Eirias

+1 Actually, a lot of Nintendo's "epic orchestral" music is fantastic, although I have to say imo, #1 is FE and #2 is LoZ You familiar with "The Power Hungry Fool?" That's gotta be one of my favorites.

Hmm....I looked at my audio file and noticed that there is one track (usually it duplicates the track). I thought it was a software update, so if it notices only 1 track it duplicates it for both sides, but perhaps the update now makes me duplicate the track manually. I don't have headphones so I can't check, but if anyone else can verify this, it's an easy fix for future videos! Also, anyone else getting close to the solution? Our resident genius @RadicalX has already solved it, but the challenge is still open! Right now the plan is leave this challenge open until June 30th, but release Challenge #2 on June 23. The next one is quite a bit different!

Dang, I'm getting lots of rep from this Was not (necessarily ) my intention, but I certainly don't mind! Also I decided to upload the video in lower quality (720p) so it would upload faster (i.e. it's done now). If y'all want future videos to be in higher resolution, I'm willing to make the sacrifice Just let me know! Oh, and here's the video!

Just so y'all know I didn't forget again, I finished the video! Now it'll be about 12+ hours for it to upload. I'll link it when it's up. Would you guys like to see a transcript of the video here so you can get started ASAP? P.S. This first one is SUUUUPER hard so feel free to collaborate, but remember that you'll get more points if you're the only person to solve it, rather than if 4 people solve it on the same day, so I would recommend trying to spend a day or two solving it on your own, and when (or if ) you can't do it by yourself, try to collaborate with others. Good Luck!

Yep! I'll just make these (rn aiming for 2x a month, but might do more/less depending on participation) and I'll record who submits the correct answer and how quickly. I'm trying to make the puzzles pretty hard though, so the number of winners might be low. This first one, for instance, is devious. It's really cool, but super hard--I've never seen anyone (besides myself) solve it irl, although of course you guys will have access to the internet and at least a week Still figuring out how I want to keep score, but it will basically be cumulative for all the challenges, and I'm going to try to make them super diverse...so if I give y'all a math one and you don't have the math background to solve it, make an attempt (participation points!) but don't give up, because next time I might have you hunt something on the internet, or write submit "10 things to buy at Walmart to mess with the cashier" (which would be subjective and based on quality of answer, not time submitted) or something like that.

Sorry, I know, I'm terrible. What am I, 6 months late? I know the first challenge (it's a logic riddle). I'm working on making a video for it. Posting here so I can't go back and bail. Also making the post before I make the video, because videoediting is hard and I want to make sure there's still interest in this.

What do those stats mean?

This is not for a particular tournament. We're trying to establish a base set of rules for every tournament. This will also make tournament organization easier--for instance, if someone wants to host a "noob friendly" tournament, they might use the standard ruleset, but limit it to players below a certain ELO or establish certain extra rules.

@RadicalX and I were talking a little bit, and we thought it might be nice to present the community with a set of "recommended" tournament rulesets (like they recently did in Smash4, if you follow that). This will be things like legal maps, format (bo3, double elimination, pools, round robin, etc), and deck limitations (do you know your opponent's deck beforehand, are there bans, etc). We're going to have a series of discussions on PM (and maybe discord if we can all meet at once, but that might not be necessary) and decide upon a "standard" ruleset (or maybe more than one). We'll then present this to the community for further refining. If you want to get in on the PM discussions, just post here (and tag me so I get a notification, will you?) with a short summary of why you'll be beneficial to the discussion. Note that we're not only looking for strong PvP players--spectators are also an important part of any tournament. We're looking for people from diverse backgrounds who can give informed opinions, and actively participate in the discussion. The reason we're doing it in PM is to avoid being sidetracked by a random comment, but also to maintain accountability in actively keeping up with the discussion. And of course, the ruleset we end up presenting will be in no way the only tournament format that people can organize. The goal, however, is for most major tournaments to conform to these rulesets. It will be nice to have a generally unifying standard to prepare for. For instance, if most tournaments are played with only spectator-enabled maps, then perhaps a frost t1 becomes a better/worse option (depending on the number of map bans left). Or let's say you've got one deck at level 100 and you're trying to decide if it's worth going all the way to 120, or starting to upgrade a new deck. If the standard tournament ruleset means you register 1 deck and play the whole time with it, than it's probably better to sink your upgrades into 1 deck before moving on. Of course, preparing for tournaments is probably the smallest factor in determining what deck to play, but I do think a generally standardized tournament format is a good thing. So once again, if you'd like to join the discussion, post below with a short summary of why you'll be helpful!

Deathglider

Yeah. Tome decks are always U2, and they can be added to any other deck. After the time period (2 weeks) it's removed any you get another random set of cards.

As I see it: the pros of your system are the you can customize your deck, with the con of sometimes not being able to play at all. In my system: con of not being able to customize (which I think is a good thing, because it makes you get your own cards) with the pro of always being 100% competitive. I have no idea what you mean. Are you suggesting that players with tome decks will play those with normal decks? There's not a faster way to kill tome (well, if it wasn't dead anyway). I don't think tome was ever competitive, or ever CAN be competitive, but it's a nice game mode to mess around in, and you can use the tome decks to supplement your normal cards.

Well, no . . . this thread is about removing the upgrade system and why/why not to do so/alternate ideas. I'm pretty sure there was a thread about improving the PvP playerbase. As I recall we mostly decided that we needed to keep new players. That means a lower barrier to entry (which inspired this thread, iirc), a better tutorial system (there's probably a thread about that somewhere) and continue the interaction between good players and new players (which inspired my thread about renting cards).

Ah, I see where I wasn't clear. No the deck would be random. So everyone will have a different faction and a different iteration of that faction at any given time. There will be equal odds of getting every faction (although maybe it might be a good idea to tweak those ratios . . . maybe to have smaller odds of getting the popular 3 and bandits?). You might get the same faction twice in a row, you might go 3 months without ever getting pure frost, etc. Perhaps we can make it so you get a single free, locked deck, and if you don't like it you can pay bfp to randomly get another one? That might be a good compromise.

Again, nothing is being removed. This is just an additional option that new players can use if they don't have the cards to play their own deck. Also, I think the current leaning is that the cards will be slightly randomized, so people don't know what exactly is in the deck--just like normal. For instance, if I see a stonekin player, then I don't know if he's going to play t3 or not. Some composed decks will be the MaranV style of no t3, others will have varying t3. And again, if you don't like this deck, build your own. But it's at least an option for when you CAN"T build your own. Well, same as in the normal game. "Better" or "worse" are pretty subjective, because factions themselves are better and worse at certain things. Obviously every bandit deck will be worse than every lost souls deck (otherwise we're not trying to be 100% competitive with the lost souls deck) but bandits are still playable at a much higher level than a beginner will get to, before that beginner can afford to buy his own cards and upgrade them. I actually think these decks will broaden the metagame. BF has historically been dominated by lost souls, pure fire, and fire nature--those decks are both strong, and relatively easy to play. So most players play one of those 3 decks, and then they probably won't play something like pure nature, because it's a "waste" of bfp and upgrades that could be spent on a more "competitive" deck. BY giving players a random deck, each player now has something that's probably not one of those 3 decks, and thus broadens the metagame. Again, the composed decks will not all be the same (in my vision). For instance, every Pure Fire deck has very few options if it wants to be competitive. However, there are a few t1 and t3 cards that can be interchanged, and so there should be several versions of the pure fire deck--one with wrecker, one with scorched earth, etc. But I think it's impossible to make top 20 without maybe 15 of the "standard" pure fire cards--and if someone does it, then we can add his deck to the composed decks. Yes, it definitely lowers the barrier to PvP--at least as much as the ideas of removing upgrades/charges from cards. Battleforge is not RPS, and even the worst matchup (if I remember @RadicalX saying this) is pure fire vs pure frost, which is still only 40:60. Especially at lower ELO levels, deck levels hardly matter, as long as you have tools to deal with stuff. For instance, common noob-stomping strategies were to spam nomads and frost mages, because the P4F deck had no M units. I want to totally eliminate strategies such as that, because even if you just start for the first time, you'll have a complete and balanced t1 that at least has the tools to deal with those shenanigans. And assuming I get my way, at no point would I "know" what's in someone's composed deck any more than I would if they made one themselves. Obviously a pure fire player has fire dancers. Obviously stonekin has stone shards. But does the stonekin deck have crystal fiend, like MaranV, or does it have a larger t3? These are questions I would ask against composed decks and organic decks. In fact, I'm less likely to know what's in a particular opponent's composed deck, because he doesn't get to choose. For instance, anyone who's watched me play knows that I love my mortars. But maybe I want to play some pure fire, and can't afford the cards, but my random deck for the week is pure fire and it doesn't have mortar. I'll still play it because that's my only option to play pure fire (until I can afford my own cards), but my opponent would have no idea if mortar is in my deck. Hopefully I've clearly stated why I don't believe this system will infringe on either, and will actually help both of those. Well, the goal is NOT to have a static player base, but one which is constantly bringing in new players. Lowering the PvP entry barrier will go a long way toward keeping new players, imo. Not only do they get to compete with a fully competitive deck from the start, there's also the thrill of gambling (I wonder what deck I'll get this week!) and an easy way to coax players into trying multiple play styles before investing in the one they want. If we do get a static player base, players will still continue to use these locked decks because they can try out new factions. As opposed to just not having the cards, and trying to beat a lvl 120 deck with a lvl 40 deck with no essential rares or charges, and a t1 that gets stomped instantly by someone with U3? I exaggerate, because there's more to it than that, but I fear that new players might see it that way. The composed deck is just another option, which has no cost. I'm not sure you understand what I mean by "multiple iterations of the same faction." Otherwise I'm not sure why people keep bringing this up. If you'd like me to provide some examples, I'd be more than happy to do so (running low on time atm though). Yeah I read that. Still thinking about how I feel about it. I'm leaning toward that being a bad idea, because it makes diversifying much harder. Most players just have their single PvP deck, because they are best with that deck and PvE is a huge upgrade sink. I think anything that encourages players to play more diverse decks, especially non-meta ones, is a good thing. PvE requires a lot of different cards (if you want to speedrun at least) and I think an increasing upgrade system would really hurt that area of the game. Not a PvE player though, so I don't really know. In regard to your 60 card U3 "pool," I still feel like it's both too much and not enough at the same time. For instance, it's really impossible to play a deck at a competitive level without the proper t1. So if your 60 card pool is fire and frost, and you're missing scavenger and war eagle, then it's basically useless unless you already have those cards, in which case the pool is probably not helping you a ton anyway. But it's also really strong for PvE. But if you want to prove the viability of your rotation card pool, just run a simulation. Plug in all the viable PvP fire cards and randomly draw 30. See what percentage of the time you get eruption, scavenger, sunstrider, firesworn, and sunderer? IMO mortar is also needed, and thugs are pretty standard as well, but I think we can go with a 5 card absolute minimum. If you're missing any of those 5 cards (and we have the assumption that you don't have this deck already, so you can't replace them with your own cards), tell me what percentage of the time are you missing one of those? That's what percentage of the time the pool is useless for fully competitive play.