I felt after reading the topic on how high scores and sniping were going to be changed (as well as Maurog's poll) that there needed to be another poll on the subject that would hopefully represent the different opinions better as well as get closer to the heart of the matter in the first place. Allow me to tell you the story of my #1:
I was playing through MetDroid Prime. I got to a room on the Overworld that had a red door and lots of trapdoors. "
Ugh,"
I said, "
not another trapdoor optimization puzzle. I see a crumbly wall over there; I'll come back to this room later."
So I went there, and I cleared that secret room, and I came back. I beat the room from the opposite side, and lo and behold I get an untied #1. "
What's this? I got an untied #1?"
And so I looked at what had been the #1 score (Stuart's 369) and found that it was highly optimized, but finished from the other side of the room, making it take 4 more moves than even my greatly screwed up demo (for reference, the room in question is
this one), simply because going through the cracked walls near the top to get to the trapdoors on the right is much more costly than simply starting over there and doing the roaches on the left side last instead of first. I then proceeded to fix up the obvious flaws in my demo with a second run, and knocked it down to an even 350 moves. But I wasn't satisfied with my move count or my time, so I looked at the other demos on the list, and found a way to shave off 2 more moves by simply changing the order of single trapdoor visitation (in the corridor near the large group of trapdoors on the left) a bit, bringing it down to the current 348.
So, what exactly did I do here? I didn't
intend to break the record; I merely stumbled upon it. I (and others) can still claim I uniquely came up with the solution, however, as I did it on my first run (upon which it isn't possible to see and thus copy demo moves anyway). I rather think, though, that protecting my record would be a slightly different affair than protecting the record of someone who spent lots of time coming up with ways to shave moves off an already fairly well-designed route, at least if the big concern is that work done on creating the best route possible is going to waste and not being credited to the people who originally did the work (and instead to those who edit out the mistakes). I only worked at my record after I achieved it (and more or less by either taking out the obvious problems and taking other techniques from other demos); these people worked to achieve that record. Who is more deserving of protection? If both of us are equally deserving of protection, then what is actually being protected? And what is more, I 'borrowed'/stole techniques from other demo makers to enhance and protect my own; how different is that from what a sniper does? I did my borrowing after taking the #1 spot, the sniper does it to take the #1 spot; but we are both responsible of intellectual theft of a sort. Punishing one while allowing the other seems inconsistent, and it seems that the current fix does exactly that.
A question comes to my mind on this subject: Is there one best solution to any given room? The answer to me seems to be obviously yes. But if this is true, then what's the challenge of the high scores? Seems pretty obvious again: To see who can come up with, if not the best solution then the closest to best solution first. The best players? The ones who can come up with the best/nearest to best solution most often. What is sniping? The practice of taking high scores away from others by eliminating small, obvious errors in a given route. But what does sniping end up with? A #1 that is closer to the best solution. So, if you believe the best solution is what the #1 demo should come as close as possible to being, sniping seems like a very acceptable practice.
An objection here comes to mind: What about the DROD solver? Well, the high score list was designed with humans in mind. Humans make things interesting because humans don't have infinite time or patience to devote to this game and so, while they provide plenty of competition there's also plenty of room for improvement and incentive to find such improvements. Computer programs, even the excellently designed ones that can rival and even beat humans are not as interesting for DROD because all they need is infinite power and infinite time to come up with the best solution for any given room. The challenge is not simply about finding the best solution, it is about which one of us limited entities can find it/find the closest possible variant first, and which of us can do it the most often.
So where does that put me? In the middle somewhere. I won't lie; if I have to choose between protecting the person who came up with a general route first and giving the #1 to the person who cleaned up the mistakes without adding anything really new, I'll give it to the sniper after a day of the original route maker knowing he's been beaten. What I don't understand is why a person with
obvious mistakes in a natural #1 won't bother to fix them ASAP: If he/she really cares about the high scores, then he/she would fix them (or at least I would if I were him/her). If they didn't notice the errors, then what seperates the sniper from someone who comes up with a one move change to the previously-thought-perfect route in a different room? If I had not bothered to fix up my #1 at 365 moves, or if I had stopped at 350 moves, I feel the next person to come along and shave off the extra moves would have been well within their right to take my #1 away. I still feel this way, honestly: If someone out there can find a flaw in my demo, be my guest and take it away. If I'm upset, I'll be upset at myself for not noticing the error, and if it's bigger than a wait or wall bump then I'll tip my hat to you gracefully.
And that.. is pretty much how I feel about sniping. What do you think about it?
/dy
