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Originally Posted by kage
For anyone (e.g. Molon) to "certify" his own missions holds implications I think we're all aware of.
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What is it about me in particular that makes those implications more obvious? It's silly anyway; I "certify" my scenarios by sending them to Bill (or in previous lives, to Timmy G, Fish, or Phantom). [And yes, I know the mosquito boats in ARG still collide sometimes, but I have that issue with formations all the time...If someone has substantial advice for preventing it, I'll listen--but I'm on my 4th version of that one and I'm not doing another revision unless I know it will be an improvement.]
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Complexity - with the standard sub vs sub instant detection deathmatch being at the bottom
Technical problems - bugs in the missions, triggers that won't fire correctly, etc
Information - is the player ever left wondering "what the heck am I supposed to do"? Dropped into the middle of the ocean told to search, without limitations on the search area? Told to attack a cargo ship, with 13 of them to choose from?
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I guess going through dozens of SCX scenarios has just turned me off to the idea. Yes, it was hard finding the good scenarios and you never really knew if the one you were playing would work as it was supposed to, but that's the price you pay for using aftermarket missions. Eventually, I came to recognize the names of a few good designers that I knew to have faith in, and that got me through OK.
I guess if we could do better, we should, but what factors determine if a scenario is certified, and who decides? LW's idea doesn't even begin to explain anything that we'd need to know to make a list. And considering that it looks like my skeptical ass is only one to post comments on a scenario in response, others either don't get it either or don't care.
Using categories as Kage has suggested clarifies the issue of what 'certifiation' would mean, but it doesn't help on the authority problem. I suppose if someone wanted to do the web-work, it could be something people vote on. But in a community as small as ours, polls won't mean that much. A few careless responses throws the whole system out of whack. I can just see it now; a scenario ends up with a piss poor "information" rating because the designer gave the player a flaming datum, a time, and a classifiation, but not a bounded Op Area marker on the Nav map. The rating player couldn't be bothered to figure out how far away the target could have made it, so he rates the scenario poorly.
I think no matter what, any rating is going to be very subjective. It'll be so subjective that it won't mean a damn thing, unless the rating is the opinion of someone who we all know well enough to know in what aspects we should trust the opinion and in what aspects we would expect to disagree. I don't really feel like volunteering anyone for that.