Pit Changes (Some Accepted, Looking at it)
Mar 15, 2020 14:40:47 GMT -6
Post by Alma on Mar 15, 2020 14:40:47 GMT -6
So, the pit’s kind of a slight problem. Folks forget about deadlines, the battles and rounds seem to drag on forever, it’s a pain to gain pit points compared to contest points, and I’ve never even seen a single Roc Izer purchased in all the years it has existed. Since it’s going to be on cooldown for a bit, I figured I’d throw in a few suggestions. These would both allow for pit points to be gained at a slightly better pace without worrying too much killing the economy for them as actual tournaments will still allow them to gain points faster at a balanced level of points vs difficulty and always award champion status to the winner.
Under this spoiler is the idea to, assuming the actual tournaments remain exactly the same with no changes made, to include NPC elimination tournaments to allow members to possibly gain champion status and points.
In General
Players would be only able to enter one event a month. Each thread would be titled “CHARACTER_NAME_HERE MONTH Pit”, and would contain a form with information as to which event has been chosen. This thread would contain all the battles for that player. Once a month, a player can choose to enter ONE pit event with a character. Event types are explained in greater detail below. If a player fails to complete their thread within a month, one of two things can happen. Overtime in the case of tournaments that are held up due to staff oversight,, which means they are trapped in that thread still, unable to start the next month’s thread until they either finish the thread or fail to post for 24 hours after a staff post, or the thread simply fails and is locked like the successful one. All events award various amounts of points, and would do the usual 2 levels for a win, 1 for a loss. Any creature in one of these would be locked into it, unable to be used in official normal tournaments or anywhere else on the site until it was finished.
Basic Tournament
The basic tournament is an elimination-style tournament. The player starts the thread with the form and roleplay post, and contains in the aforementioned form the chosen difficulty. Each battle is worth 1 point, with a multiplier for wins based on the difficulty for the chosen tournament. This one is perfect for folks just a few points off of something they want.
NPC’s can have a tiny bit of roleplay like “The wiurn charges at your pet, jaws wide!” alongside their randomly rolled move for that turn.
Difficulty modifiers:
x0 - Beginner. These creatures only know their base moves, and are more likely to be a power level less than the same power level. Player only gains one point total.
x.5 - Normal. These creatures know all of their base moves and abilities, with the chance for something extra, and are more likely to be the same power level as your creature. Player can gain a max of 3 points.
x1 -Hard. These creatures know all of their base moves and abilities along with the stronger versions of two of them(Or something like danger sense/dash/ hardy/etc if their base stats are the strongest), and are more likely to be a power level above your creature. They will not use any useless moves/abilities, will not use weaker versions of their base attacks, and know how to counter danger sense(using a sound move). They may have a +1 to any stat. Player can gain a max of 5 points.
x2-Champion. These creatures are guaranteed to be a power level above your creature’s base level if possible. They have up to +3 gym training that helps balance their worst stats or augment their better ones further. They know only the best possible moves, of which the chance of which one is used is weighted based on the player creature’s weaknesses, and will not use any that would fail unless they have no choice(ex shackled range attacks, player creature starts dashing). Player can gain a max of 10 points.
Champion Tournament
This is much like a normal tournament, however they have no choice of the type of opponent they will face though they scale based on the player’s pet’s power level. Hard are the most likely to encounter, followed by a smaller chance of Normal and a tiny chance of Champion, but there will be at least one Champion-level opponent, to be forced in as the last opponent if not appearing before then. The champion tournament has a base worth of 2 points per win, and 1 for a loss, multiplied by the difficulty level of the opponent. A creature cannot enter this tournament if they have already been a champion before to avoid a member with a champion pet steamrolling this every month. It is meant to be difficult enough to match an official tournament, without the issue of customs/post times. May also be modified if a sarane champion is wanted to gain purebloods.
This one is intended to help with awarding the Champion status without making it too easy for a player to gain it. They still would have to put in a ton of work, possibly more than in a normal tournament with other players, and would not allow existing champions to just keep farming the system to rapidly accumulate points.
Seasonal/Holiday Tournament
These tournaments are special ones with a handful of requirements. Pets entered must be aligned with that tournament type(Ex Shadow/Psychic/Poison or a Halloween pet for a Mortavos/Halloween fight, water-aligned/amphibious for a water tournament), and will face creatures aligned with those elements as well as a chance to face the creatures related to that season. They are only active during certain times of the year. The players pet cannot be greater than one power level above the strongest pet for that season. Certain tournaments would have special environments to allow pets to use things like Jungle Dweller. Point of this would be to make the tournaments more interesting.
Monster Battle
Aka a boss fight. Up to three players can join a group to fight a power level 8 creature, with the rule that no single pet can have one greater than 5. The power level 8, or pl8, can either be a random creature from the list of such creatures, a ‘monsterous’ version of a creature normally weaker than that(*coughRocIzercough*), or one of the monsters that never got to be used from the old group battles. Winning a fight against such a creature would allow you to buy one of the related eggs in the pit shop.The battle would use health rules to prevent anyone from burning the monster down in one shot. Points would be awarded to participants at a base of 5, with a x3 modifier for a solo fighter that drops one level for every player on the team. So x3 solo, x2 for duo, x1 for trio, and x0 after that though players can still gain access to the special eggs.
A few problems and workarounds:
-The work at the beginning, aka making the randomizer for the NPC creatures to fight and applying special stats to the harder ones would take a bit of time. I’d be willing to help, or it could be opened up for people to submit their own ideas of op creatures for the Hard/Champion levels.
-Staff would be in charge of doing rolls. Unless either they find a dice roller plugin to let users do it and prove they were honest rolls, or just trust the users. If a dice roller plugin could be found and installed, it would cut down on staff involvement beyond awarding points at the end. Would also help with non-tournament pvp.
-Point inflation? The ‘easier’ basic tournaments award few points in comparison to real tournaments. Heck, the multiplier amounts could be upped a little, as I made the gain a little less than the general points won in third place in a contest.
-Also in regards to points, contests are held with a far greater frequency, offer more points to those who do not win, and have a shop full of things and special creatures that are not dissimilar to the fighting pit's prize pool. This would not greatly hurt that point economy.
-If the point gain is too low, I would set Beginner class to x.5, Normal x1, Hard x2, Champion x3. This still keeps the point values from being high enough to easily outpace normal tournaments.
Alt suggestions that are not directly connected to the above:
Note that these are all separate ideas that are not directly related to one another.
-Mention a teaser of what the next tournament will be after the first round of the current one starts, then the actual type no later than the middle-most round.
-Award a point and level to participants out of tournament player battles. You can make it so that they can only run them once a week to avoid farming.
-Up the points awarded, and make all tournaments elimination style. That would speed them up immensely, and the smaller amount of matches prevents the point increase from causing inflation. The more frequent competitions would make up for being knocked out in the first round, and losing said round points-wise could be worth 5 points and victory awarding 7. This would also allow tournaments to be held more often, hopefully reaching contest levels of frequency.
-Seeing as the pit is one of the few areas on the site that has an entirely revealed system, staff do not need to manage the rolls. Implement a dice roller plugin so players can roll for battles themselves in a way that would be trusted.(Saw more than a few ones so far when checking for them, including ones allowing different ranges.) Players would make the roll at the end of their post, and their opponent could quickly type up the calculation of accuracy/damage. This would cut down on staff involvement. Either that, or get trusted volunteers/one dedicated staff member for the pit.
-Put in the old NPC battle/challenge system that got used only a few times so folks can fight them for points, and throw in the group battles as well.
Under this spoiler is the idea to, assuming the actual tournaments remain exactly the same with no changes made, to include NPC elimination tournaments to allow members to possibly gain champion status and points.
In General
Players would be only able to enter one event a month. Each thread would be titled “CHARACTER_NAME_HERE MONTH Pit”, and would contain a form with information as to which event has been chosen. This thread would contain all the battles for that player. Once a month, a player can choose to enter ONE pit event with a character. Event types are explained in greater detail below. If a player fails to complete their thread within a month, one of two things can happen. Overtime in the case of tournaments that are held up due to staff oversight,, which means they are trapped in that thread still, unable to start the next month’s thread until they either finish the thread or fail to post for 24 hours after a staff post, or the thread simply fails and is locked like the successful one. All events award various amounts of points, and would do the usual 2 levels for a win, 1 for a loss. Any creature in one of these would be locked into it, unable to be used in official normal tournaments or anywhere else on the site until it was finished.
Basic Tournament
The basic tournament is an elimination-style tournament. The player starts the thread with the form and roleplay post, and contains in the aforementioned form the chosen difficulty. Each battle is worth 1 point, with a multiplier for wins based on the difficulty for the chosen tournament. This one is perfect for folks just a few points off of something they want.
NPC’s can have a tiny bit of roleplay like “The wiurn charges at your pet, jaws wide!” alongside their randomly rolled move for that turn.
Difficulty modifiers:
x0 - Beginner. These creatures only know their base moves, and are more likely to be a power level less than the same power level. Player only gains one point total.
x.5 - Normal. These creatures know all of their base moves and abilities, with the chance for something extra, and are more likely to be the same power level as your creature. Player can gain a max of 3 points.
x1 -Hard. These creatures know all of their base moves and abilities along with the stronger versions of two of them(Or something like danger sense/dash/ hardy/etc if their base stats are the strongest), and are more likely to be a power level above your creature. They will not use any useless moves/abilities, will not use weaker versions of their base attacks, and know how to counter danger sense(using a sound move). They may have a +1 to any stat. Player can gain a max of 5 points.
x2-Champion. These creatures are guaranteed to be a power level above your creature’s base level if possible. They have up to +3 gym training that helps balance their worst stats or augment their better ones further. They know only the best possible moves, of which the chance of which one is used is weighted based on the player creature’s weaknesses, and will not use any that would fail unless they have no choice(ex shackled range attacks, player creature starts dashing). Player can gain a max of 10 points.
Champion Tournament
This is much like a normal tournament, however they have no choice of the type of opponent they will face though they scale based on the player’s pet’s power level. Hard are the most likely to encounter, followed by a smaller chance of Normal and a tiny chance of Champion, but there will be at least one Champion-level opponent, to be forced in as the last opponent if not appearing before then. The champion tournament has a base worth of 2 points per win, and 1 for a loss, multiplied by the difficulty level of the opponent. A creature cannot enter this tournament if they have already been a champion before to avoid a member with a champion pet steamrolling this every month. It is meant to be difficult enough to match an official tournament, without the issue of customs/post times. May also be modified if a sarane champion is wanted to gain purebloods.
This one is intended to help with awarding the Champion status without making it too easy for a player to gain it. They still would have to put in a ton of work, possibly more than in a normal tournament with other players, and would not allow existing champions to just keep farming the system to rapidly accumulate points.
Seasonal/Holiday Tournament
These tournaments are special ones with a handful of requirements. Pets entered must be aligned with that tournament type(Ex Shadow/Psychic/Poison or a Halloween pet for a Mortavos/Halloween fight, water-aligned/amphibious for a water tournament), and will face creatures aligned with those elements as well as a chance to face the creatures related to that season. They are only active during certain times of the year. The players pet cannot be greater than one power level above the strongest pet for that season. Certain tournaments would have special environments to allow pets to use things like Jungle Dweller. Point of this would be to make the tournaments more interesting.
Monster Battle
Aka a boss fight. Up to three players can join a group to fight a power level 8 creature, with the rule that no single pet can have one greater than 5. The power level 8, or pl8, can either be a random creature from the list of such creatures, a ‘monsterous’ version of a creature normally weaker than that(*coughRocIzercough*), or one of the monsters that never got to be used from the old group battles. Winning a fight against such a creature would allow you to buy one of the related eggs in the pit shop.The battle would use health rules to prevent anyone from burning the monster down in one shot. Points would be awarded to participants at a base of 5, with a x3 modifier for a solo fighter that drops one level for every player on the team. So x3 solo, x2 for duo, x1 for trio, and x0 after that though players can still gain access to the special eggs.
A few problems and workarounds:
-The work at the beginning, aka making the randomizer for the NPC creatures to fight and applying special stats to the harder ones would take a bit of time. I’d be willing to help, or it could be opened up for people to submit their own ideas of op creatures for the Hard/Champion levels.
-Staff would be in charge of doing rolls. Unless either they find a dice roller plugin to let users do it and prove they were honest rolls, or just trust the users. If a dice roller plugin could be found and installed, it would cut down on staff involvement beyond awarding points at the end. Would also help with non-tournament pvp.
-Point inflation? The ‘easier’ basic tournaments award few points in comparison to real tournaments. Heck, the multiplier amounts could be upped a little, as I made the gain a little less than the general points won in third place in a contest.
-Also in regards to points, contests are held with a far greater frequency, offer more points to those who do not win, and have a shop full of things and special creatures that are not dissimilar to the fighting pit's prize pool. This would not greatly hurt that point economy.
-If the point gain is too low, I would set Beginner class to x.5, Normal x1, Hard x2, Champion x3. This still keeps the point values from being high enough to easily outpace normal tournaments.
Alt suggestions that are not directly connected to the above:
Note that these are all separate ideas that are not directly related to one another.
-Mention a teaser of what the next tournament will be after the first round of the current one starts, then the actual type no later than the middle-most round.
-Award a point and level to participants out of tournament player battles. You can make it so that they can only run them once a week to avoid farming.
-Up the points awarded, and make all tournaments elimination style. That would speed them up immensely, and the smaller amount of matches prevents the point increase from causing inflation. The more frequent competitions would make up for being knocked out in the first round, and losing said round points-wise could be worth 5 points and victory awarding 7. This would also allow tournaments to be held more often, hopefully reaching contest levels of frequency.
-Seeing as the pit is one of the few areas on the site that has an entirely revealed system, staff do not need to manage the rolls. Implement a dice roller plugin so players can roll for battles themselves in a way that would be trusted.(Saw more than a few ones so far when checking for them, including ones allowing different ranges.) Players would make the roll at the end of their post, and their opponent could quickly type up the calculation of accuracy/damage. This would cut down on staff involvement. Either that, or get trusted volunteers/one dedicated staff member for the pit.
-Put in the old NPC battle/challenge system that got used only a few times so folks can fight them for points, and throw in the group battles as well.