Idea for MF Competition

[nulio]

After hearing some old MFO players saying that they are not up to play so much in such a short time I had an idea for a tournament and I want to have your feedback.

The Name:
- MF Journeys

The format:
- 5x 20h, each done in one month

The targets:
- A85 and Pindle+ all in same category (any combination of targets and characters, limit is 20h max per Journey)

The scoring:
- Top 5 like MFO

The ranking system:
- Each journey has one (final) update and rankings - the journey of each player for that one
- In the end of each journey we have a rank leaded by the best journey so far - all journeys from each player are ranked
- In the end of each journey we update the MF Championship rank - each player has a total score result of all their journeys

Winners:
- 5 winners, one from each journey
- 1 winner of best journey
- 1 champion (best total)

Prizes:
- Same as MFO, the champion can claim up to 4 items from any player, 2nd place up to 3 items from any player below him/her, 3rd place up to 2 items from any player below him/her. Max of 2 items taken per person.
- BUT also 4th place can claim up to 1 item from any player player below him.
- Winning any journey reduces max items taken to that player to 1 (I think it shouldn't be cumulative)
- Winner of best journey is immune

Details:
- Starting in November 1st?
- Would end in March 31st
- Results of each journey must be sent until the end of the first day of the next month
- Posting results and update must be done until the end of the fifth day
- Next Journey starts on the 6th and ends in the last day of the month
- Local time for each player (but with at least 23 days to do 20h I guess we don't need such details)
- The 20h per month should be counted for time in D2 only. Mulling doesn't count. Updating excel doesn't count.
- I'd share a google excel with every player so I could take the final results as soon as I'd get the okay from that player. For those who don't like google, or can't make it work offline and needs to be offline, I can send a MS excel file instead, that needs to be sent back to me in the end of each Journey

Updates details:
- If I manage to get a new and nicer excel, in addition to ranking every qualifier found and showing top5 and score, it could show number of qualifiers, number of each qualifier. This for every Journey, for Journey Rank and Championship Rank

Comments:
- I tried to designed it in a way that players don't get discouraged if the first Journeys don't go well. They'd have lots of time to look for better maps, change characters, get gear upgrades, practice, etc. And continuing and aiming for great Journeys ahead can save found items (even if looting doesn't happen much these days) and brand them as winners anyway.
- Maybe the Journey winner prize should be saving one item (and cumulative) instead of reducing the max items that can be claimed from him/her?
- This tournament would bring us lots of players doing 100h
- Since it give all participants time, they don't need to do huge efforts in such a short time and when RL steals a couple of weeks, they still have a chance to participate
- Maybe it should start in October instead, so then we can have a MFO in March?
- If it goes well we could have 5 months of Journeys followed by MFO twice per year!

 

[maxicek]

I think looting should be MFO only.

Did you consider enforcing different areas like the Magic Find League?

Pits
ATs
CS without Diablo
WSK
Pindle

For example? For me this reads like "run the pits permanently."

 

[XyleneCyanol1]

+1 with maxicek, I will be more comfortable when there is no looting.

Also, is it only one batch allowed per month? Say one player finished 20h in 10 days, can s/he start a new 20h in the same month and only submit the best batch?

 

[nulio]

The idea was a tournament where the participants would keep getting better and better by sticking to the same targets if they wanted. And having something MFO-like made possible for those who can't or don't want to run like crazy in 10 days.

If it'd become something more like MF League, then we have MF League

I know the MFO might be enough for some in the department of MFO-like stuff, but for others could be a chance of doing a MFO effort (diluted in time) and having in the end a MFO result.

If there's enough interest for both competitions, this one and MF League, they can co-exist depending on the time frame of the other competition.


About looting, it'd be for motivation, but since these days people care less and less for that, it can go away.

About the possibility of making several Journeys in one month and submitting the best one, I feel it would break the spirit of not penalizing the ones that can't join a tournament with hopes of winning because they don't have enough time.


This idea was just about that, giving a chance to all players to join and have the same chance of winning. And participating in a MFO like format (but without the intensity of being compressed in 10 days). MF League in my opinion, having so many different targets doesn't really amount to any great and amazing result, just several nice ones together.

I'd love to see several old timers joining (that don't join MFO because they can't or don't want to spend so much D2 time in 10 days and/or because they feel they can't compete for the first place anymore and/or it's just on a week they can't play) and new ones also (feeling that is a competition that can make them better and in a format where they can aim for the big prize).

 

[TreeOfSmoke]

This or something similar sounds fun. My pindlezerker should be vaguely functional by then.

I agree with maxicek and xylene about looting. It's rather demotivating for the players who have no chance of winning and nobody seems to be doing it anyway.

 

[pharphis]

Great enough idea that I'm almost even considering participating. I have at least 20 hours of youtube content to consume and D2 can help me do that every month

Don't care about looting but never really have. Is 100 hours enough to go from 94 to 97 in AT? I can't really remember anything about it.

 

[Thyiad1]

I like the idea, I definitely need some incentive to get Atil that final push. And I'd like to be able to gear up every single character I have, so I'm not swapping gear. And I'm sure my rune drops are broken. (Except the Ohm I got in the MFO just gone.)

I'm not sure about 100 hours of Pindle and AT though. I appreciate the difficulty of scoring if you have everyone running every different area, but I'm not sure I could stomach 100 hours of just that. During the MFO, I'd do AT/Pits and then hit Pindle.

Fantastic idea to make it over a month, so even my family shouldn't be able to totally screw it up (now watch them).

Look forward to seeing how the discussion develops.

 

[Grape1]

I will most likely participate no matter what the final form would be.

I'm not against adding Baal(exp)/Runes(Travi) rounds. If it's only alvl 85, that's 100% fine too, but at least I will probably chance target/runner every once in a while.

Vote for no looting from here as well. Maybe a voluntary price pool of for example pgms? Those who add the certain amount can win it, rest are there for the glory, fun and their own findings. Pgms could be sent every round even.

 

[LiquidClear]

-No looting: most people don't do it and there are lots of self-found players who don't really want to trade anyways. You could have a voluntary pool on the side (as Grape says above) and even 1 v 1 side bets if players want. Lo rune to whoever wins, etc.

-To add a touch of variety while still staying true to the supposed mission of improving run times, maps, strategy, etc., I'd suggest doing a 5 month cycle like this: A85, Pindle, A85, Trav, A85. That way you're not doing 2 months of the same consecutively. I feel it's best not to force the player to do either Pit or AT, leave the choice up to them. Baal/EXP category sounds nice, but how would we do it? With different character builds, levels, etc., it doesn't seem conducive to this kind of competition. I put Pindle and Trav because they seem to be the most popular targets other than A85. (Could even just do a strictly rune finding month, with Trav + Cows + whatever else people run to get runes... I just want to see that Zod drop )

-I'd say just let the runner have the entire month to do the running, even if they start before results are posted. There's no need to be strict here, if we want people to play maximum flexibility should be our goal. I'd suggest starting in October (assuming people aren't burnt out from MFO) just to get us closer to the usual Summer/Winter MFO schedule. Whatever it is, I'm sure I'll end up playing as well, although this will force me to use the run timer and stress out over every little misclick.

 

[Grisu]

Great enough idea that I'm almost even considering participating. I have at least 20 hours of youtube content to consume and D2 can help me do that every month

Don't care about looting but never really have. Is 100 hours enough to go from 94 to 97 in AT? I can't really remember anything about it.

Lol - you really want to restart your 75k AT runs quest?

According to my calculations, at /p7 you need 416 runs to reach lv 95, 791 to reach lv 96, and 1697 for lv 97, so a total of 2905 runs which equals to roughly 48 hours if you need 1 minute per run. (You managed around 50 seconds the last time your ran AT, but it was at /p3 IIRC. So yeah, it is doable

 

[Grape1]

I like Liquid's suggestion that no 2 months of same target, but emphasis still on the alvl 85.

Maybe you should use some online stop watch or something if seeing run times gets on your nerves I can totally understand that.

@Grisu let's not be so harsh! maybe pharphis can keep counting from where last time stopped. I bet there's plenty left

 

[pharphis]

Definitely not doing 75k but I never did try fire drood which is something I wanted to try (no higher than p3, either)

If you're going by my 75k AT posts I definitely went faster at p3 with later chars but not much faster. p1 at ~41 sec is about all I can remember atm with FoHer

edit: BTW I think I totaled about 20k AT runs. +/- 1k

 

[Excalibur]

It's so nice to see that you guys are trying to bring some new and I would love to join a MF competition although I would prefer a much shorter in duration competition something like a tournament that would last maximum 3 days or so.

Reading a bit the details and rules this would be very time consuming for me as I barely have time to play. I definetely don't want to spend so many hours on D2.

 

[TheNix]

To get into the MFL you had to pay an entrance fee of 50 pgems (or something like that), the gems were later payed out to the divisional winners and the final winner. Perhaps as well as the pgems each entrant could throw a TC87 Set/Unique into a pot that will be the final prize. No disincentives of looting if the entrant gets to choose the opening bid.

 

[Grape1]

It's so nice to see that you guys are trying to bring some new and I would love to join a MF competition although I would prefer a much shorter in duration competition something like a tournament that would last maximum 3 days or so.

Reading a bit the details and rules this would be very time consuming for me as I barely have time to play. I definetely don't want to spend so many hours on D2.

Well that's why it is spread out over so long time: many don't have much time to play per day, but little playing now and then adds up. One doesn't necessarily have to run whole 20 hours in one month. Run 10 hours instead and participate with results from that. As simple as that. 10 hours of playing in one month is not that much, I think

To get into the MFL you had to pay an entrance fee of 50 pgems (or something like that), the gems were later payed out to the divisional winners and the final winner. Perhaps as well as the pgems each entrant could throw a TC87 Set/Unique into a pot that will be the final prize. No disincentives of looting if the entrant gets to choose the opening bid.

Good idea. Even as a self found player, I could probably consider to donate some item(s) for the price pool. Wouldn't claim anything back ofc, even if winning every round

 

[nulio]

Hmm, introducing anything outside A85 areas and Pindle+ would make it impossible to compare fairly each Journey. For me the main selling point is that every part of the tourney can be ranked together.

People can always run Pits, Pindle, AT, Pindle, Pits if they want to change characters and/or targets. But if someone just wants to try to get the best result possible they can stick only to the target they are most efficient in.

Side question: Has anybody recently tried to roll a map where Eyeback the Unleashed and/or Sharptooth Slayer spawn near Eldritch the Rectifier and run Shenk + Eldritch + Eyeback/Sharptooth + Pindle in the same run?

And since this tournament would be spread so much over time and doesn't want to monopolize all MF/RF tournaments, I hope there's a MFL or RFO around the same time,

 

[maxicek]

It would be nice to plan out a years worth of competitions at a frequency of about one per month.

2x MFO
1 or 2x RFO
5x This
3/4 slots for something else.

Each competition winnable individually, but also possible to win glory for most points in total.

I also like the PGs idea. Mainly my goal these days is to level and find gear for PvP characters, not optimum for MF, but it can work. Probably why I am still grail-4 after 10 years.

Almost certainly I will be in.

 

[Cyrax1]

Not sure if i'd be participating, but let's throw in another idea for those people that are interested:

How about pits, AT, pindle and then repeat the 3 (for a 6 month total duration). That way you have fairly comparable areas, it's still MF related areas, people don't have to run same area over and over again, since you're running all areas twice there's still room for optimizing running the area in the second half of the competition and most people will already have toons to run one or even all areas at leas semi-decent.

 

[nulio]

But why forcing people to play Pits or At or Pindle if everybody could chose any combination from any A85 area plus Pindle+?

 

[Cyrax1]

Because certain areas are proven to have an advantage thus already forcing anyone running seriously to run that one area? Or to quote maxicek from one of the first posts:

For me this reads like "run the pits permanently."