The Annual Grand Grindstone Event Idea

[Aldotsk]

I sent Sindl and Kage a PM regarding this since I was at work and I wanted to have an idea that's something of an annual Grindstone event that could be bigger than just standing outside of Central Thanalan - but make it into more of arena style like Wolves Den, and this is what I wrote on the quote to them (quote below). Please share your thoughts if anyone's also interested and want to see this happen.

 

If I didn't PM you and you were involved in Grindstone as a staff member, please forgive me - the only few people who talk about it a lot was Kage more than anyone and he slipped the name of Sindl so I thought he was involved too!

 

 

I wanted to see if you two want to do something big for an event like World Cup style by forming up a tag team battle like Wolves Den with limit of 2-4 people per team. This would happen once a year and winner would win like a really big pot. Possibly a month event , where it'd be preliminary then quarter finals then semi finals then finals. In the end top three teams will win the money but highest rank wins it big.

 

I have some ideas to customize a coliseum , so it'll be indoor base and audience are only allowed to talk through linkshell (which means they need one linkshell spot open just for this) and the competitors and referees and the narrators (yes the narrators) would be the only one to talk. I also wish to set up a stream if no one minds too.

 

If you like the idea, please let me know.

 

As I've said, I've got some idea to set up the arena and I think it might work. It's a big prize than Grindstone since it'll be an annual/seasonal thing depending on how popular it is. I know Grindstone is a very popular subject to many people out here, and I think it will work. Like a team battle to earn money.

[Nyorai]

Sounds like a great idea! Maybe it's something that the champions from each of the previous Grindstone Champions could only participate in? (or say every 3, 6 months or something)  

 

I was thinking something similar along the lines of the above at least. Not sure how much Sindl gets on these forums but I know there are quite a few threads about the GS lately - I'll be sure to tell him to have a peak at this one!

[Warren Castille]

Tag-team battles? TAG TEAM BATTLES?

 

YES. YES. YES. YES. YES.

 

[Aya]

Will they be hiring? ^^

[DoomsdayClock]

I will team Iron with....Aya...and Lady Edda.

[Aldotsk]

This Saturday, I'll be trying to talk with most Grindstone staffs to work this out. Until then, keep checking this thread!

[Edda]

I will team Iron with....Aya...and Lady Edda.

Sure, if you want to lose.

[Leanne]

Leanne likes tagging, cause it means she can finally be an archer without people actively trying to destroy her bow...

[Meta Xi]

Leanne likes tagging, cause it means she can finally be an archer without people actively trying to destroy her bow...

Spear throw from across the map, no scope style, right at your bow. You cant escape it.

 

On a more serious note, this sounds awesome. I want in!

[DoomsdayClock]

I will team Iron with....Aya...and Lady Edda.

Sure, if you want to lose.

Pssh..naw. See the game plan is Aya fights while holding a tray of cookies..and when the enemy knocks it from her hands Edda goes into rage mode and runs forward spinning her arms like whirling dervishes...we have this.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

I will team Iron with....Aya...and Lady Edda.

Sure, if you want to lose.

Pssh..naw. See the game plan is Aya fights while holding a tray of cookies..and when the enemy knocks it from her hands Edda goes into rage mode and runs forward spinning her arms like whirling dervishes...we have this.

 

But what if they were going against Franz teamed up with a giant cake?

 

In all seriousness, this could be interesting. I'll see if I can make it, when there's a planned day/time.

[Aldotsk]

Good News is Sindl seems to be interested too!

 

I'll be speaking with him/her about how I and Sindl could work this out to make it interesting. I've already arranged a place for the arena, so it'll happen around November through December. This is like World Cup style, which means it's a long term project. 

 

I'll definitely be posting up soon. Chances are that I want the teams to be team of 3-4 people so everyone can gain something.

[DoomsdayClock]

Good News is Sindl seems to be interested too!

 

I'll be speaking with him/her about how I and Sindl could work this out to make it interesting. I've already arranged a place for the arena, so it'll happen around November through December. This is like World Cup style, which means it's a long term project. 

 

I'll definitely be posting up soon. Chances are that I want the teams to be team of 3-4 people so everyone can gain something.

Anelia simply must team with Iron.

[Sindl Arahn]

Tag-team battles? TAG TEAM BATTLES?

 

YES. YES. YES. YES. YES.

 

 

This was my response as well, complete with the Canadian flags.

 

I really need to pay attention to these forums. >.>

[Aldotsk]

Okay!

 

So I've worked on first page of the tournament, and the rest of combat sequence will be uploaded tonight. Sorry for extreme  delays. Here it is!

 

Click Here for first page rules!

[Aldotsk]

http://ffxiv-roleplayers.com/showthread.php?tid=8692&pid=117220#pid117220

 

The event is finally up. Took a while to finish working on the guide. But feel free to sign up and message me when you have enough people!

[Aldotsk]

So apparently  I am informed that some people were not pleased with the system I've created into this fight. I'd appreciate it if you would leave feedbacks instead of trying to step back away from it.

 

I'd prefer this to be a very big event and I want this to happen and if people are going to show negative side about it, then it's going to be a discouraging for any event that I might host.

 

If no one is going to ever try to say anything then what's the point of trying to make any events work, right? So please leave a feed back and we can work it out instead.

[Warren Castille]

The rules feel needlessly complex in the face of the Grindstone's compared-rolls system.

 

Zone-based positioning seems like a giant headache.

 

Alternate dimensions are questionably canon.

 

Healing and magic are not Grindstone-friendly and further make the event feel like the name is tacked on.

 

Arbitrary limits on how many people can be attacked at once.

 

Complex Attacks Of Opportunity that frankly don't make a lot of sense, even as someone who played D&D3/3.5 a lot.

 

Unstated rules on how healing works.

 

Rules on Summoning an Egi, but no rules stating any differences between them or how they work or why you would change or how you have any HP left because the rules state expressly you transfer them all.

 

No movement rules.

 

Healers being unable to cast attack spells make no sense considering they begin with Stone/Ruin.

 

That all having been said, it is clear you're working hard on this. That's evident! The fluff bits (I liked the "no throwing peanuts" rule) add some flavor and you're obviously trying to make this all it can be, but the extraneous stuff doesn't really feel Grindstoney to me. I was initially expecting larger-scale combat with multiple people, tag-team style.

[Berrod Armstrong]

/finally takes a proper look at the thing

 

 

Okay! So here's my two gil:

 

Most of the Grindstone's success is owed to it's simplicity. I would know, because there were nights when I'd have to let my character step up and run the entire thing by himself, including overseeing and begging people to heal for him. It was smaller then, 10-12 participants a week, but it was manageable because in the end, the combat system was a breeze to monitor. It made things go quickly, smoothly and USUALLY resolved in a manner that catered to people's attention spans. 

 

Bells and whistles and fancy rules are all great -- I mean, all this looks good on paper -- but in the end you want something simple and functional that ends up being -fun-, not work. There are new players in the Grindstone who get nervous about the current rules as simple as they are. It's only natural that a large fraction of people are gonna balk at this. 

 

As I said, the concept is wonderful -- and it's clear that you've but a lot of thought and work into it, but in the end, simple is best, especially for a large scale event. 

 

Flavor wise, I think a 'Grindstone' event should feature grindstone style fighting. Even if it's a tag team thing, keep the same rules and let the teams handle the rest. Three hits per team member, or some such. Organize a tourney chart and tear through it in a few evenings/weeks.

 

Simple is good!

[LiveVoltage]

I would have to agree with Warren and Berrod. I ran the grindstone about a weekend before last and it was incredibly unnerving and difficult for me. I thank the twelve that the rules weren't complicated.

 

In short, if this is going to be an annual version of the tournament, it should be the exact same as the regular grindstone, just with teams though.

 

I do think that if this is going to be 4v4, they should all choose one person they will fight first OOCly and both group agree to that then until that fight is finished, then they can go around and gang up on the opposing team. This rule would prevent a single person from the oppisite team being singled out at the begining and being ganged up on.

[Warren Castille]

I do think that if this is going to be 4v4, they should all choose one person they will fight first OOCly and both group agree to that then until that fight is finished, then they can go around and gang up on the opposing team. This rule would prevent a single person from the oppisite team being singled out at the begining and being ganged up on.

 

These sound like agreeable terms. Having everyone lock-on makes it a lot less chaotic in the scheme of things. With the move/fight/counter system I'm fairly sure that a group of 4 melee would statistically annihilate anything opposed: Form a wall and march into the backlines. Counter anything that attacks (and rangers can't!) and then get free swings on anyone moving past. It breaks down to something like 3 swings per person per round, but my napkin with my doodles is at home.

[Aldotsk]

It seems like without asking too much question, everyone seems to agree on the part regarding the combat complication, theme complication and overly worked ideas.

 

I'll see tonight of how much needs to be fixed.

 

I'd appreciate Grindstone veterans to fill me in about this, but please if possible - organize the suggestions by listing them if possible.

 

(On the other note, I did rush this to make this event push to November base only because I had serious IRL stuffs that I didn't really ask people what they want from the tournament and just worked on it to be pretty creative but I guess that was not what they wanted.)

 

 

EDIT: From what Inessa is saying I guess it'll have to work with who will fight who through OOCly and agree to it until at the end, it'll be a gang beat down.

 

So this is how I am getting from people's feedbacks.

 

• 4v4 - to be OOC agreed term basis 1v1 fight until last-man standing in team match 
  
• Grindstone style of a simplistic combat fight. Non-Movement or Counter-Attack or non-sense
  
• No-Healing/No-Complicated Technicality - applying to overly creative non-canon stuff
  

 

 

But I suppose everyone has 0 problems with the arena's layout settings, right?

 

- I really do not want to do these tournaments at Central Thanalan right outside of Ul'dah. It made no sense to me when it is a big annual tournament and it does deserve better settings.

[OttoVann]

I KNEW there was a thread about this or something from weeks ago. Sware on me mum. V I N D I C A T E D.

 

Also qt-chan I love you m8 but these rules confuse me. I am not an avid DnD player and I suck at RPGs that are tabletop style. The current Grindstone / Fightclub rules are all I can handle personally. Ignoring the fact Otto doesn't combat anyways.

 

I also am concerned that its bigger than 2 v 2. 4 v 4? Phew. I couldnt handle that if I wanted to

[Aldotsk]

So I suppose we'll have to stick with Tekken Tag Tournament by going with 2vs2 or 3vs3? If people do prefer 2vs2 instead, please let me know.

[Warren Castille]

The Arena setting is fine, I'd only worry about it becoming TOO crowded. You've seen how many people show up to the Grindstone weekly. Throwing spectators and everyone else into a basement might make it a bit tight if we're also using pillars and whatnot.

 

There is a laaaaarge amount of self-policing that happens in the Grindstone. Overseers are tasked with watching multiple chains of long emotes and attempting to track what's a hit, what's a defense, and what's a defended hit (posting scratch damage on a winning defense) and what's a no-sell defense (being hit but ignoring for the sake of attacking). Players have the logs in front of them and I've never had an issue in any of my twenty-some fights about who was winning against who.

 

The biggest problem you're going to run into is speed I think. Sometimes having two fights who take their time can make a 30-second match in game-time take 30 minutes. to resolve. You're going to get a mix of all sorts writing at once and it can get muddy if you wind up with two speed-posters replying to one another and finishing ten rounds before someone else's first punch lands. To that end, I propose you use team initiative so it looks something like this:

 

Team A "Captain" rolls initiative. Team B "Captain" opposes it. Team B wins initiative.

 

Team Member B1 writes his post and makes his roll.

Member B2 writes post and rolls.

Member B3 writes post and rolls.

Member B4 writes post and rolls.

 

Team A members 1-4 roll their defenses. They post, then post their attacks, then roll one at a time.

 

It would, to my not-thinking-too-hard brain, reduce the odds of people getting left behind or missing out. We'd be fighting the equivalent of musket firing lines, sure, but there's room for imagination. I think it would be best to keep things orderly, but this isn't my event. Just pitching in ideas.