We have just wrapped up our 8th quarterly Mayhem and we have enough history that we should learn some lessons. This study was done by me because I thought I noticed some patterns and wanted to know if they were actually there. I fear I may be poking a stick into a hornet's nest, but I promise you all NO conclusions reached here are in any way indictments of anyone or anything. They are simply observations extracted from the empirical data available.

FIRST AND FOREMOST: Thank you all, everyone who participated in them, everyone who provided prizes to them, everyone who helped fine tune them (HAMMER out rules), everyone who helped in judging them and ESPECIALLY everyone who sponsored one so I could have a break!!!!

Ok, on to the analysis for the rest of the lessons. The links to the contests themselves are listed below so that you can review them. Two of the contests were on held on the private forums so you will have to log in to see them.

1-10 viewtopic.php?f=60&t=19408 Word Scramble Sponsor: Blondie
4-09 viewtopic.php?f=60&t=19173 Hide and Seek Sponsor: Jayden
3-09 viewtopic.php?f=60&t=19023 Big Fashion Show
2-09 viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18783 Fashion Show
1-09 viewtopic.php?f=60&t=18560 Hide and Seek Facilitator: Jayden
4-08 viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18296 Hero Battles
3-08 viewtopic.php?f=60&t=17996 Solo PvP
2-08 viewtopic.php?f=61&t=17768 Scavenger Hunt

Study #1: Of the 8 Mayhems, 4 of them turned out to be Races Against Time (RATs) in actual practice and 4 of them turned out to be Head To Head (HtH) competitions of some sort wherein it was not neccesary to be online "early" to win.

Of the RATs (2-08, 1-09, 4-09, 1-10), Jayden won 100% of the two he did not facilitate. Good on you, Jayden. Raven placed or tied for second in those two; he won the other two. Good on you Raven. Lesson #1 (part 1): in RAT Mayhems, the results are predictable. NOTE: I am not taking any kudoes away from these two excellent competitors. These are just observations.

The HtH competitions (3-08, 4-08, 2-09, 3-09) are more difficult to examine because of the fact that the first of these did not have a complete ladder, there were 3 "winners" (the Solo PvP had 3 separate winners declared with no final round of competition). The 3 contests with single winners each had different winners and none of those winners even placed in the other contests. The Solo PvP competition had 3 separate winners, only one of whom won one of the other 3 competitions. That is the only name that repeats among all the HtH Mayhems, and it only repeats once. Lesson #1 (part 2) In HtH Mayhems, the results are anyone's guess for the most part.

Average number of entrants in the RATs was 5, average in the HtHs was 7. Lesson #1 (part 3): People like the HtHs, possibly because of the perception of a level playing field. Average participation for the life of the contest for RATs was 2, for HtHs was 7. Lesson #1 (part 4): Participation stays high for the HtHs and falls off quickly for the RATs.

Study #2: There were 6 Mayhems where intensive competition was required (however briefly) and 2 Mayhems where relatively leisurely participation sufficed (the fashion shows). Lesson #2: attempting to predict winners based on this quality is extremely difficult as detailed below.

In the competitive Mayhems (2-08, 3-08, 4-08, 1-09, 4-09, 1-10), Jayden won twice and placed once in the 4 he did not facilitate, good on you again! Raven won twice, XG won once and placed once, Bunny won once and showed once. No clear pattern here but there are some trends.

In the passive Mayhems (3-09, 3-09) no name repeats anywhere among the overall winners and placers; Raven, Blondie and Mimi all took 3 Best in Class wins. They seem to have the fashion sense. Again no clear pattern, just trends.

Average number of entrants in the competitive Mayhems was 5, passive was 8. Lesson #2a: People like the passive Mayhems, possibly because of their HtH nature (percieved level playing field).
Average participation for the life of the contest for competitive Mayhems was 3, for passives was 8. The drop in participation in the competitive Mayhems is skewed by the fact that all the RATs were in the competitive category. No useful pattern here.

Study #3: There were 4 PvE (for want of a better word) competitions where everyone took on an external challenge and 4 PvP competitions where entrants were pitted against each other directly. The only thing really worth noting is that these exactly correlate to study #1, The external challenges all turned into RATs and the pitted confrontations all turned out to be HtHs (imagine that!). The only reason I even mention this is that it originally looked like a quality worth examining and I didn't want someone to come along and ask why I didn't.

FINAL CONCLUSION: For my part, I will do my best to design future quarterly Mayhems along the HtH pattern just to attract competitors. I have no objection to sponsors stepping up and hosting a RAT, I will be grateful for the effort! More power to you! Dont be surprised if the real competition is for 3rd place though... I will try to design active competitions that are HtHs but these tend to be very high overhead compared to RATs (which are no picnic).

Hope this information is useful to future Mayhem sponsors!

Jim

The following edit was added AFTER 6th post:

I ought to define som terms clearly here:

HtH: Head to Head, direct comparison of one entrant to another entrant with no chance of the results being affected by ones ability to patiently watch for an event and then react to it.

RAT: Race Against Time, results of the contest are directly affected by how soon contestants react to some starting event. cf: drag-race

Intensive: a contestant has to actively engage at a particular place at a particular time to compete.

Passive: a significant window of time exists (days or weeks) in which to act and the actions are compared later to determine the superior performance. By this definition, a passive RAT would be very hard to compose.

This post exists ONLY to define vocabulary terms used in the general discussion of Mayhems. So now we all understand one another...

Thank you for the excellent study on the mayhems, it helps me to better understand alot in case I get the opportunity to host one.
The RATs we can turn into HtHs by changing some minor things about them.
For example:
We can start the time sensitive mayhem contest on a Friday, and end it on a Sunday at noon.
If there is 1 person that submits 100% correct, they are the first place winner, 98%, second place, 95%, third place etc.
If there are 10 people that submit 100% correct answers, these names can literally be placed on pieces of paper and drawn from a hat to determine the 1st 2nd and 3rd place winners.

Also a big thanks to everyone that has hosted these mayhems in the past, it is much appreciated.

As far as starting on a Friday, I did that with this last mayhem - It didn't seem to help much (just my opinion, I may be wrong). I had just as many people whining about the Friday start, whether it be the time of day that I posted the clues: "I have to work until ____, you should post it after that!", or the day in general: "I can't be online on Fridays, can't you post it Sundays?", as anything else that they chose to complain about. It took me awhile to realize that there's no way to please everyone with these things - If people can compete, they will, if they can't, oh well.

Something tells me that just drawing 1st-3rd from a hat wouldn't go over well...I know I wouldn't enter something if I knew I could get all my answers done and still not win by pure luck of the draw. At least with time, there's a definite reason why a person does or doesn't win; however, Bunny is right, races against time inevitably favor those who have the ability to be online right as the competition begins, which generally leads to predictable results. I actually thought a lot about that while planning the mayhem, but was at a loss as to how to make it NOT a race against time for fairness' sake. I also tried to think of other ideas for competitions that wouldn't have to be so time sensitive, but ideas for that (for me at least) were few and far between.

I originally assumed I'd have people submitting incorrect answers and would have need for clues to help people figure out the things they'd missed, and that there may even be scrambles that people just didn't get right altogether - That was way off. We have enough smart people, Wiki-aholics, and GW geniuses in AW that it's very hard to base results on people getting things wrong.

My tips for people COMPETING in these mayhems:
It's supposed to be fun for everyone involved, but actually winds up being a huge investment of time and game resources for the person in charge. Keep that in mind before you start criticizing every little detail.

When someone posts rules, schedules, etc, don't automatically start asking them to change things because it might not be ideal for you personally. Decide if you can or can't compete, and deal with it. Remember that hosts have lives too, and they probably have good reason for designing things the way they did.

When prizes are posted and you can see that they're fairly high-end, don't complain about the cost of entering the contest or assume they're trying to make some sort of profit by charging entry fees. I can guarantee that the person running the contest is putting quite a lot out there for the prizes, and will in no way recoup the expense with the entry fees they receive. Yes, donations are made, but a lot of the prizes still come directly from the person hosting the contest.

When you finish whatever part of the contest you're working on, it's not really necessary to whisper the host "I'm done!!!" They'll see your forum PM, and if they have their account set up to do so, they'll see the email that you sent them a forum PM. In-game whispers = pretty redundant

If you find yourself behind, or don't feel like you're doing very well, sending the contest host a PM throwing tantrums = not a good idea. Whining in game or on the forums that you're losing = not a good idea. Giving up halfway through because you think you don't have a chance takes a lot of the fun out of the contest for everyone else, and pushes more towards predictable contest results. Be a good sport!

First off, let me start by saying thank you to everyone that's sponsored, hosted, and/or participated in a mayhem contest.

I'd like to touch upon a few certain issues. Each competion we've held have ALL been Head to Head (HtH) and we really haven't had any Race Against Time (RATs). -A race against time would really be a race to get all the answers in within a certain amount of time (ex. racing the clock by getting in as many answers as possible within X amount of minutes according to the rules set by the facilitator). What has been happening is the competitors have been racing each other in order to be the first to submit all the correct answers which would technically make the competition a HtH race.

Personally I understand some peoples dislike of the day & time stuff is posted and some very valid points have been brought up regarding them. (ex. If you're stuck at work without access while another person has access, then they have a unfair advantage.) Which leads to people feeling that they don't have a chance, thus deciding not to participate/drop out/throw tantrums. These contests were designed to be fun but we also need to make sure that they are fair otherwise people won't want to participate. And should we have these types of contests again where it is a HtH race for submitting answers first, then the judge needs to make sure that the questions can be posted at a time that is fair to everyone.

Onyx even brought up the possibility of polling the contestants to see what their schedules are like in addition to the judges schedule to better ascertain a good time to post the questions. Personally, I think with the most recent contest, the first three tiers were posted at a time that worked for those participating, however situations resulted in the last two being posted earlier in the day. Which caused some commotion regarding fairness. Some people as you would say "are in it to win it" and if they don't feel like they have a chance then why should they participate.

(as a suggestion)
If we wanted to do a RAT, we could get people on their schedules and PM them the challenges directly to them, they would then have 30-35 minutes to complete as many questions before PMing their responses back with however many they've completed. And for so many correct answers you would reach a certain prize tier. (ex. 1-5 correct you get a lockpick, 5-10 correct you get a armor remnant... etc etc)

What I would like to see happen though, is to have additional members participating that haven't in the past.

With regarding entry fee's, the fee's really are not that costly and I can attest to Blondie's comment that the host in no way comes out ahead. But it's up to the host to determine how much they are personally willing to stake inregards to prizes. And yes donations are extremely helpful and should not be considered as begging or asking for handouts. It's up to the host to guage the overall costs of prizes and to deem whether or not a prize is within their budget. (ex. such as Obsidian or Vabbian armor.)

I may have failed to communicate a very important aspect of what I was trying to do in this thread. Let me rephrase: the Mayhems started out as a way to get AWs to play together and have fun outside the normal strictures of gameplay. No one is obligated to compose Mayhems, noone is obligated to participate in them.

What I meant to do with this thread was a simple statical analysis of the results so far. No criticism of who should offer what kind of contest or what is right or wrong was intended. My kudoes to those players recognized as winners were exactly that, kudoes (like congratulations). Anyone who read sarcasm into my first post misunderstood me.

Jayden, you have corrected my interpretation of events and changed the definitions of my terms to what you think I should have said instead of reading what I wrote, thereby completely destroying any chance you might get anything out of what I said. It is interesting that Nerevar and Blondie were perfectly happy to read the thing the way I wrote it instead of deciding that I didn't know what I was talking about.

SUGGESTION: accept my definitions for the sake of understanding what I tried to say. Then read it again and see if you understand what I tried to say. If that doesn't work, I'm sorry.

Blondie, I am sorry if it seemed like I was critical, that was never my intent.

As for Blondies suggestions how to conduct yourself as a contestant, BRAVO! When someone takes the time to compose a Mayhem and puts it in the rules to communicate via such-and-so medium, please do it!

Neither I nor Nerevar intended any negative toward anyone in our posts. Those who were hurt were hurt unintentionally. Please let the hurt go. If you can't glean the positives from what I said and build from that, then you are wasting your time even reading this thread. The purpose was to derive simple, clinical, unemotional information from the events that have happened so far and learn from them. Learn to improve the product YOU want to Sponsor in the future. Remember, I am always looking for Sponsors! I DO ASK that you communicate with me first. I will not veto contests. I just want to know about them.

A final note: If you read any part of this entire thread and take offense then you have stolen something. As far as I can tell, no one who has posted to this thread so far has offered offense to anyone. If you take something (like offense) when noone offered it to you, where I come from that is called THEFT! Put it back!

I for one agree with the concept that the RAT style competitions are going to be biased towards one person or another and therefore not the ideal contest style. while its worked out well for me in the past I have often remarked to Blondie how frustrating it is that the person who just happened to be online at the time of the posting or was able to wait the longest, would get the jump start on everyone else. Blondie tried her best to post her tiers at a time when more than one person was on but with life getting in the way no one can be 100% accommodating with the mayhems.

As nerevar said i would love to see the contests designed in such a way that there is a correct answer or a definitive scoring system that leaves less chance for there to be more than one first place finisher. I have spent alot of time trying to figure out a way to run a contest like that with little luck however. we have so many guildwars aficionados that trivia and riddle contests are hard to write that more than one person cant solve, so it always comes down to who did it the fastest. perhaps jaydens suggestion of individual time limits could work for that. each person gets their contest on their own timeline and has a fixed amount of time to try and get as many as possible completed. its hard to say what will work the best. but having a clear cut winner without the benefit of luck in timing would be great.

as for the prizes i love getting free stuff but the past 4 or so mayhems have really gone through the roof on prizes and it might be a good idea for the next mayhem to get back to basics so the host isnt having to worry as much over getting all the money etc together. perhaps a return to the first wheres jayden contest where the grand prize was a single destroyer weapon. smaller prizes would take some of the stress off of the host i imagine and make the competition remain friendly as opposed to people knowing that the 10 minute head start the other guy got might be the difference in 100s of plat.

all in all a big to all the hosts weve had and all the contests. im sure they will continue to be great and hopefully improved by the discussion.

First off, I didn't have any problems understanding what you were saying, nor was I trying to correct your interpretations. It just felt to me that the RATs were in some form also HtH competitions, but that it was the participants and the rulings that were adding the time part to it. Whether or not you see that as well I don't know.

Secondly I got out alot from what you said, as I too have felt that the RAT contests tend to be less fun near the ends of the competition because unless people are on when it's posted or posted early/unfairly to others then people drop out. I have also been attempting to come up with a way to remove that feature from the contests and have it be more HtH format.
I'm sorry if you felt that I was trying to re-interpret what you were saying. That was not my intention, I was merely adding my observations of the data put forth.

Also I know that we don't force people to participate in the contests, but it would be nice to see others participate, namely those that haven't in the past.

Hello again everyone!

Since my last (possibly hastey) post yesterday, the posts have been very noteworthy. Personal defenses aside, reading down into what was said, the posts reflect that I am far from the only one with some of the following observations and I am VERY glad:
* there is a difference in the RAT and the HTH.
* both RATs and HtHs are fun!
* it would be nice to level the playing field on the RATs and people are working on that (Jayden: individual time limits)
* the Mayhems are not fair and they still serve a positive purpose (Ravenscroft: lets' get back to basics)
* the vision has gotten blurry (Ravenscroft: the prizes have gone through the roof and we get upset about the 10 minute advantage the other guy got)
* we want the Mayhems to continue
* we want the original spirit back
* we want to bury any hatchets that might be out there <pawns hatchet for Rum money>

I have a Mayhem ready to go for 2-10 (second quarter of 2010) and will plan on running it in May. I say plan on running it because if someone composes a new Mayhem that they feel will work, I will be very happy to have it run before the idea cools down instead of ramming my Mayhem through. If you come up with a Mayhem you want to run, please check with me first (someone else may have beaten you to the punch and simply not posted it on the forum yet) and we will put your Mayhem on the calendar!

I am stoked at the constructive nature of the last two posts! Prior posts had constructive points too and all of these points can benefit AW (the primary concern) and our alliance (important, but secondary) by being fun even if they are not fair.

I for one will be doing the following on the next Mayhem I host. I am still going to make use of my initial observations. I am going to take Ravenscroft's observation to heart, our members will be much less hurt by the unfairness and much more appreciative of the fun aspect if it doesn't mean the difference of 100's of platinum. The prize will not be a single destroyer weapon, but it will be something on that scale.

I just had a constructive thought about RATs: the longer they are, the more complaints they draw. Short RATs limit the oppurtunity to participate, but I think our guild is mature enough to say, "oh well I couldn't play this time but it sure looked fun, hope I can catch the next one!" For my part I WILL participate in the next RAT and I resolve now to have fun doing it even if Jayden does win and even if Raven does finish second!

Please shop at my store (link below)! If you have questions phone me using the link at my site!

HERE, HERE!!

I added some definitions to the bottom of the first post which I should have added when I first wrote it. Hind sight is such a wonderful thing,...

We should offer some sort of small bonus/incentive to first-time competitors...Like reduced entry fees (if there are any) or maybe 1,000, or a lockpick.

I could support waiving entry fees as an incentive for first time participants. A thread would have to be maintained where all existing participants and every new participant would have to be added. I do not want to get into paying people to participate; the next two paragraphs will explain part of my reasoning for this.

I hope I am wasting typing here in this paragraph, but something tells me this NEEDS to be said: "NO, you can not have your next entry fee waived if you have already been participated in Mayhems and NO, you cannot have your first entry fee refunded!"

I hope I am waisting typing here in this paragraph, but again I fear this needs to be said: "NO, we will not keep track of who got how much fee waived so that if later on someone gets a bigger fee waived you can ask for the difference to be 'made up' to you."

Waived entry fees would be something that Sponsors would have to agree on. This would start at an agreed date and would not be retroactive. People who have not Sponsored, offered to Sponsor or helped to Sponsor a Mayhem need not offer their opinions on this point.

One of the things I have been promoting throughout the Mayhems is forum registration: as of viewtopic.php?f=60&t=18646 we have adhered to holding a forum account as a condition of participation in the Mayhems. It continues to be the one standardized requirement.

Blondie brought up another idea well worth considering in viewtopic.php?f=60&t=19495 where she suggested that we have smaller (can I call them "sane") Mayhems and one each year where we blow the roof off. This is worth considering, but needs to be approached cautiously. Let's get the results of the current surveys (they end April 2nd) and then meet and talk about future Mayhems when we have everyone's responses and can go through all the cool ideas people will have posted by then. I would like to see at least Blondie and Jayden participate in that discussion. I would like to see someone like Mazer, Luna or Tres as a non-participant outsider involved to be a "voice of sanity" though this is not essential.

I'm sorry Blondie had to catch all the flak she caught, but thanks to her things being discussed and we are moving toward sanity and calm. Everyone has come to realize that the floor is open and ideas are flying and not accusations. This is awesome. This is how we frame our guild so that we move forward united (even if we dont agree to start with) and build an association we can all be proud of. Keep posting constructive ideas, keep talking about it. I would like to see a generalized agreement on some guidelines for future Mayhems so that we put the lessons we are currently figureing out to good use in the future. Lets make it work within our guild first; we may be able to throw it open to the alliance again soon!

NOTE: I added an option to one of the survey questions and that wiped out all the previous answers. I will not modify any more questions. To see if your answer got wiped out, look at the question box at the top of each survey and see if one of the answers has an asterisk next to it (letting you know which answer you submitted). If there is no asterisk, then either my edit caused the server to dump your answer or you didn't participate in that question yet.

We should also have a poll question to ascertain what time of the week is good for people to participate in a mayhem.

Weekdays, Weeknights, Weekends, Start Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Morning, Afternoon, Evening?

An availability poll does make a lot of sense. I know my game time is going to go into the toilet starting Monday...working six days a week until after the wedding...Yuck.

We will survey times soon. I have a series of 3-4 questions about time in mind already. I want to let the money and style questions fooat arount a while see what comes from that (though I think there is a clear line of general preference becoming clear).

We can see what is popular, and then figure out how to do that fairly. Even more important, we are finding out the many different things that can be made fun. There are so many cool things we can do with Mayhems! We don't have to find THE MOST popular and be stuck with that, we can figure out from all the discussions that are poping up how to do more things to serve a broader interest!

I'm stoked!