Z-I-v Summer Contest 2020 - meta and rules discussions / suggestions

Main tournament thread is here:
https://zenius-i-vanisher.com/v5.2/thread?threadid=10611&page=1

There's quite some commotion on there (around pages 28 - 33) regarding rules, voting, giving feedback, etc.

To keep the main thread focused on the tournament progression and logistics, I'm creating a new thread here to open up discussions regarding rules, suggestions, complaints, etc.

Weeeeeeell, I know this'll dissolve into a flame war in a short amount of time when we all inevitably disagree with each other, so I'll just throw in quick takes and bail.

- I understand why the split groupings happened, I just don't like them. I don't like how if there's a fantastic simfile in Group B and I'm in Group A, I can't give that file points and they may miss out on positions and points as a result. Doesn't it sound sucky to everybody that people could potentially miss out on the top ten because someone who would've voted for their file had a username start with a specific character?

- Themes so far have been hit or miss, and I really do not like the current one. I mean, if you're gonna do a throwback theme, do one a bit more "throwback-y" than THREE MONTHS ago.

- Tak and VanEden have been a lot more receptive to feedback than a lot of people are giving them credit for, but a lot of things they have to take stances on are incredibly subjective and are bound to upset somebody no matter what they do. That being said, I do think a lot of decisions the hosts have made so far have been rather kneejerk-like reactions.

- I see that people are upset that people have bias towards certain types of music or certain difficulties, and to that I say suck it up. These contests have no allocated judges - everybody has their own criteria and you can't really change that. For example, I know I would've given points to 24-Hour Cinderella regardless of how the chart was just because it was a simfile of a song from one of my favourite games ever and the novelty appealed to me. We are ALL biased in one way or another, you gotta just deal with it.

- I like the idea of a 1-10 voting system for each simfile instead of simply having a set number of points to distribute throughout them all and having to give HMs to files if you run out of votes. That said, it'd be hard to implement. Maybe an experiment for another time.

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Second this! If you use the standard 15 pts to distribute it to 5 people, some other 15 people in the group don't get any pointwise feedback at all. Comparing files independently allows people to better redistribute points the way they see fit without the need to worry about how each chart compares to another. The current system reminds me kind of how the electoral college is implemented in US -- winner takes all points style. The top get additional credit for being good while many people who would have gotten some points may get none.

I don't see this method as necessarily being harder to implement. If this format is adopted, you could automate the voting the process via some form such as Google forms to allow for quick tabulation of points.

The invitation rules to VIP room can be changed accordingly.

I agree with the 1-10 system as well. it would be more accurate of the player's opinions about the various simfiles since you aren't restricted with how many points you can give out for the 20+ simfiles.

Was the splitting process of entrants into two groups discussed? I assumed it was completely random each week - I was OK with the splitting of groups with this assumption (while I may get shafted one week because those that would have voted for my file are in the other group, in the long run over all weeks it should be a mix, with everyone penalized similarly). If it's deterministic or some function of username, I definitely agree with your sentiment then as there's no way to get out of that hole if you happen to be in one.

Some other suggestions going forward for tournaments:
- It'd be nice for all the updates to the tournament rules be reflected and consolidated in the first post. I needed to go to the 10th page on the main tournament thread to see the rules regarding splitting entrants into two groups.
- Related, the current model of "one thread for all comms" makes the thread and discussions a bit hard to read. It'd be nice to have a main tournament rules and announcement thread, with entry announcements / feedback / discussions in a separate thread.

I'm a big fan of the 1 - 10 (or 1 - whatever) rating system. Not only does it give me a little more detailed feedback as a participant (granted not as good as written feedback), but as a person voting it allows me a way to give that feedback easily to all entrants. We're playing the files already and know how we would rate the other files, it'd good to use that information in the rankings directly if possible. Agreed that a google form (or other means of voting) would be pretty nice here; would need to make sure ratings could be linked back to someone though (so that anonymous spamming does not happen).

It was discussed among the hosts, but wasn't mentioned at all to the thread until 20 minutes before the deadline of week 1. It's based on whether your file is an odd or even position on the category page. It probably would be better if it was randomized, but alas.

I think the themes need to be thought out better or way more simple.

Good themes shouldn't require like a ton of research/time to execute.

300 steps ceiling is good.
Song title letter limit was funny and good.
The song must have the right kind of title (and PM me if you aren't sure if it matches with my subjective notion of what this theme means) and also have a certain number of step elements = not so good
You have to sift through a bunch of zip files to find an mp3 you like from our last contest = very bad

I'm probably gonna sit this one out. I don't think it's cute. The picking of a song should be a relatively painless process, and this contest theme also sort of punishes people who weren't around for the last one. I also don't even know 99% of the songs on that list so I've gotta like go listen to all of them from the zip files until I find one I like and that doesn't have a cut that I think subjectively is too long. Can ya'll like please respect our time more, I'm 34 and have a full time job and I'm gay

I don't think they necessarily have to be SIMPLER, but I very much agree that they need to be thought out better. It's cool to have complex themes, but this wasn't it.

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To me, it sorta depends on how restrictive the conditions are. I think a good example would be [Be Mine] from last year's contest. Love songs are pretty common, and adding a few mines isn't that hard either, so having both at the same time isn't that bad. So far, the only theme that I think was too restrictive was [ZIv Airlines]. Funny enough, I was thinking about an outer space/sky theme myself long before it actually showed up, but I never once thought about combining it with something else. By themselves, I think an outer space theme and a "jumpy chart" theme would work just fine, but putting them together is a bit much. Mind you, I was lucky to have a WIP file that would have fit both themes anyway, but I just didn't have the time to finish it.

And as for [Flash Back 90], I think everyone else said it best already.

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That and Deja Vu allowed you to go back to all of the previous Summer Contests, so the total number of available songs was way higher than Flash Back 90, which by comparison is a heck of a lot more restrictive. The fact that putting your username in your submission is required this week because there's likely going to be a lot of duplicate entries is a sign that maybe it's not the best theme.

Combining multiple theme requirements together is only fun if it's a Simfile Buffet type of round where you only need to meet 3 out of 10+ requirements.

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last year's r10 theme is also a good example of what not to do

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Let's have a theme where you have to step a song with a political message. Holiday In Cambodia X-14, anybody?

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I think this is a really good idea for a new type of contest. Like every week the host offers 10 or 15 different restrictions (with different score multipliers each) and the contestants can take more and more restrictions for higher score multipliers in the voting session.

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Bumping to bring this back:


No disrespect towards VanEden, but this week's theme is terrible, imo. Simple? Yes. Thought out better? No. I can appreciate a simplistic theme, but this just feels like it and the punny week name to accompany it were thought of in five minutes. Also, there aren't that many songs that start with the word "The", so it's more restrictive than it sounds - I have 1344 songs in my Spotify library, and only 19 start with "The".

Oof

We now go to Summer Contest 2020's staff on a live feed.

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Would a repository of possible week theme a good idea? I think at this point the staff already ran out of theme variety to do (as mostly felt like annual rehash). Creating one big repository of possible theme filled by other people's idea may sparked one or two unique theme.

Yes, I also think this theme felt like 30-minute brainstorming for the sake of the Spongebob procrastinating joke.

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I'd be interested in seeing what would be what types of themes people would enjoy in the contest. +1 to some sort of repo or common collection of theme ideas.

Personally, I'm a fan of themes where a style or constraint is placed on the steps themselves instead of properties of the song. Not that I don't like the song-focused themes (more neutral towards them), but enjoy thinking what song to do because of the steps instead of working steps around a song to fit the song restrictions.

Regarding the recent blow ups on the main thread: it's become quite hard to go through all the content to find important information related to the contest progression (results, rules, clarifications, etc). I'd suggest making several threads for these contests going forward, such as:

- Main thread for announcements, rules, clarifications, etc.
- A thread for discussing opinions related to the tournament and express complains/praise (what this thread is trying to do).
- A thread for discussing feedback for the entries of the week.

Just some final thoughts, although it probably won't go over well. I feel the need to speak my peace I guess? It seems like I'm taking this very seriously, but I do have feelings about it.

Here's a quote from Pandemonium X, the former contest host, and through a search of twitter, someone who seems to be friendly with Forcednature, who as we know, is friendly with the hosts, talkion and VanEden.


The "Rich Girls" being a reference to the name of a discord channel some of us who were accused of cheating are in together. In fact, I have not seen one person say that they dropped out "because of voter fraud." Perhaps that's something happening in the background, but perhaps it's another false narrative, as we've seen in the main thread. Once again, me and my supposed group of friends got the blame for people dropping out, when the people who have been dropping out have stated it's because they've been unhappy with the themes or how this contest has been running. A lot of the drama in this contest doesn't even have to do with us. It seems like we've been scapegoated. I can cop up to sometimes being snarky and argumentative, I'm not completely innocent here, but I don't really think much of the drama until now has had much to do with me.

It's obvious there's a lot of talk behind the scenes about us. It's very very apparent we were targeted by a group of people who don't like us.

All of this started because forcednature sent the hosts a PM accusing me and chewi of colluding together. I assume the other names were added because of the "Undercover" debacle. (For the record, I stepped Undercover because I didn't want to step any of the songs from the small selection of choices, and I thought it was funny to have 3 files for one song. Sue me! I didn't force anyone else to do the same. I'm sure there's more collusion accusations about the same thing)

It's not very hard to make evidence to support whatever theory you want. I mean, forcednature and Vonafroa have given more points to each other than me and chewi have. (This alongside with many smarmy comments such as "chewi and tamtam voting for each other every round...truly weird, isnt it" when he was guilty of the same thing but worse...)

Look at this, I found another group of collusion.


Do I think these people are colluding? No, honestly, I don't. I'm just making a point- it's not hard to do this and make a narrative that fits whatever you want. The fact that it was only done to us makes me feel like we were targeted. I requested that they post the same data for all of the other voters, however, they did not.

This whole thing has left a very sour taste in my mouth. I don't know exactly why it even happened. Were people upset about the excess of Undercover files? Is there a group of people close to the hosts that just don't like us? I just feel like what happened today was absolutely ridiculous and more of a personal attack than anything.

As far as I understand, all the voting has been made available in the spreadsheet after the round is over:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bsJC_iRUSVu-q1maE94A-ZcT0VfCtpK09wedIPmxLEk/edit#gid=746789842

We should be able to tally up pairs of people that tend to vote for each other.

I don't think it's very meaningful though. I agree that you could show the same numbers from different angles and portray whatever you want. A humorous example of this is linking divorce rates in Maine with consumption of margarine:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27537142

I also agree with what others were saying in the main thread - people that step similar styles to similar songs will have a higher tendency to vote for others with matching song/step styles. I assume most people are stepping what they're comfortable or have the most fun to, and would rate files similar to theirs higher (unless someone doesn't think they make good files?).

Voting doesn't seem like the major problem here, as the quote above said it seems the population is severely divided and I've seen much more negativity in the contest than discussions and useful feedback. Are people entering the contest because they think they're a simfile god and must place first, and if not it must be the other entrants that are wrong? Are people looking for feedback? Are others using this as a way to see other's creativity and expand their stepmania library?

I'm very curious what format tournament would appeal to the majority here - should everyone win? If there's 40 entrants that requires 40 weeks of tournaments (2 if there's 2 groups per week). That's not feasible. For those that don't make it to the top or qualify, is there any scenario where you'd be happy with that outcome? For me, I haven't scored a single point towards the VIP room, but that's fine. Disappointing, sure, but I'm just happy that 1) I have a driving force for building up my Albumix simfile packs, 2) I can expand my setup at home with the other files I liked from the tournament, and 3) I can see feedback (both in terms of votes, and from subjective written feedback for those that provide it).