The future of the Mish Mash "Survivor queue"


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Post Post #75 (ISO) » Tue Feb 17, 2015 7:25 am

Post by CuddlyCaucasian »

Game of Thrones Survivor was run by two mods who had never run A game before, so I think it's sorta just a thing that's recommended right now. However, someone can play in many games and never actually make it far or get an understanding of how a full game plays out, so that's why it's sorta hard to base things just numerically.
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Post Post #76 (ISO) » Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:34 am

Post by xRECKONERx »

I didn't see this!

So, just to clarify: we had
35
player applications for Hyrule, and
20
spectator applications. And this was only in the short window we left signups open... I had even more people PM me after the fact stating that they wish they had known about it. Hyrule was a pretty special case where we went from signups open to closed within 48 hours, then had the game open within another 48 hours. I don't know what caused the response to be so overwhelming: I do know a lot of people who applied were first-timers, so it may have been my involvement with it since I have friends who signed up, or it may have been the theme being such a popular one, or it may have been the waiting list for NAH swarming on this game since it was going in before NAH.

Regardless, though, there were more people than we could possibly accomodate, and that's with our game being larger than most at 24 players. However, there's an issue with trying to run multiple anonymous games at once, and that is that either you'll have players signing up for both (and with the massive time commitment, I don't know that it's a great idea) or you'd have people be strictly separated into two different games. And if those games don't end at the same time, then we'd still have an issue of one group playing with one group while another group played with another group, and that ruins the point of the anonymity of Survivor.

What could work, however, is allowing a "massive" Survivor game (like 17+ players) to run at the same time as 1-2 smaller social games (The Mole usually runs 10-14 people; Big Brother is usually in that same range). I think you could just let these games sit in "queue" until they fill... meaning, they sit there until they sit there. That way, if there IS an overabundance of players for one of the tentpole Survivor games, the overflow can still get their fill of anonymous social mayhem by playing one of the smaller ones to hold them over until the next Survivor goes into signups.

There's also something worth saying about the fact that after ~1 month, the current Survivor game has usually dumped a significant portion of its playerlist. Perhaps we could, theoretically, have two Survivor games going at the same time, as long as the second one didn't get rolling until the current one had lost a good portion of its playerlist?
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Post Post #77 (ISO) » Fri Feb 20, 2015 10:22 am

Post by PrivateI »

The problem is, Big Brother and Mole games just haven't been as popular to run. I'm not saying that the demand is not there, but even most of the ideas I've heard for future games are for some large scale games. Crazy and my hybrid, for example, is certainly a "large" game. It's one thing to point out, correctly, that there could be a demand for smaller games of that nature, it's quite another to create a supply of them.

Hyrule certainly benefited from having the "friends" of what ended up being about six different mods sign up for the game. That, coupled with people wanting to move on relatively quickly from Doctor Who, created demand that I don't think will always be there. (By that I mean that Doctor Who created an environment where about fifteen players had nothing to do for a majority of the game due to the twist, they weren't even able to follow along readily.)

I do like the idea of staggering sign-ups somewhat, and potentially starting sign-ups for a game around the time jury began in another game. Especially right now, with the sheer number of games in the queue. It would be an interesting experiment, at the very least.
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Post Post #78 (ISO) » Fri Feb 20, 2015 10:32 am

Post by CuddlyCaucasian »

Survivor: Greece and the Kingdom Hearts Big Brother game did start at almost the exact same time, but I know there was some overlap in players for both of them.

And for something that kinda goes with this discussion, TBO and I have decided that we are going to be running an anonymous challenge-based game working off of his ideas for Pokemon Battle 2 this summer. However, it does have some social-based elements to it as well. Speaking of what we're talking about now, we plan on it starting up around halfway through whatever Survivor is going on before it, since it isn't really a Survivor. It'll end up playing out similarly to TBO's first Arena game, with duels determining the eliminations.
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Post Post #79 (ISO) » Fri Feb 20, 2015 10:34 am

Post by Cephrir »

We used to do that. I missed a lot of that phase I think, but it was still happening I believe when I showed up. It kinda worked, but it was also stressful as heck to be in two games at once. And people will try to do that to themselves. I don't expect Hyrule-level demand to continue, but I think signups for the next game will be telling. If we get something like a BB game in the queue, I'd be open to trying to start that partway through a Survivor game and see if it gets enough interest; as CC has ninja'd me to point out, KHBB ran through a Survivor without causing tons of problems.

So basically, staggering signups is what I'd want to do if/when we feel we have the demand for it. I don't think we do at present but it's likely to be a good model for side games that aren't as large.
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Post Post #80 (ISO) » Fri Feb 20, 2015 12:43 pm

Post by xRECKONERx »

I see it being similar to how the themed queues are run on the mafia side of things... games with 13 or less players have a queue, games with 14+ players have a queue.

I think setting a line in there somewhere will help... even if you 'stagger' the larger games, it's going to result in overlap and I think that's probably not wanted. And it'd be hard to make a rule of "only be present in one game at a time" because that might make anonymity harder.
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Post Post #81 (ISO) » Mon Mar 02, 2015 2:26 pm

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I guess the biggest question I have about this is how would someone "break in" to the modding group?

Say I (or anyone else) have an idea for a survivor game and that person has played in some survivor games.

Would they need to co-mod their own game and have someone else run their setup? Or could they get an experienced co mod to help them out? I would like some clarity around that.
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Post Post #82 (ISO) » Mon Mar 02, 2015 2:28 pm

Post by Cephrir »

Getting an experienced co-mod to help you out would probably be the best route. Co-mods in Survivor don't really work the way they do in mafia -- no one has to be the "primary mod," you can just collaborate. So it's not like control is being taken from anyone's hands.
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Post Post #83 (ISO) » Mon Mar 02, 2015 3:11 pm

Post by D3f3nd3r »

In post 81, MathBlade wrote:I guess the biggest question I have about this is how would someone "break in" to the modding group?

Say I (or anyone else) have an idea for a survivor game and that person has played in some survivor games.

Would they need to co-mod their own game and have someone else run their setup? Or could they get an experienced co mod to help them out? I would like some clarity around that.


Don't do what I did.

Well, I'd try talking to people who have expressed interest in modding and come along with them for the ride. Mod a game that someone else designed before you design one on your own (or help doing so). I tried designing the first one I modded, and I made several bad challenge decisions.
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Post Post #84 (ISO) » Tue Mar 03, 2015 4:58 am

Post by xRECKONERx »

Yeah, a new mod would need codesigners/co-mods.
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Post Post #85 (ISO) » Tue Mar 03, 2015 12:18 pm

Post by D3f3nd3r »

Also, keep in mind that the activity needed for a game changes as the game goes on. Early merge is critical, I'd say just wait until a week after the merge.
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