The addition of the vault enables movies that were previously rejected due to bad game choice to be published. Does this have any effect on currently published movies that were judged not to be a bad game choice? You would think not. Although... maybe we do have some published movies that are better suited for the vault in hindsight? I've expressed my opinion on putting currently published movies into the vault on irc before, but I'll lay it out here again.
Current system
All current movies with an entertainment rating below 5.75 are automatically placed into the vault. People who are able to move movies between tiers place some movies that they feel do not belong into the vault back into the moon tier.
My problem with this system
Future TASes are not automatically placed into the vault when their entertainment value drops below a certain rating, which makes it unfair to currently published movies that are subject to this automatic vaulting. I am not suggesting that future movies should automatically be vaulted based on rating though.
What I suggest
Put all the old movies back in the moon tier that were auto-vaulted. These movies were manually judged already after all. It is always possible to manually move movies between tiers if it seems to be better suited for a different tier, but every time a movie is moved between tiers, it should be required that a post is made in the movie's thread with an argument why the movie's tier was changed (so that the decision can be debated).
What is worse: a moon movie ending up in the vault by accident or a vault movie ending up as a moon? I think the former is what we really want to avoid.
I noticed we added a Movies by Tier tab. While there is a description link (Movies by by publication Tier) I think some basic info about the tier should be added to the top of each tier page. Right now users can very easily be dumped into them with no idea what the tiers mean.
Feature request (well, somewhat off-topic)
Now that we aim on publishing movies for (almost) every game, there should also be an easy way to view these.
I noticed it's possible to view movies on a per-game base, for example NES Battletoads, SNES Plokshameless self-advertizing, N64 Super Mario 64, NES Archon, and they offer more information than the pages on the movie list, and we already have a big list of games on the submission page. I was only able to find these pages because I discovered a link to the Battletoads page somewhere, but I haven't found any easy method to access these pages.
Let's put a "View all movies for a specific game"-button to the movie page, or even better: right at the front page. Just use the same drop-down list as for the submission site, and redirect to the game view site.
Or let's replace the movie list page by a game list page.
I don't think the judging process is as simple. It can't be efficiently automated. I think only the division to popular and unpopular speedruns can be automated, everything else (even Stars) should be manual. So I wouldn't start drawing flowcharts for the process, especially with symmetry in mind! :)
Actually I intended to leave the entire thing manual, I agree with adelikat that it's easiest that way, at least for a while.
My only point is that if we're going to try to divide movies up a bit more, either we should have added only Vault and changed only Vault, or added all the categories these splits imply and changed them all. But we went halfway and watered things down.
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So... not trying to cause trouble and such, but... why is there a category for movies the Angry Video Game Nerd has reviewed? Is that really necessary? Or useful?
That aside, I really like the re-refined rating and categorization system! It's easy enough to understand now and works pretty well. I like the fact there's a separate listing for new Vault entries, too, since they don't show up under the "Latest Publications" list anymore. Heh.
Wrong thread, dude.
I'm still not completely comfortable with the tiers system yet. Maybe because it does feel too arbitrary. I'd rather divide movies by the type of movie they are. We have enough categories there to make a meaningful division of the site.
All in all, I think the main division is not necessarily straight entertainment, but relative importance of entertainment to speed. Say this way.
A movie where speed is much more important than entertainment is a record.
A movie where speed and entertainment are both given strong consideration is a super play.
A movie where entertainment is much more important than speed is a play around.
Also we have star movies so new people don't feel overwhelmed by the large number of movies on the site.
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adelikat wrote:
I really like the gold,silver,bronze suggestion (Kind of wish that had come up before the change).
So how about this:
Gold medal = old star criteria
Silver medal = old moons if they were used with consistency
Bronze medal = current moons
Vault = current vault
(And this system doesn't mean that we couldn't add in a demos type tier at some point.)
I wholeheartedly support this concept - it makes sense to people unfamiliar with the star / moon system and it gives the flexibility the site needs. It's never too late to change course on something like this.
A.C.
******
But these charts are not meant for outsiders, they were made for site maintainers, to let them better understand the system they are employing.
That's exactly my point. How does the average user supposed to understand how movies are classified if site maintainers need complex charts to do so?
AnS wrote:
If Stars meaning has changed to "the most entertaining movies" then yes, they can be automatically attributed, but until their meaning is (was) "the showcase of the site content", they have to be manually picked.
I completely agree. With the old system, each Star publication demonstrated a unique aspect of TAS. They were more of a "first-time visitor" thing than anything else. That's why it doesn't make sense for me to exclude them from other tiers in the new system simply because amazing publication A was arbitrarily picked over similar-but-just-as-amazing publication B.
That's exactly my point. How does the average user supposed to understand how movies are classified if site maintainers need complex charts to do so?
There's a difference between assigning categories and just reading them. The average user can easily understand what the symbol means, but the rules on which symbols go to which TAS can be more complicated to those who have to categorize them.
If you are reading movie or game reviews, you don't need to understand what are the underlying principles by which they assign scores to them. You just need to know that higher score = better movie/game.
That's why it doesn't make sense for me to exclude them from other tiers in the new system simply because amazing publication A was arbitrarily picked over similar-but-just-as-amazing publication B.
To be well-founded, please post in the stars thread what was arbitrarily starred.
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.
There's a difference between assigning categories and just reading them. The average user can easily understand what the symbol means, but the rules on which symbols go to which TAS can be more complicated to those who have to categorize them.
If you are reading movie or game reviews, you don't need to understand what are the underlying principles by which they assign scores to them. You just need to know that higher score = better movie/game.
I disagree with both of your arguments. If you don't understand how something is attributed a specific label or score, it is meaningless.
In your reviews example, you're basically saying that full written reviews are pointless because a score is good enough, and I'm sure even you experienced at least once purchasing something based on good scores alone and regretting it afterwards.
feos wrote:
SmashManiac wrote:
That's why it doesn't make sense for me to exclude them from other tiers in the new system simply because amazing publication A was arbitrarily picked over similar-but-just-as-amazing publication B.
To be well-founded, please post in the stars thread what was arbitrarily starred.
Based on your comment it's obvious I worded that sentence incorrectly, so let me clarify. I'm not saying stars are arbitrarily attributed, but rather that given two very similar publications, only one can get a star, and since this choice is subjective, it is unfair to separate these publications into different tiers.
At least that's my understanding of the star system. If I'm wrong... well it just proves my point about the difficulty of understanding the tiers even more. :/
You're right, but when I think of 3 tiers only (vault, nothing, moons), when the stars are just a flag, then we get an overload of icons for movies that are starred, because having a star, a moon, a bolt and something else is TOO MUCH. That's why I thought stars after all can be the fourth tier above those 3 (vault, nothing, moons).
And what you're talking about is called borderline. Surely some runs in the vault are going to look like they deserve moons, or vice versa. That's why we need to speak of every "wrong-tiered" run openly and move it if necessary.
Post #331178
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.
Having two news feeds on published movies (for everything else and Vaults) is to me both redundant and confusing. Redundant because Vault movies aren't IMO significantly less entertaining than your normal publications on the site. Confusing because now there's two feeds for published movies, where there could be just one.
Just my two cents.
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Also, I'm curious about board, sports and game show games not being "serious" game choices as far as Vault is concerned. Why do segregation by game genre? Aren't the rules of "must be clearly definable as a game, which has achievable goals" and "gameplay still needs to standout from non-assisted play" enough to settle if a run can be accepted here?
Forgive me if this has been answered already, as I only read through the first five pages of posts, but while I like this idea and voted "Yes", MESHUGGAH had a very valid concern;
"making slower TASes (making entertainment/speed tradeoff as much as you are under the WR time) will gets the higher tier while a very fast TAS of the same game that for example skips the "best" parts of it will be gets a lower tier because of lack of entertainment"
This is indeed a potential problem here, though one can argue that it already exists in a smaller form.
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IronSlayer wrote:
"making slower TASes (making entertainment/speed tradeoff as much as you are under the WR time) will gets the higher tier while a very fast TAS of the same game that for example skips the "best" parts of it will be gets a lower tier because of lack of entertainment"
My concern is precisely the opposite. I worry that we will see fewer speed/entertainment tradeoffs. If someone were to make a movie with no trade-offs, it will be published to the Vault for sure. Whereas if they do speed/entertainment trade-offs, that is riskier since it would be judged on its entertainment value as well as technical and they risk rejection and/or obsoletion.
Specifically in the case of doing a less glitched run in order to do a more entertaining longer run, I don't really see that as a problem. The latter is in more demand, which benefits the community more. But still, I see this system encouraging assisted speedrun records not discouraging them.
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Mitjitsu wrote:
I still think "too trivial" should be a reason for rejection.
Essentially it is, or at least I tried to make it so with the wording of the Vault description. The point of the vault is for movies that are well made but for a very niche (if any) audience. The requirement is that they are at least well made, and to some extent game choice matters as the game has to lend itself to at least allowing it to be well made.
Wowee! Seems to have been some changes around here.
While I agree with the new tiering system in function, it's a bit difficult to navigate. I think the system could do with some filtering options.
For one, I can see all the Moon+ runs for, say, NES/FDS, and I can see all the runs for NES, but there doesn't seem to be any way to easily view only vault runs for NES. Or if there is, it's not very clear. I think on the Movies page, it would be nice to have all consoles listed something like:
- NES/Famicom/FDS (All) (Vault)
or maybe even
- NES/Famicom/FDS (All) (Vault) (Moons) (Stars)
... though I will admit that might be a little too much.
In the same vein, I think I filtering tool like the one on the Submissions page would be handy. So, say, at the top of the NES movies page, in the empty space off to the right hand side (right of the key) there could be 2 selection boxes (or dropdowns) to filter by, the first being a list of consoles and the second being the tier list (and perhaps also commentary, improvements and console-verified options).
I suggest this especially because the key in the top left seems to imply that you can use it to sort submissions. I know that that's never been the case, but now that not everything will be shown in the "default" view, it seems helpful!
Also, I think the notable lightning bolt icon should be 18x18, the same as the rest of the icons. It just makes the key look messy otherwise.
I seem to remember a Barney TAS that was rejected due to bad game choice...
In other news, I was surprised to see so many videos had been published without my knowledge. I had no idea there was a "Vault," or what the hell "The Vault" was. This was because my screen is too small for me to see the featured movie, published movies, and vaulted movies.
Is there any chance we could get the front page less cluttered?
I also find the general theory behind the tiers to be convoluted.
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
