Voted for "No poll, but enable rating for submissions like it is for publications". There are ways to make it neat and orderly, and it will make sense, too. If it will use the "entertainment/technical" system like our publication rating, it will also be good if the entertainment rating is locked upon voting, but tech is possible to modify (in case a person would like to change their opinion as a result of a discussion in the submission thread). It will be something new and useful.
Second favorite option was "No poll. But add "post <vote_type> post" buttons to where the poll was". It's potentially less useful than the above, especially for judges, but it can formulate a different approach to discussing submissions, hopefully moving from monosyllabic posts to rationalistic discussion and more constructive feedback.
adelikat wrote:
At that point, wouldn't someone then demand to know who voted no?
It's not "who" that is of utmost interest, but "why". Note that such problem is near-impossible to solve if voting is kept anonymous.
Another thing you can do is return a poll but make it possible to every user to view each other's vote. Can someone add it to the option list? I'm not choosing this option, but I guess it should be there, too.
"4th generation" is definitely not an option, for an obvious reason. "Sega Megadrive / Genesis / CD / 32x" is somewhat long, but it's the only viable option I see.
Derakon wrote:
Even though right after the technical rating it says "(how close it is to perfection)", no one really agrees on what it actually means, and gives it an own meaning. This might not be a problem to many, but it can be used to argue against people who say they are interested to see what technical rating people are giving.
I don't really understand how can it be used to argue against people who are just interested. The fact that every person defines the scale to themself is not only true, it's fundamentally unchangeable. Which is why we shouldn't really argue about it, let alone try to change it in some way. What we should do is accept it and relieve the importance sometimes associated with it. Victory comes at the moment you decide it doesn't really matter.
Baxter wrote:
Assuming that most people do view the technical rating as a measure how close the movie to perfection is, is this a good thing for this to influence the final score?
As good as any other beside entertainment. You can always take this "easy" game and say "this is optimal as hell", and likely be right. If that matters in some way, it can also matter as a part of the resulting score.
Baxter wrote:
Assuming that most people do view the technical rating as a measure how close the movie to perfection is, how does one know how close a particular movie comes to perfection? The truth is, you have no idea of determining that until you actually TAS the game yourself, and notice howmany, frames you can save. Neither the tricks used, the amount of rerecords used, the author, whatever else you could possibly know of this movie by watching it.
Duh?.. Let me tell you more: even if you do attempt TASing it, there's no way to tell you're doing what's best. Maybe you're overlooking as much as the original author. No way to tell.
That means that you (not you in particular) shouldn't pretend to assess the actual quality of optimization, but come to terms with the fact that you're assessing how optimal it looks. Which is neither bad nor wrong; TASes are a form of entertainment, entertainment is subjective, assessment is thus bound to be subjective. Nothing else needed.
Baxter wrote:
One can also see a very strong correspondence in some cases to people being entertained by a TAS, and the technical rating they give, even if this strictly shouldn't be the case.
That has more to do with people being stupid and not seeing/understanding the difference. Nothing new here, unfortunately.
Baxter wrote:
People might disagree on the fact that entertainment counts for 2/3 and technical rating for 1/3. Some people might find entertainment more important than that, or less important. People might also consider other things besides these two things. Would it not be better for each person to consider whatever he finds important, weigh it as high as he thinks and compiles it into a single rating?
Either too complex or potentially abusable. Hardcoded values won't be ideal, but they'll give a solid, robust base.
Baxter wrote:
People might want to rate higher than a 8, but wouldn't quite give it a 9 (or want to be between some other numbers). Some people consider a 10 to be a perfect score, and are reluctant to hand it out, but it's the only option if something is worth more than a 9. Being able to give ratings like a 8.2 or a 9.3 would solve this problem.
I don't think such accuracy is needed, either. For one, I'd be just fine with 0—20 system (via .5 decimals), but wouldn't be sad if the current 0—10 one stayed, either.
Baxter wrote:
Being able to rate a 8.2 or 9.3 (or whatever) will also enable you to list the TASes you've rated better by rating. This way, you will truly get a list of TASes you like best to TASes you 'like' worst. The current system doesn't produce this kind of list for two reasons: 1) You can only rate integers, and many movies will get the same rating, even if you like one movie a little better than the other. 2) The technical rating will give boosts to some TASes, even though you don't like them as much... this will especially be the case for the 'easy' games I mentioned earlier.
It won't be ideal at all. For one, I like certain aspects in one kind of TASes, but different ones in another. I value them differently. So far I can express it by giving different tech and entertainment ratings to represent that value. With a single value they'll be equalized, which I would be less comfortable with.
The current system is far from ideal in this case, it may even not be better, but it's not really worse either.
Baxter wrote:
The labels the current integers have "slightly above average" and so on are very confusing, and might not represent what people think. It doesn't matter if one person gives his movies an average rating of a 5, while some other gives them an average rating of an 8, as long as their own list is consistent. I don't think these labels are needed.
These are only guidelines; you shouldn't worry much about them because people aren't taking them literally either.
Warp wrote:
I have always had the opinion that people understand the technical rating wrong. It was not what I had in mind when we created the voting system.
But that's so human-like! I can't believe you were expecting everyone to take it as you wanted them to. Though maybe you weren't, but then you shouldn't feel bad about it.
Warp wrote:
Does it perform heavy luck manipulation? If so, does it do it to its great advantage? Is it "cool"? Does it zip through walls? Is the zipping performed with good style and technique? Does it "look good"? What kind of tools were used to make the run? Was lua scripting used to aid in making the run? Was a bot written to create part of the run? Was the game disassembled in order to understand how the rng works? That kind of things.
It also looks like a mishmash of subjective and/or shabby criteria that have about the same probability of being precise or misleading. Not to say any other criterion (except "was it bruteforced") isn't in this case, but still. I won't go into elaboration on how faulty they can be, because you can ask these questions to yourself just as well.
Warp wrote:
Even a frame-perfect run may deserve a low technical score if it doesn't show advanced and well-executed techniques. Perhaps the game in question just doesn't lend itself to awesome techniques, but then it's simply a poor game choice.
Makes very little sense. You're basically suggesting that some games will enjoy the usage of a full scale, but not the other games. And this is such an awesome favoritism that we could start presetting ratings for certain games just because they do or don't lend themselves to something. Let's start with SMB series. (Or wait, let's not, unless you want people to die.)
Warp wrote:
They want the technical score to be a pure optimal-frames/used-frames score, and nothing else. Interpreting it like that makes the whole technical score kind of moot and uninteresting. It has no value. It doesn't say anything.
It has. It gives you an idea of what people think of it. Wake up! The peers are telling you what they think! That's a valuable info that you could go and do something with. For example, prove them wrong. :D
Warp wrote:
Removing the stars is one of the symptoms of the current Political Correctness trend here, and I still heavily oppose the decision.
Current trend? Heh, as if. :)
Baxter wrote:
If people want to consider all that, fine, but just come up with a single rating that fits everything you considered.
Yeah, except coming up with a single value and trying to explain it to yourself is much harder. Try it. Why does this movie deserve 9.2 and not 9.3? What about another pair of 9.2-9.3 movies? Same kind of a difference? Or not?
A single rating is almost as close to being completely arbitrary as possible. Maybe it's a good thing, maybe not. After all, it's what most are striving for, so basically we're giving them a toy to fulfill their "lowly desires". :)
I don't think I've ever agreed with BoltR as much as on this very page before.
On topic of peer pressure and such, people should not be afraid of voicing their opinion. If anything, it's bullies who must be smacked, not the watchers giving feedback.
Moozooh: the rule about beating existing times really only applies to times that existed at the time of publication, does it not? when Guano's run was published, it was the fastest of it's kind. just because it can be improved doesn't mean it should be taken down asap.
It's not so much in the context of a rule by this point, as it is in the context of a TAS being KO'd by an unassisted run competing under the same rules, and staying like that for years. This is something that shouldn't happen. Moreover, it's not like the published any% is flawless in regards other than route/major glitching; it has its own share of all kinds of other inaccuracies as well. If you know/remember, it was originally meant to be a test run, which ended up being submitted and published due to overwhelming feedback. In retrospect, I can't tell that has been a bad decision, but the fact that it's so outdated and still published in the any% category definitely doesn't benefit the site in any way. Popular games need their content refreshed, and it's a good idea for a cutting-edge site like TASVideos to stay up to date with that.
alden wrote:
My point still stands that deleting the old movie doesn't really solve anything and is effectively lowering the net entertainment opportunities for the majority of people.
Is it? Consider that no-one would bother downloading it via BitTorrent at this point, granted it's been uploaded to every possible video hosting service, and that's about the only advantage its published status has now for those who are lazy or ignorant enough to not know about/search for faster alternatives. There are all the ways to watch it for those who really want it, but otherwise Bloobiebla's movie has all that + more + better.
And what percentage of the audience can be considered "OoT experts"? Probably higher than that of the general population, but still low I believe.
Check the amount of pages on SDA's Zelda topics, and the amount of views on any given OoT trick uploaded on YouTube. The crowd following OoT tricking/sequence breaking is huge, and there's a high chance any interested user would check some of the more popular recently uploaded YT videos before watching Guano's run.
The exact reason why it should be obsoleted now is that OoT is a very popular game. The published run aims for speed (as such, it has to beat unassisted records in the comparable categories), yet it is dramatically outperformed by newly discovered knowledge, thus lowering the expectations from the site in general ("meh, I've seen better on YouTube" and so on). So far the only reason it hasn't been obsoleted is that there hasn't been a worthy replacement, but now there is.
I'd say it wouldn't be so important with a game like, say, Jaws, which is rather obscure.
Maybe just note in Guano's that it's technically deprecated at this point. The skips in that run, outdated though they are, do provide a significantly different viewing experience.
Here.
AKA decided that was wrong, so he removed such notes… twice. Whatever, I've given up on trying to reason with him.
That run is deprecated, it surprises zero OoT experts since by this point it can be beat twice faster even in realtime, and thus it should be obsoleted ASAP, even if it takes another category to do that. Remind me, were we looking for reasons to obsolete it, or for reasons not to obsolete it?
If you didn't like what you saw then you should say so
Right, that's what it asks in the poll, now doesn't it.
Also note that it was pointed out many times before, by Bisqwit himself at one or more points in time, that "vote after watching" doesn't mean "vote after watching the entire movie". You don't have to sit through a movie you don't like, and you don't have to do that to tell the others you didn't like it. OoT isn't a unique little snowflake which one should treat with more respect that all the other games in regards to voting and stuff.
Hope that helps.
The reason why it would make sense to store dipswitch settings in the movie file is that they can be modified "offline" (that is, wihout even loading the game). I expect many TASes to modify the switch configuration to set a higher difficulty or something else like that, since arcade games usually don't have ingame menu for obvious reasons, and sometimes that involves resetting the game upon modifying them (which would bring reset recording into equation, which is, to my experience, pretty useless in arcade emulation otherwise).
Dip switches.
Ideally, the movie format should store ALL settings that can affect sync in its header, and load them so that they will be active at least until the movie is playing. That's the only foolproof way to counter erroneous setting desyncs.
I don't care one way or another whether it's published
Yet Upthorn has a full right to express his thoughts on what he has seen in the run.
z0MG wrote:
If you personally don't think there's enough improvement for it to be worth watching, no one's forcing you to watch! Many people enjoy watching it for the small improvements, and it makes the viewer experience slightly better for first time viewers.
There's no sure way to know if you'll tell the difference until you watch it.
While it's true that the >10% thing was a hoax (should have known but never been bothered to check, my bad), and it's also true that all parts of the brain are known and used by the organism, that's not even close to tapping its potential. Knowing the function of each part doesn't mean too much.
Consider that a human brain is actually a very, VERY powerful supercomputer whose performance by far exceeds modern desktop computers and then some. If you just analyze the human visual system, you'll see that huge amounts of data far exceeding HDTV detail depth are being processed at enormous rates… so fast we don't even have time to think about it unless someone reminds us to! The neural system allows for very effective parallelism that helps in nonlinear pattern recognition no software is yet capable of. And keep in mind that our brains manage our whole organisms without even interrupting our thought process.
The problem with its low performance, speaking in computer hardware terms, is that we:
1) don't have any feasible ways of direct long-term memory access. In order to remember something, we go through whole chains of memories, and still may be unable to remember the event we were looking for. The information is still there, though;
2) have literally awful debugging interface. We have little to no ways of accessing our brain at a lower level without help from hypnosis, strong mind-altering substances, or some other external help. Because of that, most problems and other mental bugs that crawl in are usually there to stay;
3) don't have developed routines for really fast linear calculation. How many people are there who can multiply 4+ digit numbers without using tools? It's not like we lack processing power for it, though, as demonstrated by certain individuals;
4) are very rigid. Developed ways of thinking don't yield to changing themselves well, and sometimes at all;
5) are very autonomous. There are no manual ways to tweak the performance of a brain by assigning priorities to certain functions over the others. In fact, the only really manual way of doing something with your brain is learning something new and hoping it will override any conflicting or erroneous knowledge you have learnt in the past;
6) have the abilities to change or distort the characteristics of our perception (subjective time, for instance), but we barely, if ever, can control the quality and extent of these changes, or even induce them at will;
et cetera.
As you see, it's not that the hardware is ineffective per se, it's the interface that is. As such, I'm positive it's much less than even 1% we can take advantage of on our own will, in contrast to our organism's hardwired routines, which, unfortunately, only take what is required to solve a certain survival task.
