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Mevious 12 Mar, 2014 @ 5:26pm
Incentivising Votes
DeathWish brought this up in the latest competition thread (bi-weekly 14) and it's something I've been thinking about for a little while. In this case, there were 10 entries and only 4 votes, and I have a theory as to why.

For this competition I didn't vote because I wasn't able to finish all of the levels in time. That being said, if you submit a map there is no incentive to vote. In fact, since you can't vote for yourself, it can only hurt your chances of winning. In past competitions I haven't voted because if my vote had made the difference between winning and losing, I would have kicked myself. I'm not a particularly competitive guy, but if I see an opportunity to increase my chances of winning, I'll take it. Don't get me wrong, I design puzzles because I love doing it, but I also enjoy the prize. It bugs me that I have to balance the desire to win with the desire to be "fair" to the competition and vote. Maybe I'm the only person for whom this is an issue, in which case, thanks for being more sportsmanlike and less petty than me. :)

If I'm not the only one, there are a few options to reduce this conflict of interest.
1. Give people some points just for voting. E.g., if I vote then I get 1 or 2 points added to my score.
2. Only allow non-entrants to vote. This isn't great because there usually aren't many people who vote without submitting a map.
3. Force all entrants to vote. I'm not sure how this would go over because people often have legitimate excuses for not voting (being out of town, too busy, etc.).
4. Some sort of other incentive for voting. This could apply to entrants and non-entrants alike. For example you could get one "experience point" every time you vote and use those to enter yourself in a drawing or submit an idea for a competition.

To be extra fair, these can be complemented by making the votes blind. That is, make people submit votes privately to a moderator and have that person tally them all at the end. This prevents evil me from voting specifically for maps with low scores in order to increase my own chances.


What do you all think? Is this adding unnecessary complexity to a friendly little competition?
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Showing 1-6 of 6 comments
mechtakendall 12 Mar, 2014 @ 7:58pm 
Agree with the blind vote point. It would definitely deter some of the manipulation of the vote. But really, Mevious, hundreds of people flock to your maps, it is validation enough don't you think? I digress, apologies.

Voting is always going to cause issues. The only good vote is the unilateral vote (one person does the voting for such and such challenge), but that isn't a vote, and that isn't always fair.

I see two issues with why voting has been off. One, the maps are too difficult in the time period allowed for casual gamers to finish them and be voted on fairly. Two, the voting deadline falls in the middle of the week, in which case most people aren't thinking of looking in on their account, whereas the competitions end on weekends.

Just to be complete, I voted very late, because it literally took me that long to get through all the maps and judge them appropriately. I still haven't solved one of the maps, because I couldn't come up with the solution after two hours of play, and I'm not sure there is a solution at this point, at least not a natural one.

I think there should be a time limit of what a puzzle should take. Just because you can make an uber difficult map doesn't mean you should for the competition. To me, I'm starting to get to the point that if a puzzle takes me longer than 30 minutes to solve, I've wasted alot of my time. The gamesmanship of design is very high here, and it might be refecting in the lack of votes. Just saying.

Anyhow, no idea how to solve the issue, or even if there is an issue.
#1
LPChip 13 Mar, 2014 @ 6:19am 
Ah yeah. This is something Stagger Lee and I have been pondering about ourselves too.

Not being able to vote if you submit a map is definitely out of the question. That would just make it more likely we'll run out of votes quickly.

Forcing all participients to vote is also something that is something I'm not willing to do because sometimes you simply can't vote.

I am in for rewarding voting by giving points to the voter. The point is, I'd like to reward 3 points for voting, because thats the only amount of points that would make you think: I'm not nailing myself for not voting for the best map. But by doing so, I basically force everyone to vote.

As for making the voting blind, I'd rather not take that path unless its absolutely necessary. This competition is supposed to be fun, and by adding secrecy as part of the process, it becomes more of a serious security thing. Like we are forced to take this route because otherwise there can't be any compo.

Also, giving a point for voting that can be used for other reasons seems a bit pointless. The counterpoint has to be very strong otherwise people are still like, well, nice for that but I'd still rather not vote and have most chance of winning.

Anyway, the reason why I haven't voted is because I just don't have enough motivation right now. I'm in one of those periods where I don't play portal at all, nor making maps. I do this so I can return with fresh ideas and motivation etc. (and also my portal is acting weird and crashes in the middle of maps for no apparent reason on any map).

I appreciate all input from everyone though, so if you have something to add, feel free to do so. It'll help us coming up with a proper solution to deal with this.
#2
LPChip 13 Mar, 2014 @ 7:39am 
Originally posted by mechtakendall:
Just to be complete, I voted very late, because it literally took me that long to get through all the maps and judge them appropriately. I still haven't solved one of the maps, because I couldn't come up with the solution after two hours of play, and I'm not sure there is a solution at this point, at least not a natural one.

I think there should be a time limit of what a puzzle should take. Just because you can make an uber difficult map doesn't mean you should for the competition. To me, I'm starting to get to the point that if a puzzle takes me longer than 30 minutes to solve, I've wasted alot of my time. The gamesmanship of design is very high here, and it might be refecting in the lack of votes. Just saying.

Anyhow, no idea how to solve the issue, or even if there is an issue.
Based on this part, the staff has decided to move the deadline of voting from wednesday to friday. So 2 additional days of voting time. And note that you can always play maps as soon as they are posted in the topic, which should give you a head-start.
Last edited by LPChip; 13 Mar, 2014 @ 8:10am
#3
Mevious 13 Mar, 2014 @ 1:54pm 
It sounds like this was just an off couple of weeks for people. If that's the case, I'm all for just keeping voting the way it is, along with a personal resolution to vote more and keep it casual.

I would like to reiterate what mechtakendall said about the average difficulty for these competitions being very high. I've noticed this too and haven't been able to complete a lot of the levels recently. Walkthrough videos are helpful in judging and it might be a good requirement to have everyone submit a video or demo with their map submission. Maybe if people don't want to link it to their map they can just attach it in the thread when they post the map.

Originally posted by LPChip:
And note that you can always play maps as soon as they are posted in the topic, which should give you a head-start.
I was actually curious about this. A lot of judges play and comment on the maps before the deadline. Many if not all of them also replay the final version. Is it acceptable to play the map once as soon as it's submitted to the thread or are all judges expected to also play the final version after the submission deadline?
#4
LPChip 13 Mar, 2014 @ 2:15pm 
Originally posted by Mevious:
It sounds like this was just an off couple of weeks for people. If that's the case, I'm all for just keeping voting the way it is, along with a personal resolution to vote more and keep it casual.
Yeah, it might just be that. Perhaps its a good idea to keep things like they are for now unless other people chip in here with more information about how they look against it and what they'd do to solve it.

Originally posted by Mevious:
I would like to reiterate what mechtakendall said about the average difficulty for these competitions being very high. I've noticed this too and haven't been able to complete a lot of the levels recently. Walkthrough videos are helpful in judging and it might be a good requirement to have everyone submit a video or demo with their map submission. Maybe if people don't want to link it to their map they can just attach it in the thread when they post the map.
I agree. I always have found that some people make really hard maps in this group. When I can't finish a map in say 45 to 60 minutes, I usually just stop, and post in the comments that I was unable to solve it requesting a hint or eventually just the solution.

It wouldn't hurt to just add your solution if you know you made a hard map. I'm in for that! Definitely.

Originally posted by Mevious:
Originally posted by LPChip:
And note that you can always play maps as soon as they are posted in the topic, which should give you a head-start.
I was actually curious about this. A lot of judges play and comment on the maps before the deadline. Many if not all of them also replay the final version. Is it acceptable to play the map once as soon as it's submitted to the thread or are all judges expected to also play the final version after the submission deadline?
Once you post your map in the topic, everyone can play it and you are not required to redownload the map again and play it again. After submission ends, you are not allowed to update your map anymore, but people do update their map if some breaking has been done. I usually look if the map I already played and got updated did something to my breaking the map. If it did, I look into it again. If not, I don't replay the map.
#5
mechtakendall 13 Mar, 2014 @ 6:49pm 
To be honest, when I started contributing here, I started off with easy chambers. My main reason was because I knew from previous competitions I had been in that nobody wants to waste all their valuable time playing the same 6-8 maps just trying to solve them. So I try to make them appealing without being very difficult. I CAN make very difficult chambers, but I choose not to. If I do create a difficult test, or a non-standard test, I try to always provide a hint or a direction to start in. I, for one, hate going into a map not knowing what needs to be done first or at all, and spending the first 15 or so minutes just trying to figure it out. I usually just bail on those. I've not encountered that in this group, so that's a plus.

Probably just an off week, as Mevious put it. Let's see how things shake out.
#6
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Date Posted: 12 Mar, 2014 @ 5:26pm
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