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Mega Man: The Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet 2011


DarkeSword
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Keeping a running tally of the points everyone receives and basing the overall victor of the competition on that is actually wrong, because it's affected heavily by the number of voters and a team's overall ranking in the competition can be heavily influenced by vote-stacking. Round-to-round scores need to be normalized; the teams that rank first in each round should always receive the same number of points; in this case, five.

The top ranking team in the first round received 64 points, right? Let's say that in the next round, not as many people vote, so another team wins that round with 50 points. So just because more people voted in the first round, the first team is still ahead? That's not fair. You win the round, you should be in the same standing. That's why points going from round to round are normalized. I will not change this, because it's the only system that is actually fair in a multiple round competition.

As for keeping the normalization only at three places, I did that to keep things competitive, i.e. if you lose a round, you still have a chance to catch up.

However, since we have a lot of teams competing and I look at the scoreboard now, having only three places where you can actually get more than a participation point is not the way to go, so I'll be adjusting the scoring as follows, based on how you place overall in the round:

  1. 10 points
  2. 7 points
  3. 5 points
  4. 4 points
  5. 3 points
  6. 2 points
  7. 1 point
  8. 1 point
  9. 1 point
  10. 1 point
  11. 1 point
  12. 1 point

Not turning in a mix will still get you zero points for the round, but so long as you're placing in the top 50% of submitted remixes, you'll be getting more than just an "I sent in a remix" point.

And yes, I realize that awarding points based on place rather than dividing overall tallies by a number is not actually normalization, but again, awarding points based on rank keeps things more competitive than simply allowing landslide victories carry over from round to round, and it gives younger mixers a fighting chance (young in the sense of newer-to-the-craft).

I'd also like to stress to everyone to not sweat the numbers so much, and concentrate on bringing the best remixes that you possibly can to the table.

That said, I definitely appreciate everyone's feedback, and I think the changes will work out for the better for everyone.

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The top ranking team in the first round received 64 points, right? Let's say that in the next round, not as many people vote, so another team wins that round with 50 points. So just because more people voted in the first round, the first team is still ahead? That's not fair. You win the round, you should be in the same standing. That's why points going from round to round are normalized. I will not change this, because it's the only system that is actually fair in a multiple round competition.

I disagree. Voter participation levels can affect in results in any compo, not just multi-round compos. That's not something you can eliminate or normalize without seriously distorting results in a different direction. Case in point, making half the entries automatically tie. I still believe that getting the points you actually get is fairest. And I don't think we should think only of the feelings of remixers, what about voters? What if they vote for the bottom 50%, shouldn't their votes still count?

However, as I said before, you are the final arbiter of the rules and I will still participate in the compo enthusiastically. But, I will be keeping my own tally. Thank you for weighing in on this.

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Darke makes a great point and I see why he went with this system now. That said it needed less normalization on the mid range and that's what he's doing. I think its a great solution.

I agree. A pure vote tally could be unfair depending on number of votes each round, but coming up with standard values for each placement is the best idea. We could still distribute points further down the ranking (think Mario Kart circuit rankings) and not just cut off at 7th place now, but I think this is going to be a better system then before for sure.

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I do like the little bit broader range of tiers. That I think will satisty almost everyone.

We still will just vote for our top 3, correct?

Yes sir.

In other news, I've updated the first post with links to archives of the previous Mega Man competitions I've run, so if you've missed out on listening to GRMRB or GMRB remixes in the past, make sure you grab the final release zips for those competitions.

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Yay, a better system. :D

Normalization would be dividing the number of votes a mix gets with the total number of votes in the round. I think I'll do that when I'm not mixing, just to see the differences between scores.

There's so much we could do with the data: neutralize ppl's rankings and just see whose mixes were in the top 3 the most, award arbitrary amounts of points to each rank, normalizing or no normalizing, Darke's original choice of scoring, the current system, variations and combinations...

I might be a statistician. Scary thought.

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Normalization would be calculating the standard deviation and assigning a certain amount of points depending on where people fell ranking-wise...something that'd take more effort than anyone probably would want to put in, including me.

I would do it. But Darkesword has already chosen his system. I'm ready to move on and just keep my own tallies.

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Normalization would be calculating the standard deviation and assigning a certain amount of points depending on where people fell ranking-wise...something that'd take more effort than anyone probably would want to put in, including me.

Yeah, hence the reason I said that I realize what I'm doing is not actually normalization. :mrgreen:

Anyway let's move on, shall we? Less statistics, more reviews!

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I didn't expect the scoring system to actually change, but I'm glad it did. Even though I'm 7th (and thus JUST out of range to be affected this time), I think this will be a much more reasonable way of doing things.

Ultimately what it came down to was that there were nights were after a long day of working late that I just didn't feel like remixing. But the thought of letting my team down by getting less points helped me power through.

Similarly in the GRMRB it was the possibility of being eliminated that helped me push through times when I was too tired or just didn't feel in the mood.

Again, it was never about winning. It was about that extra push of motivation to make sweet, sweet music even when the mundane things of life have sapped my energy.

Thanks, Darke, for making the adjustment. I appreciate it.

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Normalization would be calculating the standard deviation and assigning a certain amount of points depending on where people fell ranking-wise...something that'd take more effort than anyone probably would want to put in, including me.
I'd be happy to do a table with the Z-scores calculated out if anyone actually wanted them. It's actually very simple in a spreadsheet. I don't think there's any point, though.
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Just throwing this out there, I appreciate all the comments towards my mix in your reviews. I don't have a lot of remixing experience under my belt (let alone mixing 2 songs in one), and I'm still learning a lot production-wise so I'm glad that there are some people enjoying what I was able to put together. Also rock really isn't something I have a lot of experience with as far as mixing goes so it was a bit of a gamble this week, deviating from my more comfortable style. I realized it was a bit muddy but I'll continue to work on it. Thanks all!

Also I may have time in the next few days once I'm done all this school crap to do some small reviews, but I can say that it was an enjoyable bunch, and there were definitely a handful that I could have slotted into my top 3 that didn't make it. Alas, choices had to be made. But a good effort from everybody, in my opinion.

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Well let's say I'm among one of the few that's unhappy with the changed system. People are only going to vote for 3 entries, aren't they? Then that means out of a choice of 12 they're obviously going to leave behind many of the great tracks that will be heavily cut aside by the system.

See, this was one of many reasons why there'd be sometimes several year-long gaps in my appearances in the Dwelling of Duels... :\

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Well let's say I'm among one of the few that's unhappy with the changed system. People are only going to vote for 3 entries, aren't they? Then that means out of a choice of 12 they're obviously going to leave behind many of the great tracks that will be heavily cut aside by the system.

See, this was one of many reasons why there'd be sometimes several year-long gaps in my appearances in the Dwelling of Duels... :\

People do vote for tracks that don't end up winning. Those get counted in the system.

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I'm not saying they don't, Nabeel. But you've seen so many people around here in this thread that have felt that they found it so hard to just pick 3 out of so many, right?

Think about how disappointed you would be if you had a mass amount of people saying they didn't quite put you in their votes, coming with the price of a painfully weak rank right at the end. As one that looks out for artists' welfare, this to me is just not on. :?

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I'd be happy to do a table with the Z-scores calculated out if anyone actually wanted them. It's actually very simple in a spreadsheet. I don't think there's any point, though.

Yeah, it's not really that bad. In a way, there's a flaw with that method too, since there's no way it can capture if someone's track happens to be just that much better than everyone elses. At the end of the day, there's no perfect method for voting since each voter uses different criteria.

On another note, I completed my review of the tracks so far here.

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I saw Rexy mention that they are Addictive Drums, which are the ones that Sixto uses to good effect.

I thought Sixto uses Drumkit From Hell?

But yeah, should this version end up going through to refining for OCR (which seems very likely) I'll be sure to consider working on the balancing there for that and the flute. I think I learnt a few new techinques from last night's Punchfest too, so I'll be prepared to see what I can do.

Thank you again Wes :)

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Random question:

I have reverb, a multiband compressor, and a stereo shaper in an effects chain on a percussion loop.

What's the best order? Multiband compressor --> reverb --> stereo shaper?

Never compress reverb. So put that before all else.

I would put stereo shaper (I use the enhancer not the shaper, tbh) and then reverb.

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