Tournament Ascensions per version or variety in Junethack 2023

[cssdixieland]

The Junethack competition of 2023 has finished. This is the proportion of ascensions for each of the versions or varieties played. Eight servers have participated: one of Nethack Alt Org, one of Nethack 4, three of Gnollhack, and three of Hardfought. Hardfought servers also have few other versions available, such as NetHack version 1.3d, but they have not been included in Junethack. The list is ordered by the proportion of ascensions obtained.

Version or...........Ascensions......Total games played......Per cent of ascensions
variety................of the hero.......in Junethack 2023........per version or variety

NetHack 3.4.3...........23..........................575....................................4

NotDNetHack.............8..........................211....................................3.79

GnollHack..................3............................92....................................3.26

DNetHack...................7..........................248....................................2.82

SlashTHEM................2............................99....................................2.02

AceHack....................3..........................174....................................1.72

NetHack4...................9..........................588....................................1.53

NetHack 3.6.7...........51........................3936....................................1.3

NetHack Fourk...........1............................84....................................1.19

NetHack 3.7.0...........25........................3333....................................0.75

XNetHack...................3..........................501....................................0.6

EvilHack.....................4..........................742....................................0.54

Slash'EM....................1..........................221....................................0.45

DynaHack..................1..........................358.....................................0.28

HackEM.....................2..........................837.....................................0.24

GruntHack.................1..........................470.....................................0.21

UnNetHack................2........................1245.....................................0.16

NetHack 1.3d.............0............................61.....................................0

SporkHack.................0............................77.....................................0

FIQHack.....................0..........................196.....................................0

SpliceHack.................0........................1630.....................................0

Average: 7 ascensions and 747 games per version or variety, less than 1 per cent ascended.

On average, one ascension out of more than a hundred games, the others are not ascended.

Dungeon games are amongst the most difficult, but they are also amongst the most addictive.

A combination that seems to suggest a certain... 'masochism' amongst dungeon enthusiasts.

The table given above is reasonably well aligned on our screen, but maybe not so well on other screens, or printers, as it depends on the spacing and the character font used by each machine.

The table shows only the proportion of ascensions in Junethack 2023, not in other competitions, and not in the total number of games played throughout the years. It is also known in Statistical Science that samples with small numbers tend to be less reliable than samples with big numbers, therefore the table should not be taken as an absolute indication of play difficulty, especially for versions or varieties in which the number of games played, or of ascensions, has been small.

Let alone should the table be seen as indication of play 'enjoyability', a very subjective perception that varies greatly from an individual player to another. The style of a player may be rapid, playing our dungeon game almost as he would play a 'point and shoot' arcade game. The style of another player may be slow, playing almost as he would play a classic game of Chess, thinking every action and considering possibilities at every few turns. Or at every turn, in particularly difficult situations.

Turn-based dungeon games are unique in accommodating to both kinds of players, rapid and slow.

One is the 'action' player who goes for muscular Barbarians attacking in melée, at close quarters. The other is the reflexive player who prefers brainy Wizards casting magical spells. In between we have Walkyrie, Ranger, Knight, Samurai, and the other rôles. Every player has some choice for him.

Of 1630 games played in SpliceHack, not even one has been ascended. FIQHack, SporkHack and NetHack version 1.3d have not been ascended either, but they have been played less than 200 times each (196, 77 and 61 times), not 1630 times. At the opposite extreme we have NetHack version 3.4.3 heading the ranking with NotDNetHack and GnollHack, each with an impressive ascension rate of between three and four per cent. Four per cent exactly, in the case of NetHack version 3.4.3.

Some other factors may account for such disparities in results, from four per cent to virtually zero ascensions. NetHack version 3.4.3 was for many years the only official version available, meaning that plenty of detail in game mechanics is known to a vast number of players. Once the Dev Team decided to take action and release NetHack versions 3.6.x (NetHack version 3.5 never was official), a number of dungeon devotees started to migrate to them, but version 3.4.3 is still very well known.

However, that explanation does not account for NotDNetHack, which is not so well known. Let alone for GnollHack, which is, besides, a recent arrival on the field and known only to a select minority of dungeon enthusiasts. GnollHack can be played off-line in classic or modern mode (permanent death or not), serious or casual commit (preserving older sessions or not), with various levels of difficulty (damage inflicted to the hero or by the hero to monsters), but in Junethack it is assumed that all 92 GnollHack participating games have been played in standard configuration. Then, it is difficult to think of what has made GnollHack so successful in the number of ascensions. I have myself played GnollHack a few times and I am playing it at present. It is interesting in the unique features that do not exist in any other variety, but it is not 'excessively' easy. My hero has died a few times already, and in the others I have made him exit the dungeon from first depth, with the remaining pets beside.

Sources:

https://junethack.net/activity

https://junethack.net/post_tournament_statistics

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

Statistics do not tell the whole story, because if you look at the games, you can see:

• Player post163 (31PwnMoat) spammed 10509 games during the tournament, which highly skewed the results towards the variants he/she was playing.
• GnollHack implemented some anti-spam measures decreasing the number of the games he/she spammed for GnollHack.
• So, actual game count has very little to do with real popularity of the variants. Actually, anti-spam measures decrease the game count for a variant.

As for notdnethack and dnethack, these two variants are preferred by a small number of pro players, namely Demo and malor. You can see that for both variants, these two players were responsible for 5 ascensions.

 

[cssdixieland]

You are correct, Herre Gustafsson. Statistics give an approximation to the understanding of a subject, but are not sufficient for the deep comprehension of that subject. I have briefly mentioned it, as a warning. A thorough analysis is required for really grasping a subject. Mister Post163 is famous in the Nethack scene (for example in the Nethack News Group) due to his strange conduct. He spams everywhere, regardless of measures, but certainly there is less of his spamming with efficient measures being active. And as You say, statistical counting and popularity are not exactly the same concepts. Let alone if we speak about 'quality' of a variety as compared to another, because then we enter waters of personal subjectivity where individuals preferences may be opposite, without objective explanations for those preferences. Any statistics must be understood as what they represent, a mere counting. Even when not containing errors in the counting itself, statistics cannot be extrapolated to hasty conclusions that are beyond their scope. Nonetheless statistics serve a purpose, and they are valid exercises when the purpose has been correctly understood.

 

[hothraxxa]

The dangers of extrapolating results from such a small sample size aside, the explanation here is easily determined.

The three ascensions were K2, malor, and me. K2 is the developer of Evilhack and an expert player capable of ascending any variant he puts his mind to, and in this case he was determined to ascend in Gnollhack. malor and I have both ascended all roles, me at least once and malor multiple times for some roles. I have ascended in all variants tracked by the Nethack scoreboard except Hackem (working on it) and malor is the current leader in Z-score. I am second, K2 is sixth.

In other words, the sample is no good. It's heavily biased. This is not a question that can analyzed with stats anyway. Most games were players looking to get in 1000 turns to qualify for the sightseeing and globetrotting trophies. You can't use this to make any sort of determination of Gnollhack popularity.

I encouraged K2 and aosdict (developer of xnethack) to play Gnollhack to see how things were done. I am hoping we'll see the influence of the experience in future releases of their variants. Gnollhack is vastly underrated and mostly is ignored outside of June, and this make me sad.

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

Gladly, there are more players playing the Android or iOS version of the game.

 

[Tommi Gustafsson]

There are 993 active Android devices where GnollHack is installed.

iOS is more tricky to report, since some statistics are opt-in only, so those who have opted-out are not reported. Still:
- 1400 product page views per month
- 288 downloads per month
- 23.4 sessions per active device (opt-in only)
- 62 active devices (opt-in only) – the real number can be much higher

 

[cssdixieland]

Mister Hotraxxa is perfectly right that the table prepared by me, based on the numbers reported by the official Web document of Junethack, IS NOT AN INDICATION OF POPULARITY. Effectively, as he points out, it is not a good sample and it is heavily biased.

I also perceived that a considerable proportion of the 248 player names in the Junethack competition of 2023 were more interested in appearing with their names listed as participants, with at least one game finished inside the thirty-day period, than they might be possibly interested in really serious play, with the ultimate goal of ascension (as opposed to merely getting points or trophies).

Curiously, in the rec.games.roguelike.nethack news group (of News Network Transfer Protocol), it also has been commented that my table is missing relevant data for measuring popularity of Nethack versions or varieties. Likewise in the Nethack Wiki, and in a few other places. I do not know why a number of my readers have construed my intention as that of measuring popularity, but it may have been my fault not including a more clear disclaimer declaring that A MEASURE OF POPULARITY IS NOT INTENDED.

What my table intends to portray is simply the number of ascensions in relation to the number of games played, and only in that particular event, the Junethack competition of 2023. The data are presented separately for each vanilla version or each variety, but from that presentation it cannot be reasonably concluded that the table be a measure of 'popularity', because definitely IT IS NOT.

Not only the final number of games and ascensions was relatively small (15678 games, of which 146 ascended the hero, about a 0.93 per cent), but more importantly, as Mister Hotraxxa indicates it is obvious that a significant number of players just wanted to reach a minimum of a thousand turns, the minimum required for having the game registered before the dead line, and having their names displayed in the 'Roll of Fame of the Dungeon'. Without regard to the rest of the game. The hero may die ignominiously at the thousand and first turn, but it does not really matter much to the player, as long as seeing his name sculptured for posterity.

It is true that a REAL measure of popularity should take more representative samples, much bigger in number, from many more sources of every day play (as opposed to a single annual event), and many more data, such as the number of unique players as far as that uniqueness could be determined (as opposed to player names, in which a player may use more than one name, or a name may be used by more than one player whether in different servers or even in the same server). Such thoroughness of research, however, was definitely NOT the purpose of my table, simply because a reliable measure of popularity was NOT my objective.

The table is perfectly valid for what it shows, ascensions inside a single event. Measuring popularity was far beyond my scope.

Thanks to Herre Tommi Gustafsson for providing statistics on the acceptance of GnollHack in the Android Linux and the Apple IOS platforms, at least as far as that acceptance can be determined, especially for Apple IOS (IPad, IPhone, and related devices). I ask him, through this document, if he would accept my OCCASIONAL sending of reports via electronic post (electronic mail, the SMTP and POP3 or IMAP protocols). I do not think that a report should necessarily be sent via this forum. It is intended for the team of programmers, not so much for the general readers. My hypothetical future reports will be, hopefully, more accurate as I gradually learn the characteristics of GnollHack. Which is FOR ME, I must say, the most fascinating dungeon game or variety that I know.

Herre Gustafsson is therefore invited to contact me by private message for the purpose of interchanging our electronic addresses. They will be kept private, not disclosed in public. Continue, Gentlemen, developing and promoting Your EXCELLENT GnollHack.

Receive a Confederate Salute.