Heads Contest/Boss Heads Contest

[Chewett]

The Heads contest was originally a contest to gather as many heads as possible, scoring every X period of time, gaining the number of heads you are holding as points.

The winner would then win a heads contest medal. Once won you wouldnt be able to participate again.

Boss Heads Contest was a similar contest, only for the winners of the heads contest. The winner could win any number of prizes.

The main problem with HC and BHC was that over time there were very few participants. So we stopped running it.

Would anyone change it to make it more interesting, especially for those who previously have won?

Should we just leave it alone for now?

[Ledah]

Change how heads are initially distributed, like say, thorugh containers

Heads themselves as a system are cool, just HC itself doesn't work with the current amount of players.

[Fang Archbane]

I say make a batch of NPCs wherever the heads contest is to be held, and make it so all mind powers can attack them.

A win means some heads gained, a loss means some heads lost. make it so you can gain less than you can lose per battle.

Attacking other players should still be enabled for sabotage, but heads will only be passable from mind powers via the chat command and the NPCs.

[Aia del Mana]

I had an idea last year, of variation of this - the Tails Contest, whereby one should instead gain of the opponent's tails upon an attack of them resulting in loss. In this manner one may grant victories to others, to aid in advancement of creatures, while those who did wish to attempt to place should need to devise of new rituals that may lose to other rituals that were designed to lose.

Edited March 24, 2019 by Aia del Mana

[Lazarus]

What are the rules of the Heads Contest again? If my memory serves, I think the tokens are melted and you got to have your ritual slider down to 0% so it's just a matter of strategy than based on stats.

I was the sole winner of the 2013 HC simply because there were no other participants besides the 6-10 players who were actively gathering heads, I don't think my character was that strong but it's evident that it is because of lack of players engaged in it. My suggestion is if you are going to continue these types of fighting contests, it has to be based on the influx of new players coming in otherwise it wouldn't make any sense to have it held every month or however frequent it is.

Judging on what I've observed so far, I would suggest that the regular HC can occur every 6 months or so and BHC being annually. It's an interesting contest and I would dislike for it to be abolished.

[dst]

One issue that I see is that past winners cannot win a second time or a 3rd time or etc times. This way the competing population decreased over time.

Maybe, let past winners compete and win again with a certain "lag" meaning for example that if I win this round, X amount of rounds from now I will not be able to win. Or if you want to be really sadistic, make X random (between I don't know...0 and 10?) meaning that I can be eligible for win the next HC or 9 HCs from now.

[Mallos]

As stated, not being able to participate after a win destroyed the amount of participants after a while. I'd suggest making the winners be disqualified for the next contest or next two contests, but no more than that. This way they rotate out who is playing and you can make tactical decisions whether to fight this one or the next based on who is going for it currently.

Also most of my heads contest ideas involve some form of distribution of heads through a player considering I cannot control automated spawning of heads, so making either an npc that can hold heads or a "container" that can dispense them upon certain conditions would be ideal to circumvent the problem of players not being reliable dispensers.

@Imperius you are thinking of Boss Heads contest, which nullifies stats/tokens, heads contest is free for all heads spawning on participants

Edited March 27, 2019 by Mallos

[Kaya]

I loved Heads Contest, but it did have two major flaws. One, there were not enough participants, and two if you 'won' second or third place you were kinda screwed.

HC gave some pretty good rewards, but second/third place got only half the rewards first place got and with no way to try again this resulted in a sort of match fixing where some of the stronger players would decide not to participate in the same contests, leaving the lower ranks to be filled up by the unsuspecting noobs and alts.

I would suggest allowing anyone to participate, but have rewards depend on previous achievements.

If you win Silver for the first time you will get a major reward (i.e. 20 credits)

If you win Gold for the first time you will get an even bigger reward (i.e. 40 credits) However if you already have Silver you will only get the difference (20 credits)

If you win a rank you have already obtained you will get a minor reward (e.g. a small amount of stats, maybe a few silver, bragging rights, etc.)

This way the incentive to participate is far greater for those who have not yet won, but there is no reason to avoid an uphill battle. If it turns out the same people keep winning regardless it would still be possible to place a ban for X rounds on the winners.

[Sunfire]

How about not banning players with previous victories but giving them a handicap that goes up with their amount of HC wins. We could let the system "forget" wins after x time so it wouldnt be a too high handicap that stops them from participating

[Jubaris]

But what kind of handicap would nullify the advantage of ancient players with maximum diversity of creatures, spells and tricks in general?

Younger mp5s would never be able to compete against such players, the handicap would need to be very creative, I don't find it realistic.

[Aia del Mana]

2 hours ago, Jubaris said:

But what kind of handicap would nullify the advantage of ancient players with maximum diversity of creatures, spells and tricks in general?

Younger mp5s would never be able to compete against such players, the handicap would need to be very creative, I don't find it realistic.

I would think such a handicap could come in a form proportional to the age of the account in question; in example, one gains score proportional of heads held, and inversely proportional to the age of the account - such that the ease of scoring for newer accounts were somewhat commensurate with their strength.

[Sunfire]

Age isnt a great indicator of combatstrength. 

I would suggest an exponential % stat diminishment. Players would then need to sign up to heads like they do for bhc