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[Salmeuk]

Before I start with the questions, here is a cheeky little advertisement for round 2 of Numbercurses, my own attempt at hosting a competitive succession fortress. Round 2 starts next week, probably Tuesday, and if you are interested or just want to watch, the game can be found here. Anyone can play!


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I'm curious what other people's opinions on the thread title are. I think by it's nature as a randomly generated simulationist-style game, DF thwarts attempts at a traditional 'race to the finish' style competition, as there really is no end game to race to. Opening the clown car is the closest thing we have, and that's not so much a goal as a punishment for greedy players.

So, competition would have to be a community-defined sort of thing, with arbitrary goals or procedures that produce a sense of fair-but-varied play. It needs to be fair, so that each competitor feels like it's worth pursuing excellence in, and also varied, so that a single rote procedure cannot dominate the competition. That is rather boring, though arguably many modern athletics could be criticized in that manner, and the competition comes from preparation and training, rather than unique strategy.

We could say that, for Fortress Mode, there are many settings and variables at play that would need definition, and some kind of measureable goal or achievement that could be used as a win condition. This win condition could be comparative in nature, as in my attempt with Numbercurses where players try to achieve maximum item counts, or it could be some game state that, when paired with a shared start between all players, would dictate the winner of the competition. Like, uh, being the first to mine 1000 gems. Or the first to raise a dwarf to legendary in all weapon skills.

For adventure mode, those same categories apply. The win condition could be the player who collects the most heads in a given time limit, or it could be the first player to kill a 300-year old dragon. Further modification of these conditions could be found in setting starting conditions, for the fortress or the adventurer alike. You can only use 20 dwarves max. Or, your adventurer must start as an outsider.

An example of a competition that seems very fitting to the nature of DF is the arena fights that are regularly hosted on the DF subreddit, though I believe they got their start on these forums. Players skill and equip a chosen arena denizen, who is then placed into a tournament bracket, and sent to fight other avatars for glory and the win. Most die. This is a particularly interesting notion of competition, where foreknowledge of game mechanics and the relative power of equipment and skill is the whole of player input, as they have no direct control over their avatar.


And, what about speedrunning? I think this might be the toughest style of competition to translate to DF's gameplay. As all goals are entirely arbitrary, one would have to look to 'speedruns' of Minecraft or Terraria to draw inspiration, though those games have the benefit of end-game bosses, even if in Terraria's case it lacks a clear ending. DF has no such boss, as so to define a speedrunning category would take cooperation and agreement from all interested parties, and frankly, I'm not sure speedruns will ever be a thing for DF.

Thoughts anyone? Does anyone have any interesting ideas for competitions within DF? Have you seen examples of competition from other forums, or past threads, that you might bring to my attention?

[delphonso]

Some notes on competition in games in general:
Most e-sports exist in the realm of PvP. I have trouble thinking of any game that could be done competitively that isn't just a speedrun. Speedruns as well fall under a hundred categories (tool assisted, bugs no bugs, any %, etc.) and each category is determined basically by the game they're played in.

DF isn't a good contender of this. Without a PvP mode (Arena battles as you mentioned are as close as we get without the insane multiplayer mod) speedrunning would be the primary candidate.

DF's end states aren't good for speedrunning. Reaching the circus isn't hard, so the record would be maybe 2 minutes and then improvement with better seeds. Killing X is alright, but would require using the same world for consistancy's sake. Killing nX (all goblins, all FB) is too uncertain to pull off - as historical figures are sometimes misplaced and unable to be found and killed. Building a "stable fort" or something equivalent is tough too, as that is hard to define.

Now that that's all been shot down, what are the options?

I'd say a Fantasy Football approach could work in two ways. Either a fort is played and players build a "team" of dwarves gaining points depending on what happens (skill increases, kills, tantrums, etc).
Or, it's Fantasy Football in that each player builds a fort and gets point on some agreed-upon achievements, which I believe is kind of close to your thread already.

Some other options might be:
Best of year 1: Each player builds a fort and cancels all jobs on the last day of Obsidian. Points awarded for overall happiness, number of dwarves, variety of food+drink, etc.

Topple the tower: All players have a copy of the same world. Build a fort and attempt to ruin the necromancer's tower nearby. First to accomplish this (by game calendar) wins.

Mountainhome Rush: Fastest to gain the Mountainhome rank wins.

Cavern Closer: First to seal all 3 caverns wins.

Battlemode (might require DFHack): train up a military for two years in Fortress mode. Export the fighters and pit your team of ten against other players' teams. (Highlander variant: send a single champion)

Artificer: Play until the first artifact is made. Highest value wins (most verbose gets second place?)

[wierd]

I could also see a more "open ended judging" type competition style, where an initial save just after embark is distributed, and all participants have X number years to "Do the most impressive thing"

[voliol]

Another subculture for speedrunning is the randomizer one. Basically, randomizers shuffle things around in a game according to some seed. There will always be some best/fastest seed, but no one want to play that seed over and over again, as that would defeat the purpose of randomizing. Instead, the randomizer community has these live tournaments, where multiple people get the same seed, and then compete (often while streaming) to reach a set of objectives. Sometimes, the objectives are as simple as ”complete the game”, but at other times the objectives are randomly chosen, either as sets where you have to complete all the objectives, or spread out in a (5x5) bingo-card, whoever getting a bingo first winning. Then, there are brackets and whatnot to decide the best of the best.

In the end, speedrunning randomized games is pretty different from ”normal” speedrunning. No one will have the muscle memory or knowledge to perfect a run, so while technical fastness is important, it is as much about pathing the game in real-time, making decisions and weighing risks against another.
Dwarf Fortress is not strictly a randomized game, but it is highly dependant on the initial seed, amd has many random elements. I think these methods of competition could be applied. The game is clearly open-ended, so random objectives would work better than just beating the game. Of course, some objectives could be ”late-game” such as ”kill x amount of clowns” or ”have x amount of holdings”, it depends on how difficult/long you want the runs to be.

[Cathar]

Competitive DF seems a bit far fetched, but if ice dancing can be competitive, anything can, but it depends what kind of competition you're looking for.

True competition would stack two (or more) players with the exact same start and would be given the exact same goal (reach hell first, defeat X civilization first etc).
Artistic competition would give the players X amount of days and their fort would be evaluated by extremely well vetted judges (which may be a tad hard in small communities where everyone know each other).
Actual, in game competition can take other shapes. One player make a fort, others make adventurers of enemy civs and try to rob it of their treasure/artefacts. Or try to invade them with a fort of their own. But this kind of game would be unbalanced, and unrankable by definition.

The main problem I see is how to prevent the use and abuse of DFhack or other third party tool in a competitive setting.

[Urist9876]

Abuse of tools can be an issue in any e-sport. Serious contests would have to be streamed. While not perfect, being able to see what is going on helps to prevent cheating. Time delays could be set up so other contenders don't see what the others are doing in real time.

Competitions thrive on viewers. I would like to see a "Keupo vs BlindIRL", but I doubt it will attract a huge audience.

[Luckyowl]

I got this idea for a Rping dwarf competition. The rule of game are as follow:

There are 12 players, and these 12 players will spilt into 2 teams. Each team will have 6 members. You'll be PMed a random dwarf and the random Dwarf's skills and profession. Once the rooster of both team have been picked. Then the game can start.

The game will go like this: every week a random new challenge will be given to both team. These challenges range from crafting cups to making the best dwarven cuisine. Once the challenge has been set Then each team must choose a representative to fight for them. Once both have picked their representative. The two representatives will face off by either crafting 10 craft item or cooking. When both are done. The items will be observed by the fortress broker, and the one with the most most points will win. The winner will be immune from elimination. Where as the losers must now choose one of their member to kick out.

Now keep in mind, although one of your member might've caused you guys to lose this time, you never know if the next
 Week challenge they might be a pro at. So you must choose wisely...and oh! If you're thinking, whatever let's just kick someone out, it's not like they are going to be punished. You can't be more wrong! You see... Once the losing team has chosen their sacrifice. They will be kicked out the fort...however you see...the exit isn't a walk in and walk out without a worried. Mhm...for you see said sacrifice must now run for their life through the danger room if they want to leave the fort. So dwarves better play their cards right if they don't want to go through the danger room!

Honestly I would do it, but I feel like I would do bad job at it. Especially collecting all the screenshots and also having shitty wi fi. So I wanna just leave this out for anyone who might feel inspired to do it.

Edit:: I also thought of interesting scenario on why these 12 dwarves are playing this game. I'm thinking that these 12 dwarves were kidnapped by Armok cultists and now are being forced to play this game to see A sacrifice the losers and B to recruit more members to their cult. But that's just my head canon on it.