Board 8 > [VGMC] Video Game Music Contest 15 announcement!! Noms are 4/15!!

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXeL4Iwh11w

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my feelings next year are definitely to do staggered only 5 new noms per day rather than only doing that the first day. i'm also in favor of locks deadline being closer to actual final deadline

also expanding number of noms to 100
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I have some questions about that first part, but I think that's a discussion that can wait for later.

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personally i kinda want multiple lock points to be considered

or maybe even just first x number of songs to reach various points, like first 50 to 3 are locked, first 50 to 4 etc (also maybe even dropping the lock concept in its current form so they don't permanently stay in people's noms (doubles would be penalised in some way though), making that idea flow a bit better)

those were my thoughts after last year anyway

UF8 posted...

like first 50 to 3 are locked, first 50 to 4

I'm against anything like this. We don't need to arbitrarily impose a mad rush like that

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All right, so here's my retrospective criticism on how noms went down here.

I have two main points here: 30 noms is too much, but the more important point is I think the lock phase really messed things up on several levels.

I think the part that's obvious to everyone is that it kinda just brought the momentum to a halt in the second week, with it never really picking up again until the last hour or two for the final rush. I honestly think the lock phase had a really bad impact on the nom phase in general. By creating a "halfway point rush" I think it totally screwed up the standing of the nominations that just loomed over the remaining proceedings. Because it was a rush-type event you had people abandoning songs waaaay too early, both in terms of time and support status, all to chase the locks and for the most part things didn't snap back afterwards so you had a bunch of songs consigned to the graveyard with a decent cluster that tried to boost towards the lock but didn't make it making them all look like lost causes. All this happening in the first week, where we had like 900 songs because of the combination of nom expansion and an influx of new people.

My answer, to be honest, is just to get rid of locking. However, since I know that's unpopular, I'll workshop some alternate ideas. I think if you want to retain locking then your goal has to be to try and prevent the target number from being all that obtainable. 6 was far, far too low. In retrospect, I think it should have been 9 or even 10. No way the hosts could know that of course, but that's why I think the answer is get rid of it entirely to remove it from the equation. Heck, even then I feel like all the new participants greatly changed the "meta" so for all I know even those numbers would be chased.

tl;dr: I think locking caused most nominations to be abandoned/given up as hopeless way, way earlier than they should have been considered such and is a bad idea in the current environment. I'd get rid of it, but if you really want to keep it you should raise the target number considerably and probably move it closer to the actual end of noms. Like 2-3 days before or something.

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all aboard the "locking threshold should be higher than regular threshold" train

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NFUN posted...

all aboard the "locking threshold should be higher than regular threshold" train

LOL there's that but that's another thing I 100% can't fault the hosts for (and to be clear, while I was criticizing there, I sincerely mean it as constructive criticism. I'll never blame anyone for trying stuff out, just I don't think it worked in this case.) because you can never be sure where the cutoff will land.

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I definitely agree with that though I'm also in the "doesn't really like locks at all" camp
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xp1337 posted...

LOL there's that but that's another thing I 100% can't fault the hosts for (and to be clear, while I was criticizing there, I sincerely mean it as constructive criticism. I'll never blame anyone for trying stuff out, just I don't think it worked in this case.) because you can never be sure where the cutoff will land.

they (or deo, at least) wanted it to be around the same

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then that's rank a clairvoyance but I disagree with that philosophy!

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bring back the final 24 hour nomination lockdown
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you can also dismiss my criticism as that of a bitter old man being left behind in this crazy, new vgmc world

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The optimal system is choosing a time based on a right-weighted pdf to randomly determine a time to lock the field as it stands in that instant

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The locking wasn't so bad when there were 20 noms and fewer participants, but

pyresword posted...

I'm also in the "doesn't really like locks at all" camp

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Seems like if you got rid of locks then nothing would be safe in the last-minute scramble due to people dropping the top stuff to make room for other noms, resulting in a 400-way tie to get into the bracket or some shit

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nah, locking is still good and we shouldn't drop it
the actual problem was the week of downtime, if it was just a couple days it would be fine

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I'm still a fan of locks.

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A lot of songs nominated this year. In the end, I was only able to make it to 986 songs listened to. I get to find out over the next little while if I missed anything I would have liked to have supported.
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I love locks, but I'm biased because the two songs I most wanted in were locked which removed all the tension for me.
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I am strongly in favor of keeping locks. The constantly moving goal post of "the cutoff" is awful to me. That, along with various personal reasons, are why I went out of my way to lock all of my supports and essentially skip the entire last week of the nomination period.

I brought this up in Discord like a week ago, but as a long time member whose VGM interests aren't often in line with the norm, making rules to make it even more difficult for me to get songs I love in will only serve to disenfranchise people like me and further promote group think.

If people want to move the locking deadline to a later date, that is totally fine by me, but increasing the minimum amount of votes or removing the locking system altogether is something I am very opposed to.
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I'm a big fan of locks because they prevent me from making terrible last-minute decisions that I will regret for the next year.

i personally agree with kcf on that myself for pretty much the same reasons, for the record. but in position of being one of the hosts it'd be irresponsible of me to implement how i feel most without listening to other options of course. but it is how i feel as well. and i understand why others feel differently as well
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NFUN posted...

all aboard the "locking threshold should be higher than regular threshold" train

Now that we're done, and this has been brought up a few times, I'm on it too. Putting an intentionally high cap that wouldn't normally be hit would sort of let locks and the "vanilla" system co-exist during the nom period. Normally people might let something like a 6 sit because "surely it's safe" and no one will pull support from it at that point, but if the lock goal was 10 or 11 then a few more people would throw supports just to ensure it. But this way songs that don't get locked aren't doomed on the last day; if they don't get pushed to lock then they still have the same strong numbers that they had originally. There might not even need to be a lock deadline in this case. If there is still a separate lock deadline then it sounds like nearly everyone is in agreement that it needs to be closer to the final end date.

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I'm not entirely against eliminating locks.... I think it works fine either way. But I sure do love that feeling of safety for my favorites. But if we do locks again, raise the limit enough so that people hestitate on whether a song is actually worth locking (maybe)

The other thing I'd change about locks is, again, what azuarc posted a few days ago... give us maybe 10 days prior to locking period so we have more time to listen to the music, and then four days to finish things up. Or maybe even, like, 12 days/2 days?

And finally, 5 nominations-per-day limit might be helpful, particularly if we continue to have 30 nominations per users!!!

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It's okay, I concede. It was not my intent to make it seem like I was trying to exclude or push people's nominations out.

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We had a similar discussion last year I believe, and in both cases I think it was the case that there was a split of opinions between being opposed to and in favor locks, but that the people in favor of locks held the opinion much more strongly. (ie. there was a lot of "I'd prefer no locks but it doesn't really matter much", which for the record is also my opinion)

Assuming that impression is correct I think that's an argument in favor of locks staying.
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Nominations should stay. They should (probably) not occupy 2/3 of the field unless we do the entire contest by locking.

I ran a bunch of numbers to guesstimate where things would fall compared to last year, between the larger bracket, higher number of nominations, and raising the threshold to 6, and I concluded that for an equal number of participants, the lock threshold should be like 5.6 or something? So yeah, increased participation is to blame for the threshold not being sufficiently high. Would it have been better at 7, though? I'm not sure. (It absolutely should not be set to 10.)

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azuarc posted...

Nominations should stay.

would be weird if they didn't

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I like locks because they properly execute their intended function of relieving pressure from the last day by allowing early entry. It's just the numbers themselves that need to be tweaked. Currently I believe that locks are too powerful for what they do, and having locks shouldn't obsolete the non-lock method of entry.

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The biggest change is just not to put the locks at literally the halfway point of the nomination period. That would give us more time to gather our wits before things got hectic, and would allow for a continued push at the end rather than a huge layover.

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Soo turns out the link we have for Xepher is a fanmade long version, we can change it to the real one if all its backers are alright with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrqWvvDqGjY

@Flamander @Mac_Arrowny @tgs2 @TheArkOfTurus @Zigzagoon

Probably fine with me?
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if the version is unofficial like that, I don't think you have a choice in changing it...

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well no but it'd be a problem if one of the supporters suddenly decides they wouldn't have supported it with the canon version

I won't drop support for it.

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IM Ok

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NFUN posted...

if the version is unofficial like that, I don't think you have a choice in changing it...

True, but I'm mainly looking for any preference between long vs short to change to, since the nominated one is in between the two (basically adds sections but with only vocals or only vocals/backing strings and whatnot... which are actually in the long version as well but the official one has more "new"er stuff too lol

anywho i'll prob change it and then we can figure it out if Cath/tgs have objections but I doubt they will, I could've really just done it anyway but no harm in asking now

I don't mind the change at all. Didn't even realise for years that one wasn't even official and thought the real one you posted was the remix lmao.

Just a reminder that the first nomination topic is going to purge soon. I'm not sure if it is still needed to deal with any outstanding disputes.
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i'm ok with replacing the xepher link!

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wear bucket!!!11!!1!1!!1!!!!

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