I’m down to play through all of them again – except mine, it sucks – and record it this time.
Specifically; as I just ranted in discord:
Seriously, this is a long and bad rant
Sme: wasn’t sagematthis’s submission the one where you need to mine glitch and make the boss drop all its weapons
You have to make it drop all but one weapon
(The Darkstone.)
then you can actually kill the boss, because it makes the boss have negative pathetic stats
and then you have to do a PIXEL HUNT in the last part of the map
because a bunch of the tiles are fire traps and poison traps and poison instakills
and there are wyverns coming from behind that kill you real fast
and unkillable swordmaster “walls”
but it is beatable!
So here’s the last segment
Do you see the purple walls? They shoot poison jets.
the first part has a bunch of enemies with no purpose, and requires you to play a specific way
the second part has a completely dumb and stupid solution that cannot be figured out from any information you are actually given
the third part, the living maze, is actually fun
the fourth part, the talk convo puzzle with the armory, can be softlocked in a few ways: if you buy the wrong item from the armory; or if you talk to a certain statue because that statue’s EID doesn’t unset when you talk to it at the wrong time
the fifth part is a timed 1v5 that’s kinda RNG centric and boring
the sixth part, with the dragon and the grinding off the rogues, was stupid, because
a. the bonewalkers on your team actually die before the time limit is up
b. the solution is “kill rogues until a Mine spawns”
c. FUCKING USING A GLITCH IS NOT FUN GAMEPLAY YOU SHIT
d. EXPECTING ME TO PAY SUPER CLOSE ATTENTION TO ONE LITTLE TINY DETAIL WHEN I’M DROPPING ITEMS WHILE USING THE MINE GLITCH IS EVEN WORSE YOU GARBAGE TRASH FIRE
THe submission has seven parts, only one of which is remotely fun
also, each part takes an EXTREMELY long time to go through
The first part takes 15 minutes
There are four first choices for the second part
If you chose wrong, add 15 minutes to your timer
If you chose correctly, guess what? You now have another pick-1-of-4 to make.
if you pick wrong there, guess what – add 15 minutes to your timer, the chapter can’t be cleared.
living maze is actually clearable on your first try and actually fun, but it does take 15 minutes
part 4’s puzzle has 6 statues
if you talk to the wrong statue you have to reset because its EID gets set at the wrong time
there are three items to purchase
in that manner, you could easily need 4-5 attempts to beat it (coincidentally i picked the right item on the first try)
so let’s add another 30 minutes for each attempt you made there
part 5 is beatable on the first try despite the rng part; and takes only about 5 minutes
part 6 requires you to grind against rogues and then realize it’s hopeless and i hope you have time left and then realize that one of the rogues spawned with a mine and that Lau can steal – and that mine glitch is intended behavior.
and then once you use the mine glitch you have to realize, while dropping the dragon’s items, which you have to decide is a good idea,
that the dark stone coincidentally tanks his stats into the abyss
and then – and only then – can you get to part seven; which requires you to move nearly perfectly, on account of the swordmaster walls, wyvern reinforcements, poison traps, and mine traps
and, if you make a single mistake? 45 more minutes to get back here.
If I had not been abusing savestates and rewinds it would have taken me over 5 hours to beat the submission. That’s stupid and dumb and is even worse when we consider that i was having fun for less than twenty minutes of that.
I can definitely see where majority of these points come from.
If I had to sum up the issues:
Obscurity/Crypticness, eventing issues, requiring somewhat-perfect play, time required to beat specific parts?
I am kind of under the assumption of savestate use since those are always available, especially with the more trial-and-error sections. Not that I am saying that it should be required, but I keep in mind that those are always available, and the submission can only be one chapter long.
The first part is not exceptionally specific, just that it requires strategizing to remove the bigger threats first?
Second part I agree. How would I improve that concept?
Third part, good to hear.
Fourth part, sounds more like eventing issues. I thought I fixed them all. Did you skip the text? That may be what causes it, but I think I thoroughly tested each one to make sure it works without issues. The expected outcome of buying the wrong item should result in eventual game over from running out of time, or did that not occur?
Fifth part, again, what would make it more interesting?
Sixth part, I think the bonewalkers dying early was intentional, though I forget exactly. The thieves with the mine should spawn relatively early, second or third wave at latest for the first round of them. This was definitely a more technical part and less gameplay, requiring going outside normal gameplay to pass. I had to account for the possibilities of what could occur while the glitch was active(dropping items that are not intended to be dropped, moving units that should not be moved, etc.)
Part 7, I admit that it is pretty specific, though if reviewed beforehand, the invisible walls can be identified from the get-go, the traps, less so, but I tried to make each trap stand out visually, probably not enough though(specifically the mines), reading through your comments?
I would say exploiting a glitch is less gameplay-oriented and more… technical-oriented? More of a “use all resources available” type thing that requires a tad more thinking than straight fighting/gameplay, if you will. Would displaying stat boosts in the help/description box have helped significantly?
On a more general note, however, will there be critiques/feedback for the submissions so that each creator knows how and why they got the score they did?
Originally I was going to do that, but after we ended up with over 20 entries it seemed like it’d be a bit much. Perhaps the other judges will include feedback with their scores.
9/22, I see. Top half, that’s pretty good. I was more messing around with my box and experimenting rather than actively focusing on “fun”. As a result, I ended up making a door maze.
I got 8th, that’s a lot better than I was expecting tbh, especially when the flow got broken through all the glitches near the end that i had no way to fix. The Capturing mechanic also seemed to hurt the experience in general, but I’m ok with these results. I definitely expected the narrative to be my best portion, so that’s not a surprise.
Anyways, i hope that this experience helps me make my projects better in general.
Wouldn’t it be great if Lusq decided to just let the judges post their scores and give the entrants a sense of closure on this since he takes forever to do anything anyway?
Yeah…it was a pretty rushed submission. There should have been a better indicator that seizing the first tent unlocked the first gate. Having two doors was confusing and a poor design decision. There was a good reason for it IIRC, but I’ve got no idea what that was.
I feel that some of the scores you gave for game feel and map flow were a bit arbitrary. After a certain point they’re all somewhere between 4-6… and if that’s really an accurate indicator of how they were then why not just make the score out of 3 instead of 10?
But anyway, it was a really fun contest. Proud of this community for coming through with so many submissions.
I also just wanted to say, it’s one thing to be “active” in the community–posting a lot on discord and the forum, but when something like this contest happens it always indicates to me who the real grinders are. The people willing to put their time and ego at risk to put something out there and hone their skills. Glad that there’s still some drive and hunger out here, it’s a really good sign and the reason we really gotta have more contests.
Since apparently it hasn’t been mentioned in this thread (I swear it was though at one point), Zane actually ported GBAFE tilesets that were in his box to FE5 to fulfill box requirements and to fit within box content usage rules.
I’ve been compelled to post my scores, so here they are.
I graded on an average scale. What I would consider an average chapter would have 5/5/5/5 for a total of 20. I will admit to grading a little harsh across the board, but the thing I valued most in all my scores is whether I had fun playing the chapter, which bled into my rankings in general.
If you want elaboration on why I scored something the way I did, you’re free to ask, while it’s been quite some time since I played them I may still have some insight for you. That being said, it’s an internet hacking contest for fun. Don’t be too upset if your score isn’t what you wanted to see; you can’t please everyone. Just keep practicing your craft and getting better at what you want to do.
How bad did the ones you scored low have to be to get grades like that? Given that mine got over average, it seems like you thought they were pretty horrible.
I guess the important thing is to remember the grades are subjective just like any judging. It would have been nice to have Alusq’s scores as well to balance things out, but its interesting seeing what at least our two other judges thought.
(I kinda want to attempt an LP of all the entries now though, as the list has me curious)
It was entirely my intention to have one judge that skewed “nice” and another that skewed “harsh”. I was going for something in between in my scoring, but I wanted to give the benefit of doubt as often as possible and didn’t intend on giving a 0 or 10 to anything unless I believed it was actually the best/worst entry of its category.
