AC XI

[Daze]

Altador Cup XI sign ups has begun - Colosseum

New this year:
Join a team before sign-ups close on 6/06!
Lower caps/RanksTNT Board - ACXI changes

The Altador Cup schedule is as follows:

5/16-5/24 Tournament pre-event
5/25-5/31 Team sign-ups and practice rounds begin.
5/25-6/06 Team sign-ups are open.
6/01-6/29 Tournament play takes place.
6/30 Tiebreaker played (if necessary)
7/1 Y18 Altador Cup champions are announced and the Prize Shop opens.


Low Quality Links:

Yooyuball:
http://www.neopets.com/altador/colosseu ... uality=low

MSN:
http://www.neopets.com/altador/colosseu ... uality=low

Shootout Showdown:
http://www.neopets.com/altador/colosseu ... uality=low

SS:
http://www.neopets.com/altador/colosseu ... uality=low


Kiko Lake Spotlight

All is Fair...?

After the initial celebrations surrounding their spectacular win in AC X, the team has been dealing with a lot of suspicion and criticism from a large portion of the public, who are convinced the players were using special magic to boost their performance. The players have repeatedly denied this claim, maintaining that all of them had undergone the routine tests set down by the Altador Cup Committee, and that no irregularities were detected. However, with rumors that the Committee is bringing in new regulations to clamp down on unfair practices during the tournament, it remains to be seen how well the team fares this year.

Staff Tournament results

Forwards
Player Round 1 -- Round 2 -- Round 3
Agog 1460 --- 1101 --- 1340
Cherry Blossom 1083 --- 1540 --- 1960
DJ Sally 521 --- 583 --- 612
DJ Skellington 1200 --- 1210 --- 756
Gingersnap 865 --- 910 --- 1045
Lawyerbot 982 --- 1060 --- 1130
Senor Malo 1315 --- 1295 --- 1320

Defenders
Axe Bond 990 --- 1007 --- 1012
Country Queen 1570 --- 1920 --- 2180
Dark Lord 1080 --- 1135 --- 1185
Kikocat 1130 --- 1185 --- 2100
Max Mutant 1320 --- 1345 --- 1305
Stroopwafel 810 --- 1260 --- n/a
The Clash 1084 --- 1281 --- 976

Goalies
Beast Master 1011 --- 883 --- 1017
Binary Supagoo 1555 --- 1690 --- 1910
Ehlo Froyo 1300 --- 1820 --- 1300
Ppod 804 --- 717 --- 880
~~~~

Best score round 1: 7220
Best score round 2: 8020
Best score round 3: 9490

Last edited by Daze on Sat Jun 25, 2016 2:35 am, edited 5 times in total.

[Siniri]

Yay and boo -- sums up my feelings about the AC.

"Special magic" -- you mean of the darkest kind? I hope the new regulations actually work, but they always seem to implement "new regulations" each year, and the ACGs manage to find a workaround within the first few days.

Though I'd personally love for one of those new regulations to be even lower caps.

[Pickles]

Sign ups are open. I joined RI, as usual. It said I got the 8-year prize, but a new prize showed up in my inventory instead.

AC Themed Luxury Lounge

No clue how much I'll even be able to play this year, but breaks from unpacking will probably be a necessity, so maybe I'll get a few games in.

[Daze]

You've become a Roo Island supporter. Thanks for believing in us... we won't let you down! A team background is now in your inventory.

Roo Island for me too Pickles!!

Nice prize! I got Altador Cup Through the Ages for 2 years.

ETA: LOL...We both signed up at the same time.

[Pickles]

ETA: LOL...We both signed up at the same time.

Haha, yeah.

VERY interesting new tidbit:

This year, team sign-ups and the practice round will begin on Wednesday, May 25th. The practice round will last until May 31st and the team sign-ups will end on June 6th.

Start by joining one of the 18 teams that are competing in the Altador Cup this year. It's easy to do. You don't have to join a team if you just want to practise Yooyuball, but you won't earn any Prize Shop points, be able to play any of the other games included in the Altador Cup, or have a chance of winning one of the cool Altador Cup trophies unless you're playing for a team. New this year, be sure to join a team before sign-ups close on 6/06!

...I'd like to see the bots get by that. They won't be able to keep creating dummy accounts and joining the same team once their accounts are locked down.

FINALLY!

[Zilary]

Wow, the logos really haven't changed year after year. Uhhh...Team Maraqua because I like ocean things.

[Pickles]

Though I'd personally love for one of those new regulations to be even lower caps.

Looks like your wish may be granted! Another new tidbit:

The Altador Cup has returned for its 11th annual version, and it's brought some new rule changes we wanted to discuss. The Altador Cup Rules Committee has taken a good look at player comments from the past couple Cups, along with its own data, and made a few changes to the structure and functionality of the tournament. Now, some of these will be immediately obvious (like sign-ups, seriously do it now!), some will be unveiled throughout the tournament, and some will be more invisible to you guys, but we believe will help create a better experience overall.

One of the changes we made that will affect you guys the most is to the daily score caps, and the ranking system! Now, we know some of you are against the idea of lowering the maximum amount of game scores you can send per day – but hear us out! We looked at how players were doing in the personal ranks over the past few years and decided a change up to the points required for each level was in order. The new rank levels will make getting past rank 1 much more attainable for most users, but still keeps the users who reach All-Star to an elite group. Now, in order to account for the rank values changing by so much, we had to lower the score sending limits per day. It was originally planned out so you could reach All Star by sending the maximum amount of scores for one game, for a certain number of days, accounting for users needing to miss a few days or not being able to send the maximum scores every day. So, we kept the same idea, but obviously with a lower value for reaching All Star, that means the scores you could send per day had to come down, or you'd be able to reach All Star by playing only a few days, which obviously isn't ideal and unfair to the players who send scores each day.

As for more on the changes to this year's cup, be sure to read the Rules page and the updated FAQ, and be sure to keep checking for more updates from us on what else is in store!

[Siniri]

Hopefully the cheaters will be curtailed a bit by the sign-ups closing, but I suspect they'll just create enough shell accounts before sign-ups close to last through the tournament... But if JS's new measures catch them, it won't matter how many they create. But they'll have about a week after the tournament starts to keep creating those shells... (Which I think is fair; you want real people to be able to join even if they get to the party a few days late...)

Yay for the lower caps! I read that the new ranks have been discovered through the coding of the page, and it's 10k SOSD/MSN games to reach AS now. No idea what that means for the caps, but hopefully I can max YYB and SOSD most days this year. The lower caps should help mitigate the damage the cheaters can do, because there will be less of a discrepancy between what they can easily do with their bots and what more real human players can manage.

I don't want to end up on the same team as one of the cheating groups, so I'm going to wait to sign up until closer to the tournament's beginning, once people figure out where those groups are going... I don't think I'd want to play much if I ended up on their team.

[Blue]

As usual, I am torn between Brightvale and Roo, but "Squeaky" Tressif is still with the Roo Island... and I already have siggies made for Roo Island... Leaning to Roo.

After scanning all the teams, I noticed that Shenkuu has a Lupe now, too. Pink Lupe by the name of "Timu". Hmm. "Timu's" weakness is scoring. No thanks. Still like Squeaky.

I also noticed that most of the players are still the same after all these years of AC. I wonder if the gameplay will be slower since 11 years is getting a bit old for pro athletes.

I suppose I should sign up before I forget...

ETA: I joined with Roo, too.

Welcome back! For your 10 years of dedicated play you have earned the prizes below:

Both the background and the foreground were in my inventory.

[Pickles]

Taking a break from the craziness of this weekend, I found this in the editorial.

TNT, I love the Altador Cup and always will, but the new rank requirements and estimated daily maxes are honestly offensive. Allstar is supposed to be hard to achieve. The caps shouldn't be lowered to appease people who want all the glory without actually putting in the effort. Allstar players used to represent the dedicated elite, and now, reaching allstar won't feel like an achievement at all. ~ joeythesmurfy
So, we're really sorry you feel that way! But it's not being lowered so people can earn All Star without putting in the effort - it still takes playing the maximum amount of one game for at least 20 days (25 if you're only playing Shootout Showdown or Make Some Noise). Reaching All Star by playing only Yooyuball will take about 42 hours... We feel like that's a pretty serious time commitment and effort to put in. And it is definitely still the dedicated elite. With the new levels, it changes the amount of people who reach All Star by a VERY small amount (about 1% looking at performance for the past 3 Altador Cups). We looked at how the ranks were being reached and decided it wasn't really the distribution we wanted, so we moved it around a bit. It has a minimal change on the level of people who reach All Star, but spreads users out between the lower ranks. Again, we're sorry you're upset, but we hope you change your mind as the Cup goes on.

Looks like the caps on SOSD and MSN will be lower point-wise than YYB.

However, the bit that they shared (about ranking in general) was interesting to me.

[Daze]

With 15 minutes to go, the lag has started!

ETA: Game 1 Roo Island Vs Brightvale

[Siniri]

Woot woot! Ready to play! Any word on the new caps yet? And does anyone know the minimum scores?

[Daze]

The caps/minimum scores:

Yooyuball: 46 wins
Make Some Noise: 401 games - 3000 points
Shootout Showdown: 401 games - 1 goal
Slushie Slinger: 86 games - 285 points

[Siniri]

Already at rank 2, and I've only played for about an hour today. Now back to work; hopefully can max SOSD and YYB today.

Edit: rank 3. 8 YYB left to reach the cap, and then I'll SlSl and SOSD until I hit the SOSD max. (I already reached my own physical max of 50 MSN -- and that might have been too much.)

Edit 2: still rank 3, but YYB maxed... Now to SlSl/SOSD. Should hit rank 4 soon, I think.

[Blue]

Wow! You go, people! I have yet to play...