Discussion about a reform on LDCs

[-BY]

*shoves his 2 cents back to Doram*
Not much to say to this. I'm yet way beyond you in argumentation stuff. : 3
I could never go for so much theory and push that all into one doram~ish cube of knowledge.

So yeah. Agreeing with you.

[nin10mode]

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[Harmless]

Wow, you're seriously still angry at the 27th LDC judgings I gave you? ._.

(Here's some fitting music for this rebuttal.)

Meanwhile we've also been talking about something else, right? Something about what makes the difference between hard and frustrating levels, and that hard levels are difficult and controverse to judge? So MoD, BY, Harmless, Nwolf, MK or whoever else to dislikes the reform right now, this is a perfect example why I advocate for it.

Not sure what you mean by this. It's not too hard for me to judge a level regardless of difficulty. If I find the level difficult, then I find it difficult, regardless of my skill level or mood. Whether or not it was enjoyable or executed well or creative is still up for debate.

I hate how one person rates a level "9/20" and another rates it "17/20."

I hate it too, and I guess everyone else hates it too but he just doesn't want to say it. Like I've said already, if it ever comes to such a situation, there's something wrong. People are getting upset about it, and it causes drama, hatred whatsoever. That just needs to stop. We can't prevent it from happening, but we can prevent it from being valid.

Well ♥♥♥♥ son, if you think you can take out an entire review and prevent it from being a valid opinion just because they thought poorly or highly of your level, I suggest you consider again. There's an awfully good REASON as to why they probably rated it 9/20 or 17/20. Sure, I hate it when you have that one judging that drags your chances of winning, but let's be honest - their judgings speak for themselves. Maybe if you actually READ my judgings you'd understand why I gave you the score I gave you. And don't give me the bullcrap that 'it's too long and boring' either.

If you got one person rating it a 9/20 and another person rating it a 17/20, then maybe the level was just controversial for the audience - a 'like it or hate it' level, rather. Real pros know to just minimize the 'hate it' section so most people end up liking it instead. They don't take their ego and rage and go around trying to reform the LDC system after their first freaking LDC just because they got frustrated about a certain person's judgings.

This is not the Olympics. This is not Politics. This is not World Peace or World War.

Sure it isn't, but professional LDing appears to me to be more than just a game. It's both passion, art, science and mental exercise.

Again, you're not going to get ♥♥♥♥ malaria if you lose your first LDC. You're not Manfred von Karma.

The goal of choosing a winner is picking a level that is different or awesome or weird and showing that it is different than the average.

That's exactly what I've tried to do, doing many unconventional and weird things I've never seen before, stuff like the boat ride on hot water, the flame dodge between two narrow walls, jumping from one metal cap to the next etc. and all that. And I've got heavily punished for it, basically because it was too much, but I was also surprised that some nice little details weren't rewarded with bonus points in "Other", e.g. only MoD recognizing the SMW reference. But the point of what I want to say is that a perfect mixture of conventionality and unconventionality makes a great level in many cases.

I'll be honest, there were some creative things like the Koopa shell challenge in your 27th entrant, but there were some dull and repetitive things that just didn't go well in your level. The bad outweighed the good. I probably didn't go into detail about it too much, but I've already mentioned that there were some areas that were repetitive like the lava tiled and ice tiled areas in the second level of your series, and I expected something different because fire and ice are practically opposites.

And like I've said before, your creative platforming and designs won't matter a whole lot if they were executed terribly. And that's exactly what happened. You certainly tried to put something different, but the execution of what you gave us was not very good. I'm not going to reward you bonus points for platforms that were so short on count that it was impossible to get past. If anything, I'd subtract points for that.

Pure averages are beautiful for a reason. Guess what. First judge is having a good day? He scores everybody high? Ok. The final scores run from 15 to 20. Second judge is a bad day? He scores everybody low? Ok. The final scores run from 10 to 15. The third judge is having a normal day. She judges everybody evenly. The final scores run from 12 to 18. Average it out. Guess what? The person who got a 20 from one, a 15 from the second, and an 18 from the third won. That's because they were the highest in their brackets. That's what the averaging does. That is the point of averaging.

If it's meant to be a contra, it isn't. Like I've said, judges must not be influenced by their current mood, or at least limit that as much as they can. And despite from this situation being very theoretic, as long as all judges have the same level rankings, the winner stays the same no matter in which intervalls each judge's scores are. But the problem is that rankings can be heavily varying, JJJ's level was the top level for MoD and the third worst one for Harmless, and the intervals can also be very patchy, with sometimes distances of more than 4 points gapping between two adjacent levels. 6 judges, 4 results for each level being valid, so we keep our beautiful averaging, but with less stupid distortions.

You're making that assumption again that I was in a bad mood when I did my judging of your level. If you've noticed, the judge tends to get pissed off during or after they play the level, not before it.

'As long as all judgings have the same level rankings, the winner stays the same no matter in which intervals each judge's scores are.' So are you saying that the 'winner' who we somehow know is the winner because we can see into the future, will always be the winner if we did your judgings because important criticism and praise is left out due to your system that would otherwise influence his standing?

'6 judges, 4 results for each level being valid, so we keep our beautiful averaging, but with less stupid distortions.' That is a horribly poor argument right there. How can you have beautiful averaging WITHOUT all of the judges and score inputs? I thought the meaning of 'average' was to take all of the numbers and find the average total. Yes, the average TOTAL, not the average total minus two. If I found a huge problem with your level that others did not care too much about or missed, then of course I'm going to slam you on it. (The possibility of that is unlikely though as long as we have decent LDers/judges in the judging panel.)

If you're so worried about 'stupid distortions' appearing in the oh so beautiful averages, then let's think about hypothetical examples for a second. MP3 Amplifier, in the 64th LDC, has given mostly positive scores ranging from 12-18. Grumpy ♥♥♥ Supershroom gave scores ranging from 6-12. Now tell me, if we were to combine the two together into an average, they would probably range from something like 9-15. Again, this is just a hypothetical example.

But what if we had Grumpy ♥♥♥ Supershroom AND Grumpy ♥♥♥ Supershroom? Then we would have two judgings with 6-12 in overall scores. The result would be 6-12, but NOBODY WOULD PLACE DIFFERENTLY. Likewise, if we had two happy go lucky MP3 Amplifiers, the average would remain a constant 6 points in difference from last to first.

Ergo, your system is not finding the true average at all. It is straying away from it by cancelling out the judgings that MAKE the difference between first and last!

[MessengerOfDreams]

I've never seen someone so ardently and blatantly try and rig LDCs in their favor

[NanTheDark]

Alrighty then, I skimmed through like two pages, it's time to say stuff. Not much, just a few things that maybe weren't said much before.

♫

First off, "only one judge gave me an extra point for referencing SMW". Dude... you seriously expect to get extra points for making a reference to something else? For starters, we might not even get the reference to begin with. And even if we do, why should we give you points for it? It's like giving you an extra point for choosing a good music theme to go with the level.

*slaps past!Nan in the face*

Just a reference doesn't really count as part of the level design, so it can't really be taken into account when judging the level, unless it somehow adds to the overall enjoyment of the level. But that's like just sticking a sticker on something hoping that people will laugh at it. Referential humor often fails because of that.

Also I haven't really played your level, so I'm not sure of what reference you might have done.

Second. Professional Level Designing. Don't make me laugh. Maybe a lot of us here aspire to design levels for games in the future, in fact I'm sure a few of us aspire to have a video game related career at some point. But lemme tell you that, first off, if you're trying to be successful here, you're doing it wrong, for many reasons. Because one doesn't simply become a professional level designer by making levels for SM63. Or for LL. Or for Mega Man Powered Up, Mario Maker, or whatever the heck you want. Sure, it helps, it gives you a great base. Just like playing other videogames and paying attention to level layout, and whatnot. But one doesn't really do professional work until you're actually working in your own game. When you're trying to figure out what's best to make the most out of your engine, and whatnot. Making decisions. Working with the artists, and the programmers. Dealing with all those hurdles. That's when you're truly a pro. In that moment.

Here, you're gonna become good at level designing with time, sure. But you'll become good at level designing for SM63. And nothing else.

Not to mention that the whole rating thing is, paradoxically enough, based on the portal, and the idea that people will rate your level after they're done playing. When you create your own game, you most likely won't have something like that. You'll just have websites rating your whole game.

Also, difficulty. It's hard to pull off. This vid will probably say more than I can. I recommend you watch a lot of Extra Credits, btw.

So yeah. Not sure of what else to say.

...

I guess I'll suggest my own judging system! Since that seems to be popular nowadays.

I say we get rid of the scoring system altogether, and have all the judges just rank contestants by what their placings should be. For example, I could have this as my judgings for the random participants of a random LDC:

1st. Treemaster
2nd. ~MIDI Minimizer~
3rd. Triple Pain
4th. Astro prince

And then, for the purposes of adding up the judgings, each player gets a number of points equal to

n - (p - 1)

with n being the total number of participants and p being the player's placing.

1st. Treemaster gets 4 - ( 1 - 1 ) = 4 points.
2nd. ~MIDI Minimizer~ gets 4 - ( 2 - 1 ) = 3 points.
3rd. Triple Pain gets 2 points.
4th. Astro prince gets 1 point.

And then we average that with other judges.

On the plus side, things would be easier to judge. I mean, you just have to compare each level to the others. Like, I think Treemaster's level is the best, Astro prince's level wasn't so good, but Triple Pain's was somewhat better, etc. And that way I don't have to bust my head thinking of how many points to give you in Fun.

On the other hand... You don't know how good your level is as a whole.

So yeah. I just came up with that idea and I actually think it could be a valid way to judge. But I'm sure it won't be used.

[Harmless]

We don't need another suggestion for judgings. The one that we have is not broken. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[NanTheDark]

I just came up with the idea and wanted to say it. I don't really want to change the current system.

[Harmless]

Alright, fair enough.

Though I fail to see how it's necessary if you're not actually planning on inputting it.

[Supershroom]

Nan, I wasn't complaining about not getting bonus points for the reference, but I was surprised of comments like these:

then there was that freefall part of which I couldn't figure out the purpose.

I went into the pipe, and now I'm freeeee.... free faaallingg... No really though, what was the point of that freefall passage? I'm very confused.

If a reference fits well into the level, it should be rewarded with bonus points. If it doesn't and it damages the level, it should get a minus. Same with alternate music.

[~Yuri]

Well, I thought this was over, at least while our duel didn't end yet. *sigh*

Unfortunately, while I accepted testing it, I think your system still has some big flaws.

Let's take the 27th LDC results, where it all started, and see how much the placings would change with your system?

Spoiler: show

Original Version:

1st) Yurimaster (16.5/16.25/16/17) = 16.4375
2nd) ~MP3 Amplifier~ (16*/15/17.25/15.5) = 15.9375
2nd) MessengerOfDreams (16/15.5/16/16.25*) = 15.9375
3rd) KABOOM (15.25/14.25/15.75/15.75) = 15.25
4th) Harmless (15.75/11.5*/13.75/16.75) = 14.4375
5th) Triple J (15.5/8.75/14.5/17) = 13.9375
6th) Nwolf (13.75/12.75/14.75/12) = 13.3125
7th) 1018peter (15/10.75/9.75/16.25) = 12.9375
8th) Supershroom (14/5.25/8.5*/13.25) = 10.25
9th) Thefiredragon (7.75/x/4/7.75) = 6.5

---

Supershroom's System Version:anged?

1st) Yurimaster (16.5/16.25/--/--) = 16.375
2nd) MessengerOfDreams (16/--/16/--) = 16
3rd) ~MP3 Amplifier~ (16*/--/--/15.5) = 15.75
4th) KABOOM (--/15.25/--/--) = 15.25
5th) Triple J (15.5/--/14.5/--) = 15
6th) Harmless (15.75/--/13.75/--) = 14.75
7th) Nwolf (13.75/12.75/--/--) = 13.25
8th) 1018peter (15/10.75/--/--) = 12.875
9th) Supershroom (--/--/8.5*/13.25) = 10.875
10th) Thefiredragon (--/x/--/--) = --

Are you seeing how much it changed? No? because there were only two actual changes in placings, which just happened to be from the two most controversial ones. Now for the flaws of this system, using your version of the results as an example.

Tying scores - In your version of the score board, MoD has 16 as final score, pretty much the two middle scores he got, right? That's really, really bad. Why? It increaeses a lot the chances of having a tie. And no, even with 6 judges, this wouldn't really change so much. If amongst 4 judgings there are 2 tied scores, I think the chances would stay the same with 6.

Tying negative scores - Now this even worse. Look at Thefiredragoon's level. see how it has no score at all? Ok, the problem would be reduced with 6 judges. No, not all. In fact, it would only increase the chances of this happening. Then one person stays with two/three judgings, while all the others have four. It's ot fair at all.

It is not neccessary at all - Now that's the point I was wanting to reach. Do we really need changing? Even so, your system is honestly, changing almost nothing. as shown in the table, only 2 scores would have really changed, which were the ones that it was most likely for this to happen. It's almost as if we were back to the 2nd - 5th LDC era, where every score was rounded up. And no, 6 judges don't change this at all. Judges tend to give solid scores most of the time (10, 10.5, 10.25, 10.75), and unless it suddenly changes, when rounding up the scores, there wouldn't be many changes from the normal system at all.

---

Also, for the whole thing of the six judges. You noticed I'm saying it wouldn't change from the normal system. And well, it really wouldn't do much. 6 - 2 is still 4 after all. Plus, there are lots of judges who have similar opinions, ''glitching" this system.

Not to mention that besides all the flaws, people also aren't happy with this at all. And trying to convince them is not really the best thing to do. I think you should just leave the system as it is currently, it has been working since the very first LDC, and had only some really small amount of flaws during this whole time.

Don't worry, we'll still have it for our duel.