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Post by zerker on Jan 3, 2019 20:11:15 GMT -5
Well, since I ran into it last year (though surprisingly it shouldn't be an issue for me this year), I'm going to suggest being generous with rollover games. If you started in 2018, and played continually then finished in 2019, it should generally count. Similarly, DLC should count as long as it's a clear separate "chunk" of content, regardless of how it slots into the game (see debate on Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds earlier this year). For platform listing, I'm going to suggest listing operating system instead of just "PC". So it would become DOS, Win 3.x, Windows (i.e. 9x or newer), Linux, Mac Classic or MacOS/OSX. toei , I think the emulation comment is more for official re-releases (e.g. Monster World IV on PS3 or something). Though I guess it's also interesting to see what's being played on original hardware vs PC emulation too. dsparil , we used Google Sheets with some formulas to count things up and/or format for the forum. But some basic scripting with a Database would work just as well. One of us can give you the spreadsheet link once we get the stuff from this year squared away. I also had some ideas for automatically scraping the game data from the forums via Python. I can poke into that a bit more if it sounds like something you'd like
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Post by nerdybat on Jan 4, 2019 2:43:17 GMT -5
-I'm all in for allowing to include DLCs that introduce a decent chuck of additional plot material - stuff like Dark Souls' Artorias of the Abyss and Darkest Dungeon's Crimson Court easily competes with some of the shorter games. We can make a separate category for it or something .u.
-Fighting game restriction never made sense for me, and I raised my concern for it during the very start of the challenge. Forcing people to beat the game 15 times is frankly ridiculous - honestly, 6 fighters will be enough.
-Maybe some fun optional goals for all participants to work towards? Alphabet challenge was an interesting one, for example. I think this year proved why competition just doesn't work with this kind of idea - some people will rack up arcade games and cheap digital releases, while others will stick with 100-hour JRPGs.
-If competition is a must, we can rank participants according to average "HowLongToBeat" rating rather than just the amount of games - while I'm not fond of possible tension and complications it may create in the process, it's definitely a more balanced option.
Those are my suggestions .w.
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Post by dsparil on Jan 4, 2019 8:33:36 GMT -5
I'll stay open to suggestions over the weekend and put up the thread on Monday.
Emulation - That was about official rereleases.
Rating - I do think having an actual short or long post is better and has always been encouraged. Some people don't put anything at all so I thought a simple rating would at least be something.
Replays - That could be tracked as distinct from first plays.
NG+ - I'm a little iffy on allowing NG+ since they've never been allowed, but I guess they're okay if replays are separated out. Those would be counted together for the sake of simplicity.
DLC - This is going to stay the same. It must be able to be launched on it's own and be generally separate from the main game to count on its own.
Platforms - People should have been doing that already. DOS for DOS games, Windows for Windows games.
Rollover - There was none the first 2 years and 2 weeks this year. No matter what, someone is going to get cut off. Honestly, 1 week should be plenty as the reason this exists in the first place is Christmas. I'll leave this unchanged though.
Fighting Games - 8 is the number of characters in the original release of SFII which is where that number came from 2 years ago. In 2016 it was a single character. 2017 was the lesser of 8 or half. 2018 was 15. 8 is functionally the same as 2017 for basically anything released after the mid-90s.
Time - This was suggested for this year and there was very little time tracking. There are issues with HLTB mainly that the data isn't always the greatest or even available sometimes. GameFAQs can be more complete, but only tracks total time without breaking it out at all so some types of games get gigantic play averages when a regular play through is a fraction of that time. It's a good thought, but it's also too difficult to implement properly. I could try to track it, but I really doubt the ranking would be wildly different.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Jan 4, 2019 13:28:23 GMT -5
I claim Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon on Normal/Veteran. It took almost two hours. I really enjoyed the character switching gimmick. I forgot to ask when you claimed this it seems, but can you specify what system you played it on?
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Post by toei on Jan 4, 2019 13:56:26 GMT -5
nerdybat There was a credit limit on arcade games, though, and most of those games are hard and require practice and many attempts, unless you're extremely skilled. Actually beating Heated Barrel within the 2 credits per level limit took me several days. That final boss is a monster. Likewise, a lot of the indie games dsparil was claiming seemed pretty long. Obviously, it's not possible to finish the most games if you play nothing but 100-hour RPGs, but that's exceptionally long. The average game is much shorter, modern triple A release or not.
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Post by zerker on Jan 4, 2019 16:37:45 GMT -5
Platforms - People should have been doing that already. DOS for DOS games, Windows for Windows games. Well, they weren't. And the list wasn't tracking them separately, so it sounds like a clear change for 2019: no generic "PC" platform. Similarly, "Steam" is not a platform on its own, since it supports three operating systems. I did a bit of cleanup as well and had the following questions: Feynman, which version of Doom did you play? 1993 original or 2014 reboot? moran, which platform did you play Dark Souls Remastered on? Snake, which platform did you play Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age on? And some minor shaming: GamerL, you listed Infamous: Second Son twice. I deleted the dupe. KGRAMR, similarly, you listed Power Drive Rally twice this year too.
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Post by nerdybat on Jan 4, 2019 17:13:58 GMT -5
nerdybat There was a credit limit on arcade games, though, and most of those games are hard and require practice and many attempts, unless you're extremely skilled. Actually beating Heated Barrel within the 2 credits per level limit took me several days. That final boss is a monster. Likewise, a lot of the indie games dsparil was claiming seemed pretty long. Obviously, it's not possible to finish the most games if you play nothing but 100-hour RPGs, but that's exceptionally long. The average game is much shorter, modern triple A release or not. I see your point, but there's still a severe lack of balance that turns actual competition into a joke due to games of different lengths and skill requirements being ranked equally. I mean, the whole thing resulted in a situation where a couple participants ran circles around everyone else despite a lot of people putting similar amount of time into their gaming sessions. Not to mention it discourages competitive participants from taking on longer games or exploring them more than a bare minimum of completion, which can hurt the overall experience. I still suggest either dropping the pretense at competition entirely or creating a system to rank players that will actually work; time-tracking is one of the options when it comes to latter, though I'm not the biggest fan of it myself. I'm personally for the former, since majority seems to treat it more as a place to categorize and review completed games than any sort of contest anyway.
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Post by zerker on Jan 4, 2019 17:19:06 GMT -5
nerdybat , I'm hoping that separating out replays will help a bit on that front, but we'll see. I kinda had the idea of simply assigning a score for general game length. My mental idea was: 1 point = < 2 hours 2 points otherwise
But then I also had some ideas of a tiered system with a few arbitrary additional boundaries, and kinda shelved the idea because it got too close to just tracking hours to begin with .
Part of the problem I found when I was just generally interested in game length is that my two preferred platforms (PS4 and DRM-Free Windows/Linux) don't have any easy tracking method.
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Post by Snake on Jan 4, 2019 17:52:56 GMT -5
Snake , which platform did you play Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age on? Playstation Quattro, amigo~
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Post by toei on Jan 4, 2019 18:01:18 GMT -5
Yeah, none of my preferred platforms track time. Also, a "most time spent playing video games in a year" competition is pretty pointless.
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Threads
Full Member
the disco before the breakdown
Posts: 122
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Post by Threads on Jan 4, 2019 18:11:48 GMT -5
When DLC is mentioned as needing to be launched on its own does that mean like through a menu separate from the main game/campaign? Like the Resident Evil 5 DLC campaigns Desperate Escape and Lost in Nightmares are not part of the main game and have their own menu and settings to start from. Would those qualify?
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Post by zerker on Jan 4, 2019 18:27:09 GMT -5
That's the interpretation we used this year, so they would qualify.
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Post by lurker on Jan 4, 2019 18:57:28 GMT -5
For a racing game like Mario Kart, would beating each of the CCs count or does it have to be overall?
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Post by dsparil on Jan 4, 2019 19:05:49 GMT -5
I think any CC would be fine. Just all the cups.
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Post by moran on Jan 4, 2019 20:32:18 GMT -5
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