scullyangel Posted:

Agree with everything plk said.

Problem with Bashy’s cut the score in half and increase things by one idea is that it still creates a radically skewed advantage for long term players. I will always think that it is nice for longevity to be rewarded, but the reward should not be never ending. You used the idea of the college basketball finals. Well, if teams retained their win/loss record from the previous season it would make for a different game.

I don’t get how this is true. You’re forgetting that in addition to that, I support the whole decreasing buildr score-addition thingy. +1 would be what the newbies would be earning. Maybe by now plk would be able to earn +0.1.

I didn’t post any exact formula for the way I think scaling should work because I am sort of occupied with other things. But using the tool the scaling idea provides, it by no means is a guarantee that it’d be a horrible advantage long-term.

Maybe, for example, plk has been active for two years on buildr doing well, and has a score of 45. A newer six-month player might have 32 and fter a year, 40. Plk would still have incentive to improve, but long-term dedicated players could catch up to where the percentage differences wouldn’t be unfair for time spent without having to set aside a few years.

Maybe after two years, plk’s 50 score would take her a quarter of an entire year to raise to 51, or something. You get the idea. Scaling is a powerful tool.

I don’t like the idea of seasonalizing everything because, relatively, newbies start out with quite a few, most likely too many, entries, and it takes time for the system to weed out the terrible submitters and reward the good ones. If every so often we had to start from scratch, we’d be making the “holy **** too many to look through” problem worse with people newly trying to improve their zeroed scores and the ****ty people having submit power again.

Seasonalizing would also make the scaling gains/losses almost impossible to do meaningfully, since in the scale newbies have the most relative power during the early periods. It’d be chaos with the uninterested or malicious throwing their submissions into whatever. And it’d keep happening, with seasons, and looking long-term as the playerbase grows, NOT having a huge difference between a talented veteran and a dumb newbie, you see, becomes horrifying.

I sort-of like the idea of breaking things down into category submissions but since scoops are involved, I feel it’s already rather self-correcting. If we want to make things more even, the system itself isn’t the only aspect, it’s the layout of the Fbuildr page. It heavily pushes forum ideas but not very in-depth voting. Forum ideas are probably the most important, but perhaps the layout needs a rethink because of what it leads to.

Anyway, I’ve wasted far too much time here. I’m on vacation, yet this typing just took ten minutes, which is pathetic. I’m sure whatever changes are eventually made will eventually end up bearable and not too stupid. I feel bad for the admins trying to find the right solution for the game and its players.

—Bashy