west.logan
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I've wondered this for a long time, but why does the original first place get more points? I'm not looking to start another war but was wondering what the reasoning was behind it.

Take for example, that wonderful classic "Snakes to death remastered". In this hold, pretty much everyone ties second place, it's almost impossible to get anything else. Yet Tahnan (no offense, Tahnan), receives 68 points for the hold while everyone else receives 52, simply because he got to the hold first.

There have been several of the easier holds where I'd work through and manage to tie (sometimes beat) almost every score and end up third, fourth or fifth in overall points just because everyone above me had one or more original firsts, and had done this four or five years ago.

I now have 40 original firsts and none are because I was quicker in getting to the hold. I typically start long after everyone else. It just seems a shame that on certain holds and theoretically overall I could never match the top players in score (not that I expect to!). Though it's nice to give props to the first person who optimized a room, sometimes it comes down to just the first person to get there. Is there a particular reason why a "first place" can't simply be considered a trophy and a tied first would then be equal in points? Has this been debated in endless detail before and should I be flamed for bringing it up? You decide.

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Someone Else
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I don't think it's been debated in endless detail before. I don't really have an opinion either way, as I don't do too much optimization.

I do think that you should be flamed for posting it, though.

skell
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The simple reason is - you can very easily copy a demo move-to-move, and if you are more sneaky you could write a program which would do it automatically for you.

I don't think it would be ok with the people who spend time and sweat to optimise to get the 1st place only so others can come and repeat their demo.

Besides it's not exactly the matter of who got to the hold first, but rather who optimised given room enough first. Tahnan (or mxvladi or any other high-ranking person) is not a perfect robot who never does a mistake, so it should be possible to improve on the rooms they got 1st place.

To give it a perspective - imagine you have invented a completelty novel way of producing sausages. It is so awesome it doubled your revenue. But someone copied your technology. Now two things can happen:
1. You lose customers and the things even out (real life-like but unfair, all players get the same score for 1st place)
2. Your customers are faithful to you and shun of the stealing monkey (not very realistic, but more fair and represents current way of handling points).

Then again I'd rather eat some fried chicken I just made for work tomorrow.

EDIT:

Also, take a look at MMOs or browser games like OGame or Kingdom of Loathing - it's not like you can get anywhere close in terms of power to guys who are playing these games since the moment they left the womb of their caring, erm, programmers. You need to suck it up and accept the fact .

Changing this behaviour would be cool for new players, but unfair to those who spent hours upon hours optimizing. Okay, that's it, enough redundancy.

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[Last edited by skell at 01-16-2012 09:12 PM]

west.logan
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skell wrote:
I don't think it would be ok with the people who spend time and sweat to optimise to get the 1st place only so others can come and repeat their demo.

Which is why I suggested one solution being to have first place be a trophy (i.e., no point benefit but it still shows up as a "first place score"). You still have the street cred.

Copy-cats will always be out there, I can do nothing about that, but what often happens is I tie a first place score, sometimes on a difficult room (without looking at a demo) and I get three points less simply because I did it five years later. I've never seen another game rank players like this, that gives late-comers a handicap.

There's another example I have of one person who was the first through the hold and doesn't seem to care about optimization, yet as the first person through they got 10 original first place scores (exiting first room of a level for several), and thus thirty more points. That's thirty points that cannot be beat. Ever.

Do most people care? Probably not, but I thought I'd bring it up.

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skell
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west.logan wrote:
Do most people care? Probably not, but I thought I'd bring it up.

Just for the note, I don't criticize you, I am just stating my thoughts .

Well, think that the trophy is equal to three points .

About other games that penalize newcomers - in Kingdom of Loathing there is a load of Trophies, Familiars, items and locations you can't reach again, because you weren't playing the game when they were available. I am not much of a gamer so I don't have any other example, but I am fairly sure many games do similar things.

Now that I think about it, even sports adhere to this rule. Usain Bolt got famous and will be remembered for being the first to reach the time of 19.93s on whatever he was running. But if Sam Superslow ever manages to reach the same time he is never going to be known for this achievement (plus he won't get paid as much money as Bolt surely got) (then again, they could remember him just for his name).

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12th Archivist
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I agree with skell's reasoning that the first person that plays through a room should get a reward for optimizing it without anybody else's run through the room as a guide.

However, I also agree with west.logan in that being the first person to run through a hold and get first place in all the rooms is rather luck-based. Holds are released at all hours of the day/night cycle, and no matter how good of an optimizer you are, you could find yourself consistintly [sic] beaten in that hold and lose a fair number of points just because you did not check the forum at your three-in-the-morning for more holds to gather points on.

(Question: If mxvladi gets first place on a room in a new hold and gets X points on it, then Tahnan optimizes that score and gets Y points on it (where Y < X) and mxvladi loses some of those X points because he no longer has a first place score, would mxvladi, if he optimized the room further and re-earned a first place score, go back to having X points (since he was the original first-placer) or Y points?)

I like the idea of the first-place having a trophy next to their name in the "View Demos" section when viewing a room. They might not get more points for being first, but they would get recognized for it.

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west.logan
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In this case it seems analogous to saying that assuming a maxed time, nobody after Usain in future olympics can get anything but a silver medal


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skell
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I've got the bestests solution! I am such a genious sometimes!

Basically, give all first places the same score. First "getter" should get a trophy icon. This we know. (Edit: So no one is confused, I know it is what west.logan proposed and I am not trying to steal credit or anything, my genious lies in the paragraph below).

Now, additionally, if ever two players tie on the leaderboard, say R1bbentrouv with 123,999 points, and Mol0tof with 123,999, the one with more first-first places gets a better place. So our R1bbentrouv has the grand first on the list of all scoretables, because he has 5,000 first first places, and poor Mol0tof has the less-grand second place on the list of all scoretables, because he only managed to get a laughable amount of 4,900 first first places.

I am not sure if what I wrote is understandable though.

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[Last edited by skell at 01-16-2012 10:07 PM]

west.logan
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12th Archivist wrote:
(Question: If mxvladi gets first place on a room in a new hold and gets X points on it, then Tahnan optimizes that score and gets Y points on it (where Y < X) and mxvladi loses some of those X points because he no longer has a first place score, would mxvladi, if he optimized the room further and re-earned a first place score, go back to having X points (since he was the original first-placer) or Y points?)

Currently if you are the first person to get a first place, you get 17 points. If someone ties you, they get 14 and you still have 17.

Let's say a hold has three rooms. mxvladi goes through first and gets 51 points for the hold. Later, Tahnan comes and beats two of mxvladi's scores, having found a neat little trick. mxvladi, not knowing this, goes back and after playing it over, discovers the same trick Tahnan did but now Tahnan has 48 points for the hold and mxvladi has 45, though they both have the same number of turns in each room and both discovered the optimal solutions independently.

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west.logan
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skell wrote:
I've got the bestests solution! I am such a genious sometimes!

Basically, give all first places the same score. First "getter" should get a trophy icon. This we know.

Yes, that's basically what I was saying in my first post.

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I look forward to having a gajillion trophies to my name for clearing trivial rooms faster than anyone else, by virtue of my having all the free time.

skell
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west.logan wrote:

skell wrote:
I've got the bestests solution! I am such a genious sometimes!

Basically, give all first places the same score. First "getter" should get a trophy icon. This we know.

Yes, that's basically what I was saying in my first post.

Which is why I ended this paragraph with "This we know", and afterwards I presented my glorious improvement .

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west.logan wrote:
Currently if you are the first person to get a first place, you get 17 points. If someone ties you, they get 14 and you still have 17.

Let's say a hold has three rooms. mxvladi goes through first and gets 51 points for the hold. Later, Tahnan comes and beats two of mxvladi's scores, having found a neat little trick. mxvladi, not knowing this, goes back and after playing it over, discovers the same trick Tahnan did but now Tahnan has 48 points for the hold and mxvladi has 45, though they both have the same number of turns in each room and both discovered the optimal solutions independently.

Thank you. That makes sense.

skell wrote:
Basically, give all first places the same score. First "getter" should get a trophy icon. This we know.

I wonder what some of the top-ten folks would think of that solution.

Also, would this new system be retroactive? That is to say, would someone with a lot of original first places lose three points per original-scored room if this change occurred? That might not be fair to said people (though they would get many a trophy in return; maybe they could display how many trophies they have on their profile?), but it would immediately balance the scores, instead of having the scores balance themselves out over time.

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west.logan
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If all first place scores (tied or otherwise) move to 17 points, then theoretically no one would lose points, they would only stay the same or gain.

Currently I don't see how scoring a tied first as 14 points would prevent copiers. They would still copy because 14 is as much as they could get that way. True, they would get more if it were 17 but it's not going to encourage or discourage them to copy either way.

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It's not to prevent copying, it's to reward the original innovation /more/ than those who just copy.

TFMurphy
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Two things that haven't been mentioned or considered here yet.

1. The bonus for first place gives an additional incentive to not just *tie* with whoever has the current highscore, but to find a way to *beat* them. Right now, doing this automatically gives you 3 more points. It wouldn't do this if the score for tied 1st and 1st were the same. (Obviously, in either system, people are going to lose points as rank changes).

2. Trivial rooms with no puzzles in them (but that can't be 1-moved out of existence) are one of the reasons we allow architects to mark rooms as unscorable. Ideally, the battle for 1st Place should take place over non-trivial rooms. Of course, this is something that's difficult for new architects to get a handle on, since it requires a fair amount of experience with the CaravelNet system.

On top of all this, there's still a huge number of #1s up for grabs. mxvladi has the highest number of #1s of any current player, and he's only been with us since 2008. Do you think he got them all from running new holds? And yes, he is beatable. I won't say it's easy, or that it's possible in *every* room (proving a room is perfectly optimised is a rather nasty task most times), but I do guarantee there are plenty of #1s there still available. With a point bonus for pulling it off, naturally.

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I personally think it is a really good idea to reward people who get these points just because they play first.

The faster a new hold gets played means that bugs that the HAs missed can be found quickly by a greater group of people.

In case of some serious bugs the hold can be fixed quickly without many consequences, and is faster because the architect is still available.

If the early reward is gone, bugs in hold can take much longer to discover, and by that time too many people has scores that have to be invalidated. That will give CaravelNet an even worse image.

So if that means that some of the scores are easier to get for those people, that is absolutely not a problem to me!


PS. HA always gets to play first, since we promote the holds ourselves, so we know _exactly_ when it is going to be promoted. We just try not to upload scores ourselves, at least not immediately.

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[Last edited by Tim at 01-17-2012 12:35 AM]

west.logan
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TFMurphy wrote:
Two things that haven't been mentioned or considered here yet.

I've considered that personally and honestly it wouldn't make a difference whether I got more points or less: I still strive to make a new first place.

And Tim, I still think that the honour of getting a first place score will be incentive enough, I just don't like it to be a handicap to others. I can't imagine mxvladi not going for first place scores any more simply because others can get just as many points by tying. Go back to my very first example where no one can even come close to Tahnan's score (granted, there aren't many holds like that one!).

In other words, I think it would still be a rat race to beat the hold first, but it wouldn't then become a handicap to those who come later, or even join later like myself.

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Tim
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west.logan wrote:
In other words, I think it would still be a rat race to beat the hold first, but it wouldn't then become a handicap to those who come later, or even join later like myself.

You are correct that being later sounds like an handicap. But then you would be missing the massively huge advantage that later players have.

Every one of the later players can easily reach second place, while earlier players usually get lower places (except the one person who get first rank). Therefore, playing earlier means actually having the bigger chance of receiving lower scores.

It sounds like an handicap, but it isn't. Later players have way too much advantages over most of the early players.

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west.logan wrote:
I've considered that personally and honestly it wouldn't make a difference whether I got more points or less: I still strive to make a new first place.

Different people have different motivations. And also note that the amount of points you get from a hold determine your ranking for the *entire* hold. If you're trying to hit first place for the hold, then getting #1s for individual rooms can be important for the extra point boost.

west.logan wrote:
I can't imagine mxvladi not going for first place scores any more simply because others can get just as many points by tying. Go back to my very first example where no one can even come close to Tahnan's score (granted, there aren't many holds like that one!).

I said motivation to break the current record rather than tying. Not motivation to do a good score in the first place.

And your very first example uses a hold that really should not have been scorable (and would've been better as an architecture piece). So I don't think using the flaws of one hold really hold weight in this debate. A more useful example would be "not dr0d 2", which was certainly a fun challenge, and had 13 rooms that required a specific set of moves to complete. Obviously further optimisation isn't going to happen, and the optimisation for these rooms were trivial... but in this case, the score was a reward for people who solved the rooms first. (And a rather heated race that was.)

All this said, I'm not sure exceptions like "not dr0d 2" offset all the holds where optimisation is *not* so clear-cut, and finding new ways to break old established #1s deserves some reward. And I also agree with Tim about running new holds: being the first through a hold is a *lot* harder than being the second.

Schik
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I'd need pretty strong motivation to change the scoring at this point, and I haven't seen anything here to convince me.

One thing I would like to do however is mark all the trivial rooms unscorable. I have no idea how many there are, and it would have to be done manually, but I think it's a good idea.

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Banjooie
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Oh look, you just figured out next month's contest, Schik.

TFMurphy
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If there was one change to DROD scoring that I would suggest, it would be to give conquering a hold some nominal score (maybe 20 points? ...higher than a single 1st place, but equal/lower than 1st-3rd in two rooms), so that there's always a reward for finishing a hold, even if it's something without scorable rooms like "Deja vu..." or "RPG 3.0".

(And if it hasn't been fixed yet: those two holds really need some way of getting onto the Conquered Holds list once you've completed them.)

west.logan
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TFMurphy wrote:
If there was one change to DROD scoring that I would suggest, it would be to give conquering a hold some nominal score (maybe 20 points? ...higher than a single 1st place, but equal/lower than 1st-3rd in two rooms), so that there's always a reward for finishing a hold...

In lieu of anything changing to first/first place tie, I like that suggestion, but only because I tend to be a completionist. Although I have to admit I like easy scores gained by exiting an entrance room. It boosts my self-esteem

I had hoped that perhaps mxvladi, Tahnan, da rogu3 or perhaps Penwielder would have chimed in as I was interested in knowing their opinions as well.

It's possible I'm one of the only ones who thinks this a potential issue because:
a) I'm fairly new
b) I'm playing through easy holds.

I know it's possible to make first place scores. I believe I've even stolen 4 or 5 from mxvladi, yet my big concern was for many of the easy rooms (most with under a hundred-move solution) that are, without a doubt, maxed out, and often since the first person went through. It's a significant handicap to latecomers. Things like this happen:
Pitways

Where the top three players can probably never be beat, simply because they have lots of the maxed out OFPs (original first places). Some can be beat, sure (I did achieve an OFP on that hold), but I bet most cannot since it's a very straight-forward hold and Wallu and Syntax have almost all the entrance points in an eleven-level hold. I know I have only about four scores that are less than a first-place tie on that hold and even so I'm not close to even third place.

This probably isn't a problem on holds with more difficulty. I find it an annoying handicap on some holds like these.

Isn't it almost like having a golf course where someone went through five years ago and now, unless you beat his score on a hole, you automatically get a 1 stroke handicap?!

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[Last edited by west.logan at 01-17-2012 01:40 PM]

Schik
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west.logan wrote:
Isn't it almost like having a golf course where someone went through five years ago and now, unless you beat his score on a hole, you automatically get a 1 stroke handicap?!

Well, the difference there is that in golf, you can't just watch what someone else did and then recreate it precisely with no required skill on your own part. So we compromise, and sometimes you're just too late and can't beat a perfectly optimized score.

I don't have any problem with adding a bonus for conquering a hold. Could do a flat bonus, could do something like +1 for every scorable room in the hold?

One thing I considered years ago was multiplying points for a demo by the difficulty of the hold. However, hold difficulty does not equate to optimization difficulty, and you can have a vast range of optimization difficulty in a hold anyways, so room-by-room multiplier would be necessary.... which isn't going to happen. I've considered trying to automate detection of how hard a room is to optimize, but about the only thing I can come up with is the number of #1 changes, and that's... not perfect.

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skell
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west.logan wrote:
Isn't it almost like having a golf course where someone went through five years ago and now, unless you beat his score on a hole, you automatically get a 1 stroke handicap?!

Not exactly. You score as good as him, but it was he who got paid by his sponsor grand cash for being the first person to ever do that, and he is the first one on the top-scores-of-the-course list.

It's just a matter of how you look at the metaphor .

I personally don't care about points much. I admit I do love every single of my very few first places, but it's just that. It will always be that case that those who come later are handicapped, and I personally don't think anything should be done with the current scoring system.

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west.logan
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It seems that no matter the scoring scheme there are always going to be some people who copy. Whether they get 17 points or 14 points for tying first place, it still gives them the maximum points.

I think the people who care about a OFP would still go for it regardless of the point incentive. I know I do and I imagine mxvladi likes seeing the 3000+ first place scores next to his name more than his overall points.

Regardless, I keep plugging along, but thought I'd at least bring this whole thing up.

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martz
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Maybe it's because I'm older, but I don't see the fuss about things like this (see also: Syntax vs mxvladi Xmas Pantomime). If I was to go to my wife and say "Look at this, I'm currently ranked 7th in the whole world for this fairly obscure computer game!" she'd just call me a nerd and go back to watching TOWIE...

Back to the discussion at hand, I think there could be a case for removing scores for uninteresting level entrances, but then you could take that further (eg. rooms with no monsters where you enter on force arrows, rooms with just one brain to kill etc.) Personally, I think being able to get these 1st place scores is a perk of being the first to play a hold. Assuming holds are generally released on US time, that puts me at a potential disadvantage anyway (in fact, I think there are only 1 or 2 holds where I've managed to get some of these 1st place scores) but as previously mentioned, I'm not bothered.

I do like the idea of additional points for finishing a hold, and taking it a bit further possibly a few more points for mastering it. I think it goes without saying that this should be a flat score for all rather than the first person to complete a hold gets the most points...

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west.logan
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martz wrote:
I do like the idea of additional points for finishing a hold, and taking it a bit further possibly a few more points for mastering it. I think it goes without saying that this should be a flat score for all rather than the first person to complete a hold gets the most points...

But if one was being consistent, the first to complete a hold would get more points than the others. However, I like your idea.

Again, I don't want to strip people of their first place medals. To be the first is certainly an achievement and should be recognized, but right now it seems like a double-reward to me. Every other gaming ranking system I've competed on gives a nod to the first person while still giving those who match it the same number of points so they can stay competitive.

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Schik
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I don't want to overstate the copying issue, because I don't think it's about that at all. Simply going into a room knowing that the high score is 215 moves is a huge advantage. In general, it's way easier to tie the #1 score just by knowing the move count than by not knowing.

The good: Truly innovative play on a hard-to-optimize room is rewarded.
The bad: Very simple/trivial rooms are rewarded based on who gets there first.

I guess I just think the good outweighs the bad. Looking at the high scores, the top 3 people (ordered by Points) have average ranks between 5 and 7, with average points per room between 8 and 10. Those are all quite *good*, but the total score is obviously biased towards number of rooms played - only three players in the top 20 have an average rank of better than 5, and 8 of the top 20 have an average rank of higher than 10! To be competitive, you don't need to be first on all the trivial rooms.

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