The Contest

jasonrohrer · 2014-01-22 11:59:25

Rumors have been floating around for months... I've finally launched this thing.

http://thecastledoctrine.net/stealRealMoneyContest.php

arakira · 2014-01-22 12:32:39

Exciting! I don't know if I should tell this to my girlfriend, she says I'm playing this game too much already...

What if a top player, right now, stops playing, stays home and presses a key every 5 minutes until the deadline of the contest? Wouldn't he be assured to keep his money and win a prize?

Last edited by arakira (2014-01-22 12:35:49)

nathan · 2014-01-22 13:48:58

Or you could just do a macro that pushes a key every 4:30 or something. It sounds a bit cheap IMO.

anable · 2014-01-22 13:57:48

Kinda figured a wipe would happen first to put everyone on the same playing field. Neat contest nonetheless.

joshwithguitar · 2014-01-22 18:06:18

My suggestion during the contest:
Increase chills, perhaps as high as 24 hours to limit multi-account abuse.
Similarly increase the time before you can re-rob an account that died after you last robbed it.

I can imagine massive bounty build-up until the last minute and then dying in the second house. These will limit it, but it will remain a large problem. All money should be visible and robbable throughout.

DethBringa · 2014-01-22 19:26:38

inactivity or some macro setup should be able to be tracked. People that are playing unfairly should have their funds wiped.

iceman · 2014-01-22 19:50:43

Oh man, this contest has really upped the activity in the game... I just made almost 10k in 2 hours...

Blip · 2014-01-22 19:53:06

Really, a server wipe is only fair. I haven't played for a while, and having to start with a fresh $2000 while others have hundreds of thousands of dollars is absolutely ridiculous.

DethBringa · 2014-01-22 21:06:58

server wipe is not needed. I went from 1k to 50k to $0 all in one day. The top players will be hunted by other top players. money will cycle.

Ape · 2014-01-23 02:13:34

I died and began playing from scratch after the contest had started. I already have spent over 100k$ just fortifying my house.

The contest is very exciting, but I'd like to see what kind of houses others have been building. I don't really need the loot, but I'd like to see the puzzles. I just can't risk it and go robbing since it's likely I would die and lose my house.

Last edited by Ape (2014-01-23 02:15:10)

iceman · 2014-01-23 09:39:12

Ape wrote:

I died and began playing from scratch after the contest had started. I already have spent over 100k$ just fortifying my house.
The contest is very exciting, but I'd like to see what kind of houses others have been building. I don't really need the loot, but I'd like to see the puzzles. I just can't risk it and go robbing since it's likely I would die and lose my house.

I just died and lost my house that was in the top 8 for a bit, and I have to say, the variety of houses being built is pretty amazing! (One good side of being able to explore all houses without risk... at the cost of $50 =P)

On restarting the server - I thought it would be necessary, but I started from scratch after the contest as well and did well almost instantly. There's just so much activity that nothing is stable right now.

Last edited by iceman (2014-01-23 09:40:45)

jasonrohrer · 2014-01-23 12:02:04

Yeah, I didn't want the contest to disrupt the existing game too much (there were already a bunch of new players before the contest started), so I decided against a full reset.

I also figured that there would be enough "churn" throughout the contest to negate the advantages of pre-contest money.

I am a bit worried about people camping in their houses at the end. I'll think about how to deal with that. I have to be careful not to penalize people for legitimate long-editing sessions!

arakira · 2014-01-23 12:08:51

What scares me the most, though, is the possible high bounties transfers between friends/double accounts one minute before the end of the contest.
It is crazy and fun to see so much activity in the neighbourhood right now!

Last edited by arakira (2014-01-23 12:09:53)

jasonrohrer · 2014-01-23 12:23:47

Okay... I've upped the chill timer to 24 hours for the contest.

I've also upped the "force ignore" timer. If you robbed someone, and then they die, you can't see their new houses for 24 hours now. That prevents you from farming a second account for bounties by robbing them over and over again.

The timers were 1 hour before when the population was small, but now with 90 houses to rob, it's not an issue.

Ape · 2014-01-23 13:33:01

I think you should keep those timers long and even raise them in the future as long as there are enough players and houses to rob.

Blip · 2014-01-23 15:41:52

I haven't had a problem with high timers so far; they seem pretty good when the population is high. It's really nice to see a long house list now; I'm so glad the game has been thriving! I would like to note, though, that alt accounts are now even more powerful, allowing one (or more!) alt account to suicidally scout, and take the massive chill penalty, and the main account to rob successfully after those suicidal scouting trips, something nobody can afford to do normally anymore.

nathan · 2014-01-23 16:04:02

In actuality, the game hasn't been this packed since before the contest had been announced. Of course, it's fun now to take peoples' alt accounts when they aren't fast enough, and improve my house. I got 2 days' worth of improvement before the contest in a few hours.

joshwithguitar · 2014-01-23 16:04:14

I don't think the last minute dump will be completely fixed. What if someone uses there account which already has a large bounty on it, continues to rob easy houses relentlessly even if they have no money murdering even woman an child in sight, especially paying focus to free $2000 houses. Meanwhile a second account is turting and making as much money as it can. Minutes before the game end, account 1 dies in account 2's house converting all money into tools. With the current play rate building up a huge bounty from other houses shouldn't be hard.

arakira · 2014-01-23 16:26:24

Yes Josh, that's what I was thinking, just a single fake suicide of account 1 into account 2 will be a huge bounty. Every 1 or 2 minutes, there is an empty new house in which you can club the whole family without taking any risk. I imagine someone could build a bounty of at least 1 million $ in a few hours.

DethBringa · 2014-01-23 22:24:30

I think the 24hrs chill timer is a bit long. 1hr was definitely too short as you could re-attempt a house and map it while the person is asleep. 24hrs tho seems a bit too long as people cant re-enter the house again. I think 4hrs would be good.
Just a thought.

arakira · 2014-01-24 03:31:00

I really like 24h, and I even think it is a minimum (especially with the contest running, it limits double account/friend suicide scouting). There are about one hundred houses around, so way enough houses to visit in a 24h window. If you play 24h a day, that makes a house to rob every 15 minutes!

Short chills penalizes houses with smart/uncommon traps. If you die in a smart trap, you are most probably going to understand it, and then you can come back just 1h or 4h later to break through it? It is not fair. Also, many traps rely on timing. Once you die, you can come back and walk the exact same path (minus your last lethal move), and even if you don't understand how the trap works, you'll know that after walking 8 steps to the right and 3 steps down, you just have to cut that electric floor to continue scouting (because you died on the 4th step down in the previous life). And you can be sure that this will work, because you can check in the house list window if the owner came to modify his design (just check that the counters of robbers hasn't been reset).

So, this brings something important to me. Ideally, if you die in a house, you should not have any knowledge about what's inside in your next life. Therefore, I think that after dying in a house, you should be able to re-enter in it ONLY IF the owner has made some change inside. You don't know what he changed, so you'll probably have to start from scratch if you want to break in.

Last edited by arakira (2014-01-24 03:38:24)

radnetro · 2014-01-24 04:25:06

the problem in here is multi-account. people will just buy the game twice. Using the other as a tester, Jason must check an account who just keeps robbing and dying without protecting and building his home.

It is more better if the name of the house owner is not visible. In this way people who keeps robbing the same house

Last edited by radnetro (2014-01-24 04:40:33)

Zukas · 2014-01-24 11:58:26

Though, I'm confused about one thing. It says that it will count HOUSE WORTH right? So I can have 100$ Spare bucks but built it around 20000$ and it will count in costs of all I have, right?

DethBringa · 2014-01-24 14:08:58

Wow Arakira that would be perfect! Locking a house for 24hrs unless a change is made. That would be sweet. I found 1hr was just to quick as I would go to bed and find repeat scouts/deaths and then a robbery cleaning me out before I got up in the morning. However the 24hr chills prevents people from re-entering my house and building up my cash through bounties... well doesn't prevent it but slows it down to a snails pace.

radnetro · 2014-01-24 14:42:52

what happen if we quit the application? can we still retain our house?

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The Contest

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