I am aware that a handful of people here are doing their best to find the right concept for the game, struggling with the unpredictable dynamics of a site that has a content that is generated by users. Yet - or therefore - I think pspan's decision to quit deserves extra attention. I'm sure pspan is not alone in his frustration about the time consuming nature of the game as it is. As for me, for a number of months I did my best to solve as many shots as I could, but such behavior really takes a lot of time. And the new shots keep coming every day, and in enormous numbers... In the end it's impossible to keep up with the pace of the site, unless you have no life outside WTM.
So after some time you either give up the game entirely, or you decide to take it easy, solving some shots here and there, now and then (which is what I do now), and don't bother about the competitive side of the site. Personally I think that's a pity. WTM is getting more valuable every day as a database of movie stills, which is great, but in the end it is a game, isn't it?
Asmodai teasingly recommended to just do the side contests. Actually that is not such a bad idea. :-)
But, just out of curiosity: do you WTM admins and moderators see the time consuming nature of the game as a problem that should be addressed at some point, or not?
Well, for myself, I can say that I quit playing competitively in FF, because of time problems. This was, however, mostly caused by having to study 24/7 for exams. Now that I have time off, I might go play again, or just stick with browsing when I feel like it. I don't think, however, that it is a problem that needs to be adressed. In any game counts, if you want to be among the best, it takes lots of time. If you don't care for position among others, but you do like to give yourself a challenge, how about solving as many shots possible that are in one day in FF, or indeed do a sidequest.
Antituur, I agree with you. I think far too many shots are submitted and in turn accepted every day. It just isnt possible for anyone but the hardcore player to stay in any way competitive. I have a few friends who play WTM but they gave up on FF and NS because they couldnt keep up. As asmodai suggested, they just play the vault quests now. I know that already we put more shots through than the admins would like.
I'm sure the admins would welcome any (simple) suggestions or solutions.
I think I realised soon enough how much time I ended up spending around here, some time I actually can't afford to waste, and as there's too much outside here to consume the time I do have available I just don't care being competitive or not. If one can spend a lot of time here solving shots, I think that's good, and for those of us who can't, well, no big deal also, right? I don't see it as a problem that the site has many snaps - that's actually a good thing in my opinion. If you take it seriously, might be frustrating not being able to solve that many snaps or posting them or whatever, but if you take this just as something to spend some time and have fun with, it's great - I've been bookmarking a whole load of thing to take a look laters :) that might help me having some more culture eventually. And something pretty curious, I noticed a very high improvement in how my memory works (laugh loud if you will, it did :P). I guess my image memory is getting better, I'm getting faster in associate things now than I was before I started playing more seriously, and paying more atention to details than I used to also. But! Also recognise pspan problem. Sometimes I'm way too eager to get home and see how things are here, and that's the point where a yellow sign starts pulsing in my head. I don't think I'm making any specific points here, except for just cooling down. What I see is that the site has grown too much, not a bad thing, but the more people in a place, the more potential trouble and conflicts, and that's what happens naturally. Not getting slots for famous movies, getting tons of slots every day to check out, the seasonal unbalance in ratings, for me it's all due to this much people who find it here a nice game and (that's where the good thing is) want to participate and show a bit of themselves. We'll just probably adjust with time, imo, the mods and the players in general are doing the best here =)
maybe you can make the FF a monthly competition, and maybe it's an idea to make the uploader of a shot anonymous and when it's accepted the uploader appears
I agree with Antituur and them00ch about time consuming. Sometimes ago I proposed to reduce the uploads to 2 for supporters and 1 for non supporters every 48 hours. This simple malthusianist change could reduce easily the numbers of shots in FF per day together with a better rate of acceptance, and thus less frustration for the uploaders.
I think efji has got a point. Uploading (and solving for that matter) can get quite frustrating (no slots available, rejected snapshots) And reducing the number of uploads can prefent that. I don't spent any time in NS, that means I don't vote anymore ( I really do want to do this, but I can't seem to find the time :) ). I can understand more people are doing this because it's very time consuming. edit: Caspar, why do you wan't to make the uploaders anonymous?
The mods said he used multiple accounts. They gave him ban for a year and he deleted his account. I'm talking to him now and he denies using multiple accounts.
Oh wow... that really is strange, he was one of my fellows, didn't think he would do that, but I'm sure the mods wouldn't say something like that if it wouldn't be based on facts... But why would someone in his position(rank) cheat anyways?... Oh well, I think this is something that will stay confusing, since we're all not involved directly and will never know the total truth... But besides all that... I'm still gonna miss him and his shots. Sati may I ask you to tell him that, too?
Yeah, but I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision for the moderators and creators and I'm sure we can trust them that they had their reasons for making that decision... We don't know what they know so... It's not like they do something like this all the time... I don't even know if it has ever happened before, that they banned someone
Yeah i know that, and such a decision is never easy. They did it a month ago too, they banned a guy who also used multiple accounts, he deleted his account too but he's back under another name.
I really don't get it: why would anyone use multiple accounts? How many times would you have to vote on your own shots for them to be accepted? That's time consuming, not solving shots!
I know there are lots of shots to solve. I can still keep up with the FF, but I hardly ever check the NS, nowadays. Still, I don't think that's a reason to reduce de number of uploads. As SunsetWalker said, some people have time to play. It's not like you win anything when you get to the Hall of Fame.
One more thing I don't get: XidiosyncratiX was on the World Cup sidequest top 10 and about to win some Awesome Uploads when he just deleted his account (or got his account deleted). If he did that, why now? Why not wait?
Let's just kill that rumour: mods or creators CAN'T delete other accounts. It's just technically impossible (unless tliff wants to spend hours hacking something into the database, which isn't practical). We can only ban users from voting and/or uploading, and that happens rarely. If an account is deleted, it is because the user him/herself did it.
@fungus Ah thanks mate :) I see I missed some things while I was away the last time ;) But I have to agree with some others here, I really can't understand why people do something like this, there's nothing real to win or whatever... maybe some people are just bad loosers, even if it's just a virtual game ^^
At the beginning of WTM 2.0 I have instantly thought that there are too many shots every day! Nearly impossible to watch them all without losing too much time. Anyway that's the reason why I stop competing for a good high score ranking. Hence I propose to establish a limit for a specific number of NS-shots per day.