Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
I was expecting a long run with lots of identical repetitive combos. Instead we get one guy one-shotting everything in a second. I thought that was pretty funny, so yes vote.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Mothrayas wrote:
Let's try to backtrack the discussion a little bit.
The guidelines state essentially: Play the most interesting difficulty - which is usually the hardest difficulty, but if the hardest difficulty only adds repetition, easier may be preferred instead for the interest of speed. When it's unclear which one is better, we can accept whichever if it is justified well enough.
All right. In my view,
(1) The goal of the site is to provide superplays, runs that show superhuman ability in beating the computer. It is obvious to me that in general, beating a game on the hardest difficulty fits this goal better than beating it on an easier setting. If a run is on lower difficulty, then the onus should be on the author to convince the audience that this is fitting, just as for runs with non-standard goals.
(2) It is trivially true for most games that a run on low difficulty setting will be faster (and easier to make) than a run on higher difficulty. Therefore, doing a run on a lower difficulty "because it's faster" or "because it's easier to make" is circular reasoning, and should not by itself be sufficient justification for doing so.
(3) I agree that having lengthy repetitive sections is not entertaining. E.g. there are RPGs where fighting a boss takes a minute to grind through its thousands of hit points, and on higher difficulty this would take up to five minutes of similar combat orders and critical hits. This is a good reason to choose a lower difficulty. If there is no generally accepted reason to play a game on easy mode, then a higher-difficulty run of that game should obsolete a lower-difficulty run even when the latter is faster.
(4) The game that sparked the current discussion is a platform game with a total run time of 3.5 minutes, where the boss fights take about one second each, and maybe two seconds on hard difficulty. A "hard" run would be longer but it would clearly not be repetitive. I don't see how any of the reasons for lower difficulty apply here, nor was this addressed in its thread.
(5) Proposed earlier in this thread was that people who discuss or vote based on difficulty should be summarily discounted; I think this is a bad idea and it should not be implemented. There is no sense in asking people's opinion if one is going to ignore those opinions that one doesn't like.
And finally, this discussion is basically about difficulty vs. entertainment value. A good solution may be to accept only highest-difficulty runs in the Vault (which is explicitly not about entertainment); and to accept lower-difficulty runs in Moons / Stars if the audience finds them sufficiently entertaining. This is similar to how the Vault only accepts standard goals (100%/any%) and how other goals can be added to Moons / Stars if they are entertaining enough.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Samsara wrote:
Radiant wrote:
Rather, certain judges are operating differently than other judges. Some judges expect a run to be in hard mode and will generally reject easy-mode runs as being against site guidelines. Other judges except a run to be in easy mode and will likely reject hard-mode runs as being slower. So effectively, runs are being treated very differently depending on who ends up judging it.
Do you have any proof of this?
Basically this:
Mothrayas wrote:
One point I do believe should be discussed is the enforceability of the guideline as it currently stands. As Samsara said, sometimes runs are rejected for not using the hardest difficulty, and sometimes they are not. Currently the difficulty "rule" is only a guideline so it need not be enforced in its current state. However, we'll probably want to handle this more sensibly than "sometimes do enforce it, sometimes don't".
Samsara, I believe the simplest solution would be for you to ask the other judges to make a brief statement in this thread here. If they are all on the same line with you on this (as they may well be), then the only problem is that site users simply don't know that.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Samsara wrote:
I'd like to stress for probably the 10th time that the difficulty guideline was not changed. It was rewritten to be more clear. We are not operating any differently than before.
Rather, certain judges are operating differently than other judges. Some judges expect a run to be in hard mode and will generally reject easy-mode runs as being against site guidelines. Other judges except a run to be in easy mode and will likely reject hard-mode runs as being slower. So effectively, runs are being treated very differently depending on who ends up judging it.
Easy mode is not an automatic, unquestioned acceptance.
But your proposed guideline does strongly suggest that. Like I said before, if that isn't your intent, please reword it.
Tangent wrote:
I doubt at least the RotJ submission would have blown up like it did had the difficulty choice actually been clearly explained instead of met with vagueness, followed by hostility and unresearched claims. Other submissions were treated similarly when questions about the difficulty were asked at all, which ended up being answered by other people, and/or the submission immediately canceled without an author response.
Indeed.
Warp wrote:
There's a difference between what we find "entertaining", and what the wider public (mostly consisting of gamers) finds "entertaining".
Indeed as well.
goldenband wrote:
there's ample evidence that casual viewers, i.e. the semi-mythical "general public", strongly prefer runs on Hard -- or, at the very least, not Easy -- and care more about the mastery angle than the entertainment angle. In other words, they find mastery more entertaining than, er, "entertainment". So whose tastes are we really catering to here?)
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Samsara wrote:
No. Never. This kind of behavior is what I'm trying to prevent. Difficulty should never be the focal point of a run.
Yes, we get that YOU feel this way, but please understand that (1) this is a complete reversal from how the site used to be run, and (2) as this thread shows, there is absolutely no consensus for this change.
Warp wrote:
I did indeed interpret it as being a serious (perhaps even semi-official) proposal for the new guidelines. I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions.
By my count, at least three movies have already been accepted based on this 'guideline', despite strong disagreement in the relevant submission threads.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
moozooh wrote:
I'm pretty sure I'm stating the obvious here, but just so that the discussion isn't carried away too far, the guideline in question reads:
Well, no. The guideline reads to me (and will likely be interpreted as) "easy mode is always acceptable and people are not allowed to vote against it". It's more verbose than that but that's the gist of it.
If that wasn't the intent it needs to be reworded in less circumlocutious fashion.
Warp wrote:
This looks to me like the complete reversal of the principle that has been in place so far. In other words, this new guideline actually prefers easy difficulty over hard difficulty in almost every case (and is, in fact, quite contradictory to the statement that "usually, this is the hardest difficulty").
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Samsara wrote:
I should mention that what I said is just my personal opinion and shouldn't immediately be taken as the direction the site's going. The Guideline rewrite is a little closer to how we've been dealing with things as of late, but it's still subject to changes based on the discussions it'll spawn and the thoughts of the higher-ups.
In that case I would really like to see the opinion of more judges in this thread. As far as I've seen, there are not many runners on the site that prefer easy mode, and all easy-mode submissions I've seen run into a lot of resistance from voters. So there does not appear to be a consensus that easy mode is really OK if it's faster (which let's face it, it usually is), and just one personal opinion shouldn't set a big precedent all by itself.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Spikestuff wrote:
Like Sonic says.
Gotta go fast.
Anyways? Why is this an issue to you?
Because I find hard mode runs much more entertaining; e.g. compare this easy run to this TAS. Many runs on this site would be faster if played on easiest difficulty, but I'd say that makes them less of a superplay.
As the guideline says "it is preferred to play on the hardest difficulty level (for more interesting gameplay) unless the only difference between difficulty levels is enemy/boss hit points", and as Jungon points out, that is far from the only difference in this game.
So I'm voting no here.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
c-square wrote:
BrunoVisnadi wrote:
You can get this result in real time, because it doesn't happen only if you start the game in the first frame, but you can't do it with only 1 frame of input, obviously.
Since the TAS movie would look quite indistinguishable from Alyosha's RTA, the question then becomes does the fact that there's only 1 frame of input enough to justify the TAS being on the site?
Yes, I agree. As our guidelines state, a run must beat all known unassisted records and be distinguishable from the best real-time speedruns. This run does neither.
feos wrote:
We have real-time speedrunners skillfully reproducing tas-only (as it was believed) strats, and we don't unpublish such tases just due to that.
I fail to see how that's an example, considering the RTA you link takes about 11 minutes, whereas the TAS is twice as fast ([1543] NES Gimmick! by Aglar & Hotarubi in 05:11.49). If a new TAS were submitted wit the same length as an RTA (or close to it), it would be summarily rejected for being suboptimal.
Perhaps this can be put in Gruefood Delight for the novelty of having a one-frame input, but otherwise I don't think this should be published.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
As I understand it, this run contains only a single frame of input. That leads me to wonder how viable this is to do in real time. If you reboot the console and try to press that one button at the right frame, wouldn't you just make it after 10 or 20 tries?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
goldenband wrote:
IIRC the teleporter has a pretty fixed algorithm. I'm not sure how it works, but suffice it to say you have no real power to choose between destinations -- within a range of starting positions, you'll always end up at the same spot.
It's supposed to warp you exactly three squares forward (rounding to the next full square if you're in the middle of two), on top of the lowest block in that column.
including the one where you get the Lantern, which I guess you simply don't need (I don't remember what item opens the door to the final stage). I like this game, BTW!
The key (obtained early on) opens every door. Most of the castle is dark, without the lantern you won't be able to see anything although this doesn't technically block you from passing.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
hopper wrote:
That was the most amazing TAS I've ever seen. I love that you incorporated some of the most popular memes from the site, like Color A Dinosaur and Shinespark. The best for me, though was the sudo joke at 3:22. I totally burst out laughing. I'm in a network operating system class and we're all getting tired of being told that we can't do something after forgetting to type sudo. Great job!
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
BrunoVisnadi wrote:
A run must be stared to be Newcomer'd?
Yes. Newcomer is essentially the fourth tier, one step higher than Star.
(that might not have been intended, but that is in practice what it turned out to be, anyway)
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Hilarious and great movie. Obvious shoe-in vote.
Warp wrote:
As it is, it doesn't really fit into any category. The major reason is that it doesn't complete the game. Even "playarounds" complete the game.
This is a perfect fit for our "Moons" category, along with similar playarounds like this one and that one.
arandomgameTASer wrote:
I guess you missed the part where the credits rolled, you know, in the run.
Personally, this is a PERFECT playaround movie. Because he's literally playing around with the game's code to produce a highly entertaining TAS.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
I think it would be more entertaining to have a Pac-Man run that plays as fast as possible to the point where the game starts repeating itself (instead of doing hundreds of levels in a row).
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
Spikestuff wrote:
First Semi-TAS that was created, by using a special name in the name field.
I don't think "frisk mode" qualifies for a TAS run, though. It is an unfinished hard mode that only lets you play the first area out of five. So it doesn't actually complete the game.
Also, if the aim is to finish the game in the hardest way, then clearly that needs either the Omega Flowey or the infamous Sans battle at the end. Neither of which works in frisk mode.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
WST wrote:
FYI the poll is asking:
Did you find this movie entertaining?
And not “does this movie worth publishing?”. Thus, the poll is only intended to determine if the run should be placed into moons or the vault, if it gets accepted. However, for this particular run the acception is not guaranteed, despite it’s quality, as the goal choice may seem a bit pointless.
But I didn't find it entertaining: because in my opinion this movie is too similar to the already published movie. Novelty is entertaining, repeating something I've already seen is not.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player
(26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
While I appreciate the concept of a ringless run in Sonic games, I find the execution here not very interesting. Specifically, as the run often uses out-of-bounds or underflow methods to skip the entire level, then it technically does skip all the rings, but in practice it looks the same as the regular run on those levels.
So, voting no.
