Working Rules for Launch Contest

joshwithguitar · 2015-03-10 23:46:26

Jason, I think instead of having amulet holders join/create a random sub-$5 game you should match them to a player about to join a game as you outlined in an earlier post. This, I think, would fix most of the problems faced by the suggested system.

Firstly, it would mean that instead of having a high chance at a $2.50 stake game you would instead on average join a median stakes game, which I imagine would be much lower. Sure, there would still be a chance of joining a $1+ game, but as long as these are much less common than sub $1 games this would be pretty rare. Still, under this system there is no advantage to playing lower or higher stakes in order to get into an amulet game.

Also, under the current proposed system I would be tempted to just sit around waiting for odd priced $1+ games (with stakes like $3.86) and just join them as I think it would give a much higher chance of joining an amulet game. If I wanted to be lazier I would just set a $5 stake in order to increase my waiting time, and thus increase the chance of an amulet game joining me (and giving them a nasty surprise when they lose $5!). These are both things that most players will not have the luxury of being able to sustain, giving high rollers an advantage.

Under your earlier proposed system of stripping players away from games, none of these things would be problems.

jere · 2015-03-10 23:47:53

Once you HAVE the amulet, you'll be playing games with an average stake of $2.50. Where each chip is 2.5 cents. That seems okay. If you don't want to risk it, just drop the amulet or ignore it until it auto-drops.

This seems kind of nuts to me. Less than 30% of current players have an account balance with more than $5. A great deal of players are dipping their toes in the water and putting in the minimum of $2. For $2.50 to fit into bankroll management, you'd have to have $50.

Josh has a good sounding proposal that reduces the expected value you're risking, but it still seems really brutal to make new players put $5 at risk.

1. It doesn't solve the fundamental problem of collusion, because the $5 tier would be much more sparsely populated than the 50-cent tier. So far, 90% of players have deposited less than $10. The vast majority of people are playing for very low stakes, and $5 games tend to sit there for a while. If you let the amulet holder control the stakes, even tiered stakes, you let them control the stakes. And colluders also control the timing.
2. It funnels the behavior of non-amulet holders in a way I don't like. This is your first time playing the game, and there's all this extra stuff on the screen. All these tier buttons.

Well, the "sparsely populated" issue only exists if you have these high stake tiers.

The extra stuff on screen is a tradeoff, but didn't seem to be a big problem in the tournament.

The thing with "let's not change things for non-amulet holders" is: everyone is trying to be an amulet holder and if the amulets are changing hands often, lots of new people will be amulet holders quickly. These new people could very quickly get swept up in having to risk their whole bankroll.

Cobblestone · 2015-03-11 00:25:05

I think at this point the contest is very geared toward high rollers, like Josh and jere mentioned. However, if you want to keep the stakes that high, then I'd like to suggest adding a Drop Amulet button to the interface. This way the little guys (myself included) and newbies can still participate, but with the strategy of winning and dropping amulets as often and quickly as possible to get points. Currently holding an amulet bleeds your points, which makes dropping it that way as pointless as having not even won it in the first place, and dropping it immediately requires leaving with a 6 coin ($.15 @ $2.50 stakes) penalty, which is also unattractive to new players who are trilled to win a penny.

Unless this contest is meant strictly for veterans and high rollers, then we don't have to be considerate of new players.

jere · 2015-03-11 00:36:39

Yea and I think it is somewhat telling that the high rollers that have weighed in don't seem to be for the thing that would be easier for them. Probably because what we really want is just to see the most possible growth (a rising tide feeds all sharks... or something?)

I guess if you're really attached to this idea, one way to make it more reasonable is simply to limit the cap to $1. I think any way you cut it, you're going to change how the game is played.

storeroom leaflet · 2015-03-11 01:26:24

I'm totally with Cullman on the tiered amulets thing. It lets players choose their stakes without creating possibilities for collusion. Plus you can have more valuable amulets at higher stakes which makes which one you get seem less arbitrary.

jasonrohrer wrote:

1. It doesn't solve the fundamental problem of collusion, because the $5 tier would be much more sparsely populated than the 50-cent tier. So far, 90% of players have deposited less than $10. The vast majority of people are playing for very low stakes, and $5 games tend to sit there for a while. If you let the amulet holder control the stakes, even tiered stakes, you let them control the stakes. And colluders also control the timing.

The system I envisage would have each amulet locked to a particular stake so the amulet holder would not be able to choose their stake, non-amulet holders would be able to.

jasonrohrer wrote:

2. It funnels the behavior of non-amulet holders in a way I don't like. This is your first time playing the game, and there's all this extra stuff on the screen. All these tier buttons.
The current stake picking screen is clean and wide open. I want non-amulet holders to have that experience (whoa, I can play for 1 cent or 2 cents or 11 cents...). Ideally, for non-amulet holders, the game should look and behave identically to how it does now.

If this is important you can have each amulet locked to a range of stakes, e.g. 1-6c, 10c-30c, 66c-99c,$1-$1.49 $1.50-$2, $5-$6.66. You could creat ranges to fill in the gaps, expand those ranges or leave the gaps there depending on how much variance you can live with for the amulet holder, whether you want opt out stakes (as Cullman suggests) and how much you're concerned about funnelling stake selection. Then when an amulet holder decides to join a game they get assigned to a random player joining or having their game joined as suggested by Josh (there'd have to a random time delay here of course). You wouldn't have to add anything to the create game screen, non-amulet holders would get to control their cash stake precisely, everyone would know their cash stakes and amulet holders who are only playing penny games couldn't suddenly find themselves in a $5 game.

I still don't like that non-amulet holders don't know whether they are in an amulet game though personally. So I'll suggest a modified version of my idea in the other thread: When an amulet holder proposes a game, a random game in progress or waiting to be joined gets assigned as a game for the right to challenge for an amulet. There are a number of benefits to this, it rewards length of time playing the game, but it doesn't reward any particular part of the process over others, and so doesn't reward any particular behaviour given that you are playing. For example the current system rewards just the waiting for a game or joining part of the game, ss a result it rewards players who are in that part of the process at the right time. So if you get a tip-off about when an amulet game is to be proposed you have an advantage over other currently active players, and you are better off playing short games to get to the joining/proposing part of the game more frequently (this is balanced a little by not letting people know whether they are playing amulet games, but 1. It still encourages higher variance play if it doesn't reduce your winning chances too much. 2. If two colluders always tried to join each other's game they would often be successful if you don't fiddle with the mechanics for non-amulet games much, and they would always know if they weren't successful). It also means more players get the excitement of amulet games, you get all the amulet challengers knowing they are playing for an amulet, PLUS you get all the people who are playing for the chance to play in an amulet game. It also automatically reduces collusion edges as to even get an amulet you now have to win 2 games against 2 different opponents.

The major disadvantage of course is that it means that amulet holder might be waiting around a bit for a game, but you could reduce this a couple of ways, the idea I currently like is this: at the start of the promotion not only assign amulets but also amulet challengers (one for each amulet, though a challenger can play actually play for any amulet, unless you have a tiered stake amulet system when they can play for any amulet in the right tier). Then each time a new amulet game is started you select one game to be for the right to challenge for the amulet, then the average wait time for amulet holders or amulet challengers will be less than the average difference in length of time between two different games. (Challengers would of course lose the right to challenge if they don't accept an amulet game within a particular period).

This system has practically 0 collusion potential if you combine it with one of the zero-sum structures I proposed in the other thread (there's still a small edge that a colluding amulet holder can avoid starting an amulet game while there non-amulet holding partner is briefly afk, giving them a slightly smaller penalty for taking a break from the game, not a significant worry). With the current structure of amulet points there is a bit of potential for amulet challengers to try to hang around to make sure they get paired with a colluding account that has a few points. But this could be reduced by making the right to challenge for amulet games only last for a short period of time, and upping the penalty for sitting around with an amulet without proposing or playing a game. Also it requires that the two accounts get into quite a specific situation already which they can't collude to get into.

storeroom leaflet · 2015-03-11 06:35:09

jasonrohrer wrote:

In terms of the new player experience, well, super-conservative new player play isn't totally what I had in mind. Yeah, you CAN put in only $2, but you should probably put in more. So if you want a chance at an amulet, put in at least $5.

Just my 2 cents on this. I think the current intro page anchors people a lot on that $2 figure, it's the only realistic possibility put on the screen and a bunch is said about it. I'd suggest giving an example with $20-$50 with 10c-$1 games. This would be the price a lot of people would pay for a videogame (with no chance of winning money!) and is not going to break anyone's budget. I'm not saying you want to reduce people's respect for money like a casino will try to do, but ultimately it will be good for the game if you get people p[laying more of a spread of stakes.

By the way that's another advantage of the tiered amulet system it encourages a people to think about trying a few different stake levels and decide what's best for them which has got to be good.

claspa · 2015-03-11 15:07:36

I also have two cents to spare.
I don't understand the two different threads. I would advice using one for discussions and another where you are solely stating your current status of the working rules.

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-11 16:43:13

Josh, what is your suggestion?

That we pull either a game creator or a joiner out of a game that's about to start, and match it with an amulet-holder who is waiting. But have some limit on it, like $5 max?

So the amulet-holder still needs to have at least $5 in their account to play an amulet game, but they will never create a game themselves at random stakes (with expected value of $2.50, which is high). Instead, their fate will be decided by the current stake-climate in the game in the sub-$5 range.

They still have a chance of risking up to $5 in each amulet game, though. Psychologically, I don't think this changes things too much. I mean, if you do the math, then yeah. But our emotional assessments of risk don't take math into account.

I agree that I don't want this to favor high rollers.

This thread is meant to discuss the above rules as they develop. I keep changing the rules in the original post to reflect the discussion in this thread. The other thread was where we were coming up with the amulet idea in the first place.

Man, this is SO hard to get right....

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-11 18:41:26

Took a long walk and thought about this.

As Josh has pointed out, amulet players will WANT to play as low stakes as they can to find the weakest opponents. And also, if a win is a win, why risk more money than necessary? So, that's another strike against tiered stakes that the amulet-holder can pick from. They'd mostly pick from the lowest tier, looking for the weakest opponents. This would push non-amulet holders toward the lowest tier as well.

I hear the suggestion about different tiers for different amulets, but that puts gold amulets more out of reach.

Rising stakes, based on how much you've won while holding the amulet so far, is really good... It would have to be a random, unknown stake within that range to avoid collusion. You're about to play a random-stake game where the stake is less than $1.24, the total you've won while holding it so far.

The longer you win with it, the riskier it becomes to keep playing with it. But you're only risking what you've won on it so far.

Oh, crap, this would make the amulet games slowly rise in stakes, system-wide, over time. The following numbers ignore the tribute for simplicity. If you play a 62-cent game (half of your $1.24 max) and lose, then your opponent has now WON 62-cents on that amulet. Which means their limit will START at 62-cents and go up from there. Say they win three games, averaging stakes of 31, 46, and 70 (because the stake cap rises after each win). Their stake cap is now $2.09, and their next game will have average stakes of $1.04. If their opponent wins, they will START with a stake cap of $1.04.

Deliberations on this topic are now approaching the three week mark.

I think that a fixed stake cap for a random match-up for the amulet holder, known to all, and the same for all, is the cleanest solution. Maybe $5 is to high. How about $3? Remember, you can gain the amulet at lower stakes, but to keep playing with it, you must have at least $3 in your account. You've got the football. Time to money-up and run with it.

We could also TELL the amulet-holder what the stakes are once the game starts. So they have the opportunity to leave and drop the amulet if the stakes are too high. They could also leave half-way through the game if they feel like they've lost too much. A game of chicken.

DAMN YOU, COLLUSION! Imagine the design freedoms that would be possible if collusion wasn't a factor!

Three weeks of my life have been sacrificed upon your altar, cruel collusion.

LiteS · 2015-03-11 21:06:38

jasonrohrer wrote:

Oh, crap, this would make the amulet games slowly rise in stakes, system-wide, over time. The following numbers ignore the tribute for simplicity. If you play a 62-cent game (half of your $1.24 max) and lose, then your opponent has now WON 62-cents on that amulet. Which means their limit will START at 62-cents and go up from there. Say they win three games, averaging stakes of 31, 46, and 70 (because the stake cap rises after each win). Their stake cap is now $2.09, and their next game will have average stakes of $1.04. If their opponent wins, they will START with a stake cap of $1.04.
Three weeks of my life have been sacrificed upon your altar, cruel collusion.

If you reset the counter to .01 per player each time they pick up the amulet, that stops the system wide rising stakes, and should keep players /relatively/ on the same playing field as far as "I won 6 times in a row, and am now playing for similar stakes as another player who won 6 times in a row with this amulet".

Example play:
I win a $.43 game and Amulet 20, the first amulet game I start with amulet 20 means I will risk .01. I win 4 in a row, (.01, .02, .04, .04) then lose when the stakes hit .12. I earn about 1000 points minus 1 point per minute I held the amulet, 200 points for stealing the amulet, then 800 for winning the for amulet games I created.

The next player who defeated me at .12 can now start to earn points for himself/herself starting at .01.

Later I manage to find Amulet 20 again, and my stakes will start at a max of .12, and I'll have a chance to again boost my points on this amulet.

Collusion should be solved if the Amulet Game button doesn't let the player know if they're creating or joining a game, especially if you add the previously mentioned random time to create/join element combined with random stakes with rising max. Be sure to timeout the game creation/joining to reset the random element after 2 minutes or so. so the player won't be able to use idle time to assume they've created a game.

The stakes will start low initially, but as points rack up max stakes will as well, meaning the high rollers will start to see amulets in their games. There may be a problem with the growth function being essentially ".01*x^n" where 1<x<2, instead of simply .01*2^n. Maybe the latter function would be better for simplicity sake, but the rake starts to hurt that function when you get to the big bucks. Even making amulet games immune to rake doesn't solve anything, because players can still leave with half a stack.

Edit: Points for winning a match

Last edited by LiteS (2015-03-11 21:30:17)

Cobblestone · 2015-03-11 21:16:40

I think setting the stake cap at the value of the winnings while holding the amulet is pretty amazing, actually. It's accessible to low-stakes players and newbies, because they could still win an amulet at low stakes and the risk is only what they've won or less, but it's also good for high-stakes players because amulets could be found and played potentially at high stakes too.

I understand that a fixed stake is a clean solution, tho. If you went with raising stakes, then you'd have to allow people to track what the stake cap is of each amulet, which might be confusing. With a fixed stake cap, I think you really would have to tell the amulet holder what a game's stake is once the match starts to avoid burning new players on the game. I'd also suggest that amulet players leaving the game ~only~ drop the amulet in lieu of the 6 coin penalty. That way they're able to bow out of a super high stakes game, giving up their amulet, but also not be futher penalized by losing $.18 (or add a Drop Amulet button outside of a game for the reasons I mentioned before). Still, it kinda sucks to be like OMG I WON THE AMULET to having to drop it because the stakes are half your bank roll.

A set stakes cap may potentially make playing with the amulet accessible to only those who are bold or have a high bankroll. A new player will be neither. Since this is being run during launch week, I'm thinking getting new players involved is part of the goal.

So I had an idea this morning, but I'm pretty sure you're not going to like it... I'm going to throw it out here anyway.

The conversation here yesterday kinda threw me, and I was trying to figure out in very simple terms what the intentions and goals of the contest are. Here are my assumptions:
1. As a launch contest, you want it to be accessible to new, low-stakes players.
2. It also needs to be interesting for veteran, high-stakes players.
3. As Ano(?) eloquently stated, the game's value of a penny is greatly increased over reality. It represents a real, possibly difficult win.
4. The amulet has a real world value more than pennies, and the contest should place an in-game perceived value on it over pennies as well.
5. People should be able to play as normal until they've (surprise!) won an amulet, this high-value item.
6. The contest is to promote the game and encourage players to play as much as possible, whether they're playing for an amulet or not.

So given all these things, having to be accessible to everyone, not affecting gameplay for non-amulet players, and allowing everyone to play many many games without destroying their bankroll, here's my idea and please hear me out:

Asymmetrical stakes.

What if it worked like Josh's suggestion - an amulet game steals another player from their game, either someone waiting in a created game or joining a game. Since the non-amulet holder is aware of and have selected the stakes they're willing to risk, they'll never know they were in an amulet game because if they lose, they still lose their money normally to the amulet holder. However, if the amulet holder loses, the non-amulet holder wins the amulet instead of money.

I think it's ok to do this because the amulet is supposed to be a high-value, rare item. Doing this would aide in giving it this perceived value in the game. The amulet holder is still going to play the same without money being at stake, because they don't want to lose the amulet. This lets everyone play with the amulet, unlike randomized stakes under a certain cap, where new players would have to drop the amulet or potentially lose over half their bankroll. Getting an amulet requires ~SKILL~ instead of just joining a game and hoping the amulet holder can't afford it.

So non-amulet holders play normally, and amulet holders, regardless if they're high-rolling veterans or low-stakes new players, can participate.
I think this checks off all of the items I listed above.

(Sorry I wrote a lot...)

Last edited by Cobblestone (2015-03-11 21:19:06)

LiteS · 2015-03-11 21:41:35

Cobblestone wrote:

I'd also suggest that amulet players leaving the game ~only~ drop the amulet in lieu of the 6 coin penalty.

I really like this idea, an amulet is surely worth more than 6 chips, even at the highest stakes.

Cobblestone wrote:

What if it worked like Josh's suggestion - an amulet game steals another player from their game, either someone waiting in a created game or joining a game. Since the non-amulet holder is aware of and have selected the stakes they're willing to risk, they'll never know they were in an amulet game because if they lose, they still lose their money normally to the amulet holder. However, if the amulet holder loses, the non-amulet holder wins the amulet instead of money.

I can't get on board with this. The amulet player is not playing with value at all, and their individual chips become worthless. 1 chip held by the amulet player has the same value as 199 chips, they don't "risk" anything and can play erratically. I think Jason is right to avoid "funny money."

Edit:
Also, on the "Amulet players play with skill, not money" front, rising stakes also fixes the unable to afford problem since amulet players will only play with winnings.

Last edited by LiteS (2015-03-11 21:43:59)

Cobblestone · 2015-03-11 21:47:33

LiteS wrote:

I can't get on board with this. The amulet player is not playing with value at all, and their individual chips become worthless. 1 chip held by the amulet player has the same value as 199 chips, they don't "risk" anything and can play erratically. I think Jason is right to avoid "funny money."
Edit:
Also, on the "Amulet players play with skill, not money" front, rising stakes also fixes the unable to afford problem since amulet players will only play with winnings.

Ya, I understand that. I actually vastly prefer the raising stakes idea, but if that's not an option then there's this problem where either the chips are worthless, like you mentioned, or the amulet is worthless and a player is forced to throw it away if the stakes are too high. It's a tough thing to balance really.

Last edited by Cobblestone (2015-03-11 21:48:06)

storeroom leaflet · 2015-03-12 00:06:59

jasonrohrer wrote:

I hear the suggestion about different tiers for different amulets, but that puts gold amulets more out of reach.

Oh if you *like* the arbitrariness of whether you pick up a gold, silver or bronze amulet, you could preserve this in a tiered system by having the same distribution of amulets available in each tier. It does encourage people to play in whatever stakes they expect to be less popular to get more chance of picking up an amulet, but I think this is 1. Less distorting than other proposals and 2. Good for the game because having a spread of stakes is good for the game.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Oh, crap, this would make the amulet games slowly rise in stakes, system-wide, over time. The following numbers ignore the tribute for simplicity. If you play a 62-cent game (half of your $1.24 max) and lose, then your opponent has now WON 62-cents on that amulet. Which means their limit will START at 62-cents and go up from there. Say they win three games, averaging stakes of 31, 46, and 70 (because the stake cap rises after each win). Their stake cap is now $2.09, and their next game will have average stakes of $1.04. If their opponent wins, they will START with a stake cap of $1.04.

This is completely opposite to the worry I have about this. First why worry about max stakes rising? You can still get an amulet by playing a 1c game and if you do, your next game you are only up for 1c. Even if the max stakes are rising low stakes players are not put at any disadvantage (quite the opposite actually). Indeed I would argue you probably need the max stakes to rise in expectation over time for this sort of thing to work. However, does the expected max stake of the amulet in fact rise as the game progresses in the suggested system? No, I don't think so. (What follows is a bit of maths, which may be hard to follow, explaining it would take a bit of work but I'm very confident in it and the upshot is that max stakes of amulet games would not be expected to increase and they would in fact likely hang around only a few cents) Call the max stake for game n of the amulet X(n), the actual stake of game n, Y(n) and the probability that the amulet holder wins a game p (assume for simplicity that p doesn't depend on n). Then the expected value of X(n+1) given the value of X(n) is p(X(n)+E(Y(n))+1-p(E(Y(n)))=pX(n)+E(Y(n)). If we assume all players are equally skilled so p=1/2 and that all stakes are equally like so E(Y(n))=1/2 then E(X(n+1)|X(n))=E(X(n), that is the expected max stake of a game is exactly the max stake of the previous game. In reality we can expect amulet holders to be more skilled on average than non-amulet holders so that p>1/2 but we can also expect most games available to be low stakes so E(Y(n))<<X(n)/2. As a result I wouldn't expect the max stakes to rise over time. In fact I expect there to be downward pressure on the max stake which will keep at a few cents (e.g <10c for most of the promotion).

Even if the system is changed it so that max stake did rise over time in expectation you would still have the issue that everyone who wants an amulet is encouraged to play 1c games as then they're sure to be in with a shot at the amulet. If you increase the min stakes as well, then you get a weird guessing game about what stakes the amulets are currently at, or put the low stakes players out of the running for it. I'm pretty pessimistic about finding a way to get it all to work, as cool as having rising stakes for amulet games would be.

joshwithguitar · 2015-03-12 01:21:10

jasonrohrer wrote:

Josh, what is your suggestion?
That we pull either a game creator or a joiner out of a game that's about to start, and match it with an amulet-holder who is waiting. But have some limit on it, like $5 max?
So the amulet-holder still needs to have at least $5 in their account to play an amulet game, but they will never create a game themselves at random stakes (with expected value of $2.50, which is high). Instead, their fate will be decided by the current stake-climate in the game in the sub-$5 range.

Yep, that is what I'm suggesting. Combined with letting the amulet player know the stakes this will mean that they most likely will be playing low stakes, but if they are unlucky and get drawn into a high stakes game they can opt out (for a leaving fee, though maybe this could be waved somehow).

But.... this again gives an advantage to playing high stakes games as you are more likely to have an amulet holder leave when they join you. I would be tempted to play lots of games at the highest amulet stake as many players would not be willing to risk it if they were joined to me.

When it comes to rising stakes games, I agree with storeroom: if only the maximum and not the minimum stake increases then this gives a strong incentive to play low stakes as it will ensure that you can join all amulet games, especially if the stakes reset when the amulet changes hands. Also, lower stakes amulet holders are less likely to have held it for long, and are therefore less likely to be good.

If the minimum stake rises then you again have a system prone to collusion, especially as the stakes get high.

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-12 18:01:29

I think I'm going to push ahead with the $3-or-under randomly-chosen opponent plan. It's simple, it allows vibrant non-amulet play at all stakes under that level, it prevents collusion, and yeah, it may scare new players a bit, but it also sets the tone that you should be playing SOME bigger money games now and again. You just got the amulet by winning. Okay, you need $3 but don't have it... you could try winning some lower-stake, non-amulet games to get it (hurry up!) or you could deposit more. If this is your one chance at the amulet, $3 is a cup of coffee, right?

The truth is that, in the long run, players who put in only $2 and never put in more aren't an important part of the economy of the game. If everyone did that, the game would flop financially. $2 is practice money. I've never put less than $30 into an online poker room as an initial deposit, and that's for playing what they call "micro" stakes.

So, I don't want to pander to the $2 crowd too much. It's funny to talk about $3-capped games and refer to them as "high rollers". In poker, a $5 buy-in is the smallest available stake.

After three weeks, it's really time to move on and get this contest implemented. We'll still need to run a test contest for a few days with "practice" amulets (worth $20 each or something) floating around to check for bugs.

So, discussion here should really close unless someone discovers an exploit that we haven't covered yet. Also, small tweaks to the rules (like the stake cap, the number of points won, the number of points lost per minute, etc.) are welcome. All these things can be tweaked as server settings as we go along.

Professor Chin · 2015-03-12 22:12:20

+1 for the 3$ "starbucks" cap.

While I'd feel much more comfortable with a $1 cap, since i almost never play more the 30c, I hope it will be at very least 2$ to make the game more exciting.

Also I hope this will encourage a post-tournament scenario when not only the elite players play for 50c or more.

I think that because of the risk "attached" to an amulet, the perceived value of its 100 points per win would be even higher. Therefore loosing 1 point every 2 minutes would be enough to "keep it rolling" (at least it would for me!).
It also would be less punishing against longer, well fought games.

Edit: I see the amulet points were already set to 200, loosing 1 point per minute

Last edited by Professor Chin (2015-03-13 09:14:41)

joshwithguitar · 2015-03-12 23:39:36

I'm glad that things are moving forward, but, just to clarify some things:

You're still planning to use a system in which a random staked game can be made? I cannot see any problems with the alternative of pulling a player away from a game that is about to start and, again, I see three advantages:
- games will tend to be around the median game stakes
- there is no advantage given to waiting around for odd valued high stakes games to pop up.
- there is no advantage given to posting a less frequently played stake in order to increase wait time, and therefore the chance of joining an amulet game.

All of the corresponding disadvantages of your current system favour high bankroll players.

Secondly, you've decided to ditch the idea of making the stakes transparent to the amulet holder? If not, you're fine with the advantage given to higher stakes games in terms of forfeited amulets?

storeroom leaflet · 2015-03-13 01:19:17

Not sure if this counts as a new exploit or not but it seems worse than Josh suggests. In the current system without a random delay in when the random stake amulet game shows up colluders are going to have a very good shot at getting in a game together 50% of the time just from choosing a random stake that pops up when the amulet holder starts the game. Josh's system would also require random delays to avoid a similar or larger advantage to colluders of course. But I guess I'll focus on just exploiting things in the practice contest and see how that goes more than making criticisms/proposals here from now on?

Regarding tweaks to the current system this requires a little more work than just changing a parameter but the main one I'd advocate is getting rid of the leaving penalty in amulet games, or (better) just allow the amulet holder to drop the amulet. The amulet system is already punishing enough for those who might have to leave the game at some point while holding the amulet.

storeroom leaflet · 2015-03-13 02:49:33

Another minor tweak. Just noticed this:

jasonrohrer wrote:

After a full two hours of no amulet match completion, they drop the amulet into the player pool.

I'll record my vote for having this changed to "two hours with no amulet match beginning", or "two full hours of inactivity (no playing or offering amulet games)". Or if that two hours would then be too long, reduce it to one hour. I don't think you want amulet holders needing to finish a game by a particular time at all costs (that was on of the major advantages of having amulet holders lose a point per minute as I saw it).

AnoHito · 2015-03-13 04:12:50

I think Jason is right that it's really time to move on and just go with a plan. I know everyone here has their own ideas about what will create the best possible tournament, but at a certain point you just have to say it's good enough and move on. For what it's worth, I think the current plan isn't perfect, and I am concerned incentivising higher stakes play so soon could decimate the new player base. But then again, it's completely true that if this game can't attract new players willing to lose significant amount of money in exchange for the opportunity to win even larger amounts, the game is doomed in the long term either way. Maybe increasing the stakes during the tournament is just what it takes to break the mentality I was talking about that has artificially inflated the value on money in this game. At any rate, I am really excited about the official launch and all the new opportunities that will bring, and I wouldn't want to see it delayed any longer for the sake of a debate that really has no definite right answer.

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-16 14:59:13

Josh, yeah, I think it could work to pull a player away from a game that's about to begin. A random delay would be needed before picking a such a game to pull players away from, of course.

You're right that if the amulet holder is shown the stakes at the start, higher stakes will have a greater chance of scaring them into leaving the game and dropping the amulet. But won't higher stakes also be less likely to find a joiner, so be less likely to end up in an amulet game? I.e., it wouldn't be a viable strategy to propose high stakes ($3!!!) in hopes of scaring the amulet holder, because the game would sit there, unjoined, and thereby be ineligible to be pulled into an amulet game (according to your suggestion).

joshwithguitar · 2015-03-16 21:02:34

jasonrohrer wrote:

Josh, yeah, I think it could work to pull a player away from a game that's about to begin. A random delay would be needed before picking a such a game to pull players away from, of course.

Good to hear, I was getting a bit worried about the collusion problems that Thomas brought up as well.

jasonrohrer wrote:

You're right that if the amulet holder is shown the stakes at the start, higher stakes will have a greater chance of scaring them into leaving the game and dropping the amulet. But won't higher stakes also be less likely to find a joiner, so be less likely to end up in an amulet game? I.e., it wouldn't be a viable strategy to propose high stakes ($3!!!) in hopes of scaring the amulet holder, because the game would sit there, unjoined, and thereby be ineligible to be pulled into an amulet game (according to your suggestion).

Well, this all depends on how many players there are. Just say there were lots of games and the average wait time for a 1c game was < 1 second while the average wait time for a $3 game was 30 seconds. The majority of players might still find $3 too high, but 30s isn't really that much of a wait given the average length of a game. 30s is enough though to give a much higher chance of being brought into an amulet game under your old scheme though. Of course, as this time increases there will come a point where it is no longer worth the wait, but we can't really know how frequent games will be at this stage.

Unless the wait time is prohibitive, I will personally be tempted to sit on $3 anyway because I imagine that most of my games will still be mostly against new players and my odds of winning will be high. This does mean that if game stakes are transparent then I will have the added bonus of amulet leavers, and again this kind of strategy is only something that someone with a decent bankroll can pull off sustainably. Still, perhaps this (slight?) advantage to me is not as bad as amulet players unknowingly being playing $3 stakes against me.

jasonrohrer · 2015-03-17 14:31:10

I've got this mostly working. When two non-amulet players are about to join, and enough time has passed since the the amulet-holder asked for a game, one of the players is pulled away, and the other is left waiting for another opponent.

I don't have the "show the stakes to the amulet holder" part working yet. I'm not sure that I should... but maybe...

.. · 2015-03-19 13:11:54

I'd like to point out that the rule for tie-breaking is incomplete. With 36 amulets it seems fairly likely for there to be a player who gets the most points for two amulets of the same rank (gold/silver/copper): which do you give him? This requires picking which of the runners-up gets an amulet. It seems fairest to do so by looking at the number of points for the 2nd place position. E.g:

amulet 1 (gold)
player A: 1000 points
player C: 400

amulet 2 (gold)
player A: 800 points
player B: 600

amulet 3 (gold)
player A: 300 points
player D: 200 points

amulet 4 (silver)
player B: 600 points

Players B and C did better than player D, so are more deserving of gold, so player A could get amulet 3 and cut D out. But this rule is still very incomplete: should B get the silver amulet 4 instead? Looks like you might have to ditch attempts at "fairness" and just assign in a simple way.

CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

#51 2015-03-10 23:46:26

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#52 2015-03-10 23:47:53

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#53 2015-03-11 00:25:05

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#54 2015-03-11 00:36:39

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#55 2015-03-11 01:26:24

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#56 2015-03-11 06:35:09

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#57 2015-03-11 15:07:36

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#58 2015-03-11 16:43:13

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#59 2015-03-11 18:41:26

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#60 2015-03-11 21:06:38

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#61 2015-03-11 21:16:40

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#62 2015-03-11 21:41:35

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#63 2015-03-11 21:47:33

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#64 2015-03-12 00:06:59

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#65 2015-03-12 01:21:10

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#66 2015-03-12 18:01:29

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#67 2015-03-12 22:12:20

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#68 2015-03-12 23:39:36

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#69 2015-03-13 01:19:17

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#70 2015-03-13 02:49:33

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#71 2015-03-13 04:12:50

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#72 2015-03-16 14:59:13

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#73 2015-03-16 21:02:34

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#74 2015-03-17 14:31:10

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

#75 2015-03-19 13:11:54

Re: Working Rules for Launch Contest

Board footer