5 years of voting data compressed into graphs

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FuriousFox

AKA FuriousFox
It's been 5 years since the first successful bimonthly contest was started (March/April 2005 doesn't count, since voting didn't occur), so I decided to make some graphs to see if there's been any distinct voting patterns emerging. There's 28 points of data, most of which was taken from the wiki.

http://www.srb2.org/contest/contestgraphs.xls
 
Some more interesting statistics:

Over the past 5 years, 521 maps have been entered into the Official Level Design Contest. That's an average of 18.61 maps per contest.

The average rating for every contest over the past 5 years (the average of the contest averages) is 5.35.

The highest rated contest in the past 5 years was January/February 2006 with an average rating of 6.90. It contained 13 maps.

The most maps in a single contest in the past 5 years was November/December 2009 with 34 maps. Its average rating was 5.22.

The lowest rated contest in the past 5 years was July/August 2008 with an average rating of 4.28. It contained 15 maps.
 
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You should probably label significant points in time (IE version releases, SAGE, site/board software changes, etc.) on these graphs. They're pretty interesting, I've got to admit. You can clearly see the decline that occured over the 4 years where 1.09.4 was the standard.
 
Notice how the latest contents have been getting worse? :O

Uh, that's a given, considering 2.0 hasn't even been out yet for a full year. Add that to the standards of what makes a good level getting stricter and yes, the contests "appear" to be getting worse.
 
Except they actually haven't. In 05/06, standards were pretty low. Look at how Mystic gave Egg Palace a 10, for example. Then, rating standards decreased, which meant an abrupt decline in the contest averages in 2008. That was also a year with very few (mostly sub-par) Multiplayer stages (probably everybody noticed that the system wasn't all that balanced, but that's me guessing). Shortly before 2.0 was released, there was an outburst in creativity in SP maps (hi Kuja, SonicMaster and Ezer.Arch, for example), pushing the average higher. Now, we have a balanced multiplayer system, which ensures better maps in general (even though there are still some maps that haven't quite grabbed it), and the standards for SP maps have rapidly increased, meaning a drop in the ratings there. After all, averages are better than in 08, and are mostly around 5, which I consider pretty standard, obviously.
 
I might add that the only level to ever get an average score of 10, Tree Ring Zone, sucks in my opinion. That should be an example of contest standards increasing.

BTW, are we to deduce from the graph's ToolTip that FuriousFox's real name is Hank Brannock?
 
Plus, more and more people are voting, which could be influencing the averages as well.
 
Plus, more and more people are voting, which could be influencing the averages as well.
The number of votes doesn't matter...rather, it's the demographic breakdown of the voters. If only hardcore SRB2 gamers are voting, the ratings will probably be lower. If a greater proportion of casual SRB2 gamers are voting, the ratings are likely to be higher.
Someone hasn't played the game with realnames set to 1. ;)
I just tried that in a netgame, and it did absolutely nothing.
 
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Egg Palace was freaking awesome, what are you talking about?

Lessee...crampedness, no colormaps on the water, confusing layout, and if there was a way to finish it as Sonic, I can't find it. I don't consider that worth 10/10, or "freaking awesome" or, well, anything of note, really.
 
I found the level pretty easy, actually. I finished it as Sonic (I don't like using Tails and Knuckles).
The layout wasn't too confusing for me and I actually liked the exploration.
I don't find the crampedness and lack of colormap to be much of a problem.
 
Are we talking about the same level here? I've seen you deliver withering, scathing attacks on levels twice as good as Egg Palace.
 
Hmm.
Desert level, red carpets, waterfalls all over the place, enemies coming from the walls, switches, Gargoyles, and cracks in the ceiling that let the light in? Yeah, I think I know I'm talking about Egg Palace, the one released on srb2.org a while ago.

I know it sounds strange to you, but I actually liked that level.
 
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The number of votes doesn't matter...rather, it's the demographic breakdown of the voters. If only hardcore SRB2 gamers are voting, the ratings will probably be lower. If a greater proportion of casual SRB2 gamers are voting, the ratings are likely to be higher.

I just tried that in a netgame, and it did absolutely nothing.

Try it once you beat the final level.
 
(hi Kuja, SonicMaster and Ezer.Arch, for example)

O hi!

Seriously, is people missing me on the OLDCs? The last one I participated in, I suspected I was causing some "bad feelings" among voters and contestants.

Egg Palace was freaking awesome, what are you talking about?

I found the level pretty easy, actually.

Are we talking about the same level here?

May it help:



http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4799936/EzerArch/SRB2/Wads/scr_eggpalace.zip
 
I found Egg Palace pretty easy, but it still suffered from enemy spamming and dead ends. Whatever, I think we all can agree it's not 10/10 material, and that's all I wanted to say.
 
I'd also like to remind you all that by definition, the average score for the contest should be exactly 5. The contests aren't getting worse; there are more voters and they are becoming better critics.

For everyone's reference, Egg Palace has inflated scores because at the time it was one of the largest and most detailed SRB2 stages made. Obviously nowadays we know better, but most people gave it rather significantly high numbers because of that, myself included. In hindsight it's certainly not a 10, but at the time the concept of a single player stage you couldn't beat in a minute or two was a big deal.
 
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