GGG: Why your 48h Cutthroat was unsuccessful. (Long Read)

Like I said in my first post Hilbert, if GGG had an actual plan on how to make Cutthroat fun I would be on board.

But just look at the history of Cutthroat, after years of working on it (on and off) it's still just the same boring snoozefest it always was.

GGG's efforts at this point just seem wasted and if you (not just you, but the other two guys in this thread aswell) could look past your personal desire to have a cutthroat league you would realize that GGG just aren't capable of making it happen.

Like, just think about what you're saying, the core game is a mess, it really is at this point, but you guys somehow think that if only GGG worked on something that is not the core game that would somehow turn out to be better and more enjoyable for everyone?

It's a pipe dream and naive in the extreme.

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SlixSC wrote:

So really what you are saying is that, this really gives us no reason to believe that the current playerbase just isn't interested in Cutthroat, because for some reason all the people interested in Cutthroat just happened to not have time to sign up for the 48 hour cutthroat.

I'm very interested in CT, but i didn't play in the 48hr race. I had time. I've done plenty of these rough-draft CT races, i'm just waiting for the real thing at this point.

Not saying it would be any good, or even popular. ;) But i do want to play perma CT.

Then we need real testing not this "Look we needed 2 weeks for 1 tiny change"

If 90% say freeze is broken and 10% say they had fun, then you need to fix freeze.

Real testing means non version patches for 2h CTs or CTs with pregenerated characters.

If you fix early game issues, there are game issues and CT will be reduced on 2 basic Trapping strategies.

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SlixSC wrote:

Complete and utter nonsense.

Take the 48 hour Cutthroat - 1600 characters created over the span of 2 days... 2 DAYS.

On the very same day they ran an Endless Ledge race which had more characters created than the 48 hour cutthroat in just an hour... 1/48th of the time.

So really what you are saying is that, this really gives us no reason to believe that the current playerbase just isn't interested in Cutthroat, because for some reason all the people interested in Cutthroat just happened to not have time to sign up for the 48 hour cutthroat.

And you could come up with the same bullshit excuse to justify low player numbers in a 4 month cutthroat league aswell.

"nah its not that people just aren't interested in cutthroat, they just don't have the time".

It sounds like you misread what I wrote. To clarify the intent of my previously-wordy post: I'm saying the sample size of the data you're using is not large enough to draw meaningful conclusions about the level of interest of the playerbase as a whole.

The playerbase as a whole may or may not be interested in the format, I would presume that you are not. I, on the other hand, am -- but haven't participated in many of the cut throat events (including the 48h) due to scheduling issues. Neither of these data points are meaningful by themselves.

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exhortatory wrote:

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SlixSC wrote:

Complete and utter nonsense.

Take the 48 hour Cutthroat - 1600 characters created over the span of 2 days... 2 DAYS.

On the very same day they ran an Endless Ledge race which had more characters created than the 48 hour cutthroat in just an hour... 1/48th of the time.

So really what you are saying is that, this really gives us no reason to believe that the current playerbase just isn't interested in Cutthroat, because for some reason all the people interested in Cutthroat just happened to not have time to sign up for the 48 hour cutthroat.

And you could come up with the same bullshit excuse to justify low player numbers in a 4 month cutthroat league aswell.

"nah its not that people just aren't interested in cutthroat, they just don't have the time".

It sounds like you misread what I wrote. To clarify the intent of my previously-wordy post: I'm saying the sample size of the data you're using is not large enough to draw meaningful conclusions about the level of interest of the playerbase as a whole.

The playerbase as a whole may or may not be interested in the format, I would presume that you are not. I, on the other hand, am -- but haven't participated in many of the cut throat events (including the 48h) due to scheduling issues. Neither of these data points are meaningful by themselves.

Then at best you could argue that there is a chance people might be interested in Cutthroat, not that they actually are, but that there is a chance.

What an absolutely horrible argument.

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SlixSC wrote:

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exhortatory wrote:

"

SlixSC wrote:

Complete and utter nonsense.

Take the 48 hour Cutthroat - 1600 characters created over the span of 2 days... 2 DAYS.

On the very same day they ran an Endless Ledge race which had more characters created than the 48 hour cutthroat in just an hour... 1/48th of the time.

So really what you are saying is that, this really gives us no reason to believe that the current playerbase just isn't interested in Cutthroat, because for some reason all the people interested in Cutthroat just happened to not have time to sign up for the 48 hour cutthroat.

And you could come up with the same bullshit excuse to justify low player numbers in a 4 month cutthroat league aswell.

"nah its not that people just aren't interested in cutthroat, they just don't have the time".

It sounds like you misread what I wrote. To clarify the intent of my previously-wordy post: I'm saying the sample size of the data you're using is not large enough to draw meaningful conclusions about the level of interest of the playerbase as a whole.

The playerbase as a whole may or may not be interested in the format, I would presume that you are not. I, on the other hand, am -- but haven't participated in many of the cut throat events (including the 48h) due to scheduling issues. Neither of these data points are meaningful by themselves.

Then at best you could argue that there is a chance people might be interested in Cutthroat, not that they actually are, but that there is a chance.

What an absolutely horrible argument.

Well, there's a known interest in cut-throat from some of the playerbase. I'd say that at best I (or anyone else) could argue is that there is a chance that there's a significant amount of interest in the playerbase as a whole. I think it would be foolish to claim to be able to know otherwise at this point.

It's not really an argument, so much as a statement concerning the reality of trying to divine the level of interest in a specific thing over a large heterogeneous group of people. It doesn't just apply here, and isn't a controversial statement to anyone who has done a bit of (for example) usage data analysis. Conclusions drawn over single data points with nowhere near a representative sample size are often wrong. They may not be, but I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with making claims based on them.

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exhortatory wrote:

Well, there's a known interest in cut-throat from some of the playerbase. I'd say that at best I (or anyone else) could argue is that there is a chance that there's a significant amount of interest in the playerbase as a whole. I think it would be foolish to claim to be able to know otherwise at this point.

It's not really an argument, so much as a statement concerning the reality of trying to divine the level of interest in a specific thing over a large heterogeneous group of people. It doesn't just apply here, and isn't a controversial statement to anyone who has done a bit of (for example) usage data analysis. Conclusions drawn over single data points with nowhere near a representative sample size are often wrong. They may not be, but I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with making claims based on them.

But you are arguing hypotheticals, unless you can actually demonstrate that there is enough of an interest in the community you are just being naive.

You don't realize that the burden of proof is actually on you, because you want something to be done about Cutthroat... I'm just saying "let's not waste time with it".

Unless you can actually demonstrate that there is a significant amount of interest in the playerbase, not just assert it but demonstrate it, why would anyone else give a shit?

If (as you say) at best any predictions we could possibly make about the general interest of the playerbase are of speculative nature, then why should anyone waste time working on Cutthroat?

You use this statistical argument under the assumption that it is somehow a problem for my position, when in fact it is a defeater of your own.

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SlixSC wrote:

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exhortatory wrote:

Well, there's a known interest in cut-throat from some of the playerbase. I'd say that at best I (or anyone else) could argue is that there is a chance that there's a significant amount of interest in the playerbase as a whole. I think it would be foolish to claim to be able to know otherwise at this point.

It's not really an argument, so much as a statement concerning the reality of trying to divine the level of interest in a specific thing over a large heterogeneous group of people. It doesn't just apply here, and isn't a controversial statement to anyone who has done a bit of (for example) usage data analysis. Conclusions drawn over single data points with nowhere near a representative sample size are often wrong. They may not be, but I certainly wouldn't be comfortable with making claims based on them.

But you are arguing hypotheticals, unless you can actually demonstrate that there is enough of an interest in the community you are just being naive.

You don't realize that the burden of proof is actually on you, because you want something to be done about Cutthroat... I'm just saying "let's not waste time with it".

Unless you can actually demonstrate that there is a significant amount of interest in the playerbase, not just assert it but demonstrate it, why would anyone else give a shit?

If (as you say) at best any predictions we could possibly make about the general interest of the playerbase are of speculative nature, then why should anyone waste time working on Cutthroat?

You use this statistical argument under the assumption that it is somehow a problem for my position, when in fact it is a defeater of your own.

I think I may have been misinterpreted a bit -- my first post in this thread was intended to clarify why someone would consider a longer-term thing useful, particularly for the case of judging interest; it was not intended as an argument as to whether or not cut-throat was worth working on.

I, personally, do not have much of an opinion about cut-throat leagues/events or people's interest in them. I enjoy them to a degree. I'd agree with you that there's not much of a point in working on them if there's no interest in them, however I wasn't talking about statistics and all that to support the position of working on or improving cut-throat related stuff, but to support people not drawing conclusions from or basing arguments on what looks like a meaningful data point when it may not be. It's not a problem for your position, it's just useless for your position unless it turns out to be a consistent trend.

As far as the speculative nature of predictions goes: while it's true that unless you actually went and asked every single player about their level of interest that predictions would be speculative, the usage / participation data from (for example) every cut-throat event in the season allows you much more confidence in that speculation. If, when more events are tried, participation is consistently as lackluster as it was in this particular event, it's pretty safe to assume that the percentage of the playerbase interested in it is a small minority.

For what it's worth, if this was reverso-land and this thread had people talking about how the event having so many participants showed that it should be way higher on GGG's priority list, I'd be making almost the same posts about how more time/events are needed in order to judge general interest level with a significant degree of confidence.

As for why GGG should spend time working on it, it's their game. They like the idea. I personally wouldn't suggest they devote huge chunks of time to it at the moment, but if they were going to devote some time to it, it would be a good idea to run some varied types of events and then look at aggregate participation data - in fact I'd be surprised if they weren't doing exactly that.

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exhortatory wrote:

As far as the speculative nature of predictions goes: while it's true that unless you actually went and asked every single player about their level of interest that predictions would be speculative, the usage / participation data from (for example) every cut-throat event in the season allows you much more confidence in that speculation. If, when more events are tried, participation is consistently as lackluster as it was in this particular event, it's pretty safe to assume that the percentage of the playerbase interested in it is a small minority.

And this is the problem with everything you are saying. You think that my argument is solely based on one isolated incident, where participation was relatively low.

It's not. I just looked through some of the Cutthroat events in season 3-5 and participation in those events was considerably lower than in actual race events, even though the Cutthroat numbers were already inflated by the fact that they were hardcore-events back then and people had to reroll with several characters.

Cutthroat has historically always been relatively unpopular, rewards or not, so I find your argument very narrow-minded and uninformed.

I just gave that particular example to illustrate my point, my argument isn't based on just that one cutthroat event where participation was low, participation in Cutthroat events was always low, even though the numbers were inflated.

For example, the S4 turbo-signature had more characters created (on average )than the S4 cutthroat events and the S4 signature was by far the least popular signature race to date.

The assumption there was that people simply didn't enjoy turbo races as much which resulted in low participation numbers... and that's a pretty fair assumption, because participation numbers were in fact consistently low.

The same principle should then apply to Cutthroat events. We ask "why was participation so consistently low, despite the fact that numbers were clearly inflated?"

And what's the most obvious answer?

Bingo.

People just aren't interested in cutthroat. A very tiny fraction of the playerbase might be, but as it stands we have absolutely no reason to believe that Cutthroat could be more popular given different circumstances.

And some of the arguments in this very thread prove that to be true. Hilbert's response was that "there weren't any rewards in the recent cutthroats so that's why participation was comparatively low", but then we look at the cutthroat events in earlier seasons (which offered pretty much the same rewards as regular races) and we see the exact same thing, lower participation, despite numbers being inflated.