News / New NE Release Paradigm

I think it just blacktile land isn't included in that. Since lots of parks use large bodies of water.

okay wow, i'm happy that this actually did stir up some debate as we had hoped it would.
i'll try to address all the points people have brought up.

dr dirt, when we were voting, we noticed that what matters the most about a park is the feeling it conveys. i am sure you have a few h2h parks that you really really enjoyed, or a few pt2 entries too that you like to look at every once in a while maybe. then, you have seen probably dozens of full scale parks that you found ugly and boring and never looked at them again. would you not rank those h2h parks higher? when you think about it, you'd have to, right? at least that's the conclusion we came to. we found that if a park really manages to strike on a so called "emotion scale" then it is considered a "good" park and stays in people's minds. for each of us, the importance of the map size plays a different role. some regard size to be very important because the more someone builds the more he has accomplished, right? you seem to be one of those who see parkmaking in that way. i do, too, by the way. however, there are others who don't really care about the size. they just focus on their "emotion". if it's there then they rank the park accordingly. you cannot believe how many hours we discussed about these different approaches to voting for parks. it was an issue that evil wme originally brought up when the panel first opened. as a result, we had to close the testing polls only to debate over this for i believe 10 or so days. it was terrible because we couldn't find a solution. eventually, we redesigned the polls so that both approaches to voting would be possible and a global scale for voting was established. there was one aspect we all agreed on though, which was to not allow mini parks for spotlight. hence we agreed that an additional requirement for winning spotlight would be the 115x115 min size restriction. this means that spotlights will remain "bigger" parks that are of top quality. the combination of size and quality is what's so hard to achieve. therefore the spotlight level score cannot be higher than 14. originally we had considered a 16.5 level for spotlight. we found though that bgss would then not have won. couldn't be right.
now, i agree with your worry that this might encourage too many small scale park submissions, but i believe that most people (and that goes for the panelists as well) value map size much more than they want to admit. so i don't see these submissions win very frequently, simply because they're just not good enough. also, the madness created by custom scenery for ever more detailed and work-intensive parkmaking is reaping people's motivation to start full scale projects. a trend that is unstoppable, unfortunately. only exceptional people like rctnw aren't affected. and see they are directly rewarded with a spotlight win.

gwazi, yes, we will review everything we're sent. we're thankful for your contribution to our site.

jusmith, ranking all our releases under this system is a thought that has come up in some of us, too. i agree it would be rather exciting. however, i do not believe it's possible. the test polls we did took 2 weeks to get roughly about 3/4 of the panelists' votes. something we were rather disappointed about. we realised that it takes extremly enthusiastic people for this kind of job and we already had to replace 2 panelists who showed by far the least initiative and support. so this idea is nice but impossible, i think.

Ge-Ride, did you sign up for a panelist spot? considering your great concern for the correctness of the scores, wouldn't you be interested to join the panel? (that is once a spot opens).
now, for reasons others have mentioned already, i do not believe your concerns should be worried over. and let me tell you that in the panel poll design, the poll has 23 options. 0-20, can't view and "i participated in this submission". we mostly know who was involved in a submission we receive and so even if they aren't so honest and take the "i participated..." option, we can still simply not count their vote when closing the poll however, this has not happened until now because the voting is looking very honest so far, something i'm rather happy about.

Great job on this guys, looks like submissions would be judged more objectively this way..
Major props also for the way the scoring ballot is displayed at the release page of the release!
Gives a great indication how every voting member was feeling about the release and it makes the whole voting system more transparent..

Kind of surprising to see Disney Sea Spain ranked "just" Runner-Up where iris ranked it Spotlight, although I agree with the "silver" nomination..

Great job guys and keep refreshing NE with these kind of new "features"!

SF

Just a tip, I don't think you should put the names of the people who voted in the breakdown thing under each submission's page- it should be anonymous, but you should put the score etc.

^ I disagree. It means we can hire someone to shoot them

Plus I'd like to know what people think of my park and if it is low then why


But this system does appear to be flawed in a way.

I'd say Divinity Ridge is Spotlight quality.

Also a coaster that was rejected recently. I personally find to be better than Kumba's that was released recently

Edited by JJ, 24 August 2008 - 09:44 AM.

Cool, posix. Thanks for the info.

So it's flawed because you don't 100% agree with it? Open your eyes, this is exactly what the panel was put in to place to fix.

^ Well if you BGSS wouldn't make the cut when it the score is 16 for spotlight then something must really be wrong. Maybe it is just the wrong people voting or something? As in those who don't have LL voting for the LL park? Just wondering.

Not saying the panel is bad just wondering why

Edited by JJ, 24 August 2008 - 10:14 AM.

What? JJ BGSS would have made Spotlight... by over two points.

I meant to say 16.5

Sorry



And sorry geewhzz I think flawed was the wrong word to use.

Edited by JJ, 24 August 2008 - 10:18 AM.

i also don't think it's flawed. when you look at the scores, do you really find them that wrong? did divinity ridge really amaze you so much? i think the majority of us didn't like the park much enough for it to win spotlight and that is well reflected in the score it received.

^ It isn't about amazing me. It's whether I fall in love with it or not.

And I understand.

Edited by JJ, 24 August 2008 - 10:35 AM.

Ge you have a right to question things but I feel you aren't thinking right on the whole Majesty thing... it just doesn't make any sense to me. You know damn well how the club works and know what the forums are there so I don't get your thought that there's was some sort of constant sharing of solo projects and that somehow releates to personal bias of us all. I'd say what he advertised at NE easily was more "exoposing" of his style... in fact I think he didn't even show much on Majesty or what he did was shown elsewhere. There were no versions released that were constantly seen or talked about and while that type of thing IS possible (I won't lie) it didn't happen in this case.

And no, I don't say this out of blind defensivness for the club or the panel. Your entire argument here relies on something that never took place. You're looking for a pattern that just isn't there.

So how exactly are the scores decided on? The panelists arent just throwing out an overall number on a scale from 1-20 right? Like there is some kind of criteria or categories to choose the score on?

This means that parks are judged more on skill than likability. That's a good thing for this site which is very serious and business like nowadays.

I know. Whatever happened to having fun when playing video games?

Anyways, looks good. BTW, if BGSS wouldn't have won Spoltight by your standards, maybe it didn't deserve it after all?

I think it was that BGSS wouldn't have won if the spotlight had been determined by an arbitrary minimum value of 16.5. Once we did the sample voting and such (there was a lot of it, btw), the actual minimum value was found to be 14, so it would've won by a lot.

I think the minimums are fair, while still demanding high quality work. And I didn't know our scores would all be on there. That's a nice touch. Hopefully I'm not always the softie.

Very Good !

So how exactly are the scores decided on? The panelists arent just throwing out an overall number on a scale from 1-20 right? Like there is some kind of criteria or categories to choose the score on?

this is what the poll design looks like.

Wait a second. If Pleasre Point got a 10, then that means Dino got a lowere score! That's pathetic, dino was way better. I wish i could switch the two but i can't. (damn)

Edited by RCTCA, 24 August 2008 - 04:07 PM.

^ I think that's because they were rated on different scales. Pleasure Point was rated as a Concept Creation, while Dino Delights was rated on the Spotlight scale, which is more rigorous. That's because the Concept Creation scale is now exclusively for nontraditional park and ride entries, while before it included smaller parks. So if Pleasure Point was resubmitted, it'd be judged on the Spotlight scale, and would probably score lower than Dino Delights.