Smash Camp 2019 Feedback Thread

[seaturtle]

Thank you guys so much for the feedback!! Reading through this thread has been really good and I'm glad so many people are passionate enough to bring things up.

On the topic of participation points, the change this year was definitely experimental and I think we've learned a lot from it. I think that with the drastic shift it went as well as it could have this year, but I think that there definitely should be changes made for future years.

I think that for the art contest and writing contest, removing participation points is a good change. In those two areas specifically, we want quality submissions and not something that was written up in 10 minutes at the end of day. People also shouldn't feel like they need to write a short story or come up with some pretty piece of art if they do not want to. To accommodate this shift of quality vs quantity, they definitely should be two day (or even week long) events.[EDIT] the more I think about this the more I think starting these during pre-camp and having them be week long would be the best idea. Having them last two days would be a lot to schedule during the week, and with more time it feels more fair to remove participation points. Give people more time to brainstorm and work in their writing/art and the quality will definitely go up.

For flash/mobile games, saltybet, and cabin banners, I think that bringing back participation points would be good. Cabin banners are full of jokes in general, so trying to bar out low-quality submissions feels counterproductive when some of the jokes are funniest when they look like crap. Maybe we could make them entirely participation and give shoutouts to ones that stick out, like we do for the scavenger hunt items? That way we don't have two art contests and people can focus their time solely on the actual competition if they want to.

For flash/mobile games and saltybet, I feel like it may be a good idea to put a minimum score that people need to hit to qualify for points. The idea behind this is just that some people will literally get a score of like 7 and then post it for points, which doesn't feel like it's what we want to make the focus. It doesn't need to be super high or anything, but enough that you need to at least play the game a little bit to get the points for it. The only issue I see with this is that it may increase the pressure on people to do well, but if the minimum score is easy enough to achieve hopefully that wouldn't be a problem? Or maybe it's a case where if the minimum score is low anyways, is there a real reason to have it? I'd like thoughts on this idea if anyone has them.

Regarding the scavenger hunt, a lot of the items were harder this year to make people work for their points more. I think that overall this was a mistake on our part. In the future I think having the items be relatively easy to access but making the bonuses more difficult is the right way to go.

Concerning the scavenger hunt, I definitely think that it should be separate from puzzles in the future. I also think that the puzzles shouldn't be a race. Both of these ideas felt ok on paper, but I think the puzzles would be much better if people could solve them at their own pace throughout the day instead of needing to do them ASAP. I also think specifying how many puzzles there are at the beginning of the day would be a good idea so people know what to expect.

I definitely think that there's a lot of improvement regarding the puzzles themselves. The idea for ARG inspired puzzles was solidified a week or two before camp started, and I think that really shows. A lot of them were repeats or similar things, and got stale fast. I think that with more time to plan for them and come up with creative solutions, they'd be a lot better. It sounds like most people are in favor of keeping them as long as they're fine tuned which makes me happy cuz they were my brainchild this SC lol. If they've got support and people want to see them return, I think that having more people involved with their creation would be a good idea as well - more people means more variety.

Other random thoughts!

- If Quiz Time:tm: returns, I definitely think it needs to be adjusted more from the Azuricast format. Questions should definitely be standardized for the participants (which means no listening in, even for the tiebreakers) and honestly should probably go easier -> harder the further you get. 3 minutes or so also sounds like it'd work well for the time limit, I think it feels kinda anticlimactic to have the whole thing be done in one minute.

- I like the idea of a blacklist for campers who disappear without notice. If you sign up and won't be around much, let us know. Otherwise, if something comes up and you won't be around, let us know. If someone completely poofs without telling anyone and has 2-3 days in a row with no points, that's a big problem. I think having consequences would also possibly help keep people around lol. Obviously we should be lenient and accommodating but it's not fair to let someone ruin a cabin's scores and then invite them back to do it again.

- I do think Discord should be mandatory. This doesn't mean you need to necessarily be active there, but people should be expected to join the server as they will be out of the loop if they don't. Making it clear that it is a big part of camp also means that cabin members will know they will be missing things if they do not join. There were some issues with campers who weren't on the Discord going and doing things without the direction of their cabin leaders and that's something that we definitely need to try and prevent in the future.

- Results being added after the events being posted is definitely a good idea and should return. Ty Lizzy (:

- I think it would be neat to offer more thoughts about things like writing and art, but honestly I'm not sure if we want to add one more thing to the list of tasks that need to be done before results can be posted, especially if it's something that may generate salt from some users. If we give reasons for placement I feel like it's inviting people to argue with the reasoning to try and get their scores higher, and to be frank not everyone on camp staff is a fantastic writer/artist to start with so judging itself can be hard sometimes. I feel like if people really want their feedback they can reach out to the leaders directly.

- Giving more of a breakdown for points is a good idea, but I think it also fits into category of "more work for leaders to do at 1:00 in the morning". Outlining how many points were from which things wouldn't be too hard (especially thanks to Regine's spreadsheet skills ) but I don't think more than that would offer many benefits, especially compared to how much more work it'd take to crawl through everything and add it to the results. That's also the part of day start that takes the longest - we can co-op with counting points, but only one person can edit the thread at a time.

 

[Mystical]

About Discord:
I don't think that being active on Discord should be a requirement since not everybody has the time. But going there at least once should.
Since I don't use discord, for half of the camp I was wondering "where are the guys talking about this stuff and making all the decisions?".
Yea, stupid me xD
Anyway, if I was required to go there at least once then I wouldn't be confused for the first days, lol.

By the way, you should join that discord, it's still open!

 

[theDINOsaurus]

@seaturtle since this is really just a reply to your post, you've got a lot of really good stuff in there



I would be in support of week-long writing/art contests, though only grudgingly on the writing side. I do think it would even the playing field a bit, but I’m actually a big fan of the flash writing format. The word count is small enough that it’s reasonable, and the pressure actually adds to my motivation rather than damaging it. I haven’t written in a while and the contest fell on a very busy day for me, but I got that sucker out in about an hour and a half and was very happy with my work. That said, I’m probably on the minority side with this and am a strong writer, so I would understand that change being made, even if I would prefer 2-3 days at most instead of all week.

I’m definitely in favor of a return of participation points for flash and mobile games. Even just lowering the points for participation to a small number (like idk 5) would be reasonable to me as opposed to having a score you need to hit, though I think that would be ok too. That way people still have some motivation to try the games but having inactive people who can’t shouldn’t break the cabin. Even if there had been participation points, my cabin had a lot of people with shaky availability (which I absolutely do not blame them for they all did their best and I know we still had a blast!!), so it probably wouldn’t have particularly helped us much, which is why I think keeping the value lower might be a good idea. Maybe instead of asking about the number of hours people can spend each day, it could be good to ask for a bit of detail on what availability looks like during the week in general? We had three people almost completely gone on Friday, which means we weren’t able to accomplish nearly as much as the other cabins that day. As a cabin leader, I felt a lot of pressure to try to pick up the slack for the people who were gone (two of them being some of our most consistent team members) and to be frank I probably pushed myself too far.

Regarding the scavenger hunt, a lot of the items were harder this year to make people work for their points more. I think that overall this was a mistake on our part. In the future I think having the items be relatively easy to access but making the bonuses more difficult is the right way to go.

Yes. Please. I am the type to go out searching for whatever crazy item you guys throw in, but several people in my cabin just COULDN’T do that because they didn’t have the time or didn’t have the means. Make the bonuses hard mode, the scavenger hunt items don’t need to be.

And also yes thank you so much for consideration on removing the race aspect of the quiz. That was easily one of my biggest complaints with how things went. The puzzles were generally a lot of fun and I loved seeing my cabin bond as we worked through them. I think we should harness that without adding the stress of feeling like you have to finish first or feeling like you let the team down if you didn’t. You did a great job with the puzzles, Bubba, and I really do think there’s something good there! Just need to use the experience from this year to make them more accessible and enjoyable next time.



I’m in full support of the proposed change to the quiz. I’ve always felt the way it was handled was a bit unfair, but it was added back in so suddenly this year that there wasn’t really a chance to address that. Especially since I’m told there were repeat questions in the tiebreaker and 2 of the 3 participants had done the quiz last year, essentially putting them at a strong advantage which doesn’t seem cool at all.

Blacklist for people who join but don’t participate sounds like a solid idea too, and I’m 100% on board with Discord being mandatory. I was on mobile a decent amount of the time, so Discord was by far the easiest way for me to communicate with my cabin. The fact is, if you’re not on the Discord you’re missing out on half the camp experience. It shouldn’t be optional.

I think it would be neat to offer more thoughts about things like writing and art, but honestly I'm not sure if we want to add one more thing to the list of tasks that need to be done before results can be posted, especially if it's something that may generate salt from some users. If we give reasons for placement I feel like it's inviting people to argue with the reasoning to try and get their scores higher, and to be frank not everyone on camp staff is a fantastic writer/artist to start with so judging itself can be hard sometimes. I feel like if people really want their feedback they can reach out to the leaders directly.

I know other people have chimed in requesting more feedback on writing/art in general, but I do want to clarify since I feel like I was the one who initially brought things up that I don’t really mind getting no feedback on those (personally). My mention was very specific toward the superhero event and anything similar to it in the future just because the range of points you could get was SO WIDE when I feel like everyone probably put in a similar amount of work. There’s nothing to go off of, as someone who submitted I don’t even know what would need improved if the event were to come back. I don’t even necessarily want feedback to be given in words (that’d be awesome, of course, but I know it’s a lot of work for this kind of event) but I think awarding points from a pool of total event points based on quality would just feel… more fair for such a work-intensive effort. On top of this, I honestly didn’t like having more than one art event in the contest. We had two artists in our cabin and they were both busy. We barely managed to even get something IN for the superhero’s drawing with the short timeframe (ty so much again @Fafrir you did wonderfully and I appreciate you so much!!!). Art is such a specific skill and unlike writing it’s not something that just anyone can make a decent attempt at, so not only did I feel like we were really pushing our available artist with TWO contests, but I felt really useless when I wasn’t even sure if we would GET art for the superhero. And considering that the same person took the top slot in both (which was ABSOLUTELY deserved by Kaori’s art, don’t get me wrong on that!) it does feel a little unbalanced to me. That’s just my two cents and I wanted to clarify what I was thinking when I initially brought that up in my post since it’s something I thought about a good bit after that contest ended. The collaborative aspect of it was A+ and very enjoyable but I think execution of rewards could’ve been done better.



All in all I think this year’s camp was a lot of fun and even though I’ve said a lot (I’ve been thinking quite a bit over what worked well and didn’t work well for me throughout the week) I think you guys put an awesome effort into the week. Some of the changes need tweaking for sure, but trying something new out was very admirable and made things interesting. With some refining, I think a lot of the more experimental parts of this camp will be useful for improving the general experience. Kudos to the leaders and crew for keeping things fresh and looking for ways to improve the overall experience. It was a great time. <3

 

[SAF]

- This year we made a rather big adjustment and removed participation points almost entirely from Smash Camp. After participating, what are your feelings about this? Would you like participation points to be more prominent again, or did you like the change?

I'd say that the participation points should stay for things like speedruns, but can't really say anything about it in other events. Why? Because I'm a total noob in the whole Smash Camp thing.

- How was the selection of side events (tourneys, speedruns, etc.) and flash games this year? Which ones would you be interested in seeing again?

• About speedruns, I can't say anything about the BotW one, but the Pokemon one was alright. Since we were allowed to use the E-word for them (not even sure whether there are any E-word for BotW), we practically can do the speedruns anywhere, be it the actual Switch or Wii U (for BotW), 3DS with VC or the actual GBC (for Crystal), computer, or even mobile phone (I did my Crystal one on my phone tbh).
• Also can't really say anything about tourneys and quiz, sorry.
• About EIM, if that will be brought up again next year, how about limiting aliases to one alias for one person? Having one person with two or more aliases would be no fair, y'know.

- What are your feelings about the main events (superhero, point wars, etc.) this year? Would you be interested in seeing these return?

, mainly because I wasn't really involved in any of them. I did try in the medley one, but none of the songs were familiar to me (aside from the Pokemon ones which were taken by my cabinmates by the time I got to them). Perhaps next year's medley could use something familiar to non-American and non-European people (should it return, that is).

- The Scavenger Hunt was changed this year to require cabins to solve puzzles before getting their items. Did you like this change? How did you feel about the puzzles themselves? Would you prefer for puzzles to be separate from the Scavenger Hunt in the future, or just no puzzles at all?

Puzzles sure are fun, but I'd say they could be made less tedious to do. In return, gotta agree with Bubba for having the items be relatively easy to access with more difficult bonuses.

- Is there anything else you feel could be changed or improved for future years?

for now, though I might want to edit this when something pops up.

One thing we've talked about briefly and are considering (NOT GUARANTEED) is making Discord a requirement. Is this a mistake? Something myself and some of the other staff have noticed is basically all of the "chat" for Smash Camp has moved off of the forums and onto the Discord, leaving the forum basically to a submission box. In the end this is about making friends and making good memories together and really I feel like the people not on the Discord aren't getting the full SC experience. Thoughts on this? I know some of our participants this year didn't have Discord and it's why we want to ask about this change rather than just do it.

Discord being mandatory? YES, PLEASE!!! We don't want anyone to miss out the full SC experience after all.

One more question I'd like to bring out from myself is I wanted to know how you felt your cabin worked together this year? Since there were multiple more cabin-wide teamwork events this year did you feel as though your cabin worked together more this year than prior years if you participated in the past?

I'd say that my cabin worked together pretty well this year, though I wish I could contribute more. No idea for the previous ones though, since this is my first time.

That being said, I wanna give my thanks to the leaders, crews, and fellow campers (@Nuuk and the Lilfellas, @theDINOsaurus and the Shrimps, @Wheegalure and the Gamers, @SarasaKat and the Clowns) for this past week. I truly had a blast as a gamer (as in cabin 3 member) and as a first time camper. Big hugs to y'all, folks.

 

[Deva]

Participation Points: Felt a bit pointless to attempt some events, yes. Put that energy towards strengths instead, though. Kept busy, despite mostly only keeping to flash games. Another possible solution: Guarantee points for X entries (perhaps 5-6) per camp. Lowers the need to attempt every event.

Flash and mobile game overall opinion: Felt like a decent mix of games. Struck a good balance between mouse and keyboard. Would have preferred to see one more genre, like a typing or fighting game. Liked the daily high score list for mobile games. Suited Arcaea better than Color Switch, though.

Individual game comments

• Curveball: Probably the favorite. Rewarded you for better shots. Permitted you to look away, rather than several minutes of unbroken concentration. Ramped up difficulty constantly. Reached impossible levels by the end.
• 16384 Hex: Disliked it on a personal level. Messed up the (perfectly sensible) controls too many times. Catered to a different skillset, however. Reflected that on the scoreboard. Approves of it in that sense.
• Maverick Bird: Please no. Relies on artificial difficulty from pulsing lights and terrain. Possessed the visual fortitude to handle it. Imagines tough times for many others, however.
• Wings over Water + Winterbells: Felt too similar to each other. Why? Stopped increasing difficulty too early. Should have been just as hard at one million points as one quadrillion points in Winterbells, for example. Appreciates that this would likely not be clear during testing.

Discord: Shrugs. Read all of Cabin 4, announcements, questions, and bits of the rest. Skimmed here and there, of course. Cannot recall seeing anything important. Never saw a reason to say anything, barring one reaction to a specific mention.

Staff: Seemed really on the ball. Prepared way more events than expected (as a first timer). Looked like tons of work. Did a great job.

 

[Felly]

Hello, I am back with more. I think a lot of this has already been hit and discussed, but I'll go ahead and drop it here anyways.

• I was on the fence earlier about it, but I don't think it'd be an awful idea to make Discord mandatory for people who want to participate in Smash Camp. I think it should just be stressed that Discord isn't necessarily something you have to download though, and that there is a browser version available for people who don't want to download something else onto their computer for whatever reason.

• I'm a little hesitant to start some kinda ban list on activity, but I also feel like people who don't participate in Smash Camp don't come back to try again another year. Maybe that's just how I'm seeing it, but this is the first Smash Camp I've done since 2016, so maybe I'm missing something here. Don't get me wrong though, I understand how frustrating it is to have someone sign up and then not do anything. I went back and looked, and when I was Cabin 3's counselor in 2016, I actually had 9 inactive people, at least from the list I found where I was keeping track of who had participated and who hadn't. It's more about having fun than winning for me, but also I see how it can be frustrating for people. Regardless though, this isn't a hill I'm really going to fight over, so I'll concede to the majority on this one, especially since I feel like I'm kinda on the fence about it.

• I 100% agree that writing events and art events should be week long events. With only having a few hours at most to really dedicate to Smash Camp each night, my writing felt, for lack of better terminology, half-assed and extremely rushed. I don't have a problem with writing under pressure, but by the time I came home from work each night and actually settled in to the point where I was ready to work on Smash Camp stuff, the day was nearly over and I didn't have a lot of time to work on stuff. My writing piece for day 4 was churned out in about the equivalent of an hour, give or take, tops, and I'm not very proud of it at all; if it wasn't for feeling a little pressure to submit something so my cabin could have 2 entries, I probably wouldn't have submitted it at all. I don't think it helped that there were two writing events back to back with the superhero + day 4's writing. I think allowing them to be week long events will keep people from burning out, and they can spread the work out across the whole week rather than in one day. If superhero comes back, I think it may be better to allow that to come into play no later than day 2, that way the cabins have a chance to name themselves, because I noticed this year's superheroes were themed around their cabins, which was cool. The short story and art should definitely be week long events though, to prevent burnout and also allow for higher quality submissions.
→ The exception is for flags because I can understand the need for those to be limited to one day only, and I also agree that they should be worth participation points. I think there's charm in the meme flags that sprout up from that event, and not really seeing them this year was a little bit of a bummer.
→ I think also having the short story writing and the art event be week long would also allow for more room for people to participate in the other events. For me, I wanted to at least give the medley a listen to try and identify the songs my cabin missed, but I was so focused on making sure superhero was done good and then also the night it was due, churning out a subpar writing piece that I didn't get a chance to listen. The two day events like Medley were cool, and I think there should be more of those! (And I also wish I had a chance to participate in the Medley.)
→ Also having them week long I think would allow the rest of the cabin to participate too, even if they're not writing. I was thinking as I was writing mine that it'd be nice to have my cabinmates proofread before I submitted, but I didn't finish early enough for that. A longer time period would allow for more collaboration of ideas between members of the cabin, and others could get involved by reading through it and suggesting improvements to the story, that way the best possible final product gets put out there.

• Staff did a great job with all of this, and like I said in my last post, this is one of my favorite events. Everyone else did an awesome job too, and I'm proud of everyone here!
→ Also yes, keep putting day posts up at midnight, and then adding in points later. Gives us the opportunity to get started sooner, and it gives y'all more time to count points. I think including further breakdowns would be cool, but perhaps those could go up later in the day, after the initial point counting has been done and y'all have had some rest.

• One thing I thought was neat was how staff chose entries that went above and beyond (Scott's art from day 5 and Karolina's scavenger hunt submissions come to mind). Something that might be cool for next year could be allowing us to have a place on the server where we can share our scavenger hunt items or just Smash Camp memes with everyone, not just the people in our cabins. I know staff opened up the boards for us all to go see and explore, but I think being able to share during camp would be nice too.

• I think at the end of the day, something that should probably be kept in mind for the future is the amount of time people have in a given day. When I last participated in 2016, I was a college student that was on summer break, and therefore, I had the time to dedicate hours on end to this event. For this Smash Camp, I worked 28 hours this week on top of taking on new responsibilities there, so I only had a few hours each night to dedicate to this event. I feel like a lot of others were in similar boats with only having a few hours to dedicate to the event, and I think that's something that should be kept in mind going forward. A lot of us are adults now with adult responsibilities, and those are, of course, going to take priority over this.

I think I got everything, but if not, I'll just come back again, I guess lmao.

 

[scott]

- This year we made a rather big adjustment and removed participation points almost entirely from Smash Camp. After participating, what are your feelings about this? Would you like participation points to be more prominent again, or did you like the change?

this year was only my first smash camp to my knowledge so i can't really comment on previous years but i like participation points as a way of involving people to at least try things, that being said it can be tiring having to do all the events even if it is just for participation points so i'm very null on the matter.

- How was the selection of side events (tourneys, speedruns, etc.) and flash games this year? Which ones would you be interested in seeing again?

i actually loved the selection of side events bc it felt as if there was something that at least everyone could make an effort in. i didn't do saltybet personally, but stuff like ZU (which was nice because it didn't come down to "who plays competitive") and the pokemon crystal speedrun were fun! i was iffy on breath of the wild because it did feel niche and i only did it for the participation points since i knew i wouldn't break top 3. and even though i've never played pokemon crystal a bit of research really did help because although it was a speedrun it did feel very casual and it only took maybe 2 hours top for the entire thing w/ resetting.

on terms of flash games, i didn't mind any of them except for klung. **** klung. it was the only one that felt like it was truly rng and that you weren't really in control of your own score imo. i played a good majority of them before and i'm a big fan of orisinal in general since i feel like they are casual enough and still be good for people who want to grind.

- What are your feelings about the main events (superhero, point wars, etc.) this year? Would you be interested in seeing these return?

yes. mayb for stuff like superhero there could be bonus points based on how many people participated in the final product? that way it encourages true teamwork and cabins coming together and it wouldn't feel tiring upon not getting 1st, and people wouldn't feel pressured to do a lot of it as a small group. i do enjoy stuff like point wars encouraging cabins to actually interact and truly play with/against each other tho!

- The Scavenger Hunt was changed this year to require cabins to solve puzzles before getting their items. Did you like this change? How did you feel about the puzzles themselves? Would you prefer for puzzles to be separate from the Scavenger Hunt in the future, or just no puzzles at all?

i liked the puzzle aspect a lot because it made you work for the items and it wasn't just a freebie. the only thing i didn't enjoy was the race aspect which was mentioned. i actually didn't mind the puzzles despite the difficulty bc even the really hard ones turned into enjoyable experiences for me LFMFHNFg. s/o @shhmew for that one ****ing Hey everyone! with the question mark characters.

- Is there anything else you feel could be changed or improved for future years?

it has already been mentioned but i will say agree react to discord being mandatory.

with that being said, i loved my cabin and i felt as if we truly worked together and i was honoured to be a part of it. thank u to the staff and my cabin for this experience. uwu

 

[Nuuk]

- This year we made a rather big adjustment and removed participation points almost entirely from Smash Camp. After participating, what are your feelings about this? Would you like participation points to be more prominent again, or did you like the change?

Spoiler

i loved the lack of participation points tbh. i dont really understand why people feel the removal of participation points made them unable to contribute to their team, the placements going down to 10 made it pretty easy to beat the lower scores. on the one flash game i actually had time to try (the hex game) i only played for like 30min and i got a score that landed me in like 6/7th place. same things with saltybet, i only played for like as long as the tournaments were each day. i wonder if people didnt even bother trying to play the flash games due to the lack of participation points, because i feel if they put in the same amount of time it takes to play everything into playing one thing, they wouldve gotten points for at least placing low.

i know that was definitely the case for me. additionally, as a counselor, i felt it was a lot better essentially having people that could focus on the flash games as opposed to having to slap together other things for participation points. most of my cabin also did try everything just because of the very likely chance they did place.

if participation points did come back, i would hope that we continue having placing down to 10th place and participation points were like 1-2 points. previously to me it would suck, because only top 3 would really get any significant points. people complain about others being able to score big due to no lifing everything, but that will always be a thing. before there would always be the same people who got these astronomical scores, and everyone below that bar would get the same 10 points regardless of weather you got 4th or literally played for 2 sec.

- How was the selection of side events (tourneys, speedruns, etc.) and flash games this year? Which ones would you be interested in seeing again?

Spoiler

i love the ZU tourney and crystal speedrun. i have no opinion on smash as i dont have it/dont play it. to me, botw wasnt a great speedrun option. it wasnt super accessible and im not sure how to e-word it. i think we had like, one person in our cabin that could actually do it at all?

as for the flash games i honestly didnt play them much, but i did really like hex.

- What are your feelings about the main events (superhero, point wars, etc.) this year? Would you be interested in seeing these return?

Spoiler

i love point wars and that cabin vs cabin thing. i would have liked a way to block though, or a way to punish others for targetting you obviously, as theres not much you could do if you got ganged up on.

superhero event was really fun, im glad we got 2 days to do it. as for art competitons being week long, that would be nice, thought i do like how the time crunch restricts what you can get done. i think 2 days would be a reasonable change.

medley being 2 days was also perfect.

- The Scavenger Hunt was changed this year to require cabins to solve puzzles before getting their items. Did you like this change? How did you feel about the puzzles themselves? Would you prefer for puzzles to be separate from the Scavenger Hunt in the future, or just no puzzles at all?

Spoiler

the puzzles sucked because it was a race in the middle of the night. for our cabin, only scott and katey were usually awake to solve them. i think the puzzles should either be easier, there shouldnt be a race, or it should start at a more reasonable time and not midnight. i did like the additional layer to the scavenger hunt, so maybe just making it easier would be better.

- Is there anything else you feel could be changed or improved for future years?

Spoiler

i heavy agree on forcing to make discord and it was something that we brought up in our discord channel after we had a member that didnt use it and kinda screw us over as he was out of the loop. also, so many things were discord exclusive, so not having discord is a huge disadvantage.

ty curry for the shoutout

im so glad you guys decided to take that advice, it really sucked to be waiting for the day to start when i have to work the next day and needing to organize stuff for my cabin. especially with the whole race puzzle thing.

as a whole i loved my team, i thought the sorting was great this year. i feel like every team was overall balanced as far as i could see.

this year was fun af i was really glad to be a councellor this year and hope i can do it again next.

 

[Moonwatcher]

I propose you move the entire event over to discord. There was little to no reason for any of it to be on the forums, as they were purely used as a submission box. If you make discord mandatory, then anyone who can join will be on there already, but don't try to pretend it's a forum event when it isn't.

So, most of the events I felt no reason to enter, as I knew I wouldn't be anywhere close to the top whatever that score points, and it essentially made the event feel like a contest between a few people who were good with the general population taking a backseat for most of it. I wasn't around fro previous Camps, but the participation points sound like a good idea.

As for more specifics on events, I can't really say as once again I didn't enter most of this due to feeling as though my time would be wasted.

 

[SarasaKat]

I propose you move the entire event over to discord. There was little to no reason for any of it to be on the forums, as they were purely used as a submission box. If you make discord mandatory, then anyone who can join will be on there already, but don't try to pretend it's a forum event when it isn't.

So, most of the events I felt no reason to enter, as I knew I wouldn't be anywhere close to the top whatever that score points, and it essentially made the event feel like a contest between a few people who were good with the general population taking a backseat for most of it. I wasn't around fro previous Camps, but the participation points sound like a good idea.

As for more specifics on events, I can't really say as once again I didn't enter most of this due to feeling as though my time would be wasted.

I will say from a personal perspective that if you only look at camp as an objective and the things to do as a means to it, it's not going to be as fun. Do the events because you find them fun, and if you end up on the leaderboard, that's great! But don't feel tied to the leaderboard itself. Smash Camp's mostly about having fun, and the contest itself is secondary.

You mentioned to not pretend it's a forum event when it isn't. Do you think it should be a forum event instead of its current state? And how would that get achieved if that's a direction everyone decided they wanted to go into?

 

[Moonwatcher]

I will say from a personal perspective that if you only look at camp as an objective and the things to do as a means to it, it's not going to be as fun. Do the events because you find them fun, and if you end up on the leaderboard, that's great! But don't feel tied to the leaderboard itself. Smash Camp's mostly about having fun, and the contest itself is secondary.

I personally find fun in lists of objectives, have more fun doing things to further it that just for the fun of it. Such as getting a 100% pokedex. Without that goal, I barely played post game SuMo, with it I enjoyed the game a lot more. So I cannot simple disconnect the two things.
Getting points, even if it's only 1% of what everyone else is getting, would make me feel like it wasn't a total waste, as it's slowly contributing to the overall score bit by bit, even if I'll never win.

As for the events I did enter, while I agree about focusing on fun, the having fun part was hindered by me not having Discord, rendering the contest first and foremost. And using the fun first mindset seems to hinder any positive changes to the points and scoring system, as since it's all about fun we can ignore any imbalence or stuff in the contest part.

You mentioned to not pretend it's a forum event when it isn't. Do you think it should be a forum event instead of its current state? And how would that get achieved if that's a direction everyone decided they wanted to go into?

No, in fact the opposite. It should not be a forum event. It should have maybe the sign ups here at most, and everything else be held on Discord, since that's going to be mandatory anyway.
But if hypothetically you made it more focused on the forums than the Discord, then the only change you'd need is to have the teams talk via a discussion thread in their camp subforum.

 

[Nuuk]

As for the events I did enter, while I agree about focusing on fun, the having fun part was hindered by me not having Discord, rendering the contest first and foremost. And using the fun first mindset seems to hinder any positive changes to the points and scoring system, as since it's all about fun we can ignore any imbalence or stuff in the contest part.
No, in fact the opposite. It should not be a forum event. It should have maybe the sign ups here at most, and everything else be held on Discord, since that's going to be mandatory anyway.
But if hypothetically you made it more focused on the forums than the Discord, then the only change you'd need is to have the teams talk via a discussion thread in their camp subforum.

im gonna be level with you. when i saw you were on my team and dint use discord, i tried to post threads and have discussions on the board. the only event you signed up for was EIM, which was the event were 90% of the discussion happened on the board (which you didnt post on until i pointed it out to you anyway, which you had already made your moves without even attempting to discuss with anyone). there was basically no disadvantage to not having discord for the 1 event you signed up for.

you cannon legitimately complain about lack of discussion and communication when you made no attempt yourself. there were several topics for discussion that i made sure to post and none of them had posts from you.

 

[Moonwatcher]

As for the events I did enter, while I agree about focusing on fun, the having fun part was hindered by me not having Discord, rendering the contest first and foremost. And using the fun first mindset seems to hinder any positive changes to the points and scoring system, as since it's all about fun we can ignore any imbalence or stuff in the contest part.
No, in fact the opposite. It should not be a forum event. It should have maybe the sign ups here at most, and everything else be held on Discord, since that's going to be mandatory anyway.
But if hypothetically you made it more focused on the forums than the Discord, then the only change you'd need is to have the teams talk via a discussion thread in their camp subforum.

im gonna be level with you. when i saw you were on my team and dint use discord, i tried to post threads and have discussions on the board. the only event you signed up for was EIM, which was the event were 90% of the discussion happened on the board (which you didnt post on until i pointed it out to you anyway, which you had already made your moves without even attempting to discuss with anyone). there was basically no disadvantage to not having discord for the 1 event you signed up for.

you cannon legitimately complain about lack of discussion and communication when you made no attempt yourself. there were several topics for discussion that i made sure to post and none of them had posts from you.

Where was I complaining about discussion or communication?

 

[Nuuk]

Where was I complaining about discussion or communication?

As for the events I did enter, while I agree about focusing on fun, the having fun part was hindered by me not having Discord, rendering the contest first and foremost.


But if hypothetically you made it more focused on the forums than the Discord, then the only change you'd need is to have the teams talk via a discussion thread in their camp subforum.

i meant that the thing you signed up for wouldn't have been hindered by lacking discord, and also the fact that the team did discuss in the subforum.

 

[Varhii]

I don't understand why it's hard to have an event be based on multiple platforms tbh. Both platforms serve different purposes to the event and it wouldn't be what it is without either. Getting rid of the forums makes it harder to have central hubs to hold everything and harder for the staff to manage everything. Getting rid of discord would make it harder for teams to communicate and would take away from the conversations that both happen within the cabins and between people from different cabins. I have no issue with both platforms being a requirement to sign up as you are missing the full experience by not having one of them.

 

[Moonwatcher]

Where was I complaining about discussion or communication?

As for the events I did enter, while I agree about focusing on fun, the having fun part was hindered by me not having Discord, rendering the contest first and foremost.


But if hypothetically you made it more focused on the forums than the Discord, then the only change you'd need is to have the teams talk via a discussion thread in their camp subforum.

i meant that the thing you signed up for wouldn't have been hindered by lacking discord, and also the fact that the team did discuss in the subforum.

I was not saying that the things I signed up for didn't have discussion, I'm saying that the things I didn't sign up for didn't have discussion, which was partially why I didn't sign up for them. But I was not complaing about it. I accepted that the discussion was on Discord, and moved on to focusing on the single-player mindset, which leads to the participation point thing I mentioned earlier.

As for the second part, I wasn't saying that there wasn't any discussion in the subforum. I was just saying that if hypothetically it was to move away from discord, which I at no point said I wanted or was a good idea, (in fact I sugested the opposite,) it would be done by moving all the discord based discussion to the forums as well.

I don't understand why it's hard to have an event be based on multiple platforms tbh. Both platforms serve different purposes to the event and it wouldn't be what it is without either. Getting rid of the forums makes it harder to have central hubs to hold everything and harder for the staff to manage everything. Getting rid of discord would make it harder for teams to communicate and would take away from the conversations that both happen within the cabins and between people from different cabins. I have no issue with both platforms being a requirement to sign up as you are missing the full experience by not having one of them.

The problem is when you get people who can only use one of these platforms they are excluded. Essentially locked them out of a partial experience because they can't get the "full" experience.

I fail to see how having everything set up on Discord instead of the forums would make it harder for the staff to manage, but I am neither a discord expert nor staff, so that stance could be due to my lack of information.

 

[Varhii]

Moonwatcher, I think you fundamentally do not understand several aspects of discord.

First off, Discord pretty much works on most all platforms that you can access the forums on and if you have a device that can access the forums well and not discord to some extent that's news to me. Someone could easily at the bare minimum make a burner account for the event so they can have some communication with their team.

Secondly, it would be very hard to migrate all the discussion that happens on the discord to the forums. There can easily be during certain times over 500 messages sent within one cabin over the course of an hour. Not to mention that the Smash Camp Discord is more loosely moderated than the Marriland Discord meaning that it would take significant time to pour through the conversations to make sure they can be ported over to Marriland without getting into trouble. Of course this all ignores the fact that the purpose of discord is so I can have a conversation with someone and we can talk back and forth for a while without the conversation lasting an hour.

Thirdly, I don't get what you mean when you say "locked them out of a partial experience." You DID get a partial experience and that is overall our point. Because you were having a partial experience and missing key discussions, you ultimately gave other teams points for free. Due to the increasing dual platform nature of the event it is increasingly bad for both a person and their team if that person isn't involved in the discord in any way.

Lastly, there are several reasons why having everything on discord would be harder. The first is that the forums serve as more of a central updating hub while the discord tends to act as a faster discussion place. Either we can bloat the discord with 20+ channels so that we can make sure all the events have a place to be updated while keeping discussions from overflowing into them too much and making it hard to read back on archives or we can have a place on a forum where it is much easier to archive stuff and reference it whenever ti is needed as all you need is a simple link. There were also several forum events that made use of this being a forum and a place where you can look back on stuff without having to dig through a massive amount of discussion where people talked about betting on the girl with the bigger chest. Along with that, you risk giving up a lot of potential traffic to the event if you disconnect it from the forums even if you keep sign ups on here. I hosted a Draft League about a year ago and we made a mistake of turning the event into something very discord based. What happened was it was really fun for those of us involved in the event from the get go, but it was hard to show what was so fun about it and get potential interest for the next event due to a lot of it being behind closed doors. Getting rid of the Forum aspect may spell doom for the event.

I could type more about this but my hand is really starting to hurt a **** ton and I don't wan to aggravate it any more. I have no doubt you'll respond and I'll likely reply to you tomorrow.

 

[seaturtle]

The problem is when you get people who can only use one of these platforms they are excluded. Essentially locked them out of a partial experience because they can't get the "full" experience.

I fail to see how having everything set up on Discord instead of the forums would make it harder for the staff to manage, but I am neither a discord expert nor staff, so that stance could be due to my lack of information.

Popping in to say that Discord is accessible enough that most people who can participate on the forums should be able to join the server as well - it's incredibly easy to make an account (even a burner one if you won't use it again) and it can be loaded in browser, meaning no one even has to download anything to use it. Besided, anyone who joins should be on the forums anyways, so having submissions be here doesn't cut anyone off that would have been participating in a Discord only event to start with.

Regarding the management of the event, there is no logistical way that we could pull off this event without using forum boards. Submitting points, explaining activities, organizing day posts, none of that would function if the event was exclusively Discord based. Discord is a chat program and isn't created in a way that allows old information to be found as easily has a forum setting does.

Lastly, I just want to address that while a lot of discussion and activity occurs on the Discord server, this still is a Marriland Forums event. It's not branded as a forums event to mislead people into participating without them understanding things happen off-site, and by making Discord a requirement in the future I think we'll eliminate confusion on that aspect. This is a community event, not a Discord event, so moving it exclusively over to the Discord doesn't make sense to me on that end either. Discord is being used as a tool to enhance Smash Camp the same way that Google Sheets were utilized to store answers for the Medley or other events.

I think this discussion is starting to get a little personal and heated - it's fine to continue talking about it but please remember to keep it cool.

 

[Moonwatcher]

Moonwatcher, I think you fundamentally do not understand several aspects of discord.

First off, Discord pretty much works on most all platforms that you can access the forums on and if you have a device that can access the forums well and not discord to some extent that's news to me. Someone could easily at the bare minimum make a burner account for the event so they can have some communication with their team.

That is true. I have no argument against this, other than I hate Discord and am not using it. And being the exeption to the rule, that is not a valid argument, so I conceed your point.

Secondly, it would be very hard to migrate all the discussion that happens on the discord to the forums. There can easily be during certain times over 500 messages sent within one cabin over the course of an hour. Not to mention that the Smash Camp Discord is more loosely moderated than the Marriland Discord meaning that it would take significant time to pour through the conversations to make sure they can be ported over to Marriland without getting into trouble. Of course this all ignores the fact that the purpose of discord is so I can have a conversation with someone and we can talk back and forth for a while without the conversation lasting an hour.

So essentially Discord is for breaking the Marriland rules? And talking to someone in the exact same way as a forum?

Thirdly, I don't get what you mean when you say "locked them out of a partial experience." You DID get a partial experience and that is overall our point. Because you were having a partial experience and missing key discussions, you ultimately gave other teams points for free. Due to the increasing dual platform nature of the event it is increasingly bad for both a person and their team if that person isn't involved in the discord in any way.

You say you don't understand, then give an example of exactly what I said? Without the dual platform, communications wouldn't be an issue, and things like this wouldn't happen. Also, I thought it had been earlier stated that the goal was to have fun and the points didn't matter?

Lastly, there are several reasons why having everything on discord would be harder. The first is that the forums serve as more of a central updating hub while the discord tends to act as a faster discussion place. Either we can bloat the discord with 20+ channels so that we can make sure all the events have a place to be updated while keeping discussions from overflowing into them too much and making it hard to read back on archives or we can have a place on a forum where it is much easier to archive stuff and reference it whenever ti is needed as all you need is a simple link. There were also several forum events that made use of this being a forum and a place where you can look back on stuff without having to dig through a massive amount of discussion where people talked about betting on the girl with the bigger chest. Along with that, you risk giving up a lot of potential traffic to the event if you disconnect it from the forums even if you keep sign ups on here. I hosted a Draft League about a year ago and we made a mistake of turning the event into something very discord based. What happened was it was really fun for those of us involved in the event from the get go, but it was hard to show what was so fun about it and get potential interest for the next event due to a lot of it being behind closed doors. Getting rid of the Forum aspect may spell doom for the event.

These are very good reasons against moving it to just one location. With this new knowledge I agree that keeping both Forums and Discord is a good idea.

I could type more about this but my hand is really starting to hurt a **** ton and I don't wan to aggravate it any more. I have no doubt you'll respond and I'll likely reply to you tomorrow.

So yes. No need to keep this going. You've convinced me.

 

[atlus 2]

Imagine if everything is setup on discord next year and he still sells the cabin out