Neather2
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King Dugan's Dungeon: Architects Edition: Mastered:

A Good Hold, I give it 6 fun and 3 brains.

Comments:

Level 1:

Good, Easy. I like how the architects have build that. Simple but Beutiful. 4 fun, 0.5 brains.

Level 2:

I hate some rooms, but isn't a bad level. I like the idea, but is really boring. 2 fun, 1 brains.

Level 3:

I love it. Good puzzle, Good Music, good all! I hate mimic potion, but the level is one best. 6 fun, 2.5 Brains.

Level 4:

Notings to say, difficulty and good do, but i hate mimic, you know. 0 fun, 4 brains.

Level 5:

Long, long and long....Good room, good music, too good. 7 fun, 4 brains.

Level 6:

Boring and ripetitive. 1 fun, 3 brains.

Level 7:

I love it!!! That's fantastic! Good, difficulty and fun. I don't love serpent, but it's the best level for now. 8 fun, 6 brains.

Level 8:

What to say? I hate tar... 0 fun, 6.5 brains.

Level 9:

No bad, good the roach puzzle, good the size. 5.5 fun, 5.5 brains.

Level 10:

Spiderrrrr! Bleaack! 2.5 fun, 4.5 brains.

Level 11.

More tar..0 fun, 5 brains.

Level 12:

No bad, no bad. I like the puzzle idea. 10 fun, 6 brains.

Level 13:

Boring..See.Trapped! 0 fun, 7.5 difficulty.

Level 14:

Goblin, at part some room, all ok and i love it. 6.5 fun, 6.5 brains.

Level 15:

Trapdoors! Good puzzle, i was crazy for that. 3.5 fun, 7 brains.

Level 16:

Eeek. 0 fun, 5.5 brains.


Level 17:

Tar, tar, tar, tar...Aaagh! 0 fun, 8 brains.

Level 18:

Uhh.. That don't seems Drod, that is Space? 6 fun, ?? brains.

Level 19:

Also good puzzle, good do. 4.5 fun, 8 brains.

Level 20:

Brains! Good, but some room boring. 3 fun, 8.5 brains.

Level 21:

I hate that. 0 fun, 8.5 brains.

Level 22:

Fantastic and terrible puzzle. Good, but boring. 4.5 fun, 8 brains.


Level 23:

Don't do remember me that now! 0 fun, 8 brains.

Level 24:

Which more difficulty? 2 fun, 8.5 brains or more.

Level 25:

Good, Neather. Here. The end of the hold. My win. 7 fun, 8 brains.

____________________________
Nothing to say. I just play the game. And you, sir, should play it too.

Conspiracy, my new hold, has just been released.

Jatopian
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Keep in mind that this hold is the very first ever, built by those insane guys at Webfoot in the early 1990s. It naturally will have some flaws, but there's much good in it. Part of its strength at that time was the underlying concept itself (though I'll never understand why Webfoot didn't see the need for an editor).

I'm glad someone else shares my love for the AE music, especially levels 3 & 6. It really is underappreciated these days.

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NiroZ
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Jatopian wrote:
Keep in mind that this hold is the very first ever, built by those insane guys at Webfoot in the early 1990s.

I'm fairly confident that Webfoot only marketed DROD, Erik was responsible for creating DROD.

Jeff_Ray...
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It seems you don't like alot of things... :/

The only pains were through the tar city, dreaded lvl8: 3E7S and some other later levels.

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My Holds:
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schep
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Neather2 wrote:
A Good Hold, I give it 6 fun and 3 brains.

Sorry, that's not an option. KDD is 5 brains by definition. All other holds are supposed to be measured relative to KDD.

Doom
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Neather2 wrote:A Good Hold, I give it 6 fun

An interesting number. I wonder how you ended up with it. After all, the fun average of your level ratings is only 3,32.

Jatopian wrote:
I'm glad someone else shares my love for the AE music, especially levels 3 & 6. It really is underappreciated these days.

Agreed. I find the AE tunes the most memorable of any Drod music made. Maybe it's because that's the game I started with, don't know. In any case you just managed to steer me to the music downloads page

MeckMeck GRE
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schep wrote:

Neather2 wrote:
A Good Hold, I give it 6 fun and 3 brains.

Sorry, that's not an option. KDD is 5 brains by definition. All other holds are supposed to be measured relative to KDD.

But a lot of people rating holds haven't played KDD!. They started their "Drod-Life" with JtrH or even with TCB. So I think most people use the 0,5-10 brain-scale as an absolute scale. 1 means "very easy" and 5 "medium" and 10 "very hard". So the rating is only dependant on the skill of the voter. IMHO we should remove the note "KDD should be considered a 5 on this scale" and replace it with something else. It's just an outdated rule.

If Microsoft asked their customers to rate Windows Vista on a scale from 0,5 to 10 points, they'll never say "Win 3.11 equals 5 on this scale".

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[Last edited by MeckMeck GRE at 06-10-2007 03:24 PM]

Banjooie
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You need an objective scale of difficulty to start from, and putting 5 on a particular hold is the best way to do that. In this case, we've chosen KDD.

Arguably, it would be best to put 5 on the latest release: KDD was a lot harder before checkpoints and undo, and two goblins is rarely a death sentence these days.

But 'medium' doesn't MEAN anything on its own.

NiroZ
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Sounds like this discussion is worthy of a thread of its own.

calamarain
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Banjooie wrote:
You need an objective scale of difficulty to start from, and putting 5 on a particular hold is the best way to do that. In this case, we've chosen KDD.

Arguably, it would be best to put 5 on the latest release: KDD was a lot harder before checkpoints and undo, and two goblins is rarely a death sentence these days.

Perhaps so. KDD has the big advantage of being free for anyone to download and thus, anyone can get it. So, having the 5 rating for JtRH or TCB would be tricky.

____________________________
My Holds

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[Last edited by calamarain at 06-11-2007 04:14 AM]

Mattcrampy
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schep wrote:
Sorry, that's not an option. KDD is 5 brains by definition. All other holds are supposed to be measured relative to KDD.

Yeah, and all those holds which are twice as hard as KDD should be measured as 10. And so on. Hopefully we'll get out first 20-brained hold with TCB!

(Banj is right on the money here that we needed an objective place to work from when the holds system was first created. At the time, KDD seemed like a good bet.

Our objective yardstick these days is the hundreds of holds we have, all with their own ranking. KDD was never intended to stay 5 brains, as we expected holds to come out that would redefine what a hard hold was.)

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calamarain
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Our objective yardstick these days is the hundreds of holds we have, all with their own ranking. KDD was never intended to stay 5 brains, as we expected holds to come out that would redefine what a hard hold was.)

Perhaps pick a hold that's popular enough to have been rated loads of times, has an average close to five brains, with a reasonably low standard deviation and set that as the standard for the next few years?

____________________________
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Dex Stewart
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No.

Just let everyone pick their own scale. While the results may not be the same(as they would be if KDD was a 5), they would at least be consistent if everyone would rate every hold(which they, ideally, do).

NiroZ
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Dex Stewart wrote:
Just let everyone pick their own scale. While the results may not be the same(as they would be if KDD was a 5), they would at least be consistent if everyone would rate every hold(which they, ideally, do).

Yes, but then they would be marking off different scales.

Take for example, if you and your friends were looking at a car. One of your friends say 'Wow, that car is nice', but at the same time, another one goes 'Dude, that car sucks'. Wouldn't it have a lot more meaning if they had said 'Wow, that car is nice compared to a commodore' and 'Dude, that car sucks compared to a Ferrari'?

Another example is the judicial system. In almost every country I know of, despite the changing rules and regulations, the one thing that they all strive for is to be consistent with on anther. If someone convicted of stealing is given 1 year by a judge, if someone is similar circumstance is convicted of stealing by a different judge, depending on if it's convenient for the prosecution or the defence, they will bring up the previous case and use it to argue that the second offender should be given similar jail time.

So what I'm trying to say is, it's good to be consistent with yourself, it's even better to be consistent with everyone else.

What is a good question is what the scale should be based on. KDD is outdated in many ways, and the standard it set for checkpoints is positively awful. And while it's a nice idea to select a new hold to be the standard, we can't really expect everyone to have played a 3rd party hold, yet a SmS would cost money, thus be difficult to access. Perhaps if it was made to be inserted into the TCB Demo, where it could also do the job of displaying how all the elements work.

MeckMeck GRE
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Meh!

I think that dosen't matter as long as there are about the same number of high-skilled voters and low-skilled voters. I think we should really relate the scale to nothing more than the voters opinion (which again relates on her/his skill).

The problem with the fixed scale we have is that we don't even know if it's linear or logarithmic (or other). Does "6" mean 20% more difficult than KDD oder double/triple/tonce difficulty? Of course you could argue now "of course, it's linear", but how would we rate a hold that's slightly more than double as difficult as KDD? 15 brains?! Moreover "double as hard" is also a lot subjective.

Hmm... even if this problem is actually a minor thingy we have a more serious one... he number of people which haven't played KDD is growing. And not everybody is going to play KDD just because it's free. There are a whole of other good holds out there... free holds for TCB/JtrH! And remember... AE-KDD is free but has worse graphics and no comfort functions compared to TCB and JtrH. Nobody is going to go through this just to be able to rate holds following this rather old rule.

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[Last edited by MeckMeck GRE at 06-11-2007 03:13 PM]

zex20913
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The problem with a fixed-scale judgement system is that no matter what your own personal take on it, there's something you can't account for.

Beethro's Teacher is D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T HARD. I'd put it at 10 brains. But then I'm sure that Doom and/or Larrymurk will come up with something even harder. So then BT should be 9 brains, right? Because it's not the hardest anymore. Wash, rinse, repeat. And similarly on the easy scale.

Yes, I realize that more than one hold can be 10 brains, but then 10 brains loses some of the respect that it deserves.

I'm not saying we should ditch the fixed-point system, as there are problems with all systems. Just ask Goedel. I'm just pointing out some things that come with it.

____________________________

silver
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we shouldn't vote numbers.

we should be given a drop down of spelled out options such as,
"this hold was about as hard as KDD"
"this hold was somewhat harder than KDD"
"this hold was somewhat easier than KDD"
"this hold was significantly harder than KDD"
"this hold was significantly easier than KDD"
"this hold was crazy hard"
"this hold was pretty easy"
"this hold was insanely, tormentingly hard"
"this hold was trivial"
"this hold was off the scale -- too hard to even rate"
"this hold played itself"

oh, sure. that's still a numeric scale from 1 to 10, but it would make it much clearer what the rating was intending.

and if anyone voted KDD as anything other than "this hold was about as hard as KDD" then you'd really have an excuse to look at them funny

____________________________

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[Last edited by silver at 06-11-2007 05:24 PM]

eytanz
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That's actually a pretty cool idea. The problem is, however, that it actively requires everyone who rates holds to have at least a decent familiarity with KDD. The numerical system, using KDD as a guideline rather than as part of the ranking's content, is open to use by everyone. That introduces more variance but ultimately is a healthier system.

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MeckMeck GRE
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I agree with Silver and others.... let's make sentences for each number! The voters can use a dropdown-list which displays both number and sentence to vote.

1: This hold played itself
2: This hold was trivial
3: This hold was very easy
4: This hold was easy
5: This hold was of average difficutly
6: This hold was fairly challenging
7: This hold was really challenging
8: This hold was hard
9: This hold was very hard
10: This hold was so hard; it's to hard to vote!

Of course, these sentences are just examples.... I think there are a lot of better ones..... but I think it's a reasonable suggestion.

Jatopian
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NiroZ wrote:
I'm fairly confident that Webfoot only marketed DROD, Erik was responsible for creating DROD.

No, some other guys worked on it also, although Erik had the original idea and IIRC wrote the majority of the code. And if you go back and play DROD:AE (or Webfoot if you have it), you'll find whole levels made by one Lucas Swineford. Webfoot credits

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NiroZ
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Yes, but those people were under his direction, thus my original statement is still correct.

Hehe, pointless nitpics for the win.

Banjooie
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Why don't we make it easier to get the full version of KDD for JtRH and TCB? Not the 2.0 version, but the original version, or something. Or write a new free hold that's 5.0 or something. I don't know.

Jatopian
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Banjooie wrote:
Why don't we make it easier to get the full version of KDD for JtRH and TCB? Not the 2.0 version, but the original version, or something. Or write a new free hold that's 5.0 or something. I don't know.

Well, for one thing the money says no.
And anyway it's already on the Holds board (or better yet, on the Downloads page), so what else do you want?

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

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[Last edited by Jatopian at 06-13-2007 05:08 AM]

NiroZ
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Banjooie wrote:
Why don't we make it easier to get the full version of KDD for JtRH and TCB? Not the 2.0 version, but the original version, or something.

It is right here.

captainzakku
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NiroZ wrote:
So what I'm trying to say is, it's good to be consistent with yourself, it's even better to be consistent with everyone else.

I don't want to be consistent with everyone else. That kind of has a 1984 feel to it...

Just joking, but if everyone votes "consistently", why would anyone need to vote at all? The hold could simply be put through whatever consistent equation is used, and could be given an absolute difficulty score.

I'd say I agree most with MeckMeck. Let everyone determine their own way of voting. As long as they are consistent with themselves, then the intended result, that the hardest holds get the most brains, should happen*.

*

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AlefBet
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I believe that some sort of baseline level to compare against is important to have in a difficulty rating system. Without something like it, I believe the difficulty measurements can be off by a surprising amount. Consider two hypothetical groups of people. We'll call the first group "AlefBet's DROD playing friends." Delvers in ADPF are somewhat new to DROD and are still getting the hang of it. They get pretty hung up, sometimes for days, on most of the rooms on level 4 of JtRH. Let's call the second group "Elite School of Larry." Smitemasters from ESOL will sometimes solve the three tar mother's room without rotating their sword more than ten times and without using diagonal movement keys, but quite frankly even this task has lost the challenge for them.

Now, it's been mentioned before that the voting system will be pretty consistent if there's no comparison baseline but everybody votes consistently on every hold. Naturally that's not going to happen, but I think an unstated assumption many people are making or taking is that even without that, we can get close enough if most people vote on a good number of holds. I don't think that's true, though, because the skew on who votes for what hold can be pretty high.

Consider a hold like HIJK. Few people in ADPF will register a vote on it -- they won't get halfway through. Similarly, there won't be many votes coming from ESOL either. Some of them will start on the hold, and a few of them might finish just to be completists, but halfway through most of them will probably rip off their blindfold and say, "Meh, Perfection and Beethro's Teacher are more challenging -- I think I'll go do them again."

So we'll have a bunch of people in ADPF playing holds at the level of difficulty of JTRH:L4 and recommending them to each other and rating them all at 8 brains. And we'll have ESOL playing holds like Master Locks and Bavato's Dungeon and recommending them to each other and rating them 4-5 brains. There's going to be some overlap with the "middle group" people ADPF's difficulty ratings down a bit and ESOL's up, and we'll end up with very misleading scores.

This happens despite everyone voting consistently with themselves. The problem isn't a voter's consistency. The problem is a heavy bias pushing some voters towards some holds and others towards other holds. And this bias is heavily correlated with the direction the voters will tend to vote.

If everybody at least bases their rating on some reference hold, the scores for HIJK will all at least tend below 5 brains and Bavato's scores will all tend above 5 brains.

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Banjooie
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I'm scared someone had to actually point that out.

BeefontheBone
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It's also worth noting that you can't expect consistency een from an individual voter, given that their ability will increase (or certainly never decrease) over time.

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silver
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BeefontheBone wrote:
It's also worth noting that you can't expect consistency een from an individual voter, given that their ability will increase (or certainly never decrease) over time.

disagree: I spent 6-8 months not playing. it took me some time to practice back up to my original skill level.


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BeefontheBone
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Well, ok, I was kinda disregarding big breaks. 'course, that would only add to the variability

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