-Teams of 3 compete from various guilds or juts groups of friends.
-Each team pays an entry fee of 600CE, 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.

Under Consideration:
-Penalty for death/team wipes
-Lower entry fee. (Note: it's been lowered to 600CE already)
-Decrease in entry fee as number of teams increases
-Actual time/date of first event

As usual, comments are greatly appreciated. Probably another week or so of discussion on rules/format and then if all goes well sign-ups will open and we'll go from there.

--Cobriliant

OK, finally getting around to adding my comments in full now. Thanks for waiting! :)

Lots of good ideas here. In our experience hosting these types of events for public groups in the past, there are some things you've come up with that will work really well, and also some that you'll probably want to adjust. That said, let's get into the list of recommended changes!

1. Remove the entry fee, and sponsor the race.

The challenge you face as a team hosting your first race is that you have to build up some reputation among the playerbase. Jempire sponsors and hosts each of our race events fully, with every single crown coming from myself and our members donations. And 100% of it goes to other players - not us.

Right now, since your guild posted "let's have a race" along with the message "btw, we're really good and practice this all the time", the unintended result of that is people thinking that there's really no point trying against you, especially not if they have to pay CE that will eventually become yours.

I realize that's not what you intended, but that's the way many players are looking at this. So here's how to fix it! : )

First, find a sponsor. A rich player, donations from guilds, etc. Ideally, the hosting guild should try to come up with all the prize money in some way. This will help clear up any concerns about the event being rigged in your favor, and by removing the cost of entry, you also ensure that a great many more guilds can take part.

Finally, since I realize this is easier said than done, I'll volunteer to help you Co-sponsor the CE prize. Talk to me in game and we can discuss further!

2. Remove the Judge element and replace this with a 4th team member.

Great idea in concept, but this will cause a massive amount of issues in a real race. Consider the following scenario:

Team 1 arrives at Depth 25. Party button lies before them, all the members hop on. Except the judge, who is loading. 15 seconds later, the Judge finally arrives. Meanwhile, Team 2 has a Judge with a much faster PC, who loads up instantly. If both teams are neck and neck the rest of the run, Team 1 will lose the race solely because of the loading speed of their Judge.

That's best case scenario. Now think about what would happen if a Judge were to disconnect at the beginning of that depth, or likewise at ANY point in the race where a party button might be needed and the judge is alive. (Ideally, they'll be dead, but you can't do this at a depth's beginning.)

Essentially: Every second counts, and a team shouldn't be losing seconds solely because of a Judge member from another guild. That's your core issue with this element.

It also opens you up to teams complaining that a Judge from another team purposely sabotaged them - I realize we'd hope nobody would do that, but please trust me when I say that in a heated competition like this, you will absolutely run the risk of this occurring, or at least people thinking it did - even in legitimate situations where a Judge just had a lag spike or connection hiccup. Best to avoid it altogether and go with a different route!

3. Teams should be allowed to revive at any point.

The point of a race should be to reach the end and kill Vanaduke as quickly as possible. The Gear makeup of these teams is determined by their amounts of CE and their time invested in the game. Why then is their CE not allowed to play a part here? Likewise - one's own death so another teammate can escape is sometimes the greatest showing of teamwork. : )

I really like the idea of people being able to revive at any time, for a few reasons:

- Teams who don't prepare a list of 'who revives when' run the risk of skyrocketing their Rev costs by Vanaduke
- This adds a risky element, as both luck and player skill become more key. If you revive too much in the beginning, or don't coordinate with your team, you'll have to wait at the end and can't help as quickly with Vana.
- How much CE is worth it? The more CE you waste reviving, the less that total prize pool will set you ahead...

Beyond that, you've got some good ideas that are very similar to what we've done over the last few months. Your host should be in the Arcade and able to watch each team closely - ideally, if you're organizing this strictly, they should have all 4 team members from each team added as a friend.

I hope these ideas are useful - you've got a lot of good momentum behind this now and by making the above tweaks, I think you'll have an even better FSC race on your hands!

We're happy to add in more ideas or discuss some of the existing ones at any time. And of course, as the event host, it's ultimately your call to decide what you do and don't want to change. : )

All the best,
Ruby

@Ruby

Woah lost of suggestions and all of them good! I'd love to talk and plan with you in game but im in Hong Kong till the 30th so I dont really have the best of connection in game. (which is why im planning so much of this on the forums DX) I'd love to remove the judge part, and to be honest we dont do that when we do this in our guild, its just that i can foresee people claiming that other teams are cheating. I guess if someone were to have everyone as friends and watched it, it might work.
As to the reviving, i put that rule in to prevent mass reviving but i do see your point. I don't really have much of a response to this point and i feel like this is something that needs more debate. It does give an advantage to people who have more money/invested more in the game.
Sponsoring would be the best option, but i know for one that im way too poor to sponsor something that could potential be very big. I guess i'd have to ask the guild or ask someone to ask for me since i dont have the best connection :/. As to your offer to help with the sponsoring. LOTS of thanks!

@Adrian
Streaming would be a lot of fun, but i can foresee some problems with it. If a competing teams tunes in to a stream then they could watch some of the strategies of other teams. Also, with streaming, it would have to be someone who is actually competing and that might cause latency issues. As to having multiple categories, this might be something that we could do in the future with more sponsors and more experience, but for the first few, i think a simple 3/4 man team format is the best.

@Gemini
I think either Saturday or Sunday. If Saturday it would probably have to be around 8 or 9ishPM EST. If on Sunday itd probably have to be like 10-11AM EST

bump

So its been a while since I've posted here so just listing updates.

As of now, we have two sponsors
-Lowercase/GM/ ???
-Ruby

I haven't talked to Ruby yet because of my poor connection but I'm sure Ruby's offer still stands

There are still some thing to iron out in the rules and I'll list them here

-Should we implement the three competing and one judge, or run it on honor system/find another way to monitor teams
-If we remove the no reviving until all dead rule, we can have teams of four and just have someone keep team captains on the friend list to keep track. I'm starting to lean towards the second option with 4 competitors and just monitor progress. This still leaves some room open to cheat, but by watching the advantage can be limited and hopefully they have some honor and it won't be a problem anyways.

-Time: I'm thinking 8:30 or 9 PM EST on a Saturday. Probably August 6th or 13th. Works well for people in Europe ish and it isnt that bad for US either?

-Im going to open signups on the forums a week before so on the 30th if we decide to have it on the 6th

WHOA!
I did not agree to sponsor this.
and what the *bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep* is a Lowercase?

@Velcro

(The Risen can kick Active's butt, and any other guild) <--- Pssssh! Hahahahaha!

You and your whole crew are like a deck of 54, its obvious ya'll gone steady be rolling with some Jokers'.

Im so evil.

@Lemonlime

first off Cobrilian is sexier cuz he has med uv's. And okay i guess only Ruby then. I might have to ask holla/heron/etc. for donations since im far too poor.

@gmhuntr7

That is a possibility but then you run into that whole loading time argument. I see your point and I agree that its a problem but as far as i know there isn't really a solution. (unless... im not sure about this, but if you have a friend and they go down on elevator, but it takes them a while to load, in your friends tab thingy does it show them at the floor already? e.x. if someone finishes vana and goes down to the core on the elevator if you check them on the friends tab would it show them at the core? cuz if it did then thats our problem solved)

Bump! Thing..
Thanks Lowercase for telling me about this, I'm sure to join. I'll get the pro Guildies together and see if we want to make this happen.
Its also funny how Active thinks, you're up against Guild now! I'm kidding, I'm not gonna be arrogant. Just gonna say now I can solo a difficult 4 Vanaduke...

But with trust issues, I would say, all hosts of the parties for the race should friend each other host, so they can see if they are going unrealistically fast. Like you know, just running and ditching all the monsters. < That needs to be against the rules.

We'll see what happens.

@Omegablue

Great! So that solves that problem. So i guess I'm changing the ending to first to reach core. Thanks!

@Twili

Ahhh yes that has been discussed. So the announcer (probably me?) and maybe an assistant or two will do exactly what you just said. Friend all the team captains and monitor their progress. As to running through monsters. As much limiting as we want to do on that, there really isn't a good way. Luckily, in FSC most of the levels beyond the first depth all require you to kill everything in the room and clear it. And with previous experience on trying to run past everything on the first depth, it's REALLY hard to survive that because there are the occasional part where you use the barriers to help, but by not killing everything you surround yourself with monsters which leads to death a lot of the time.

But awesome! Signups will probably open soon since I'll be back from my trip in about a weeks time

@Patton

Awesome! Thanks for help with sponsoring. Any amount is welcomed whether its 1CE or 1000 ;D

UPDATE:

--More Final Revision--
-Teams of 4 compete from various guilds or juts groups of friends.
-Removed entry fee (forgot to do this last time) reverting to a sponsorship model
-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 4 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
-All teams will have a predetermined "team captain" who will be tracked by the announcer/assistant to monitor progress and to prevent cheating.

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 announcer and possibly an assistant or two will friend all the team captains and observe their progress to prevent cheating.
5. Any item set is allowed along with 4 full weapon equips.
6. There is no restriction on reviving (Note: After consideration and Ruby's comment i came to realize that the more they revive the less they win to a point where they may come out with negative profits. So in reality, reviving really isn't/shouldn't be a problem. Also, I was considering a penalty for revives but after removing the judge part of each team, I figured it would be too hard to implement)
7. The race is considered complete when the entire team reaches the core, at which point a team captain will pm a message to the announcer or if the announcer is paying attention, he will pm the team captain.
8. Any team caught cheating will be ineligible to participate in future competitions

Most likely barring any unseen problems, this event will take place on a Saturday starting at 4PM EST (1PM PST and 8PM GMT). Before entering please make sure you have at least 2 hours of free time and preferably 3 hours of free time to participate in the race and the following award ceremony

Sponsors:
-RubyEclipse (unconfirmed. I still need to talk to him/her)
-Lowercase (I have no idea if this is true or not.)
-Patton (If you are going to donate, an estimate on the amount would be nice so we can calculate the prizes accordingly.)

Since i first suggested a rough layout for the rules, a lot of suggestions and comments have been made on it and I feel like it's almost time to unveil this project and get it rolling! Once i get back from Hong Kong though :/ (connection in Hong Kong is terrible since all the servers are in America?)

--Cobriliant

@Patton

By all means participate. If you're the one donating money and you participate no one's gonna be complaining that you're scamming or something. Especially since you're donating so much! I'm not going to collect anything until the day of because theres always the chance that this wont happen and drop through the floor (hopefully not though!)

I don't know if this is just my guild that this is happening to, but there is something called the ARROW OF DOOM that shows up on a player's icon, where it would usually show what gate and depth they're in. It covers up the icon, so there would be no way to see where they're at. This could be a BIG problem if two teams are neck-to-neck, but you couldn't see who gets to the Core first because of the ARROW OF DOOM. Just a warning.

P.S. It seems my guild will not be participating, sorry.

1st off. I will be back in the states on the 1st and will probably be playing by the 2nd. I still have to contact all the sponsors to iron out all the little details.

I will not be accepting donations and such until the day of or the day before the event in case that something goes terribly wrong.
I just thought of this now, but I will send all of you who volunteered to sponser via in game mail with some questions.
You will be mentioned during the award ceremony at the end of the competition (you can choose not to if you want)
If possible, it'd be wonderful to actually have you guys competing/present at the competitions (i know its a somewhat large-ish commitment but its entirely up to you)
I will have to assume that your forum name is the same as your IGN, if not please post here with your IGN so i can contact you in-game.

Once i've gotten responses from all the potential sponsors, I will open sign-ups on the forums. I will also send you the node through mail if you wish to keep up with the sign-ups.

--Cobriliant

P.S. BIG thanks to everyone who posted on this topic. It's been tons of help getting this planned out and there were lots of good suggestions.

Will the race be going on today?