Michthro and I (and other peoples) have been arguing about rating philosophy in the thread for the hold "
Underground civilisation"
, and I have more to say about but I'm tired of hijacking that thread so I moved it to its own thread.
Note that everything below reflects my opinion. It's perfectly fine to have a different philosophy about ranking (and indeed, there's
another thread about this specific question. But I want to get into detail about my particular thoughts on the issue at stake.
And this issue is: holds have two scores, "
Difficulty"
and "
overall"
. Are we supposed to take difficulty into account when we rate "
overall"
, considering that it's rated seperately?
My answer to this is: absolutely yes. But not in quite the same way.
Except in extreme cases of difficulty (either trivial or practical impossibility), difficulty is not the same as quality. It's possible to have a good, easy hold. It's also possible to have a terrible hold that's challenging. I can easily think of real examples of both. But while the two factors are not the same, they are not independent.
"
Overall"
=/= "
Craftsmanship"
or "
polish"
. It's not a rating of how hard the author worked on it. It's a rating of my overall experience. And if a hold is easy, it will have a harder time making a memorable experience for me. It will require great story, or great polish, or something extra. A challenging hold can get a good rate without that something extra, because the challenge in itself is part of the experience. On the other hand, if a hold is too difficult, it might cause me to give up early, or to rely on hints, or to be frustrated in a bad way. None of these things are enjoyable to me, so that would cause me to give the hold a lower score than I would have had it been a bit easier.
But besides that, there are other factors. One of them is "
how is difficulty distributed?"
In order to be enjoyable, a good hold needs an interesting difficulty curve. That means that the rooms, as a general rule, need to progress from less challenging to more challenging. This is a rule of thumb, not a hard-and-fast rule, but a hold that doesn't do this runs a good chance of being rated lower because I'm less likely to enjoy it. In fact, the only thing about KDD I didn't enjoy even in my first playthrough was the wonky difficulty curve.
There's other things, too, such as the type of difficulty. To take the room that started this whole discussion, the entrance room of "
Underground civilisation"
is difficult for what I consider to be all the wrong reasons. It's an orb puzzle, but one where the ideal outcome is not obvious, and it's stuck in with a strict timer that makes experimentation difficult. It also has a lot of red herrings, both literally (5 extra orbs), and conceptually (you need to realize that it is an orb puzzle and not a horde management puzzle). For me, all of this adds up to a room that's difficult to solve and harder yet to enjoy.
Now, it's not that this room couldn't be made enjoyable. It could. If it was surrounded by other similar puzzles, then I could at least have been in the right mindset to begin with. But wait - it is surrounded by them. But you can't reach them until you solve it. That's the worst - it's a room that requires a very narrow solution that's acting as a bottleneck to other, simpler rooms that might help you solve it. That's just plain out wrong.
And all this is independent of the obvious skill and craftsmanship that the hold's author put into the hold. It's a problem of difficulty. But it's a problem that made me have a considerably less pleasent experience here than I could have. This should, and will be, once I rate the hold (I'm waiting to complete it), be reflected in the hold's score.
Micthro seems to be arguing that this is an unfair position to take. That I need to just give the hold one more brain than I otherwise would, and give it a high score which it otherwise deserves. But that means that a hold like Beethro's Teacher or Perfection - which both are extremely challenging *and* properly balanced - ends up looking the same as a hold like Underground Civilisation. That doesn't accurately represent how I feel about these holds, and it therefore shouldn't be how I vote for them.
(and note that I think that Underground civilisation is a very good hold, esp. for a first hold. But it's not one of the top 5 holds and I don't want to rank it as one).
____________________________
I got my avatar back! Yay!
