Mind you, I didn't say what I did to say that the people that score 500K or whatever in Galaga have a ~chance~ against Steve, my concern was that it's going to discourage them if they can't even upload it and have it worth a few measly points for all the effort they put into the game.(posted 9204 days ago)I dislike the idea of a cutoff simply because the skill level required to be 'good' at a game in the leaderboard's eyes is still highly questionable. Take Mr. Goemon, a Japanese game that I happened upon. I played that game a handful of times and got first, and for that matter, there was only one other score up there anyway. :) If I ~really~ cared about that game and I ~really~ put forth a first-class effort with it like I have for a handful of others, I wouldn't have stopped until I beat the silly thing on one credit. As it happens I think I got to round 2. There, now everybody has a game they can play a few times and beat me on. Don't say I never gave you nuthin'. ;)
I beat around the bush on that point a lot, but I hope you all see where I'm coming from. What a person's score on a game is can be totally unrelated to the effort they put into it. Lots of players never broke a million in Galaga despite their best efforts. ~I~ hadn't broken a million until the tourney rolled around and I had to do it, or else. :) It doesn't mean that the person didn't try, or that they're not good, even. I don't see why they should be punished for not being the best.
In more practical terms, I'm aware that my idea isn't the most workable. This being a competitive atmosphere, giving out grades for effort, as it were, can and will grow tiresome. But as I've said before, MARP is not the 'elitist group' of a select few that Stig talks about (ooooh, I've got a flame coming to me now, I can already feel it :), it's several hundred guys (and girls, I'd suppose) that like MAME and want their scores to be known to the world. Being denied leaderboard points is not a ~big~ problem, more than that I'm thinking of a situation where the script simply says, "No, that score's not big enough, you can't upload that." If I were a newbie to MARP, that first attempt would also be my last. Screw a bunch of people that only cater to the ones that spent all their lives playing one game!
Well, that's what ~I'd~ say, anyway. :) Your mileage may vary, natch. Anyway, it's 7 a.m., I'm losing coherency and my train of thought just hopped off the track and wiped out a small tribal village in a fiery wreck. Time for bed. :)
Brian