I'm still trying to figure out how adventure games like Uninvited got published. I know that fast menu manipulation is necessary skill for making a TAS but, even after watching the Uninvited run, I'm not sure why a game that is 100% menus and no apparent opportunities for luck/bug/glitch manipulation should be the subject of a TAS.
On the other hand, the people who gave the Monopoly video a low score just don't appreciate uber luck manipulation.
Because superhuman speed is entertaining to watch. Blindingly fast non-human speed is awesome to watch. Not *everyone* might find the joy, but many do. That's why.
Why should luck manipulation or glitch abuse necessarily be part of a TAS?
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
It's simply to keep people from registering 50 accounts and raising their ratings up. Also, there is a fair chance that a lurker doesn't have the proper insight to rate how optimal some movies are/haven't seen enough movies to get a feel for what is average.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
Someone who has 0 posts on the forums, or has no site/forum account at all. As soon as someone makes 1 post, they are no longer a lurker. There is a page somewhere in the wiki here that categorizes everyone based on their forum status, and there are quite a few lurkers, although I assume that many of them are long gone by now.
Why should people be offended by the term "lurker"?
If people don't want to be called a lurker, they should post meaningful messages in the forum until they aren't called a lurker anymore.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
I think that "lurker" is a pretty spot on term, actually. They lurk on the site, but they don't do anything other than observe from a figurative distance.
Like FractalFusion said: If they didn't want to be lurkers, they would stop lurking on the forums and get a bit in to the discussions.
As somewhat of a lurker myself, I would agree with this statement. Perhaps the length of time they have been lurking should be a factor as well as post count, however. I've been lurking for almost two years and have dabbled a bit in TASing (I really need to get back to figuring out Kickle Cubicle), so I'd like to think I have a bit more insight than a lurker that has been here 2 months.
I'm sure Bisqwit will make an informed decision either way... his record is pretty good in that area.
I have another idea.
IMDb has a nice feature for raising movies' rating confidence: the rating is not displayed until there are 5 or more votes on the movie; therefore, the subjectivity factor decreases. I find that a wise desision (hint).
Is it possible to implement such a feature here?
It is slightly more different to implement, but I'll consider it. Anyone has a good idea of the formula that should be used?
I have considered this idea but I have not yet seen the benefits of doing so. (Also, it has some technical difficulties in implementing, such as deciding how to sort movies.) Also, it is already displayed there how many votes the rating bases on, so anyone can make their own interpretations on it.
Foda raised an IMO good point in IRC.
For a not-very-obvious reason his Rolling Thunder video has got an average perfection rating of 5.4. It would be interesting to know why it was voted so low in that category. (I would say that voting 5 in perfection means "it can be improved"; however, can it?)
What I fear is that, regardless of the guidelines given in the voting page, some cross-contamination of categories has happened. In other words, since people didn't find the video very entertaining, they also voted low on the perfection. This is not very objective.
I rated Rolling Thunder as “5” for ‘technical quality’. I am not convinced that it is perfect, because there are lots of interrupts in it and it is not obvious to me that they could not be avoided in some way. On this site, we aim for the impossible and surprisingly often manage to accomplish it.
My theory is that a movie needs a number equal or higher than “5” in at least one category to be publishable.
If both numbers are below “5”, it should not be published.
This theory in my mind, it has happened that for movies which are publishworthy-no-doubt, I have given numbers higher than “5” in both categories, and for movies which are so-so, the numbers are close to “5” or even below that in one category.
I have rated each category separately, avoiding "cross-contamination", but naturally it may still have happened: unpopular games (often less entertaining to watch) or less known game may hide a greater potential than is shown in the movie we have published, without anyone yet knowing it (hence, denying the perfect technical quality rating).
Edit: That being said,I acknowledge that my ratings are not solid and perfectly just. I sometimes change them when my mind changes, and I doubt nobody else does the same. Like TNSe said, having so many numbers to choose from definitely leads to confusion and random choices.
Link broken.
I wouldn't mind hiding the votes, but some movies don't even get 5 to begin with (I know of one that's been sitting in the queue for a while, too). What would we do then?
I do not trust the technical ratings very much.
Call me jaded if you will but I managed to find over 20 seconds of wasted time in my first published Golden Axe movie even though it was described as having "no obvious [room for] improvements". Over 5% of that movie was wasted time and yet nobody said that a specific segement could have been done more efficiently. That isn't the only case where a "near-perfect" movie has been found to have significant room for improvement, either.
Personally, I'd focus on the Entertainment votes. If the movie is technically bad, it shouldn't have been published. If the movie is technically good but not perfect, I think the ideal response is to create a faster movie.
(I also think that, in an ideal world, cheese would not have high fat and high cholesterol and I could eat pizza frequently without feeling guilty about it--but that's an entirely different story. In other words, don't take the above comments too seriously--I recognize that there isn't a large group of paid TASers who can make perfect versions of all published runs. If nothing else, the technical votes serve as a rough guide for anyone who wants to beat a published movie.)
My technical quality ratings depend on how perfect the movie looks, not necessarily how perfect it is. This applies to luck manipulation as well: you might have saved a frame by using some illogical trick (like stopping for a while), but it's still ugly in my book. I don't care about those few frames.
Off topic: There's actually serious evidence that the whole "cholesterol is bad" is the biggest myth of the 20th century:
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/cholesterol_myth_1.html
So you probably can rest easy on the cholesterol part. Of course that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful about your fat consumption... :P
That was a great read, I'm 18, 5'6 and 110 pounds so I don't really worry about my diet but I was in shock at the claims...so I did a little research and it seems to check out. Guess I'll keep on eating that steak and potatoes <3
And I agree with BOMF, watching little things that look sloppy but actually save time show that the author really did a lot of investigation...as long as you read the submission notes. =)