Everyone loves submitting to a big major, but we all know well how demanding it can be on one's time to vote on hundreds of entries. Major voters don't get much in the way of thanks for their pro-social diligence, so maybe we should crank up the rewards for voting on majors?

My pretty simple suggestion is this: When voting on a major entry, you don't really cast one vote, but five - one per category. So why shouldn't you receive a criticist point for each? I think we should try offering increased rewards like this and see how it goes for the next few majors.

Alternative idea: Reward major voting with boons. Even a fraction of a boon per vote would quickly add up to real money on a big major.

Ed. I thought I'd add that this is particularly pressing for DD2, since voting - already a time-consuming activity - takes twice as long if you're being diligent and listening to every original before its cover (which is what I've been doing, and I'd like to think many other BotBrs too, as it's really the best way to appreciate this major).

n00bz get extra playa points for voting 100%
that can be a nice little extra but i dont think its enough to make people motivated to go through hundreds of entries. most people arent even aware of the playa points you get for voting.

receiving boons sounds nice, but you already get boons if people vote on your entries. so i agree it should be points for being the active party of voting. and boons for the passive party of voting. if that makes sense.

as a very regular voter on majors, i support 1 point per category.... but wldnt it be fun to retroactively give every botbr their points from past majors too if this change gets added? ;)

kleeder: prepare for a bunch of "BotBr reaches Level X Criticist" if the retroactive change is implemented lol

I was gonna joke about this being a secret ploy to instalevel kleeder to 33, but I did some napkin math and even in an impossible best case scenario (i.e. quintupling all of kleeder's criticist points) that'd still only grant 20% of the amount needed to level up. :P

lvl.33 is a mountain.

"you don't really cast one vote, but five - one per category"

frankly I find this the most convincing argument. but it also feels like about the right amount to be a true incentive

Although I'm really attracted to the neatness of 5 points per major vote, I've seen the discussion in chat about how many BotBrs would likely become criticists in the event of such a change and the people don't seem thrilled by the prospect. To speculate, I expect most BotBrs would prefer for the class system to recognise their creative contributions than time spent voting. I'm now worried that quintupled criticist points could inadvertently create an anti-incentive, resulting in many BotBrs avoiding voting on majors in order to preserve their chipist/mixist/whatever class.

This is inclining me towards the idea of rewarding major voting with boons, rather than points. Everyone always wants more boons!

I believe we should eliminate the middle criticist class. also, all n00bs that have not met their vorting quota shall be executed by firing squad

and subclasses are something to think about

i mean the average non-chip/tracks/decade/calendar majors get anywhere from 5 to MAYBE 100 submissions, so that'd be anywhere from 25 to 500 points for these battles which honestly isn't bad.

it does become a bit more egregious for larger majors - decadent would pay out over 3000 points if one manages to vote for all of the entries

i do hear the case of people not wanting to become criticists just because they like voting and want to have their creative endeavours be the rewarded thing and what's displayed on the profile, but also it'd take well over 30k points for this to be the case for me AND not get any other points whatsoever whenever i level up. it's more of an issue for lower level botbrs i think.

perhaps a solution is to reward a random amount of playa and criticist points with each voted major entry that add up to 5.

boons are nice but once you have enough of them there's little incentive to go get more. perhaps combine it with the above so that each of the 5 votes either gives you playa pts, criticist pts or like 2-3 boons, or perhaps have it scale with how big the battle is - a large major should reward more points, smaller ones rewards less points, but that starts taking away from the goal of "5 categories = 5 points". just chucking some alternate ideas to sidestep the "don't wanna become criticist" apart from just letting ppl choose their desired displayed rank

i don't agree with applying it retroactively, it should only be a thing going forward if it even gets implemented

it would encourage me to be more active with voting because there's a larger points potential for levelling up so that would work

Maybe 1-2 criticist points + 1-2 playa points per major entry voted on. It's not as neat as 5 points for 5 categories but it does significantly bump the reward for voting on majors without making everybody a criticist.

don't forget , it doesn't make everybody a criticist. only those who actually invest a lot of time to vote.

but I agree. if it makes people more hesitant to vote (lmao tbh) then maybe giving less points is smarter.

after all, you can't rly know how users will take a change like that. but we know that something shld change from the current status, so might as well try out a thing and see how it changes people's behavior

i think boons make far more sense i agree
the rewarding part of voting (in my perspective at least) is getting to hear entries and ''paying it forward'', contributing to the community, etc. if anything id say most people dont like recieving criticist points, but boons are a nice little boon.

(responding to kleed) i would be more hesitant to mass-vote if they gave me so many points, i do not wanna be a criticist, and in the higher ranks changing ur class could take months. as is i already have a ton of criticist points just from voting on the majors i participated in, if i didnt get any cans or placing id probably still be a criticist (which i do not want) and the alternative would be to not.. vote? i dont think id do that but then it just creates a bit of an awkward situation

_{little addendum: while reading this back it has occured to me to think abt points on a grander scale; i straight up feel like OHBS, even winning them, dont give many points. the scale is super tipped in favor of major entries, and this ties into my problem with criticist points: when i was voting, and doing a lot of OHBing, my criticist points were straight up dwarfing my ohb efforts}

Imagine if you will: a user trying hold down a Class with only two formats. Where there's steep competition in the infrequent Majors the formats appear in, which makes placement in those formats far more difficult.

That sort of hypothetical user would be at risk to become a Criticist. Even if they have 40+ entries as a Performist, far more than any other Class.

Oddly enough, I still think that increased point benefits for Major voting could be a nice draw (though I'm not sure about 5x). But I think the greater issue that this discussion is flagging is that some of the other Classes could use a buff, regardless of the proposed changes.

You may not need any extrinsic motivation to vote, but it's a matter of record that we never get as many votes as we'd like on the biggest majors. By discussing mechanical tweaks in terms of incentives I'm just being pragmatic about how to get results we'd prefer.

semi-related q:
does anyone *want* to be a criticist class-wise?
i'll admit this question is semi-stupid but its genuine

every other class shows that "hey, i *really* like doing stuff in X format" (or you just bang out 1 format a bit too much"
eg: the ever so common chipist shows: "i like making chiptune"
grafixist: "i really like drawing"
the extinct codist: "i like entering coding+i like niche format"

....what doea criticist tell you?
that they vort alot?

if you vort alot on majors i think most people are generally vocal on that, whether its a 100% message or just entry comments (and the possible hall of vortists is also there), i dont think you need to wear a badge of honour for that. if you did want said badge, it'd be for a specific battle (hall mention #2), not an entire class.

if you vort alot in xhbs...um. cool you're in alot of vort logs
again though, is the badge of honour for this needed?

if there is someone who's criticist and likes being one feel free to explain why the above is wrong,
its just i've *never* once heard someone say "im worried about my criticist class" or "i really like my criticst class", its always "shit i have too many criticist i'll lose my class next level up and i cant do anything until the levelup *after*"
the class itself seems to go against *literally everyone's* desires

also @melonadem about the level thing, i feel you're mostly right
lower classes cant really vort much without fear of The Criticst Levelup, points

with that said
if someone in a higher class accidentally ended up in a situation where, due to them having points spread out in various classes - but slightly biased to a single one - there's not any that can single-handedly cancel out their criticist vorts "in time" (eg if you're over halfway and nothing can reach above crit before levelup), you'll need to spend really long getting that class back.
prob a level 18-22 issue only but it is there

@djtakataka the more i think on this the more i lean to this abit
a single major can give like 600 points alone depending on how many formats and their quality
but i'm not certain whether xhb points are even close to this. if its the case where you can get 10 crit points yet only a small amount of [whatever format] points then there may be An Issue. or none at all. i've never looked at the points from xhbs and uhhh that's concerning. could also just be my hallucinations tho, i need data on this hmm



anyways, i'm just a chipist because thats all i can even do (skill issue), so class has never really been an issue for me, and so therefore this arguement is redundant to me
but im curious on some of this

whoa holy yap

yeah i don’t really have much to contribute to this other than i’d rather not vote and then have my class removed because i voted too much. it’d either incentivize voting on literally everything or incentivize not voting on anything depending on the botbr and what they want as a class.

either way this seems like an okay idea but i think five points is a little too much. i kind of agree with dj that we need to probably boost the amount of points you get from xhbs more than majors, because then that’ll incentivize voting on those more, which is much more important as xhbs rarely get a lot of distinct votes in comparison to a major battle.

cheap trick is to have voting also give some playa points to push the criticist class down a little

sorry but i don't agree with the xhb stuff at all, i think the way theyre pointed is for the most part fine.

these happen across a 1, 2 or 4 hour time span, not including voting and slugs. worst case it might be 6 hours inclusive of voting/slugs (assuming 4hb). voting can be up to 24 hours sure but it most of the time won't happen unless 1) the host is being naughty/unavailable, or 2) there's a ton of entries that warrants the 24 hour voting period in full. there's also only 1 voting category: 1 to 7. most people would want to be in the chat when slugs happen as well. point is there's much less of a time commitment there

majors have to contend with a more lengthy submission period than 4 hours in most cases, a lengthier voting period which holds back results, and 5 voting categories, so i think it makes sense to want to incentivise these by giving more points.

i think maybe a mix of crit points, playa points and maybe format-specific class points might be an interesting idea, would avoid the problem of "i don't want to earn too many crit points" for sure i think. i don't know if i agree with people getting points for formats they never entered, but it would definitely avoid levelling up as a criticist or w/e.

mostly want the points because i'm not too much of a fan of boon-based rewards, i think that should be a reward for 100% voting on a battle and the payout depending on the battle size.

of course, there's the question of would it incentivise troll voting just for the sake of points and boons? i can definitely see the case being made for this. would love to hear more thoughts on these points

troll voting for the sake of points and boons is going to happen one way or another, even if the system remains the same as it is.

honestly i'd say creating something for an xhb is actually more impressive than something for a major battle, so why shouldn't it pay out more? and why shouldn't votes pay out more in return? i'd argue it's harder to make distinctions on xhb voting because you're lacking the categories.

maybe we shld get rid of criticist points and just show people a heart emoji with a thank-you message attached after every saved vote. people seem to hate the idea of having a class which shows that they care about other peoples work

"that they care about other peoples work"

@kleeder is a class seriously needed to show that tho.
favourites and comments exist for that.
like cool, showing that you take the time to vort on majors is appreciated. thanks for thst greatly!
..but there are prob better methods to blatantly show that without this class.

maybe the crit points should stay but the class dies? fixes the issue. tho would prob require a recode :(

again, critiscist class holders, please explain why you disagree with me

Super random idea - there's already another site mechanic that shows you've been voting. Aura!

Maybe Aura could be reworked that it starts as something bland until you start voting, and decays to that bland state if you don't regularly vote?

Generally speaking, I think that aesthetic site features could be a good reward for being more engaged with the site, including voting. I love the idea of displaying that you celebrate other people's works, but not at the cost of having a more talent-based Class.

i think its just wild to me that people wld rather not vote than to pick up the voter class, i have never even thought about this before this thread

When doing social engineering, one does not question why people are the way they are. You build with the bricks you have.

i saw the idea of subclass floating around and it seems like a decent proposal. i dont think anyone directly opposes the criticist class existing just it doesnt do much or mean much... everyone who is anyone is voting anyway (or they really should), we are all criticists in some way or another but just having that class be ur main one is boring

"Everyone who is anyone is voting anyway"

That's why I think aura should be a shiny toy only for people who vote 😁

But look at me, derailing conversation.

retro (#238399): i don't think the "ohb entry is more impressive" argument makes sense because you're up against much more impressive entries in majors anyways. winning an ohb is way easier than winning a major (overall)

personally while the quintupling seems cool it'd just overtake my other classes way too fast. and i have attachment to my signalist class which i had to put in a decent amount of effort to get

also about ppl not being enthusiastic about being criticist: i feel like your class maybe represents what you put most of your effort in. when it comes to getting points, voting is easy, there's just often a lot of it with majors. meanwhile putting together an entry that scores high and nets you a lot of points is extremely hard. here's an example - i had to be the best at bytebeat to get like 1k points from the signalist battle, and i assume other battles give you similar amounts of points if you win. the problem arises when you realize that you have to put in a frankly insane amount of effort or just be really good with music in general to win in most formats. if we quintuple criticist points, you get the same few hundred points for voting on around 100 entries as you would putting together an entry that wins a format in a major. it kinda just feels unbalanced

so considering all that i think criticist points as they are now are fine and ppl just have to commit to voting more if they want more criticist points. i don't feel like it should be the main source of points for ppl who enjoy voting anyways

We're really overthinking this. Why not start with the most minimal possible change: every major vote grants 1 criticist and 1 playa point. See if that simple doubling of the points reward (that doesn't threaten to reclass anyone) results in more major voting, and then go from there.

Why playa? Because it's recognition of time spent engaging with the site - the same reason you get a playa point for every day you log in.

Who would be on board?

i think that's probably the best idea for now

seems sound!