The Direction of ACF Winter

[Ehtna]

With three iterations of modern ACF Winter come and gone, I wanted to take the chance to gauge people's thoughts on the current state of its difficulty and how well it fits the goal of being "halfway between ACF Fall and ACF Regionals."

From the smattering of opinions I've heard from people regarding each version of Winter, the impressions I've gotten for each set boil down to the following:

• Winter 2020 roughly hit its target difficulty
• Winter 2021 was too difficult
• Winter 2022 hit the target difficulty in tossups, but the bonuses were too difficult

I'm sure there are various factors that made people's playing experiences very different between years and sites, so I don't want to take too reductionist of a viewpoint when deciding what difficulty to go for in the future. That's why I'm interested in hearing what people think and creating a space to collect thoughts. As Winter is ostensibly the ACF set with the widest appeal, it's important to me that we cater to the audience as best as possible and provide a set that people towards both ends of the skill spectrum would enjoy playing.

Anyway, I'd very much welcome others' thoughts on what their experiences playing/staffing/writing were like. Impressions shared here will be taken into account in the writing of the next Winter.

[BenWeiner27]

I've really enjoyed all three of the modern iterations of the set. I think that if the goal of ACF Winter is to be exactly halfway in difficulty between Fall and Regionals, then the 2022 iteration did a very good job of keeping the tossups in that sweet spot, but I do think that the increase in bonus difficulty from Fall to Winter was greater than the increase from Winter to Regionals.

That being said, I thought the 2022 difficulty was very appropriate for newer players, experienced players who aren't elite (the category that I belong to), and more experienced players alike by offering engaging tossups and hard parts of bonuses without sacrificing convertibility and playability. I honestly wouldn't mind if the 2023 set tried to replicate the difficulty of the 2022 set in all honesty, however, I can definitely see the argument that less experienced teams might have a better experience at Winter if the difficulty of bonuses was eased up ever so slightly.

[CPiGuy]

I've really enjoyed all three of the modern iterations of the set. I think that if the goal of ACF Winter is to be exactly halfway in difficulty between Fall and Regionals, then the 2022 iteration did a very good job of keeping the tossups in that sweet spot, but I do think that the increase in bonus difficulty from Fall to Winter was greater than the increase from Winter to Regionals.

That being said, I thought the 2022 difficulty was very appropriate for newer players, experienced players who aren't elite (the category that I belong to), and more experienced players alike by offering engaging tossups and hard parts of bonuses without sacrificing convertibility and playability. I honestly wouldn't mind if the 2023 set tried to replicate the difficulty of the 2022 set in all honesty, however, I can definitely see the argument that less experienced teams might have a better experience at Winter if the difficulty of bonuses was eased up ever so slightly.

Co-sign on all fronts.

I do think it's probably better for tossups to overshoot slightly than for bonuses to overshoot slightly, if only because the mental impact of having to hear one sentence more per tossup is definitely much less than the mental impact of 10ing a bunch of bonuses in a row. I don't think last year's Winter overshot by that much, though.

Perhaps someone not from the North circuit has opinions on this.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I recall reacting to 2020 ACF Winter with the impression that the set's tossups were on-point, or even a wee a bit tough at times compared to what I expected, while the bonuses could have stood to be a smidge harder but it wasn't the end of the world. Glancing over a few packets now, I would stand by that impression and don't think this event's difficulty needs to meaningfully change from its target.

[Zealots of Stockholm]

I think its hard for me to weigh in on this and seem objective since I edited 2020, but I do think we hit the difficulty pretty well, perhaps even undershooting. However, I think the impact of undershooting on the top level of teams (who should already be doing quite well on the set regardless of if it hits the difficulty exactly or not) is much less than the impact of overshooting would be on the bottom tier of teams. I think ACF/Winter's editing team should basically be trying to make Winter appeal to as many teams as possible, even if that means the top 20 teams or so feel its a bit easy/perhaps not worth the commitment of submitting a packet/spending a Saturday to play. I do agree with the assessment that 2021 overshot; I haven't read enough of 22 to really have an opinion one way or the other.

In terms of "being halfway between fall and regs," I'm not sure the difficulty described above does that, as regs is quite hard these days. But, I still think ACF having an accessible set with wide appeal should be the goal of Winter.

TL;DR: Winter 2020 goated, emulate that, what could go wrong