"Twitch Plays Pokémon should be ashamed for turning to Democracy as often as it has"
Cheese, the two times democracy was used to an actual effect, was firstly in the frankly infuriating Rocket HQ with the arrow panels that I remember being stuck on for quite awhile as a kid, and trying to plan out moves on paper, and secondly, the safari zone.
The issue I have with the democracy mode is that it's a crutch. Simply knowing that it's there at all has a corrosive effect on peoples' resolve. Fortunately we've surpassed some difficult obstacles without it, so people are a bit less willing to use it than if we had had it from the beginning, but I can't help but see the number of times we've entered it - regardless of how much benefit came of it - as a very bad sign.
Although we didn't really get much out of those other uses of democracy except in the Rocket HQ and the Safari Zone, but the looming threat of Democracy is ever-present. The current system, with an 80% threshold for democracy, is significantly better than it used to be, but even so there is still a significant negative effect merely from knowing that it's there.
Had it only been used when there was a true threat of losing the game forever I'd take a softer stance on it, but that simply isn't the case; the rocket HQ is a clear example of this. Besides that, there is some argument to be made that we should have been allowed some chance of losing forever - this would have increased the emotional attachment, especially towards the end.
Remember the ledge? TPP took 18 hours to finish it, but those 18 hours spent made it truly memorable. Had Democracy been available for the ledge, there is a significant risk that people would have resorted to it, and I think that would have detracted from the overall experience.
Indeed, even the very first tree we had to cut seemed like an insurmountable obstacle, and yet we've cut plenty more trees since then. We actually came up with complicated strategies just to cut that tree, and we managed to execute them. The presence of democracy is a looming threat over the willingness of people to actually persevere when they run into difficulties.
I feel the same way about the Rocket HQ puzzle. Yes, it would probably have taken a long time, definitely longer than the ledge, but it would have been completed eventually, and I think the community would be better for it. It would also have forced people to strategize and cooperate to a much greater degree, as compared to in democracy mode where most of the work was being done by the voting system and the chained commands.
I agree with you that the Safari Zone was a special case, but I still have some significant criticisms with regards to the Safari Zone as well.
I wonder how long the RNG would be able to solve the Rocket HQ puzzle. It feels like something that seems doable, but would take quite an inordinate amount of time.
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I'm somewhat inclined to put together a simulator to mess around and get a better, scientifically reasonable picture of how difficult the Rocket HQ puzzle actually is.
The safari zone of course, is the biggest issue here
1) You had to know where to go and be efficient 2) You actually needed to pick up stuff like the gold teeth from the floor, how specific the RNG has to be in order to do THAT is going to be a problem. 3) You ran to risk of running out of available money, and save catching a meowth with payday or using the TM, would be stuck. I doubt the RNG would be able to do anything at that point.
In this specific ROM it seems that the Meowth / Pay Day option wasn't a possibility; there don't seem to be wild Mewoth, and the TM couldn't be gotten without already having Surf.
I find myself wondering why you seem to object to these two times democracy was prominently used. You also seem to want to compare a RNG AI with that of emotional people watching and trying to stear red in a direction of success, which I fundamentally disagree with. Part of the whole reason why the RNG stream is not getting much attention at all is because its a machine. The stories and memes and organic communication of information when a large group of humans get together in an event, is far more compelling and is equal if not greater to the act of actually getting through the game.
You're missing the point entirely. My point about RNG is simply an attempt to demonstrate that people are overstating how hard some things are to achieve.
Of course the human attachment is a key factor in TPP; that's the entire bloody point of my argument. If I didn't care about the human attachment, I would obviously agree that democracy is a more efficient way to finish the game, but we both clearly understand that that isn't the point.
The issue is that democracy is actively harmful to that attachment. It does damage every time it's used, and even the mere fact that it is present at all is hurting the game. Quite frankly, I think that if we were to have democracy at all, it should have been introduced for the Safari Zone and then removed once we got Surf. Unlike some people I do think that removing the step limit would have probably been worse than allowing Democracy, but ultimately I think both solutions were bad ones.
Had we originally chosen a different ROM in which we didn't have a chance of getting completely stuck we would have been in a much better position - if we were playing Pokémon Yellow, or if this romhack actually had all 151 Pokémon available to catch (including Meowth), it would have worked out much better. I think if we continue to play future Pokémon games it will be important to ensure that there will not be any significant situations in which we can get permanently stuck.
Surely you can allow for that two acts of democracy in an event that has been mostly anarchic, for the sake of the creation of a cultural imprint.
I agree with your motivations, but I disagree strongly with your premise. There's a solid argument to be made that, in the long term, it would generate far more of an imprint if we crashed and burned while fighting to the death. At the very least, running into potentially fatal adversity would have raised the stakes on this game. The way things are now, it's crystal clear that we WILL finish the game, and quite frankly it won't even take all that long.
Yes, there's plenty more to this than winning, but why can't losing play a role too? Besides, why would it be such a big deal if we had to start again from scratch due to running out of money? I'm not fully convinced by that type of argument, but I do think that, at the very least, Democracy should have been used as a genuine last resort, rather than being used the way it has been so far.
Ultimately, my biggest issue with the Safari Zone was that we never even gave it a fair shot. We spent only 7 hours on the Safari Zone, as compared to spending 18 hours on a goddamn LEDGE. TPP should be ashamed, because we clearly failed the high standard that we ourselves had set. Seriously, doesn't a mere 7 hours seem wholly disproportionate to you? Even if we weren't going to succeed, we should at least have given it a serious effort on anarchy. After all, the Safari Zone was, ostensibly, the most difficult challenge in the game. Surely it deserved at least a solid couple of days!? Moreover, as unlikely as it might have been, consider how awesome it would have been if we managed to complete the Safari Zone on anarchy. Wasn't that goal at least worth aiming for?
The way things turned out, our final success on the Safari Zone simply felt hollow. If we had really, truly given it our all on Anarchy, with a serious attempt by people to form strategies of what buttons to press to account for the 30 second lag, and serious attempts to spread the word and coordinate, and continued to try with all our might and yet failed again and again, then the switch to democracy might have felt like a genuine victory.
Sure, you might say that we were limited by money and not time, and I agree, but the fact of the matter is that anarchy simply didn't get anywhere near the chance it deserved. Before that final successful run on Demoracy we had 12826 Pokédollars - enough for 25 more runs. If you also count the relatively large number of trainers we had access to but had not yet fought at this point, I think we could have had another 30 or 40 runs before we resorted to Democracy. Instead, we only tried 6 times on anarchy before we gave up. How is that not massively shameful?
Moreover, those 6 runs of anarchy were already tainted - the mere presence of that insidious crutch meant people didn't have to take those Anarchy runs seriously; it meant they could simply mess about knowing that they could always resort to Democracy when the going got tough. If that option were not always lingering at the back of peoples' minds, waiting to come out, we would have actually put a genuine effort into finishing on anarchy. Instead, almost all of the organizational effort went to trying to convince people to vote Democracy instead - one of those six runs was spent mostly on democracy, and no one ever even had the chance to put forth a coherent plan for completing it on Anarchy. Instead of properly trying, people were already gearing up to use Democracy before Anarchy even got a chance.
The Safari Zone is a blot on our history. A disproportionately low amount of content has come out of it, and the reason why is clear. Right now I think most people simply want to forget the Safari Zone and move on, and the reason is clear - because there simply wasn't much of a story in what we did, and the reason there wasn't much of a story to our Safari Zone run is because we didn't bother to make one. Even if we failed a bunch of times on anarchy, our Democratic victory would have been much sweeter if it had really been down to the wire. Also, as small as the chance may have been, consider the value that an epic victory on Anarchy would have had. Instead, the event itself was soul-crushing and anticlimactic in the extreme. Hell, I think it might have been better to fail altogether than to succeed the way we did.
As it is now, there is a serious looming threat that we will resort to Democracy again even for relatively minor puzzles. I strongly suspect we'll end up using it on Victory Road.
We're still in Anarchy for the Route 9 ledge, but the fact that we used Democracy just to get into the Daycare Center is pretty sad. That said, we then used Anarchy to walk out and jump down before anything actually hapened.
EDIT: Oh, they want to use Master Ball on it. Normally that's a waste since you want to use that on MewTwo, but I guess it's almost impossible to capture it any other way with Anarchy.
I think trying to catch Zapdos is rather ambitious and I fully approve, even if it takes a Master Ball - as long as we don't simply switch to Democracy.
Of course, we may simply end up running away from the Zapdos, or using the Master Ball on a Magnemite.
By the way, if you want to check on the status of the game, this site has live updates, and a decent world map.
I think trying to catch Zapdos is rather ambitious and I fully approve, even if it takes a Master Ball - as long as we don't simply switch to Democracy.
Of course, we may simply end up running away from the Zapdos, or using the Master Ball on a Magnemite.
By the way, if you want to check on the status of the game, this site has live updates, and a decent world map.
Oh, that's much better than this one, which is the top Google search result.
I think the goals come about relatively organically, and the updating sites tend to simply reflect on what the Hivemind is (or seems to be) doing.
With regards to Zapdos, there was previously a debate on Reddit and the like as to what the Master Ball should be used on; some were suggesting Snorlax because it would be easier to get to and catch. However, it seems Zapdos is the most popular option at the moment.
Goddamn, this is insane. We've been at or around the PC in Anarchy for an hour; we haven't released anything yet, but we've deposited Pokémon in two different boxes already. Also, we've almost released Zapdos 3 times now.
It's getting mighty close to Democracy, but Anarchy is holding strong for now.
I see what is happening here. We are in anarchy mode. That is good for reasons already mentioned. While anarchy is active, trolls are entering inputs to make bad stuff happen, like almost releasing Zapdos. Non-trolls aren't entering as many inputs, they are entering votes for democracy. Merely by the fact that the voting exists, trolls have more power because non-trolls are not making as many inputs. For anarchy to work as before, the voting has to be completely eliminated so that all players use their influence to make actual inputs. Then anarchy will be as sane as it used to be.
The PC has always been a massive problem, because it requires an amount of precision that is essentially impossible given 30 seconds of lag and the near-impossibility of predicting that far ahead.
Sure there are trolls, but they don't really know what's going to happen in 30 seconds any better than you do.
Normally we can just avoid the PC altogether - that's generally pretty manageable by pressing a lot of B as well as left and/or down, but earlier when we wanted to withdraw Zapdos there was something of a consensus to use the PC, and afterwards there was a need to withdraw the Pokémon that knew Surf, Strength and Cut for later use.
Every time they encounter significant adversity, the amount of time before they resort to Democracy gets smaller. Soon it will be nothing but a tyranny of the majority. Just like real life. >:U
Comments
Although we didn't really get much out of those other uses of democracy except in the Rocket HQ and the Safari Zone, but the looming threat of Democracy is ever-present. The current system, with an 80% threshold for democracy, is significantly better than it used to be, but even so there is still a significant negative effect merely from knowing that it's there.
Had it only been used when there was a true threat of losing the game forever I'd take a softer stance on it, but that simply isn't the case; the rocket HQ is a clear example of this. Besides that, there is some argument to be made that we should have been allowed some chance of losing forever - this would have increased the emotional attachment, especially towards the end.
Remember the ledge? TPP took 18 hours to finish it, but those 18 hours spent made it truly memorable. Had Democracy been available for the ledge, there is a significant risk that people would have resorted to it, and I think that would have detracted from the overall experience.
Indeed, even the very first tree we had to cut seemed like an insurmountable obstacle, and yet we've cut plenty more trees since then. We actually came up with complicated strategies just to cut that tree, and we managed to execute them. The presence of democracy is a looming threat over the willingness of people to actually persevere when they run into difficulties.
I feel the same way about the Rocket HQ puzzle. Yes, it would probably have taken a long time, definitely longer than the ledge, but it would have been completed eventually, and I think the community would be better for it. It would also have forced people to strategize and cooperate to a much greater degree, as compared to in democracy mode where most of the work was being done by the voting system and the chained commands.
I agree with you that the Safari Zone was a special case, but I still have some significant criticisms with regards to the Safari Zone as well.
Of course the human attachment is a key factor in TPP; that's the entire bloody point of my argument. If I didn't care about the human attachment, I would obviously agree that democracy is a more efficient way to finish the game, but we both clearly understand that that isn't the point.
The issue is that democracy is actively harmful to that attachment. It does damage every time it's used, and even the mere fact that it is present at all is hurting the game. Quite frankly, I think that if we were to have democracy at all, it should have been introduced for the Safari Zone and then removed once we got Surf. Unlike some people I do think that removing the step limit would have probably been worse than allowing Democracy, but ultimately I think both solutions were bad ones.
Had we originally chosen a different ROM in which we didn't have a chance of getting completely stuck we would have been in a much better position - if we were playing Pokémon Yellow, or if this romhack actually had all 151 Pokémon available to catch (including Meowth), it would have worked out much better. I think if we continue to play future Pokémon games it will be important to ensure that there will not be any significant situations in which we can get permanently stuck.
Yes, there's plenty more to this than winning, but why can't losing play a role too? Besides, why would it be such a big deal if we had to start again from scratch due to running out of money? I'm not fully convinced by that type of argument, but I do think that, at the very least, Democracy should have been used as a genuine last resort, rather than being used the way it has been so far.
Ultimately, my biggest issue with the Safari Zone was that we never even gave it a fair shot. We spent only 7 hours on the Safari Zone, as compared to spending 18 hours on a goddamn LEDGE. TPP should be ashamed, because we clearly failed the high standard that we ourselves had set. Seriously, doesn't a mere 7 hours seem wholly disproportionate to you? Even if we weren't going to succeed, we should at least have given it a serious effort on anarchy. After all, the Safari Zone was, ostensibly, the most difficult challenge in the game. Surely it deserved at least a solid couple of days!? Moreover, as unlikely as it might have been, consider how awesome it would have been if we managed to complete the Safari Zone on anarchy. Wasn't that goal at least worth aiming for?
The way things turned out, our final success on the Safari Zone simply felt hollow. If we had really, truly given it our all on Anarchy, with a serious attempt by people to form strategies of what buttons to press to account for the 30 second lag, and serious attempts to spread the word and coordinate, and continued to try with all our might and yet failed again and again, then the switch to democracy might have felt like a genuine victory.
Sure, you might say that we were limited by money and not time, and I agree, but the fact of the matter is that anarchy simply didn't get anywhere near the chance it deserved. Before that final successful run on Demoracy we had 12826 Pokédollars - enough for 25 more runs. If you also count the relatively large number of trainers we had access to but had not yet fought at this point, I think we could have had another 30 or 40 runs before we resorted to Democracy. Instead, we only tried 6 times on anarchy before we gave up. How is that not massively shameful?
Moreover, those 6 runs of anarchy were already tainted - the mere presence of that insidious crutch meant people didn't have to take those Anarchy runs seriously; it meant they could simply mess about knowing that they could always resort to Democracy when the going got tough. If that option were not always lingering at the back of peoples' minds, waiting to come out, we would have actually put a genuine effort into finishing on anarchy. Instead, almost all of the organizational effort went to trying to convince people to vote Democracy instead - one of those six runs was spent mostly on democracy, and no one ever even had the chance to put forth a coherent plan for completing it on Anarchy. Instead of properly trying, people were already gearing up to use Democracy before Anarchy even got a chance.
The Safari Zone is a blot on our history. A disproportionately low amount of content has come out of it, and the reason why is clear. Right now I think most people simply want to forget the Safari Zone and move on, and the reason is clear - because there simply wasn't much of a story in what we did, and the reason there wasn't much of a story to our Safari Zone run is because we didn't bother to make one. Even if we failed a bunch of times on anarchy, our Democratic victory would have been much sweeter if it had really been down to the wire. Also, as small as the chance may have been, consider the value that an epic victory on Anarchy would have had. Instead, the event itself was soul-crushing and anticlimactic in the extreme. Hell, I think it might have been better to fail altogether than to succeed the way we did.
As it is now, there is a serious looming threat that we will resort to Democracy again even for relatively minor puzzles. I strongly suspect we'll end up using it on Victory Road.
It seems their current plan is this:
We're still in Anarchy for the Route 9 ledge, but the fact that we used Democracy just to get into the Daycare Center is pretty sad. That said, we then used Anarchy to walk out and jump down before anything actually hapened.
EDIT: Oh, they want to use Master Ball on it. Normally that's a waste since you want to use that on MewTwo, but I guess it's almost impossible to capture it any other way with Anarchy.
don't simply switch to Democracy.
Of course, we may simply end up running away from the Zapdos, or using the Master Ball on a Magnemite.
By the way, if you want to check on the status of the game, this site has live updates, and a decent world map.
https://sites.google.com/site/twitchplayspokemonstatus/
Who is deciding on these current goals?
I hope they Master Ball the Zapdos and then release it!
I wonder if I can run a little program on a server to spam anarchy as fast as is allowed.
With regards to Zapdos, there was previously a debate on Reddit and the like as to what the Master Ball should be used on; some were suggesting Snorlax because it would be easier to get to and catch. However, it seems Zapdos is the most popular option at the moment.
It's getting mighty close to Democracy, but Anarchy is holding strong for now.
The PC has always been a massive problem, because it requires an amount of precision that is essentially impossible given 30 seconds of lag and the near-impossibility of predicting that far ahead.
Sure there are trolls, but they don't really know what's going to happen in 30 seconds any better than you do.
Normally we can just avoid the PC altogether - that's generally pretty manageable by pressing a lot of B as well as left and/or down, but earlier when we wanted to withdraw Zapdos there was something of a consensus to use the PC, and afterwards there was a need to withdraw the Pokémon that knew Surf, Strength and Cut for later use.
https://sites.google.com/site/twitchplayspokemonstatus/ is keeping roughly up to date