larrymurk
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Just a reminder to architects to please mark all the uninteresting rooms in your holds. After posting a hold, go to your profile/ your holds to make the settings.

Please only leave rooms as high-scoreable if you feel there's a reason players should be scored for completing it.

It seems like many of the holds released recently don't have any rooms marked non-highscoreable.

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 08-22-2006 06:01 PM]

eytanz
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I think it's up to a hold's architect whether he should mark rooms as uninteresting if they are trivial. I don't think there's any sort of obligation in the matter.

Unsolvable rooms, that's another matter. But level entrances and the like? I think either way is a valid choice.

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silver
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in fact I did mark several rooms, but left the level entrances alone because they were left alone in JtRH and I take that as my precedent.
and then I had to RE-mark them when I updated. I did so, but it's easy to not know this is necessary (there's no warning, and you only see the list of un-scorable rooms if you go out of your way to see it), and just as easy to forget.


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Stephen4Louise
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I don't see anything wrong with letting the first player through a hold getting some extra points on level entrances. I actually think it's a good thing.

Dolan42
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Stephen4Louise wrote:
I don't see anything wrong with letting the first player through a hold getting some extra points on level entrances. I actually think it's a good thing.

I agree, if you are the first person to get to a level a few points on the entrance is a nice reward. On a side note, why don't more architects use the entrance rooms for puzzles? I would think that controlling the start point and orientation would make more puzzles, not less. But, then again, I've not made any holds so I really couldn't comment on why 90% of level entrances just require counting the squares to the edge.

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michthro
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hmmm.. A little voice tells me it's probably better to just shut up and let it go, but I can't.

Stephen4Louise wrote:
I don't see anything wrong with letting the first player through a hold getting some extra points on level entrances. I actually think it's a good thing.

What's wrong with that is that I can give you hundreds of examples of mere 13-point #2 demos that are each worth a thousand trivial 17-point #1s. No exaggeration. Taking into account time, effort, skill, experience, luck, everything.

Before I continue, I should probably spell out what I mean by trivial, just in case someone jumps to conclusions. Those many entrance rooms where you simply lean on a key and run straight out of the room. No such thing as figuring out the shortest path through some sort of maze, or there is at least a secret exit you have to spot, or anything. Those are bad enough, but let's at least consider those where you just go straight to the nearest exit, without even having to change course.

For most holds, it simply isn't an achievment to be the first one through it. That's purely a matter of watching the holds board like a hawk, and ripping through the hold the moment it's posted. Plus there's the matter of luck surrounding when the hold is posted. If you happen to be asleep, or away for a day or two, you lose. Either way, whatever bonus the first player to reach a certain point deserves, it certainly shouldn't be equivalent to what those who spend a lot more time optimising get.

Let's say the first player through picks up 5 trivial #1s, without doing anything more than play through the hold, and happening to be the first one. Along come us suckers who optimise, spend ten times the amount of time, battling it out for the #1 spot in the three rooms that are particularly interesting to optimise, only to pick up 1 or 2 #1s, and some hard-earned #2s.

It's about quantity versus quality. The scoring system favours those who prefer quantity. That's fine. I can live with that, and I have nothing against anyone who goes for quantity. I personally can't bring myself to indiscriminately play every last available hold, but that's my problem. What I don't like is that those who go for quantity get to have their cake and eat it. They rake in the points, *and* they pick up a lot of undeserved #1s (undeserved in the sense that on the table any #1 is a #1 - there's no indication of whether it really is what it looks like), with the extra points that go with it.

Oh, btw, I have only 4 or 5 trivial #1s, which I accidentally uploaded. I make a point of not taking them, since I don't get any personal satisfaction out of it, and I'm not a hypocrite.

One last thing, as far as I can tell, in the past the biggest objection to monsterless entrance rooms not counting for scores was that some monsterless rooms are interesting. To which I say:
-How many such rooms are there? Very few.
-There are just as many interesting monsterless rooms that don't count because they have a 1-move "solution".
-Authors could add a green door and a brain.
-Authors could have the option of overriding automatic elimination.
-For exisiting holds, I'd be more than happy to compile the short list of monsterless entrance rooms that are interesting, if no-one else wants to.

Ok, here it comes.

EDIT: Whoever actually modded down larrymurk, you're a jackass. There's a reason why the system that allows authors to mark uninteresting rooms was implemented, and reminding authors to use it certainly doesn't deserve a negative mod.

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[Last edited by michthro at 08-23-2006 10:42 AM]

Stephen4Louise
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michthro wrote:
EDIT: Whoever actually modded down larrymurk, you're a jackass. There's a reason why the system that allows authors to mark uninteresting rooms was implemented, and reminding authors to use it certainly doesn't deserve a negative mod.

Not guilty, but anyway.....

You made a lot of good points and I agree with most of them. My opinion maybe makes more sense when you look at in in the perspective of a very difficult hold, where reaching the next level is something of an achievement and the points system should account for that.

I fully agree with Hikari's suggestion in the Feature Requests forum that marking rooms should be more than an afterthought. An option in the editor would be perfect. Testers should be able to see which rooms are marked and advise accordingly.

As usual it's going to come down to personal preference of the Architects.

eytanz
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Michthro - you make a lot of good points in principle, but in practice, I just don't think trivial rooms affect the score much.

I'm not sure if I count as a "quantity" or "quality" person for you. I played a lot of rooms, and I'm clearly not one of the top optimizers. I made the top 10 by having a lot of #4 and #5 scores. But at the moment, having mostly #4 and #5 scores does make me - maybe not one of the best 10 players but probably one of the top 20. That's what sorting by average score shows. So, I made top 10 by combination of both factors.

Of the 80 1st place scores I have, maybe 20-25 are trivial. Not because I "watch the highscores like a hawk", which I don't, but just because I happen to play DROD a lot including at times when people release new holds, and because I play in a "spread" style, jumping from hold to hold whenever I get annoyed/stuck in a particular room rather than waiting to finish one hold before moving on to the next.

Now, one way to look at it is that I have about 100 dubiously gained points - the difference between trivial #1s and trivial #2s which I would have had had I gotten there a few minutes later. But your post made me realize that that's not quite the case, since I do have a bigger advantage against people who haven't happened to play the hold at all yet, but have been playing holds where trivial scores are not to be found. But, er, that's the same as anyone who happens to play an easier hold while someone else is busy optimizing a difficult hold. That's not an advantage, because the playing field is level here - you can choose to play whichever hold you want. So there unfair gain is really 4 points per rooms, and that's it.

And it's not like there are one or two people aiming to catch these scores. There are dozens of these rooms, distributed amongst quite a few players. The overall effect on the scoring is negligable.

And seriously, I can't really feel sorry for you. When I optimize, I do so because it's an interesting challenge. Getting a #1 or #1 tie score in a complicated room is rewarding. Getting a #1 or #1-tie in a trivial room is momentarily amusing but not rewarding. You make optimizing sound like a painful job. If you're not enjoying it, why are you doing it? And if you are enjoying it (and, by the way, being rewarded, since you're the #1 player by average points and the #2 by total score, and every single person in these forums probably recognizes you as the best optimizer - I know for a fact that if I see you are the holder of a #1 score I don't even bother trying to beat it) - if you're enjoying optimizing, why do you care what other people get for rooms which optimization isn't interesting?

Frankly, I'd much rather there be some point padding than for even one interesting room to be left out. I'm not even happy with the 1-move score thing - I'd much rather there was a way to have highscores for rooms where reaching an exit other than the one you entered by is a challenge even if there are no monsters, but I recognize why that's not actually possible. But seriously, I think that currently the best people occupy the top spots in the highscores. By the time you reach my current location as #10 it's more arguable, but it's also just a matter of time before I am permanently deseated - I basically entered the top 10 during the nadir of the window of the opportunity for a mediocre optimizer like myself. The system is not perfect in many ways, but I don't think this is a serious problem in any way.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 08-23-2006 01:53 PM]

Syntax
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Ooooh what a great thread

I must admit, I back michthro all the way on this. How can a #1 in a straight line match 4 hours of analytical planning or orb striking optimisation? (and before you say anything, michthro's orb solver does not reveal the optimal solution). I've spent entire days just for the #1 spot ("Unfortunate Arhcitect's Compilation" springs to mind on several counts) and that's beside the fact empty entrance rooms only favour those in countries where the most DROD residents live.

The other issue is when your avg points is above 14 - at that point a trivial entrance actually punishes the player.

But then, I'm only agreeing so far.

In my own words, I love the fact larrymurk leaves the entrance rooms as "passage" rooms with no unjust reward (VodkaAndCoke does too) - I have frequently wondered what the top 10 would be like without counting these across the board. The matter of JtRH precedent is a good one, but overall I think scores should be attained through skill, and not timezone. I'm in awe at the amount of times I see a "fully optimised room" being beaten by just one less move. DROD is, after all, a puzzle game and rewards should be given for solving the puzzle not running away

Lastly, and surely, Halph would never be proud of his unc' if all he did was run around an empty dungeon.

eytanz
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Well, yeah, nobody is debating that trivial entrances are not particularly interesting #1 scores. But where do you draw the line? What about maze entrance rooms with no monsters but several different possible exit passages? What about easy rooms that can be solved optimally within 2 minutes by any moderately competant player? What about really strict rooms (whether easy or hard) which require perfect optimization to solve, so that basically the first player to solve them also gets the #1 score? Sure, finding a #1 score in a room where that requires a lot of planning above and beyond solving the room is great, but trivial rooms are hardly the only other kind of situation.

Obviously, there's nothing wrong with an architect making passage rooms unscorable. I'm just saying there's not much wrong with the alternative, either. I think Larry's post was rude (though I wasn't the one who marked it down) because like it or not, leaving entrance rooms as scorable is a valid choice.

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larrymurk
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Sorry if my post was offensive, maybe it was the angry smiley. But I was angry.

First off, I did write for architects to please take the time and effort to mark the rooms that THEY FEEL should be high-scoreable because I realize currently it is a matter of judgement.

Lord knows it'd be incredibly difficult to make a really accurate scoring system since you'd probably need to incorporate the difficulty to solve the room, the difficulty to optimize it, the difficulty just to get to the room, and who knows how many other factors. I try not to take the scores too seriously and I hardly ever comment on the high-scoring system.

I will say that it bothers me when I see what rank I got for traversing an empty room (ooh, maybe I should've cut the corner and tied for #1). Don't worry, I'll get over it.

zex20913
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I feel like I should jump in too.

I am nowhere near as hardcore as either michthro or Syntax (or Rabscuttle) when it comes to optimising rooms. If I see that they have a 1st place, I normally resign myself to a 1st place tie at best. If I do beat out their demo, you would be able to catch me dancing in celebration.

So, I guess I'm a quantity player, even though I've been trying to improve my quality for some time.

I do admit to point inflation (hawking). But I'm also not ashamed of it. I make sure to 1-move all 1-moveables, which I feel are the truly trivial 1st place scores.

And as for entrance rooms, I have to side with eytanz. There is only a 4-point differential, and the trivial entrances can be a diversion from the brainfry that is DROD. Plus, while the hardcore of us may look at these as a bit sketchy 1st place scores, the hawkers are happy to get them. I'm not for taking their happiness away. It feels like charity to me. If somebody else (FatOldMan, etc.) got a trivial first place score, I'd be happy for them, and take my 13 points.

There is also the internal evaluation. It sounds like a trivial #1 is worth 1 point to michthro, and a tough #2 is worth the full 17. I'm happy with my numerous 2-6 scores, (and currently about 150 #1s, most of which are nontrivial) and I like the point system as it is.

I feel like my paragraphs are incoherent babble. What I'm trying to say is that things are cool the way they are, and if an architect wants to mark an entrance as non-scorable, fine. But if the architect wants to appeal to the hawkers, that's fine too. Also, see eytanz's argument against "where is the line?" in the previous post. Or is it 2 posts now? It's earlier. Babble.

Edit: 3 posts up. Hot topic.

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[Last edited by zex20913 at 08-23-2006 08:49 PM]

Doom
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I'm jumping here as well, even though I've generally lost interest in competing for scores. For a good part because of I don't have enough time and patience for clearing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of rooms...

Yeah, most easy holds cause this effect, though on a much smaller scale. When playing through efficiently, it's not rare at all to get "1st place tie" in every single room on the first attempt. I guess that's something we'll just have to live with. I don't think this is even a problem, because you're being rewarded for *something*... I remember seeing an idea about basing the amount of points on the difficulty of the hold. I liked that idea personally a lot. It would make sense if you got twice as much points for clearing a room that takes 30 minutes than from clearing a room that takes 10-15. (And reward "quality over quantity players" more than the current system does)

Point-wise, I don't have anything against leaving trivial rooms scorable. After all, everyone is able to tie those scores just as easily, not getting a real disadvantage on the high score table. It's the fact that they create a lot unearned first place scores that are listed separately on the main scores page. Sure, they're distributed among a large number of players, but everyone who begins playing later will be at a disadvantage against most other players, who have gotten large numbers of these scores. "Real" first places are much harder to acquire, after all.

silver
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assume wallu's estimate of 200-400 trivial entrances is correct for a moment. since every can get 13 points in one of those rooms, but only one person can get 17, then one person gets 4 additional points. if we imagine the same person got all 400, that person would have 1600 points more than everyone else... looking at the score list, I don't think 1600 points is that disruptive. especially when we consider that it's NOT all concentrated on one person.

I certainly am in the top 20 because of quantity, but at most 14*400*72/78 of my points are from trivial entrances. you may argue that that is like a quarter of my points, but keep in mind you'd be subtracting large numbers from everyone else as well. and certainly the other 3 quarters of my points therefore did NOT come from trivial entrances. and if you subtract the full 5600 from wallu. and then double it as a penalty because you don't like his name, and then subtract that from his score again, he's still in first place.

I'm feeling like we're arguing about a molehill as if it were a great mountainous problem.

-
In the one hold I made, I just did with regards to entrances what the authors of the KDD and JtRH did. that seems like it should be sufficient armor against indictment.


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BoyBlue
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silver wrote:
... and then I had to RE-mark them when I updated. ...

But that's only for the rooms you modified, right?

Right?

...

Uh oh.

Wow, that's really non-obvious. When the server said to be very careful because there was no way for me to undo the operation of marking rooms as uninteresting, I took that to mean there was no way for me to undo it. But in fact, undoing it is so simple that one can easily do it by accident.

Tahnan
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I feel obligated to say something, with wallu and Syntax and Larrymurk and so forth weighing in.

Unfortunately, I have nothing to say. I do wonder about those people who seem to have bought a CaravelNet subscription, walked out of the first room, and said, "Bored now." But they're hardly an argument against high-scorable entrances.

The rooms that bother me more are the cousins of "monsterless rooms that don't count because they have a 1-move 'solution'" rooms that michthro mentioned. Namely, rooms that take care and precision and effort to make it through, after which you walk in the other side, swing your sword a couple of times, clear the monster there, and walk out. In other words, rooms that combine the equivalent of a free first-or-second place with the no-reward-for-optimization of the rooms michthro describes.

eytanz
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Yeah, I agree that that sort of room sucks for highscores. Which is a shame, because sometimes that sort of room is pretty useful for hold design. But, as someone (I'm too lazy to check who) pointed out already, there is not real perfect scoring system. And the highscores are, and should be, secondary to the primary goal of the game which is conquering holds. So sometimes there will just have to be rooms that don't give scores that reflect their challenge level, whether they are monsterless rooms or rooms where the monster isn't part of the main puzzle.

Hmmm... A feature request just occured to me here, but I'll have to post it on the 3.0 dev boards, since it relies on a seperate 3.0 feature.

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michthro
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Wow! After my original post, my ISP went phut, and when I was finally able to connect again, I expected to have been flame-grilled to a crisp by now. However, everything said above is very reasonable, and I actually agree with most of it.

As usual, I stuffed up, and made it look like I'm worried about points. Not at all. I completely agree that trivial #1s make little difference point-wise. It's about trivial #1s versus proper #1s. Doom summed it up nicely:

Point-wise, I don't have anything against leaving trivial rooms scorable. After all, everyone is able to tie those scores just as easily, not getting a real disadvantage on the high score table. It's the fact that they create a lot unearned first place scores that are listed separately on the main scores page. Sure, they're distributed among a large number of players, but everyone who begins playing later will be at a disadvantage against most other players, who have gotten large numbers of these scores. "Real" first places are much harder to acquire, after all.

As for eytanz:

And seriously, I can't really feel sorry for you. When I optimize, I do so because it's an interesting challenge. Getting a #1 or #1 tie score in a complicated room is rewarding. Getting a #1 or #1-tie in a trivial room is momentarily amusing but not rewarding. You make optimizing sound like a painful job. If you're not enjoying it, why are you doing it?

If I made it seem that I consider optimising painful, well, please ignore me. I have no end of fun with it.

And if you are enjoying it .... - if you're enjoying optimizing, why do you care what other people get for rooms which optimization isn't interesting?

hmm.. You're raising a tricky issue there. On the one hand, I'm not a very competitive person. On the other hand, the high score system necessarily has it's competitive side, which I like to think is about competing in a spirit of friendly rivalry (for those who choose to compete). If you're completely and utterly doing your own thing, oblivious to what others are doing, that's fine, and possibly the ideal attitude to have, but you can't blame me for being a little competitive. It's hard not to get sucked in.

Bottom line, I feel it would be better for trivial rooms not to count, but if I came across fanatical or something, well, I'm not. It's not that big a deal. If Syntax and Rabscuttle started hunting trivial #1s, I'd find someone else to play with.

Blondbeard
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To go slightly off topic... How about if you could be rewarded a few points for compleating every dificult hold? Something like the dificulty above five squared times the number of rooms in the hold divided by ten. This would give 74 bonus points for solving Perfection, and 170 bonus points for solving Beethros teacher, and 87 points for solving a quiet place. I think this would be fair to the person who spends a lot of time to struggle through the holds without getting a lot of highscore points.

Ezlo
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I like that idea.

michthro
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Me too. Great idea.

jbluestein
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Blondbeard wrote:
To go slightly off topic... How about if you could be rewarded a few points for compleating every dificult hold? Something like the dificulty above five squared times the number of rooms in the hold divided by ten. This would give 74 bonus points for solving Perfection, and 170 bonus points for solving Beethros teacher, and 87 points for solving a quiet place. I think this would be fair to the person who spends a lot of time to struggle through the holds without getting a lot of highscore points.

Sounds like a great idea. Would you base the awards on the voted difficulty of the hold? That would probably make for more coding, although I guess not all that much more...

[EDIT: And would you give the points for conquering or for mastering, where the distinction is relevant?]



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[Last edited by jbluestein at 08-24-2006 08:24 PM]

Niccus
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Counting the number of conquered rooms would work, I'd think -- Though the secret rooms miiight be worth extra.

That would bring the question of trivial secret rooms though.

Blondbeard
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jbluestein wrote:

Blondbeard wrote:
To go slightly off topic... How about if you could be rewarded a few points for compleating every dificult hold? Something like the dificulty above five squared times the number of rooms in the hold divided by ten. This would give 74 bonus points for solving Perfection, and 170 bonus points for solving Beethros teacher, and 87 points for solving a quiet place. I think this would be fair to the person who spends a lot of time to struggle through the holds without getting a lot of highscore points.

Sounds like a great idea. Would you base the awards on the voted difficulty of the hold? That would probably make for more coding, although I guess not all that much more...

[EDIT: And would you give the points for conquering or for mastering, where the distinction is relevant?]

I would rather prefer points being awarded for completing a hold. Secret rooms can be unrepresentativly hard or tedious. Maybe bonus points could be awarded for mastering the hold. I think the most sensible thing would be to base the awards on voted difficulty.

Doom
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Blondbeard wrote:
I think the most sensible thing would be to base the awards on voted difficulty.

Definitely.

Syntax
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wallu wrote:
One more aspect I forgot to mention.

High scores page contains number of statistics: Score, Number of high scores, #1 scores, Avg. rank, and Avg. points.

Anyone can pick his/her favourite one and use it.

Only read as far as this so far, but yeah... excellent point! I guess my perspective was only from a #1 count (no other stats bother me apart from maybe score - slightly).

Syntax
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Blondbeard wrote:
To go slightly off topic... How about if you could be rewarded a few points for compleating every dificult hold? Something like the dificulty above five squared times the number of rooms in the hold divided by ten. This would give 74 bonus points for solving Perfection, and 170 bonus points for solving Beethros teacher, and 87 points for solving a quiet place. I think this would be fair to the person who spends a lot of time to struggle through the holds without getting a lot of highscore points.

I agree it's a great idea, but it might be confusing if your score fluctuates based on overall difficutly changing.

For example, JtRH would probably been an 8 when it came out, but is now closer to 6 and Beethro's Teacher would surely have been a 16 back then. But maybe the fact that holds become easier as people advance would be a good refelection of evolving talent, and hence be an even fairer way of attributing bonus points.

Hmmm... Yeah. Very good idea

Tahnan
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Syntax wrote:
I agree it's a great idea, but it might be confusing if your score fluctuates based on overall difficutly changing.

As it is, my score fluctuates based on people who keep beating my #1 scores. A little more fluctuation won't hurt. (And it certainly won't change that much at any given time; it'd take a lot of ratings. Especially if difficulty-based bonus points aren't given until there's a minimum number of votes on difficulty, e.g. 5.)

zex20913
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I've got to ask if this idea will increase difficulty ratings. Even subconsciously.

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Niccus
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Don't you mean reduce?

Evil strategies swing both ways