eytanz
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Remlin wrote:
I think this whole discussion would benefit from a rebranding. It's becoming more clear that the real issue isn't a need for a hold submission revamp. It's a need for a High Scores revamp.

I can't see what in the previous discussion would lead you to this conclusion. If anything, I think the opposite is true.

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Syntax
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eytanz wrote:

Remlin wrote:
I think this whole discussion would benefit from a rebranding. It's becoming more clear that the real issue isn't a need for a hold submission revamp. It's a need for a High Scores revamp.

I can't see what in the previous discussion would lead you to this conclusion. If anything, I think the opposite is true.

I reckon it's because those of us who actually don't want to have holds deleted are those who care about high scores.

I very much doubt anyone outside the top 40 would care if a hold got deleted. Transitionally, therefore, it's a question of points.

I voted no to deleting any hold - regardless of quality. I like remlin's take on only making respected holds high scoreable, thereby letting everyone produce what they like, yet not equating their holds to those of the experts... wasting time with achieving boring points, or the chance of a mass score deletion.

I'm sure others agree...

eytanz
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Well, see, but that just seems the worst of both worlds.

If you take a hold and make it unscorable, then the high-scorers lose their scores anyway, and the hold remains there to clutter the hold list for everyone else.

Besides, what the discussion above does clearly show is that most people agree that the solution should be about how to prevent bad holds from being uploaded/accepted, not on how to fix it once they are already there. Deletion is a bad choice, and everyone agrees on that - I'd say it's better than the alternative, but that's another matter.

Remlin is saying "lets introduce a solution that will protect high-scorers but not everyone else". That's a pretty narrow minded view. What we should be looking for, and I think a lot of the discussion is about - including Mike's post - is finding a solution that allows quality control for holds yet at the same time is fair for architects. Once that is achieved, high-scorers automatically benefit *and* everyone else benefits too.

(Note that in my opinion, this discussion is totally orthogonal to the suggestion, made in another thread, to have a seperate highscore for official holds only. Remlin's suggestion might work as a modfication of that idea, but I don't think it belongs in this discussion.)

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[Last edited by eytanz at 09-13-2006 01:56 AM]

Syntax
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I believe remlin meant "only make a hold high-scoreable if it is deemed so by peers". I doubt there's any other way of guaranteeing only good holds. We want people to use DROD as a tool, but we also want scores to mean something.

The fact that the question of how to control holds has been going on for at least a year means I doubt we'll ever find a solution. To me, the best of both worlds seems like a good middle ground.

[EDIT]

And if it's orthogonal to another thread, then maybe it's parallel to this one.

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[Last edited by Syntax at 09-13-2006 02:06 AM]

eytanz
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Well, that's just plain out ignoring everything in the thread. You can disagree with it, sure, but you (and Remlin) need to acknowledge that several solutions have been suggested, some of which seem totally workable, including Mike's.

And by "this discussion" I meant that the discussion in this thread, as a whole, is orthogonal to the other thread.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 09-13-2006 02:11 AM]

Syntax
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eytanz wrote:
Well, that's just plain out ignoring everything in the thread. You can disagree with it, sure, but you (and Remlin) need to acknowledge that several solutions have been suggested, some of which seem totally workable, including Mike's.

And by "this discussion" I meant that the discussion in this thread, as a whole, is orthogonal to the other thread.

Cool... Look forward to them.

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I think that there are actually two issues being discussed here. That is, bad holds which suck to play, and holds that are nasty to highscorers.(wheather it be through bad design or marking unscoreable)

The first issue is already taken care of with the ratings/difficulty system, and although it isn't all that accurate, it works well enough.

The second issue, on the other hand, is in many ways interwined in the first, only the problem is that people still feel they have to play them in order to improve their high score.

My suggestion for the second issue would be to have some kind of trial period, in which people can push it into the highscores.

As for redoing the architecture board, if the testing board had all the privilages of the hold board now, only it isn't final, I would agree that it wouldn't create too much of a tier. However, if it would be anything like it is now it would be a completely different story.

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[Last edited by NiroZ at 09-13-2006 07:49 AM : changed t to f]

Remlin
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I don't understand your reaction at all, Eytanz. You say my idea is essentially "lets introduce a solution that will protect high-scorers but not everyone else"? Wait, who else needs protecting? I can only imagine you're talking about casual Droders just looking for a fun time who don't want to be hit by an unconquerable or just unfun hold.

First, they don't really need protecting. They already have a rating system and comments in the hold thread to tell them "Bad hold - stay away". It works.

Second, having a class of Recommended Holds would help them as much as anyone. That label is a gaurantee that they're getting into something they're going to enjoy. Or at least, that's going to meet a certain quality threshhold.

Third, the whole point of this thread is indeed the protection of the high-score hounds. The entire problem in your initial post was predicated on not wanting to erase the work of people who have high scores in bad holds.

Fourth, I'm not ignoring everything in the thread. "several solutions have been suggested, some of which seem totally workable". Every one of those solutions has been aimed at how to determine whether a hold meets a minimum level of quality. I want to use those solutions. I just want to use them as the basis for labeling a hold "Meets A Minimum Level Of Quality", instead of as the basis of whether or not it's allowed to be published.

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[Last edited by Remlin at 09-13-2006 05:37 AM]

Hikari
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Remlin wrote:
First, they don't really need protecting. They already have a rating system and comments in the hold thread to tell them "Bad hold - stay away". It works.

I rarely see comments in a hold thread before I've already downloaded and played the hold. When the usual reaction to a new hold coming out is '5/5 it in the ratings so CaravelNet subscribers can download', I get no warning whatsoever, as I download through DROD. The rating system and comments only help when the hold's been up long enough for them to exist.

Second, having a class of Recommended Holds would help them as much as anyone. That label is a gaurantee that they're getting into something they're going to enjoy. Or at least, that's going to meet a certain quality threshhold.

There's my tab suggestion, which would probably require the two-board solution in order to function completely properly.

Third, the whole point of this thread is indeed the protection of the high-score hounds. The entire problem in your initial post was predicated on not wanting to erase the work of people who have high scores in bad holds.

OK, I admit, I'm a top-40 highscore person, but only through playing holds. I'm involved in this thread because I don't like -downloading through the paid service in DROD- what I *assume* is a completed hold, and discovering that it's shoddy and full of bugs.

This isn't protecting the highscore-hounds, this is protecting the paying customers from future bad holds getting released over the paid service.

Fourth, I'm not ignoring everything in the thread. "several solutions have been suggested, some of which seem totally workable". Every one of those solutions has been aimed at how to determine whether a hold meets a minimum level of quality. I want to use those solutions. I just want to use them as the basis for labeling a hold "Meets A Minimum Level Of Quality", instead of as the basis of whether or not it's allowed to be published.

So it's perfectly fine for holds that are below that minimum level of quality to get released to paid customers?

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NiroZ
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Hikari wrote:
OK, I admit, I'm a top-40 highscore person, but only through playing holds. I'm involved in this thread because I don't like -downloading through the paid service in DROD- what I *assume* is a completed hold, and discovering that it's shoddy and full of bugs.

This isn't protecting the highscore-hounds, this is protecting the paying customers from future bad holds getting released over the paid service.

Mrimer will be allowing more information about holds to be shown in DROD 3, which will go someway to fixing that problem. You probably knew that, but just in case.

Note that the paid service is simply designed to make it more convenient to download holds, its not supposed to be a sort of filter.

However, i must agree about the comments. I don't read the comments either, as usually they are full of spoilers, so i don't read them till after.

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NiroZ wrote:
Note that the paid service is simply designed to make it more convenient to download holds, its not supposed to be a sort of filter.

I'm going to agree with NiroZ here. CaravelNet has never been sold as a filter. It's always been sold as a more convenient method to download holds in-game.

I do think it would be really nice of CaravelNet if they could allow sorting holds by ratings in-game, by default. (I don't know if this would be possible, but mrimer's messages on this point have always been cryptic to me because of my sometimes bad understanding of English, not his fault.)

But it does seem that this whole thread is about CaravelNet users want to have a better selection of their holds (either for scoring or not). In that case, I'd like suggestions that benefit (and/or restict) CaravelNet users only for the rest of this thread.

And just to make sure I say this clear, I am completely against any restriction on holds in the Holds boards for people who does not care about high scores. The current system is good enough for people who wants to play good rated holds (perhaps adding a review board without spoilers would be even better, but not much). (and people who actually rates holds correctly; that hold had a 5.7 score before the backlash)

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[Last edited by Tim at 09-13-2006 09:25 AM : english]

Stephen4Louise
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Tim wrote:
And just to make sure I say this clear, I am completely against any restriction on holds in the Holds boards for people who does not care about high scores. The current system is good enough for people who wants to play good rated holds (perhaps adding a review board without spoilers would be even better, but not much). (and people who actually rates holds correctly; that hold had a 5.7 score before the backlash)

Keep in mind that my proposed system will not restict which holds are available. Anyone can post or download a hold from the Testing board, and to have a hold promoted to the holds board it would only need two endorsements from any forum members, so I don't see how any hold of reasonable quality will be held back for long.

This isn't about high scores or restricting people, from the start I have said that we should be actively encouraging as many people as possible to design and build holds. The problem is making sure holds are tested BEFORE being posted on the holds board. My system will enforce that.

Beef Row
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Hikari wrote:
So it's perfectly fine for holds that are below that minimum level of quality to get released to paid customers?

Actually, sure it is, considering we're talking about a model of user created, user rated content, with users in a pay tier and a free tier. This is more similar to sites like livejournal, youtube (does it have a pay tier yet?), etc, than to a pure pay site. You rarely see maintainers of such sites filter for quality. So having the same situation here wouldn't be at all unreasonable.

That doesn't mean there shouldn't be a solution, but I don't think its a matter of entitlement. I also don't like the idea of holds being removed, even ones that are unfinishable/broken (remember that MetDROiD for instance was unfinishable for quite some time thanks to a stairway bug).

Personally, I'd rather see holds labeled (maybe Solved, Unsolved, or Unsolvable, the last managed by user vote, but with any actual conquest overriding the vote), but have these labels serve as fair warning rather than grounds to delete a hold.

And honestly, I would keep unsolvable holds scorable, since a flaw in one room or staircase can prevent completion while not affecting the quality of any other room whatsoever.

For example, lets say there had been a flaw in the final room of Bavato's dungeon, discovered with agaricus was on a long absence such as he is now. Now remember, we're figuring he's not around to fix it. Would this be grounds to delete the whole hold? Or to negate all the effort put into optimizing its earlier rooms? Would you suddenly feel a 1st place in Bad Evil Resteraunt was more valid than a 1st place Bavato score?

I realize MOST unsolvable holds won't be the brilliant ones, but it could easily happen. So I'm not big on tampering with the scores either.

I guess I'd support deletion of holds for the following reasons:
1.) actually malformed .hold files
2.) extreme offensiveness (though if possible I'd rather see it 'cleaned up' than scrapped)
3.) multiple/frequent, or very early unsolvable rooms (as opposed to say just one near then end).

For anything else, I'd prefer a "player beware" sort of warning, though I realize this seems to go against the feelings of almost everyone else posting here.



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Tim
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Stephen4Louise wrote:
This isn't about high scores or restricting people, from the start I have said that we should be actively encouraging as many people as possible to design and build holds. The problem is making sure holds are tested BEFORE being posted on the holds board. My system will enforce that.

I understand that. And my point is that whether it's been tested beforehand or not, it's not that important. We have a quite good working rating system that sorts this out. If you want to post an untested hold, be my guest, and I will rate it down as low as possible. And DROD can make people easier to find better holds by allowing sorting on ratings in game. Enforcing is absolutely not needed.

And if you have read the rr hold thread, the backlash is really only about some architect changing his rooms after people have scored in it. Not because the hold is "bad", because I've already said that 3 months ago and nothing happened.

And this thread is about restricting. Everyone here seems to want to "protect" other users from playing "bad" holds. Note that restricting is not necessary bad; I like the idea of not counting for high scores for holds that are not mature enough. But usually restricting is bad. It will deprive us from some holds like the war series (or Metroid). I don't like it. (Note that this is purely my opinion, from someone who does not use CNet for scoring purposes.)

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[Last edited by Tim at 09-13-2006 09:54 AM : added Metroid as an example, thanks BeefRow]

Stephen4Louise
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Tim wrote:
And this thread is about restricting. Everyone here seems to want to protect other users from playing "bad" holds. Note that restricting is not necessary bad; I like the idea of not counting for high scores for holds that are not mature enough. But usually restricting is bad. It will deprive us from some holds like the war series. I don't like it. (Note that this is purely my opinion, from someone who does not use CNet for scoring purposes.)

I don't see how the war series would be deprived from anyone. If it was posted on a testing forum for approval, I would approve all of them (I have played and completed the whole series) and I'm assuming that you would have too if you had tested them. So the holds will be on the holds board. Noone can stop a hold from being posted, but there are currently 3085 people who can approve any hold that is posted and allow it to be moved to Holds.
The holds board should be a place where someone new to the site can download any hold and at least be guaranteed that it is completable and of reasonable quality.

Even if holds don't get approved for the holds board, there is no restriction on who can play them, they will still be available on the testing board. Don't forget that holds tested on private beta boards will have to go through the same process, but if they aren't approved for any reasons, the architect can still post on testing to open the hold up for public approval.

The subject of hold updates is a separate one to what I have been suggesting and the best solution I have heard for it is architects submitting demos with holds, any updates to holds must still work with the original demos submitted by the architect. If any of the demos don't work the update is rejected and must be approved by an admin. This system does seem a lot more awkward to implement though.

Perhaps under my system while updates are free in the Testing board, in the Holds board updates will be checked against the #1 demo for each room in the hold. If they all work (or there is no demo for that room) the update is successful. If it fails then ??? I don't know, update is rejected to be approved by admin?

Another suggestion...
Once a hold has been approved and moved to the Holds board it is locked for updates. The architect can however apply updates to the original hold on the testing board. He will have to submit these for approval also in the same way the hold was submitted. Once approved, the updated hold is written to the Holds board.

Keep throwing ideas out there, someone will hit upon a solution that fits eventually. Expand and criticise any ideas you see by anyone that can be improved or won't work.

Tim
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Stephen4Louise wrote:
The holds board should be a place where someone new to the site can download any hold and at least be guaranteed that it is completable and of reasonable quality.

Well, it could be, but it is not. The Holds board is currently meant as a place to store all published holds that their architects think is finished. The place that you suggest that is completable and reasonable quality is located here.
Perhaps this should be make more clear in the General Board. Or in TCB, for CaravelNet users (at least I hope so). Perhaps sorting on ratings in the Holds board itself is a much better idea.

The subject of hold updates is a separate one to what I have been suggesting [...]
Another suggestion...
Once a hold has been approved and moved to the Holds board it is locked for updates. The architect can however apply updates to the original hold on the testing board. He will have to submit these for approval also in the same way the hold was submitted. Once approved, the updated hold is written to the Holds board.

I might like this idea, as long as it is using a same kind of process (it doesn't matter what kind of process). I think it is a waste of time if an elaborate system needs to be set up only to get a hold into Holds, not for updates.

Keep throwing ideas out there, someone will hit upon a solution that fits eventually. Expand and criticise any ideas you see by anyone that can be improved or won't work.

Agreed completely. This is the reason why I have been quite harsh lately. Sorry if it offended you. (But I've also given away many mod points in this thread to anyone just for saying something.)

Another set of suggestions (more a recap):
1) Rename "Architecture" to "Testing". Put it above the "Holds" Board.
2) Enabling sorting on release date, fun and difficulty ratings on the Holds board, and set it on fun on default.
3) Move the Hold upload button to the "Testing" board.
What do you think of this one?

Edit: Just wanted to say I like the BeefRow's idea a few posts above as well.

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[Last edited by Tim at 09-13-2006 10:37 AM]

Stephen4Louise
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Tim wrote:
Agreed completely. This is the reason why I have been quite harsh lately. Sorry if it offended you. (But I've also given away many mod points in this thread to anyone just for saying something.)

Another set of suggestions (more a recap):
1) Rename "Architecture" to "Testing". Put it above the "Holds" Board.
2) Enabling sorting on release date, fun and difficulty ratings on the Holds board, and set it on fun on default.
3) Move the Hold upload button to the "Testing" board.
What do you think of this one?

I've worked on enough computer projects to know that if you take offence to someone criticising your ideas you won't get very far. Similarly I know that if you don't speak up about something you like or dislike you will regret it later.

OK your ideas...
1) Renaming is fine, but it shouldn't be above holds. The large majority of people come here to play holds, and it should be as easy as possible for them to find them, for that reason holds should be as close to the top as possible.
2)You can do that here, so maybe this link should be more prominent on the forum, or in the holds board.
3)Under the current system I think this should happen immediately. If my system is implemented it will already be there.

Beef Rows idea of labelling holds as solved or unsolved is something that should maybe happen immediatly, it's another quick fix for the current system that will allow casual players to see which holds are completable. I don't see it as a long term fix to the current problems though.

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[Last edited by Stephen4Louise at 09-13-2006 10:45 AM]

Tim
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Stephen4Louise wrote:

Tim wrote:
2) Enabling sorting on release date, fun and difficulty ratings on the Holds board, and set it on fun on default.
What do you think of this one?

2)You can do that here, so maybe this link should be more prominent on the forum, or in the holds board.

And my opinion is that this sorting should be available and shown very prominently for the threads on the Holds board as well, not only for that specific subpage. I think this will help first timers a lot more than having to search for this on a subpage.

Stephen4Louise
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Tim wrote:
And my opinion is that this sorting should be available and shown very prominently for the threads on the Holds board as well, not only for that specific subpage. I think this will help first timers a lot more than having to search for this on a subpage.

It's definately a good idea, but I don't think it will be possible under the current system. We are still limited by the code that runs the forum. If it's possible then I'd be all for it. Maybe when Schik returns he will be able to provide some input into the thread, and maybe he has some ideas of his own.

eytanz
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Remlin wrote:
Third, the whole point of this thread is indeed the protection of the high-score hounds. The entire problem in your initial post was predicated on not wanting to erase the work of people who have high scores in bad holds.

Well, that's how the thread started, sure. But the reason I reacted with surprise to your previous post is that the discussion has been moving away from that ever since. Which is why I found your claim that "It's becoming more clear that the real issue isn't a need for a hold submission revamp." somewhat bizzare, as I find that the thread makes it more clear that my original position - which is that this is about highscores - is actually wrong. If you had said "Why did this thread drift away from highscore reform" I would disagree with you, but I would understand how you got there. Your original post still seems like it just outright ignores that actual discussion.

Anyway, I basically agree with everything Hikari and Stephen4Louise said in their responses to Tim above, so I'm not going to repeat it.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 09-13-2006 02:09 PM]