INTERACTIVE BATTLE TOURNAMENT#2 - Build Info and Feedback page

Hi Everyone,

IBT#2 went very well, and we had allot of interest...but now it's time for some Information on the build, and for you to provide some vital feedback.

Largely we achieved the three main objectives, I wanted out of IBT#2:

• Share the Steem - One of the reasons I'm even interested in crypto is it has the potential to spread the wealth. I want lotsa people to win some Steem not just the same one person everytime.It's your upvotes that power it, by upvoting everyone is contributing to sharing wealth.
• Steemians interact - The reply capability of Steemit gives people a freeform way to participate in the same story. In some cases Steemians are virtually battling each other, just for kicks haha..
• Steemians have fun -  Relax about making posts, Upvoting and making more Steem for a bit; release the inner geek and maybe win some easy Steem in the process of playing IBT.

I think we can add some more great objectives for IBT#3  if any one has others please share, as I'd like to keep building the list out and making sure the underling principals are strong and guide us to success and prosperity for all those who play in IBT

The making of IBT#2

We all know the graphic provided by @spaceginger this was created after I approached him, impressed by his posts and art skills - he is flat out, but managed some how to make this for us and I love it! and thinks it has a place - part of all IBT posts.

As you know  @spaceginger also helped to create our wizards tower. This started as a simple concept picture I sent to him:

...but developed into the tower here (now totally destroyed), but we all knew and loved it while it stood:)

All IBT's start off as simple concepts in my head and are mapped down on paper, explored/expanded and largely designed from beginning to end before I even make the first enrolment post.

Here's some more notes I made for clues to be dropped in IBT2#

I won't bore people to death with how I work out the whole thing, but yeah many hours of work go into the concept design before the posts are made.

The Wizards puzzle

I knew from previous games I have some really smart Steemians, that to achieve my objective of sharing the wealth I would need to build in many games of chance. This is where the 50/50 battles comes in and gives everyone a chance of a prize (thus not just Steemit comp specialists always stealing the booty).

Early I mentioned the  order of the loot dropped would be handy, but I think this clue like many was missed as people got into the action and the fun; I later re-iterated this during the wizards battle, where I intended to keep improving the conversations with the wizard giving people more and more info. Thus my objective, creating more interaction with the story.

I decided fairly early in concept design the Wizard would need to be something special, and came up with the idea, what if you had to attack/guess a sequence to take him out. 

Still, what would the sequence be? true I could have just flat out told the sequence with each loot drop in the lead up, but again, this would be way too easy. I needed people to put 2 and 2 together or through process of elimination and interaction (or by simply ongoing guess) work out the puzzle eventually.

I knew the  wizard would be a computer Wizard, so I started to leak a few bits here and there that he might be a bit of a different wizard..

I worked out to keep people from guessing too quickly the attack combo I needed was around 7 points of attack.

Anything less and someone could randomly guess too easy..

So I googled computer networks 7 levels...or something of this nature and got the 7 ISO layers of the network. This is the foundation that all modern computer systems run on, they are:

• Layer 7--Application layer.
• Layer 6--Presentation layer.
• Layer 5--Session layer.
• Layer 4--Transport layer.
• Layer 3--Network layer.
• Layer 2--Data Link layer.
• Layer 1--Physical layer.

Once I had leaked enough to elude a computer wizard, I tried to use the word network a bit more, so that when people read the loot drop notes, they might pickup the use of 'networky/computery'words here and there.

Now I needed to assign each  layer some how to the attack points on the wizard. This was done by dropping the word in each of the loot drop notes. Players spotting the words (knowing the wizard was a computer wizard) and knowing that the order that the loot drop was important had everything they needed to work out the sequence. They just needed to map the ISO layer against the attack points.

For instance the first loot drop note told us to attack the wizards feet and make it a Physical attack (this is the Physical layer), its the first layer of the ISO model, it was also the first attack point on the wizard. The note also mentioned to make your way up. It was implying, make your way up the ISO layer. It was deliberately worded vaguely to throw people to think they simply needed to make their way straight up and attack all 7 spots moving from the feet up. This wasn't true, they needed to attack based on the order the ISO layer words appeared in the notes of the loot drops (that was the extremely difficult bit).

Here is my draft that shows the correct sequence, it's based on the ISO layer words appearing in the loot drops:

The only word not dropped in a note was Datalink, this made the 7th point to attack - If you had worked out that within each note a word from the ISO model was involved, that physical started at the wizards feet, you simply needed to look at the next loot note, look at the word, and realise as mapped against the ISO layer, that was the second area on the wizard to attack (you would need to have mapped them against as they appeared in the notes), you just needed to continue this pattern on and on. 

By the time you had reached the 7th point to attack, the only ISO layer not used in any note was the Datalink, and the Wizard pretty much well told you that was his knees.  This would have confirmed by attacking in the order the notes dropped, following the ISO layer up, you had to finish with knees

Very very tricky, but absolutely solvable.

In truth I wasn't sure if it would get solved at all (this is how hard I made the puzzle - with just weak clues holding it together). I was some what looking to jackpot the prize to keep people interested and coming back.

I hope this explains well enough for those players who spent lots of time trying to solve the puzzle. I am a bit tired, but hopefully I have explained it well enough here tonight..any issues I'll try to explain with some sleep and in further depth. But I'm sure if you look at my concept picture and look back at the notes it will make sense now.

Feed back for IBT#3

What is it that you guys want next?

I'm currently thinking a mini campaign map, where you enrol and have to make your way across the map/progress by cooperatively taking out little guys along the way. I'm not sure the mechanics yet, it could be a dice, it could be, the majority who choose what to attack ends up the way you all go (like a vote here for A or B), but if you dont win the battle, you all start back at the beginning of the campaign map.

Don't worry there would be no difficult puzzles along the way, until the end boss round (and I wouldn't make it as hard).

Do you have specific feedback? is there something else you would like in a IBT#3, please post your ideas here

Cheers

lordnigel