Future of simfile competitions

Hi.

I've noticed that there might be a fundamental problem with how the simfiles competitions on this site work.

A: The same three ideas have been being reused 3 years in a row. The idea of all of them are good, but... I don't know, I feel like there should be something different once in a while.
B: We have a requirement where you have to make , , and charts, but a large majority of the voters only ever look at and . Either it has to be required to take a look at the lower difficulties or nix and being necessary altogether.
C: Votes and steppers aren't anonymous. Especially in the past two contests, I've been starting to suspect this is a big problem.

What I think is the better idea is to send your finished files to the host or some other third party, then they upload it to the category. This would eliminate any bias that could be stemmed from knowing who stepped what. Just as well, it seems like a better idea to send votes to a third party, which would also eliminate any "oh, this file has 0 points, that means it's bad / oh, this simfile is top place right now, that means it should get my points". I really can't help but believe that there are people that are simply not voting for the right reasons.

There's other things about the contest that MIGHT be better off being retooled but for now, these are the three immediately obvious problems I can think of.


If there's anything that you think would benefit the simfile competitions, don't be shy and post ideas in the thread too.

+1, leaning toward only.

This happens? The only time I can think of this recently has been the thing with 01angel's friend.

+1, I guess.

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I agree with Cuzco. Which is why I would like to present a concept graphic for a new type of simfile contest that I made a few years ago.

I totally agree with everything Cuzco said, but I don't think it is that big of a problem regarding no anonymity. However, I definitely agree that votes should be kept private, because someone could intentionally vote for files that are several points less than their own in order to preserve their standing and make it easier for them to catch up. However, I have a strong feeling that this would discourage people from writing simfile reviews, which would defeat one purpose of the contest, to improve at making simfiles.

Also, we should maybe start a new contest theme. I'm not sure what yet. Maybe team collaborations throughout the contest?

-Stop enforcing a - minimum. I know DDR did this back in the stone age, we don't need to do this. People don't look at the lower levels, so there's no purpose to them, don't even begin to rationalize their existence. - only, enter the modern era.

-Bring back War Games. That was a cool thing. I don't know where it could fit during the year, maybe replace the shuffle with it for a year.

-Reduce the length of everything. Summer Contest, Shuffle, TOI. SC in particular, by the time the last couple weeks come around there's nobody participating due to school or lack of interest.

-Graphics with your comp files would be nice, even if it's just the generic ones cause you weren't able to make a set in time. Even if it's a very simple set of text-on-image or the aforementioned generic graphics made for the comp, that's better than LITERALLY NOTHING.

-I'm not too worried about people being biased when they vote, or at least I would assume most of y'all would know that's not how you vote. Either way, please don't +5 files because you're buddy buddy with the stepper.

-Bring back War Games.

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PM your concerns to pandy, the one who basically lays out the rules in SC/TOI.

https://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v5.2/pm.php?function=sendpm&username=Pandemonium%20X

Variety never hurts. Didn't Pandemonium say something earlier about something new coming before TOI?

I joined far beyond the time of War Games. Could be interesting to see the results with a new core stepping community.

THIS.

Shuffle's great, SC's great, but why so long? 8 weeks is enough. Having the experience of running a two week contest that was... above average, I see no reason not to run shorter contests. It doesn't get stale, and it's easier to stay consistent through all 8 weeks. AND you can have wider variety. It's time for this to happen. (Starting after the Shuffle though, because that would complicate things. It's week 7 right now...)

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From the perspective of an outsider, I thought about looking at it both ways regarding anonymity. Keeping the vote tally anonymous seems like a generally a good idea since voters would not be influenced by votes cast by others. For the most part, I support Cuzco's notion. That said, I can also think of at least two shortcomings to having third party votes. If you plan to implement changes, I hope people prepared to deal with these conflicts.

1) You'd have to set up adequate controls (e.g. a person who doesn't undertake any role in the contest) to ensure the voting system remains fair. This includes ensuring the person in question is always ready to tally up votes fairly, to ensure everyone uses up all their votes (and no more), and to check that no user votes on his or her own files.
2) This does not necessarily solve the problem of voters voting for their friends, if people share privately which files were submitted to the contest. If you feel that this is a problem, you'd need to instate rules regarding confidentiality about file submissions. I would guess you don't necessarily want such enforcement if it means people can't ask for how to improve on their future submissions...

You made a good point about people probably not willing to write simfile reviews. I don't necessarily think this is a likely problem, but I see where you might be going with this. While truly helpful posters would still like to review files anonymously (and this is a good thing, since you can be more objective in how you review the quality of a file), doing so might expose their own submission unless they review their own file as well. If enough people continue to review files anonymously, then anonymity may be effectively eliminated since people can find out which file was submitted by whom through the process of elimination. This is not necessarily a huge problem, since people would have to write their reviews before everyone's submission is effectively exposed, such that your reviews would be more objective than they would be if everyone knew who the stepper was.

You can try to alleviate this problem by requiring everyone to write a review on their own file as well - but I believe it is much harder to find flaws in your own submission than in others' submissions, so this isn't necessarily a good idea.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

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Perhaps reviews can be written, but not published until after the simartists for every file are revealed.

I like the way you're thinking. So perhaps you can require the reviews to be submitted before the voting period ends, but not revealed until after the votes are released.

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I floated the idea of an anonymous contest a while ago and it was palm-waved because it sounded like too much work.

Anyway, look at Best-MIX's format. Do something like that.

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how about doing a new fucking contest for once

also yeah one difficulty sounds good

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, , requirement

Seriously guys, how much it takes for you to create , ? For me about 15-30 minutes* together with (which never was a requirement yet my every single file contains it). You guys are aware that there are tons of people who are playing those files thanks to the lower difficulties? I know quite a few people that can't get over certain difficulty levels and enjoy standard files very much.

Keep , , requirement.

* it can take even 40 minutes if song has very complex rhythms and / or 3/4th metrum but that's still nothing compared to time that heavy and/or challenge takes

Summer Contest length

Summer Contest for whatever reason has been exceeding summer time and going into autumn time very often recently. In last year the ending categories were unthoughtful and boring that there has been seen annoyance between participants (and I'm not talking here about my problems related to one of the categories) which in the end lowered the amount of entries harshly in last weeks. Contest starting around first half of June and ending either halfway or at the end of August would be perfect. ToI length is fine. As far as Simfile Shuffle goes I would personally also remove few rounds due to the problem with people running out of decent ideas for songs near the end.

Lower the amount of rounds for SS and SC.

Annual contests

Annual contests are fine because due to the fact that they are reused it's easy to jump into them and know how they work / what are the rules. If we constantly shuffled the contests every three months people would get discouraged. Also currently there is barely any chance for adding any other contests on Z-i-V because amount of time which needs to be used for every single of them is just too high. Those annual contests is quite a huge part of what Z-i-V is for onlookers - a great way to get quite a few quality files. If SC and SS would be cut by 1/3rd of their length I would be all for one contest slot that would happen randomly. As for the three others please leave them how they are.

Do not remove annual contests. Consider adding one short contest that has random theme.

Anonymous contest

There are quite a few up and down sides to this. First of all it would disallow 'fixing points', as in voting in such way to give points to files that aren't a contender against your own file. I have seen such votes quite a few time where people completely ignored top-scoring GOOD files to throw 5's at some barely playable files that had 0 just not to lose the 1st place in the round. Other good thing is the feeling of thrill how good your file will do. You don't have to worry about your file doing bad for whole week you just wait for the votes and bam - either you are happy or meh. But one of things that bother me much would be opening even more space for "votes for friends". Thanks to anonymous votes they wouldn't be moderated and we could run into very awkward situations. Another downside would be the need of very punctual moderator who would keep hand on everything system wise. And recently there has been a LOT of problems with people that are running contests (for which I don't blame you guys, real life over fun always). Someone would had to volunteer to spend a lot more of time analysing, checking, keeping votes correct during whole contest duration. And people also wonder, would this affect reviews of files? I don't think so as most of people who like to review they will still review.

Do not force anonymous contests

What should be judged in simfiles

Recently this popped out which is honestly very weird thing for me. I have been taking part in simfile'ing contests since Tournamix 6 (which would be 2005... 12 years ago) and graphics were always thing that was a must and a thing that was always judged. I mean, not exactly in same way as charts but they were also important. As far as charts go, I tend to take most of my concentration on heavy/challenge but I do look into other difficulties either in editor or using x1.5 speed in-game. Some people don't grasp the idea that simfile consists not only of charts but also graphics, music file (which can be judged by how appropriate it is for dancing game, how the quality of sound is, how the quality of cut works out) and also additional bonus files that tend to up the quality even more in some cases (amazing custom made video file that fits into music, certain modifiers fitting a lot into the file). It also has been allowed since long times for people who aren't that good with making quality graphics to grab a hand from their friends or even some other competitors, heck, I have provided quite a few graphics for people here during contests because just like with lower charts, it isn't something that takes years to make. Obviously CDtitle shouldn't be taken into consideration as a lot of people treat it differently (as in, some people use it as their tag, some people use it as contest marker and others use real cd titles instead, especially those who make bemani or SEB based files). My personal judging goes mostly like this - Charts (80%), Graphics (10%), Song quality, sync quality, cut quality (10%), Additional bonuses (additional 5%).

Charts, graphics, song quality, sync quality, cut quality, additional stuff.

I want to know who these mystery ZIv users are that can't play on Hard on a keyboard. I don't know one, do you?

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I make my stuff for conventions, so I wanna make the easier charts better because 95% of people at those cons can't play for shit.

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Basically this, the exact same thing applies to my files. I tend to think that community / contests packs are made for enjoyment of public and not of elite groups / pro players (for those I think 'tournament packs' fit much better).

And we are supposed to kinda exhibit 'the best of simfiles' in simfileing contests, don't you think?

Also this irks me much. I really don't think that people who can't pass the chart on pad should judge the charts using keyboard.

I get that if they apply to your own personal files, but they shouldn't to your contest files. These packs are made of up of like 30 people and only ever going to be played by those 30 people plus some randoms that just stumble onto ZIv.

DISCLAIMER, OPINION BY SOMEONE WHO ISN'T A DECADE-OLD MEMBER; Honestly, you should only have one chart required and just allow others to be made. That way everyone wins.


Hi, welcome to my thought process of every contest ever, want to take a seat?

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We've been doing this for waaay longer than you, I don't think you have the right to play the 'you should' card on us, love.

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it's almost as if being a part of something for ten years doesn't automatically make your opinion worth more than someone who's been a part of it less, what a concept

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To be fair, people could play on the keyboard by indexing on the Numpad, which when combined with analytical knowledge of how stuff is played on the pad, can give a decent/good idea of how good a chart is as a pad chart without actually playing it on a pad (especially since stamina, the hardest thing to understand without pad experience, would have a limited role in contest charts, due to generally not allowing Long songs).
That's what I did for judging for most of the time I participated, since I can't commonly play on a pad, and probably can't consistently clear much of anything above a 13 on the X scale (not to mention that I probably don't have the stamina to go through a week's worth of files in one session).


A: I'm not someone who's good with charting to specific themes often (as shown by the fact that I've only participated in three weeks for every SC I was in, and only 3 or 4 of my SC files weren't already in progress before the week started), but I did like the War Games, and if I were still charting stuff often (I think I've only finished one pad chart since SC2013, and that chart was made very recently) I would most likely participate in a second one.

B: Personally, I'd prefer to keep the requirement of having , , and charts, because it makes sure people get experience charting easier charts (assuming people don't make troll charts, which has happened at least once), and while most of the people who download the charts can play the charts on at least keyboard, sometimes they may not be able to do so on a pad, but still may want to play the song on a pad.

C: I'm slightly against anonymous files/votes, since I'm not sure if the extra effort would be worth the upsides compared to the downsides. Also, in reviewing files, there has been a case of me referencing a recurring issue in a particular person's charts, and that wouldn't be as simple if the files were anonymous (or, possibly even worse, you could assume incorrectly).

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