I'm starting to get very tired of people complaining about other people placing 'markers' or sub-standard scores. I'm not attacking JoustGod for joking about the term, because that wasn't the focus of his posting. As for everyone else, you know who you are.

1. First of all, the obvious. A good score for one player is not the same as a good score for another....we all know this.

2. Second, telling players they *shouldn't* be allowed to upload bad scores is the equivalent of holding a TG tournament and saying "Sorry. World record holders only." My initial scores in the tournament (let alone MARP) for Gyruss, Lock 'n' Chase, and Zzyzzyxx were all pathtetic. They've gotten better.

3. New players are NOT going to be encouraged to come to a site that openly laughs and scorns their scores. I won't point fingers, but we've already seen examples of this in a few recent posts.

As a final note, Ben Jos, whatever scores you made, you earned, dammit. Let's leave it at that, and instead of putting down other people's accomplishments, let's focus on our own. I consider 5 points on Krogman's Galaga score to be a major achievement, and if people start telling me that that's not worth anything, than I don't have much further interest in being part of this group.

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), August 28, 1999

Answers

1. That's why they are called them markers, personal markers for personal best scores. Or a politically correct way for someone good at a game to say they are lame.

2. Nobody is saying they shouldn't upload scores, just that it might be more fair if only the best scores of your own be counted towards the leader board. Obviously, this isn't being considered much because of zwaxy's limited time so it's proly just a passing fancy.

3. I doubt people read this board before they start uploading scores. But if they did realize some scores are being called lame it would simply make them practice a little more before uploading a score. No one has complained about scores when the players give their best effort to put up a score.

I think both sides of this argument are arguing to improve inps, so i don't think there is an elitist view on either side.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), August 28, 1999.

Some people are better at some games than others. As for me, I play only a very limited number of games, and I am only good at even less. My personal best on Galaga, for instance, is 350k or something, and I am proud of that, even though that score is pathetic compared to the top 3 scores.

Therefore, I have no problem at all with people submitting scores that are a lot lower than the top scores. They still earned it, and, like me, they probably still are proud of their achievements. A lot of recordings I have made, I have never submitted, because *I* thought they were too low (even though sometimes they would have made the top 3), and because I thought they were below *my* standard, not because they were below the standard set by the top players. I think it should be left to everybody's own discretion as to whether or not to upload a "sub-standard" score. You know, the good thing about low scores is that the zip files are very small, so they won't take up much disk space anyway.

Most of the #3 spots I hold now can be easily beaten by others, if only somebody would put their focus on them. Most people don't, because most people seem most interested in the newer games, while I am only interested in some (a very limited number at that) older games. I submitted those #3 scores, because they represent more or less the best I can do on those games at this point, so I am proud of them.

Everybody has to start somewhere, and for those interested in the leaderboard competition, I think it reduces the quality of the competition if new players are "discouraged" from competing. Some of those people could otherwise have turned out to be a major competitor. Even a great player like BBH will not always get a top score the very first time he plays a game...

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), August 28, 1999.

IMHO, this from Ben Jos is the wisest point of view read about this topic.

Let to anyone's discretion to upload their scores, to call them lame, and so on.....

But...we should have no interest in descouraging new guys to partecipate to MARP, we shoud encourage it....the more we are, the best is the site, the best is (or should be) for the scores quality.... (Personally I felt a little discouraged at the beginning, seeing guys with 150 top scores !!!!!)

pls....give up with this flames....let the leaderboard and your scores talk for you !!!

Cicca

-- Cicca (cicca@writeme.com), August 30, 1999.

I think the main problem was the speed with which some people were submitting new scores and the low percentage compared to some existing scores certainly gives the impression they were hunting for points rather than doing the best they can and then moving onto another game.

QT - yes this means you. Are you really going to try to say you were doing anything else other than point hunting. Are you really going to say the scores you posted are the best you could do. I think not given the "lame" nature of some of these scores.

Yes it's an elitist attitude but that's what MARP was always about in the early days. Trying to get one up on the previous persons score. Looking and learning from their INP's. Not just submitting as many scores as possible just to increase one's standing on the leaderboard.

It was watching over a master's virtual shoulder that I liked the most. That's what took my best score on Galaga from just over 200k to over 6 million. That's what I looked forward to seeing in MARP - another person who could truly play a game.

Yes we want new people to join us at MARP. Yes we want them to feel proud of their scores and if they only uploaded scores on a few games at a time then they probably would not be getting hassled about their lame scores. Some of my early scores are now lame compared to the highest on this game and I don't make a habit of uploading any new scores that are lame - except for the tournament where there was no choice but to upload your best regardless of how bad it seemed to you personally.

Suffice to say the leaderboard is not the be-all and end-all of MARP. Uploading truly great scores on a few games is what it was really about in the early days. A side effect of this was reasonable standing in the leader-board.

Time for me to get off my soap-box. I truly hope MARP doesn't close down as it's too good a site to lose all those virtual shoulders from.

BeeJay.

-- beejay (bjohnstone@cardinal.co.nz), August 30, 1999.

I think BeeJay addressed most of the issues honestly here.

QT, I know you were singled out in his post, but you are not alone in the critical backlash that this new "post any score on every game and don't call my scores lame" method that seems to have grown quite popular as of late. The problem is, in your case QT, that you do seem to possess decent game skills in a number of games you have submitted on. So why would you want to embarrass yourself with some of these scores? No, everyone is not required to submit monster scores to gain respect of other MARPers (a little show of honest effort usually does the trick), but good grief...btime, centiped, kaos, mtrap4, scobra, shollow2 among others...you can submit these kinds of inps with a straight face? These were far below your ability and not worth your time submitting, especially in light of your abilities on many, many other games you've shown us that you can kick ass on. If you are not that familiar with these games, well, heck...BeeJay said it best when he stated that this is an incredible way to improve yourself by having a good player's inp at your disposal to help you learn some things that maybe hadn't occured to you. All the good players at MARP use this method and we're all better players for it...in other words, take advantage of this fact!

So, QT, you're a top 10 player in my opinion and you'll probably be hanging out there for some time so quit wasting your time with the stuff that's beneath you by concentrating a little more on quality than quantity. Believe me, the quality submissions are going to keep you up there a lot longer than the myriad of 5 and 6-pointers. Some of your 100-point scores may eventually dwindle as time goes on (I've got first hand experience in this happening to me!)but that's the nature of MARP. We've got many great players here with more to come and no score is totally safe.

As for some of the other "lame" submissions...another glaring example surfaced today when I saw some defender/ defender clone scores in the uploads...come on! Get serious...what exactly is acheived with this crap other than wasting valuable MARP resources? And I say valuable because it's just that much more pressure on the resources that we are already in danger of losing. I can't help but think that the overzealousness lately isn't one of the culprits in our current dilemma. If I'm wrong about this, Zwaxy, please tell me and I'll stand corrected. :p

Enough ranting...I suspect some MARPers are now thoroughly pissed...

JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), August 30, 1999.

I don't care if I'm considered "elitist" or not, but I fully agree wholeheartedly agree with what BeeJay and JoustGod have said.

The whole point of MARP has been to let people show off their skills, and to let people see HOW such huge scores are achieved. I'd only seen someone get a multi-million score on Galaga in the arcade once, and I was too young to remember what was going on exactly (although I was still in awe).

When MARP started, it was us sending the scores to Zwaxy for him to upload to the site. So when someone submitted a score, they usually tried to make sure it was a good one. But believe it or not, this wasn't just a site for showing off high scores. If you poke around on the Index page, you may come across a "forgotten" page with some interesting bugs, and requests for certain little "tricks". What happened to these pages? They were sort of ignored when Zwaxy introduced the Leaderboard (remember when it was originally sorted by number of 1st places only?)

Although Q.T. has been singled out, what about A.D. SAKURAGI? He seems to be going through every romset alphabetically and uploading scores no matter how crappy they may be. He does have his share of 1st's, but I have to wonder: what is the point of a score that will be in 5th or 6th place, and receives 0 percentage points? Whether you're going for medal or percentage points, it's a waste of time either way.

If you have a score us "elitist bastards" consider lame, you have two choices: 1. Download the highest-scoring .INP, watch, learn. There's a lot of people with some truly awesome skills on here, they need to just spend a little more time learning the game. Still can't quite hack it? Then... 2. Play a different game. MAME now supports 1600+ romsets... try some new stuff, you might find a game you really like and/or one that you can get the hang of. You're not forced to upload recordings for EVERYTHING.

We may never know if the flood of "lame" recordings was what sent the MARP scripts over the top, but it'd be a sad, sad day if this was the cause.

-BBH

-- BBH (lordbbh@aol.com), August 30, 1999.

What I am going to say ties in across a number of topics, so I hope everyone is reading this:

1) As a newer member of MARP, I am STILL unfamiliar with some of the founding reasons behind it (ie: I was unaware of the leaderboard points vs. lame recordings debate) often because these reasons are not posted anywhere on the site or accessible to the site. Unfortunately, with the new space problem, that doesn't seem likely to change. I don't like being yelled at by the vets for something I'm doing wrong without even knowing why first.

2) No hard feelings BeeJay. At least you came forward and said something. Ironically, I left the tournament, and more recently MARP, for literally the same reasons that he did. It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that if MARP is to continue it not only needs some changes but also a "code of conduct" or "etiquette guide". Many complaints could be solved by explaining the views on illegal methods, unplayable recordings, pcxs, lame recordings, autofire, and who knows what else on an OPENING page to MARP when players first sign up.

3) Next, JoustGod, your post. Again, thank-you for responding, and I agree with your points. That said, since you seem to have a good predisposition for stats :), guess how many of the games that you singled out in your post are or were 2nd or 3rd place and counting for medal points. Need I explain what my reason for posting them was, or what a reasonable solution to solving the problem would be? I think not. This is an easily REMOVED cancer, and an easily removed script which is probably sucking back much-needed memory.

4) BBH, your post. The thought that I might be partially responsible did cross my mind :( There's not much I can do about it at this point.

5) Finally, like BeeJay, I will probably continue to take a sabbatical from MARP. A lot of what is being said in the public forums could be solved a lot better via private e-mail, where emotions and egos are less likely to flare. The only person who seems to do this on a regular basis is skito, and I thank and respect him all the more for it.

Because of trying to host the ICQ server, my harddrive has had severe problems over the last week and my cable connection is still crashing. I am a university student with courses to be studied, a job to maintain (teaching computers to children), and a social life outside of VirtualWorld, including a very persistent ex-girlfriend. Gaming is great, but I don't think that any of our lives are wholly focused on it. So let's try and keep things in perspective. My complaint about elitism (not bastard veterans, as I think somebody phrased in their post :P) was that new players were being singled out without having been given a fair introduction to the rules that be. As I've said earlier, changes need to be made to prevent this. I was not here for the founding, nor do I want to be a part of the closing down, so I hope I can just be a regular MARPer for a while, and not the pestulent champion of lost causes which I have been for the last few weeks. Apologies to anyone offended, and I hope to see you back in a while.

A final note: JG, BJ, please do not leave. You two are a good part of the reason why I spent so much time in the damned tournament. I've learned more about Gyruss, Galaga, and other monotonous space shooters from you two than I ever thought I would be capable of.... :)

and Discipline, you can burn in h

Sincerely, Q.T.Quazar

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), September 01, 1999.