Thread: Spellbee's Spooky Competition 2016

Congrats Vampires! I'm sure we all felt quite challenged by this comp & enjoyed spreading our lucid wings! Comps are such a great way for our community to come together. I was rather distracted myself but still proud of the achievements I did have.

i bet there will be a final score and a award ceremony by spellbee like always but i want to make my final statement now

So first of all i want to thank Spellbee for his time and effort to host this awesome competition. The scoresheet is a very useful and well organized tool! i also like the themes and the weekly tasks and all. thanks for the creativity

the fact that its the first time the competition is regular within a quarter year!

I really thank all participants that participate on an active and regular basis. without some good teammates and opponents a competition is no competition!
i like the way people treat each other here. there is always a warm and friendly tone. and everyone seems to not begrudge the others successes!

But there are also some things i didnt like:

this time i atleast had the feeling that there where less comments on DJ entrys and interaction between participants in this comp. compared to previous ones. might happen and to be hontest i was more preoccupied this competition too and was therefore less active (just posted my points without much talk around) but i really like the fact that one writes a long DJ entry and see that people read and comment it!

And the last thing is that really bugged me this time are the inactive people. i get fully that for some people the competition or lucid dreaming in general is more important or serious and for others just something to do when they feel boring. but signing in for the comp and then not participiate at all because "journaling is a bitch" or "counting points is exhausting" or just "nah changed my mind" is really a sucker move! the rules are known before one can sign up so every one knows the timespan of the comp. and what comes with it like DJ and beeing active and all. and i think its an motivation-killer to have those people in ones team. half of the werewolves team didnt participate and one can be the best lucid dreamer when the rest of the team dont do a shit and participate it just makes no fun because its a team event and not a one man army...
and there are several people

Spoiler for :

like:
OneUp
Raipat
Nfri
and some more

that signed in and didnt participate the second competition in a row!
and in my opinion those people should get banned atleast for 2 comps. and those that where inactive for the first time for atleast one comp. some may have a good reason (like sivason who already told with his first post that he is occupied with his wife) but those who dont have should not participate anymore! i think a little maturity can be expected and is required to participate.


this is my opinion! feel free to show me a different angle.

I agree with relaxanddream about banning, and I definitely should have posted in some DJs.
The biggest problem with the inactive is obviously the fact that it leaves the teammates completely alone. Even with sivason, we didn't stand much of a chance with day 11-23, we had 5 people that didn't post again and 1 person that only posted once. :/
Last week of comp pic attached.
Screenshot_2016-11-11-23-32-01.jpg

Well about the subjet of the last (extended) week, in the beginning people did not sign up for 3 weeks. Banning? Maybe a suspension for one comp, but I don't think it should be about punishment.

I think there is Nearly Noone that was very active the first two weeks and didn't participate completely in the third. In first instance I mean the people that didn't participate "at all"

Originally Posted by RelaxAndDream

...
less comments on DJ entrys and interaction between participants
...
inactive people
...

Well when it comes to having an online dream journal, I just don't think it’s for me. I wake after every cycle (if I can) and must always make the decision between spending a lot of time writing up things on my computer or getting back to sleep, It really sucks when I end up waking myself up to much, so I usually go for about 2-4 minutes of recall attempt, then power up the screen and start typing. Then rollover and hope I make it back to sleep.

But I think with the things I post online I usually think about people with less recall or less triggering, (I'm not sure it would have been possible for people to have less stability, or prospective memory then I did this time). With this in Mind, I post not only my synopsis of each dream, but particularly I post my Stupidest Misses and Best Moments.

When I look back on all my dreams the moments that stand out the most were jumping up to grab a chunk of cloud and have a snow fight, and smelling the girl-on-the-4x4's hair, and the flowers from another world. None of these were lucid moments, but I certainly wouldn't trade them for a hand-slapping failing to rub 2-5 second 'this is a dream moment'. Sure during my only truly descent Lucid one of the most enjoyable moments was noticing the beauty of the dreamscape before I went for my murky breath underwater last few points. But I can recall many moments from long ago non-lucid dreams where after I woke I was amazed by the beauty of those dreams. So for me having high quality recall with beauty or fun or even just problem solving or even fear is more important than scoring a 10 point hit. So I always hope to encourage people who are just starting out to enjoy the non-lucids, as you'll have a lot more of them than lucids. My dreams 5 out of 130 (total) just under 4% lucid cycles. I'm fine with 100 Lucids since join after 2 years and 3 days, not quite the 104.5 that would have been exactly 1/week for my time at dream views.

I think the competitions are great for spiking up a few extra lucids for the intermediates like me, but they are also great for getting up recall among the newbies.


As to participation, It would have been great if 3x as many people had signed up, even if many didn't fully participate. I only tried to encourage a few, probably should be something that is done in chat, after the fact I went there and many said they wished they had signed up so it could be a good place to get more people to take a try.

These competitions are really a blessing to me. When I first started on Dreamviews, I tried out the Tasks of the Month but had little success, though I could lucid dream and have some control, my lucid dreaming time was short and I would always accomplish the task in a way that it didn't count. These half-month long competitions allow for a greater variety of tasks and I can actually have some achievements during the competition time. It's been good motivation and now I am lucid dreaming again quite regularly, twice already since the competition stopped (before I started the competitions, it had fallen to 1/month due to low commitment).

I find Spellbee's competitions are a great tool to improve commitment to lucid dreaming, even more than tasks of the month (for me).

I wish I had read more people's dream journal entries, I was actually overwhelmed by the amount of people participating, thinking I could never read it all, I feel guilty enough for spending the time writing my own entries, lol.

I can understand why people have a hard time participating, with waking life in the way, and especially with dry spells being an obstacle. I have to always remind myself that lucid dreaming is my hobby, and that's sometimes hard to remember. If anyone asks me about my hobbies, I barely feel justified in answering "my hobby is lucid dreaming". In a job interview or application, I would be too ashamed to answer lucid dreaming to the hobby question. And maybe this is one of the obstacles that prevent people from committing more to this unique hobby.

Instead of banning people as a solution to the problem, for the following competitions, I propose that participants, in addition to choosing a level (beginner, intermediate, expert), they should select a level of participation (busy, active), so for example, Sivason would have been: expert, busy. Maybe this would help Spellbee balance out the teams.

Originally Posted by RelaxAndDream

there were less comments on DJ entrys and interaction between participants

signing in for the comp and then not participiate at all because "journaling is a bitch" or "counting points is exhausting" or just "nah changed my mind" is really a sucker move!

that signed in and didnt participate the second competition in a row!
and in my opinion those people should get banned atleast for 2 comps

Yeah, comments are always nice, no matter if during comp or not

Yeah I think those who decide to quit should inform about it, so others won't have to wait to see if they show up again and the teams can be balanced.

I think one comp should be enough like Fm said There's no telling when one gets their lucid spirit back up and the more participants the better.

Btw great job with the points RaD! You're a real competitionist aren't you haha.

The competition was great and I had a lot of fun. Especially that I managed to get a few lucids this time. Thanks to SpellBee and other participants!

Thanks Spellbeetle for hosting this competition! I had a lot of fun = )

@RelaxAndDream, I agree that people who ditch their teammates are scum! They should really rethink their morals :/ Though probably if they did that they wouldn't leave their comrades in the first place! AM IR IGHT

Speaking of the wolf. lol. (pun intended, if ginsan had been a werewolf... my puns are bad)

Nah man it was pretty pfunny.

Late as usual for this, but here it finally is...


Final Results

Intermediate:
1st - AndresLD +50 pts
2nd - DreamSwimmer +30 pts
3rd - cooleymd +15 pts

Beginner:
1st - Nazrax +50 pts
2nd - KingCobra +30 pts
3rd - ExothermReacton +15 pts

- - - - - - - - - - - Vampires - - - - - - - - - - -
Expert
obfusc8 - 922.5
dolphin - 530

Intermediate
Saizaphod - 250
Cookino - 220
OccipitalRed - 202
JadeGreen - 193.5
Elaineylane - 165.5

Beginner
Nazrax - 281.5
Snehk - 117
StaySharp - 106.5
Yukita - 17
Sozu - 15.5

Tier Bonus - 50
Total - 3071

- - - - - - - - - - - Skeletons - - - - - - - - - - -
Expert
RelaxAndDream - 978
ginsan - 42.5

Intermediate
cooleymd - 319
FryingMan - 296.5
spellbee2 - 261.5
Nebulus - 124

Beginner
KingCobra - 212
Elaol - 150.5
oneironautics - 121
DeDromer - 74.5
Gusto - 29

Tier Bonus - 45
Total - 2653.5

- - - - - - - - - - - Werewolves - - - - - - - - - - -
Expert
Sensei - 911
sivason - 91

Intermediate
DreamSwimmer - 389
AndresLD - 459
OneUp - 50
Nfri - 4
Raipat - 2

Beginner
ExothermReacton - 199
Lichi - 64
Zoob - 31.5
tblanco - 21.5
AURON - 1

Tier Bonus - 95
Total - 2318


And now, the moment you've all been waiting for... The final winner of the competition is...

The Vampires!

I put this in a separate post since I didn't want it tied in with the scores.

Originally Posted by RelaxAndDream

And the last thing is that really bugged me this time are the inactive people.
...
and in my opinion those people should get banned atleast for 2 comps. and those that where inactive for the first time for atleast one comp. some may have a good reason (like sivason who already told with his first post that he is occupied with his wife) but those who dont have should not participate anymore! i think a little maturity can be expected and is required to participate.

This has always been a problem for the competitions, though this one definitely had the worst active participation rate of any comp I've done. It's difficult to do any event like this that requires constant participation on a forum where people can come and go as they please, instead of at something like work or school, where there's consistency and at the very least face-to-face accountability. And really, there's no way to solve that problem - whether it's good or bad intentions, life just sometimes gets in the way and can mess up things. All I could've really done was maybe be better at PMing members as they got inactive to get at least some kind of update.

That being said, I do agree that there needs to be some kind of punishment for those that disappear for the entire competition without any kind of warning, especially for repeat offenders (fool me twice, you know...). So this is what I propose, and will implement if enough people think it's fair:

• For first-time offenders this competition - no penalty. This was never discussed as a punishment before, and it wouldn't be fair if they got penalized for not knowing how serious we are about lack of participation.
• For repeat offenders this competition - 1 comp suspension. I don't care what circumstances happen the first competition you miss - by the second one, you should know not to sign up if you can't handle the whole thing.
• For any offenders in future competitions - 1 comp suspension. Now that we've defined this penalty, everyone should be aware of it, and therefore should provide some kind of update to their status or risk being suspended.

Also, my definition of "inactive" would be 7 straight days without a single post/PM with a score report, or at the very least a short note as to why they haven't reported. So don't worry, you won't get kicked out for just missing a day or two. And if you think your delay will be really long, just make a quick post saying that you're still active and you'll be fine. So even though the consequences sound severe, it's incredibly easy to avoid if you actually have any interest in the competition whatsoever.

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Instead of banning people as a solution to the problem, for the following competitions, I propose that participants, in addition to choosing a level (beginner, intermediate, expert), they should select a level of participation (busy, active), so for example, Sivason would have been: expert, busy. Maybe this would help Spellbee balance out the teams.

I actually really like this idea, at the very least for keeping all the inactive people off of a single team. I'll definitely add this in next comp, though I still think that some kind of punishment is probably the most effective way to nip this in the bud.

I'm also working on some modifications to the team-scoring algorithms to try to lessen the impact of a teammate disappearing. I'm still working on it though, so expect a post on that in the next day or two.

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

...now I am lucid dreaming again quite regularly, twice already since the competition stopped ...

Yes I have just awoken from my 3rd Lucid (and second many minute long one) since the contest ended.
So the real question is what punishment should there be for Sensei for only extending the competition 1 week , didn't he know 3 day weekend was coming up
I would easily be over 400 points by now

In the one I just woke up from: I searched thru 2 streets, 3 trains, 2 buses and finally before entering a locker room, I did 3 reality checks before entering just to make sure I was still dreaming, hand checks (stretch, push, count all failed), body checks (warmth, pulse) failed, finally I noticed a reflective surface (reflection check) and thought 'well if I look like that, they'll never be able to pin it on me', I even managed to change my appearance some more.
I blame Obama and his new 'bathrooms for all' for my Lucid's ending, let's just name it 'nightmare on 113th lucid street'.

Note to self: if you can change your own appearance why not just change one of the many gals on the trains/bus etc.

CONGRATULATIONS VAMPIRES !!

Great job keeping your teams together Relax and Dream and Sensei,, guess the first week of vampire attacks took out alot of players ..

Thanks for putting this together Spellbee, was definetly challenging.

@ dj comments, i've been super anxious about elections last few weeks, and i come from sweden, maybe people were distracted?

Alright, so prepare yourself, there's gonna be a lot of math in this post. I ran this competition's score reports through some different totalling methods, trying to find the fairest method that both reduces the team penalty for teammates not reporting, while still maintaining some decent incentive for actually reporting your score and remaining simple enough to understand so there's no incredible score surprises.

You can see the results of my methods in this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

First off, I'd say that if every member of the comp had full participation and was in the proper tier for their skill, there shouldn't be more than a 5-7% score difference between the first place and last place teams. So that's the basic guideline for deciding if a scoring method was feasible.

---

Current Method - Sum
Nightly Total Determined By: Adding all the members scores together each night
Formula for Cell B15: =SUM(B3:B14)

Pros: Simple to understand, and just feels natural
Cons: Lack of participation can cause drastic deficits in team scores.
Example of Method Flaw: In this competition, the Vampires beat the other teams by 400/800 points, despite the fact that they only had one member in the Top 5 scorers for the beginner or intermediate tiers, and not having the top scorer in the expert tier. This enormous deficit was mainly caused by missing members on the other teams, including 5 of the 12 members of the Werewolves not posting anything after the first week.

Outcome (without Tier Bonuses):
Vampires - 3021
Skeletons - 2600.5
Werewolves - 2220

% Difference of First and Last Scores: 26.5%

---

Average Method
Nightly Total Determined By: Averaging (arithmetic mean) the reported scores for each team.
Formula for Cell B15: =AVERAGEIF(B3:B14,"<>0")*12
Note: I multiplied by 12 to make the totals more comparable with the other methods. Since it is a constant number across all teams, this doesn't affect the ultimate outcome.

Pros: No penalty for non-participating team members. Equals the playing field for teams of different sizes.
Cons: Could create lack of incentive to post low scores.
Example of Method Flaw: Say I scored 0 points on a night, but the average from the other 11 members on my team is 15. Adding my 0 points would drop the team average to a 13.75. Thus, it is more advantageous for me to not post my score to give the team an extra 1.25 points (a full 15 point difference if using the *12 method I used in the spreadsheet).

Outcome (without Tier Bonuses):
Werewolves - 4603.95
Skeletons - 4044.09
Vampires - 3903.85

% Difference of First and Last Scores: 15.2%

---

50% Average Method
Nightly Total Determined By: Adding the scores for each member per night, replacing non-reported nightly scores with a value at 50% of the team average.
Formula for Cell B15: =SUM(B3:B14)+COUNTIF(B3:B14,"")*(AVERAGEIF(B3:B14, "<>0")*0.5)

Pros: Improves slightly on the previous method's lack of incentive con.
Cons: Still may be tactically advantageous to not report scores. Also will penalize more for unreported expert scores as opposed to intermediate or beginner scores.
Example of Method Flaw: Say I scored 0 points on a night, but the average from the other 11 members on my team is 15. Instead of adding my 0 points and keeping the team score at 165, it is more advantageous for me to not post my score, causing my score to be replaced with half the average and giving my team an extra 7.5 points for the night.

On the opposite side, say an expert doesn't post their score. Typically experts average around 50-60 points per night, but if they didn't report, they would be replaced with a 7.5, causing about a 50-point hit to their team.

Outcome (without Tier Bonuses):
Vampires - 3462.42
Werewolves - 3411.97
Skeletons - 3153.79

% Difference of First and Last Scores: 8.9%

---

50% Team Tier Average Method
Nightly Total Determined By: Adding the scores for each member per night, replacing non-reported nightly scores with a value at 50% of the average for the rest of their teammates in that tier. In other words, a non-reported score for a beginner would be replaced with 50% of the average of the other beginners on their team.
Formula for Cell B15: =SUM(B3:B14)+(COUNTIF(B3:B4,"")*(AVERAGEIF(B3:B4," <>0")*0.5))+(COUNTIF(B5:B9,"")*(AVERAGEIF(B5:B9,"< >0")*0.5))+(COUNTIF(B10:B14,"")*(AVERAGEIF(B10:B14 ,"<>0")*0.5))

Pros: Same as the previous, but also removes con of penalizing higher tiers for the naturally lower scores of lower tiers.
Cons: Can cause a point deficit if all members of a single tier don't report.
Example of Method Flaw: On night 18, both the experts on the Skeletons had a blank score, initially causing a #DIV/0 error on the spreadsheet and (more importantly) causing the them to have a 0 average for experts, significantly impacting their score.

(After reviewing the spreadsheet, RelaxAndDream actually scored 0 points that night, but because of how Excel/Google Sheets works, that caused the score to appear blank and therefore not be included in the average calculation. To remedy this, I gave RelaxAndDream a trivial score for the night, 0.00001, which allowed it to calculate the average but have no impact on the scores, which were rounded to 2 decimal places. If implementing this method, this will have to be used in the future for all "reported but zero" scores to differentiate from "non-reported" scores.)

Outcome (without Tier Bonuses):
Vampires - 3286.54
Skeletons - 3261.75
Werewolves - 3114.46

% Difference of First and Last Scores: 5.2%

For the record, of the options listed, I think this one is the best as far as weighing pros and cons goes.

---

50% Overall Tier Average Method
Nightly Total Determined By: Adding the scores for each member per night, replacing non-reported nightly scores with a value at 50% of the average for the rest of competition members in that tier. In other words, a non-reported score for a beginner would be replaced with 50% of the average of the other beginners in the competition, including those on other teams.
Formula for Cell B15: =SUM(B3:B14)+(COUNTIF(B3:B4,"")*(SUM(B$3:B$4,B$18: B$19,B$32:B$33)/COUNT(B$3:B$4,B$18:B$19,B$32:B$33))*0.5)+(COUNTIF( B5:B9,"")*(SUM(B$5:B$9,B$20:B$23,B$34:B$38)/COUNT(B$5:B$9,B$20:B$23,B$34:B$38))*0.5)+(COUNTIF( B10:B14,"")*(SUM(B$10:B$14,B$24:B$28,B$39:B$43)/COUNT(B$10:B$14,B$24:B$28,B$39:B$43))*0.5)

Pros: Same as previous, but also removes con of one team missing all the members in a tier.
Cons: Incredibly convoluted scoring method. Also, having an exceptional score can inadvertently benefit the other teams as well.
Example of Method Flaw: Despite being in the beginner tier, Nazrax outscored all but 4 of the intermediate members. On night 11, Nazrax scored 70 points, bringing the average beginner score that night from about 7.29 to 15.13. Thus, unreported beginner scores would be replaced with a 7.56. So though Nazrax scored 70 points for the Vampires, he also inadvertently scored about 15 points for the Skeletons and about 23 points for the Werewolves due to their missing people.

Outcome (without Tier Bonuses):
Vampires - 3335.61
Skeletons - 3177.43
Werewolves - 3118.79

% Difference of First and Last Scores: 6.5%

---

So that's my comparison. If you guys have any other methods you want me to try plugging into Excel, let me know. Another thing that I didn't try was only applying these scoring methods to "inactive members", instead of "inactive nights". So some of the cons involving advantages for not reporting a particular night could be circumvented by only applying the compensated scoring for members who have been AWOL for longer than a week, and not to just single instances of missing scores. However, I greatly imagine that implementing that in the live competition scoresheet would be incredibly difficult, if not mostly impossible. Still, if it makes the competition fairer for everyone, it's a challenge I'm willing to tackle.

TL;DR - Current method sucks, here's me trying some alternatives.

Millennial Method:

Everyone receives a participation trophy,

Then we all riot in the streets because we didn't get two of em

Originally Posted by spellbee2

=SUM(B3:B14)
=AVERAGEIF(B3:B14,"<>0")*12
=SUM(B3:B14)+COUNTIF(B3:B14,"")*(AVERAGEIF(B3:B14, "<>0")*0.5)
=SUM(B3:B14)+(COUNTIF(B3:B4,"")*(AVERAGEIF(B3:B4," <>0")*0.5))+(COUNTIF(B5:B9,"")*(AVERAGEIF(B5:B9, "< >0")*0.5))+(COUNTIF(B10:B14,"")*(AVERAGEIF(B10:B 14 ,"<>0")*0.5))
=SUM(B3:B14)+(COUNTIF(B3:B4,"")*(SUM(B$3:B$4,B$18: B$19,B$32:B$33)/COUNT(B$3:B$4,B$18:B$19,B$32:B$33))*0.5)+(COUNTIF( B5:B9,"")*(SUM(B$5:B$9,B$20:B$23,B$34:B$38)/COUNT(B$5:B$9,B$20:B$23,B$34:B$38))*0.5)+(COUNTIF( B10:B14,"")*(SUM(B$10:B$14,B$24:B$28,B$39:B$43)/COUNT(B$10:B$14,B$24:B$28,B$39:B$43))*0.5)

Originally Posted by cooleymd

Millennial Method:

Everyone receives a participation trophy,

Then we all riot in the streets because we didn't get two of em

Millenial just ran the comp for you. I'd be a little more kind to us M's.

Originally Posted by Sensei

Millenial just ran the comp for you. I'd be a little more kind to us M's.

To be fair, I don't consider myself a millenial. I was born in '94, which I believe is a year before the "Millenial" generation really started. Plus I can't operate a Snapchat, I think dabbing is stupid, and I prefer to keep my genitalia in for Harambe.

Originally Posted by spellbee2

To be fair, I don't consider myself a millenial. I was born in '94, which I believe is a year before the "Millenial" generation really started. Plus I can't operate a Snapchat, I think dabbing is stupid, and I prefer to keep my genitalia in for Harambe.

I totally lost respect for you man....



D*CKS OUT FOR HARAMBE BOYZ

Originally Posted by spellbee2

To be fair, I don't consider myself a millenial. I was born in '94, which I believe is a year before the "Millenial" generation really started. Plus I can't operate a Snapchat, I think dabbing is stupid, and I prefer to keep my genitalia in for Harambe.

Most people consider millennial to have started 80-85. There are very few that consider them to have started in 95. I think that the idea is that you were an adolescent near the start of the century. I personally see a major difference when looking at people born in 87 and 85 (I have friends of all ages). Anyways... saying that you aren't a millennial because you don't like the pop culture of the Millennial culture would be like saying you aren't white became you don't like McDonald's. You don't have to fit a stereotype (and say dumb things like times I just said) to belong to your group. There is a lot of diversity within our group and the media is always gonna focus on the negative. Here is a good video about it. (Yes, I know it is a 11 minute video, but it is worth it, and you can actually listen instead of watch, so... yeah, watch/listen to it).

Spoiler for lots of stuff:

A better video, but longer

Me and you probably relate a lot more than me and ginsan or you and ginsan because we have different memories and grew up in different socio economic groups.

"i hate people who can go to sleep as soon as they shut their eyes, tht shit takes me 3 hours, 700 position changes n a sacrifice to the gods"

Wow this guy know the solution to my problems!! Sensei, do you happen to know which god(s) and/or goddess(es) he prays to and what kinds of rituals he uses? I tried a bunch and it doesn't work