Best Of

Maybe there could even be like five contest windows and one of the five orrery bonuses is assigned to each one (randomly). You win that period, you get that specific bonus.

I do think this might be interesting, and make it so you don't have to worry about winning every single round and then also winning the last round to secure all the bonuses, while also incentivizing others to still try to fight when one city is ahead. Since there's 9 different rounds, each of them could give you individual rewards, e.g.

1: +5% crit
2: Increased gold drops
3: Increased bal/eq vs denizens
4: +3% increased dodge/divert
5: +5% extra sip
6: +10% damage vs denizens
7: +10% max hp and mana
8: +10% audit
9: +1 all stats

Optimally, the rewards would be randomized, so whenever a new round starts, it announces what rewards it'll give that round, so there's still an equal chance for everyone to get whatever. If you win a round you get the reward for that round, independent of anything else. Alternatively, it could just be that you get n randomized rewards at the end according to how many rounds your org won.

I am starting this thread to discuss the Orrery because it's been a pattern for a while that most people do not really bother contesting it. It is, to me, not a very fun competition as is and could use changes. But I wanted to open it up to everyone to discuss!

TO SUMMARIZE:

Scattering is a contest that happens for three RL days for a four-hour block of time every eight hours. That is, if it starts at 7:00 p.m. in whatever timezone you're in, it'll proceed as follows:

Day 1

7-10 p.m.: contest for attunement point #1
3-6 a.m.: contest for attunement point #2
11 a.m.-2 p.m.: contest for attunement point #3

Day 2

7-10 p.m.: contest for attunement point #4
3-6 a.m.: contest for attunement point #5
11 a.m.-2 p.m.: contest for attunement point #6

Day 3

7-10 p.m.: contest for attunement point #7
3-6 a.m.: contest for attunement point #8
7-10 a.m.: contest for attunement point #9

Problems:

• Only one city can have attunement points at a time. If you gain one, and then another city gains one, that city's "gaining" of a point simply removes your city's point and puts it all back at zero. To end in a place where you win any bonus at all, you basically need to score at least five total attunement points. Otherwise, the other point windows will always subtract you back to zero.
  

• Five attunement points requires approximately 15 to 20 hours of time commitment and those 15 to 20 hours generally cannot be put in within one "ordinary" playtime window for one person. For example, I tend to play only from 5:00 p.m. to midnight, at most, on weekdays. But as set out in the example above, only three windows would realistically ever fall within that timeframe and you need to win five. So, currently, it requires cross-timezone commitment or people who can play at all times of the day to be able to win it.
  

The orrery bonuses are neat and it'd be nice to be able to compete for them, but I suspect the time commitment is not only too high for me but for most people since most cities do not seem to compete in it at all, ever.

Solutions:

During classleads, I proposed that rather than attunement points working as is where a point gained by one city eliminates points gained by another city, each attunement point earned by any city should just count towards bonuses. So, I compete in a 7-10 pm window during my playtime and we manage to win an attunement point. Spinesreach now gets level 1 bonus. And so on. This was rejected because it'd make the bonuses too readily available, essentially.

But I'm starting this thread because I'm curious what others' thoughts are on this. It seems like when there is a competition that only one city will ever compete in due to timezone issues, it's not ideal. To me, the biggest problem, by far, is that if you can only commit, say, 16 hours to it, you may as well not even bother. Winning even up to four attunement points will not do you any good, ultimately.

I think there needs to be some reward for winning less than five attunement points out of nine, personally. The time commitment is already significant just to win one attunement point.

I've also thought about the possibility that we still have these different contest windows but the orrery attunement is time-of-day based. So, like, X city wins during all the windows at 3 a.m. my time and their reward is the orrery bonuses affect them from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. for the IC half year or whatever that the bonuses last. A different city might get the bonuses from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. The bonuses would reflect the contest results from that time period each contest day only.

Alternatively, I think the orrery contest periods could rotate in a way that they all sometimes fall in one timezone's main playtime and all sometimes fall in another, rather than the current situation where you have to compete in multiple "timezones" every single orrery no matter what or you will never win anything. But anyway, discuss!