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I was really surprised when I checked the results in the morning.
For the following I will just briefly touch the points which I seem worth mentioning:
- a larger player pool across every time zone will mitigate most of the problems (most of the following points too)
- waiting time should not be punished (I know it would be quite some work to implement it)
- if you get your hands and an amulet in the back and make some wins with it, will more easily secure yourself the top spots
- knowing the stakes of the amulet games is an advantage (a reminder: one of the reasons for the drop amulet option was introduced for safe playing because you didn't know the stakes of the amulet games)
- regarding points reckless speed play is still more beneficial than thoughtful slow games
- I don't like the idea of a Contest Bankrupt amulet, it think it will most likely punish innocent people
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Unfortunately I don't have solutions for the things I've mentioned.
I think the above shows the fundamental problem here is not about dropping amulets. The fundamental problem is that the parts of the games rewarded with amulets are the beginning and the end, not the middle; play 20 games in the time another plays one and you've got 20 times the chance of picking up an amulet. Since it is trivially easy for colluding accounts to play a ridiculously large number of games against each other, it is very easy for colluders to get a large advantage. My original suggestion for handing out dropped amulets did not have this issue, so I'll suggest it again here. When an amulet is dropped record which games are in progress and count how many there are (call it n), start a counter at 0 and every time one of *these* games (i.e only games started BEFORE the amulet is dropped) is finished increment the counter by 1. If upon doing so the counter reaches floor(n/2) then award the last one standing in that game the amulet. If you're happy to add some randomness to it though, it is simpler just to assign the amulet to a random game in progress at the time of the drop (by which I mean "dropped into player pool" of course rather than "dropped by a player" of course). There is a slight incentive in this system to drawing out a games you're winning, and to leaving games when you're behind, but they are slight (I'm not sure it would be worth paying the leaving penalty and forfeiting the chance to win an amulet if the game has already been assigned an amulet for example) and don't provide advantages to colluders.
I like this idea. Please try looking into it some more.
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What about the amount of points rewarded to winning an amulet?
It almost seems like if you increase the amount of points for winning the amulet, you effectively decrease the amount the penalty is per minute. I think this decreases the need to drop the amulet, Yet doesn't devalue the amount for winning an amulet since this would be relative for each person winning it.
Currently:
Win: 200 points... Hold on to it and not play you effectively get 80 points when it's dropped.
Possibility:
Win: 500 points... hold on to it and not play you effectively get 380 points when it's dropped.
Other Possible Improvements:
1. If you increase the points enough, you can change the expiration of the amulet from 2 hours to 6 hours. Almost enough time to take a nap.
2. I agree, if you are actively trying for an amulet game your points shouldn't decay while waiting for a game.
3. Increase the amount of the amulets drastically. Without a huge need to change the payouts.
EX: Prize Amounts last time: 3 Prizes: 100+50+25=175
Adjusted Prize Amounts: 8 Prizes: 100+40+20+5+4+3+2+1=175
This with the random handouts, would improve the flow of the game, while also adding a more frequent shot of excitement for winning an amulet for more players. All while not changing the cost to Jason. $1 amulet seems silly, but winning it on a few $.01 bets is not bad. I also think it would increase the player count, which I believe is what everyone wants especially during down times.
Last edited by CaravanDisturber (2015-03-28 17:21:10)
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Finally, there's the issue that the core game might change too much with this "Amulet Challenger" idea. This will be most people's first experience with the game, and Jason has said he doesn't want the game to look that much different during the contest. The whole amulet thing should just be "floating beneath the surface," as I recall.
Actually I think this is another advantage of my proposal. During the test amulet contests the game was quite different for everyone. There was strong motivation not to play for more than $3 stakes, strong motivation to play fast, often a good chance that it was a game for a particular amulet which gave different incentives to different players, etc. I think my system comes much closer to Jason's original vision of something that lies under the surface of the regular game. In my system non-amulet players can play for any stakes they wish and are rewarded for playing, but not for playing fast. The distortions to non-amulet player incentives involved are pretty minor compared to those that existed in previous amulet contests.
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With Storeroom's suggestion, amulet games could be set at a more meaningful stake, say one or two dollars. Those games would probably be hard-fought, using more conventional strategies, without insane, arbitrary all-ins.
I also like having the fixed stake be $1. Having stakes which are in some sense meaningful is more in the spirit of the game as you say, and I think there should be some encouragement to play at at least slightly higher stakes than the typical 1-10c stakes we've mostly seen pre-launch. I would expect some protest though, and I'm a bit worried about it being intimidating to some players; Getting a chance to play for an amulet should feel like a reward for winning your game, not a threat to money. My response would be that the maximum you can lose trying for an amulet this way is $1 per opportunity, and I doubt there will be many people playing who cannot afford to risk $1 every now and again.
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My original suggestion for handing out dropped amulets did not have this issue, so I'll suggest it again here. When an amulet is dropped record which games are in progress and count how many there are (call it n), start a counter at 0 and every time one of *these* games (i.e only games started BEFORE the amulet is dropped) is finished increment the counter by 1.
I think this (or something on the same principle) is a great idea, as it removes one of the incentives to spamming games and isn't a major change. I think it's definitely a flaw in the current rules for playing short games to be majorly advantaged.
However this only concerns one part of the problem: dropping unclaimed amulets. And that's actually only a small problem. Even during the launch contest, most games will be amulet games whenever there are less than 75 active players because of the 2N+3 players rule (number of amulet equal to about half the number of players active in last two minutes).
The flip side would be removing the ability to get in huge numbers of amulet games (as the challenger) by playing lots of fast games (which lets you funnel points to an accomplice with an amulet). That should also be achievable with some kind of timeout or counter.
I think many of these other suggested changed are far too major which makes them unappealing.
Last edited by .. (2015-03-30 05:48:40)
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However this only concerns one part of the problem: dropping unclaimed amulets. And that's actually only a small problem. Even during the launch contest, most games will be amulet games whenever there are less than 75 active players because of the 2N+3 players rule (number of amulet equal to about half the number of players active in last two minutes).
Agreed. That was the reason for my suggestion for selecting amulet challengers in the same way. I guess that suggestion may be unappealing because it is a larger change. For what it's worth I think the positives of my suggestion are worth the size of the changes; I doubt we're going to find smaller changes which don't distort the main game more. But hey I'm not the one who has to code them! So here are some smaller changes which I think deal with the issue to some extent I prefer them less:
1. Amulets should only be dropped into the player pool when there are at least 4N players, maybe even 6N or 8N, the original idea after all was that these would be rare. A lower density of amulets makes it harder for colluders and creates smoother player experience (because it is easier to find games).
2. Go back to the idea of having the random delay be a counter on games joined which pulls a player joining or having their game joined (call either of these players a "joiner") once the counter reaches a randomly determined N.
[To determine N I'd suggest is something like the following: take the number of games in progress, G, and the number of amulets A, then let M=G/max(4,min(A,20)) and choose N uniformly from the numbers 1 to M. The idea is assuming that games take on average 20 minutes, there'll be G/20 games being joined per minute, so M=G/4 gives an expected wait time of 2.5 minutes, while M=G/20 gives an expected wait time of 30 seconds. The reason for having the expected wait time vary with the number of amulets is that it is easier to collude with less players and so there is more reason to extend wait times to avoid it, in fact you may well want to extend it beyond 2.5 minutes.]
3.Have each player only *considered* for an amulet game once every 20 minutes. More precisely each player has a cooldown which starts at 0. When a game-joining causes an amulet game counter (ie a counter as above) reaches N, if both joiners have cooldowns of 0 one is selected at random to be pulled into the amulet game, if only one has a cooldown of 0 that player is pulled and if neither, the process is repeated on the next game-joining. Whenever a game-joining causes an amulet game counter to increment, once it is determined if either joiner is to be pulled into an amulet game, any joiner whose counter is at 0 is reset to 20. Finally every player's cooldown reduces by 1 every minute.
This really hurts the colluders spamming games against each other because now they don't get any benefit over players playing one game every every 20 minutes. What about an amulet holder trying get into a game with an alt, though? They can still do it reliably so long as the have 2M alt accounts. So for example if there are 1000 active players G=500, M=500/20=25, so they'd need 50 accounts. If there are 100 active players, G=50, A=floor(50/4)=12, M=4, so only 8 accounts. They will aslo need an extra account for every extra game they want to play in a 20 minute period, but that wouldn't be a significant concern for them.
Ok so time delay is better for preventing someone trying to get into a game with an alt, if you replaced the game counters with random time delays of up to 1 minute with large numbers of amulets in play and up to 5 minutes when there's only a few then a player with the numbers of alts I mentioned above I believe would only achieve a 66% chance of getting paired with one of their alts. You could still implement my idea, with a time based delay: a player's cooldown just gets reset every time they join a game while an amulet holder is waiting for an amulet game. 66% still sounds like a pretty high chance of getting paired with an alt to me though, and I don't know how to reduce this further with this sort of system.
My previous suggestion did much better than this at foiling colluders trying to get into amulet games with each other. When challengers are chosen from game winners, you basically need 66% of non-amulet holders to be alts for you to get a 66% chance of being paired of getting into an amulet game with one (you can do a little better than this, depending on how much flexibility is given to amulet challenger on when they offer their games, and some other details) but (I claim) you can't do significantly better. A second benefit of my original suggestion over this current one (apart from benefits mentioned previously) is that it doesn't have an arbitrary cut-off at the 20 minute mark. The arbitrary cut-off will create some weird player incentives, where there is much more motivation to finish a game quickly after the 20 minute mark, and if a game takes 15 minutes you've got some reason to wait 5 minutes before joining another game.
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Also what proved to be beneficial for me was that in the last hours of the contest "owner infection" got hold of the $50 amulet and probably didn't know about the contest and just hold onto it.
I cannot say for sure, but it seemed to me that he was playing regular games while holding the amulet.
You can argue if 2 hours limit for a non-active amulet holders are too much?
But it is important that you have the time if you are active and play amulet games.
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The problem of "getting stuck with an amulet" when the player population is low is dramatically reduced by the new limit on the number of amulets released based on player population. Yes, you could be that one amulet holder who can't find a game right when the player population started to dwindle, but that will be much more rare than it used to be when amulets were handed out with no regard to current player population. So, I think that simply removing the DROP function will probably work.
Storeroom, you're addressing the general problem of colluding quick players having more chance of picking up amulets.
If fewer amulets were being dropped (with no DROP button), half of the problem is already solved (most amulets will NOT be picked up while free-floating, but will instead be won from someone else).
Regarding the other half of the problem---where colluding fast-players are more likely to be picked as an amulet game partner (and KNOW IT, because they won't pair with their colluder)---that's a tough one. Your Amulet Challenger solution could potentially keep the amulet holder waiting for a long time for the next Amulet Challenger to be ready. You suggest that one AC is selected each time an amulet game starts (effectively selecting the next challenger), so there would be a small pool of these ACs (one per active amulet).
But I do see what you're getting at here. If you are picked to play an amulet game based on the "start of the game" moment, you are motivated to have as many "start of the game moments" per minute as possible (through collusion, or just through non-colluding fast play). You're trying to reward "simply being in an active game" instead.
Hmm...
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Seems like the important thing is full randomization when picking amulet challengers.
We can try to come up with some rule that would make is hard to exploit (using active game players, some timing mechanism, etc.) But in the end, what we really want is a mechanism that gives players NO avenue for control over their being picked.
So, why not mark players as amulet challengers (AC) randomly at some rate, and then when pulling players from starting games, only consider players that have been so marked.
Colluding accounts could still spam-start loads of games, but they would have no control over whether they were marked as an amulet challenger or not.
Of course, having loads of active collusion accounts increases your chances of one of your accounts being marked as an AC, but I don't think there's any way around that issue (even in a straight lottery to award amulets as prizes, multiple entries into the lottery would have an advantage).
In the end, this is still not a skill-free way to WIN an amulet (because you'd still have to win games while holding it).
The big problem here is not colluders having a better chance of getting picked for an amulet game by spam-starting games, but rather the threat of the those colluders working with the current amulet holder. If spam-starting will get you paired up with the amulet-holder, and you can then throw the game to the amulet holder, this would be a reliable way to feed the amulet-holder points.
Also, it seems like there's no way around keeping the amulet holder waiting longer in order to solve this problem. If there's some mechanism that allows an amulet holder to quickly get paired up, it seems that mechanism is going to be exploitable to control who the amulet holder pairs with.
Which makes this sound like quite a frustrating experience for the amulet holder... waiting around for some blessed opponent to be ready.... essentially not playing most of the time. Yuck.
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