To quote Ron Corcoran's site when he revamped his snipercade site - he said the following:

"I'll admit, MARP is fun, for the casual gamer"

Thanks for saying MARP is fun - but that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the second part - for the casual gamer. I'll provide the example to shoot it down very quickly. I take my games EXTREMELY seriously. How? Well... let's just say if my parents were not here, you wouldn't want to be around me when I lose a life where I shouldn't be in a game while recording.

Not only do I take my gaming extremely seriously, I take the MARP tournament coordination EXTREMELY seriously. In one respect, I was disappointed that we had four or five withdrawals this tournament. In case everyone is wondering, I understand why they did so.

You're thinking... oh... Gameboy thinks this tournament sucked! Well as a matter of fact, Gameboy thinks this tournament was quite successful. This tournament was also... well... my "teacher". With the same said incident taking place, I, and several others, learned that we can't have slow computers into the tournament. I, and several others, also learned via the masses of gang voting that happened in tournament 2 to NEVER let such voting happen again.

We are trying to take steps to avoid such incidents ever happening again - with the MAME TG 35 v.3 rule to hopefully defeat slow computers and the 3 votes of equal weight rule to avoid the gang voting. We may put some of the slower computers into the competition via the debate of games come the 11th or so. I'm hope we will have a very successful result in tournament 3.

I feel that ANYBODY who kept fighting it out in the second tournament despite everything that was happening here should be commended and praised for their efforts. Yes, I realize that I'm probably(about 98% sure) not one of those people - but understand it wasn't because of any incidents that happened in this tournament(you might wanna look at the serious gaming paragraph). I am pleased to report that twenty-one people qualified for this tournament - and I'm hoping for more people to qualify in the third. I hope that everyone who participated will play again in our third tournament - for we WILL have more possibilities put to use than the second tournament.(we'll be using v.35, not v.34) By the way... if you haven't voted for the third tournament, please do so - it's near or at the top of the tournament section of the board.

As for Ron's comment - there are a LOT of more serious gamers here than you'd think. If people are submitting pure solid valid scores, then I think they're playing for real. For fun, yes, but also for serious competition. No casuality here, at least with me.

One more thought - for people who are trying to post illegal recordings... like autofire recordings(last I remember that wasn't allowed), points leeching, or what for, you're only cheating yourself - and I hope many people will agree with that statement - and I also hope that we will take steps to show that we will not allow it. This is why I am NOT leaving MARP - because I believe we can filter out the wrong and acknowledge the right!

Thanks for reading.

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), January 01, 2000

Answers

With all due respect, I don't even understand why we need to vote for games in the tournaments. Why not just randomize the entire process. That way people need to develop skills at new games, instead of running over mostly the same old favorites. Not to mention that then everyone can claim equal representation of interests as well as having all players start out on a level footing. If we're going to play the same-old, same-old, I'll go join the vets at Deca2000.

Well, no I won't actually. I really don't want to try and beat Ben Jos at DK, but I still made my point, somewhere.

-- Q.T.Quazar (qan@home.com), January 01, 2000.

As for Ron's remark, I don't understand how he can say that. There are lots of world class players on MARP, and as long as they use TG settings and indicate that, Mark Longridge will eventually get around to seeing it and asking the player for permission to put that recording on his TG MAME site (which would happen faster, of course, if the player also submitted it to Mark in the first place). And it is Mark, NOT Ron, who decides which MAME recordings go in the book...

And "casual" players? Come on... For any given game, I bet I can find a "casual" player on MARP that can beat Ron at that game. Ironically, this means that if MARP were really for the casual player, then, judging from Ron's performances on games, Ron would really belong on MARP...

As for Q.T.'s remark, I have to disagree. Allowing people to vote for games is no guarantee at all that people don't have to develop skills for "new" games. Despite the fact that we voted for T2, 7 of the 10 games in T2 I had NEVER even SEEN (not to mention played) before the tournament, and I bet a lot more players weren't familiar with at least a few games. If you vote for a game, that does not mean it will be in the tournament, and there actually were players who didn't get any of the games they voted for in the tournament. Voting for games is not that different from completely randomly picking 10 games...

As for beating me at DK, well, a lot of the #1 recordings on MAME are pretty good, so whether it's DK or not, there's a good chance you'll have to try to beat SOMEONE's great score on that game...

Cheers, Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), January 01, 2000.

There is a decent amount of ammunition to back "for the casual gamer". I don't agree with Ron, but things like MACH 3 or T2 Kung Fu Leech Master don't make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. But the MARP Scoreboard is reasonably good as it is, and I believe things wlll improve with time.

I love the tournament concept as a way to promote competition on lesser known games. The main scoreboard, even if it was improved, can't really encourage people to try unfamiliar games to the extent that a tournament does. And I don't feel it would be fair for me to hang around proposing and debating and arguing and voting on the rules if I'm not going to participate. That's why I wouldn't have left T2 even if nothing got DQ'ed or the voting was left as it was in T1. But if some of what's changed hadn't changed I wouldn't have voted for games in T3, and I probably wouldn't be going to play in T3 either.

To do a purely random choice of games risks getting all clones of one or two games - say 4 Donkey Kongs and 6 Street Fighter 2: The World Warriors. Easily maxable or badly broken games also need to be removed. So a list of "acceptable" choices would have to be made. Essentially, the voting for games now is making a list without forcing one or two people to play every game in MAME.

Aqua

-- Aquatarkus (aquatarkus@digicron.com), January 02, 2000.

I have to disagree with Ron, but I think I understood what he meant.

As for the Tournaments concern, we cannot say we are "casual players": from T1 and T2 some of us showed great skill in any kind of games, and achieved stunning scores!

Ron begins to have a little right if we have a look at the regular Marp, lately closer to a "Land of Confusion": it is easier to control the genuinity of submissions in a short time period (2 months), with the help of 4-5 judges, more difficult is to do that all time long....but this is a problem we're discussing since a long time, and somenthing, sooner or later, has to be done. In any case, among several non-regular recordings, Ron cannot ignore that Marp collects the greatest players, and the greater scores, in the world.

Cicca

-- Cicca (cicca@writeme.com), January 03, 2000.

This is in response to GameBoy and others who were offended by my statement on Snipercade.

Wow, I didn't realize my statement would offend so many... My apologies to all of you whom I did offend with my "casual gamer" remark. My intent was NOT to belittle MARP, or it patrons, by any means. The tournaments you run here, while I do not participate, are very well organized and thought out. Yes, there are some serious gamers here. My statement came from looking at the general scoreboard, and reading all the problems you have with people of "questionable character" and their scores. Yes, MARP has several world class players and I would not presume to debate anyone that argues the fact that I have some rather pathetic scores... :) My point was simply that Mark is the official scoreboard keeper for Mame (yes Ben, I too can decide what scores get into the book as per Walter), and I didn't want to impede the work he is doing, or confuse people, by having two separate boards for TG. MARP is, at this point in history, not an official TG board, and in all likelyhood, more than 95% of the scores on this site will NOT make it into the book of records. Why? Lack of a true means of verification and validation. If everyone was to use TG v3 and their scores were validated, then I see no problem at all with ALL MARP scores being incorporated into the book provided Mark can get to them in time for printing. :)

Again, my apologies to all and thanks for reading.

Ron

-- Ron Corcoran (sniper75@mindspring.com), January 06, 2000.