I love this idea. I believe stephen4louise mentioned earlier the following style of play: Solve, if didn't enjoy and happy with score then move on, if not happy with score then play again. If love the room and feel a trick is missed (or such things as the best entrance to use etc) then watch demo in accelerated to get a feel of the room then replay.
I play exactly like this. I'm pretty good at certain types of rooms such as hordes of wraithwings but hate them. I probably would not watch the #1 as I'm not interested enough. Certain rooms tho (mostly lyncpin ones relying on alternative entrances) fascinate me. In the case where I know I've optimised my solution to a good degree and end up 18th is when I realise there's a trick to solving it. That's usually when I would download the #1. Most of the time it's only to see the entrance used. At other times, the general order. I've never watched in order to copy (ethically, does this still make me a sniper?). I'll use Korvak's Keep as an example. I optimised the first monster room yet kept equalling the #1. After over an hour I couldn't work out where these had been saved. I therefore downloaded the #1 and watched the first 5% of it in accelerated play. That was enough to realise there was another technique. I improved on this and got a #1 outright. I believe this was fair. If I get more than an hour a day to play DROD, it would be a lucky day. I just don't have the time sometimes to test out every start and given the same beginning, I think a #1 is still as deserving.
Anyways
I think Beef Row's idea is great. Lynchpins are rooms I won't want to download #1s for and be a sniper for. It's those long hack and slash rooms where I just don't have the time to work out the better start. In these case, having watched the general idea behind the room is when I will then optimise and beat it. Korvak's is a good example of this happening. Unfortunately, because I watched a demo, it since got equalled and I lost my #1 even though I didn't use that demo for anything other than getting insight without spending ages trying each branch. As an indicator, I think demo downloading should not be classified as sniping.
But yeah... back on topic again. If you download a demo and improve on it then get credit for it. Otherwise get punished. I second Beef Row's idea.
Beef Row wrote:
My thought is this. If you download a demo from any given room, you can no longer submit a new demo unless it has fewer [moves] than the shortest demo you downloaded. So if you took 125 moves to do a room, then downloaded a 60 move demo, unless you can make a 59 move demo, you can't improve your rank.
That's kind of intriguing, isn't it. Of course, it doesn't help with the cases of "I just got a #1; let me check demos with more moves than mine to see if there's a trick or two I can learn from them." Which isn't sniping, it's just...oh, hell, I think I've utterly lost track of what we're actually trying to fix here.
No, wait, not track. Interest. Utterly lost interest. Carry on.
Jatopian wrote:
You cannot patent DROD solutions, any more than you can patent strategies for winning at chess. If I went up to the US Patent Office and said I'd like to patent a way of winning a chess game in 4 moves, they might laugh or sigh, but I wouldn't get my patent. And like a chess game, you can't use the strategy without revealing it.
That's a terrible analogy. The equivalent of a chess strategy would be general DROD techniques. You don't actually believe that anyone has anything against players learning techniques from some demos, and applying them in other rooms, do you?
On the contrary; each chess game starts the same way, and so does every attempt to beat a DROD room, barring multiple entrances.