1 2
7 8 9 10 11
Reviewer, Active player (286)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
If the problem is with lists getting too long, then maybe we should reorganize our site like SDA does. I actually like how their site is set up. The runs are under a games list, where you can choose a specific system or just see everything, but the list is just a series of links, which will be less of a strain on the server. When you click on a game, you can see every run of that game. If we want to put our best foot forward on this, we can make the games pages sort with highest rated run on top by default. As far as submission process goes, any% and 100% runs are auto accepted as long as no improvements can be found. Give a reasonable amount of time for people to suggest improvements, if no objections are made, then the run is accepted. Alternate goals have to defend themselves a bit more, but people should be encouraged to go after entertaining alternate goals. All other sorting can be done with categories. Vault and Moon as is are meaningless distinctions. Let's make distinctions meaningful. My understanding was the purpose of the original tier system was to be more inclusive, both in terms of providing runs that don't necessarily go for pure speed and including more games. I think this will allow it to happen. As for me, I like to watch every movie on the site, but I use my "not yet rated" list to find runs. If I want to find a specific run, I just search for the game anyway. I almost never use the system lists. If we want, we can feature some of the more popular categories on the home page: e.g. Stars, heavy glitch abuse, playaround, contains commentary?, console verified?
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11473
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
So after a break, I feel like listing the problems with the current tier system which users are unhappy with, and which are solved in the proposed system. Moth: sorry for the collision.
Tangent wrote:
Anything that's an improvement gets a disproportinate number of yes votes, especially if it's a significant improvement. See: Any Atari game frame war.
Archanfel wrote:
1)Rules about transition from Vault to Moon is very unclear sometimes. From recent examples http://tasvideos.org/2697M.html such a small improvement was enough to do transition; But dunnius's NES Hydlide in 05:11.62 improvement which nearly twice faster than 09:07.32 predecessor - still not enough for transition, it is strange imho.
Ferret Warlord wrote:
I don't know if this really fits in the discussion, but there's something flying around about, "Improving a vault into the moon." Forgive me if this isn't really applicable. I made this run nine years ago, before the tiers came out. When tiers were implemented, it was automatically assigned Vault, according to its user ratings. Just this last week, someone improved one level in it by six seconds, and left almost all the rest untouched. Look what tier it's in.
If the tier of an accepted run is not decided by posts and votes, people voting yes for dead boring improvements don't skew the stats the judge will use.
dunnius wrote:
The problem that I have with vaulting something is that it ends up hidden, and so it is less likely to get voted on. Also, vaulting a movie that is rated as a 6 is rather harsh; it hides too many decent runs. I suppose there is also an aspect of "The TASer wasted time making this" element to the vault category. I understand why Vault exists, to have a place for runs that would be gruefood under the old system, or for really old runs that squeaked by in voting.
With flexible hiding cutoff, there's nothing that's always hidden.
Archanfel wrote:
2)Voting system is imperfect: Vote: Did you find this movie entertaining? Vote: Should this movie be published? It is two absolutely different questions. Sometimes boring movies deserve be published. And sometimes (rarely but still) entertaining movies not deserve.
ais523 wrote:
What concerns me here is that so far, nobody claims that they don't understand the system; and yet, the votes we actually get on submissions often don't match the poll questions. Which implies to me that either a) people are lying on this poll, b) the people who don't understand the system didn't look at this thread at all; or c) people fully understand the system but intentionally subvert it because they disagree with the way it works. FWIW, I voted "subpar but we can't come up with anything better", because IIRC there are technical problems with changing the options to something other than Yes/No/Meh, and although it's clear that people aren't using the poll for its intended purpose, I can't think of a better solution to that. If you change the poll to "Do you think this should be published?", it then isn't producing the information that judges actually care about. (Arguably, it isn't anyway, but we should at least give it a chance.)
AnS wrote:
The only problem is that people tend to vote Yes (or at least Meh) even for mildly entertaining runs, simply because they consider the run technically well-made, or they don't want to look like an asshole voting No, or they actually want to support the author/the game franchise/etc, even though they watched the movie using fast-forward and skipping huge parts because of boring content. On the contrary, people who actually dislike the run usually abstain from voting (e.g. if you drop watching an encode, you may as well close the tab and forget about the submission. Or you may obey the rule "must watch [supposedly to the end] before voting").
If the question is simply "Do you think this should be published?", the voters are finally happy, and false positives don't appear out of people granting their votes arbitrary meaning. But what does such a question help judges to decide? If the run is any%/100%, it concerns optimality at least. If it's a side goal, it tells whether this run is entertaining enough to be accepted, or it should be rejected. For runs that are neither any%/100%, nor entertaining (fully botted minigame), or probably break some rules (cheat codes), but is still technically impressive (a smart bot was designed), the answer Yes would mean "we're still okay with having this run publish".
Samsara wrote:
To be fair, there are several Moon runs from months back that don't even have ratings displayed yet. People only really rate either popular games or really entertaining games. That being said, this is still valid criticism, and it's part of why I don't even support the Vault tier at all. It's discouraging in my opinion. No one wants to spend weeks on a really good movie only to have it end up in a section of the site that isn't even listed by default. The big problem is that the defining factor of Moon VS Vault is the game itself, and that's kind of arbitrary when you really think about it. A run is tiered according to the game itself, not according to the run. People vote based on the game itself, not on the run. Highly optimized runs of bad games still get awful scores, while a less-optimized run of a "good" game will get much better scores. I'm sure now that this movie is published and Vaulted, it's just going to end up ignored with a low score even though it's a huge, well-done improvement that I found pretty entertaining even without watching the last one for comparison.
r57shell wrote:
If run going in Vault, it marked as "not entertainment", literally: "don't watch it, it's only waste of time", and as result: less votes about ratings, and so on. More than that, vault runs are hidden in list by default. With runs in Moons/Stars category, completely different situation, they marked "this run cool, watch it", and result: more votes about ratings, and so on. And they are visible in list by default. Where is issue here? Good runs forces its ratings to be good, and not entertainment runs forces its ratings to be bad. In other words, it's not good that rating is affected by tier. For me, vault is like "black mark". All going bad after you got it. :D
Without using Vault for badly looking runs and Moons for nicely looking runs, we won't have the Vault runs stigmatized as a priori bad, boring and not worthy.
feos wrote:
Borderline cases are serious business (Vault something poorly received until it gets good ratings, Moon something unclear until it's rated poorly, and then switch tiers with proof), but this one is in no way a borderline case! feos looks at #3795: Samsara's NES Moon Crystal in 08:35.12 votes. feos looks at #3795: Samsara's NES Moon Crystal in 08:35.12 judgment note. feos does the same all the time. others do the opposite, get complained about it, and it's still officially more legit. feos fails to understand how that fucking instinct is supposed to work. As I said, each time I accepted something uncertain to Vault, there were always people mad about it.
dunnius wrote:
There are runs, this one included that are borderline enough not to fit neatly into vault or moons. How the hell is Riddick Bowe Boxing a moon tier? Perhaps we should abandon tiers since I don't see it working well.
If there's no need in figuring out what entertainment tier we should send uncertain runs, there's no way to judge that wrong and get people pissed over it. And there's no need to move movies between tiers after publication once the time proves the decision was "wrong".
Now, the the problems that this system introduces. ...errr, my list is empty!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Player (26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
feos wrote:
Tangent wrote:
Anything that's an improvement gets a disproportinate number of yes votes, especially if it's a significant improvement. See: Any Atari game frame war.
Feos, the quotes you give have absolutely nothing to do with the new system you're proposing. If the issue is that it's too easy for improvement runs to get Moon tier, then adding a new tier isn't going to solve that.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11473
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
This particular quote has absolutely nothing to do with adding a new tier. If you can't see from these quotes how often Yes votes people give just because it's an improvement are translated as Yes in terms of entertaining, well then, you don't have their problem with the current submission poll and tiers.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Radiant wrote:
Note that runs of games with no clear ending are already allowed in vault tier
Are they? Most infamously board games (and some sports games) are not vaultable. If they aren't accepted for Moons, they won't get a publication at all (which I think is a huge shame.)
and I think runs of a completeable game which don't complete it shouldn't be published.
I don't think that should be a hard rule. Of course the standards of quality should be quite high, as we don't want to publish any random thing that anybody happens to submit. However, I don't think we should close the doors to that option either, if there is some really remarkable that could showcase TASing without necessarily completing a game. There are quite many games which do not have a clear progression and ending, by their very nature. Board games, quiz games, games made to emulate a TV contest... things like that. These types of games are in that odd place where they might or might not get a publication if they are deemed good enough for Moons (using a very arbitrary and fuzzy voting and judging system). Why not have a tier for those (and everything else that doesn't fit into the other tiers)?
Editor, Experienced player (884)
Joined: 1/23/2008
Posts: 529
Location: Finland
My reasoning for an any/100 tier is simply this: TASVideos says one of its goals is "being a TAS records site, and a central repository of tool-assisted literature and information" (pasted from the Vault description). The thought of a TAS records site is a great one in my opinion. Creating Vault for movies that were rejected in the past for entertainment reasons was a great step for the site. But TASVideos is still far from being a formal records site. I guess the lack of formality is the thing that bothers me the most here. Rant incoming... The way I see it, speed is a fairly objective goal. As far as I'm concerned, it should be the foundation in a "tier system" (or another type of organizing). But... TASVideos has always been founded on a (narrow-minded) focus on entertainment. TASVideos suffered for it in the past before there was a Vault, when plenty of good runs were rejected because they weren't "entertaining enough". And even now, runs that are perceived to be not that entertaining are hidden away and more or less discouraged by the site. Heck, the Vault description itself says "Movies which are not all that entertaining are included here". Is it just me, or is this a somewhat disrespectful attitude towards the work? The thing is, entertainment is highly subjective. You cannot claim that this bunch of runs is entertaining and these other runs are not, and draw a clear line between them. It all comes down to user preferences, age, past gaming experience and all that. For instance hiding away Vault runs in the search is doing a disservice to the end user, who might in fact be most interested in one of the runs that ended up in the Vault, and now never ends up finding it. To get out of the arbitrary trappings of "entertainment", have an objective tier for speed records. Something you can create statistics of and simply keep track of. Then, another tier(s) for alternative categories ("Moons")... As for pinpointing runs that are likely the most accessible and of critical worth to new users, there is the tag for that. Mumble mumble... But after that... all this ruminating on what is "entertaining" and what is not... is it really necessary? Can't the user decide for themselves what they want to watch once they get the basics and are starting to grasp the limitless possibilities of this fringe art form? Obviously some kind of guides can be useful, but separating all the runs on the site on a single interpretation of "entertaining" doesn't help much IMO. I'm kind of sorry to hear that this whole idea is a no-go. About the site resource drain... can't the displayed results be divided into pages that show 50 first runs, for instance?
Player (26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Warp wrote:
Radiant wrote:
Note that runs of games with no clear ending are already allowed in vault tier
Are they? Most infamously board games (and some sports games) are not vaultable. If they aren't accepted for Moons, they won't get a publication at all (which I think is a huge shame.)
Wait, we're discussing two different things here. "Games with no clear ending" means endless games, so something like Space Invaders that keeps repeating forever. These are allowed in Vault, generally by running the game until the round where it stops getting more difficult. "Board games and some sport games" are by no means endless, but are not allowed in vault. Basically, the easiest solution to the issues pointed out in this thread would be to allow board games in the vault.
Reviewer, Active player (286)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
In light of adelikat's statement and actually getting some good arguments against the feos proposal, I am now in favor of having no tiers at all and using categories to organize the site. On the issue of server drain, if my proposal from up above can't be implemented, I'm in favor of all list pages turning into a series of links to the actual movie page. (As thatguy said) That way each user that's searching will only pull up the picture, video and description when they've decided on a movie. The thing I've not budged on is the tier system as is needs to go, and I still prefer feos' proposal over what we have now.
Active player (263)
Joined: 8/14/2014
Posts: 188
Location: North Kilttown
I have still, after months of reading threads pertaining to the tier system, have yet to figure out what this site has to gain from saying "hey, these runs are entertaining; these are not". All that this system does is put higher (or lower) value on certain movies based on a very, very, very small portion of the site user's views of "entertainment". (I say "small portion" because the - at most - 30 or so voters in the poll and the - usually - 3-5 people who will rate a movie is extremely small in comparison to the amount of users/contributors/viewers on this site.) As I said in another thread I really take issue with the wording on the Vault's info page where it refers to it as "the lowest publication tier". Last I checked a Vault was for the sake of preserving something, because it was worth preserving. Not a place to put something because it doesn't measure up to a very subjective sense of entertainment/value. Overall though, I think AKheon nailed how I feel about it through the use of a few words: "TASVideos has always been founded on a (narrow-minded) focus on entertainment". I swear this is the only speedrunning related site that gets so bogged down in what constitutes an entertaining run or not - forgetting, of course, that not only are newcomers and veterans and everyone in between entertained by different things, but also that simply seeing a game you love (obscure or not) TASed is where a lot of individual entertainment lies. I think trying to quantify entertainment - quite literally - categorically is flawed in many ways. Now I say this specifically for the runs that aim for speed (which is most of the runs). Entertainment-specific categories like playarounds are a different story. At the end of the day I think a goal-based tier system not only gets rid of subjectivity in a lot of cases, but it also makes the Vault not so damning of a place for an author to see their run published to. By making the Vault (or whatever equivalent) based on speed goals specifically, and making Moons (or whatever equivalent) into an entertainment based tier specific for playarounds, sports/board games or anything seen currently as "unvaultable" would make each tier desirable in some way rather than one being where you hope your run doesn't end up. That or say bollocks to the whole tier thing and navigate based on system/game to find a movie like any person with half a brain cell firing would do and just show the newest publications in a single, shorter list.
Somewhat damaged.
Active player (428)
Joined: 9/7/2007
Posts: 329
Do we really need to have tiers at all (except for the star and recommended for newcomers tags) if we use a page system that filters by a range of movie ratings? There is a proposed 4 tier system that would place TASes based on movie ratings, but that seems unnecessary and redundant with the page filter.
ars4326
He/Him
Experienced player (775)
Joined: 12/8/2012
Posts: 706
Location: Missouri, USA
TehBerral wrote:
...As I said in another thread I really take issue with the wording on the Vault's info page where it refers to it as "the lowest publication tier". Last I checked a Vault was for the sake of preserving something, because it was worth preserving. Not a place to put something because it doesn't measure up to a very subjective sense of entertainment/value...
As a practical 'tweak' for at least a smaller issue, could the wording be changed instead to "the standard publication tier"?
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
Reviewer, Active player (286)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Language is helpful, but it doesn't change that the vault is treated like a punishment and hidden away from public eye.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
IIRC Moons were originally invented as some kind of "outstanding TAS, albeit not star-worthy" tag. In other words, a "notice this TAS, you might like it". Something in between the regular runs and the starred ones. This was perhaps a working system when we had something like 400 published runs. However, now that we have over 1600, it's getting a bit out of hand. The Moons tier is too large to really serve its original purpose. And, as have been commented by many people many times, it has had the unfortunate side-effect of making it look like non-Moon TASes are somehow inferior, and relegated to some kind of heap of mediocrity. At some point an actual tier system was introduced, with the Vault being the new "lowest" tier. Intended or not, this only helped consolidate the notion that Vault runs are somehow "inferior", as anything that was not "good enough" for Moons would be relegated to Vault (and possibly not even there, if it didn't meet the goal qualifications). As TehBerral pointed out above, perhaps we don't need this kind of two-tiered system of "better" and "more boring" runs. After all, it is rather superfluous given that we have the rating system. I also must agree somewhat with dunnius above. Thinking about all this, do we really need a tiered system at all? What purpose do they serve? Although as a somewhat of a perfectionist who loves to categorize things, I still think it would be nice to have a (stricter) categorization system for TASes, like the one being proposed in this thread. Just don't call them "tiers", but instead eg. "categories". I would also love to see (as I have mentioned in the past) a kind of "official" list of "world record tool-assisted completions". Something that somebody could easily check to see what the current record is. This would be pretty much the proposed new "Vault" category. (It's too bad that this idea is made very difficult by the fact that it's hard to unambiguously define for some games which one of the completions should be the "official WR completion", given all the savedata corruption, arbitrary code execution, and so on. Clear rules would need to be delineated, but I get the feeling that I personally wouldn't agree with the majority consensus. Thus perhaps for my own sanity and peace of mind it's probably best that this idea was abandoned. A pity, but perhaps it's for the best.)
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11473
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Tiers are still good as long as each of them has strict and clear rules different from other tiers. Or categories.
arkiandruski wrote:
In light of adelikat's statement and actually getting some good arguments against the feos proposal, I am now in favor of having no tiers at all and using categories to organize the site.
Yeah, except they weren't actually against it, as explained by my next post.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Active player (428)
Joined: 9/7/2007
Posts: 329
Warp wrote:
I would also love to see (as I have mentioned in the past) a kind of "official" list of "world record tool-assisted completions". Something that somebody could easily check to see what the current record is. This would be pretty much the proposed new "Vault" category. (It's too bad that this idea is made very difficult by the fact that it's hard to unambiguously define for some games which one of the completions should be the "official WR completion", given all the savedata corruption, arbitrary code execution, and so on. Clear rules would need to be delineated, but I get the feeling that I personally wouldn't agree with the majority consensus. Thus perhaps for my own sanity and peace of mind it's probably best that this idea was abandoned. A pity, but perhaps it's for the best.)
The solution is to recognize that there are multiple any% (game end glitch is separate from normal any%) and recognize each one.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
dunnius wrote:
The solution is to recognize that there are multiple any% (game end glitch is separate from normal any%) and recognize each one.
That could indeed work. We could have a "official world record for game X" for different categories, such as "no game breaking glitches" (which includes savedata corruption and ACE both of which, I think, can be quite unambiguously defined) and "wild" (ie. anything goes). I'm not expecting to see this any time soon, though. But it's an interesting idea.
Experienced player (675)
Joined: 2/5/2012
Posts: 1786
Location: Brasil
ok but the glitchless and glitched runs must be reasonably different not some "i avoided a few timesavers here and there".Games should guarantee their obligatory any% and 100% categories(if they have some kind of form of bigger completion) and nothing else.
TAS i'm interested: Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS? i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
Player (26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Warp wrote:
That could indeed work. We could have a "official world record for game X" for different categories, such as "no game breaking glitches" (which includes savedata corruption and ACE both of which, I think, can be quite unambiguously defined) and "wild" (ie. anything goes).
We basically do that already. Vault tier is "anything goes", and moon tier tends to avoid glitches that cuts too much out of the game. And no, you can't unambiguously define "game breaking glitch". We had long debates on that and it doesn't reach any kind of consensus.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11473
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Radiant wrote:
And no, you can't unambiguously define "game breaking glitch". We had long debates on that and it doesn't reach any kind of consensus.
Yes we can. http://tasvideos.org/Glossary.html#GameBreakingGlitch http://tasvideos.org/Movies-C3041Y.html
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Player (26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
feos wrote:
Radiant wrote:
And no, you can't unambiguously define "game breaking glitch". We had long debates on that and it doesn't reach any kind of consensus.
Yes we can. http://tasvideos.org/Glossary.html#GameBreakingGlitch http://tasvideos.org/Movies-C3041Y.html
It's hilarious that you think that tag is being applied consistently. Hint: it's not.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11473
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Hint: it is.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Radiant wrote:
Warp wrote:
That could indeed work. We could have a "official world record for game X" for different categories, such as "no game breaking glitches" (which includes savedata corruption and ACE both of which, I think, can be quite unambiguously defined) and "wild" (ie. anything goes).
We basically do that already. Vault tier is "anything goes", and moon tier tends to avoid glitches that cuts too much out of the game.
If we did it already, this thread wouldn't exist.
And no, you can't unambiguously define "game breaking glitch". We had long debates on that and it doesn't reach any kind of consensus.
I said "both of which can be quite unambiguously defined". Referring to "savedata corruption" and "arbitrary code execution".
Editor, Experienced player (569)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4035
Radiant wrote:
It's hilarious that you think that tag is being applied consistently. Hint: it's not.
I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but soon after the tag's inception, I and some other vested editors / staff took several days to filter through all the movies on the site and mark those which matched the criteria for a "major skip glitch". (There were several not-well-known movies in which the "heavy glitch abuse" tag or any mention of a large glitch were absent, or instead referred to as a "warp". I was glad we uncovered those movies.) So at least for all movies from May 2014 and earlier, that tag should be correctly applied. If you know of any newer movies that need the tag added or removed, it shouldn't be hard to fix those.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1250)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11473
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Now to the Demo tier Category. The problem we all had with it is that we couldn't define any clear criteria for it, there were lots of ideas of which particular runs seem to fit into Demo, but none of them was solid enough. Here's how it would work in the proposed system: If a run can't fit into any other Category due to breaking their rules, but nonetheless has positive feedback, it should go into Demo. Records Category demands being any% or 100%, beating existing records (or matching them), not using ROM modifications, standing out from an unassisted play, etc. Moons wants all of these too, but also demands high entertainment value. And there are some runs that couldn't fit into these Categories, but were well received. This submission predated the Tier system, so the question was still "Should this be published?" But people still posted quite a lot about how much they were entertained with the run. The rejection reason was that even though cheat codes aren't completely banned, one should not use them to make his life easier, because it doesn't look that impressive anymore. And the problem with that is, they are still impressive to people! It's just they are not an overwhelming majority. Now see what we did about these people not in majority. We agreed to accept speed records that are not entertaining to the majority, but still have value to some people. That's how Vault was added. Even if the verbal reasons for it are different ("yes we want to be a records site too, bla bla"), the very reason why adding a whole new tier was even considered is because of the people who wanted not-so-entertaining records to ever be published. Again, they are not in majority, but that way we annoy the viewer the least, and include more runs entertaining only to the few. This run received clear Moon feedback, most of the posters enjoyed it. It was rejected because it didn't stand out from the normal play. Then there was a 6-page thread about how and why do we want some way to have such runs published, and we couldn't come up with something certain. Some suggested adding board games to Vault, others wanted to add a special tier for board games (inclusively). What is clear: people do want board game runs published. However, not all of them: Scrabble was received poorly (48% (11/10/12)), people wanted to see a playaround instead. Then, there's a whole bunch of Gruefood Delight runs that were well made, but couldn't make it for different reasons. Not much to say except that its post feedback matches the votes. Judgment isn't quite clear to me, but it's pre-tier. Fantastic research&development piece, great feedback, simply rejected because it's real-time slower that its emulator-aimed analog. Regardless of decent votes, not a single post about it being entertaining (or boring). An example of a run to be pondered, and then rejected for no support. Thought there are people disliking it too, the overall feedback is okay. Rejected for the quality of the hack, but people didn't have much of a problem with it, except for those voted No. Pre-tier, so wasn't considered for Moons, and there's KMW3 published, so there's probably some content overlap, but I'd let the crowd decide if they are similar enough to the point when one iteration of the hack series obsoletes another, or maybe we could allow both. Quite borderline feedback in my opinion, novel goal, nice script, so this might be an interesting run to ponder once again, with the new Category in mind. ABSURD goal, but good feedback. Rejected for "too much branches" and the fact that this goal is also doable in real time (lol, RBO is doable too, its TAS is still great). And so on... Runs canceled by the author are out of the question, because they could be vaulted. Runs that desync or are suboptimal can't be considered either (see how I changed my mind about Star Control 2, as it can still be redone to sync and get accepted, same with Perfect Dark). Runs that can't even be emulated aren't eligible either, as there's nothing to verify (and it can simply be redone on an actual emulator now). And no "uncompleted game" runs, simply because nothing prevents us from completing them. Finally, there's Technical / Showcase tier thread and wiki page. Not posting any of its suggestions though, because using the above approach, it can also be decided, which of the runs mentioned there could make it into Demo.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Btw, since we want to (and should) be inclusive, if we end up creating a demo category where "everything else" goes, I think that a TAS of a game with no previous TASes should be accepted by default there (if it doesn't fit in any of the other categories) unless there's a good reason not to. In other words, same principle as with current Vault: An any%/100% TAS of a new game is accepted there by default regardless of feedback, for the simple reason that every game (that's any%/100%-TASable) deserves a TAS, unless there's a good reason why it shouldn't. This way if you eg. make a TAS of a board game which doesn't fit anywhere else, you can be pretty certain that it will get published, if there's even a modicum of logic in the stated goal of the TAS. (Of course obsoletion of existing Demo category TASes becomes a more complex question, but that's its own problem.)
1 2
7 8 9 10 11