler than signing on and immediately seeing your character bounce up two or three levels. I KNOW it's silly but I still giggle like a schoolgirl when I remember running Edie Wyldfire through Outbreak at combat level 10. I've NEVER got the Isolator badge so easily.

So, I deleted over 24 characters, most of which were over 30th level and am now only running 4.

Do I regret it?

No. The game feels new to me again and I'm rediscovering parts of it I'd forgotten were so much fun. I am also, for the first time in my strange CoH career, actively seeking to team and having an absolute blast doing so. (Some of you on Virtue may remember teaming with a Dual Pistols Blaster named Assisted Afterlife in Neutropolis... if you do... thanks for a great play experience!)

So, I have fulfilled my duty to Zwillinger. That's my Tournament in a VERY compacted and abridged nutshell. I could easily fill dozens more pages with useless digital ink explaining the ins and outs and minutia of my Tournament, but let's face it... you don't care and I don't remember most of the detail stuff anymore.

I am sure that some day I shall find myself in front of the Pearly Gates and Saint Peter will look down at me and demand to know what I've accomplished during my time on Earth. I intend to stand tall and proud before him and, with great conviction say:

"Hold on a moment... I have a spreadsheet for that..."

When I first learned of your tourney all those months ago it made me cringe...

Reading how much fun you get from it makes me smile!


Still, I'm really really hoping you can reach 50th level this time around! IF that happens be sure to announce it here before hand so we can throw you a party.

The one thing missing is why you restart your league with new game updates. I think I remember you posting this in the past but I seem to have forgotten.

Overall, I greatly applaud your efforts for finding the fun in the game that best suits you. We see lots of posts on the boards of saying the game is boring to them, nothing is fun anymore, etc. Every time I think of you and want to tell them that their fun is only as far away as their own imagination.

Hello,

Steelclaw, I have sat here from afar and several times, I have thought two thoughts about your Tournament, often just about simultaneously:

1) good on him
2) yikes

Point 2 is mainly about the number of times you've had to reset the tournament, deleting everyone in the process. If I may ask, what's the minimum number of characters needed for a round of the Tournament, and would it be possible to break characters out into "seasons?" A new update hits, a new flight of characters start a new season of the Tournament.

I realize it might make apples-to-apples scoring comparisons harder, but it might also let you keep anyone you actually like enough to keep.

Have a good one.

Later on,
Gate

I restart my Tournaments for pretty much the reasons Twisted mentioned. If the Devs come up with a neat little feature that I simply HAVE to incorporate into the Tournament then I tend to restart to make things "fair and just" among the competitors.

Another reason I restart is when the Tournament begins to be more cloyful than joyful. If I start having to convince myself to play then I know it's time to reconsider my rules system.

As far as introducing more characters; I have rules for that. Gee... what a shock. I divide my tournament into Rounds. Here is what my current round looks like:

1st up- D'Shan Steelclaw
2nd- Choice of team La Vedova di Mafia
3rd- Edie Wyldfire
4th- La Bella Mafia
5th- Choice of team Forge Force
6th- Assisted Afterlife

The "Choice" turns are basically so I can choose which of the two team members I play that day. I did this so I wasn't always REQUIRED to play a certain character. Usually my choice is based on who I am in the mood to play or who would be advantageous for the day it lands on. (ie- A support archetype on a weekend day or a solo-centric on a slower playing day)

My current rules include a new hero and villain team to be introduced every 5th round. So, once I have played through the above list five times I will create four new characters (two heroes and two villains) and add them to the list which will double it to 12 turns during the round rather than 6.

Each addition of teams will increase the amount of time before the NEXT new teams are added so, hopefully, I won't become quickly inundated with a quagmire of too many characters to play.

Characters in the Tournament will have all their stats recorded on the 5th, 10th, etc rounds so as to be compared to new players to determine the Tourney rankings.

See? Not complicated at all... heh.

What happens if someone wins?

Further, how does someone win?

Thank you for enlightening a whole new generation of forum goers Steelclaw .

The odd thing is that Steelclaw plays the game as analytically as I post about the game, and posts about the game as looney as the way I play the game.

Since I already HAVE a goatee... I figure I'll take that responsibility.

I'd upload a photo of myself to prove I have one but the last time I tried to send my picture over the internet it devolved into a rather embarassing fiasco...

Weapon of mass destruction indeed... hmph.

You know...

I have a webpage (l2pnoob.org) dedicated to trying to explain to people that the point of MMOs is not to have the l33test loot, or have the best rewards, but to enjoy playing.

Steelclaw, would you mind if I were to use you as an example there? I think you've got one of the best examples I've seen of playing a game on your own terms, completely disregarding what other people seem to enjoy. And I honestly find it really cheering. I could never do that, I can't understand how it's fun, but you take such evident joy in it.

Well, I do have a psych degree.

But really, it's a fascinating thing. And it seems to me that it's probably a much saner response to your internal state than spending immense amounts of effort trying to Be Normal.