Here is a good (or WAY good) idea!

[Adventure]

Well, then go ahead and create that thread.

And yes, the person who made the high score will be mentioned next to it. Good you pointed it out again.

[DuckBoy]

I'm going to be the party pooper.

I don't much care for this idea.

1. It just frustrates those who try and try and trrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyy to get the high score but never do (believe me I'm always in that position) then see people who plays the game just ONCE and gets an insanely high score. I know its stupid to feel that way but believe me it is not a great feeling to sit here and play a game twenty times in order to achieve a reasonable score then come here and see that somebody got triple that score in just their first play (if they say how many times- arcades I can tell how many times they play). Moot point but the sentiment is there.

2. Generally it is almost always the same people who play and from experience most likely the same people who will ALWAYS get the "high score" and 1st place.

for me I try to just play the game for myself, so it makes no matter to me if the thread is there or not but I can also see hard feelings surfacing regarding who gets there in the end.

I'm just looking at it from the other side.

I realize that this is meant to be 'friendly competition'- I just hope it doesn't go beyond that- the capability is there but I hope it doesn't.


Signed,

Devil's Advocate Duck

[Justeazy]

Well, thanks for your input DuckBoy.
Those are some good points, but we would have to establish some ground rules...
The rules aren't totally refined yet, so, even though Adventure gave the "Go Ahead" I would like to hold off on it until the rules are agreed upon.

Here is what I got so far:

This will be run in a very similar way to the Game Contest thread.
1: It will be a weekly game, however, with no exceptions on the time if someone just posted a winning score 5 minutes before the time is up.
This means not only playing, but strategy in your posts is key to winning.
2: The winner of the game will get: their score and their name next to the game in question, on the first post of the thread.
3: Screenshots are a MUST. No exceptions. If you forgot to SS your score out of excitement, you are unfortunatly out of luck.

New ideas:
3: Everybody can enter their scores for every game, but they can only be clarified as the winner once a month, in light of DuckBoys input.
4: The game type (escape, RPG, puzzle, etc.) must change between games, this way, if you are best at 1 type of game, and you want to prove it, you have a better chance to get your score on more of them. Also, it keeps it alive in the sense that it will not get as repetitive doing the same type over and over.

Questions:
5: Are people going to be able to post winning scores to old games, or just the current game?
6: Who will choose the next game, the winner, a mod, or someone else?
7: And, where exactly should this be posted?


If you have any input, would like to add/change/remove anything here, please say so.

[Mistery]

I agree, we need to clarify some rules/details first.

Here are some of my personal thoughts:

@Duckie
I'm also pretty bad is such highscore games
So in the Game Contest thread, I only played very few of them, which I really liked, without any hope of having a good score compared to other players - just for fun.
You don't need to participate in the contest thread. You can just try/play those games in the regular threads for fun. But I can understand your frustration seeing those highscores
On the other hand, I can also understand if players would like to have a friendly competition. In Game Contest thread, where there is a daily competition, we didn't experience any problems - although it's true that the highscores aren't gathered in the first post.

If everyone who participates, can see it as a friendly competition and fun, and is honest with their scores, there shouldn't be a problem.
However, participants must also understand, that if they have the highest score in a game, this doesn't mean that they are the best player from all forum members. They just have the highest score from all who have posted their scores.
In case things don't work out (cheating, fights, frustrations etc.), moderation would have to lock the thread - this is not what the thread is meant for.

As for posting highscores for older games:
I can again understand this point, but this would be difficult to organize. We would have again a mess in that thread with scores from the daily/monthly contest plus new highscores of previous games. I don't know yet how to handle this point. If anyone has a good suggestion that wouldn't be time consuming for moderation to use, feel free to post it

I think that changing the game genre (at least as much as it is possible - there are not many room escape games with scores ), I completely agree with that.

Players cannot see the hours and minutes if we would have weekly/monthly challenges. Therefore the time would be up as soon as the post that suggests that game says "1 week ago" or "1 month" ago.

We also need to clarify who would post the next game. I think that it shouldn't be up to moderators to do so. Either the winner has to post a game from a different genre (in that case we need to specify a time period how long we have to wait for the winner to post the new game - otherwise the thread might die if a member doesn't log in for several days or even more); another possibility would be that the first person who posts after moderation announces the winner of the last round, could choose the game.

The game should be posted in the Forum Games subforum in my opinion.

[funja]

wow so much stuff has been added sice my last post such great ideas and i agree that there are details to be worked out still but i still think this is going to be a great
(subforum,thread) or whatever it ends up being even if i never get the highscore

[Justeazy]

Rules so far?

Here is what I got so far: (In the forum games section?)

This will be run in a very similar way to the Game Contest thread.
1: It will be a weekly game, however, with no exceptions on the time. If someone just posted a winning score 5 minutes before the time is up.
This means not only playing, but strategy in your posts is key to winning.
However, a moderator will have to validate that the screenshot is authentic, and that the posted in the time alloted, in order to be given the official win.
(added that moderator part, should keep it honest)
2: The winner of the game will get: their score and their name next to the
game in question, on the first post of the thread.
3: The winner will also get to post the next game. If they do not post the next game within 24 hours of when a moderator officially gives them the win, then the first person to see that post as "1 day ago" may post the new game.
(sounds pretty fair right?)
4: Screenshots are a MUST. No exceptions. If you forgot to SS your score out of excitement, you are unfortunatly out of luck.
5: The games will be sorted into the same categories as the "free online and offline games" forum and in the same order, so as to make it easier for users to find a specific game.
6: The game type (escape, RPG, puzzle, etc.) should be changed as much as possible between games. This way, everyone gets better practice at all types of games here. Also, it keeps it alive in the sense that it will not get as repetitive doing the same type over and over.


Again, any input of any type is appriciated.
When a mod believes these rules are updated enough, I will post the thread.

[someguy]

that looks amazing.
We could have a whole new thing here on GH.

[DuckBoy]

Questions...

1. How are the mods going to be able to authenticate the screenshots? That's adding more work for them tbh if there's more than 10 people or something in any given thread

2. the section regarding if the winner does not post within a day- How are you going to determine a day considering the time zone differences? This may or may not have an unfair advantage as a "Day" may be done with for the Europeans while the US is 5-8 hours behind. This also depends on which moderator validates/verifies who the winner is. Same is true for determining the time period that people have to play although this is less of a problem in a sense but I can see how it may be hard...
Same is true for "it is posted in the alloted time slot"- it may or may not be difficult to do this because of the time zone difference. I may post a game within what I consider the 24 hour time slot but it may be disqualified because it falls outside of the moderator's perception of the 24 hour rule.

I'm not sure if that makes any sense but..just seeing a few things-- forgive me... too many years as a tester and my team leads always pestering me to elaborate more lol

Please not I'm not trying to shoot down anything (even though I still am not crazy about the idea)-- just a few thoughts to think about.

[someguy]

There is usually something when you post, like, posted one hour ago or something like that.
As for authenticating screenshots, it's not that hard really.
Wait...I hope I'm thinking of the same thing. Specify what your meaning, because I might be thinking of something else.

[Justeazy]

Questions...

1. How are the mods going to be able to authenticate the screenshots? That's adding more work for them tbh if there's more than 10 people or something in any given thread

2. the section regarding if the winner does not post within a day- How are you going to determine a day considering the time zone differences? This may or may not have an unfair advantage as a "Day" may be done with for the Europeans while the US is 5-8 hours behind. This also depends on which moderator validates/verifies who the winner is. Same is true for determining the time period that people have to play although this is less of a problem in a sense but I can see how it may be hard...
Same is true for "it is posted in the alloted time slot"- it may or may not be difficult to do this because of the time zone difference. I may post a game within what I consider the 24 hour time slot but it may be disqualified because it falls outside of the moderator's perception of the 24 hour rule.

Great input Duck,

1: Mod's will not have to authenticate ALL of the screenshots. Just the winning ones, and in the rare case that it has been false, then the next one down. It is fairly simple as they only have to see if the score has had any added/changed numbers/letters, and since many games have their own fonts, this is a very difficult task to preform, and therefore easy to detect.

2: This will only be a problem if any user does not have their time zone set to what it should be. If you have the time zone set to the correct zone that you are in, then, no matter where you are, the time will not matter. As this is a weekly challenge, with a 1 day requirement, the exact times aren't a big issue. The way that the forums work, it will say 1 day ago for the correct time for you, whether it was posted in your 8 o'clock or 5 o'clock. If we went by hours, that would be a different story, as there would be from 24-32 different zones to consider depending on the time of the year (not everyone has daylight saving time) but it will say "1 day ago" at the same time for all members, and the same with the "1 week ago" message.


Thank you for pointing out these possible faults, but I believe that they are covered, and not that big of an issue. Any further input you have is still appriciated, as it could always be better,

[funja]

i want too play now so long but some many improvements to what i think will be another great part of GH. This is still improving and i am out of ideas and it sounds to me that everything is covered,but i guess you have to be sure. It sounds like a great thing to do when no one is online which i have alot for some reason

[DuckBoy]

Hmm

how can they authenticate it if they've never seen the end screen if they have never played it? I'm pretty sure in most cases it will be possible but I DO know a few good artists who could probably replicate whatever the font is. For the most part I don't think it will matter screen to screen & monitor to monitor but there's always some small variances especially in color. Even then.. How can you authenticate that the person DID get that score in the time frame allotted? The screen shot could have come from months ago or years ago even (in fact I still have a book worm deluxe screen shot of a very high score lol.
Again I don't think the majority of members would do this but as you said you want to keep this honest. I can see authenticating so that people don't "doctor" the pic but I'm not sure how you could authenticate WHEN the screenie was done.

Hopefully GH doesn't have this sort of community or members but its not a perfect world and always a possibility.

[Justeazy]

Hmmm....
Well, I don't think there is a rule that the SS has to be taken BETWEEN the start and finish, just posted before time is up...
But then again, I don't know if the rules are done yet...
I'll wait to see what a mod has to say about this, and if it doesn't matter, I'll make bookworm a game sometime so you can post that high score of yours,

[DuckBoy]

lmao if I can find it... I can't remember if it was on the gateway desktop that GreyHound so kindly lost

[Justeazy]

It has been 3 days with no new issues, so I will post this thread tomorrow, unless a mod says the rules need more definition before then.

This is the Up-to-Date rules:
This will be run in a very similar way to the Game Contest thread.
1: It will be a weekly game, however, with no exceptions on the time. Even if someone just posted a winning score 5 minutes before the time is up. This means not only playing, but strategy in timing your posts is key to winning.
However, if a moderator determines that the screenshot is fake, or the score has been tampered with in any way, then the poster is disqualified, for a time frame that the determining mod says.
2: The winner of the game will get: their score and their name next to the game in question, on the first post of the thread.
3: The winner will also get to post the next game. If they do not post the next game within 24 hours of when a moderator officially gives them the win, then the first person to see that post as "1 day ago" may post the new game.
4: Screenshots are a MUST. No exceptions. If you forgot to SS your score out of excitement, you are unfortunatly out of luck.
5: The games will be sorted into the same categories as the "free online and offline games" forum and in the same order, so as to make it easier for users to find a specific game.
6: The game type (escape, RPG, puzzle, etc.) should be changed as much as possible between games. This way, everyone gets better practice at all types of games here. Also, it keeps it alive in the sense that it will not get as repetitive doing the same type over and over.