Response to A question on the definition of points leeching

The definition is flawed and GNG is a bad example because you DO run out of lives after leeching long enough - a life every 70,000 until you get over a million I think. But I think most of us agree that the GNG leeching is one the most painful ever witnessed on MARP. I don't have a suitable definition for leeching either - I've long since put that in the 'too hard' basket. I like to see a games where a player juices as much out of the game as possible pointswise and still finishes it - provided I don't fall asleep waiting for them to kill a million zombies like in GNG.

Maybe we should define leeching as being proportional to how hard/long the average person leans on the F10/frameskip keys when playing back a recording. We could call it the leech rating - every inp should have one :-) Hey, I've got a great idea. How about

leech_factor_p = points_leeched / total_points_in_game

and

leech_factor_t = time_spent_leeching / time_spent_in_game

leech_factor = (leech_factor_p + leech_factor_t) / 2

Then all games with a leech_factor over say 0.75 are banned. I am being facetious but it's really not such a bad idea if you think about it. After all what pisses me off is when most of the inp is spent leeching and when almost all the points obtained in the game are leeched. Hell you could even weight your p and t factors if you felt one was more important than the other.

I do know I would not like to see games banned because players hang around juicing the points where they can. My favourite sort of game is where points leeching can be done but is difficult and risky and can't be sustained for long - this way a players skill really shows. Unfortunately not all game are amenable to this. It then becomes a fine line between acceptable/unacceptable points leeching and I suspect most cases should go to a vote (we spend too much time voting - not enough playing).

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