News: Game of the month for Civ V - feedback appreciated

[DaviddesJ]

You have said that there is no basis for comparison between player rankings

I said exactly the opposite. Obviously, there's a basis for comparison. Everyone gets a score and a result, you can write them down, you can see that some people finished sooner and other people scored higher.

I assume you aren't deliberately misstating what I say, you just can't understand my point of view. It's a waste of time to continue.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Arnold and Hammer, I haven't played any of the Civ V TSG/GOTMs. This thread has reminded me of why. I think the concept is great and the player community can be great, but the attitudes of the staff, the worshiping of prizes and "public recognition" and the obsession with enforcement and "cheating", make me unhappy. The idea that some people think the reason to play games is to win prizes, rather than to enjoy the games and the friendly competition and social interaction, makes me sad. Life is too short to spend doing things that make you sad. Probably I should just unsubscribe from CFC entirely.

 

[AlanH]

It's a waste of time to continue.

Agreed.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Arnold and Hammer, I haven't played any of the Civ V TSG/GOTMs. This thread has reminded me of why. I think the concept is great and the player community can be great, but the attitudes of the staff, the worshiping of prizes and "public recognition" and the obsession with enforcement and "cheating", make me unhappy. The idea that some people think the reason to play games is to win prizes, rather than to enjoy the games and the friendly competition and social interaction, makes me sad. Life is too short to spend doing things that make you sad. Probably I should just unsubscribe from CFC entirely.

well, its a shame you arent playing them anyway, not to submit, not to compare but just for a neat little game save to have some fun with. you dont have to submit or even participate in any way that is measurable by anyone but yourself. we put some effort into the maps, they arent just random starts uploaded for all to play.

and i take offense to the suggestion that we 'worship' prizes and public recognition. that is your own inflammatory extrapolation/assumption. words like 'obsession' and 'worship' are just silly inflammatory language. if you read the threads for each gotm you'd see the community is indeed friendly and the social interaction is indeed nice, with only a couple less than helpful commentators participating. regardless of who 'wins' everyone for the most part is helpful and encouraging.

good luck, and happy gaming.

 

[DaviddesJ]

and i take offense to the suggestion that we 'worship' prizes and public recognition.

Obviously everyone is different. But Alan gives a good example. He's the one who said that prizes and public recognition are the primary purposes of the GOTM. That's the attitude that turned me away, and leaves me disinclined to return. I fully agree that most of the community are great; that's what I said myself. I did play in a lot of GOTMs over the years.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Obviously everyone is different. But Alan gives a good example. He's the one who said that prizes and public recognition are the primary purposes of the GOTM. That's the attitude that turned me away, and leaves me disinclined to return. I fully agree that most of the community are great; that's what I said myself. I did play in a lot of GOTMs over the years.

but you took primary purpose to mean worship and obsession. just because it is the primary purpose doesnt mean you have to participate with that in mind. you can participate however you like. and alanh has little thread participation in civ 5 gotm's so if you dislike him you will very rarely have to deal with him. he only comes in when a technical issue needs resolving.

Leif really manages the majority of the thread commentary and I've been playing since roughly TSG25 and I dont remember things ever getting ugly in the threads. I hope you can enjoy the games we made even if you dont enjoy the GOTM setup. But if you would prefer to abstain completely out of an objection to the setup/representation of gotm, then that is fine.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Thanks for the encouragement. I don't dislike Alan, he's a nice guy even when he's distorting what I say into unrecognizable knots. I do dislike the attitude that he represents and particularly his antipathy toward other points of view. It's always been the case that there's a tension between people who want to make GOTM about the prizes and people who want to make it about the community. It's the tension between people who are self-referenced and people who are other-referenced. Sometimes it's easier to ignore the part of it that I dislike and sometimes it's not. The whole "TSG" thing has made it especially hard to ignore. It's also hard not to be concerned about what will happen at some day in the far future when the "real" GOTM is launched, and what that will mean for people who don't like everything that might come with it. Looking around, I see that we already have the "unplayable on Macs" problem even in the "TSG", that's only going to get worse in "real GOTM". But I will think about it.

 

[Moriarte]

You could be more clear when you say that GOTM can be 'not about prizes'. If there is competition involved, there has to be ultimate goal (and prizes), like: fastest time, highest score, or any other. You reach the goal faster than others - people recognize your effort. It's only natural to acknowledge that someone is better than you. You can learn from winner's success too and improve own playstyle, since community is sharing their experiences in friendly manner. Limiting yourself to Honorable playstyle is encouraged. How is this self <---- centric?

What 'other' model do you have in mind, if you don't mind?

 

[DaviddesJ]

If there is competition involved, there has to be ultimate goal (and prizes), like: fastest time, highest score, or any other.

To have a competition, there does have to be a goal (e.g., achieve the highest score you can). But there doesn't have to be prizes (e.g., announcement of, or reward for, or validation or recognition of, the player with the highest score). This is the core point, and for some reason Alan keeps ignoring it.

"Competition" just means "a contest between rivals". You don't have to have prizes to have competition. If everyone plays the same scenario and they compare their scores, they are, by definition, competing with one another.

There are lots of things that the contest organizer can potentially do to aid in that competition. Enforcement is one example of something that helps. Prizes are not, in and of themselves, harmful, when viewed with the right attitude. But none of those other things are essential to competition. And none of them should be more important than the activity itself.

 

[Gamewizard]

The fastest time gets recognized because that is what the majority of players want. There are also plenty of people who participate knowing full well they will not achieve the fastest time (I am one of them). The maps are well designed and the community enjoys sharing strategies. It is that reason that I think the GotM competition is successful.

 

[Moriarte]

So, you can win, but you shouldn't be recognized for it. Thats the idea? What to do with people who still brag about: who came First, who came top ten, who improved a bit and who failed? Because they will. And we'll end up with same system of ranking. The only difference is: ranking will be unofficial.

 

[DaviddesJ]

So, you can win, but you shouldn't be recognized for it.

I don't care if people are recognized. Calling out the highest scores and putting some kind of goofy symbol next to their names does no actual harm to anyone. You can just ignore it if, like me, you think it's pointless.

It's only when people get obsessed with the "integrity" of the awards and preventing "cheating" and you allow these goals to interfere with the thing itself, that it becomes a problem. Using software tools or other methods to encourage people to compete in GOTM within the spirit of GOTM is a good thing, in my view. The GOTM has, over the 10 years that I've followed it, done something useful in helping provide an incentive for people to play the game fairly, where they don't simply reload and reset every time something goes wrong. That temptation is normal and human, yet ultimately it's counterproductive because if you are constantly "cheating", it makes the game too easy and whole aspects of the game become irrelevant (e.g., once upon a time you could get any result you want from a battle just by repeating it over and over---what's the point of having combat odds if you can win a battle every time even with 10% odds?).

But these are things that people do for themselves to enjoy the game more. Where people start to go wrong is where they rank the winning and awarding of prizes as more important than the game itself. Where they develop the attitude, if Joe cheats and undermines his own enjoyment of the game, that this somehow harms me, because I wanted to win the Foobish Prize and he unfairly took it away from me. I just think people should get over it. That sort of attitude is harmful. A focus on prizes, that are awarded to you by someone else, rather than on satisfaction from what you do for yourself, is unhealthy. It's my view, you don't have to share it, but I want to help you understand it if you care to understand it.

One example of how this attitude has harmed the GOTM is refusing to hold any GOTMs for two years because the staff thinks some kind of software patch is essential to the integrity of GOTM. (This is especially silly because it ignores the fact that I could cheat in a dozen different ways that no software could ever detect.) The "TSG" is probably more like what I think the GOTM should be. But the prospect that, one day, everything is going to change, makes me more reluctant to be involved. And they make this implicit in the name that they chose.

 

[Moriarte]

I share your view about reluctancy to name this competition 'real GOTM'. Thing is: I consider it real, even though creators refuse this reality.

As for other part in question, i shall remind you that we are in a company of comrades. To walk them away from concept of 'prize' you have to draw a different interesting playground, where they will have no need to refer to best result. Most people consider the ladder of results as an opportunity to improve. You have to come up with something to give them incentive to compete and improve.

'Just removing' prizes won't bring about the environment you are dreaming about. There has to be systematic rehaul, where focus is shifted away from power gaming towards... something else?

Do you have such solution?

 

[Half Nelson]

There are merits to both sides of this discussion, so might a possibie compromise be to have 2 types of submission for Civ5 TSG/GOTM? One for first attempts only (with policing as far as is possiible) and a second no-holds barred "Hall of Infamy" where you can reload the game to your heart's content to seek the fastest "result" for each map. This might attract more players and submissions (and perhaps more varied approaches) especially for higher-difficulty games. There are frequent descriptions in the Post-Game Discussions of replayed games and I suspect many more lie unseen on players hard-drives. I would find it both interesting and instructive to see how people finally "got it right".

 

[DaviddesJ]

There are merits to both sides of this discussion, so might a possibie compromise be to have 2 types of submission for Civ5 TSG/GOTM? One for first attempts only (with policing as far as is possiible) and a second no-holds barred "Hall of Infamy" where you can reload the game to your heart's content to seek the fastest "result" for each map.

I don't see what this has to do with "both sides of the discussion". No one on either side of the discussion has advocated that people should reload or cheat when playing GOTM.

 

[DaviddesJ]

As for other part in question, i shall remind you that we are in a company of comrades. To walk them away from concept of 'prize' you have to draw a different interesting playground, where they will have no need to refer to best result. Most people consider the ladder of results as an opportunity to improve.

I have no problem with the ladder of results, or even with prizes. Like I said several times, if some people care a lot about prizes and others don't, the ones of us who don't can just ignore the prizes and awards. I'm not so selfish that I figure you have to get rid of something you appreciate just because I don't want to ignore it.

The only problem arises when the quest for enforcement and the attitude of entitlement to prizes, clashes with the desire to expand participation in GOTM. The obsession with the need for an enforcement "mod", to the point of suspending the GOTM indefinitely (two years and counting!) is one example of that.

 

[Carazycool]

are we ever going to get beyond the "training series" and into official GOTMs?

 

[Ribannah]

I support most of what David is saying.

Before we started the TSG, I suggested that awards and recognition should go to the best write-ups. The purpose of the GOTM (which the TSG is, of course) is to compare our GAMES. Not to compare our RESULTS. A great many players agreed, yet this was entirely ignored by the staff.


I ignore participants that just post their results and nothing else. I'm not going to watch a whole bunch of videos of 8 or so hours each either.

I also ignore people that cheat / play the exploits. (And I don't really see a difference between the two. Note: we had rules and software checks to the extreme in GOTM3, yet the people who cheated the most were never caught, and some major exploits were still allowed.)


So far, so good. We still had interesting games, and many participants who enjoyed telling about their game and reading each other's stories.


However, the fun of playing the GOTM diminishes when:
- players that cheat / play the exploits start rudely criticising the other participants for not doing the same;
- these players find their way of playing and their attitude supported by members of the staff;
- participants, who used to play the game honorably, start copying these players' style, just so they have a chance to compete.

This is what is currently happening.
And it takes only one such player and an unresponsive staff.


If there were a Realms Beyond competition for Civ5, I would play there. Unfortunately, there isn't. But I am leaving this competition nonetheless.

 

[Moriarte]

You sound like this is so serious for you, yet this is just a game we play. Everyone is using exploits, even you. So why should your exploits (hammer overflow for one) be special, so that you suddenly consider yourself honorable and others - dishonorable? Are you sure there isn't a 'light' way to handle these things?

You are a good player, Ribannah, and i think that if you start playing these GOTMs again, and posting your great results, more people will adopt your way of play, which, i guess, might please you.

This attitude: change things, and maybe i'll join your dishonorable crowd, is a bit childish.

 

[Gamewizard]

I also ignore people that cheat / play the exploits. (And I don't really see a difference between the two.

I agree with this, but I also agree with Moriarte that drawing the line between fair play and exploiting is difficult.

Now that the modding tools have been opened up hopefully the community will be allowed to vote upon some tweaks to the vanilla G+K game, such as purposefully breaking lump sum gold transactions with the AI, and the majority conclusion would be implemented in a GotM mod. BtS received a mod so I assumed G+K would get the same treatment.