Jatopian
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This question is addressed only to the sort of person who feels that he must complete nearly every possible high scoreable room that exists, and will play even the worst room in existence for a juicy #1. If that doesn't describe you, you should choose the poll response "View Results".

Let's assume that I am an architect, and I want to put in a room that I know is a terrible room, and make it unrequired. Maybe it's an early or alternate version available post-mastery. Anyway, we know that a normal person will skip it, because they're playing to have fun. A score seeker, however, may play the room for completionism's sake. My fear would be that such a person would judge the hold on a basis including that room, despite my intent that it was not to be played at all, and rate the hold lower. Should I, as an architect, be afraid of this, and make the room non-scoreable, thus removing the incentive for score-seekers to play the bad room? Or is this an unfounded fear, and I should let the score-seekers play it?

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zex20913
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Make it scorable. As there's no way to see if a room is scorable or not in the heat of the moment, those who do play it will be QUITE angry that they don't get a score at the end of an unpleasant room.

The bigger question I have...is why would any architect intentionally place a room that they know is unpleasant or poor?

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calamarain
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zex20913 wrote:
The bigger question I have...is why would any architect intentionally place a room that they know is unpleasant or poor?

To annoy the completionists and optimizers

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Rabscuttle
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nearly every possible high scorable room?

*chooses View Results*

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I would say it depends on how tedious the room is. And if it's a non-blocking post-mastery room than it'd have to be very tedious to tick me off.

Stupid snake-chasing is tedious.
So is repeating 3 moves nine hundred fricking times.
A room full of brains is also dumb.

Anything else is probably bearable (given non-blocking & post-mastery etc)

Actually some nasty thing involving scripting (do an unknown 100 step dance exactly right otherwise you die) would be worse than these.

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Jatopian
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zex20913 wrote:
Make it scorable. As there's no way to see if a room is scorable or not in the heat of the moment, those who do play it will be QUITE angry that they don't get a score at the end of an unpleasant room.

Good thought, that. Would it affect your answer if such rooms were clearly labeled as such?

why would any architect intentionally place a room that they know is unpleasant or poor?

Why shouldn't an architect, if it isn't required? Maybe they want to showcase an earlier version (e.g. The City Beneath : The Undercity : 1 North, 2 West). Maybe they're compiling someone else's rooms. Maybe it's hold art.

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zex20913
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If it was unscorable, and clearly marked as such, I would probably not play the room and not include it in my vote. I'd consider it the "deleted scenes".

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Tuttle
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Jatopian wrote:
This question is addressed only to the sort of person who feels that he must complete nearly every possible high scoreable room that exists, and will play even the worst room in existence for a juicy #1.

I meet the blue bit, but not the #1 bit -- I'm aiming to have 100% completion (yeah, I know, I'm still a long way off from that), but I couldn't give a toss how efficient or otherwise I am.

I voted not, but that's assuming you mark them as such (eg a scroll in the entrance). zex20913 makes a very good point.

schep
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I'm reminded of that one room from Holds Al Dente. I don't want to spoil which entry, but if you've played it you know what I'm talking about. Although in that case I gather some folks somewhat enjoyed the challenge.

Tahnan
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I've thought for a while that there should be a way to see upon entry whether a room is scoreable. (I think I requested that as a feature somewhere. I forget where.)

Syntax
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zex20913 wrote:
Make it scorable. As there's no way to see if a room is scorable or not in the heat of the moment, those who do play it will be QUITE angry that they don't get a score at the end of an unpleasant room.

I agree strongly with this sentiment

I didn't vote myself as I'm not in a situation where I need to tackle poor or annoying rooms and so tend not to. As of now, I have *plenty* of fun rooms to play so I'll play those first. This also explains why I switch holds as much as I do.

Having said that, if I ever catch up with the amount of rooms out there, I'd invariably start tackling the worse ones and would like to know my effort hadn't been wasted.

Remlin
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My goal used to be do finish every room out there. I gave that up after seeing that ridiculous Caverns of Animus room Rabscuttle linked to. Since then I've lowered my standards a bit and added a lot more to my "just not worth it" list. But if your hold has one of those rooms, and it's high-scorable, that's definitely going to lower my rating.

Snacko
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If there's a room you think doesn't live up to your standards cut it or make it better, there is absolutely no point in having a bad room in your hold (unless every room in your hold is bad or the hold is intentionally bad) and does nothing but lower the quality of the hold.

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BoyBlue
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zex20913 wrote:
there's no way to see if a room is scorable or not in the heat of the moment

If you don't want players to try to get high scores in a room (for whatever reason), one thing you could do is put a conquer token at the entrance, to make it clear that the room can be solved in 0 or 1 moves (if it can be solved at all).

Jatopian
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BoyBlue wrote:
If you don't want players to try to get high scores in a room (for whatever reason), one thing you could do is put a conquer token at the entrance, to make it clear that the room can be solved in 0 or 1 moves (if it can be solved at all).

Does that work even if there're monsters in the room?

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Rabscuttle
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Yes, the score in a room with a conquer token is the time taken to reach the conquer token.

eg
Edge of the World : Serpent Level : 1 North, 1 West
scores
High score is 38 but it takes more than 50 moves for the briar to reach the roach.
I think this is probably the only time I've liked that functionality. In general I want to see the whole room done quickly - not just the race to step on the conquer token. (The difference in this room is that there is nothing to do except wait once you reach the conquer token so the mechanism means that every score isn't the same length)

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 12-07-2007 01:49 AM]