GTN revival of Competitions..let me ask you something.

So as the title indicates this thread is about competitions and or events here at GTN. I have some ideas of my own for original type of competitions, but I have also taken part in some really cool competitions over the years and wanted to bring some of them back.. The only problem I have is I don't want to outright steal anyone's original ideas. To this I wanted to know if anyone out there knew of some of those gamers that brought us these competitions. If you don't then what do you think about the ramifications of taking these competitions and implementing them here at GTN?

The competitions I'm talking about specifically were ones done over at 360v at one point.

The great buffet challenge
This was a single player challenge where the contestants all battled to see who could be the first gamer to add 1000 Gs to all genre games, the first person to do that would win.

There was also a gstacts ? the name eludes me but the basic format was that teams of two would score within a weeks time frame and the top and bottom teams were both eliminated.

If you know of the gamers who sponsored these or were the gamer who made them please contact me.

If you think these sound fun and interesting comment. I really enjoyed these two particular competitions and would like to bring them back in some way.

Thank you.

Preach it!

Skyline please!

Skyline please!

Originally Posted by LAFTA

Without the bricks. lol

I know the guy who sponsored a lot of prizes in several competitions there. He's kinda an asshat though, and now keeps all those Gold and $ codes to himself since 360v died. He also helped hammer out the rules because he likes to game the systems to his full advantage. He also isn't allowed to post at TA anymore because of a Dick over there.

I know the guy who sponsored a lot of prizes in several competitions there. He's kinda an asshat though, and now keeps all those Gold and $ codes to himself since 360v died. He also helped hammer out the rules because he likes to game the systems to his full advantage. He also isn't allowed to post at TA anymore because of a Dick over there.

Originally Posted by Hotdogmcgee

Was it you? If so please tell me either way. I'm not looking for prizes or anything like that form anyone those are streakily voluntary and even not wanted right now. Bringing prizes into things seem to complicate a lot, so the best I can do is award badges and possibly mystery prizes.. IDK. Like I said these are just ideas I'm looking into.


@ Nightmare: I'm not sure of the Skyline rules or what that exactly was as I didn't take part in that.

If anyone can refer me to the actual gamers that were moderating those or came up what the rules on them please let me know. I'm not asking them to host it or track it or Moderate it, that is something I can do. Otherwise I either may not do it or implement different rules.

Laus ran Skyline, that much I'm sure of.

Skyline & Lucky Number were my favs. Laus & Toddy ran those, respectively, I believe.

You're from Vegas...lucky number is right up your alley!

Laus: Skyline and Buffet (buffet would be tough without genres here)
Toddy: Lucky Number (with tracking help from futiles)
futiles and Chrome30: STEI (the one you are thinking of with two and bottom eliminated) and HERBIE (basically High School/ College wrestling format) and Chrome's October Challenge

Basically, it was the events team, Chrome was first, then me, then Laus, and then Toddy. So, 99% of all the competitions there were done by us, and a lot of times with overlap. There were plenty of people to offer support, too. Faf would actually do some frontend work for presentation, and I would use some of his APIs for data validation. Hotdog would offer prizes. I believe I still have all of the code for the HERBIE and the Lucky Numbers, as well as most of the code for the proposed STEI 2 (although, my heart was never in that with the changes, so, I never finished it). I can provide that to you.

Laus: Skyline and Buffet (buffet would be tough without genres here)
Toddy: Lucky Number (with tracking help from futiles)
futiles and Chrome30: STEI (the one you are thinking of with two and bottom eliminated) and HERBIE (basically High School/ College wrestling format) and Chrome's October Challenge

Basically, it was the events team, Chrome was first, then me, then Laus, and then Toddy. So, 99% of all the competitions there were done by us, and a lot of times with overlap. There were plenty of people to offer support, too. Faf would actually do some frontend work for presentation, and I would use some of his APIs for data validation. Hotdog would offer prizes. I believe I still have all of the code for the HERBIE and the Lucky Numbers, as well as most of the code for the proposed STEI 2 (although, my heart was never in that with the changes, so, I never finished it). I can provide that to you.

Originally Posted by futiles

This is the information I was looking for! Thank you, as for the code I was sure there was spreadsheets and stuff but I'm afraid I wouldn't know how to implement any code here or if it would cross over to GTN or if Eric would allow that...

I'm not aware of the proposed changes to the STEI but I know I loved that format. As for the buffet challenge and there not being genres here, I don't quite follow? Do you mean we just don't have genre badges? Skyline and Lucky Numbers and even Herbie I was not to familiar with.

The code your speaking of, you think it's was enough for a layman like myself to work with and possibly do a google spreadsheet type of thing? That way it could be hosted and still be public accessed.

This is the information I was looking for! Thank you, as for the code I was sure there was spreadsheets and stuff but I'm afraid I wouldn't know how to implement any code here or if it would cross over to GTN or if Eric would allow that...

I'm not aware of the proposed changes to the STEI but I know I loved that format. As for the buffet challenge and there not being genres here, I don't quite follow? Do you mean we just don't have genre badges? Skyline and Lucky Numbers and even Herbie I was not to familiar with.

The code your speaking of, you think it's was enough for a layman like myself to work with and possibly do a google spreadsheet type of thing? That way it could be hosted and still be public accessed.

Originally Posted by B8TINGU

No, I mean like actual code. I made Perl scripts that went online and downloaded the Xbox.com profile of each contestant in the contest at exactly midnight, then it went through each profile and pulled out the important info and built a database entry for it. Then I had a webpage front end that displayed it for me.

Trying to do manual spreadsheets for dozens of people took an hour or so. Once I automated it, I had everything done in 5 minutes.

Skyline is the contest TA has copied to make the Leap Frog.

Lucky Number was just pure luck. You scored on a day, then the next day, a random number was generated. Whoever had scored closest to that number won the day. (Numbers were never reused)
Then, whoever on the most days won it all.

The great buffet challenge
This was a single player challenge where the contestants all battled to see who could be the first gamer to add 1000 Gs to all genre games, the first person to do that would win.

Originally Posted by B8TINGU

For this to work we would actually need a similar set up to the badge/genre calculator from 360 Voice/Fshguy's website first (I miss this feature the most from the there).

Skyline is the contest TA has copied to make the Leap Frog.

Lucky Number was just pure luck. You scored on a day, then the next day, a random number was generated. Whoever had scored closest to that number won the day. (Numbers were never reused)
Then, whoever on the most days won it all.

Originally Posted by futiles

Lucky number 2 was in the works when 360v collapsed. Toddy and I were discussing rules, including the "survival" aspect I had added in to the previous event. Basic premise was a unique random number between 1 and 500 (or 1000, part of the discussion) was picked each day. The gamer who scored the closest to that number without going over won 1 point (ties awarded points to each gamer who was tied). At the end of 30 days the gamer with the most points won a prize. If there was a tie at the end, and additional tiebreaker day was held. During the 30 days there would be special days where the range could double, or there would be hints as to the lucky number for the day (i.e. narrowing the range to something like 75-125, revealing the number early through a story problem, etc).

The survival pool was a prize for the most unlucky. It had different rules, as a last man standing type of thing. A gamer would be eliminated from the pool by scoring over the max in a day, or earning a point. 0 GS gain was a valid "strategy" to stay in the survival pool, as the random number always had a chance to be low enough to result in a point to everyone scoring 0 that day, Overtime added eliminations for 0 GS days, and the max was reduced to move things to a conclusion. It only took a few extra days to get a survival winner.

It's a fairly simple to track contest, as long as you have the ability to capture each contestant's exact gamerscore at a set time. We had Faf set up a page that pulled from the data 360v reported each day, so that the procedure was consistent and avoided the problems of manual tracking.

Toddy isn't very active here, but I could be available to provide input on some of the obstacles faced when putting these challenges together. One of the most important things is to have clearly defined rules set before starting anything, and then get input on those rules to figure out ways people might be confused or might break them. The worst thing you can do is change the rules halfway through the competition, or be inconsistent in the application of those rules.

The best advice I can give, simpler is better. The more complex (or longer) you try to make a competition, the less likely you are to succeed.

I really enjoyed the ABC challenge :P The hilarity that ensued on day 2 & 3 will never be forgotten.

I loved the buffet the most, but it's also probably the most difficult to run here even though there are genre categories such as http://www.gamertagnation.com/games/genre/6/

The best advice I can give, simpler is better. The more complex (or longer) you try to make a competition, the less likely you are to succeed.

Originally Posted by Hotdogmcgee

You complete me.

I couldn't agree more. My two favorites were both mostly due to their simplicity. When I sign up for a contest I do a once-over of the rules and can usually tell how much fun it will be as well as how much effort I plan to put into it. If it's one of those super complex dealios, I'll only sign up if the creator needs a warm body and I warn them up front that I plan on being useless

The two factors that kill contests for me are when they're too complex or the ones that require you to watch other players' scoring and stay up until 3am just in case you need to add additional points. The former simply lessens my interest and the latter makes me not sign up at all simply because my work schedule doesn't allow for such things. Those contests are more youth-driven and probably wouldn't work well here, considering the average age of the members and the fact that most have family and jobs. I'm pretty sure most of us only see 3am these days if we're working midnight shift. Or maybe if the baby wakes up in the middle of the night for the younger parents

I kinda liked the monthly genre contests over at 360v. Any contest would be awesome though and yea I agree the simpler the better though

another pro tip. Figure out your tracking methods ahead of time, and then test them out before even announcing the competition.