Duel2 - Arena 93 Newsletters

A compilation of Noblish Island Articles

Avoids, Bloodfeuds, and Challenges by Pagan

Ever wonder how the whole challenge/avoid thing works?

Who you fight depends on exactly how it works. We will never know exactly how it works unless we can get a look at the coding for the program, but this is how I think it works:

The Situation:

The system allows a warrior to make two separate challenges and two distinct avoids.

Avoids are distinct in that they MUST indicate a specific team to be avoided, so a "double avoid" indicates a single team twice, which by default means you are avoiding one team. In this case, the second avoid is a duplicate and therefore a waste of an avoid.

Challenges are to specific warriors. You have a first challenge, and then you have a second challenge.

The Process:

First the computer removes all Dark Arena challengers from the list of available warriors.

Second, the computer checks for WHO fights WHO by going though all TVs and bloodfeuds, which are 100% sure to go through except in four instances:

1. the warrior challenged does not fight
2. the warrior challenged is also making a bloodfeud or TV challenge and that challenge has already been assigned,
3. the warrior has already been assigned to a Dark Arena fight,
4. that warrior has declared your team to be one of his warrior's avoids, reducing your challenge to 50%.

Third, the computer assesses all the regular first-challenge warriors and assigns fights. All other challenges are at 100% chance of success except in a few instances:

• warrior challenged is going to the DA,
• warrior challenged is involved in a previously assigned challenge,
• warrior challenged is not running this turn,
• warrior challenged has avoided your team at 50% chance to avoid.

Fourth, the computer assesses and assigns all secondary challenges of warriors not so far assigned for bloodfeuds and TVs.

Fifth, the computer assesses and assigns all the regular second challenges.

Sixth, the computer assigns random matchups in each available class starting with the highest class first.

Seventh, the computer finds the remaining warriors that have successfully avoided all first and second challenges and/or who also did not get randomly assigned, AND for whom no more available warriors remain in their class for random pairing. All of these warriors get RSI-generated warriors to fight based on their class.

So, if I'm right and avoids reduce the chance for a challenge to 50%, then:

     In the absence of an avoid
          single challenge = 100% success
          double challenge = 100% success, then an additional 100% success

     Where an avoid is involved
          single challenge vs avoid = 50% success
          double challenge vs avoid = 75% (chance to avoid is 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25; 1 - 
                                           0.25 = 75% chance to succeed)

Bloodfeuds and TVs may increase the percentage chance of success above 100%, or they may not. I feel that their increased ability to get through is based solely on the way the computer assigns challenges. They are first, so they are most likely to go through. The 100% chance for a challenge to succeed is 100% if it's a TV bloodfeud and you are the first one to get assigned a fight that day because you are also the Duelmaster. But after that the chances start to diminish rapidly.

The run-through for second challenges theoretically means your challenge should be 100% but it's not the case if you are the LAST guy the computer goes to for finding challenges.

If you don't double challenge, you significantly lower your chance to get your challenge through. The second challenge is not equal to the first challenge.

--By Pagan