Suggestion about "final spoilers"

Megalou

Thez worlds are not enuf
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While I can appreciate the intentions of the GOTM staff when they reduced the number of spoilers threads from 4 to 3, the final spoilers make me uneasy.

I don't understand the point of having two so different qualifcations for the final spoilers, namely
1) you must have entered the modern age
or
2) you must have finished (submitted) the game.

I think the first one should be removed. The only acceptable qualification should be to have submitted.

Let's say I go for a diplomatic victory or a space race victory and complete the game. I then have two options to choose from.

I can write a full report of my end game. Such a report would be incomplete because I must not reveal the location of modern resources. In effect, I think it may well become less interesting, because I cannot tell the whole story. Moreover, do I really want to post such a spoiler, knowing that other players may check the spoilers as soon as they have entered the modern age? These other players get an unfair advantage because they can change their game plan. For example, they can calculate that they will not be able to beat me in a space race and change to a diplomatic victory or vice versa. (As the criteria are usually described today, a player can access the final spoilers as soon as they get the message "We have entered a distinctly new era...")

My other choice is to only post my progress up to the beginning of the modern age. I see two problems with that too. Firstly, the industrial age is usually rather uneventful. I cannot believe that the reason for reducing the number of spoilers from 4 to 3 was that the industrial age should get its own spoiler. Secondly, if I post only my progress in the industrial age, when can I post my endgame? Supposing I'm still reluctant to "help" other players decide on a victory condition, I don't want to post the endgame before submissions are closed and who reads spoilers then? I don't. There are two new XOTMs to focus on at that time. At the very least, more than one report from the same player makes the thread more messy.

To sum up, I think the present qualifications for the final spoilers are out of tune. To me, it makes perfect sense that the 2 most uneventful eras should have just one spoiler to share, if you want to keep the number of spoilers threads down.

Thanks for reading,
Megalou
 
I think that may have been an accident -- whatever the post actually *says*, the staff's intention for a thread marked "final spoilers" is certainly to allow all finished games to be discussed. Perhaps the post can be edited.

Renata
 
A recurring accident in that case. I'm referring to all recent final spoiler threads.

"Perhaps the post can be edited." Which post do you mean? The players' reports? I doubt that people will go back to see if reports have been edited. It would still make the final spoilers messy.
 
Hmmm, well you're right that that is ambiguous wording. A "final spoiler" should be final, I think -- comments allowed on any part of the game.

I was referring to editing the initial post in the relevent thread(s).

Renata
 
Excellent suggestion, IMHO.

It makes the "Final Spoiler" title much more appropriate and it eliminates much of the confusion that the spoiler criteria for the last spoiler now (obviously) create.
And it's easy to implement too.

I'll second the suggestion. :)
 
I sympathise, but is anyone going to discuss anything in it if it's limited to finishers? As already indicated, as soon as players are finished they're off to the next game. If there's no discussion then pretty soon there'll be no posts.

At one point we stopped having a third spoiler at all, but there were complaints, and I think it was me that reinstated it in Ainwood's absence, on a "temporary" basis, to allow discussion of the modern era..
 
I agree with Megalou.

I like the final spoiler, but I wish it were specific to post-submission.

I find most Domination/Conquest victories end right between the Middle Ages and the start of the IA. (before the AI gets Nationalism, basically). Based on the spoiler criteria, post on these games must wait until the final spoiler, or get wedged into the IA spoiler and contain end-of-game details best left to completed games only.

My dream request would be a final spoiler, available only to those with submitted games, that was open as early as the first spoiler. :cool:

Oh, and I'd like to thank Alan, Ainwood, Renata and the rest of the GOTM staff for the awesome work they do. :goodjob:

StanNP
 
AlanH said:
I sympathise, but is anyone going to discuss anything in it if it's limited to finishers? As already indicated, as soon as players are finished they're off to the next game. If there's no discussion then pretty soon there'll be no posts.

At one point we stopped having a third spoiler at all, but there were complaints, and I think it was me that reinstated it in Ainwood's absence, on a "temporary" basis, to allow discussion of the modern era..
I'm not positive, but at least for myself, I've been actively reading the final spoiler posts even after I've submitted. I may not be a good example because I don't play C3C and therefore COTM is not an option for me. But still, I think it's enjoyable reading as I've commented to several spoiler posters.

Perhaps if we also added that you can't talk about how you win in the first two spoilers, that would force everyone to get together in the final spoiler once more to brag about their victories or commiserate their losses. It would sort of be like the Results page, without the ranking. That would also prevent spoiler readers from avoiding/trying a conquest victory just because they've read a lot of Ancient age spoilers with conquest victories before/after their projected end date.

In summary, "my dream request" would be three spoilers.
  1. Ancient Age Spoiler - Knowledge of all required ancient age techs, map of local area, knowledge of local civs. If you win by Conquest or Domination before this era, don't talk about your final enemy that enabled your victory. "My troops turn towards Japan...(to be continued in the next spoiler)"
  2. Middle Age Spoiler - Knowledge of all required middle age techs, map of global area, knowledge of global civs. If you win by Conquest or Domination before this era, don't talk about your final enemy that enabled your victory. "My troops turn towards the Aztecs...(to be continued in the next spoiler)"
  3. Final Spoiler - Must have submitted game. Talk freely about anything.

Obviously, if you finish your game in the Ancient Age, you can read all the spoilers but you must be careful posting about your game to leave out details of your final victim. Ideally, posts should leave enough uncertainty in the final date to prevent the comparative decision making to which Megalou referred.

I'm not sure what restrictions I would place on an Ancient Age loss. I would probably allow losses to be posted in full rather than rubbing the salt in the wound by making them relive it again in the final spoiler. :(

I think if posters are satisfied to reserve their last chapter for the final spoiler it might make the discussions more fun in the final spoiler. Hopefully, it wouldn't take that much out of the first and second spoilers either.

On the other hand, there will be a bunch of people that won't get to look at the final spoiler until the midnight on the last day (I am still often in that crowd.) This might take something away from them, but I think, if they were posting to the Modern Age spoiler, they could adjust to posting to the Final Spoiler a bit later. Anybody make a bell curve out of the submission dates? What's the distribution look like?
 
Well, we're open to any ideas. The 'final spoilers' generally tend to be a bit slow.

BTW - my "intent" was always that they were open to discuss the end of the game. The modern-age caveat was to allow people going for milk runs or space-races who wanted to post a progress report to do so. The only thing is that I didn't want them having the locations of uranium & aluminium spoilered for them.

Shall we trial it as a simple "Final spoiler" and do away with the industrial / modern-age spoiler?
 
I am like ControlFreak (I mean a person).
I also always read spoilers of those games that I submitted. I support an idea of having only two spoilers. First one is highly restricted. And a last one. The date of the final spoiler can be moved further (lets say around pre-game discussion). Players cannot be on the next game at this point anyway.

BTW stuff can organize a poll about this issue.
 
AlanH said:
I sympathise, but is anyone going to discuss anything in it if it's limited to finishers? As already indicated, as soon as players are finished they're off to the next game.
Perhaps, but when submissions are closed there may be even fewer readers to see your endgame report.
AlanH said:
If there's no discussion then pretty soon there'll be no posts.
I thought the spoilers were meant to teach us things long-term, not help us to make decisions in an ongoing game. Most discussions are in the past tense already, aren't they?

ainwood said:
Shall we trial it as a simple "Final spoiler" and do away with the industrial / modern-age spoiler?
I considered setting up a poll, but it's better if you as staff members set up the alternatives in such a poll.

ControlFreak, I think your suggestion could increase the interest for the final spoilers a bit. Yet, it might be complicated to force posters into a pattern like the one you suggest. With my suggestion, posters would be able to follow your pattern anyway, if they want. (And I do like the idea.)

Thanks for all the replies.
 
I really like ControlFreak's take on Megalou's suggestion, and personally see little reason to open the Final Spoiler to those who haven't actually finished. Milkers won't really have much to report until they are done anyway, as conquest will probably be finished or nearly so within the time limit of the middle spoiler, and from then on out it is milking. Modern Age generally goes fast for spacers, so moving from waiting until endgame instead of Modern Age won't be a terriblly long wait.
 
ControlFreak said:
Anybody make a bell curve out of the submission dates? What's the distribution look like?
It's not much like a bell! I've counted it back from the deadline. If you count days forward you get a false impression as the last day submissions are split between 30 and 31 days.
 

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AlanH said:
It's not much like a bell! I've counted it back from the deadline. If you count days forward you get a false impression as the last day submissions are split between 30 and 31 days.
Interesting. I assume this is for all games. How about recent history? How does it look over the last 6 months?
 
ainwood said:
Shall we trial it as a simple "Final spoiler" and do away with the industrial / modern-age spoiler?

:) :goodjob:
 
Here it is since GOTM 31, and still covering all COTMs. A little rougher, because the sample's smaller, but the shape's similar.

I guess your next question is going to me ... "What's the distribution for the players who post in the spoilers?". :eek: Answer - I've no idea.
 

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AlanH said:
Here it is since GOTM 31, and still covering all COTMs. A little rougher, because the sample's smaller, but the shape's similar.

I guess your next question is going to me ... "What's the distribution for the players who post in the spoilers?". :eek: Answer - I've no idea.
Naw. That wouldn't be any good. You would have to do it by which spoiler they posted in. :joke:

Seriously, I was just wondering if the pre-COTM games would would distort things as people didn't have to rush to get in a second game. Apparently not, though.

Thanks. :thumbsup: :)
 
AlanH said:
Here it is since GOTM 31, and still covering all COTMs. A little rougher, because the sample's smaller, but the shape's similar.

I guess your next question is going to me ... "What's the distribution for the players who post in the spoilers?". :eek: Answer - I've no idea.
Thanks for the graphs AlanH. As I figured it might be, the forced deadline creates a unilateral distibution. (The back side of the bell curve is squashed up onto the deadline date.) That's actually good news for switching to Megalou/CF type spoiler. The reasoning is that there is plenty of good discussion in the current first and second spoilers, they remain unchanged (except for my possible suggestion of avoiding talking about your last victim). The final spoilers would see a bunch of people submitting near the deadline date and therefore a lot of viewing around the same time. That (I would think) would lead to better discussion. And for those who don't have time to make a full end game writeup, they could at least say "Hey, I did that" or "That was a good idea" or even "My game beat your game by two turns. :p " ;)

To further enhance the experience, you could reprogram the submission received page to have a link into the final spoiler. (That should be cake for the PHP monkey. :goodjob: )
 
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