Other a cereal murder that shoots people with cheerios - task 5 (trial 4, Night 8)

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Bass

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Adding a few more clarifications:

You cannot trade any food you bought for money
If you have less than $20 before your bet (but not $0), you must bet everything you have.
If you aren't feeding this round and know what you will bet on, you can PM me your bet in advance.
You can only bet on one horse. Choose carefully!
 

Bass

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Alright, I have a sufficient number of PMs, so we will now move on to the betting phase. The rules should already be made clear in my previous posts. Just PM me which horse you are betting on and how much. Hopefully we can get this done in 24 hours if not less, though again in case some of you are busy, the deadline may be extended by another day if enough of you request it. I sincerely hope that we do not need to though.

EDIT: Extending the deadline for another 16 hours, or ~4 PM CST. Too many idlers. Also, it seems some of you didn't realize that you could bet more than $20, so I wanted to clarify that you can in case you wish to change your mind. I want to move this task on already. If you still idle, you will automatically lose $20 and suffer a harsher punishment should you go on to lose the task.
 

Bass

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Betting is closed!

The races have now started. And wait... woah! What's this? Xx_bitchin_m0tocross_equine_xX has immediately taken the lead. But quite a big lead, in fact. All of the other horses looked quite tired in comparison. As the owner of this racetrack, I am pleased to see that most of the people betting today had such good taste!

And thus, Xx_bitchin_m0tocross_equine_xX won the race in near record time. John Lemon and Beethoven the 9th happened to cross the finish line at the exact same time for second place, followed by Spartacus and STALLION in third place, also finishing at the same time.

With these results, the wealth of the players is as follows:

EARTHWORM $160
zorbees $160
Ace Emerald $140
porygon3 $140
Pidge $139
Fishin $109
Ditto $100
forks $100
StevenSnype $100
SkullCandy $100
Quagsires $100
billymills $90
DaLetterEl $80
ssbbm $80
coolking49 $80
Mastadi $80
Gmax $21

For the record, one person did idle.

We will now move on to the final phases of this task! Please finish up feeding in 24 hours. Again, I will be generous with extensions, but I want to get things moving as fast as possible.
 

Bass

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The second betting phase is now over. This is how the race went down:

After the starting gun is shot, you notice that John Lemon, Spartacus, and Beethoven the 9th rush rapidly towards the finish line. Xx_bitchin_m0tocross_equine_xX and STALLION however were quite tired and couldn't keep up. As the race continued, Spartacus also began to slow down, despite his valiant efforts. It was then between John Lemon and Beethoven IX. Although fairly close, John Lemon slowly continued to increase his lead. Beethoven tried hard, but not hard enough unfortunately. The horses thus reached the finish line in the following order:

1. John Lemon
2. Beethoven the 9th
3. Spartacus
4. Xx_bitchin_m0tocross_equine_xX
5. STALLION

So our final monetary totals are:

1. zorbees $281
2. porygon3 $280
3. billymills $180
4. Ace Emerald $161
5. EARTHWORM $160
6. Pidge $139
7. Ditto $120
8. Fishin $118
9. DaLetterEl $110
10. forks $100
11. StevenSnype $100
12. SkullCandy $100
13. Quagsires $100
14. coolking49 $80
15. ssbbm $60
16. Mastadi $60
17. Gmax $1

Therefore, the winner of this task was zorbees! Well done.

On the other hand, the losers of this tasks were coolking49, ssbbm, Mastadi, and Gmax. I originally intended to eliminate one more player here, but as you can see there was a tie for the bottom fifth spot. I don't want to spend at least two days in sudden death to decide the fate of just one person, so consider this a holiday present, SkullCandy, StevenSnype, forks, and Quagsires!

As for Gmax, ssbbm, Mastadi, and coolking49, it is time for them to be punished. As promised, it will be considerably more harsh and humiliating than in the previous task. Your avatars are to be changed to the following:



For one week.

And with this, the second task is finally over, and the third task is about to begin!

The current playerlist is as follows:

1. zorbees
2. porygon3
3. billymills
4. Ace Emerald
5. EARTHWORM
6. Pidge
7. Ditto
8. Fishin
9. DaLetterEl
10. forks
11. StevenSnype
12. SkullCandy
13. Quagsires

Your third task will place you in a hypothetical Easter party. I am an atheist, and before that I was Jewish, so this might be a strange scenario coming from me, but I thought it would fit quite well. Anyway, in this party, you are all sitting at a dinner table. The table is circular, and you are seated clockwise according to your number. So the 1st player on the playerlist (zorbees) will be sitting next to porygon3 on his left and Quagsires on his right. porygon3 (the second player) will have zorbees on his right, and billymills on his left, and so on. You should be able to get the idea.

After eating a terrific meal, you are each given a special present for desert: A giant chocolate easter egg! But just when you thought everything was all fun and games, the host of the party makes an eerie laugh.

"Kekekeke!"

The host then unmasks himself. It's The Joker!

"I hope you guys enjoyed your meal! However, it wouldn't be fun without an explosive finale. I have placed bombs in FOUR of the eggs that are in front of you. But that's not all! You will be trapped in this room for up to four days. This entire room will blow up if you fail to get out by then. But of course, if you are bold enough to eat at least one egg and survive, I'll be happy to let you go!"

And there you have it. After The Joker left, the other staff in the room provided some more detailed rules:

  • The item of interest in this task is your chocolate egg. You are able to carry an arbitrary number of eggs at any point in the task.
  • Eggs are treated as "stacks" for the purposes of this task. The egg at the top of your stack will be the one you received most recently (see below). Everyone starts with one egg.
  • This task will be divided into four cycles. During each cycle, you can pick from one of the following actions available to you:
  • The first action is of course to eat the egg at the top of your stack. Eating an egg without a bomb in it will ensure your survival. Eating an egg with a bomb in it however will eliminate you instantly. Failing to eat a single egg before the task ends will also ensure your demise, and you will be punished more harshly for this. If all four bad eggs are eaten before the final cycle, the game ends immediately, and everyone else survives. The person who eats their egg first and survives will get an advantage in the next task.
  • You can pass on the egg at the top of your stack to one of your neighbors.
  • You can pass also pass on an arbitrary number of eggs to your neighbors, though this follows a slightly more complicated procedure. For example, if A had B to right and C to his left, if A passed an egg to B and wanted to get rid of more eggs during the same cycle, he must pass his next egg to C instead of B. If he still wanted to pass more eggs, he would then pass the next egg to B again, and the cycle repeats until you reach the bottom of the stack.
  • If two people pass their eggs to the same person, then the person who PMed me his action first will have their eggs passed first, and therefore his eggs will be farther down the stack of that user's eggs.
  • Another action is blockading one of your neighbors. This will prevent your neighbor from passing any of his eggs to you. In the case of multiple eggs mentioned above, this would stop the chain entirely, so at most only your top most egg can be passed if at least one of your neighbors is shielding you.
  • Finally, you can check if at least one of the eggs in your stack contains a bomb. You will not be told which one. I will be granting an exception to zorbees, for his exceptional performance in the previous task. One time only, he will be allowed to determine the exact egg(s) in his stack, if any, has a bomb. This action has the lowest priority, so it will take all the eggs you receive that cycle into account, as well as ignore the ones you successfully pass.
  • When a player eats an egg (safe or not), his seat at the table his vacated and your neighbors may change accordingly. Any additional eggs he was holding will automatically be passed to his neighbors, starting with his left. This passing will follow the same scheme as the one mentioned earlier, but it will ignore the effects of blockades.
  • You know that all the bombs at the start of the task are placed as far away from each other as possible (so in other words, there are 2 to 3 safe eggs between each bad egg).
  • Each cycle will last 24 hours, with the exception of the first cycle, which will be 48 hours. You will be given results after each cycle (ie any unsuccessful passes, who passed eggs onto you, final size of your stack, etc), but you will not be told what any of the other players have done. This is up to you to infer.
  • Important new rule: You may NOT eat from your stack during the first and second cycles. I have explained the reasoning for this change in post #63 of this thread.

So to summarize, these are the actions available to you, in order of priority:

1. Eat (highest priority)
2. Blockade PLAYER (where PLAYER is one of your neighbors)
3. Pass EGG[n] to PLAYER, where n is the number of eggs (starting from the top of your stack) you are passing, and PLAYER is the first player you are passing to.
4. Check for bombs (lowest priority)

Remember, you can only do one of these per cycle, if that wasn't already clear!

That's it for the explanation. Cycle 1 for the third task starts now! In order to give you time to formulate strategies, you will have 48 hours to send me your actions by PM (according to the format above). Good luck!
 

Bass

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Made a few edits of things I forgot to mention:

1. If all 4 bad eggs are eaten before the end of the last cycle, the task ends immediately with every remaining player at the table surviving.
2. The person who eats and survives first will get the next task advantage.
3. Everyone starts with one egg.
4. When someone leaves the game (win or lose), if you originally passed eggs to this person, they would instead go to the person next to him. Additionally, all passes that are a result of people leaving have priority that depends on how close they are to the person being passed to.

Also, I will remind you all that Ditto's suggestion is perfectly valid. Just keep in mind that the 4 who blow up will suffer a punishment that is worse than the last one, and I don't think anyone wants luck alone to determine that!
 

Bass

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I have an important announcement to make regarding your third task.

I want to make one thing clear here. When I design each of these tasks, however complex they may be, I want to try to make the rules flexible enough for people to try a variety of different strategies. In a nutshell, the the outlines for the tasks themselves are just a starting point. Each task is exactly how the players choose to make it. That was the design philosophy I have stuck with in regards to all the tasks I have given you so far, including this one.

Unfortunately, the announcement I am about to make will slightly contradict this philosophy. Let me cut to the chase: I am very disappointed that a majority of the players so far have chosen to forgo all skill that could have been applied in this task and decided to instead rely entirely on luck by eating on the first cycle. When Ditto became the initial spark to it all, I did not expect that many people to follow suit, but alas, I was wrong. Because of this, a large percentage of the players who had chosen to eat would have immediately survived due to luck, while the few players who didn't in favor of developing interesting strategies would be put in a difficult position. Yes, this competition is about courage. But eating on the first cycle is NOT an act of courage. In fact, it is the opposite. It is actually the fear of having to exert an acceptable amount of effort and ingenuity to win, which is what I had intended with each of these tasks to begin with.

Despite this disappointment though, I am the one to blame here. I regret not considering this scenario while designing this task, but thankfully only a day has passed since the task has began, so what I am about to say should not be that big of a problem for the players.

Anyway, let's get right down to it. In light of this situation, I have spoken with a few knowledgeable associates for some advice, and they agreed with what I am about to propose. I am going to restart the third task. It will still be the same, but there will be one important change to the rules: Eating will be forbidden on the first and second cycles. This change should hopefully eliminate the luck aspect that I have complained about, and actually force you guys to make this task more interesting. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this may cause, and I was a bit hesitant to do this at first, but I believe that it is necessary. While this is only one new rule, it will change the nature of this task for many of you, so I will make the deadline 48 hours from this post to submit your actions to me. This should be an adequate amount of time, though I will accept any actions you have sent me previously, as long as they were not eating. Again, I apologize as this will extend the task slightly, but hopefully it is for the best. As always, good luck!
 

Bass

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All results for cycle 1 are out. If you tried to block anyone, I merely noted that you blocked successfully, not whether someone actually tried to pass anything on you and failed.

Cycle 2 starts now. It will end in 48 hours, or until everyone PMs me their actions.
 

Bass

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Because this is important, let me explain the priority of egg passing a little more.

When multiple eggs are passed, each individual egg gets passed at the same time. What this means is that when you pass, you will always pass the top egg of your stack, even if you are passed another egg. That egg would then be added to the top of your stack. If you passed. If you were still passing eggs that round, then the egg you just received would be the next in line to be passed. If you anticipate receiving eggs, feel free to say you are passing multiple eggs in your action PM, Pass EGG[n] to PLAYER. Since there are 13 eggs, n can be 13 at most. If you end up being able to pass less than the number of eggs you specify, you will simply stop passing once you run out of eggs. Just keep in mind the nature of passing multiple eggs, which is described in the original task 3 post.
 

Bass

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Cycle 2 of the third task is over. Cycle 3 starts now, and ends in 48 hours or until I have all PMs in. By the way, giving up all hope and idling just because of a bad cycle is a foolish thing to do.

I have sent all results PMs for Cycle 2. If you got nothing, that means your action was successful and your stack remains unchanged (also if you checked and you got no PM, assume the same result as in Cycle 1).
 

Bass

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Cycle 3 is over.

The table has finally shrunk! zorbees valiantly eats his egg before everyone else. It was safe! He will now move on to the next task, as well as win the advantage.

SkullCandy was next. Unfortunately, the egg he ate had a bomb! He then exploded into several pieces. As he is now eliminated, his punishment will be pending.

Several other players ate their eggs too, but survived. They were:

2. porygon3
3. billymills
6. Pidge
7. Ditto
8. Fishin
10. forks
11. StevenSnype

Thus the following players are left:

4. Ace Emerald
5. EARTHWORM
9. DaLetterEl
13. Quagsires

Just a reminder, the priority of eggs being passed this round is determined by the distance which the original passer was from you in the table. Use this information wisely for Cycle 4. It will end in 24 hours. Let's finish it up, people!
 

Bass

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Cycle 4 has ended.

Ace Emerald, after putting in a lot of preparation in the end, finally decided to eat an egg. And so did EARTHWORM. He was holding three eggs, so he knew that at least two of them must have had bombs.

The two waited it out. As time went by, EARTHWORM's condition was unchanged. It appears that the egg he ate was safe! Upon realizing this, he quickly leaves the dinner table. Unfortunately for Ace Emerald, his egg had a bomb in it, so he rushed to the medicine cabinet for laxatives, in hopes he will poop out the bomb before it explodes. Either way, he will be punished. As Quagsires and DaLetterEl had no eggs to eat, they were trapped in the dining room, and so they died in the explosion.

And with that, the third task is now concluded, with the following players advancing!

1. zorbees
2. porygon3
3. billymills
4. EARTHWORM
5. Pidge
6. Ditto
7. Fishin
8. forks
9. StevenSnype

Meanwhile, DaLetterEl, Quagsires, SkullCandy, and Ace Emerald are eliminated. Their punishment will be more involved this time around. As the theme of the previous task was the holidays, I want you guys to write an essay of at least 500 words in length about what the holiday of Easter (or Passover if you prefer) means to YOU. Even if you celebrate neither, you must write something meaningful, ie why you think both holidays are bs. For failing to eat a single egg, DaLetterEl and Quagsires will be required to write a short extension (at least 250 words) about the importance of food for these holidays. I will not accept cheap troll submissions (ie "Bass sucks" 250 times). Failure to submit this to me via PM within the deadline (1 week after this post) or plagiarism will result in an even harsher punishment that you cannot escape from. When I have them all, they will be posted here for the public to see.

Now I will briefly provide some more commentary for the third task. Hopefully, you have all read my previous post on the matter, as it discusses important game design philosophy issues that were taken into consideration. I would normally save such commentary for the postgame, but I felt it is necessary to discuss this now for your own sake.

First of all, I will discuss the bombs. The following four users started off with bombs initially: porygon3, EARTHWORM, SkullCandy, and DaLetterEl. This wasn't really an accident. In order to conform the bomb placement to the rules that I have written, they must be placed at least 2 spaces apart from each other. As you guys may have realized, starting off with a bomb puts you at a large disadvantage. DaLetterEl and SkullCandy performed rather poorly in the second task and really only made it this far because of their luck. Because these two were given bombs, so were EARTHWORM and porygon3. These two did rather well in the second task, so while this might seem unfair (hint: it is, but remember the disclaimer about fairness I put in the rules of this competition? Yeah.), I also thought it would have been boring to give the remaining two bombs to other users who have been playing rather poorly, as then there would be no incentive for the good players to come up with any strategy.

Speaking of which, I was still disappointed that a majority of you did not put the effort in to come up with a good winning strategy. The few of you that did ended up performing very well though. I won't throw any specific names, but it should be obvious who did. The point of this task was to reward the players who collaborated with each other to the fullest. Otherwise, even with the rule change that I made at the beginning of the task, your fate would mostly be determined by luck (with the players who performed poorly in previous tasks having a much more uphill battle.) I will save the details of what strategies were performed by the winning players for the postgame, though. I just wanted you all to understand that putting an effort into these tasks will not only make them more fun, it will also make them easier for you to win. I suggest that anyone who has been riding on luck so far to heed this advice. You might make it further into the competition with luck alone, but you will never win, and your punishments will be worse for it.

With that out of the way, I must congratulate the 9 individuals who have made it this far! I will be rather busy tonight, so details for your fourth task may not be up until tomorrow morning or afternoon. Until then, feel free to discuss your take on the competition so far in this thread.
 
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