I am still of the strong opinion that the Star category ought to be a (relatively small) representative sample of what TASing is all about, not just a blind list of "runs with an entertainment rating of X or higher". A run might be very appreciated for its entertainment value, but if there are already three runs starred that are very similar to that one, that spot ought to go to something that showcases a different aspect of TASing, even if that something is slightly "less entertaining".
That's overly complicated. With your logic there's like 2 Star tiers.
The purpose of Vault tier is to accept movies that are still TASes, but not entertaining enough to be Moon tier. Which is how you keep out boring Vault 'entertainment' TASes.
We should at least be able to reject movies for being suboptimal.
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.)
I personally would love to see any Thunder Force game
And I use some of the stuff in TAS Editor/TAStudio that can't change hotkeys too. I'd like to be able to change some of these though.
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.
Ilari made an image writer that was quite interesting but it took quite some time to write a single image to the screen even at the maximum rate we could sustain through the controller cables so I don't think that's a good choice.
I'm happy to report that everything except the console verification runs made it into the AGDQ 2016 games list. We don't yet know what days things will be scheduled on but Brain Age, the Total Control run, the Speed TAS Competition, and the Super Scribblenauts run were all accepted. I've updated the first post with this information and I've started working hard on getting everything moving in a sane direction to have all framework done by December 6th with all payload fully done the week before the marathon starts. (Seriously. I don't want to scramble again. Ever.) Thank you to everyone who made suggestions. If you can help out with anything please let me know, there are plenty of small tasks to go around. Special thanks to everyone who has contributed to the lively Brain Age discussions - I'm quite impressed with the artwork and I already think Brain Age will be very well received.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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").
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.
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
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.
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.