In post 177, Flavor Leaf wrote:On the topic of a taly’s hydra topic, I do like that idea. Hydras seem to be pretty popular right now.
Said it at the time it was suggested, will say it again.
As one of the strongest proponents of hydraing on site. (I literally am still bitter they're banned from Normals because I lost that fight.)
I am against the idea, and that says something.
Hydras can, and SHOULD, be nominated for awards that they are eligible for.
They are PARTICULARLY eligible for awards like best town performance, best scumteam.
A long-running hydra may be eligible for a body of work award.
A rather hilarious hydra might be eligible for a kodak nomination.
A game modded on a hydra would be appropriate to nominate the hydra involved.
Etc.
Hydras don't need a separate award, because they are eligible for all of our current ones--and in fact. On at least one occasion and I think MORE than one occasion. A hydra has WON the scummie award for that year. Yet alone, the number of hydrae nominated (which is significantly higher than the number of winners since we have a finite number of winners and a near-infinite number of theoretical candidates).
"Best Hydra" or something of the sort is far too subjective of an award; what metric could you possibly use to determine it, when there are so many different reasons to hydra? A teaching hydra is different from a modding hydra is different from a hydra for fun is different from a hydra for activity reasons (either individual head wouldn't be able to play) is different from a deliberate abomination-style hydra is different from a strategically-oriented hydra (two players deliberately trying to augment each other to be better than they'd be individually).
Yet they are all hydras that are no less valid than the other, so which would you call superior? You really can't. It's a bad idea all-around.
In post 177, Flavor Leaf wrote:I also understand where Mastina’s coming from, though. I agree that people shouldn’t actively go out of their way to try and win a scummie, but I still think it’s okay to want to be nominated, especially if you feel you deserve it. I don’t think people should actively play in a way where it’s like “oh, they’re just doing that for the scummie”, they should just play the game as they normally would.
For instance, I replace into a lot of games, and I’ll replace into games specifically because I feel no one else is going to sometimes, but maybe that’s more of an addicted to mafia adrenaline than anything else, and I don’t try to go for the White Knight scummy, but if I had a great replace in, or multiple great replace ins, i’d like to think a scummy nom isn’t out of the question.
That is what I was getting at, yes.
However:
In post 177, Flavor Leaf wrote:I think it’s okay to try for scummies, just don’t compromise your games because of it.
My point is that on a subconscious level, that's literally impossible. By aiming deliberately to get the scummie, you
are
compromising your game; your goal is to get the scummie, not do the thing the scummie is for. You need to do the thing the scummie is for in order to get the scummie, but because your aim is to get the scummie, your focus isn't on the thing, it's on the scummie.
That being said: aiming for scummie quality in what you do? Absolutely I encourage
that
. But that's not the same as aiming to try and win a scummie. Trying to be scummie-worthy in the quality of your work is, essentially, trying to be
the absolute best you can be
; trying to win a scummie is, essentially, trying to win a trophy. The mindsets are superficially similar but entirely different in execution.
Which means, that yes:
In post 177, Flavor Leaf wrote:Don’t be an Oscar bait movie just for the sake of potentially getting an award, basically.
That is EXACTLY what I meant.
In post 178, Jingle wrote:100000 Shit tier replace ins < 1 Stellar replace in sure.
3 Good replace ins > 1 Great Replace in.
I don't think anyone's arguing that we should have tw keep track of the number of times each player replaces in and just auto-award the scummy to whoever replaces into the most games. I definitely think that someone who consistently performs well as a replacement and replaces in 10 times should win over someone who dives wholeheartedly into a single game, even if their impact on that one game was bigger.
And yeah, arguing that body of work makes it all about quantity is pretty :thorface: as well. It's not like we just hand Don Corleone to whoever wins the most scumgames in a year.
Respectfully, Jingle: as a veteran Scummies judge? You should know better.
Take a look at how people have judged the scummies for body of work nominations versus non-BoW nominations over the years. I can attest to the process being pretty much exactly that.
Judges are lazy.
I don't mean literally lazy.
I mean that judges are busy. They have real lives to attend to, they have other site obligations to attend to, they are volunteers and this isn't a job for them and many judges have secondary duties that trump their judging desire--as a consequence, they tend to procrastinate in their judging. Heck, you know this better than anyone as
you missed the deadline for judging
.
Body of Work awards are, quite simply, not given the attention they deserve by judges.
Keep in mind that to judge someone who has replaced into 20 games, to properly judge them, you'd have to look at each and every single one of those games, not just their iso but the effect they had on the game, something you'd need context from not available in an iso--yet no judge has that time.
People who are outside of the process, in their naivety, in their idealism, think, "Pshaw! You judges are lazy. If *I* was a judge, then I'd actually do all the work!"
And then we go, "Okay, you think you could do it? Sure, you're in; you're a judge!"
...And then they don't actually do it because nobody actually can.
So the award tends to go to the people the judges have the larger data set on.
It's easier to skim 20 games than it is to in detail read 7 games.
So the judges are going to favor the player who replaced into the 20 games over the player who replaced into 7 games, unless the player who replaced into 20 games had a strong compelling reason not to be seen as the better candidate.
Is that a flaw in the judging process, why yes, yes it is. Within the next couple of years, with the new SSC getting their footwork established and a good grounding, maybe with luck if we focus on it we can fix that problem. (We're aware of it and we talked about it but the idea of fixing it is on the backburner last I checked.) But as-is, with the system we've got right now?
It literally would just go to the person with the most replace-ins as a body of work award, unless the person with the most replace-ins strongly fucked up in some of those games to the point of being disqualified.
And that won't change until the judging system's revamped.
So I suppose I should say: until such a time as the judging system is fixed to remove that flaw, I don't support it being BoW. I'm not against the idea altogether, but for it to happen, other things need to change first.