Altador Cup XVI (2021)

[Pickles]

The Altador Cup started today. Sign-ups began last week. Probably best to sign up soon if you haven't already, as signups will close in a few days.

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The games are super buggy and difficult to mess with - enough so that TNT has a known bugs board. I'm signed up for Rooligans again, but I'm not sure how much I'll be doing this year. Meh. I've only managed 150 SOSD games today because of the 10-second "invalid session" required delay. Granted, I had very little free time today, but still. Ugh.

[Siniri]

I decided to join the home team this year. I'm not liking most of the new changes to the games, but I did get a new HS in SlS (over 1k). I have to play in FF, and the games overheat my computer, but I was able to max SOSD and get another half-max across the other games.

[Blue]

I re-upped with Roo for two reasons - it is one of 2 teams with a Lupe, and maybe more important... I didn't want to make any new AC siggies

ETA: Cannot play Yooyooball. Nope. Took forever to load. Then would not start. Meh.

[Pickles]

I did absolutely no AC yesterday. I might get some in this evening, but we'll see. I'm completely, utterly, totally exhausted. Company is now gone, but I've been running long hours for the last week.

[Blue]

Staff Tourney is live.

I went with my team from last year:
SenorMalo, Gutterfoot, KikoCat, VanDoodle, and Binary Supergoo.

If any of the new players shine brightly, I might swap them in.

[Pickles]

I used the same team for mine - Senor Malo has performed well in the past, but had a few not-the-best rounds last year, but I'm sticking with him.
*** You selected Binary Supagoo as star player ***

Maybe I'll attempt some actual playing now. Maybe. So sleepy.

[Siniri]

I trust you guys, so I'm using the same team. Kikocat for star player because... There's no reason.

[Blue]

Kikocat for star player because... There's no reason.

Because she's awesome.

I actually went with SenorMalo for no reason.

[Pickles]

Well, today is a Bye day. I can use the break. I'm still behind from missing more than half of the first day and all of the second, but I've been making some small progress towards catching up. We'll see how things go. I *might* be able to make it to All-Star, but...it's going to be rough. The whole no-shift-keys thing is driving me crazy, as it's requiring a lot more mouse work for me.

I've given up on playing the best I can on Slushie because so many of the customers are too real...they can't make up their minds! Also, the inputs being eaten is super frustrating. Ah, well. It is what it is. I'm still giving it an effort, but I've kinda stopped caring what color slushie to give them since half the time it ends up being wrong.

[Siniri]

I made it to rank 11 yesterday. I can play SOSD on my phone while multitasking, so I've been trying to max that, but some days were better than others. I still haven't figured out how the second per prize point works out for each game for me under the new system. My high score in SlSl is over 1k now. The other three games are much harder.

[Pickles]

I pushed myself today, and did more catchup than I was scheduled to, because I loathe Rank 9 soooo much...and I hit it right not too far into today, so I made it to rank 10. I still have a little over 100 points to catch up from those first two days, but maybe I'll be there in the next day or so. With SOSD taking so much longer and the other issues with the games, it's made it very hard this year to do it.

Staff scores are waiting to be posted, so hopefully we'll see those by tomorrow. Can't make changes to your team anymore, though, so that's something?

[Siniri]

Staff scores are now posted! I think we all got the same: 5295 NP (and twice as many prize points). Seems pretty good. I don't have time right now to find JN's page with all the results to see if we should change our team. Star player was a newbie, so none of us could have gotten that right.

SOSD is now much slower than YYB. If you can play YYB, it's the fastest game per prize point. (I calculated it would take me over 3 hours to max SOSD, maybe closer to 3.5 hours, while it would "only" take just over 2 hours to max YYB.)

EXCEPT: My friend discovered yesterday that you can now hold down the key on the right side of the MSN screen* while you tap the left-side key! This is hugely game-changing because you can reach the minimum so much faster, and you only have to use one finger to tap, which means you can alternate between six fingers for the tapping (unless you can tap with your thumbs and pinkies, in which case, you'll have more fingers to choose from). I'm going to time how long it would take to max MSN using this new technique, and I'll edit it in here. It's probably faster than SOSD; I don't know about vs. YYB. One thing you could do is alternate between YYB and MSN -- after every 3 games/11 minutes of YYB, play 30 of MSN. (Sadly, SOSD is the only one that works on my phone. But that's nice for getting extra games in on the sly throughout the day.)

(*Be careful with this. I don't really register which key is listed on the right side of the screen; I focus on which hand I'm going to use for the keys. But sometimes the "Q" might be on the right, so that's what you'd hold down, even though it's the leftmost key on the keyboard. Maybe it's just me who was a little confused by this dichotomy?)

Edit: I was able to get 40 MSN games done in 15 minutes (vs. 91 SOSD in 42 minutes). So here are my calculations:

46 YYB (552 prize points): 129 minutes (It would take 96 minutes to earn 408 prize points from 34 games)
401 MSN (401 prize points): 151 minutes
401 SOSD (401 prize points): 186 minutes (on my phone, full games, which only take 2-5 seconds longer than a minimum-score game if I'm paying attention, though the time is based on not so much, since that's usually how I play; I multitask while drinking water, getting steps in, listening to videos/audiobooks, etc.)
86 SlSl (516 prize points): *picture Sandlot ghost story* For-E-VUH (seriously though, I'll try to calculate it later, but not today, because I'm aiming to triple max, except not quite, because I don't want to end on the ugliest shield and have to look at it all day tomorrow...)

[Pickles]

We did not have the best scoring team. Senor Malo and Kikocat let us down big time, which is highly unusual for them. Senor Malo was 3rd for his section (but more than 500 points lower) and Kikocat was 4th for her section (and more than 400 points lower than #2). I'm switching Senor Malo out (albeit reluctantly, as he's one of my old favorites to cheer for) for Agog, who did massively better than last year and last year was fairly consistent. Scrappy, on the other hand, started strong last year and dropped off after that, so I'm keeping Kikocat for now. We'll see how things go after round 2...

I can max out on SOSD in about 2 1/2 hours or so...waiting until the 50 (sometimes scoring as much as I can, and sometimes just making one goal, depending on how I'm feeling) and bypassing the "close" button after submitting my score by just clicking on Start Game - clicking anywhere closes the score submit pop up, so it's not necessary to make that extra click. I've been doing some YYB games, as I can play them, but I get bored with it after 5-10 games, so I don't do much more than that a day. I think it MIGHT be faster than SOSD for me, but...
On a side note, there is an overarching pattern to the "randomness" of the goalie in SOSD. I've played enough games now to notice it.
I've played a whopping 5 games of MSN and that's enough for this year. The scores don't go up as fast (I'm starting to wonder if it's another 'inputs getting eaten' thing). I might try the trick you posted...or I might just not. With an injured pinky finger on one hand, I'm avoiding things that are more likely to stress it.
Despite my dislike of the 'inputs being eaten' on Slushie, I'm still playing it because for some reason, it's my favorite game, even if it's the slowest.

[Blue]

Not sad about the scores. I followed Pickles in swapping out Senor Malo for Agog. Seems prudent. Agree about keeping Kikocat.

Cannot seem to choose the star player this round, though. If I remember, I will check back later this week.

[Pickles]

Well, I caught back up yesterday, doing some extra. Today, I pushed to get ahead, because in all likeliness, I won't be able to play on Monday due to family in town. So...I'm now Rank 13 and should easily get 14 tomorrow, provided I have the time to. I stayed up late tonight to keep Mr. P company while he was catching up on some things.

I will admit, being able to stack multiple of the size-up power-ups on at the same time on YYB is quite entertaining. I got 3 once on top of each other, and my players were GINORMOUS. It was quite entertaining. Once, my goalie scored with a Faerie Yooyu, because of the size-up. Watching that Yooyu hit dead center middle of the court on the side and go bouncing in the opposite arch into the goal was quite entertaining. One time, when I had two size-up power-ups on the board and a freeze power-up, I specifically went for the freeze just so I could make sure to get both of the size up ones...just for giggles. (Okay, so I might be a bit slap-happy at this point.)

....I clearly need to go to bed.