Forums → Forum Games → Interest Check: The Surge | Tournament Game

@SirLegendary, I am interested in joining. But I have 5 queries before that -
1) Should we change our Armatars for joining one 'company'?
2) Can we change companies before the game starts(i.e., before the start of the first month)? And, is changing allowed after the 1st month starts?
3) Should we keep track of our Surges or does the GM keep track of it?
4) Even though it is highly unlikely that there will be a tie, I think one rule must be made up for that just in case. Is this considerable?
5) [On a lighter note] Who is the Mayor?

Hats off to @SirLegendary for coming up with this novel idea! and a Thank You to @nichodemus for the sponsorship of the prize

1) You don't need to change your armatar
2) You may choose which company you'll be joining, and you cannot move teams once you have decided.
3) I'll be keeping track of the surges
4) Will keep that in mind, but the chances for that is highly unlikely due to a best of five system. Though if there is a tie in the monthly surge, I'll be sure to put up the rule that it will be considered a point for both teams. This is so the the 5 month tournament isn't prolonged to a 6 month tournament.
5) Well, it isn't me, I'm just an event organizer.

So, this begins as soon as 10 people have signed up?

Well, I want to join "The Candlelight Company"

I want to join - "The Candlelight Company"

Looks like we have 3 :P

I'l join "The Candlelight Company" too.

Calling in major forum gamers and inviting them to join

@Chryosten @Patrick2011 @Doombreed @JACKinbigletters @red303

@SirLegendary sorry but I Don't think this is ever going to work. All you are going to achieve is promote FG spamming and even hand out merits for it. When a user who spams forum games contributes more to his team than one who joins armatar contests, ASC,poetry contests and spends time in the support forum to help you have one, unfair system.

To put it simply, the old AP system was discarded because it promoted spam. You took a part of that system, made FG posts count and applied to this game. Just imagine how much spam the game promotes even in forum games. If community activity was at a reasonable level, users would have a choice. But now they don't. Even if they wanted to stay out of the forum games and actually promote activity by helping out in other sections they can't. You've basically shown them the easy way to win and showing it pretty much makes it the only way in a community with as low activity as ours currently. It would have been a simple game in which not addressing such core matters properly wouldn't matter IF there were no merits involved. Merits make this almost offensive however.

You may think that I am just being negative here but think logically. Even if one wanted to be active all around he couldn't because there are not enough new threads and responses in any other category to promote a swift discussion. One team can only win if they post a lot and this can only happen here.

We actually tried something similar in your clan some time ago, you are welcome to see how it turned out.

Also, I am not even sure if we have 10 people willing to do this. Even if we do and we go through this you will have to balance the teams by taking each user's activity into account.

I actually liked the wanted list. The stats may be tough to update but you didn't ask for help. I for one would be perfectly willing to help out with any calculation there and I am sure most users would not mind being the ones to update their Worth themselves. It was a good idea that relied on a decent system but without overdoing it, since the most important part was the haul worth, not the gold.

So, excuse the negativity in this post but I don't think it helps the situation at all. In fact it can only make it worse if merits are handed out to the winners. Obviously this is still an interest check, so you can still refine and modify the game. So maybe you can take my advice into consideration Even if you doubt my ominous negative predictions about how it will turn out you can at least test it for a month or two without the merits. If I am wrong and you and @nichodemus see helpful all around contribution, activity and valid reasons, you can always implement the merits later. But since it will most likely turn into FG spamming my advice is leave them out at least for a month to see how it goes.

@Doombreed, the wanted list was the kind of game that needed more than three people to manage, assuming those people didn't spend a lot of time managing the game. Also, the other thing was, that game would have probably snow balled winners into a state of never losing.

Now for the current game, here are the reasons why I created it:

Increased activity for all the forums. (btw, if you haven't noticed, the only forum that's borderline active is the forum games section.) I'll make this one short and simple, newcomers to the forum won't stay long if there's no one to interact with, which is pretty close to the situation we have now. This game promotes activity and not spam.

I understand your point that it may promote spam, but it's only limited to ten players. This is a different case because every single user was part of the AP system, as compared to just ten players. So worst case scenario, all ten of those players will be spamming the forums. Let's stay focused on the scenario that those ten players spam the forums because of this game. We have more moderators and admins available to tell these users off. Okay, so not all moderators frequent the forums, but it only takes one moderator to punish users who abuse posting. That's what moderators are for.

About the merits, they're handed out at the end of tournament. Meaning when a team reaches 3 monthly wins. That's already three months. Though I'm sure not every one of those players are willing to spam the forums and risk the consequences for five months unpunished for a single merit.

About the balance of teams, I'll consider randomizing teams before the start. For everyone, this isn't a sign up sheet yet, so I can't promise you'll be in the teams you've chosen here.

Here's how I'll combat spam through more rules I'll be implementing from your comments, because I do see the potential for spammers: Users who are warned by moderators about spam/abuse, will be disqualified. To keep the balance, the user is allowed to be replaced. I'll set a waiting list on the sign ups.

Again, I understand your criticism, but this game promotes activity, and not spam. I'll be sure to make it clearer if the sign up sheet eventually get's posted.

tl;dr - This game promotes activity not spam. The forum needs activity. Spammers will be punished by mods and myself (through means of disqualification). Merits are handed out only once in 3 - 5 months. The wanted list had a huge potential to snowball constant winners into a state of never losing.

But my key talking point is that there are multiple kinds of activity. I didn't say it encourages spam, I said it encourages forum game spam, meaning no one doing anything against the rules, just 500-800 posts a month in FG. Users like the kind mentioned contribute to their team more than others who post 100 times in the FG a month for example but also join armatar contests, ASC, Frequent The WEPR and spend time helping people in the support forum. So the winners are going to be the ones who play the most Forum Games. So your game is not only promoting the wrong kind of activity, it is actively rewarding it. Granted spamming is punished so we probably won't get a lot of this but playing forum games is not against the rules and one can, in fact one is encouraged to abuse it and rewarded for it. Am I the only one who thinks it is unfair? Look at the examples again. Do you think the first user actually contributes more than the second in the example above? Even more do you think rewarding user A with a merit, which is generally reserved for hard and meaningful work Is The Right Thing To Do to promote Forum activity in general and not just activity in the forum games?

There is activity which is good and encouraged, activity that is not bad but also not useful and activity that is actually harmful. The first is what we want to see more of. The third is actual spam. The second is what this game actively encourages and rewards. Because I only see one way to win this. No strategy, no different path to follow, no different tactic.Every post I'd the same. Just one more in the total of the team. Doesn't matter how much effort you've put what have you done with that post. Be it actual art, poetry, well thought and level headed opinion with sources on a world event or whatever this post is for all intents and purposes less than 2 posts in the FG...

@Doombreed

You're intentions are clear and very honorable. After reading what you've posted, the lines between good and bad activity are clearer. However, I can safely assume moderators can read between those lines, or have good perception of the two. This isn't an argument, just assurance. Yes, there can be gray ares, even when applying forum rules to a post that follows the rules of the game, but doesn't necessarily follow the rules of the site.

Even before, users were frowned upon for only frequenting the FGs, or constantly playing games that only required two or three words in a single post. What I'm trying to get at is that even though a user only frequents the forum games, doesn't mean his kind of activity is bad. Despite the fact that it certainly does take more effort into creating more meaningful posts in places like WERP forums, I can't say that a user focusing their activity there can't be any different than focusing their activity in the FGs. I do however understand your point. That being, this game will most probably only increase all kinds (even the bad) forum activity in the FGs because it is the easiest place to gain higher post counts with minimal effort. Though from what I've seen, a user who started out in one forum, tends to extend their hand to other forums. So, a boost in activity in the forum games creates a community, which in turn attracts newcomers with all sorts of interests. These newcomers, wherever their different interests lie, will learn to channel these interests into the appropriate forums. You see where I'm getting at with my point? This game has the potential to indirectly affect all the forums.

The downer of having cut off AP and move onto quests was that there was no reward in interacting with the community anymore. Yes it cut off a big amount of spam, but the community started to die out. My point is, with high activity comes spam. This game shouldn't be looked at the way AP rewarded everyone (including spammers and bad sorts of activity), but a more balanced way of increasing activity. Which is, a contest on activity between two teams of five.

Though your concerns do have merit, and thought through very well. I assure you, I'll take some steps and try to think of ways to combat bad sorts of activity and spam.

You know lets just host a new Forum based game that involves someone drawing comic strips call it WoKaWaM, Way of Knights and Wardens and Mods...

We can simply copy all the tropes in anime and throw it at the users... I got it Legend vs Doom, build an army of users and we fight it out :P

What if teams were randomly selected? The most active people have already came and chose candlelight. Doesn't look like much of a contest. Also, this does sort of encourage spamming, if by spam you mean short posts that were not thought out. However, those are the kind of posts you see here normally ever since most RPGs died out. What if you added other challenges that measured some other aspect other than sheer amount of posts?

What if you added other challenges that measured some other aspect other than sheer amount of posts?

I think that this is the best option. My concerns aside, this will at the very least add some diversity to the game. And since this is still an interest check and not the actual game, I think a brainstorm is bound to lead to some good ideas if we work together. We can think of something that will help make the game more interesting but will still not make updating this difficult