Schik
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I just now changed it so that demos cannot be downloaded in-game until they've been there for one week. This is a test feature, and could be removed, but I think I like it.

The purpose is to try to make it harder for people to simply download the #1 and find some trivial mistake in it to get the #1 for themself. Looking through some server statistics, I think this happens a fair amount, and this is a very simple way to try to fix it. Hopefully this will reward people for coming up with an optimal solution independently, as those people will be able to get the #1 before the copiers could.

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Maurog
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I like this feature.
Mostly because of the mental image of someone I just beat boiling there for a week thinking "how did he DO that?"

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Syntax
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Excellent idea!

michthro
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Great idea!

zex20913
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Yarr...one ploy down the drain.

Hmmm...I get #1s beaten more often than I keep them. I think I want to wait and see what happens before I pass judgement on this, because right now I'm a bit against it. Maurog's comment is how I feel often, and I don't like having that feeling imposed on me.

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kzc
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As someone who cares very little about scores, I find being subjected to these kind of tweaks mildly irksome. I don't look at demos that often, but sometimes I'm curious as to whether an alternate approach could give me some insight into solving other rooms. I understand why highscore players would find a 1 week wait useful, but I wish there were a way to be exempt.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to keep most of the CaravelNet features (I like having the site track which holds/rooms I've completed, in-game hold download, etc.) while opting out of the scoring system. Any chance of something like that being implemented?

Schik
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I did think about that, and I think there's a somewhat elegant solution.

I would set everyone as "competitive" by default, and you could choose to be "uncompetitive." This would affect your demo downloads/uploads as such:
- You could immediately download any demos
- Your uploaded demos would have a +1 week timestamp.

Thus you couldn't use downloads as a "cheat" to break #1s... at least, others would have that full week to beat or tie your demo and get credit for doing it before you.

Changing yourself to uncompetitive would be irreversible.

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tokyokid
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Yes, great idea.

zex20913
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I don't like finalized options like that. Hows about you can change back, and all demos have the time stamp as the time you return to competition. So, if I go uncompetitive, which I personally won't, and want to change back on March 12th at 3:48 pm, all of my demos will have an upload time of March 19th at 3:48 pm.

The solution may be elegant, but I'm still not sure if what it's solving is necessary. It might be kind of like punching somebody in the face and then stopping their nose from bleeding with telekinesis. It's a great method of solving the problem, but the problem didn't need to be there in the first place. I'm still swaying to the "anti" side, obviously, but I still need to assess whether the new element enhances or detracts from my gameplay.

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Schik
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Hmmm. So you'd want to change all demos upload while you were uncompetitive to have a timestamp of one week from the instant you turned back to competitive? I guess there's only slightly more bookkeeping, but it sounds confusing to me. You yourself said that you pretty much want it both ways... you want your #1s protected this way, but don't want everybody else's protected that way. Pick a side and stick with it!

How about this for a compromise:

Remove this latest change, so everyone can download immediately. However, if you download a #1 demo for a room, then upload a new #1 for that room, your timestamp will be moved to a week in the future. So "cheating" in this case will not really net you a win, because anyone will be able to come along and tie your score, which would mean getting the #1 out from under you as long as they didn't watch the #1 as well.

Edit: that "download a #1 demo for a room" could possibly change to "watch any demo for a room"...? Watching any other demo could give you a tactic you hadn't thought of. I don't know. Thoughts?


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The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi

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[Last edited by Schik at 02-22-2007 09:06 PM]

kzc
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I was actually kind of digging the "uncompetitive" option, because it could go a long way towards solving other issues of this type as well. I'd sign up for it and never look back.

Stefan
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If the "competitive"/"uncompetitive" gets implemented (I quite like it), sign me up as uncompetitive!

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Schik
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Is there some reason to like the competitive/uncompetitive idea over my last proposal? I believe the latter allows you to choose competitiveness on a per-room basis, and implicitly. Am I missing something?

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larrymurk
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Sign me up for uncompetative, but I still want to be able to watch the top demos immediately. I think being able to watch other's demos is one of my favorite features.

Schik
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larrymurk wrote:
Sign me up for uncompetative, but I still want to be able to watch the top demos immediately. I think being able to watch other's demos is one of my favorite features.

If we end up going the competitive/uncompetitive route, then yes, you'd be able to download everything immediately.

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stigant
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Unfortunatly, the competitive/uncompetitive solution isn't workable since someone could buy two accounts, mark one competitive and the other not etc. Or become friends with someone who is uncompetitive etc.

Also, I don't like finality type options.

Let me ask a different question of kzc... how often do you actually download a solution within a week of it being uploaded? Its probably fairly likely that this won't affect you at all except in official holds since you are unlikely to be playing the same rooms of some random hold at the same time as one of the more competitive players.

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zex20913
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Schik wrote:
Hmmm. So you'd want to change all demos upload while you were uncompetitive to have a timestamp of one week from the instant you turned back to competitive?

Yup. That's the first thing that came to me when thinking about a bypass for the "uncompetitive is final!" option, which I liked even less.

I guess there's only slightly more bookkeeping, but it sounds confusing to me. You yourself said that you pretty much want it both ways... you want your #1s protected this way, but don't want everybody else's protected that way. Pick a side and stick with it!

Everybody loves special advantages. Also, I like this fence. It's kind of comfortable.

How about this for a compromise:

Remove this latest change, so everyone can download immediately. However, if you download a #1 demo for a room, then upload a new #1 for that room, your timestamp will be moved to a week in the future. So "cheating" in this case will not really net you a win, because anyone will be able to come along and tie your score, which would mean getting the #1 out from under you as long as they didn't watch the #1 as well.

Edit: that "download a #1 demo for a room" could possibly change to "watch any demo for a room"...? Watching any other demo could give you a tactic you hadn't thought of. I don't know. Thoughts?

Would this differentiate between #1s and #1 ties? I don't like the idea of "any demo". I may just want to see what the architect wanted as a solution (a la a Larrymurk hold) or why michthro is in 11th place (a rarity to be beheld). I do like the concept, but I'm iffy on the implementation.

Potential issues I foresee:

1) I download a #1 demo, watch it, and 1 year later, come back and replay it, gaining the #1 score. Is there still a 1 week delay?
2) Sometimes, if I get a surprising #1 score, I go back and rebeat it. I'd like to know that this wouldn't be penalized. (I don't know if your own demos count as already downloaded.)
3) Again, as stigant mentioned, the heavy loophole abuse potential.

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Stephen4Louise
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Schik wrote:
How about this for a compromise:

Remove this latest change, so everyone can download immediately. However, if you download a #1 demo for a room, then upload a new #1 for that room, your timestamp will be moved to a week in the future. So "cheating" in this case will not really net you a win, because anyone will be able to come along and tie your score, which would mean getting the #1 out from under you as long as they didn't watch the #1 as well.

Edit: that "download a #1 demo for a room" could possibly change to "watch any demo for a room"...? Watching any other demo could give you a tactic you hadn't thought of. I don't know. Thoughts?

I like this idea, much better than the others put forward.

My personal preference will always be to stay competitive, but I do like to watch demos. The problem I will have is that once I play a hold I am very unlikely to go back to it to watch a demo a week later. So it will be like losing one of the main features of caravelnet.

At least on a per room basis, I can make the decision myself whether to watch a demo. If I see a way to improve my score after watching a demo for a room, I'd be happy to wait a week before it will count.

Following on from this, it will be good if the pending scores show up in the high score table, but without points, therefore anyone playing the room will be able to see what they need to beat/match and how long they have to do it. It is good incentive to "beat the cheat".
Adding to this again, another tab in the high scores pages showing scores that are going to be beaten, ordered by time remaining, at least this will give the current top scorer notice that he is going to lose points soon. EDIT : Rather than a new tab, I think a new table on the "#1 Scores" tab will work better.

Steve.

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[Last edited by Stephen4Louise at 02-22-2007 09:54 PM]

Stefan
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Schik wrote:
Is there some reason to like the competitive/uncompetitive idea over my last proposal? I believe the latter allows you to choose competitiveness on a per-room basis, and implicitly. Am I missing something?

Consider the following:
Player X has been playing a hold offline. After a while X connects to CaravelNet, goes into a conquered room and notices that no-one has a better score. Just out of curiosity, X downloads the current #1 to watch where the other player had "failed" (or for some other reason). Now, even though X has independently found a better solution before the current #1 player's high-score, X can't get a high-score for it until a week has passed.

stigant wrote:
Let me ask a different question of kzc... how often do you actually download a solution within a week of it being uploaded? Its probably fairly likely that this won't affect you at all except in official holds since you are unlikely to be playing the same rooms of some random hold at the same time as one of the more competitive players.

High scores change all the time in a lot of holds, not just new ones. I for one would not like to have any restrictions on what I can download, but I'll gladly put "restrictions" on what I upload.

So, I guess I could accept the compromise solution in some form, but I don't really like the recent change.

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Tahnan
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As for me, I very very rarely download demos anyway--I think I might've downloaded the occasional #1 demo just to see what entrance the person is starting from(*), and once or twice I think I've said, "OK, fine, I'm not going to try to imitate it, I just need to see it." So the one-week waiting period wouldn't particularly change the way I play, but it would be perhaps a very occasional impediment.

But a quick note about the competitive/non-competitive option and permenancy: I didn't used to care about optimization (see my average score in JtRH, say, and that's after I've gone back to replay a whole bunch of rooms--at some point I literally just reloaded every entrance room and walked out of it the right way). But I've come to find it an interesting challenge. I'd hate to think that someone who signs up and says "no, of course I'm non-competitive" wouldn't be able to change that.

(*) Idle note: some demos, especially some #1 demos, start from the entrance back from a secret room. How interestingly spoilerrific. Not that I see any good way to fix that, and it probably doesn't matter, but.

kzc
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stigant wrote:
Let me ask a different question of kzc... how often do you actually download a solution within a week of it being uploaded? Its probably fairly likely that this won't affect you at all except in official holds since you are unlikely to be playing the same rooms of some random hold at the same time as one of the more competitive players.

True, it's unlikely to affect me very often if at all, but the restriction chafes, nonetheless. However:

1) There may be others who like to download demos more often than I do. They might be impacted only in official holds, but some of those can be quite large, and I can see someone making a list of demos he wants to download and grinding his teeth while he waits a week for them to become available.

2) Is the impact of the issue which precipitated this tweak really that great? Perhaps it is, but I think you have to balance the annoyance of demo-download abusers vs. the annoyance of non-abusers having to wait.

3) Most importantly, this is not the first discussion of ways to keep people from abusing the high score system, nor is it likely to be the last. While this change may have a small or no impact on me, the next one might be substantial. The "un/competitive" option could be a big hammer to solve multiple problems at once. It'd be nice to opt out once and for all.

Tahnan
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Schik wrote:
Remove this latest change, so everyone can download immediately. However, if you download a #1 demo for a room, then upload a new #1 for that room, your timestamp will be moved to a week in the future. So "cheating" in this case will not really net you a win, because anyone will be able to come along and tie your score, which would mean getting the #1 out from under you as long as they didn't watch the #1 as well.

You know--he said, apologizing for the double post--here's the thing. I said that I rarely download other people's demos, and that's true. But I do look at the scores for the room when I'm optimizing. If I found a 47-move solution, check the scores, and see that michthro found a 43-move solution, I'll say, "Well, all right, let me see if I can make it down to 43."

Would a postdated-by-a-week demo be visible immediately? Because if so, then I could tie (and thereby beat) someone's week-late high score based on the fact that they got it, without watching their demo; and I wouldn't have been able to if they had simply waited a week and then gotten the high score instead. That seems unfair to me. Does that make sense?

Also: suppose I download a #1 score, look at it, and go, "Oh, well, blah, I did make an extra move in there, oh well." Then a few months later, looking at the hold again, I say "Oh! Wait! We were both wrong--there's a much faster way to do it!" Why should that demo be postdated by a week?

mrimer
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Another option to postdating all "cheat" demos by a week is to make sure that they are at least postdated a week after the last time the user downloaded a demo for that room. So there's no way to avoid waiting a week to get your score, but after that point, you don't have any more time delay penalty.

Tim
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What value does CaravelNet has if it is "non-competitive"?

Downloading demos to watch? Being able to read room images in H&S to help others?

I predict that what will happen is that only people who want to cheat buy both versions, while everyone else wants the competitive version. And you have more code and database issues to check for.

It's good that you try to stop people uploading just after they download, but I don't think this is a good solution.

Mike's solution is much better in that respect.

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[Last edited by Tim at 02-22-2007 10:33 PM]

AlefBet
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I'm not sure I see the point in making "cheat" demos have to wait any longer than a week after the post date of the demo being "cheated." If the rationale for this is to allow the original delver to correct his own inefficiencies in a new #1 without imminent fear of being sniped by a copycat, I believe that would do it.

It would also require less storage on the server keeping track of download times per player per demo. Any demo older than a week would need no such list. The storage reqs wouldn't be quite as low as the original "hide new demos for a week" solution, but much lower than the "anytime you download a demo, you eat a week in time for that room" rule.

My personal preference is still the original easy flat week delay for demos to show solution. It requires virtually no additional storage and is immune to the shill account problem. But there have been some valid points made for the other solutions, so I am reserving my opinion somewhat.

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[Last edited by AlefBet at 02-22-2007 10:38 PM]

stigant
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It seems to me that the problem here is that there are two types of improvements to a high score for a room:

1) A small tweak - say, less than x moves improvement over the old HS, or less than x% improvement over the old HS.

2) A novel approach to the room. A wholly new idea that results in a significant improvement to the HS for the room.

So a typical situation is that Optimiser A finds a nice type 2 improvement to a room. A day later, Optimiser B downloads A's demo, notices that A bumped a wall on his way out of the room and makes a type 1 improvement to the room. The next day, A sees his mistake, fixes it and now has the number 2 score. So B has, what, 1, 2 extra points? Why not just award a type 2 improvement with 2 extra (permanent) points?

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AlefBet
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stigant wrote:
Why not just award a type 2 improvement with 2 extra (permanent) points?

We had discussions very much like this while deciding how the HS system we have now would work. The trouble is, how do you algorithmically tell the difference between the two? It opens up a can of worms, and it was pretty much decided to go with something simple and easily understandable rather than make something complicated that's hard to explain and won't always work anyway.

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coppro
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My opinion would be this, but I'm not much of an optimizer.

Sometimes, I decided to see what the best I can do on a room is. I don't optimize or anything, I just play around to get the fastest. I can. Once I've done this, I might download to see how the person who did it in half the moves did it. As long as I'm not interfered, I don't mind.

That said, CaravelNet is meant to be competitive (I'm pretty sure) and so if I make a mistake by bumping into a wall, that's a mistake. In a footrace, if you make a misstep and don't win, that's your problem. It doesn't affect me much, but IMHO, if you make a mistake, and someone fixes something that you should have fixed, that's your problem.

Once again, I don't optimize, so I don't really think that my opinion will matter much. But it is there.

NiroZ
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When I download demos, usually I check the highscores to see the tricky moves that the top player is using. Waiting 10 seconds for the scores to be downloaded is long enough for me, I don't want to wait a whole week.

Perhaps if in there was a clan feature for the highscores, we wouldn't have to worry about snipering. I mean, most of the time that I did it (I didn't even know it was bad. I mean, everyone did it to my scores) was because I didn't have the time or the effort to be able to think up all the clever tricks that other people had done. If you where only able to see the demos of other people in your clan, and only the highscores of the rest, things might get more interesting, as you can only see a portion of the scores, and have to figure of out the rest. Other interesting things you could do is make it so that you can only see the clan name on the score, thus people who see a michthro score would be more likely to challenge it.
Of course, you could probably have to have special rules for people in the top 20. I'm just brainstorming possibilities.

Schik
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Well, there have been a lot of opinions spoken here, and I'm not sure what I think is the best option yet. I do believe that *something* should be done, so here's my reply to the opinion that nothing should be done:

That said, CaravelNet is meant to be competitive (I'm pretty sure) and so if I make a mistake by bumping into a wall, that's a mistake. In a footrace, if you make a misstep and don't win, that's your problem. It doesn't affect me much, but IMHO, if you make a mistake, and someone fixes something that you should have fixed, that's your problem.

I don't think a footrace is a good analogy - if I raced the fastest 1-mile runner in the world, I don't think I could beat him even if he tripped. His skill is that much higher than mine. However, with high scores, as long as I can somehow pass a room, I can download the #1 demo and recreate it to appear as good or if I'm lucky find a small flaw that I can improve upon.

Here are the pros and cons of the various suggestions as I see them:

A: Current implementation
Pro: Near perfect #1s will be less likely to be sniped, but can still be legitimately beaten.
Con: People want to download demos. NOW.

B: "competitive"/"uncompetitive"
Pro: People who don't care about highscores can download demos whenever they want. People who do care won't get sniped (but can still get legitimately beaten)
Con: You gotta pick one or the other, and can't go back.
B2: Make it so you can change back and forth, but changing to competitive changes the timestamps on all demos since you last changed.
Pro: Fixes the above Con.
Con: Added complexity to code and confusion for players.

C: Download demo -> later uploads for that room timestamped +1 week
Pro: Players can download demos at any time, and are only "punished" for rooms they watched other demos for. Competitiveness is per-room rather than per person.
Con: Worries about this punishing people who aren't even trying to snipe a #1, or punish them indefinitely.
C2: Change the timestamp to be +1 week from their last demo download, or +1 week from the submission time of the demo beaten.
Pro: Addresses the Con in C.
Con: ??

D: Algorithmically determine if a new #1 is a tweak or innovative
Pro: Were it perfect, it'd be pretty neat.
Con: Complex, prone to false positives and false negatives.

E: Clans
Okay, I don't understand this one.


Anyways, it seems like C2 is the best option to me. There are some parameters to tweak in there, but it seems like a compromise that should make most people happy.



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The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.
--Mahatma Gandhi