Jacob
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I agree with the statements made in the above post.
Good idea.

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Tim
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I've modded that post up, so I agree with him too.

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CuriousShyRabbit
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I agree that user-made holds are DROD's greatest asset. The best free user-made holds are every bit as good as the official holds that you have to pay for. If only more of the people who are active on the forum now acted like they cared about user-made holds. It seems like just a tiny core group of forumites are doing what everyone needs to be doing:

* Go to the Holds board and leave comments about holds you play. Rate them there too, so the next players can get an accurate estimate of fun and difficulty before playing.

* Go to the Architecture board, playtest, and comment on holds in progress. Help them be the best they can be. Currently, there is a range of easy, medium, and hard holds in need of playtesting.

* Go to the Architecture board and post your own creation for beta testing. Using comments and advice from other players, make your hold the best it can be.

And something that makes the Rabbit very, very, very sad. As far as I know, Schik and slimm tom are the only remotely Caravel-related people who even play non-official user-made holds.

Pinnacle
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I wouldn't say TCB is traumatizing so much as it's designed with the assumption that the player already finished JtRH, but the game page doesn't really mention that. JtRH has a more reasonable difficulty curve because it was directed at new players, not really getting difficult until about halfway. TCB gets difficult by the third or fourth level.

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skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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CuriousShyRabbit wrote:
* Go to the Holds board and leave comments about holds you play. Rate them there too, so the next players can get an accurate estimate of fun and difficulty before playing.

Once I finish a Hold I always make sure to rate it, visit its topic and provide at least half-decent comment.

CuriousShyRabbit wrote:
* Go to the Architecture board, playtest, and comment on holds in progress. Help them be the best they can be. Currently, there is a range of easy, medium, and hard holds in need of playtesting.

This is more problematic. I don't really like playtesting holds which don't have at least major majority of rooms and story done. And besides I am not really that great player too and I usually get pretty easily stuck.

CuriousShyRabbit wrote:
* Go to the Architecture board and post your own creation for beta testing. Using comments and advice from other players, make your hold the best it can be.

Done. Once. Not developing anything actively now, only poking around from time to time.

So to summarize, while your points are very valid and hit the issue spot on, the problem, at least in my case, is DROD skills. I can happily play holds in the architecture board, but I get stuck very often which can get a bit irritating.

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CuriousShyRabbit
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2 out of 3 ain't bad. That counts as caring.

Although... I'd say Homeward Adventure is a pretty good fit for your testing criteria. Jeff's done with the vast majority of the puzzles and most of the story. He just needs help putting it in order of difficulty.

slimm tom
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I always try to leave a comment after I've conquered/mastered a hold. I do some testing occasionally too. However, all testing I did in the last few months was privately. In fact, I don't remember if I did some testing on the Architecture at all.

Architecture itself is not my thing, so don't blame me for not participating in that and uploading a hold of some sorts. I don't think it's fair to list this under 'stuff every forumite needs to be doing', really.

I think there are 2 reasons why other Caravel-related people don't play holds so much anymore (or not at all). Firstly, developers (Mike, he's really the only DROD engine developer) have spent so much time making the engine and fixing bugs in it, they may want to spend their free time on something else than DROD, for a change. I can imagine Mike doesn't want to play DROD anymore after spending so much time developing it.

Secondly, the Caravel Team is much smaller than it used to be. As you all know, Erik has left, and I haven't seen other old-timers like Neil or Eytan in months. There's only a few people working on Caravel stuff now, and Mike's currently busy with personal things, so he doesn't have much time to spend on Caravel either.