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[CCOS] Results are coming soon! But in the meantime, let's talk about updates.....

Sir ArmaMalum·12/14/2015, 6:41:28 PM·11 votes·1,163 views

Hello all! I hope everyone's December is going well!

From Star Wars releases to Finals to Christmas to Snowdown it's been and will be a very busy month. And being the fool I am I always manage to find new and creative ways to add onto that pile. (I would get bored otherwise :P)

In this case I happen to be completely overhauling the CCOS back-end. Along with more to come!

In general, there have been a few complaints about the tools that judges had access to as well as the 'final product' the entrants got to see at the end. There were better ways! But the CCOS sheets were for the most part a collection of various touch-ups from different people built on a relatively shoddy foundation (made by yours truly). For example, did you know I have to manually copy and past the judge's feedback and scores manually every month? That takes more time than you'd think! Not to mention the vulnerability to mismatching and general clunkiness.

No more I say! Here is what you'll be finding now:

for entrants

for judges

It's shiny and properly tooled to make it (hopefully) much easier to to use for everyone involved (myself included).

There are a lot of new bells and whistles to this, but 80% of them or so are for myself to be completely honest. These sheets pulls values from each other automatically, which means all I have to do is type in the list of names, authors and links and everything will set for me. Which gives me time to judge myself! Huzzah!

But beyond that there are some new features I'd like your all's help with. First and foremost being the...

Master Rubric

The addition of a rubric allows me to do two things:

  1. "Assign" some automatic feedback based on your average score. In other words, if you score a 17 on lore I can give an automated bit of text explaining what that generally means. Not a cure-all by any means, but a hell of a lot more useful than an arbitrary number when a judge doesn't give any specifics!

  2. Allows me to accurately explain what each category's scores imply and lets judges score more consistently.

Now naturally what this rubric actually says will impact how some of you make entries, and as such any of you who are interested should take a look at this rubric (seen on either sheet) and tell me how you would have it say instead!

I will be posting several rubric updates over the coming months with calls for feedback everytime, so if you'd like to give you 2 cents or even your whole dollar keep an eye out! (or ask me to e-mail you anytime I post an update, I can do that for you!)

Category updates! (NOT in effect for November or December CCOS)

There have been quite a few proposals to change the CCOS' scoring style, some great and some not so great. At the end of the day there will never be a perfect way to score concepts across the board, but by that same regard that means that the current system isn't perfect either!

Here are a few points against the current set-up that have remained constant among those proposals:

  • 'Lore' and 'Kit' are too vague
  • 'Originality' is weighted too heavily
  • 'Effort' is so arbitrary it hurts
  • Lore/Kit should have more weight! (both have been argued numerous times)

and here are the objectives of any set-up I'll have in the CCOS

  • Lore should always be included, current live situation be damned
  • There should be a method to allow for new conceptors to still compete well (i.e. current 'Effort' category)
  • Tired tropes and themes should be punished (sorry folks, but another half-dragon shouldn't score well)
  • Kit should remain somewhat vague, since there are endless possibilities to how kits can be made as well as interpreted

As such, here's the new scoring system I am currently considering (note: Will NOT be in effect for November OR December CCOS)

|-Wt-|----------Category----------|Description| |- | 20 | Lore| The overall feel and description of your champion as a personality. | | 25 | Flow/Fun | How a character's abilities/kit feel to play with as well as against. | | 20 | Design Implementation | How well our champion's kit fulfills its goal. (i.e. Asassins assasinating, tanks, tanking, etc.)| | 20 | Novelty | The uniqueness and niche areas that your champion has made for itself. | | 15 | Cohesiveness | How well your champion ties into itself. Kit into character and vice versa. | | 10 | Good Neighbor Bonus | An extra possible 10 points for if you gave feedback to another entrant. |

So first you may notice this is a 110 point scale and not a 100 point scale. A brilliant suggestion by TheDjinn was that by having it in a 100+10 format let's you see your concept's score out of 100 but still allows for the feedback bonus to play a part in deciding a winner. I am all for that, and it also allows for more room for slightly more specific criteria.

As for the changed criteria, this is not a guarantee just yet but it is what is on my mind at the moment. Would you rather see another kind of change to the CCOS scoring? Tell me!

#Judge Limit

With these new sheets comes some technical limitations. Currently I have template able to hold five judges, and with the constant possibility of a judge not making it all the way it's fairly easy to remove incomplete scorings. Adding them however is significantly harder with all of the automatic data imports happening.

As such, I'm going to be soon enforcing a limit of five judges per month. Should I get more than five judge requests (what a happy problem to have!) I will have to start turning people down.

However I would like to get opinions on this change.

As an entrant, Is five judges enough for you given the option?

Sectioned feedback (not available for November CCOS)

I had to cut this out of the November sheets sadly, but I plan on allowing Judges to have seperate feedback boxes for each category. A suggestion first asked for by Bearly Leah and then promptly by about everyone else.

These more bite size feedback will hopefully encourage more judges to give feedback as well as the judges who are already awesome enough to do so to give more! Here's hoping!

#Outsourcing the Archive

For those who haven't noticed, I have not updated the CCOS archive in 2 months. I apologize to the entrants of the September and October CCOS, but I have unfortunately come to the conclusion that so many links in the post is starting to really hammer on a Boards post's bandwidth. Especially for slower connections, and we gotta make it available to absolutely anyone.

I have begun working on copying over all the information to a google sheet (I like Google Sheets if you haven't noticed already). Not only will this allow for more people to to see the archive easier but it will also be easier for me to update it directly AND to spiff up the winner names with some fancy formatting. As well as other less fun functionalities, such as transferring ownership of the archive when the torch is eventually passed....

The scoresheets take priority of course, but for anyone who has started to wonder why the archive has stagnated, don't worry too much. Hopefully it'll be better than ever come new years!

tl;dr

  • I made a shiny new sheet thing for judges and entrants.
  • I'm considering changing the CCOS scoring style (refer to table above)
  • I am partitioning Judge feedback per category
  • I am possible bringing in a limit to the number of judges
  • I am working on moving the CCOS archive from a Boards post to a Google Sheet

22 Comments

ModThe Djinn12/14/2015, 7:09:47 PM4 votes

I think a five judge limit is fantastic, especially if the judges are consistent. I'd almost be in favor of reducing it to three and making sure they're quality judges, so the contest is as professional as possible.

The scoring system also seems like a good change (and close enough to what I suggested that I love it -- its definitely a more graceful implementation of my ramblings), although I would change "Balance" to "Game Mechanics," since that gives the judge a bit more flexibility, and takes a little pressure off people to balance numbers perfectly...which can be difficult. Hard Game Mechanics aren't necessarily directly related to gameplay flow either, so those categories will remain distinct.

Candurill12/14/2015, 6:50:39 PM2 votes

I am OK with this ^^ As a first time entrant to the CCOS last month i do not yet know how my champion will be judged so i can't say anything about the current way of judging...but im sure you know what you are doing ^^ so you have my full support :D

warpenguin55512/14/2015, 8:50:16 PM1 votes

i just thought of this. can we have a contest to make the most cancerous champion possible?

Dyslexai12/14/2015, 10:13:07 PM1 votes

I just wanted to pop in and say that I do like the new scoring system, but there's a few points I'd like to bring up about it.

First off, I'm absolutely on board to having the bonus points be bonus points. Nothing makes me sadder than watching a concept miss out on 10% of its possible points because no reviews were posted. With this setup, it rewards people for doing it rather than penalizing them for not doing it.

Secondly, I'd honestly argue for lore to keep its own category, and then add a bit more weight to Theme and gear it more toward overall feel of the character, and if the themes contained within the lore are interesting and unique. I've seen a lot of concepts with some really great ideas that aren't conveyed as effectively as they could be through the lore, and I think a change like this might help reflect that a bit.

Finally, I really feel like implementation is a good word to use for the category. You can have the coolest kit ideas in the world, but it doesn't mean very much if they're not implemented in a reasonable way. I think having a place to address that is pretty important.

Just some food for thought. Keep up the good work!

WarchfGinger12/14/2015, 10:45:44 PM1 votes

Instead of turning people down, put them on a waiting queue for the next month

FloRaider4212/14/2015, 7:45:39 PM1 votes

I think it is a very good idea to set some parameters and new catagories for the judging as it used to be very unclear at times. Most often coming down to how much you liked the concept, instead of how good it was made.

I love most of the changes, but I am split on Balance

| 20 | Balance | How your champion's numbers stack up against live precedents. |

In my opinion numbers are part of the finetuning, as they can be changed rather easily and have vague effects (I doubt that every judge knows how much impact the base or ability stats have, especially with abilities out of the ordinary) I think that as long as the numbers give a vague idea of the intention (high/low damage/CC etc.) they suffice.

I'm just gonna throw this opinion out and see what you guys think about it.

FloRaider out summoner 31

warpenguin55512/14/2015, 7:16:27 PM1 votes

question: (and sorry if you already answered this above) Are their points for how well a characters theme matches their kit? (Like brand having water abilities should cost points imo) nevermind i found it