Board 8 > [VGMC] Video Game Music Contest 16 announcement!! Noms are 5/1!!

(+) Yeah! (+)

sergiocornaga posted...

From what I understand, spontaneous madness happens every year regardless of how the nomination phase is structured.

Yeah, but it's different this year because the ending point itself was spontaneously reached. This is the first time that noms didn't last until the pre-determined end time.

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

Yeah, but it's different this year because the ending point itself was spontaneously reached. This is the first time that noms didn't last until the pre-determined end time.

This.

Honestly, I'm somewhat... frustrated by people who think the way things played out was good. Noms ending when they were not expected to end, while e.g. people on the west coast were getting off work on a Tuesday, seems intuitively undesirable.

I feel like it was a lucky coincidence that the spreadsheet update got delayed due to work issues. There was a big wave of supports after the update went up. I wonder how much earlier we hit 256 if the spreadsheet had regular updates instead.

An alternative suggestion: impose a limit on how many of a person's initial noms that can lock.

If one of the goals of a locking system is to allow for people to get niche tracks into the bracket, well. This will get you there. If the number is 2-3, it also means that the field will not be 100% locks, which I think must be a goal.

Downside is that this is much harder to track, but again -- this would get us to the stated goal, while the current system really doesn't do well for such people.

How about give every user 3 lock items to use? If the song reaches six nomination points (or a new threshold), any user can use one of their locks to lock the song. That way there's no weirdness from songs getting locked in a strange order (eg. your 2nd, 3rd and 4th favourite initial nomination reach lock point before your number 1). Songs can be set to an auto lock list as well so the users don't need to camp the nomination spreadsheet all day if there's a song they know they want to lock for certain.

That... seems like a fairly elegant fix to my idea, yeah.

I thought of something else if we wanted to reduce the amount of music. DireKrow thinks reducing noms to 20 wouldn't reduce the totals noms. And Tox is vehemently against doing a nomination cap of 10.

What if we re-implemented the nomination/support system with a nomination cap of 10, but enabling users to potentially go above the 10 if things go poorly for them? For example, if after 72 hours of the nomination topic you have less than ten total supports for your songs, you get to drop some of your struggling songs (removing them completely from nominations with no way to bring them back). You can then replace them with new music, up to five depending on how few total supports you've had.

Granted, we would need to impose a small penalty for replacing old noms with new ones, or else users might end up nominating a bunch of garbage just so they can get 15 nominations. For example, if everyone had 50 supports to use, each new nomination beyond the original ten would reduce their available supports by one (e.g. if you nominated five songs beyond the original ten, your available supports would drop to 45)

I'm just throwing out ideas, but I kind of like this one!

KCF0107 posted...

I feel like there is an elevated level of homogeneity of video game and VGM interests that with the increased user count

Not sure how much I agree with the rest of what you said, since I'm not even sure where some of it is coming from, while other bits I understand and was probably part of the problem during my tenure as host, but I wanted to say that I think there's far less homogeneity in this bracket than there was when I took over. Case in point, someone said there's only 4 Falcom songs. It's true that there are little mini-blocs, but that's always been the case. It's just that instead of a clique of Touhou users, now it's Xenoblade. But I'm not sure what point in time you're juxtaposing the current bracket against that this statement holds true.

My big disappointment of the nomination period was the feeling that my favorite songs were either overlooked or just simply buried in the massive pile of noms. I'm sure I was hurt by the fact that I waited until the third day to nominate my stuff (among other factors).

I think a solution to this could be to give each user a one-use special "priority" slot for their favorite nominations, which would at the very least include it on a special "LISTEN TO THESE FIRST" playlist so everyone would be able to give them consideration without having to wade through hundreds of songs. It could be combined with some of the earlier ideas to give these songs an even better chance to get in.

probably would be easier to just nominate on the first day or send your songs to mycreo to be nominated then if you're busy...

That's why I feel like two original noms per day would be an improvement - we had 350 noms on the first day, and with the same number of nominators and two noms per day, we'd only get 140 instead. Being a day or two (or an hour or two) late wouldn't be as big a deal.

yeah i had even considered being ok with only 1 nom every [x] hours, as a thing. just to spread the listening order between people out.

literally the only problem i have with that is "i have fun coming up with an order of noms in given block of 5 or whatever so people listen to the songs in a cool order" and "i like listening to a bunch of noms from the same person in a block". but that's definitely not nearly as important as making it easier for everyone's contributions to be heard without a wild bias based around how fast someone was able to post (or even be present online for)...and those same things could happen as long as not literally every day had as small a count as 1-2 noms (but i'm not theoretically opposed to that either)

i mean even cutting things down from 5 to 4 per day would make everything easier at the current participant count

Could do

Day 1: 1 nom
Day 2: 2 noms
Day 3: 3 noms
Day 4: 4 noms
Day 5: 5 noms
Day 6: Freeze
Day 7/8: Unlimited?

something like that has actually been suggested before...and imo...it honestly sounds awesome as a setup

@Raetsel_Lapin Some discussion was being brought up on Discord over Secret of the Forest link getting replaced with the SNES version instead of the current link thats the DS version?

(Also apologies for not weighing in on the discussion in here much while Im bust with bracket stuff lol but I am reading and will definitely have things to say eventually!!!)

I don't exactly have both links on hand to compare to them, but I feel confident in saying I would have supported any version of the song so I'm fine with changing the link to whatever everyone else prefers.

azuarc posted...

t's just that instead of a clique of Touhou users, now it's Xenoblade.

you jinxed it

xenoblade will never have another retiree

This is irksome because I've been nominating Xenoblade songs since I joined VGMC and I think there's only been one instance of a Xenoblade song getting in that I've supported or been willing to support. Maybe 2 after this year but it's on the borderline.

Mac Arrowny posted...

Could do

Day 1: 1 nom
Day 2: 2 noms
Day 3: 3 noms
Day 4: 4 noms
Day 5: 5 noms
Day 6: Freeze
Day 7/8: Unlimited?

I like this

I would allow full nominations before the freeze. Most people are tapped out by 15 anyways so it won't add that many more.

As for the current discussion: Let me start by saying that I love the series and I'm just happy to be allowed to take part in it. I'm aware that it is a lot of time and effort on the parts of those trying to host it, as well as those trying to find new things to nominate--I'm here because I just want to dive into a large amount of new songs and this community never fails to give me a lot of songs.

That being said, listening to the entirety of the playlist takes 3 days, 3 hours, 8 minutes, and 48 seconds. And most of that came from the first two days. It was rough and there literally were not enough hours in the day to keep up with things... I was in a position to basically do nothing but listen to VGM for two straight days and felt like I was barely making any progress. I wouldn't say the total amount is too large, but the nominations should really be spread out a bit more. I was personally thinking something like "3 original nominations per day for the first four days" to get things to a more manageable amount, but Mac's suggestion in #113 also sounds good. Just... something. (I'd argue four songs per day is still too much to deal with, especially as there is a non-zero chance that I make the problem worse by actually nominating multiple songs next time, but I'd accept it as least trying to make a compromise.

...of course I'd also accept removing all restrictions and refusing to acknowledge that the problem exists because I will agree to anything that results in me getting my yearly influx of new songs...)

As for the issue of locks, I do like locking because leaving everything up in the air until the last second is more stressful than I'd like, but I've gotten to enjoy the lock system twice in a row and would be willing to give it up so those who prefer classic rules can have their fun too. My first thought is just a generic "no more than half the bracket can be locked" rule so that both camps get <i>something</i>, but I'm sure everyone else has had that thought (and indeed NFUN brought it up directly back on Page 1) so I'm sure all the pros & cons of something that simple have already been discussed.

(I will concede that allowing everything to be locked has indeed given me far more influence over the bracket than I probably should have. Between having the time to show up whenever the action started, the willingness to abandon things I love to support things I like, and the blatant greed to ram my supports through this bracket is heavily skewed towards things I like. Obviously I couldn't get all those songs in on my own and am not the original nominator of any of the tracks, but trying to look at the results from an objective standpoint... I likely should have backed off a bit towards the end so other people had a greater voice. So either scaling back on the amount of locks or making the locking harder, so that more people's input matters, is probably better for the health of the series? But I think I'll stay out of that particular conversation from now on because I'm not really able to predict how changing the rules will impact things and wish to defer to those with stronger beliefs on the topic.)

To me the problem of setting a limit on the number of things that can lock is that it's probably better for people that can listen through the playlist quickly.

Playing with specific numbers probably mostly fixes that, but it seems better to just not have that be a thing to begin with.

(Yes I am aware the bracket size functionally does this no matter what)

azuarc posted...

I think there's far less homogeneity in this bracket than there was when I took over. Case in point, someone said there's only 4 Falcom songs.

In my view, the homogeneity problem is actually exacerbated significantly by having such a large bracket. The stuff that gets into the field is super diverse and not homogenous at all IMO, but were all aware that stuff like Neko Nabe, The Elephants Foot of Obnoxious Music, the ambient Uru track or that 75-minute thing have negligible chances of making it past the first round. Thats fine, just having something you like featured in the contest is a win in itself, but the fact remains that theyll be filtered out even further from the finals and round 2 is going to be a 128-song bracket comprised of mainly RPG battle themes and Japanese rhythm game tracks when we could have had a 128-song bracket with round 1s variety.

I see where you're coming from but it's not as if other things can't do well at all. Looking at only the retirees from last year, it's true there's a lot of RPG battle themes, but stuff like Digifamily, Catabolism, and Living in the City also managed to make it there.

DoctorJimmy133 posted...

but were all aware that stuff like Neko Nabe, The Elephants Foot of Obnoxious Music, the ambient Uru track or that 75-minute thing have negligible chances of making it past the first round.

i wouldn't be so sure about that last one

Hbthebattle posted...

i wouldn't be so sure about that last one

Well, one is supposed to listen to the whole thing in order to vote against it so you may have a point

I was actually planing to skip voting in every match it was in...

DoctorJimmy133 posted...

The stuff that gets into the field is super diverse and not homogenous at all IMO, but were all aware that stuff like Neko Nabe, The Elephants Foot of Obnoxious Music, the ambient Uru track or that 75-minute thing have negligible chances of making it past the first round.

That 75 minute song might have a chance of making it through a round or 2 by virtue of people abstaining from voting in its matches because they don't want to spend that long listening.

Honestly I was going to say this earlier but forgot:

I think that if the votals for prime's match are substantially lower (say by a factor of 2? idk) than the other matches, then it should be disqualified regardless of result.

mycro & deo have said they plan to stick prime (and suite photoconductivity) at the end of the bracket and warn people well in advance so they have time to decide on its match beyond just the normal 24 hours

Hbthebattle posted...

mycro & deo have said they plan to stick prime (and suite photoconductivity) at the end of the bracket and warn people well in advance so they have time to decide on its match beyond just the normal 24 hours

I guarantee most people won't listen in advance.

regarding prime. one thing we're intending to do, is for the match that contains it to be very late. and repeatedly advertise that it might be worth everyone's time to listen beforehand on whatever day is most convenient for them (rather than expecting everyone to do it within the same limited 24h span of time)

will that help? i don't know, but people on the discord did do a listening party to listen to it all beforehand too. so i think it's safe to say we're ok with "you have listened to this in full, once, at some point relatively recently. we're not going to make you do it [specifically in this exact 24h window] "

put it on in the background during a commute? whatever is convenient. as long as anyone voting in the match listens to it before the match..

i would probably not make as much of a big deal out of suite photoconductivity because that's not /that/ much longer than some tracks we've had in the contest before. but if anyone wants to get the match for that one out of the way beforehand for similar reason, i think it's a good idea.

(note: i'm not actually sure we're putting photoconductivity vs prime specifically as we might've half-serious half-joked about---some people have expressed not wanting it that way. but both toward the end makes sense for the reasons stated of giving lots of warning about them beforehand)

((oh. i see i was too late to make this lengthy post already))

I will listen to prime 4507 exactly once unless I really like it

Could do

Day 1: 1 nom
Day 2: 2 noms
Day 3: 3 noms
Day 4: 4 noms
Day 5: 5 noms
Day 6: Freeze
Day 7/8: Unlimited?

I like this

I like this

Making a limit on the number of locks is an interesting idea, but I think it would work better to just to make it more difficult to lock music, though we could do a limit on locks to prevent the worst case sceneario, of course. Hesitating on whether it's better to lock something or to not lock something is the ideal situation, methinks. It could be tough to figure out that balance, so it's probably better to err on the side of it being too difficult to lock music rather than being too easy (as we have all witnessed). This is what other people have been saying already, of course.

I'm not sure what to think about homogeneity in these contests, since it seems like to me there is good variety regardless. Could be better, of course. I feel like KCF, too. Most of the music I've been able to get in VGMC were well-known beforehand. VGMC 14 I went 5/5 for "familiar" music, and 1/5 for "new" music. VGMC 15 I went 4/4 for familiar music, and 1/7 for new music. This year I went 2/2 for familiar music, and 2/16 for new music.

Total that makes me 11/11 for familiar music and 4/28 for new music the past three years..... the inequality here is pretty crazy! If you count music that almost made the bracket, I'm 6/28, though....

(by "familiar" music I'm talking about "returners", music from BOST matches, or a new version of a returner, e.g. Danger ARM version).

Those numbers exclude nomination conflicts. Thermosphere, In the Doldrums, and Rock Castle were all going to be nominated. If you count nomination conflicts that puts me at 7/31....

EDIT: I made a mistake in the numbers, which has been fixed, hopefully.

Re the 'ramp up' 1/2/3/4/5/Unlimited thing

Aside from being kinda complicated, the problem is that it means you have even less time to listen to most of the nominations. Yes you give a special glowing 'listen to me' to your day 1 and 2 noms this way, but then what about the huge amount of noms that arrive in days 3+? They're going to be completing with each other even harder than before and there will be less time to listen to them all, because the bulk of nominations will occur in later days instead of day 1.

I honestly don't care either way if it's implemented this way, but I don't see how it'll help with most of the issues people were complaining about compared to 4/4/4/4/4. In fact, it may make some things worse. So... I'm specifically saying the 'ramp up' part isn't worth it.

Perhaps day 1 can be changes to 2 nominations. If someone can make it through 120+ songs in the first 24 hours before more songs get posted, they are probably going to make it through the entire list anyways.

I said this on the discord but I'll say it here: It's like 'cleaning' up a messy room by sweeping all of the dust into the next room over. You didn't get rid of the mess, you just moved it to a new spot.

If 60 people want to nominate 10 things, then no matter whether you do 1/2/3/4, 2/2/3/3, 3/3/2/2, 1/1/1/7 or 7/1/1/1, you're going to end up with 600 things in the playlist at the end of Day 4. But by making Day 1 a smaller number of noms, then what you ARE doing is increasing the number of noms that appear on Day 2-4 and consequently giving all of those songs 1 less day to be heard + making the crowd on those days bigger.

Likewise, from the "give some noms special attention so people listen to them" perspective. Yes, small Day 1 will make those songs shine more, but it's always a tradeoff. Less songs on Day 1 means more songs on Day 2+, which makes all of those shine LESS. Not only that, but you'll have less chances of impressing people. Are you willing to pin your hopes on just 2 of your picks, at the risk of them being 2 songs not many people want to support? Only to then screw over the 8 you didn't give special attention to more than in previous years?

DireKrow posted...

Yes, small Day 1 will make those songs shine more, but it's always a tradeoff. Less songs on Day 1 means more songs on Day 2+, which makes all of those shine LESS.

It doesn't make them shine less. There are people every year who ONLY listen to day 1 noms when planning their supports (whether this is due to time, fatigue in later days, or non-interest). A system that allows more people to get their noms earlier in the playlist benefits everybody who posts on day 1, even if they're not in the first hour.

So yeah it doesn't address the other isues you mentioned, but it is a solution to this one specific issue.

You aren't wrong. But there are simply two different problems.

1) 1000+ difference songs is too many for most people to even attempt to work through. Many who attempt don't make it either.
2) Uneven visibility for showing up a day late or even 1 minutes late.

Changing how many nominations unlock does NOT address problem 1. Likely we still end up with 1000+ songs.

But, it does effect problem 2. If someone is 30 seconds late, their song is now 24th instead of 120th.

It does reduce the amount of time to listen to later songs in the queue, but as crazy as this sounds it doesn't matter.

Imagine we get 1000 songs like this:
Day 1: +1000
Day 2 onwards: +0 (total 1000)

Imagine someone listens to 100 songs a day:
End of day 1: 900 songs in the queue
End of day 2: 800 songs in the queue
End of day 3: 700 songs in the queue
End of day 4: 600 songs in the queue
End of day 5: 500 songs in the queue
End of day 6: 400 songs in the queue
End of day 7: 300 songs in the queue
End of day 8: 200 songs in the queue
End of day 9: 100 songs in the queue
End of day 10: Done!

Imagine we get the 1000 songs like this:
Day 1: +100
Day 2: +200 (total 300)
Day 3: +300 (total 600)
Day 4: +400 (total 1000)
Day 5 onwards: +0 (total 1000)

Imagine someone listens to 100 songs a day:
End of day 1: 0 songs in the queue
End of day 2: 100 songs in the queue
End of day 3: 300 songs in the queue
End of day 4: 600 songs in the queue
End of day 5: 500 songs in the queue
End of day 6: 400 songs in the queue
End of day 7: 300 songs in the queue
End of day 8: 200 songs in the queue
End of day 9: 100 songs in the queue
End of day 10: Done!

Despite seemingly less time, it takes 10 days either way to get through the entire queue. Extra time to listen to a song doesn't matter if all that time is spent in the queue. It only becomes an issue if the queue becomes empty (which can happen if the first day is limited to 1 nom so I suggested increasing it to 2).

A case where it would matter is when there is a person who is just flying through the queue.

Imagine we get 1000 songs like this:
Day 1: +1000
Day 2 onwards: +0 (total 1000)

Imagine someone listens to 200 songs a day:
End of day 1: 800 songs in the queue
End of day 2: 600 songs in the queue
End of day 3: 400 songs in the queue
End of day 4: 200 songs in the queue
End of day 5: Done!

Imagine we get the 1000 songs like this:
Day 1: +100
Day 2: +200 (total 300)
Day 3: +300 (total 600)
Day 4: +400 (total 1000)
Day 5 onwards: +0 (total 1000)

Imagine someone listens to 200 songs a day:
End of day 1: 0 songs in the queue (Halfway through Day 1)
End of day 2: 0 songs in the queue
End of day 3: 100 songs in the queue
End of day 4: 300 songs in the queue
End of day 5: 100 songs in the queue
End of day 6: Done! (Halfway through Day 6)

In this case, the person goes through the queue so quickly they empty it out with time to spare on Day 1. The person won't finish all 1000 songs until halfway into Day 6. In this case, they are being delayed by the nominations being made in waves. But, this isn't a big issue because they are still finishing the entire queue several days before people who listen to a reasonable number of songs per day.

Just for the record there are people who posted late on day 1 and they had already removed their day 1 nominations by the time I'd made it that far in the playlist. This wasn't even people who came in 3 days late; it was like people who were just busy and posted at 11 EDT instead of 10 or whatever.

DireKrow posted...

If 60 people want to nominate 10 things, then no matter whether you do 1/2/3/4, 2/2/3/3, 3/3/2/2, 1/1/1/7 or 7/1/1/1, you're going to end up with 600 things in the playlist at the end of Day 4.

This is not true. If you look at least year's nominations topic, there were quite a few people who nominated 20+ original songs. I don't believe anyone did so this year. I think that's because by the time they had the chance, there were more songs out there from other people that they were interested in supporting.

Mac Arrowny posted...

This is not true. If you look at least year's nominations topic, there were quite a few people who nominated 20+ original songs. I don't believe anyone did so this year. I think that's because by the time they had the chance, there were more songs out there from other people that they were interested in supporting.

(sweats)

i apologize; but i think i can not continue to host this contest, at least not for the remainder of this year. i'm giving everything to deo and even my participation this year will be distant and minimal if at all.

(i may still do some amount of work behind the scenes [probably finishing the bracket construction i've already sorta helped start, and am very used to doing], and deo has already told me he is capable of running everything 100% on his own if i had to leave anyways. but myself intersecting with a large social group at this time and having the weight of being responsible for as much as i've made myself responsible for broadly, is not a good idea for me to entangle myself with at this time in my life)

i really wanted to stick it out, but there are some serious issues for me at this time in my life (both psychological and physical. and even just bad timing in other ways) that me focusing on any degree to this contest---very distinctly, has been making worse. in ways that i anticipated, and have even dealt with their intersection with vgmc in previous years even. but they are far worse this year than in any previous time. i'm putting myself in danger by forcing myself to see this through just out of a sense of seeing it as my 'responsibility' and not wanting to come across as someone flaky and irresponsible. but it is probably not worth it

deo has always done some of the heaviest lifting anyways since we took over (last year i constructed most of the bracket, but after that...my main time sink was mostly just doing almost all the composer finding and loop point finding myself, a feature that i'd willingly added that wasn't even there before. this year amazing people like uf8/az/p0 have been slaving away finding all the loop points for me, and robin and plenty of others have wonderfully researched composers as well!! thank you so much to all of you!)

when deo and i took over, i explicitly said i wanted someone else to fall back on (hence, willingly having the contest have "2 co-hosts" rather than one host, deo being the other in this case). because i knew i had these issues, and might need someone to fall back on at times. i was hoping i would never have to completely fade away, but i think it's time, at least for the time being.

thank you to everyone who's helped out this year in any way, who i may have neglected to mention. but it's time for me to at least temporarily step back from b8 for now. ideally i will return next year (or even next month? who knows), but if i don't, i'm very happy to have known everyone who's part of this community for as long as i have

(really, many times in the past few years i've said "my favorite community" is "board 8's vgm crew", and i do mean it when i say that. it's not just empty flattery. there's experiences i cherish that i can only have with this group of people, doing the activities we do together. vgmc IS one of them, but if i am to heal from my the quite severe issues i deal with, i need to step away from the particular stimulation of this environment---as well as away from many other things, for quite a while.)

i MAY try to pop back temporarily into the discord sometimes for vgm guessing games specifically on weekends still, but don't count on that. and for other reasons, i'm going to have to be away from the internet entirely for months, at some undetermined probably 3 month time-interval at some point within this year. so i'll be pretty distant for a while, but my goal IS to be fully-functional and back everywhere around 2023 if i can; and i'm not planning on totally abandoning everyone. because i love you all and what you've provided as an enriching experience to my life

sorry this post is all over the place and articulated in a convoluted way, but tldr:
- i'm leaving due to serious issues with my brain and body; that trying to remain attentive to this contest has made even worse
- i will ideally be back and still co-hosting in vgmc17 if i can.
- i might sporadically pop back in for various things as soon as even this weekend---who knows?! but i should not be counted on to be able to be around right now.
- i love this community, and wish i didn't have to leave it even partially. and i apologize for any inconvenience or to anyone who will miss me during my currently-undetermined-intensity-of-absence absence

deo will do a great job he's run entire contests himself before and those turned out to be so cool.

thank you for hanging out with me and i will see you all at the time i am ready to see you again! whenever that is

Take all the time you need to feel better, Mycro. I'm sure that's what all of us want most.

:(

Best of luck, hope it all works out.

i will make sure rock castle retires in your absence!!! hehehe

Good luck with doing what needs to be done and I hope that you will be able to return eventually. I have genuinely enjoyed reading all of your posts about music (and everything else) over the years. Thank you for all that you've done for this board, and we will miss you.

Take care of yourself and thanks for all the work!

I hope things get better for you. Thanks for all you've put into VGMC!

thank you for all the work you've put into this event and helping to make my first vgmc (15 ) a good one (pollution/purpose debacle notwithstanding)