Alright, here goes. I'll be revealing the rankings over the next few days, posting each out separately. This list is based on both the opinions of myself and Pollux based on everything we saw throughout the game.

Players are ranked on game performance, activity, journal quality, character performance, progress towards their goal, attitude to the hosts and relevance to the story. There are a number of factors to consider when it comes to ranking players, and I don't expect everybody to completely agree with the listing. These are purely our opinions, but I hope that at the very least people will read our justifications and understand why we've placed them where they are.

With each ranking we'll be talking about the positive and negative aspects of the player, discussing our feelings on the character they played, discussing our initial opinions and how they changed as well as much more. These are detailed entries that will hopefully have been worth the very long wait.

To kick-start, there are three players who are exempt from being formally ranked. In two cases, it was because the player quit. In the third, the player technically quit but in a way that had no bearing on the game. These players can't really be compared to the others, so I'm listing them first.

Sit back and enjoy the ride.

(NOTE: I'm posting this both here and on the Lab 3 forum. The thread on the Lab 3 forum will remain locked, but this one is open to discussion as they're ongoing)

Kru @ 26/9/2013 22:42

Spoiler + I was surprised that mikey was playing, I thought he left after that drama with that chick that followed him to ProM.

Wasn't it due to something with 8bit and PMs? I can't remember the exact reason but it was a bit strange. He lurks around SA now and rarely leaves the site I think.

Vic @ 28/9/2013 18:39

RIP Matt (even though I basically killed him)

You were both on my fantasy team and I was heartbroken.

Now we move past the dropouts and onto the real players. Everybody past this point has no excuse. If they sucked, they did so on their own terms and made no attempt to correct the balance by side-stepping the game altogether.

For the most part though, they didn't suck. There was a general mixture of good and bad for most cases and it reaches a point where it will become difficult to rank people. The next few were almost unanimously decided by myself and Pollux though. These are the players who despite their potential, never came remotely close to unleashing it for one reason or another.

Number 42

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Rhea Leonhardt Portrayed By: Vespis Rhea was a somewhat interesting character who had a lot of potential but became nothing more than a walking, rarely talking inactive shoe. She barely used her role, barely had a character arc and barely posted during the entire game. Vespis has since been quite apologetic about the whole affair and openly admitted it was one of his worst games, but that won't stop me from laying into his performance! History: Vespis has a perfect record when it comes to Labyrinth games. He played in the first under his own name (or one of his notable variants) and was the hacker. His cryptic messages caused a little bit of disarray before his untimely end in an acid trap that would prove to be disappointing to both of us. Continuing on from this, he played as the androgynous butcher, Rayne Lant in Labyrinth 2. He became a mysterious, silent and creepy annex to the infamous Group B before he attempted to murder Roth and got the tables turned on him quite dramatically. In Labyrinth 2.5 he was the leader of the "scum" side, the Shades. His heart wasn't in that game much so his performance wasn't particularly noteworthy and Rayne got his just desserts in purgatory too. Despite this we had fairly high hopes for him coming into the third game. Having played with Vespis before, he's certainly somebody who can dominate in the right circumstances. His was also one of the first applications we received. Character: Original Avatar: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v629/mikirou/bluehighlights.jpg Rhea was an interesting character. A few people got the idea to extend the plot of Labyrinth 2 by casting themselves as somebody related to a former character. In the case of Rhea, she was the younger sister of Rayne and on a desperate quest to locate her older brother. This scenario actually proved something of a challenge to us in development. I liked the idea, and I wanted Vespis to be able to portray Rhea as he wanted but the girl in the photo looked fairly young so making the timeline sync up proved to be a tad problematic. I originally anticipated Labyrinth 3 being set a long time after the second, maybe as many as 50-100 years onwards. Rhea didn't fit this model, along with Rita. The result was we had to limit it to being a mere decade later. This worked in the end, and we kept the character of Rhea the same without any changes. In spite of this, however, the character idea would ultimately fall flat. Vespis barely portrayed her as a character at all and aside from the one phases where she proactively spoke, Rhea's story was more or less forgotten for the duration of the game. Her eventual death resolved or sealed nothing with regards to the character and what we got was an ultimately wasted opportunity. Journal: She used her journal to post the occasional role use, somewhat inconsistently. Other than that, the pages were very much left blank. Gameplay: It goes without saying that this result was also disappointing. Rhea was the tracker, a role which has been placed in every single Labyrinth game to little acclaim. Though it has been used throughout, it has never been used to deduce anything worth knowing. In the case of this game, the tracker role would've been perfect for finding Carl and the Caduceus, saving a lot of backtracking time and thrusting the game forward into a more interesting direction. Rhea's lack of involvement in the game came at the expense of Vespis not having time to read the long threads. Unlike other people in a similar set of circumstances, though, Rhea was extremely vocal about this. It seems like the majority of the posts I remember her making in the phases were complaining about the amount of talking that was going on in the phases. Whilst there was a lot of unnecessary back and forth going on, I found the complaining about it to not only be counter-productive but to also detract a little from the fun of the game. People don't want to see other people constantly whining and complaining about the state of the game, and the constant one note attack on people who were more dedicated felt incredibly coarse and tore away any empathy I had for Rhea. She used her role, but almost never commented on the use of said role. She revealed results in the one phase where the groups were halved and she had opportunity to finally speak, but other than that I don't really recall her making an effort to post them any other time. Part of this was due to her wanting to keep her role secret from the other half of the group. I still don't get the rationale behind this because while it could've been a nasty role in the wrong hands, its only value is if the results are known. Pollux kept a meticulous record of footprints long after Rhea's death, just in case. Like the trackers before her, they would prove to be somewhat worthless which was a pity. Other than her role, Rhea's involvement in the game was next to nothing. She discussed nothing, achieved nothing and her only viable purpose was acting as a shield so the others in her group wouldn't die instead. Conclusion: Her exceptional lack of activity and functionality, coupled with the fact that she was openly abrasive about the state of the game and its discussion leads her to falling firmly in last place. Most of the other characters achieved some semblance of interest, whether from a one time effective use of their role to just a single humorous moment or comment. Rhea had no plot, no humor and was barely even a player at all. Overall, a very disappointing effort from a player who can do much better.

Stupid_Panda @ 28/9/2013 19:55

I was with Tyron in his final moments. For those couple of seconds...they were the best of my life.

You were with him for much longer than that!

Kru @ 28/9/2013 22:00

Hell I don't know if I'm going to include the role in the next game, it seemed to cause Paul grief when I used it back in Lab 2. I bet when Vespis died, Paul or Zersch went "Yeeees!"

Nope. Zersch was meticulous with footprints. He would go in every day come rain or shine and update every last one. Those still kept being done long after Rhea's departure from the game.

It is a frustrating job, but I stand by my belief that the tracker role is useful. Other than using it to find Carl, it could be used to find rogue scum (like Tyrese) or figure out the pathways of other groups. Wouldn't you have appreciated the role when it came to locating Lee?

Part of the problem is that when conjoined with other roles, it loses it's efficiency. The twin roles always prove to be way too generous with information, making a two group setup miserable from an isolation stand-point. Thankfully in both games, these roles imploded before the mid-point. It still mostly amounts to nothing though.

The Humanist also renders it a little redundant, but the humanist only gives the closest player, whereas the tracker picks up on every last footprint.

A lot of information in Labyrinth 2 would've been gleaned if people paid more attention to your role results. But they didn't, and it wasn't. I still think it could've resulted in a hugely different outcome.

Kru @ 28/9/2013 23:06

How did you execute the Humanist role with the larger rooms? Was it like 3 rooms away or 3 standard sized rooms away?

Went by map squares. The biggest issue there was a lack of communication about method, since we both had our own way of doing it that never really synched up.

And I really, really do have to apologise for the virus. That was a shitty trap with a boring outcome.

Also:

Number 41

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Origo Aenigmatis Portrayed By: Shawn Remembered fondly as the fly man, or spider bait, Origo was the masked vigilante with a lust for judgement and showing up at the worst possible time. Not the worst of the game's inactives, but far from the best. Origo achieved precious little in his short life other than being a noble human sacrifice and being annoyed greatly. History: Shawn has an interesting history when it comes to these games. Taking cues and advice from his older brother Curtis (who always wants the best for everybody), he has slowly built up his ability to play mafia not terribly. Shawn captured the hearts of the predicition writers when he played as Carter in Sausage Island 5 (and later All Stars). His legacy as Carderp, one half of the most bumbling and tragic brotherhood of all time, made me very excited to see how he'd handle a game like this one. In the end, he didn't really. The game proved too much for him with its long and drawn out threads and he never quite gelled with the game or anybody around him. With no role to speak of, it wasn't a complete disaster. It was just a little sad. Character: Shawn's original application was as the Joker from Batman. Given that the game called for original characters, I obviously couldn't let it stand but I was very keen to let people play the type of character they wanted to play. I toyed around with the idea a bit and came up with something which was probably a lot more different than I originally intended. The end result came about because I saw the avatar when I was searching for another character's image and really, really liked it. I though the application it fit with the most was Shawn's, due to his desire to play the joker. The background I came up with was more than a little inspired by Rorscach from Watchmen, probably because the avatar was in a similar vein. Finally, I got the name by choosing a phrase that sounded mysterious and converting it into Latin. Origo Aenigmatis translates roughly to "beginning of the mystery" which summed up the character's background and style. He was envisioned as being a sort of middle of the road, ambiguous figure who seemed neither good nor evil. I suppose he was very much meant to be the "G" of Labyrinth 3. What came as a result of Shawn's portrayal wasn't even close. He did have his moments, when he was around to have them. We quite enjoyed the fact that Origo's only contributions were to scald and reprimand his group severely, whilst adding nothing of value himself. He had an almost surly attitude towards everything which was partly due to his not getting the game, and partly a characterisation. The problem was that Shawn was very inconsistent with it, and some days he would completely break character to apologize for his lack of overall activity, or something similar. This destroyed the image of Origo as a surly misanthrope and just made him seem more like a clueless idiot. It was good for comic relief but probably annoying to travel around with. His death was at least functional to the plot, serving as the sacrifice Genevieve was forced to make in the red room. Something very different may have panned out if she'd chosen a different target, but it was Origo's time to go. Journal: Like all inactives before and after him, Origo's journal was a blank canvas. Gameplay: Precious little to report. Origo had no role, so he had almost no functional value to his group at all. He would've served as a useful human shoe if it weren't for the fact he kept showing up to post right at the last possible second before becoming declared an inactive. Despite this, he was generally apologetic for his lack of participation. He seldom posted a theory, which was generally off-base and more often than not ignored in the mass of posts each phase. I chalk this up to at least having a go, though it wasn't much of a go and it wasn't really that helpful to anybody. He participated in a few room events, took a trap or two in the face and was at the very least, inoffensive to us as hosts. Conclusion: I think a lot of my disappointment here stems from the fact that I enjoyed Shawn so much in Sausage, and I really liked the character I devised for him. It was probably incredibly ambitious, and I can understand his lack of activity in the game. Still though, he'll always stand out to me as a "what could have been" kind of player. We respect that at the very least, he tried. Even if his trying amounted to nothing and was very rare, it was something.

Natalie @ 30/9/2013 2:31

Aw, so much hate for poor Frederick. :( Still wish that bridge thing would have worked out better since he was following me, lost all that extra searching when we split.

A lot of people were following you though, that was the problem. It broke after the midway person from your group crossed the gap. Everybody was following either you or Mark, so it didn't matter that Frederick was too. He was just one of many.

I checked the calculations for that so many times because I knew there was no outcome that would be good for either of your two parties afterwards. The worst case scenario would've been Fred falling dead centre, because that would've seen him tumble into the void and teleport off alone.

The bridge was actually one of the biggest design flaws of the game, to be honest. It wasn't that the idea itself was flawed, but the location was terrible.

It was intended to be an early game event, but the placement of Cerberus made that path inaccessible to begin with. Couple that with the fact that the Northern path out of the South-West corner contained both a locked door and a resetting teleporter, and that little segment of maze was nightmarish to escape from.

Either the bridge needed to be more centralised, or Cerberus needed to be further North in the maze. I just really liked the idea of crossing over the top of the entrance room.