Originally posted by DarkMattFirst off, I understand perfectly that a strong development team made up of a bunch of hobbyists is very rare. It's even rarer to take a group of people and make a productive team out of them. I mean that's all skills that just making and/or moderating a level design contest doesn't just magically grant to people. However I can't be completely accepting of how this went. I mean come on. It's been how many years? 5? 6? Everyone has a life to tend to but that's not the point. The point is this has been done 9 times before and I was hoping there'd be a progressing understanding of what's needed to bring this together. Maybe there is though, because I can't tell with VLDCX since its ambitions were shot through the roof this year.
As for Vitor, maybe he isn't the devil but one thing to understand is that he was the cause of a LOT of grief, and though most of it was just him overestimating, he was still responsible for the contest's progression. If he's at fault for anything, it's his management skills. I really don't get the people coming in here to preemptively whiteknight for Vitor because so far most of the posts I've read have been valid points, neither derogatory nor opinionated. Also, I'm sure there's a couple other reasons why this contest fell flat besides Vitor, and I too will say he shouldn't be the scapegoat, but if lessons need to be learned we need to start with the biggest issues first, and just from a little bit of reading I can tell the first issue to confront is how management played a lot in this failure to launch.
And that's it. Vitor is at fault for that one thing, and though I can't confirm this because I need it straight from horse's mouth, he had an attitude about it which didn't help with motivation for anyone. That's a problem, and if we really care, we should really think about that instead of defending him from criticism, because this is a time for criticism. However, so far, that's the only thing, so we should focus on that specifically instead of assuming it's all his fault. And not as a "We have to do something about Vitor." way but as a "How can we learn from this?" way.
Also if anyone still has doubts about whether or not VLDCX's goal was possible, do you understand how very unlikely it was to get this whole compilation done? It was, a new concept, known by one guy, and I'm led to believe it was virgin territory even for him. And in addition to having to administer the contest and get it all working? In essence that was a high risk high reward scenario, and when Vitor couldn't do it, well, that's what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket. It's a mistake everyone made, from production team to community, so I'm not going to point the finger at anyone for getting their hopes high. I won't blame people for aiming high.
Reading this, I feel like you're under the incorrect impression that we tried but failed or something. There has legitimately been no work on the VLDCX collab portion so far, and Vitor didn't, like, attempt to handle the dual ROM thing and fail, he just never even started, just like nothing else has been started yet because, due to the nature of how the dual ROMs work, we could not begin level insertion until we knew each level's ranks and their themes, as levels had to be in the ROM with their respective overworlds (which means we had to know their themes for the worlds and their ranks for worst/best world).
I have no doubt that Vitor would've been able to make it work if he had tried, he's got the talent.
It's not a matter of "we aimed too high and didn't reach it despite our best efforts", it's a matter of "the person who was handling this disappeared so we are reassessing how to approach it before any work begins". So really, we didn't take any risks at all so far. It'd be a risk to still attempt it now, but we've evidently decided against that and are aiming for the more realistic result.
(And when you say it's a "mistake everyone made, from production team to community", I'd just like to point out that again, Vitor was the singular member of the production team until he disappeared, minus the judges who obviously have no hand in the actual compilation part.)
Originally posted by DarkMattAnd another thing, there SHOULD be an incentive for people to make good levels. Recognition and approval can be great motivators for people to really think about level design. If people get sad over not clearing the bar, then whatever. If they still care they can try harder next year. What does it matter in the grand scheme of things? I'm not one of those players who feel obligated to play the community's levels or anything like that. I just play video games. I want to play good video games and not bad video games. I really hope this is elementary to this community and I really hope this is what people go for when they make levels, at least for this contest.
The incentive thing is probably an issue with how this is simultaneously a contest and a collab.
The incentive for doing your best is obviously supposed to be scoring high in the contest, but a lot of people don't really care much about the fact that it's a contest, so they just make their usual.
I personally think that making it clear that the collab will be a best-of in the future would make for higher quality entries, but at the same time it'd also be less entries, so I guess it just depends on which of the two we prioritize.
Originally posted by DarkMattAnd I'm gonna really stick this to the community: you're arguing about whether or not you should include the best levels when we already have people going "the levels suck, you aren't missing out on much"? Seriously? It sounds like people are already disappointed with this year's turnout and wants better level design anyway so uhh, is that a legitimate problem or not? Is it something this community should fix or has this community already given up on the inside?
You're confusing "a big chunk/the majority of the submitted levels suck" with "all the levels suck". The ones that do suck are made by people who registered to join the contest and then disappeared, people who have no real experience or stake in the community.
I think we're all aware that there's a big bunch of really really good levels in this contest, which is why a best-of is something we think would be good.
Originally posted by DarkMattTo wrap up, I do like playing your levels, SMWC, and though there's good times and bad times I still appreciate it enough to come back next year to play some more. Buuuuut, it pains me to see you tear yourselves up just to even get something out. I was really hoping I could get your honest try at making entertainment instead of squabbling over how to technically appeal to me. For me, at the end of the day, I'm not that wowed by technical achievements in Super Mario World. I'm here for Mario levels first. And some of VLDC9's and VLDC8's levels did really impress me to the point where I tried my best to find more work by those authors.
I mean this is opinion territory but I see the VLDC, and probably all major contests, as a stomping grounds to flex your entertainment muscles. Technological breakthroughs are great to use but for someone like me, I'm here to enjoy the art of level design. That's what this contest...this vanilla level design contest, should be about. I mean, having played the past 3 or so iterations I'd imagine I would have an idea of what I like and don't like about VLDC. What I like about VLDC are the people who really come forth and bring forth entertaining Mario levels. I just want this community to do that however it pleases, because I still hold hope that SMWC can do that with vanilla assets and gimmicks, even if I've played several VLDCs already.
Nobody is really tearing themselves up (other than the judges who again, we're all aware now that it's not realistic to expect people to play and judge 180+ contest entries). As I explained above, we didn't fumble about and come to a breaking point or anything, this is just our decision before we even start, because we know we don't have the assets to make the original full collab any more, as well as because, hey, look at the calendar. VLDC11 would be planned to start next month, but we don't even have the results for VLDCX yet. VLDCX' existance as a large scale site project has swallowed up a large amount of smaller contests we could've had in this time, without even having begun, just because we knew we would not be able to support both those contests and VLDCX at the same time were they to coincide.
We would rather make VLDC assembly a simpler process permanently and be able to run more events than spend the rest of our time on SMWC making VLDC after VLDC.
This is something we lowkey knew all along while Vitor was in charge too, but then our mindset was just "Vitor will handle it himself", because that is what he said and did (by force for the most part). So now that that is out of the picture, we have to actually turn it down.
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