Xpovos' Blog - Apr to Jun 15 (170 followers)
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May03
GTASC - Period 15: A Canary in the MinecraftPermalink
The story this week has to be the release of a major TU for Minecraft. Prior to the update Minecraft was sitting at a fairly easy 485 TA on 400 GS like every other "Arcade" game. But because Microsoft is finally realizing that this determination that a game is "Arcade" doesn't properly reflect how much content or depth a game may have, they added 600 more GamerScore. As I've noted before Title Updates are the worst offenders for spikiness and decay because of how the math is done of these formulas. As a result, the 600 GS was adding up to about 10,000 TA in short order, and while a good chunk of that (almost 4000) was already gone by Saturday, the decay will continue next week and cause much strife for some teams, because that's still nearly 5000 points of potential decay that will be slicing off scores for the next few weeks.

  • 0chieve Survivors

This week: 7
Last week: 12

The new decay hasn't hit yet and the week was fairly normal, so we're seeing a smaller number overall. Even with a DQ the team side saw an increase in the cut-off as well, so there was definitely more pressure. But that we have any 0chieve survivors is still indicative of the level of participation.

  • Personal Notes

My week focused on three things. Madden NFL 15 (Xbox 360) because I want to earn all the MUT achievements before there's any chance the servers go down; https://www.trueachievements.com/Diablo-3/achievements.htm because it's time to finish this and delete the installed game from my hard drive so I can use the space for other things and the big scorer for the week: Xbox Fitness. Xbox Fitness got a huge push from a new competition with Phoenix1701, so I'm going to take this and run with it. Quite possibly in a literal sense.


  • Highlight


Xbox FitnessAdvancedXpovosThe Advanced achievement in Xbox Fitness worth 367 pointsEarn 100 workout stars.


It was a slow week of mostly behind the scenes grinding, so that I got an achievement this size was a nice bonus for my points, but even this is just part of the nearly endless (particularly since they keep releasing TUs) grind that is Xbox Fitness. But, then again, so is real fitness an endless grind.

  • Lowlight


Madden NFL 15 (Xbox 360)Seasoned VeteranXpovosThe Seasoned Veteran achievement in Madden NFL 15 (Xbox 360) worth 19 pointsWin a MUT Seasons game.


Unintended achievements are truly annoying. They waste points and don't even feel satisfying. The penalties borne from being too good at gaming.

  • Started

None.

  • Completed

None. But I smell a big week coming.
Posted by Xpovos on 03 May 15 at 00:20 | There are 3 comments on this blog post - Please log in to comment on this blog.
Apr28
mTAhletePermalink
Ow. I sincerely apologize for that title. It still hurts just looking at it.

But the fact is that I love statistics. Not always the actual mathematically rigorous application part--OK, usually that too. But the modern world is aflood with data and facts and more and more of them are being put into useful categories and databases to be searched and queried to our heart's content. My hope is that in 20 years I'll be able to use Google's replacement to auto-pull data from reliable sources to answer difficult questions like, "Graph the correlation between between the price of tea in China and the number of Bilderburg attendees for the 1990s and 2000s with a linear regression trendline." And it would be on screen.

For now, though, the actual work of the math and statistics still has to be done by hand. I just enjoy the results enough that I'm willing to do that work. I know that other people enjoy the work as well, so I'm going to share some of it today I'll be looking at two recent and ongoing contests here at TA for my stats, the GTASC and the LeapFrog.

Data for the GTASC comes from my own work and from planting. Data for LeapFrog is all my own, so any errors are my fault. Analysis is also my own.

I'm going to start with LeapFrog because there's less data, but that doesn't mean there aren't some interesting conclusions to be drawn.

LeapFrog
*** Spoiler - click to reveal ***



Next is the GTASC, where I've got a huge data set, but sometimes big data makes it harder to find meaningful correlations. Maybe I can nuance out something interesting, though.

GTASC
*** Spoiler - click to reveal ***


I hope you enjoyed the graphs. I'll do another one of these once the LeapFrog is done for final analysis and maybe go into more depth with GTASC later as well.
Posted by Xpovos on 28 April 15 at 15:22 | Last edited on 28 April 15 at 18:51 | There are 5 comments on this blog post - Please log in to comment on this blog.
Apr26
GTASC - Period 14: Push itPermalink
Others have already noted that we're now slightly more than a quarter of the way through the contest. Congratulations to everyone still alive, you're in the top 75th percentile. If that's not good enough for you, push on. The only way to improve that is survive week by week. Some weeks seem to go by in a blur while others drag. This seemed like a dragging week. With the intense drag put on scoring from decay and the relatively speedy Leap Frog event running concurrently, the pace of the GTASC just seemed slow. That didn't necessarily keep scores down in the contest, though. While the decay impacted the cutoff score somewhat, keeping it reasonable, the push to stay alive "just one more day" in the Leap Frog definitely pushed up the scoring overall for a few teams partaking in both events.

The decay experienced came from three sources and was pretty intense all around. A second week of decay from Neverwinter, a Title Update to Project Spark, and the new release of Mortal Kombat X. The first two are done with the major decay now, but their impact could still be felt for a few weeks, depending on how teams handled the decay. And while this round of decay is done, it's a truism that there'll always be another new game to crush someone's TA score via decay. But for right now, at least, it looks like clear sailing for next week. Could that mean an uptick on scoring for the cut-off?

  • 0chieve Survivors

This week: 12
Last week: 5

That massive decay caused by the trio of factors pushed a lot of people deep into the negatives. As a result, it's not surprising that more got through on pure appreciation this week by avoiding those titles. The fact that it's still fewer than we had at the start shows that the competition is getting more serious now. More gamers are gaming even if they don't need to do so to survive. There are always multiple competing goals too. Do you want to stay alive in the GTASC? Do you want to stay alive in LeapFrog? Do you want to meet your personal goals on targets for TA score and GS score in a certain timeframe?

  • Personal Notes

75,000 GamerScore, wow. What a week. The run between 25,000 GS and 75,000 GS was a shade under 600 days, or a touch more than 80GS per day on average. If I continue this pace I should hit 100,000 GS sometime around the middle of February 2016. To that end, I've created a goal to hit it by year's end. Push me, GTASC, push me.



Aside from my rampage towards the finish line for my 75,000 GS challenge, I also competed in and then croaked from the Leap Frog contest. After hitting 75,000 I looked and saw I needed 6 more achievements to survive the next day. EASY! I thought to myself. And it would've been. And then the next day I would have said, "I can do ten." And onwards until eventually I just collapsed in on myself from the strain. That might be fun for me if I weren't also in a team competition. I can't just focus all of my efforts and points into the Leap Frog if I'm going to be any help to my GTASC team further down the line. So I let it go and resumed my normal streak and scoring habits until a new need arises. Sooner or later, something is going to call on me to unleash the potential and show off my scoring might, as minimal as that might actually be.

  • Highlight

Castlevania: Lords of ShadowMaster achieverXpovosThe Master achiever achievement in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow worth 175 pointsComplete all the trials

The path to 75,000 GS which I chronicled here: Xpovos' blog post - 75,000 GS - Achievement Master ended with that achievement in a fitting note. This will be a highlight for a long time to come, it certainly takes this week.

  • Lowlight

Elimination from the Leap Frog 2016 event. It was bound to happen, and was on my own terms, but still kind of disappointing. I'm competitive, I want to win always, even when I don't even intend to win as I join up.

  • Started

None. Last week was enough.

  • Completed

None. Some very nice progress, though.
Posted by Xpovos on 26 April 15 at 00:03 | There is 1 comment on this blog post - Please log in to comment on this blog.
Apr23
75,000 GS - Achievement MasterPermalink
A few years back Microsoft revealed a new rewards program for it's Xbox brand. They conveniently named it Xbox LIVE Rewards. Though the program has gone through numerous changes and revamps over the years, the basic premise still holds: they reward gamers for playing games while simultaneously boosting their sales.

Ultimately the most intriguing features have been removed or reduced to near zero significance over time, but the program was responsible for pushing me in my GamerScore whoring direction. It was about two years ago that I decided that I wanted to push my way to 25,000 GS because at that time it was the top-tier for rebates on purchases. They called that level "Legend". And truly, who doesn't want to be a Legend? But I wanted the rebate points. So I set myself a goal, and ultimately crossed the 25,000 GS threshold in September 2013.

It goes to show how far I've come (gone?) since that time. I don't know what achievement pushed me over the top. I didn't even try to memorialize it in any way. Now, attempting to backtrace the information I can only guess that it was probably this one.

Assassin's Creed IISweeperXpovosThe Sweeper achievement in Assassin's Creed II worth 18 pointsSweep 5 guards at once by using a Long Weapon.


How boring. At least for 50K I had a little fanfaire.

Even then, both of those achievements weren't "on the money", because I had stray achievements from non-mod(5) achievements. So those are only the achievements that pushed me over, nothing dramatic. Nothing nearly as fun as when I hit 100,000 TA.

Essentially right as I hit 25,000 GS Microsoft changed the terms of the Xbox LIVE rewards program and expanded the top tier from 25,000 GS to 75,000 GS! I had just gamed hard for several months to increase my score to 25,000. 75,000 seemed impossibly far off.

External image


Time solves all things impossible but for time, and certainly I've gamed harder than I expected to when I initially reviewed the new version of the program. About two months ago I saw that I was getting close and I wanted to make it truly significant; so I started scanning achievements to find the perfect one to pop for exactly 75,000GS, to make it a challenge like my 100,000 TA, but even moreso. Not too long into my search I found the perfect one and I began the long road towards setting it up.

So here we are at 75,000 GS, I am in Microsoft's own words an Achievement Master. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my 75,000th GS.

Castlevania: Lords of ShadowMaster achieverXpovosThe Master achiever achievement in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow worth 212 pointsComplete all the trials


External image


External image
Posted by Xpovos on 23 April 15 at 01:54 | There are 6 comments on this blog post - Please log in to comment on this blog.
Apr18
GTASC - Period 13: Are we LIVE? Does the red light mean we're LIVE?Permalink
Lucky number 13. We're in Period 13, but week 14; so if you're triskaidekaphobic, you can think of it like counting floors in a hotel, thanks to that extended period earlier on... we almost had another one this time around thanks to that impressive LIVE outtage last night. There were flickers all through the week, at least for me, but from Friday night through Saturday morning, things got messy.

Period 13 was a bonus period too, so it's not all unlucky--unless you are like me and Bean Dove all of your unstarted titles last year. I have so many arcade games sitting at 1 achievement that would've been perfect!

To recap, the bonuses in play were for having each teammate on the team side start and complete three games where each game was at least 200 GS; and to score exactly 2020 GS on the individual side. They work somewhat synergistically as scoring 2020 is much easier when you've already nailed at least 600 individually for the team bonus. But the "exactly" means you have to be cautious to not go over and, of course, ensure that enough of them are high enough ratio to survive. Oh, wait, no... that's the caveat if this were a couple of months later. If you score 2020 GS in a week right now, you're surviving, even if it's all at 1.0. Unless you have some really massive decay... like from being one of the first people to kill 1000 dragons in Neverwinter. That decay is hitting hard now, and it's going to continue to hit hard for a few more periods. Is the only solution to double-down and burn through more new games and then suffer even more decay? How long can one person keep that up?

Last year I was continually impressed when one contestant I was watching closely played--and absolutely destroyed in terms of completion time--new title after new title. Not only was this an awesome display of gaming prowess (and bank account residuals), but it kept the decay monster at bay for himself and his team for quite a long time. That strategy kept his team in the contest longer than mine was, so it's certainly possible for an extended period of time.

  • 0chieve Survivors

This week: 5
Last week: 13

It was an interesting week as we had higher scoring at the top end because of bonuses and lower scoring at the low end because of extensive decay keeping the pressure at the bottom lower than normal. Overall that pushed the team cutoff down and kept the individual cut-off manageable. That let a reasonable number of people squeak through without achieving again. On a related note, we had the start of the 2015 Leap Frog event this week. 2021 individuals entered. 268 (13.26%) got eliminated on the first day for failing to earn a single achievement.

  • Personal Notes

Wow, what a week. The team overscored a bit, but it was for a good cause. As much as it was nice to stretch my scoring capacity a bit, having to have the game be started this period meant I couldn't really unload. But even then, when I had the opportunity to go for 2020, I ended up not doing it anyway. Part of that was some LIVE connection issues--I didn't want to risk playing when I knew an achievement could show up offline and ruin everything--but I just didn't have the time to sink into it that I thought I would. Still, it was a high scoring week for us and it felt good as we coasted to safety once more and got a bonus for our "troubles".

  • Highlight

Either the ending to the first episode of Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series or my completion of Motocross Madness which was more annoying than I anticipated. Either is a good choice, for different reasons.

  • Lowlight

Random connection problems and timing issues that kept me from going for the "I Can See Clearly" bonus. Meh, I guess those points are better stored for later on anyway.

  • Started

So remember last week when I said, "New starts are going to remain rare for a while, but occasionally something comes up that requires a start at a particular time. That's why I've got flexibility built into my plans." Yeah... so this week's bonus was one of those occasions that required flexibility. And my plans are still on schedule.

Motocross Madness
Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series
Tales from the Borderlands

  • Completed

Once again the bonus changed things up, and while I get completions to add to my total, they won't stick entirely as I need to get more episodes for the episodics, and they did nothing for my dived titles completion process.

Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series
Tales from the Borderlands
Motocross Madness
Posted by Xpovos on 18 April 15 at 23:58 | Last edited on 21 April 15 at 14:53 | There are 6 comments on this blog post - Please log in to comment on this blog.
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