2021 Annual Doomerboards Spergout

just do a people's choice voted-for democratic award like I already advocated for in a post nobody read. That way we can also take into consideration the mentionations in the relevant thread on DW for cross-community relevancy. Doom doesn't need two curated awards

ALSO I don't like Caccolade, it's too much like Cacoward and will come across as an off-brand imitation (another good reason not to do a curated kinda award). I do agree it's an improvement on/more fun to say than Cacoward but we need to differentiate ourselves better

I approve of "The Big Fucking Championship". Yes this blows cacowards out of the water, "Shaolin Soccer"-style.

I agree completely.  The best stuff should win regardless of who made it.  Being impartial will differentiate us from Doomworld and show that we can be mature adults capable of unbiased behavior.  Gotta give credit where credit is due.

Many years ago, back when I was still a member of Doomworld forums, I tested some of Grain of Salt's maps, and he or she(not sure of the gender) tested some of mine.  We both were able to behave like adults about it, compliment each other's work, and offer constructive criticism, regardless of the fact that I might not agree with that person's politics.  And if dew made an incredible map that rivaled Suspended in Dusk, by god I would nominate it for an award.  Doesn't matter if I think he's a prick or not, he created something awesome.

I think about how we can setup a searchable review system in parallel (without ratings/awards). What I'm talking about, is where users give quality, extensive reviews of the wad they played, so that reading a review might help find a wad that one might like before playing it. And the review index should be geared towards players who have an objective of finding a wad (not a specific wad) that matches their interest.

I think it can be done by assigning tags to reviews. Then searching by tags, relevant reviews pop up.

This system can be designed parallel to awards system. Its cons is that it will be more demanding resource-wise, while the pros is that it is geared towards players and allows to find something subjectively good for someone, regardless of whether it's a champion or not.

I think we should spotlight the top 10 or so highest voted WADs, so my concern with limiting people to one vote is that in the event of a low amount of votes or a really popular release, we might not have enough variety for a top 10. I do think there should be a relatively small vote limit though. You've convinced me that we don't need the rule about not voting for your own projects though - if the votes are public, everyone will know the creator voted for their own project.


This would be a lot of work but it's a good idea. Especially if we had some sort of tool to read WADs that could generate certain metadata, like monster count, map size, etc...

I kind of like this idea, might make a nice little sidebar to the main awards article/posting.

If I was DB el-presidente-for-life I'd run things more or less like this:

It would be called BFC9000;
Bob Page would do all the puns;
Votes would be tallied per community; each identifiable Doom community (us, DW, ZDoom, /vr/, r/doom maybe (redditors tend to be a bit retarded so I'm snobbish towards them), moddb; not really that interested in the opinions of stream viewers since they're passive consumers and anyone who isn't will be on at least one of the other forums) gets sent a survey using SurveyMonkey or a similar service to generate a top 5 or top 10;
Rules would be on the honours system: just vote on one survey and don't vote more than once;
Using a weighted system (ie. the top wad in any given communities list might get 10 points, the bottom would get 1) we'd generate an overall best-of list (each wad thereon would be assigned an arbitrary, hopefully humorous category of it's own).

I would do this twice, once for general wads and another for people's favourite DBPs since it's our award and we'll self-promote if we want to.

Special privileges for DB members would include doing the write-ups for the overall best wads (no DBers, you are the self-appointed pompous Doom critics), as well as a chance to contribute to an 'unpopular opinions' section in which we talk about our favourite wads from the year that didn't make it to the best-of list.

dont you get tired of asking the same questions

The ultimate powermove would be to give Auger;Zenith a Cacoward and put it on the frontpage

Maybe you'll have better luck. We tried voting on awards in 2004 at the start and found that people are generally unreliable; it was far more efficient and provided greater security to just put people in charge who want to write. But that was 17 years ago and the community was shrinking and social media was relegated to IRC and the DWF.

I played the hell out of Dynamite Dutchess... but it really started to unravel the farther I made it into the project. Hexen switch hunts became the norm and I just gave up after 5-6 hours of play because I simply could not figure out what I was doing and I became increasingly frustrated. There is an incredible experience hidden under the surface, but it needs a lot of polish to clean up the labyrinthine maps--it's just too damn easy to get lost/confused/miss some small item needed to advance. And I won't fuck around; Impie chose to make himself a pariah in the commmunity and took his ball and went home before listening to any criticism of his work. All of this could have been addressed to make Dynamite Dutchess a better experience, but he chose to leave instead.

Oh please, truly "strong" people can take a critical thrashing in stride and come out on the other side. When I attended an art school, teachers and students were absolutely brutal in their criticism of your work... You sucked it up, took nothing personally, and used their advice to improve your work. Too many people in this world let their pride get in the way.

It's easy to be "strong" and indignant... It takes real balls of steel to be introspective and critical of yourself.

scubasteve, I enjoyed the story and the gameplay of Dynamite Duchess as is. I don't think your suggestions will result in improvement. You are also not the one to talk about dignity, as you consider "the ban that was not even given after a warning" to be a result of "choice". What kind of choice that is? An authoritively forced action is not a choice. You would think that if I hold a gun to your head then "choosing" to obey my orders to save your life would be dignity.

Your criticism is purely subjective. The author doesn't owe you changes, it's a good setting and is probably an upgrade from originally a story fiction that this started as. Yes, it's about lockdown, in fact it is reimagining story as game that can be played, and it makes it a pretty high achievement, a proof that visual novel is not the only way you can convey elaborate story in the game. Hexen-like gameplay is a thing for some people, it's good to exercise brain sometimes. It's not even as hard as hexen quest-wise, and the majority of cutscenes don't deprive player of the ability to move, unlike BoA, for example. Some people would also agree with the political message of the mod, as the lockdown took a toll on their mental health AND the game really represents the state of being locked very well indeed. I mean, the world inside indeed felt like the world I experienced in real-life during the hard phase of lockdown.

I've also been fucked by lockdown, because I am ultramarathoner, and need to do a lot of running outside to stay in shape, so I really appreciate the author's message is allied to my side. Your opinion about the political content is just your opinion, I don't consider disagreeing with politics a valid criticism. There is nothing wrong with hunting for items either, it's good to sometimes use brain and not just reflexes. The dopamine reward when you actually solve BY YOUR OWN (if you didn't consult any sort of walkthrough) is very high. The messages to stay at home were so mass-spread anything that everything that is aligned to it has no artistic value. Viber replaced its brand with "StayAtHome" for sometime which really annoyed me. Meanwhile, people who managed to stay in physical shape did so by evading the lockdown, and they are plenty, because in Russia there is a lot of towns that are like villages, with no one to enforce the rules, and a lot of forests to run into.

Also, once you are out of school you should be able to realize teachers and students are not always right, and that one value system (cultural paradigm) is not really superior to another. Your insistence that author should have appreciated your criticism and discarded opinion of people who have been positive about the mod has no grounds except in your chosen value system. I'm willing to admit that my definition of strength is not the only one, but yours isn't somehow more correct, contrary to what you seem to be thinking.

In regards to introspection and self-criticism, these things are not to be made public if you value to be a rational human. Sun Tzu never recommended to expose the weaknesses one actually has (thus, the results of introspection) in his "Art of War", and I consider it a yardstick of what being smart in a hostile environment is. So people who believe that admitting weaknesses (unless you are bluffing) in public is a sign of real strength are idiots, and should read the classics about warfare. There are things in "Art of War" that still hold today, especially re espionage. I remember that someone in US pointed out that the majority of trators (spies that gone in reverse) did it for money - in fact, everyone except one. This can be found in "Art of War" as it tells that reverse spies are indeed lured by the promise of reward. Hence why I consider it a yardstick, it aged pretty well even with all the technological progress. As smart as you can possibly be, you don't really stand up to Sun Tzu. And the defiance also can be attributed to Sun Tzu, as the legend recounts he(? now this can't be certain, but the legend was written in intro to "Art of War", it might be only in specific translation? I don't have a book close by to look it up) defied the edict of king and executed three of his concubines to get the women to perform a military parade, and succeeded. I like the spirit of that legend.