Get out your lawn chairs, ladies and gentlemen, it's soapbox time. :) (Don't worry, it won't take long to get my point across)

I've been watching the voting activity more or less since we started picking games for T2 and I'm alternately amused and annoyed by some of the practices, two of which I'm going to call up here.

Gang voting: Oh, please. :) This will sound flame-ish, but after openly admitting that they had to have someone else think of the idea ~for~ them, they did it wrong, and the number one game they're going to force in the tourney as a result... Pac-Man? Are you people warped? ;) People went and whined about how Galaga was such a pattern game, and now we're seeing the ~ultimate~ pattern game crossing the tourney. I'd have to look at the voting scores again, but 30 points has got to put it in or near the top 10. Rethink that one, gentlemen. Or come tourney time, you're going down. ;)

Changing votes: I can understand people switching their votes because a certain game that they originally wanted was disallowed, doesn't work well enough in MAME, whatever. That's perfectly legitimate in my eyes (Even I had to clarify one of my ROMS because there were several versions, and after looking at the top scores for it I'm regretting it a bit ;). But several MARPers seem to be changing willy-nilly based on what game has x points in an attempt to hoist it up to the top 10. Pardon me... Did I mistake the NYSE for MARP? If I had one (and only one) suggestion to make to Gameboy9 about the way the tourney is run, I'd say everybody gets to vote on their ten games. Once. And if you want different games later, tough. :) But then everyone would wait until the last minute and gang vote anyway, which can't be helped in general unless you really want to get legislative. The solution to that is simply to shorten the voting time considerably, make the hidden deadline within a span of a week or even less rather than the two it is now.

Anyway, that's my suggestion, take it or leave it as always. Gb, Zwaxy and crew do a fine job on this page in general and I'm still loving it. Except for Pac-Man, by Midway, with a speedup cheat. Don't invoke my wrath (read, full attention) ;).

Cheers, Brian McLean

-- Brian McLean (bmclean84@hotmail.com), October 12, 1999

Answers

Did you look WHERE those 30 points actually came from?

Now, I am not going to accuse people of anything, but here are just some random thoughts that I can't help but have:

(1) I could create a lot of e-mail addresses myself (at my own domain, but also using lots of free e-mail services), and impersonate a lot of other persons so that my ENTIRE top 10 will be in T2...

(2) Or if I wanted to be SLIGHTLY more honest, I could ask a lot of people I know to start voting using some permutation of my top 10...

(3) All of a sudden, I see people that I have never seen any posts of, vote. I can't help but think that, somehow, we won't see all of those people actually play in T2 either...

Ah well... . I'm mostly with Brian on this one.

Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), October 12, 1999.

First, Pacman is a great game,think about if we could get the a perfect pacman in mame,it has only been done once in the arcade.

Second, We are a group of players here in Norway that love Mame, we will all be competing, so dont even think about accusing US for cheating. If this is looked upon as cheating this is the lamest group of players i ever met. What you guys are afraid of is that you "TOP players" wont do well.

Example, as i told Zwaxy BEFORE it happened, when Brian was leading, I knew there would be some kind of screw up, then somebody of the so called top players would pass him in the final minutes of the tourney (or even after :) )

More votes coming from us today.

Btw,this is not a free email service. This server can take a hell lot of more mails than the other isp's in Norway, and wont struggle.

btw2. I was quiet surprised it took so long before anybody reacted lol.

AND IT WAS NOT MY IDEA,PLEASE REMEMBER THAT, GANG VOTING WAS SOMEBODY ELSE'S.

regards, Stig Remnes

regards,

-- Stig Remnes (sremnes@samsen.com), October 13, 1999.

So Stig, why don't you clarify your statement by naming names and citing infractions with the so-called "screw up". Gee, I think I can narrow your "so called top players" in your post to mean BeeJay or me or both as we both submitted last minute scores...well, mine actually got in over an hour before closing AND minutes before the server shutdown (read that as "within the alloted 72 hour submission period and before the closing"). As far as BeeJay goes, I believe you should talk to the judges on this one as I understand that he gave proper notification to the judges when the server went down.

And trust me, if the tourney means this much to you, perhaps you should actually attempt to participate this time around instead of whining. I don't believe anyone here is "afraid" of anything. In my case, I'll give a good effort but if I don't do well in T2...c'est la vie. In case you didn't realize it, there is nothing at stake here to worry about...so why make such a statement? If you players from Norway can do well in T2, then I send my sincere congratulations to you.

I personally could care less about the "gang voting". If you read my last post, you'll see that I didn't get ANY of the games I would have like to have seen in T1, but did well regardless. The biggest problem with the "gang voting" as far as MARP is concerned, seems to be the fact that it potentially closes the tourney down to becoming nothing more than a top 10 favorites of a few people. Thus only serving to give the few players their own private tournament...not a very good measure of those few players' game-playing abilities and not that satisfying as well. Perhaps the random game selection would be a better way to go so there is none of this "finger pointing" nonsense that seems to have some people's feathers ruffled.

BTW- Why is it that a player of your great talent feel the need to be on the attack so much? Take it easy, have fun and save the energy for when these tourneys begin to pay us money for winning...like that'll ever happen! ;)

JoustGod (well, used to be one... :p)

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), October 13, 1999.

I know I'm dragging myself into quite possibly a flame war now, but I should clarify. I'm accusing nobody of cheating, just, well... I guess it's more of a smirk than anything at the goings on. But gb has already resolved things, so it's a moot point.

And JG and Stig, what happened there? ;) Geez, there's no need to get nutty about who won T1. Everything that happened was perfectly within the rules, and as I said before, just because I didn't submit anything on the last day doesn't mean I wasn't in the middle of a hot game of miexchng at 23:59 that night (well, GMT, it was more like 18:59 for me). If I'd nailed that elusive 64 before midnight, you can bet your hiney I would've uploaded and passed them both. :) I won't deny JG and BeeJay a shred of their victory, and the only regret I've got is that I can't give the latter a rematch next time! I guess JoustGod is going to have to take double the punishment instead, heh.

Anyway, my original objection with Pac-Man was not necessarily so much about gang voting as that it was simply a dull game. Galaga wasn't so bad, but getting the 3mil+ a good showing will require in Pac-Man is just a matter of repetition. A whole lot of it. Hours of it. It's more like being at a job than playing a game. :) Such displays of monotony are fine for regular MARP, because ~somebody~ has to get the 100 million in Asteroids, 600 million in Star Wars, etc. But it's far less fun when everyone has to do it or be punished in the rankings. That's all I'm saying.

Cheers,

-- Brian McLean (bmclean84@hotmail.com), October 13, 1999.