Is there anything like a "Game of the Month/Week"?

[Buttons840]

http://arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,3468.0.html

This disapoints me in many ways:

1) We need to flush out the details a little more until we jump into it, lest half the community revolt due to poor organization.

2) The first game should be a little more normal.  Like 40 to 80 planets vs a level 7.  Not a timed survival with most your knowledge already spent, impossible odds, and no way to validate the save files.

3) If I had known it was first come first serve for hosting "game of the month," then I guess I would have been the host.

I'd suggest making a sub forum where only a moderator can post new threads.  Every month a moderator posts the new game of the month, and then locks the tread at the end of the month and posts the next.  This is simple and organized; other forums will not be cluttered.  The moderator will get ideas for the games from the community by contacting the contest winners, or through polls, etc.

My suggestion is that on the 20th (maybe 25th?) of every month winners are determined from the submissions for the current months game.  The two (or three?) top players each may suggest a game specification, and these two games will then be presented in a poll.  The winner of the voting will be the next months game.  A player may not submit a game for voting 2 months in a row.  This way the winners get to choose, but if a winner suggests something silly, it will likely not be voted upon.  The community at large has a say through the voting.  This would require about 2 new threads a month (one at the beginning with the game, and one for voting), as well as reviewing the winners (which should be easy, because you chose the winners based on their word, and then verify with the save; no need to review every single save).

The success of this depends on community participation and one single person jumping the gun and spamming the forums with "game of the month" threads will not bring the level of organization we need.

[RCIX]

Ok that sounds like a good idea! sorry for going off half cocked!

[Buttons840]

Apology accepted.  I probably have more need to apologize for using such a negative tone in my reply to your thread.  Sorry.

One second thought we mine as well do what we can in January.  But I suggest we start fresh in February and then start a new game at the beginning of every month hence.  And we do need more organization in the future.

What do you think about allowing co-op?  The AI scales to compensate, but how does this affect score and such?

[Black]

The two main settings that must be decided are the combat style and whether expansion content is to be used.

I think expansion content should be included so that it provides an incentive from the community for new users to buy the expansion pack. This is good for everyone involved.

I have posted a poll in the general forum asking which combat mode people prefer. I say, go with what the majority say and leave it to the honor system that no one abuses the ability to switch between the combat styles. Pretty much everything relies on the honor system though, which is fine.

Do we allow save scumming or not? Once again, this can't be enforced. You can only hope that people abide by this stipulation in the spirit of the challenge. I think save scumming should be discouraged, and you should only get one shot at the scenario, because restarting gives you a big advantage in planning over people who don't have time to play the scenario more than once. I could tolerate other policies though, personally.

Any other loose ends?

[Buttons840]

In the Civ GOTM's there was only one shot allowed.  No saving and reloading (save scumming you call it?).  Honor system is all we'll have and I'm fine it with.  I think it will work out ok.

[Oewyn]

I got bored after 6 hours of defending...  Can we do something else next time?

[Kjara]

Well scumming is a rogue-like term.  I think it got introduced at some point when we were discussing ai war vs roguelikes.

Anyhow, the best score in 5 hours sounds decent as a quick before the end of the month event, but yeah, lets start with the more basic ideas for now, and work our way up to the more oddball ones.  Discuss ideas in a thread like this one before we post one.

We should pull up a set of rules before we get going for real.

I think that one try is all you get, you can save/load but only to take a break(power outages or something are covered by autosaves).  Agreed that it can't be enforced, but I think we can trust people until proved otherwise.

Other rules would be that for anything time based, you can't toggle f&d(normal best score by end of game, I'd say that one is personal prefence).  Other specific rules will be game specific and should show up in the initial post.

[Buttons840]

After visiting the chat and speaking with...   well, I forget his name, bit he works with Arcen games.

He said if you look on the Steam statistics (I don't have the game through steam) it will be clear that score is exploitable.  We didn't talk about it much, but apparently there are ways to inflate your score?  So the quick and efficient victory doesn't always guarantee the highest score.  Score then is not a valid measurement of performance.

Let remember that we don't have to measure performance.  We can all just play the same game for the sake of comparing experiences and stories.

[Harry]

I've played a few of the GOTMs over at Civilization Fanatics, and it really does enhance one's enjoyment of the game.  In fact I've even run a couple of Civ GOTMs at my guild's website (but I have no interest in doing that here, as I'm too busy these days).  For me it doesn't really matter how scoring is handled; I just like playing the same scenario as other people and seeing how I did in comparison.  Even so, some objective yardstick can be useful, if only to see how different people play the game. 

I'd suggest multiple "prizes" for each game, in a lot of different areas, using the game's stats function.  These might include not just score (heck, I'd still be curious how high scores can get), but also things like most starships constructed; most total ships constructed; quickest time to victory; quickest time to defeat (!); highest winning AI Progress; lowest winning AI Progress; most worlds conquered; fewest worlds conquered in a victory; score after five hours; a prize for playing the scenario for 24 hours of in-game time; etc.

At Civ Fanatics, the mods also regulate when people can start posting AARs and screenshots.  After a week, you can post pics of your first five hours, something like that.   

As for difficulty, I think it's a good idea to make the first couple games in the 7/7 range, but if the idea takes hold, have some games that are tougher, just to push some of us out of our comfort zones.  Like me!  Also, ideally the poster should playtest the GOTM before posting it.  Maybe not all the way to victory/defeat, but at least long enough to scout the whole map, or some such, and ensure that the game is a reasonable and interesting challenge.  I don't remember -- is there an editor that would let someone create a custom map or scenario, like the tutorial campaign?  That could be especially interesting, if it were well-tested.

Anyway, it's a great idea, and I'd be interesting in playing a GOTM. 

[Shardz]

I like this idea very much as it would be cool to see other people's experiences within the same basic domain. Perhaps just post a seed number for the map, select only two total modifiers (including minor races & game options), 30 planets (as that's the minimum for minor races), and let each user operate on their desired difficulty level. I'm finding more and more balance issues the more I play on level 7 difficulty and some games are just impossible to win, but under level 3 is not meaty enough for my tastes. Time is an issue to report your experience, but it would be fun to see screenshots and stories of others' games.

[Kjara]

One could always post 2 or 3 "levels" of a game like they do for some of the civ ones.  As an example, one could be at level 6 that scores vs other level 6's and one at level 7.6.  Not 100% how much would change about the map with different difficulties though(I know the planet level distribution depends on diff, there are more higher level worlds on higher diff levels).

I agree that past this point, playtesting at least a hour or two into the game would be good, and more is better.  Usually I'm used to the creator playing a shadow game first to test the idea out, then posting that/their thoughts when other people do their reports but not actually competing.

What I'm used in regards to reporting is when that there's some deadline you have to finish the game by(and perhaps report your score to whoever is running the event), then after that point you can post your experience, to avoid giving away spoilers to others before they finish playing.  The other option is create a spoilers thread where we just trust people not to head into before they get to specific points in the game.

I'm not a huge fan of giving awards for so many different factors in one game.  I think each game should have one or two themes, and give one or two awards based on that theme, and we should explore the different themes in different games.  That way you can't always play the way you are comfortable at if you want to compete---forcing people to take risks and stretch themselves.

[Buttons840]

I like this idea very much as it would be cool to see other people's experiences within the same basic domain. Perhaps just post a seed number for the map, select only two total modifiers (including minor races & game options), 30 planets (as that's the minimum for minor races), and let each user operate on their desired difficulty level. I'm finding more and more balance issues the more I play on level 7 difficulty and some games are just impossible to win, but under level 3 is not meaty enough for my tastes. Time is an issue to report your experience, but it would be fun to see screenshots and stories of others' games.

There cannot be balance issues the same as there are in other games for 2 reasons:
1) There is no competitive player vs player mode.
2) The AI does not play by the same rules as the player.

All games thus becomes a challenge and nothing more.  If a ship is extremely effective, this is just one tool to solve the puzzle and complete the challenge.  Sure, there should be stat tweaks to some ships, but I don't consider anything as "unbalanced."

Look at it this way:  The game starts out with about 10,000 AI ships, and - what? - 3 or 4 human stations.  All so called "imbalances" are paled by this fact.

[Kjara]

Something can be unbalanced enough that its not fun if the optimal strategy is always to use that ship(as with say light starships right for example).  Or a patch ago when it was impossible to use frigates if the ai had electric shuttles .

Probably the games you are finding impossible to win require a different set of strategies at diff 7.  I doubt there are many if any games that are actually unbeatable at diff 7.  I'm not sure I can make the same claim at diff 9 or so.

Edit: Oh, just so I don't forget, In general we will want to tie these games to a specific release(ideally a official release) that way people's game's play out the same way. I.e the current game should prob be played in 3.0.1.6.