And that's the option to "handicap" yourself by setting a starting puzzle range above the default of 1000.

A player might want to improve their speed of pattern recognition of puzzles in the higher rating ranges, but to do that in the current puzzle storm settings, one must first grind through the monotony of one movers, free material, and back ranks before reaching the "meat". This is especially tedious and apparent when doing 20+runs per day, which I and a few dozen others at my local chess club are doing.

I know it's possible to set normal puzzles to various ranges, but the gamified nature of puzzle storm makes it a much more enjoyable (and addicting) experience than the standard or puzzle streak modes, and I think this additional option would be a substantial benefit to the mode in general.

That's a good idea. How would the score be handled between the handicap and normal modes?

@a_bump_on_a_log said in #1:
> This is especially tedious and apparent when doing 20+runs per day, which I and a few dozen others at my local chess club are doing.

Wow, how many people are at your club?

> I know it's possible to set normal puzzles to various ranges, but the gamified nature of puzzle storm makes it a much more enjoyable (and addicting) experience than the standard or puzzle streak modes, and I think this additional option would be a substantial benefit to the mode in general.

Maybe you're right, but I do think that spending time on the regular puzzles will probably help you more than puzzle storm, though a few runs can't hurt either, especially to improve intuition. 20+ runs every day does seem a touch excessive to me though.

@sunrosa said in #2:
> That's a good idea. How would the score be handled between the handicap and normal modes?

I don't think any sort of differentiation is necessary, as handicapping wouldn't provide any significant benefit to an individual run.

Anyone wanting to compare legitimate runs would just consider the default starting point, while the purpose of non-default starts would be for training/grinding.

@AsDaGo said in #3:
> Wow, how many people are at your club?

It's a large club with an active discord as well, we've had sort of a boom of members competing with each other for higher scores and posting screenshots daily. This has been going on for around a month.

> Maybe you're right, but I do think that spending time on the regular puzzles will probably help you more than puzzle storm, though a few runs can't hurt either, especially to improve intuition. 20+ runs every day does seem a touch excessive to me though.

Perhaps, but it seems there's a special kind of motivation players get when chasing the new puzzle storm high score that isn't quite there with the other modes.

Regardless, this seems like it would be a very simple QOL change, and I don't see any reasons why adding it would *not* be a good idea.

I would definitely use this feature :)

@AsDaGo said in #3:
> Wow, how many people are at your club?

It's a VRChat chess club of like 50 to 100 regulars. It's been around for 3 or 4 years now with waves of members coming and going. I think we're going through one of those waves right now actually. If you're curious, I can show you how to participate. It's open to the public.

@a_bump_on_a_log said in #4:
> I don't think any sort of differentiation is necessary, as handicapping wouldn't provide any significant benefit to an individual run.
>
> Anyone wanting to compare legitimate runs would just consider the default starting point, while the purpose of non-default starts would be for training/grinding.

Maybe. Then I suppose scores shouldn't be submitted at all in handicap mode, because those earlier puzzles contribute a massive amount to the exponential-ish growth of difficulty, so the handicap score would be way off. It could be submitted as its own category, perhaps.

@a_bump_on_a_log said in #1:
> And that's the option to "handicap" yourself by setting a starting puzzle range above the default of 1000.
>
> A player might want to improve their speed of pattern recognition of puzzles in the higher rating ranges, but to do that in the current puzzle storm settings, one must first grind through the monotony of one movers, free material, and back ranks before reaching the "meat". This is especially tedious and apparent when doing 20+runs per day, which I and a few dozen others at my local chess club are doing.
>
> I know it's possible to set normal puzzles to various ranges, but the gamified nature of puzzle storm makes it a much more enjoyable (and addicting) experience than the standard or puzzle streak modes, and I think this additional option would be a substantial benefit to the mode in general.

I imagine that it is toutorously difficult to rate puzzles in the first instance, but if possible, finer adjustment controls sounds fairly sensible, if this is what you mean.

@heallan said in #8:
> I imagine that it is toutorously difficult to rate puzzles in the first instance, but if possible, finer adjustment controls sounds fairly sensible, if this is what you mean.

Puzzle ratings are already a mechanic, and puzzle storm starts at 1000, then gives you incrementally harder ones as your score increases. The proposed setting would only give you the option to start with higher rated puzzles (i.e. 1200, 1600, 2000, etc), making the run more difficult but allowing you to grind some of the harder patterns you otherwise wouldn't see as much of in a run straight from 1000.