Biggest Firestorm Citadel race ever? :o

I was thinking of getting some guilds together and organize a big speed run of the Firestorm Citadel. Maybe have about 8-10 guilds participate, seeing who can get through the Citadel and beat Vanaduke the fastest.
I'm not going to be all elitist, and say: "ONLY THU BEZT GUILDZ PLZ", I want to let any guild, that has about 4 members with T3 access to join. Want to make this an event for everyone to enjoy! :)
The one thing I need help with is prizes though... Not rich enough to give out like, awesome UV items to the winning team, let alone crowns or CE. :<
If you want to be a part of this or help organize it, please, just tell me here, or send a tell to Blanky! I'll put the guild that you are from in the participants below, and the team of people that you chose.
I really want to make this one of the biggest non official events ever! :)
Participating Guilds:
Active
Echo Of Silence
The Risen
The Jempire
Kat Burglars

My guild Active does this every week. It adds a whole new element to Vana runs with strategy and building chemistry with your team. We have a guild of almost 100 and its a constant challenge to set up teams as well as everyone knowing when the times are for the race. At most we are able to get 3 full teams to do it. I feel like this will be tough because its hard to get everyone to participate at the right time. Plus how can we be sure the other guilds will follow the rules when it comes to any type of prizes. It will take a lot to make sure this is run right and fairly as well as getting everyone involved. I will gladly lend my help to get this running but like i said its going to be a challenge.

depends on time and place but i think i can get one or 2 teams together from my guild One Piece don't see an issue competing in this but we got 100 and there are alot of varying timezones so will have to figure out a time and date first things first.
imo the only way this could work is to make some rules, and have people record thier timed runs then put them on youtube or something. it's really the only way to be precise and prevent any type of cheating or mistakes. otherwise its hard to co-ordinate and doubt a lot of people will participate. I think just a ongoing leaderboard with the top 5 timed runs for bragging rights would be fun, rather then a event that not everyone would be able to make the times etc.
People always ask me if I was in the last "race." It's happened at least five times now. I didn't even know what the hell it was until now.

I want to let any guild, that has about 4 members
damn.
my guild's name is kat buglars
we are a bunch of ppl with good ppl :D
cakeasaurus is with us plz let us in :)
The Jempire guys have been hosting race events for a couple months now - we create large races that anyone can take part in, and we've got a fairly streamlined system to make it all come together. Happy to assist by sharing some experience and planning there, as I think to-date that all the largest player-run events have been our races and trivia events.
We may also be able to help out with some prizing - I'll add you in-game.
As a final note to the discussion above - you'll have to go for one or the other: either a planned race at a specific time that not everyone can make, or else a proof-of-time style leaderboard. Pros and cons to both sides. : )
Hope this helps!

So this thread somewhat died out and i wasn't aware of it until now.
Anyways, I can't speak for other guilds, but in Active, there has been talk of trying to get this project underway and bringing it closer to reality. As holla mentioned above, we have been doing smaller in-guild runs for a little bit now and feel that it breathes new life into Vanaduke and FSC. Unfortunately im in Hong Kong till the 30th, so i wont really be able to coordinate much in-game. However, i will have access to the forums.
As of now, my idea in terms of a basic structure (btw this is all open to suggestions!!)
-Teams of 3 compete from various guilds or juts groups of friends.
-Each team pays an entry fee of 1000CE, to add to the prize pool
-Each guild/group of friends will also have one more friend, to judge other groups (i.e. each group will consist of 3 competitors and 1 impartial judge)
-There will be one announcer who will make periodic announcements about the position of teams and overall make it more interesting.
-Prize money will be rewarded by (all of the money is to be split among the 3 competing members of the team)
-1st place: 50% of prize pool
-2nd place: 30% of prize pool
-3rd place: 15% of prize pool
-4th place: 5% of prize pool
RULES
1. All teams will start the competitions at d23, or Basil where they will have time to organize their team, equip items, etc.
2. At no point can teams port to someone at a deeper depth
3. No buying vitapods/vials from the ghosts at Emberlight
4. The judge is not to assist ANY team or to falsely accuse any team of cheating (this may be difficult because of trust issues)
5. Any item set is allowed along with 4 full weapon equips.
6. At no point are teams allowed to revive with CE unless all competing members are dead. (this is to prevent abuse from players who try to run though reviving willy nilly)
7. The race is considered complete when the entire team reaches the hologram thing at the end, at which point the accompanying judge will pm a message to the announcer.
So this is a VERY rough structure that i've been thinking about a little and i was wondering what your opinions on it are. If this idea should become viable, i also wish to keep sign-ups closed until all the rules and details are ironed out, make it all less confusing for the organizers. For future use, my IGN is Cobriliant
--Cobriliant

Velcro here. The Risen will likely be participating in this race.

I like the structure you have there Cobrilliant. Though the main difficulty I see is having someone as a trusted CE repository. The whole idea of having someone to hold on to everything will undoubtedly make some people uncomfortable. We also know that OOO does not approve of pay to enter lotteries (this happened around the steam launch) and will probably not step in to fix a CE mishap.
I would hope people have enough integrity not to make false claims. Especially since many of the groups will likely be guild groups and any hints of cheating would be a pretty big stain on that guild.
I would also hope that this race could be pulled off on a Vanaduke build that is not as easy to glitch, as I think that would be against the spirit of the competition.

Yes trust is a big issue dealing with these type of competitions. Undoubtedly if someone did run off with the prize money, then their name would be noted. As to if the money could be recovered, its rather doubtful. Luckily the way the prize pool is constructed, each person will be losing only around 333CE. Not saying that this is a small amount, but in the overall scheme of things, 333CE is an amount that most people participating in this event wouldn't miss too sorely. (around 20kCR).
I trust basically anyone in Active to not run off with this money should they get it. If someone from the Jempire should also help in organizing this event, i dont think anyone would have trust issues with them either.
As to glitching Vana. This is kind of a hard topic to address since most people who attempt Vana end up using such glitches to either expedite the process or to prevent deaths. As far as i am aware, there are no true glitches that allow people to bypass or severely reduce the time it takes to kill Vana, only the difficulty and the amount of deaths. I'm still not sure whether or not to allow glitches and this could be a topic that requires further though and debate. If they were to be not allowed, the impartial judge would be able to keep an eye on such a thing.
As to the comment about OOO not supporting lotteries. To be fair, this competition should it happen isn't exactly a lottery, more of a competition. I wouldn't know their stance on such an issue. But if they were to support this event, it would solve all trust issues to have a GM hold onto the CE.

I feel like if tactics are banned then it could become an issue with players mistakenly glitching.
Furthermore ground rules should be clearly established so teams don't think they need to do unnecessary things. For instance, in my understanding, any and all enemies who were not required to be killed (read: If the way ahead is clear) then you could proceed without finishing off enemies.)
Or will this race be one where you must kill all enemies that may drop crowns/what-not?
There's no point in having a competition when you allowed glitching in it.
[i]'At no point are teams allowed to revive with CE unless all competing members are dead. (this is to prevent abuse from players who try to run though reviving willy nilly) '[/i]
Having a death penalty ( eg. 1min time added per death or per resing with ME/CE or any variations that floats your boat) is more ideal to prevent zerg rushing, massive deaths, rise and repeat. This doesn't prevent incompetent zerg rushing at all to be honest.
Now, the part on judge. Like in every fastest speed runs, a single variable element can affect the speed of the gameplay, especially due to a player's positioning. You can minimize this aspect if the judge killed himself/herself ( eg. through spikes, flame wheels, fire spots ) discreetly in the beginning.
If discouraging the use of exploit(s) at Vanaduke would be necessary... maybe imposing something like 20% CE penalty could work. That is, 20% of the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th place's presumed prize. For example, if the 1st place used exploit to facilitate in defeating Vanaduke, their prize (50% of the pool) would be deducted by 20% (which would be 10% of the pool), yielding only 40% of the pool as the 1st place prize as a result. The deducted portion will be given to the next best team. If the second-place team also exploited at the boss, they will also be deducted 20% off of the sum of their second-place prize and the first-place team's 20% prize penalty. And so on.
Say the pool is 10,000 CE. The first team to reach the hologram wins 5,000 CE, the second team 3,000 CE, the third team 1,500 CE, etc. If the first and the second team used exploits at the boss stage, 1,000 CE will be deducted from the first team's prize and given to the second team (resulting in 4,000 CE for both teams). Then, the second team's TOTAL PRIZE will also be deducted by 20%, which would be 800 CE, and the penalized portion will be given to the third team (giving them 2,300 CE for the third-place prize). The final prizes for the first three teams would be 4,000 CE, 3,200 CE, and 2,300 CE, respectively.
Side note: Whether you can tell if a team intentionally or inadvertently used the exploit(s) may still be in question.
I second Gemini's suggestion of having to kill every loot-dropping monster just to put more emphasis on teamwork and on ones own ability to survive. Albeit, it may put pressure for all the would-be arbiters, there are MANY skip-able mobs throughout the run. I can think of many in Charred Court.

@Gemini
During FSC, there are many parts that require you to kill all mobs before moving on. For the parts that do not require you to kill all the mobs, running past them is allowed, but it VASTLY increases the difficulty and increases the likelihood of dying. As I mentioned earlier, Active has been doing a few of these in guild and running past mobs always ends up in team wipes.
@Yuu
A time penalty for deaths would be something that would be very hard to implement because the way this is formatted no one is specifically tracking the time but rather whoever gets there first. The part about the judge killing himself is viable and probably is what should happen to prevent the judge from slowing down a teams progress.
@iSpy
Such a system to me seems unnecessarily complicated and would be rather confusing to implement. Also, there are many places through out FSC that could be counted as glitching and would be hard to regulate a list of glitches that cannot be used.
@Sick
see my comment to Gemini above
Overall, i feel like glitching will have to be allowed. While it does present a slight problem, keeping track of glitching and exploits is not something that can easily be measured. Also, any penalty system for using glitches would be hard to balance. Say fro instance, if you trap Vana between the fountains. This glitch decreases the danger in fighting Vana, but requires a lot of skill to execute properly, and there is still a large of risk of Vana escaping from the fountains. This glitch doesnt necessarily impact the time required to fight Vana. But say you take advantage of the fact that you can shoot those wheel things from the front. That glitch does speed up the run immensely. But who can compare and set a penalty for these glitches? Its an issue that cannot be resolved fairly and properly with a penalty system. In my opinion, I feel like glitches should be allowed as it shows one knowledge and experience in dealing with FSC
Really? That seems so backwards. I can understand trying to outrun Greavers, but...zombies?
why not just do a FSC screenshot scavenger hunt of sorts, like "first one back with a picture of their team having a picnic with both stoned trojans" (sitting in a circle with 2 dead, but unbroken trojans) or "supersoaker" (have all 4 members throwing waterbombs at vanaduke at the same moment)..

@iAM
we all know you have trust issues after someone suggested that costume to you. (Valkyrie and volc salamander i think?)
@Sick
When out running the zombies, you generally leave those totems behind with them. Some parts have barriers that people often abuse to dodge attacks, but when we ran by the zombies, we found that we could no longer use those barriers to dodge because of the zombies behind the barriers. Also, the killing zone became rather small because no one moved the totems from their positions which caused zombies to respawn. Note: I dont really name mobs all that often so im not entirely sure what grievers are. but im talking about those fire zombie things that you meet throughout all of FSC
@Crimson
The purpose of this thread is to organize/plan a speed race/competitions. If you were interested, you could make your own thread about a FSC photo scavenger hunt.
well im just putting forward a more manageable idea, instead of having who knows how many guilds to manage simultanously in this event. not trying to hijack or anything (examples i made being somewhat keypoints in the run which you can kinda use to guage speed and skill, you know)

@Crimson
I know that you're just posting another idea, but the purpose of this thread is to specifically plan a FSC/Vana Race. Not just a competition involving Vana or FSC. While this photo contest is a good idea, it doesn't belong in this thread
Without videos from each competing team there is no reliable means to ensure that people aren't glitching or cheating, so you either need to require video proof from each team, in which case there is no reason not to hold this event over the course of a week and allow people to submit videos during that time, or allow whatever tactics people want to win, in which case its a zerg run to vana. Speed running to vana is fun for something to do on a slow night, but trying to turn it into a contest complete with entry fees and prizes is pretty daunting and I see much turmoil in the process. The premise of the contest as it stands seems to be who can run the most quickly through all the levels without killing anything not required to move forward, then killing vana. Why not just have the contest be who can make the fastest vana kill, seeing as how I don't think it requires much skill or effort to just skip as much content as you can to get to vana quickly then kill him. How will the start and finish times be tracked and co-ordinated? How do you track whether or not people adhere to the no ce rez rules or any of the rules for that matter? Seems like its all on scouts honor or something and once people are paying in a fee to join that is no longer good enough.

@qyv
If you read the proposed rules that i posted above, each competing team of 3 will have an impartial judge that will suicide and follow along dead to ensure that teams follow the rules. This impartial judge will be someone selected from among people who are not competing. As an example, say there are 3 guilds, (g1,g2,g3) that each has 4 members. Team one will consist of 3 members from guild 1 and 1 member from guild 3. Team 2 will consist of 3 members from guild 2 and 1 member from guild 3 etc. This system will be based on the integrity and honesty of the judges who, I hope, will have the decency to judge such an event fairly. Also, the judges themselves are not rewarded in any way if their team finishes first so hopefully, this will mitigate some of the urges to unfairly judge teams.
For the issue of running past all the mobs. In FSC, there are only a few places where mobs can just be ignored. In those few places, running past such mobs greatly increases the difficulty of future parts of the level. The start of the race will be coordinated by the announcer, and the finish will be determined by whichever judge messages the announcer first as mentioned in the proposed rules. Yes, there is a lot of trust that will be involved in such a competition, but this is something that cannot be removed from such a competition.
As for the idea of submitting a video. While this is an idea that solves all the trust issues, i see three main issues that will complicate the issue. The first is that not everyone has access to video recording in-game. This would stop many people from entering and make the competition smaller. Also, there is no way to verify the date that each video was taken, which may lead to reused entries. Finally, with a large enough competition, watching all these videos to verify that they followed the rules will take a long time. After doing a few Vana speed runs, the fastest time that i can recall is around an hour. Couple that with a minimum of 4 teams leads to someone having to spend several hours watching Vana run videos.

Why force ourself to go those extra miles? So many rules and mis trust. I think that the pool need to split to different instead of one person. Rem , u can run off with prize pool without having going to jail in real life. Ppl in reality whom we seems to trust often misuse our trust, let alone In virtual world.
how about you get some people with all five star gear together and run a vana run and just run through it. Find that time. Then Do a run where you kill everything record that time.
Then have a set time of... who can do the vana run in..... amount of time? Make it just fast enough to make it harder but slow enough to where you'll know if people ran through it.
Unless people record it, which will be HUGE files, there is not REAL way of knowing if they are cheating or not.
Like in the depth where you have all the rooms and have to get the things for the water, say they can pick six rooms (since you only need six) to do. Then if people do everything that's their problem. If they want to do the evil room with the re-spawning gun puppy... GO AHEAD. lol.
I like the not using CE to revive, and something tells me people won't be using a lot of CE to revive anyways if they are wanting to win CE. Unless they are power hungry and only care about the status of being the fastest to reach vana.
These runs are all about strategy, so lets see who has the best strategy. I don't think killing EVERYTHING is necessary. I've been with people who killed everything in every room, and i've been with people who skipped killing some of the zombies if they could. Otherwise arena areas force you to kill everything, because you can't move on otherwise.
The picture thing could actually be incorporated if you didn't want to do the video thing. Because you can get pictures in the six rooms they need to kill, and such.
The problem with having someone come in a just die is that everything will be scaled to four people and only three people will be fighting. IT may not be a big deal in some rooms but arena areas could be more difficult.
As for who is going to hold the prize pool, it should be the coordinator of the event holding the prize pool. Or someone everyone knows and someone that doesn't have a guild involved in the run. You people are just going to have to trust whoever holds it. it needs to be something that is picked on a weekend and done in one day so someone isn't holding all that CE for long. So you hand over the CE at the beginning of your run then at the end of the day or the next day the CE will be distributed to the winners.
this is so rigged.
Active already does FSC speed runs on a weekly basis, they said it themselves.
"My guild Active does this every week." - hollafamer
So this is going to end up:
1st place: Active Team 1
2nd place: Active Team 2
3rd place: Active Team 3
4th place: some team.
And then Active walks away with 95% of the pot.
I'll be ok with this whole event if this is internet fame only and not prized. As it stands right now, there's very little chance of other team winning. This pretty much amounts to other guilds funding Active.
BTW, Cobriliant is from active too, whether or not this is why he's so actively (hur hur) advocating it, I leave it up to the rest of you.
So not like I have the right to say this, but there should be someone making the fourth member from another guild, they would not fight, true, the monsters would be stronger, but they can ensure whatever happens, does.

Going to agree with adrian for the most part. I have to hand it to you guys though, it's a rather interesting and fun way to make money. Have guilds line up to pay you a "prize" for pretty much doing what you do regularly, and having them try to out compete you with less experience. It's clever, I like it. XD

Geeze, you know there are many more FSC runners than Active alone, right guys? Just because there's a lot from their guild posting doesn't mean they are the only ones. It's more of a challenge for me to not log on and find guild mates in the middle of yet another FSC run, I've seen some solo multiple times in a single day. There are many more top notch players outside of Active than you give credit for, or are you just not up for a challenge?
As has been stated, this is a discussion to bring more SK players in general into some sort of competition. All the CE prizes you are claiming as "scam" are not even finalized parts of this competition. As you can see there's already problems even implementing the suggested prize pot.
You're welcome to leave constructive criticism, but if you want to call the whambulance for an event you clearly aren't interested in I don't know why you bother. Active can only be the majority participant if you let them be. It's lack of participation from other guilds that could kill this, not Active's willingness to figure out how to host it.

@Icycloud
I feel like that no matter how we hold onto the prize pool, people are just going to have to trust one person to not run off and take the pool. I know that asking a lot from a lot of people, but I just dont think there is another way. Splitting the pool would cause even more trust issues among people and make it harder to distribute the prizes.
@ Dancinjen
I think as of now, it stands that people do not have to kill everything, and they are allowed to glitch FSC. The way that this competition is set up, I feel like that its more of a show of strategy and experience with FSC. So if you can manage to run by tons of zombies without wiping then go ahead because its not every team that can do that.
@Dancinjen (again? lol)
Yes the difficulty will be increased, but I get the feeling that for most people who are going to participate the difficulty increase from 3 people to 4 people in FSC will not be substantial enough to cause a huge difference. As to who should hold the prize pool, this is still up to debate but if everyone can trust the coordinator with their money, then there really isn't a problem. Also, yes the competition is designed so that the entry fee, the actual competition, and the awards will all be in the same day.
@Adrian
There are several reasons why such a thing probably won't happen. First off, even though we have done a FSC race a few times, there really isnt much that changes from a normal run of FSC to a speed run besides the intensity of the players concentration and the mood of players. Second of all, not only Active has been doing these type of things (i.e. Ruby from The Jempire said that they also do speed runs). Lastly, i can think of many good players who are very good at FSC that are not in Active. It's nice that you think Active is that good, but its not like the 100 members of Active are the 100 best players in the entire game.
And as to the accusation that I'm planning this just to get more money for Active and such. It saddens me. In all honesty, this competition was planned to bring new excitement into Vana/FSC and to bring together many experienced players into one competition. As I've mentioned before, Active has done this a few times, and every single time has been a lot of fun and it is always very exciting. If you dont trust me enough to believe that this is merely for fun and you honestly believe im trying to scam everyone into donating CE to Active then dont participate. But please dont try to slam a honest idea just based on your beliefs.
@Ninjapbob
I'm somewhat confused as to what your suggestion is but I'll address what I think you are saying. Yes, the impartial judge that will accompany every 3 man team will be from another guild. Like I said, I'm not entirely sure what you're suggestion/question is so if i didnt address your comment correctly feel free to comment again and call me stupid ;D
you were on the spot! ty...
i'll participate when i dont have to pay and be in a 3-man team to enter.
I just typed out a huge post of suggestions and then got auto-logged out by the forums when I hit preview. The entire thing is gone. Win.
There are five key issues I'd recommend changing - will post them shortly, when I can pull myself to finally re-type everything. : )
This sounds so cool, a bunch of pro's not just talking about doing the hardest boss in the game! But like... seeing you could beat him the fastest! AHHH!
Someone should invite me into their guild and I can help out and maybe win! I am sure my Super Slime Slasher will be a big help. Im thinking of crafting a wrench wand soon (: Is there constructs in this boss level? OMG!
Please, someone invite me to their guild who is doing this I wanna participate :( IGN: Uppercase
Uhh...

:o
This has become into such a huge thing.
Anyways, some very good ideas have come up here! Although, I avoided having people pay, just in-case we get people thinking that it's a scam only to make our guild have more CE. I if I had enough CE, I would probably just give the players 1/4 of it each or something, depending on the place. Maybe the entry fee can be smaller? The more guilds that participate, the smaller the entry fee. :)

@Ruby
Yes! The more suggestions the merrier! and as you're very experienced with this type of thing I'd love to read your suggestions ;D
@Lower
Id love to see that dps on the wrench wand charge attack against Vana. I probably have to ban it since id be so cheap and OP.
@Inzane
Haha. Two reasons why I added the entry fee/Prize pool. 1. It makes everything that much more interesting and fun. 2. I'm way to poor to make satisfying prizes. I mean if you want to do all this for 100CE go right ahead but other than that... DX. The entry fee is somewhat high in retrospect, but it was a nice number that works well. I'd be interesting to make a system where entry fee decreases on amount of participants. But theres no way to know the total amount of participants before the event happens so... :/
Why is there a need for entry fees at all? Traditionally entry fees are done in a way to discourage woefully underqualified from participating, and is usually nominal. What is proposed here is 1k ce per team. That only serves to discourage people who are unlikely to win as 1k is anything but a small amount. Players already have a cost of entry: the elevator cost. If you truly want to have prizes, why not talk it over with the people in Active and have some rich member sponsor it? Or better yet, have multiple guilds sponsoring this event? That way guilds gets e-fame and participants get paid.
Seriously, If i were an average or even below average player, why would i pay 1kce to participate? That is just throwing money away to the ones that does it all the time. No dogrock, maybe I'm not up for the task, maybe I'm not good enough compare to EoS, Active, Jempire, etc. So the most reasonable course of action for me is to not participate. And unless players who run FSC all the time are a majority, I don't see this event as anything but an elitest circlejerk.

Adrian, I just wanted this to be a fun event where everyone can just have some fun speedrunning some of maybe, the hardest levels in the game in a competition. I don't want it to be an "elitist circlejerk" , rich people only, bleh blah blah. It's supposed to be a nice fun event that people take place in, so we can have some kind of community-like bonding time. :P
As I said before, the more Guilds there are in the race, the smaller the CE cost it is for those teams. Maybe we can make it cost crowns? I would like to get an alternative to make everyone happy, but it seems with this game, everyone seems pissed off no matter what choice you make. People always find loopholes around it so they can complain. Maybe if enough uproar rises, or we can find an incredibly rich person what is very generous, that 1k-500 CE range will stay.
Hell, we can even make it the cheap equivalent of 1k CE in crowns, maybe 40k c each team? C'mon, if you see a flaw in it, don't complain and blabber about it, try and find a solution.

@Adrian
The price is also somewhat reduced by the crowns and mats that are gained by running FSC in the first place. 1kCE may be too much but like I've said, these are merely proposed rules that require much editing and revising before they become "official".
In a normal FSC run, including mats and just the crowns gained, the total amount is around 7.5kish (i think?) Multiplied by 3 members, and each team is earning back 22.5k. If 1kCE were the entry fee, that roughly converts to around 60kCr. Subtracting the amount gained back, and each team is really only investing 37.5kCe. Divide by 3 members. So each member is only putting up 12.5kCr. Which converts to around 200CE. From my experience and observations, this is almost pocket change to many experienced players. Not to mention that some players will be running on ME, which lowers the cost even more. From an optimistic standpoint, the average investment each player makes is around 150CE. Realistically, its probably closer to around 175 or 180CE per person. But thats still minimal compared to the possible 600ishCE that each player stands to gain if they should win. (Assuming only 4 teams participate)
I'm not saying that 1kCE is the right amount, but if you consider all the factors, the player investment isn't actually that high
#43:
Exactly, you want as many people to come as possible. That's just not going to happen with the entry fee setup like it is right now.
And I've given you a solution: find a sponsor.
I'm only speaking for myself, but as it stands now, I won't be participating.
Lets make something clear. If this is going to be advertised as a guild thing then we should limit teams per guild. Like 2 teams per guild or something.
If this is going to be who can do it the fastest then lets nix people signing up their guild and do it by teams only, and then people can come up with fun and goofy names for their teams instead of guild names.
I think if it's going to be a guild competition that we should encourage the best of the best from the guilds that wish to participate. It will encourage members of every guild to become better so they can participate in something like this, and it would encourage more guilds to sign up.
I'm all for doing a judge in each group and them dying and coming along. I was just making sure that everyone is aware that it will increase the difficulty of everything.
Some words of encouragement.
Just because people brag about doing runs all the time doesn't mean they are awesome or/nor fast at it. You don't know how many revives they have or people that die. We don't know these things. All we can do is join and have fun and be good sports about it. This is all for good fun and lets treat it as such.
As for prizes maybe it shouldn't be made into a big thing this first time with a huge prize pool. Try making it smaller then see how it turns out and making it bigger next time. That's how these things work out. I know many times in ypp if there are popular and successful events that the oceanmasters (game masters) would gladly help out. I'm not saying that this is the case here. I'm just saying maybe if this goes over well there would be more of a backing for it.
You could also do a donation type thing. It does well for guilds that are seeking members and what not, and just overall publicity of being an awesome guild. I know I would be willing to donate things if that was the case. Especially if I had some of my guild members in it.
I hope what i'm saying is making sense here.
As for the general rules of the competition. This is how I would do it. (note i'm taking your post and adding and taking away things.)I'll capitalize my changes.
-Teams of 3 compete from various guilds or just groups of friends (DEPENDING ON HOW WE ALL WOULD LIKE TO DO THIS AND ADVERTISE IT)
-Each team pays an entry fee of 300CE(SPLIT THAT IS 100 CE PER PERSON), to add to the prize pool
-Each guild/group of friends will also have one more friend, to judge other groups (i.e. each group will consist of 3 competitors and 1 impartial judge)
-There will be one announcer who will make periodic announcements about the position of teams and overall make it more interesting.
-Prize money will be rewarded by (all of the money is to be split among the 3 competing members of the team)
-1st place: 50% of prize pool
-2nd place: 30% of prize pool
-3rd place: 15% of prize pool
-4th place: 5% of prize pool
RULES
1. All teams will start the competitions at d23, or Basil where they will have time to organize their team, equip items, etc.
2. At no point can teams port to someone at a deeper depth
3. No buying vitapods/vials from the ghosts at Emberlight
4. The judge is not to assist ANY team or to falsely accuse any team of cheating (this may be difficult because of trust issues)
5. Any item set is allowed along with 4 full weapon equips.
6. At no point are teams allowed to revive with CE unless all competing members are dead. (this is to prevent abuse from players who try to run though reviving willy nilly)
7. The race is considered complete when the entire team reaches the hologram thing at the end, at which point the accompanying judge will pm a message to the announcer.
Everything else is pretty solid. Just start the prize pool small and work it from there.
I hope this helps a bit.

@Dancijen
Regarding that comment about signing up guilds. Atm, its kinda of an unofficial rough estimate of who would actually be interested in this event. It's nothing official.
I feel like that you're right and that there should be a limit on the amount of entries from each guild and that it should only be the best of the best. As to how many teams form each guild, i have yet to decide. (I'm thinking either 2 or 3). But at the same time, this also presents a problem regarding groups of friends. Not sure if this should be something that should be included I think that i will lower the entry fee, but not by that much. An entry fee at either 600CE or 750CE seems about right. (Nice clean numbers that are divisible by 3 XD) Regarding the 3 competing members and one judge format, I'm not entirely sure what your suggestion actually is.
And yes Dancinjen, any constructive comment helps ;D
Probably tomorrow I will post up an updated version of the rules and pending suggestions
We will need a temporary "Formula One" guild, so chat will be synced, then, the guild members would join back...
the reason I'm saying 300 CE for now is that it's 100 CE per person. People can use their mist energy to do the event if needed. It makes it more attainable. At least for this first time.
Well maybe there needs to be two separate events. One for guilds and one for groups. Otherwise I think it would be to do random groups. I know what you're saying by signing up guilds and what not.
I still think the price you are wanting is too much FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME ever doing this event. If it goes well and it turns out then up the prize pool and work on sponsors/donations. The key thing for event running is you need people that are going to help you.
People willing to go with the parties, people to be around to answer questions, to hand out prizes, and even a voice chat so you can speak to all the coordinators.
The only way you're going to be able to really find out how this is going to go is to just run the even. Make it very basic, maybe a two team from each guild, and lower the entry fee. Make the entry fee low enough to not be too expensive, but more than enough for those that will be compensated for the gate costs and what not. Set the date, and run it. You can sit here and talk and debate and try to please everyone but if you don't just do it... it will NEVER get done. Plan it. set the date. do it. Then from there you can tweak it how you like. Raise the entry fee, decide guild or group of friends... stuff like. Remember it is a trial run, first time event, but if it doesn't run good enough people aren't going to want to join.
Hmm
This competition need a sender who send a mails to the judges with a 4 letters or digits codes every 15 minutes or so. When a team finishes ( reach the core ) judge will reply to the mail with the closet time from the team's time ( ex. -30 minutes mail teams finishes in 35 minutes they'll reply to that mail ) with members' names, judge's name and time then screenshot it then he'll also pm the code and the team's time to the sender or head judge with the code. This mean team doesn't need a judge. Also, I think if there is more than 15 teams entries should be drop by 100-200ce. Just my 2cents. IK I have grammar issues.
I'd be glad to help organize this event, after all it seems as if you're going to need all the help you can get for something like this (advertising, prizes, etc.) I'll probably throw in 100 CE or something to help get a cash prize started.
I'm obviously not qualified to speak on behalf of my guild, Echo of Silence, but I'm sure we'd be willing to participate if you spoke with our leaders.
Looking forward to this being a success, best of luck to ya ;D
IGN: Techpriest