The weekend game should always be without upgrades.

for note, there is an existing forum post on the subject if you want to see sparticus' thoughts

http://www.beatthegeek.com/forum/forum3.asp?f1_id=230&f2_id=322

edit:
i would like to say though... that this week's GT with a predefined path, very easy to finish, only 2 active towers, and very limited tower placement options (pretty much everyone will use the exact same 10 spots for the lower loop) that there is really not a lot of room for creativity. because of this, level points will play a much larger factor than they normally would.

i would suggest instead that the tourney itself is the issue this week :/

It's an issue of upgrading order and speed at which you send the levels.

Granted the scores will all be close, but I don't think creativity is an issue here as most people tend to use similar maps in any event anyways.

I disagree, I prefer Sparticus's reasoning on this issue.

Except he's wrong. T19 won the last tournament not because he's better, but because he's been here 3x as long and had 22 extra power up points. If I had that my score would have been significantly higher.

It's nearly impossible to counter the extra points on these kinds of maps.

It is partially true that the more power up points help, but i could only beat you with a slightly better strategy. The key to my strategy was not to use the buy time power up on the last wave (bosses) where one gets true and so wasting 1/4 of the power ups but to use them one wave early. That difference is nearly 1000 points with is far greater than the 130 points between us.

You're strategy wasn't better. I watched your replay.

> The key to my strategy was not to use the buy time power up on the last wave (bosses) where one gets true and so wasting 1/4 of the power ups but to use them one wave early. That difference is nearly 1000 points with is far greater than the 130 points between us.

What?

You won by 130, where's this magic 1000 points coming from?

> where one gets true

What does this even mean?

I finally decoded your English. You mean 'when one (creep) gets through'. Except you're wrong. I got the 4k points, not 3k as evidenced by my replay.

Anyways, that doesn't support your claim. If we removed power-ups, the difference in score would have been significantly in my favour. That's my point.

First, A, you've risen through the ranks in a remarkably rapid fashion. Already you're the 21st highest-ranked geek in the entire world. So you of all people shouldn't be complaining about being disadvantaged by other people having more powerups.

Second, Sparticus's reasoning to which I referred (and which was also well explained by Landronn in the prior discussion on this topic) was that there needs to be a point to rising through the ranks and getting customization points. I certainly would have stopped playing weeks ago if I had to do the same old mazes over and over without any incentive.

The smear at someone else's English is unbecoming.

And when all is said and done, it's Sparticus's game. If you want a different one, go code it.

> The smear at someone else's English is unbecoming.

It's not smearing when someone isn't careful enough to read their own work, so that it's legible.

It's not as if I corrected his spelling. What he wrote as is, literally made no sense.

Here is my simple solution:
Run the Saturday tournament twice. One with upgrades. One without.

I personally am in the no upgrade camp - it is not possible to compete fairly in a 'tournament' when someone has an artificial advantage. Luckily I can make maps with no upgrades and others also make maps with no upgrades. Extended info now tells me what to expect - its all good.

Possibly the only way to fix this would be to go to an ELO and/or Handicap system as discussed in other threads.