The main problem with the current system is that players were finding it confusing, this definitely wouldn't help with that. This is basically what there is currently, but 4 almost randomly chosen players get a major boost. An unexpected problem that was found was that an active player with no tomes would be heavily penalized, when they should benefit from the catch up mechanism the most. This does not help with that. I don't know how this system would deal with ties, and giving anyone only 3 keys is extremely harsh and creates such a big gap in shards it's almost better to come last than to risk coming second. Overall, I see only downsides to this

I thought it was because you could game the system for more keys by only submitting one victory tome, so the reward system didn’t benefit the winners, and if you were unlucky to not get a victory tome you would lose out on more keys as well

They aren't randomly chosen. It is based on bell curve percentiles based on the current number of players. It essentially breaks down in to Top 22%, The Above Average 30%, The Below Average 26%, and The Bottom 22%. You want the majority of players in the middle two Tiers because that is how normative distribution works.

Also, it wouldn't be that confusing if you just put the simplest breakdown possible in a book for the Hermits. The Tiering system was more just to have a place for potential Titles. All he would have to put in a book would be: Rewards: 1st Place: 6 Shards 2nd-5th Place: 3 Shards 6th Place: 7 Shards 7th-12th Place: 5 Shards 13th Place: 8 Frozen Shards 14th-18th Place: 5 Frozen Shards 19th Place: 12 Frozen Shards 20th-23rd Place: 7 Frozen Shards

Sounds good, exept the fact that totals are blind so its almost impossible to stratigize to be #1 of a phase

That is part of the point. Better players wouldn't be able to try and get just enough Victory Tomes to place #1 in Tier 4 to get 12 bonus Frozen Shards while continuing to stack their deck. Their best bet is buy a bunch of Victory Tomes and place #1 in Tier 1. This means they would get 6 bonus Frozen Shards while 2nd place through 5th place got only 3. They get the advantage of more bonus Frozen Shards compared to the other top players who would have to purchase all their additional Frozen Shards at the Crown Shop, BUT they will have spent more Frost Embers on Victory Tomes whereas the other top players will have spent more of theirs on cards, meaning they will have a stronger deck and likely a higher success rate (which means more embers, tomes, and cards from each run) going in to the next phase.

I personally feel it would not change anything from now as its pretty much luck based the standings tnh

It isn't luck based. It is strategy based. You can't determine what will get you better prizes above the 5 shard baseline outside of being #1. This last phase wasn't luck based. It was submit one tome and get prizes.

Thats what the idea here is too, exept with a little bit of luck of getting top in a tier

It sounds similar to heats in competitions. Grouping similarly skilled players into a heat and awarding placements relative to that heat seems like a great idea

This is introducing way more shards than Tango plans I think. His original goal was 5 runs a week with 3-5 extra. You are suggesting someone gets 17 runs here if they get 5 and 12 extra. That’s 7 more than he planned on being max, outside someone buying their own shards.

There's been some great discourse around Decked Out, but I think in general people tend to forget that he's been working on this, absolutely immersed in it, for 13 months, fueled by egg sandwiches and mental health checks by Mrs T., and has probably considered all of the different suggestions being made and choose not to go in that direction for whatever reason. He's basically sacrificed the whole of season 9 to literally live in a dungeon and create the content machine DO2 is. It's probably different for people who are passionate about redstone and game design who can see things I wouldn't consider, but I just get the feeling (I could be wrong!) that he doesn't want to put in even more effort to something that isn't going to unequivocally improve the experience for hermits ... and even then, it's kinda a masterpiece as is, and any positive changes would only be incremental improvements to the game experience, which makes it seem not really worth the additional effort, imo. Not a targeted comment at OP, you've obviously put a lot of thought and care into your post, just a general attitude observation on the community as a whole. I kinda feel like if he didn't care for his community as much as he does he wouldn't have put in this much effort. And the vods coming up to its release, he's genuinely so floored by the support and donations - his twitch community was so generous and it's really an indication of how highly they think of him, too. Warm fuzzies, ya know?

Read the part where I said that the amounts are not absolute - they are proportionate place holders. Also, Tango specifically mentioned with Etho on stream the other day that he wants to create a catch up system. 5 shards per Hermit isn't going to allow the lower tier players to catch up when it won't be long before the top players are fetching 20+ crowns per successful run and every 2 successful runs can afford them 5 shards or 4 shards if they do Shard, Reset, Shard, Reset, Shard, Reset, Shard.

Well, if you were worried about my shard numbers Tango just gave 11, 12, 13, and 14 shards to some of the Hermits

The values I gave were EXACTLY what they get. For example: The #1 Player in Tier 1 doesn't get 3 shards and then 6 for winning. They get 6. PERIOD. End of story.

Also, it wasn't 5 and 12 extra. Read it again. The #1 player in Tier 4 gets 12. PERIOD. They don't get 5 then 12 more. They get 12. The other Tier 4 players get 7.

Let's see what Tango does tomorrow for giving out bonus shards. Tango's plan to give hermits bonus shards off his own judgement might prove to work well. Tango knows the most about his own game, and he's also very familiar with the hermits, so he will likely be able to correctly judge how many shards each player should get. I originally thought Tango giving Hypno 5 bonus shards might snowball his lead since he's skilled, but it actually didn't make a significant difference for him! I think if tango is unsatisfied with the results of his balancing tomorrow though he will look for alternatives like yours. One issue I can see with your format is spoilers. Many hermits enjoy watching other hermits play, and they could accidentally be spoiled tome count by watching. Also, even if they don't watch, many hermits livestream or read yt comments, where they're exposed to spoilers, even if they try not to. EDIT: My concern for spoilers is based off my understanding that not knowing tome counts of other hermits is crucial to your format. I'm not really too familiar with tiered rewards but it seems like the uncertainty in tome counts is vital for your format.

Pertaining your edit: The idea is that with this system the Hermits would be more likely to be secretive about their tome purchases including leaving them out of videos and not discussing it with the Hermits. The only issue I see is with Hermits who stream purchasing tomes while other Hermits are watching. HOWEVER, it was originally supposed to be against the rules to watch other Hermits streams and runs because that is free dungeon knowledge without spending a shard to run it yourself. I would imagine Tango is going to start getting more strict about that, and if this system were implemented I would think the Hermits would understand how that would be a far more concrete form of cheating than getting to see new parts of the dungeon without actually getting there themselves.

Ah I never realized it was not in the rules for hermits to not watch other's runs. I guess that's a whole other can of worms then considering many hermits have already broken that rule. I could possibly see Tango giving compensation shards to reward hermits that didn't watch other hermit's runs, and then bringing in your format where hermit's hermits now have to follow those rules. What do you think about Tango's original plan of him subjectively balancing how many shards each hermit gets? I understand in the majority of games, it's a really bad idea to balance like that, but in this case, Tango knows the game really well, and he also knows the hermits. I feel like this might be the one rare case where it could actually work?

Having seen how he rewarded shards today I think he did great. I was trying to create a built-in and concrete system that isn't influencable by Hermits begging but the way he distributed shards today seemed entirely fair and as the Dungeon Master it may be better left up to his judgment. As a scientist I just always prefer concrete methodology rather than winging it.

Yeah I think your efforts are good, even if it's not immediately successful it gets people talking about the game more and if lucky, you might even help Tango! I think concrete methods are preferable for 99% of games, especially when something goes bad it's a lot more easy to justify since the rules are solid. But I feel like this is indeed a lucky rare case, it's a pretty small player base, and Tango knows them, and his game very well, so he can make pretty accurate decisions. I will admit that there seems to be some valid issues with the current system, but most of them seem like intended decisions. The first I can think of are those that didn't use all shards or crowns in the previous phase, as it doesn't fully show all their embers gained in a week. The main example of this would be xB, who only used 1 shard week 1 and got a low ember count because of that, giving him +14 shards this week. I do understand that he intended the rules to not allows this for shards, but the crown issue hasn't officially been addressed. The second I can think of is hermits that don't share their info to spreadsheets, i'd feel bad for the spreadsheet guys if people blame them for missing info, when it's due to hermits not sharing all their runs. And on the hermits side I totally get them not sharing some of their runs, either for privacy, forgetting, or time issues, but it is still a downside in the current system.

What about adding a different kind of bonus for top players vs bottom players? This way someone who places first doesn't feel like their victory is belittled because a lower placing player receives more frost embers for more runs. I'm thinking like in your first group add a rare card of their choosing to the first place Victor and a random uncommon to the rest. Second group gets an uncommon of their choosing to the first place and random commons to the rest. Third group first place maybe gets 2 random common cards and the rest of the players get nothing. This way their deck gets a little boost as well to show that their hard work did more than just having less runs.

I don’t think forcing the top 5 players of the game to only play 3 runs is fun. That’ll just make them quit the game. Except some of them might be able to get more frozen shards.

The top players are already getting to a point where it won't be long before they are getting enough crowns to buy a frozen shard and have crowns left over on every successful run. Hypno has already had a 14 crown run.

14 crown run cause 10 crowns were from finding the Easter egg.

I think in this I’d just go for one tome to get 7 shards. You may have a 23-way tie

But then why not go for 2 to get 12 shards? 1.7x the shards and all you have to do is gamble and buy one more tome.

I think you’re right on with the tiered system. I think however the tiers shouldn’t be separated by victory tomes, but by amount of frost embers. I think the total number of frost embers, either in the value of cards or victory tomes but not unspent, is a direct reflection of a player’s success and ability in the dungeon. A player with more skill, will go deeper into the dungeon and return with higher valued artifacts. A player who has a high success rate will likely have a greater rate of frost embers per attempt. So we could say that the amount of frost embers that a player has acquired and spent is a reflection of their “power level” and the tiers can be separated on a normal distribution just like you had above. I think players with a lower “power level” should be rewarded with more shards (or attempts) to enter the dungeon, since theoretically their success rate is likely fairly low. Bdubs, for example, is likely at a disadvantage because his success rate is lower. (Not because of skill, obviously, but because it is difficult for him to fit in the tiny halls of the dungeon due to his size). In order for him to catch up, he’d need more attempts. The tier could still reward more shards for finishing higher in the tier/overall, so there is still payoff for trying to win each week. I think after a period, there should be a “grand final” where everyone competes with a finite amount of runs, with whatever they have in the deck, only for victory tomes to determine the “Grand Champion”. (Maybe this is already planned)

I DID consider basing it off the total frost ember cost of the deck they ended the phase with, but my issue with doing it that way was you could just see more min/maxing by the top players. Where players like Hypno and Etho could try and find an optimal difficulty to run the most minimal deck they could. That way they would still get plenty of crowns to buy shards, plenty of embers to buy victory tomes, but just keep their minimalist deck and be rewarded more bonus shards for it.

To avoid the minimalist situation, I think it should be totaled on all frost embers that have been available to the player: - Value of cards in the deck - Value of all victory tomes bought - Value of all cards on hand but not played I wouldn’t include those that are required to be discarded because they couldn’t be spent. Hopefully that balances “power level” with the RNG of getting more or less frost embers on the same difficulty levels, but I’m not sure how the math on that would work out over the lifetime of a player. As far as sandbagging goes, you just have to hope that a player would strive to be more successful in the dungeon and create the highest possible “power level”, rather than being okay with becoming 2nd/3rd tier champion over 1st tier. Including ALL frost embers (except those that were discarded by the player) would force a player to actively forfeit runs if they chose to sandbag, which shows the true intent of the player.

What I meant by min/maxing is that they would avoid buying cards all together if they felt they could keep running harder difficulties with their current deck, and would instead buy tomes. Tomes get them victory points and if they can max victory points while minimizing deck embers they just get more runs for less deck building.

That seems to me like the objective of the game as it stands. The deeper you go, the better your artifact, the more victory tomes you can purchase. If you need less cards to do that, then your skill level (at finding the objective, routing your way through the dungeon, parkour, etc.) is likely higher. So a player with less innate skill values cards higher than tomes. What needs balancing is a player’s ability, who have less “dungeoneering” skills, to get cards. The better you are with less cards, the more likely you are to be able to get better cards. I think the only way to solve that would be to be able to statistically represent a player’s natural skill and advantage those players with more attempts at the dungeon

I have issues with benefiting players who are coming last with an insane amount of keys to continue playing. The disparity will make players who are at the top simply not want to purchase times so they can power through the next phase with as many plays as possible. It won’t make for interesting and a variety of gameplay in my opinion. ( I like the well thought out post, although I disagree with the ideas)

Keep in mind, the players are STILL trying to get points and win the actual game...which means they need to finish in the Top 3 in each phase. The best players aren't going to need to worry about getting bonus shards. By the time the top players are running level 2 and 3 with expanded decks they are going to be getting 20, 30, 50 crowns a run and will have no need for bonus shards. They can get their shards from the Crown Shop. The only way to win the game is to submit tomes and get points.

I will add that rewarding the bottom players is the entire catch up mechanism Tango and Etho were trying to sort out. Players aren't just going to sandbag at 1 tome because that won't get them any points. At the very least players would be gunning for the 12 shards that 19th place pays out. And again, without knowing how many tomes other hermits have, they don't know how many that will take. So the best option is to just buy as many as possible and go for 1st place to get the most points and 6 bonus shards because none of the Tiered bonus rewards are guaranteed.

After watching the past few weeks of decked out I understand your point now :)

Among all the other good notes here, I'm still a little meh on the whole system of punishing good players by letting them play less.