I'm so confused by this. You word the link this way, giving the impression that most of your runs were similar to the image enclosed, so when I see a pic of a(n effective) dual Ral drop I think "wow, Cyrax must've really enjoyed the runs then!" but then you named the image "No. Just no."
Granted, different opinions for different people, but since Ral is one of the most useful finds from Travincal it's one of the things I am actively glad to see when doing those runs, and if my RFO experience mostly felt like getting 2 Rals per run, then I'd have to conclude I had an absolutely amazing event. I mean
this was probably my third favorite moment from the last RFO, behind the Cham(my first of them) and the second Ber (Infinity).
On the one hand I am talking about Rals because I'm addicted to them and they're one of my favorite items in the game, but on the other hand what I'm actually talking about are the small rewards we let ourselves have in a large endeavor to stave off stress and frustration. Running hard for 20 hours looking for just high runes and trying to run as efficiently as possible gets to you over time, especially if you're trying for more than one set, and it's important to give your brain a reason to let go of the stress and even fight back with a little happiness along the way. I can't guarantee a Lo+ rune, but Rals drop frequently enough that I know I'll see a decent amount while still being infrequent enough to be worth noticing and are useful enough to qualify as a good find, so they're my motivator of choice for basically any D2 shindig. The exact reason may differ - for Gripphon this RFO it was facets, for nulio it was pgems, etc. - but just running to win is pretty hopeless overall, especially if you consider that even the mammoth, insane, incredible amount of lucksacking that went into Gripphon's third set could've been put to shame by a single (albeit ridiculously unlikely) qualifier from 1.07, and so I think it helps everyone to have smaller goals to help them stay motivated and excited along the way.
So that started off as me just being like "hey guys I like Rals" in sort of a jokey way, but I decided to turn it into a sort of runner's theory type thing just in case that's helpful to somebody going forward. Like, in D2 and basically anything it pretty much sucks to look at the goal and nothing else, it helps to set up little rewards along the way for yourself. And it's not like anything in D2 is actually important, but some people did mention in their PMs that they stopped running because they got bored and I wanted to take a minute to go over some of the ways those of us who do a lot of runs avoid getting bored. That's not to say that they weren't doing that and just getting bored because they didn't like it (I don't think there's a technique in the world that would keep me from getting bored with LK runs, for instance) but I figured I'd say just a thing or two in the way of maybe helping somebody just in case, since I got on that particular train of thought.
@Cyrax: hopefully none of that comes across as having a go at you about anything, was just making a bit of a joke in your direction and then I sort of meandered off on a tangent (as I'm wont to do.)
@BBS: People do often compare me to a sun baby, and by "often" I mean "never," but I assume that's just because they're afraid it might be taken as an insult. ;p
@Thyiad: I think we should just institute a standing "mini-RFO" policy for slow work days. Highest rune wins.
As for myself: being the supervisor was cool and all, but I sort of wish I would have ran. Of course I would've been crushed under foot by the CroDuo, but without knowing about their insane exploits it would've been fine and given the way things turned out it would've been cool to have personal results to compare between an "unlucky" RFO (which even at the time the last RFO seemed like) and a "lucky" one. It's sort of strange, but good luck and bad luck (or statistical outliers, to give them a less esoteric name) do have a tendency to clump together and comparisons are cool.
Speaking of numbers, I'll spout off a little more about them, in the form of comparing the ones from this RFO to the last one, just because they've been on my mind for awhile now (jeeze, I can't imagine why I've had numbers on the brain recently...).
Code:
Number of competitors with qualifiers (2014): 16
Number of competitors with qualifiers (2015): 26
Total number of runes (2014): 103
Total number of runes (2015): 238
Percentage of scores over 100 in 2014 RFO: 18.75
Percentage of scores over 100 in this RFO: 30.77 (34.62 if you count Cyrax's 99 as close enough.)
Median score (2014): 67.05
Median score (2015): 78.4
Mean score (2014): 62.41
Mean score (2015): 90.20
Most common qualifier, as a percentage of total qualifiers (2014): Mal, 26.21
Most common qualifier, as a percentage of total qualifiers (2015): Um, 19.75
Least common qualifier, as a percentage of total qualifiers (2014): Ber/Sur/Cham, 2.91
Least common qualifier, as a percentage of total qualifiers (2015): Ber, 2.52
After I started to get results in I got somewhat curious and did a little thought experiment about what sort of final standings I might expect in so I went back to the previous RFO and dug around for the amount of time people ran and all that jazz. I ended up guesstimating 15 hours per entrant for that event which I then plotted forward by getting a number of hours per drop for each rune from the 2014 results and ended up with this horribly depressing expectation for this RFO:
Code:
4.3 Chams
8.7Jahs
4.3Bers
4.3Surs
5.8Los
5.8Ohms
20.2Vex
7.2Guls
23.1Ists
39Mals
26Ums
which does outstrip our actual findings in both Mals and Ists but, I think we can all agree, does seem much less exciting than where we ended up, though, to be fair, the average hours per entrant for this event was much closer to 18 than 15 (~470 total hours as opposed to ~390, which still only adds most of a Cham/Sur/Ber, ~1.5 Jahs, etc. based on the numbers I was using).
And, lastly, a heartwarmingly depressing little bit of statistics:
Gripphon: 166.9 current score at half point. 320 incoming.
maareek: even with 320 that averages out to 166.66 for all the results from both rfos ;p
Gripphon: 320 wont happen ofc
200+ might
maareek: yeah, it's not even certain 200+ is more unlikely than 65 if your ev is 165
Actual average for all of his RFO results? 161.18. Basically right in line with the expected value at his run times. I hinted at this post I made before the RFO, at the time meant as trolling, with an excerpt in the results, but I'll include the bulk of the post now in earnest admiration of his abilities.
Grip winning this and having both the MFO and RFO title would mean we could just create a single event called the Griplympics in which Grip runs targets chosen at random with characters chosen at random and would still show he could do so more efficiently than anybody else could run any other target with any other class. I, for one, would welcome our new Croatian overlord.
One post script, in the way of a little reward for sticking with me so long.
Congrats Grip. No surprise of course!
Fabian: I'm sure Grip will post a Cham Cham Jah Ber Ber Sur Sur Sur Sur Sur Sur Lo result
Psychicbian (almost) confirmed.
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