Challenges: The Second Page Of Doom

[Der Anfang]

...Or something like that. Anyway, not entirely sure why this happens. I see plenty of half-decent challenges, and I'll admit I am a little jealous at times. I thought my last attempt at a challenge (killing ablators as quickly as possible) was actually fairly decent but I dont think anybody actually went for it. What exactly is is that appeals people to attempt a challenge and why is it that other challenges get ignored, except for the very obvious reasons such as being impossible to complete or a clone of something else, etc? Why do a lot of challenges get pushed to this second page of doom that I have heard of, including myself? (And no, not whining or salty or anything along those lines. Genuinely curious on how to make a challenge that people actually want to commit to.)

[Temstar]

I personally would be more likely to attempt a challenge if its goals were aligned with practical aspects of career.

Eg: cheap and chearful rocket, payload fraction, K prize.

Participation leads to growth in my skill as a player.

[Overland]

Challenges also start better in the mission report forum then transition to fan works for each persons challenge

See elcano challenge for reference

[sal_vager]

I think if people used the challenge guidelines more we'd see more involvement in the challenges in general, there's too many challenges what aren't well thought out or presented.

Not saying yours are like this but it can be hard to find a good challenge when you've clicked 3 or 4 and they've been rather poor, players may decide to look at a fanworks instead of clicking one more challenge.

Also I find I can't do the challenges that involve large craft, my PC can't handle it, so it takes some of the fun out.

[Wallygator]

My experience most recently was regarding the Apollo Applications Challenge - which I basically gave up on.  Mostly because it required just so much intensive work and time dedication,  but also because it was written in a manner that required me to build a matrix of information just to decipher the requirements - which were not just the "Applications-cycle" of Post-Apollo hardware, but rather the entire "Birth to fantasy after-life-cycle" of Apollo.  Not that it is a bad challenge (it's kinda' cool actually), it was just so much of a challenge to accurately understand all the options, the vast number of missions required, the point award system, and the part counts, etc... that I basically lost the will - I have only myself to blame.  ;-)

On a constructive note, I agree with sal_vager above - folks should take the time to follow the guidelines when proposing challenges. This includes the requirement that the person proposing a challenge actually demonstrates that is can be done at the time the challenge is submitted.  Otherwise IMO it is a game-play question, not a challenge.

 

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Classic internet reverse psychology.

The best way to get a response on a forum isn't by asking a question.

It's by giving the wrong answer to a question and watching while dozens of users scramble over each other to be the first to correct you.

 

Case in point: 

 

Edited February 24, 2016 by Rocket In My Pocket

[GoSlash27]

The challenges I submitted that became popular all had a common theme to them: The advancement of practical skills and understanding as it relates to the game (especially career mode).

 My challenges never require the use of any mods to participate, and are things that I find fun, interesting, and challenging during normal gameplay. If I find it to be an interesting challenge, then chances are others will find it interesting as well. Hopefully, their participation in the challenge results in them becoming better players or more understanding in the community of how certain parts work.

 The trick to it is I never go looking for challenges to create. I just note when I happen to stumble across a scenario that I find challenging and interesting. When I find myself thinking "wow, that was tougher than I thought" or "I wonder what the limits are for this tech", then it's time to think of it in terms of a challenge.

Best,
-Slashy

Edited February 24, 2016 by GoSlash27

[Just Jim]

In my case, I think the challenge is just to hard for most (including me so far) and that's fine.  I presented one a few weeks ago based on a career game contract called the Ultimate Challenge.  Quite simply, it's to land on every planet and moon in the Kerbin system in one ship, then return to Kerbin and land.....

yeah, right...... 

I actually got permission to post it, because I haven't completed it myself.  The moderator let me because it was a game generated contract, not something I made up.  And as good as I like to think I am at this game , I'm still not sure how I'm going about it.

Anyway, my point is, when I posted it, I didn't expect to see too many people take it up.  A few did, and one actually has completed it.  But so far only one.  It's a really, really hard challenge, and I definitely expect it to get passed by a lot and make it to the page of doom.

No big deal, it doesn't make it a bad challenge, just one not many are going to attempt. 

[Foxster]

I've completed (and "won") quite a few challenges and it is still tricky to say what it is about a particular challenge that sparks my interest. I suspect it will also vary by person. 

The things that I find interesting are:

1. Stock parts only. There's no kind of level playing field possible once you can use modded parts. 

2. A major element of clever design/build being required. As opposed to being given a craft and told to do something tricky with it.  

3. Requiring a certain undefinable amount of time. Not days of grind or five minutes of trivial effort. 

4. A good but simple description with well defined rules. I get immediately put off by both a wall of text (that might include a load of fan nonsense) and by too simple a challenge, like "build a rocket that can go to the sun". 

5. An attentive challenge-setter! There's not much worse about a challenge than the person who set it abandoning almost immediately and not acknowledging entries. 

 

Edited February 24, 2016 by Foxster

[Nich]

1. Back story or humor.  You have 3 sentences to grab my attention or maybe just the title.

2. An actual challenge.  Getting to orbit is not a challenge.  Building an SSTO space plane is not REALLY a challenge but the K Prize does so well because it is a little challenging, provides multiple levels of difficulty and provides a great place to show off your new creations and has an attentive maintainer.  Not to mention it grabs your attention in the title being a reference to the x-prize

3. Leader boards are a double a edged sword.  They make for some interesting competition and rule bending however someone like @Nefrums can come in and set the bar so high no one bothers posting their results.  Does not mean they did not enjoy the challenge.

4.  Time to complete the challenge.  Basic easily beatable entries should take less then an hour to complete.  You can spend months making a top scoring entry but the first entry got you hooked.  I have no idea how the Jool-5 or caveman challenge is as popular as it is as it violates this rule.  I suspect number 7 plays a part

5. Restrictive enough to provide a challenge and prevent cheating but open enough to allow out of the box thinking.

6. 100% agree with @GoSlash27 and @Foxster stock is very important as it give you a larger audience

7. If you don't qualify for all 6 of the first 6 points an awesome badge can make it worth doing a challenge and provides free advertising via linking to the challenge.

8.  The major problem with your challenge is based off your description I am immediately think MOAR boosters (no challenge)

[Laie]

The successful challenges fall into a few categories:

1. novelty challenges like the Caveman Challenge or "get into space using no controls but the space bar". Being silly often contributes to the appeal. It's important that the task seems like an interesting and/or fun exercise that doesn't take too long to complete. This doesn't mean that it stops there: people may start refining their designs and put serious effort into the challenge... which means that they've been hooked. These challenges tend to taper out once it seems one has to put in too much work to still score well on the leaderboard. Cavemen Challenge escapes this fate by not having a performance metric.
    
2. Exploratory challenges like the Ion Collier or Biome Hopper or Eve SSTO Limbo. These are sucessful if they hit a topic that enough people care about, but it doesn't take that many. Two or three people outdoing each other over and over again can keep the challenge on the front page for weeks.
    
3. Rite-of-passage challenges like the K-Prize or Jool-5 or Eve Return. These work if they cater to the audience, that is, propose a logical mission that people want to do and place no undue restrictions on how to perform the task. In many ways, they serve the purpose of achievement awards (a badge is important); plus they give people who are proud of their achievement a place to show off and a guaranteed audience (and feedback!) for their exploits. Since my short run of hosting the Eve Rocks challenge I have the utmost respect for the people who host these challenges.

Overall, it helps if the instructions can be kept simple, if restrictions are few and common-sensical, and if the mission is of limited scope. Jool-5 actually is way too involved but gets away with it because "visit all five moons in one mission" makes sense. "Visit Gilly Duna Ike and Dres" would be of similar scope and difficulty but -- why I should do that?

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 2016 by Laie

[Nefrums]

I agree with what @Foxster, @Nich and @Laie writes.

One more this thou. This game has two parts:  building and flying, 

Some challenges are more focused on building and some are more focused on flying (or driving).  Some people like one and some like the other, but most people like to have a good mix of both.

I like challenges where you spend most of your time refining your ship over and over again rather than spending many hours flying the same ship. Like the Stock payload challenge.

 

And to come back to what @Nich said about leader boards.  If a challenge is so simple that building the ultimate craft is possible, then the challenge dies very quickly.  

[Hotaru]

A few things that put me off a challenge:

The first is anything that boils down to part-count (or, the "Who Has The Fastest CPU Challenge"). A lot of challenges look interesting at first, but as soon as I start thinking about how I might actually build an entry, I realize I'll run up against my part-count limit long before people with more powerful CPUs and almost immediately lose interest.

The second (not entirely unrelated) is the phrase "No mods allowed." While there are exceptions--some challenges obviously only make sense with stock parts, or without MechJeb, or whatever--a lot of challenges just ban part mods when they could be much more inclusive by (for example) having separate stock and modded divisions. The reason this is related is, one of the main things I use part mods for is reducing part-count. Attempting something like Jool-5 without part mods on my system is borderline impossible due to lag, and even worse if I'm not allowed KJR. In general, as soon as I see "no mods" in the list of rules I instantly hit the "back" button.

A third, more minor issue is unnecessary rules. Example: why is the K-Prize limited to horizontal take-off SSTOs? Why exclude SSTO rockets (especially since a number of entrants to the real-life X-Prize were in fact rockets)? Another example: Why can't I use a rover-and-ferry arrangement in the Elcano challenge? It's a completely arbitrary limitation that adds nothing to the challenge and requires entrants to use cumbersome amphibians to circumnavigate Kerbin where a ferry would make much more sense. While this sort of thing usually doesn't cause me to instantly give up on a challenge, it can be discouraging enough that I eventually lose interest.

For me, the Elcano challenge is a good example of the right way to do it (neglecting my complaint about the ferry issue). It's a difficult-but-doable challenge that I probably wouldn't have tried if it weren't suggested, with a very inclusive set of rules. Jool-5, with a relatively inclusive list of allowed mods and separate ISRU division, is another good example.

[Temstar]

2 minutes ago, Hotaru said:

Example: why is the K-Prize limited to horizontal take-off SSTOs? Why exclude SSTO rockets (especially since a number of entrants to the real-life X-Prize were in fact rockets)?

I'm not a fan of arbitrary rules in challenges either (eg: land on the Mun and return, no Mun orbit rendezvous!) but in K-Prize's case I can see why the rule is in place. Tailsitter SSTOs are completely different animal. They generally climb to orbit using normal gravity turn trajectory, relying almost entirely on their engine power. This is as opposed to orthodox airbreathing spaceplane SSTOs that fly depressed trajectory using lifting surfaces. As a rule, SSTOs are most useful (read: cheapest cost per ton to orbit) when they take off with as low of a TWR as possible, as evidenced by the leader board from the payload fraction challenge.

So from a practical perspective HTHL spaceplace SSTO is where its at and Tailsitter SSTO is a compromised solution that's trying to have it both ways. HTHL spaceplane SSTO is harder to make, so it's no surprise that K-Prize focuses on this. Now the challenge could waste a lot of energy as I did above trying to explain the differences, but people's eyes will glaze over reading it so it's easier to just say "HTHL only".

But then again, K-Prize maintains a separate "gatecrasher" scoreboard for entries that complete the challenge by bending the rules like VTVL SSTOs. In some ways getting on the gatecrasher list is more fun because @boolybooly adds you entry with a witty comment about how your entry subverted the rules.

[SpaceplaneAddict]

I see you took the K-Prize as an example, and though I don't answer for @boolybooly, I think the premise of that challenge is solely for spaceplane SSTO's. Why? Better, why NOT? Because that's what makes it a challenge, spaceplane SSTO's are pretty hard to utilize for beyond LKO, or for cargo, which is really an aspect of the challenge.

 

All IMO,

-SPAddict

P.S: Please don't hate me  but it seems a lot like you are trying to blow off some steam about thing that grind your gears. I can TOTALLY understand that feeling

[Hotaru]

1 hour ago, Temstar said:

in K-Prize's case I can see why the rule is in place

1 hour ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

I see you took the K-Prize as an example

The point isn't whether you agree or disagree with that particular example. The point is that any rule that limits the possible approaches to a challenge has the potential to put people off and it's up to the challenge creator to decide whether it adds enough to the challenge to be worth it. The K-Prize thing wasn't a very good example. It really only bothers me because of the connection to the real-life X-Prize; if it were called "Kerbal Spaceplane to Orbit Challenge" I'd never have complained about things that aren't spaceplanes not being allowed. The Elcano ferry thing is a better example: it's a rule that doesn't really add anything to the challenge.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Hotaru

[Jetski]

13 hours ago, Just Jim said:

In my case, I think the challenge is just to hard for most (including me so far) and that's fine.  I presented one a few weeks ago based on a career game contract called the Ultimate Challenge.  Quite simply, it's to land on every planet and moon in the Kerbin system in one ship, then return to Kerbin and land.....

yeah, right...... 

I actually got permission to post it, because I haven't completed it myself.  The moderator let me because it was a game generated contract, not something I made up.  And as good as I like to think I am at this game , I'm still not sure how I'm going about it.

Anyway, my point is, when I posted it, I didn't expect to see too many people take it up.  A few did, and one actually has completed it.  But so far only one.  It's a really, really hard challenge, and I definitely expect it to get passed by a lot and make it to the page of doom.

No big deal, it doesn't make it a bad challenge, just one not many are going to attempt. 

Hey, at least one person did that one!  (Ahem)

[Just Jim]

8 minutes ago, Jetski said:

Hey, at least one person did that one!  (Ahem)

I mentioned you! 

[Jetski]

9 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

I mentioned you! 

Yep, took almost a week IRL. I see your point

[Death Engineering]

When I create a challenge, it's one that I want to play myself but also see how others approach the challenge using the same parameters. And, I'm always impressed by the ingenuity I encounter. 

A challenge I create or participate in needs to be epic; something that's requires multiple launches, planning, complex goals etc. However, there is definitely a sweet spot somewhere. Take for example a challenge I developed around Vall: it had it all, or so I thought.. Background story, diverse goals, clear and easy rules, and took some time to prepare. But, it got very little interest, perhaps because of the rules, maybe the destination wasn't interesting enough, maybe too linear with its goals. 

Anything Apollo usually gets some interest though. 

[RocketPropelledGiraffe]

It seems to me that the topics of "hot" challenges are mainly planes and SSTO, I guess there are two main reasons for that:

1. Aero- and spaceplanes offer a lot of optimization potential. Small design changes can have a huge impact on the performance. This is a huge playground for those optimizers and tweakers out there, who love to scratch even the last m/s of deltav out of a given design.

2. "Normal" space-related challenges need a very catchy special feature to make them popular. To stay on the "first page of awesome" instead of the "second page of doom" requires constant posting, which mainly has to come from the most active people in the forums. Let's face it - the games has been around for quite some time now, and the most active forum people are mostly also very active players. "Normal" space related challenges without a very unique feature will often just earn you a "been there, done that" response.

The obvious exception are challenges that have been around some time or return regularly, just because they feel "natural" for everyone playing a while - Returning from Eve or doing Jool-V type missions are appealing to almost anyone who picks up the game and most people want to do it at least once.

Personally, I do not enjoy optimizing planes as much. It just feels like work to me and not so much like recreation, which is what I look for in a game. I also do not have a lot of time to play anymore, so I will generally not consider the very time consuming challenges like Elcano. Regarding the original post: I thought the burn-down-the-ablator thing was a nice idea, but too much optimization necessary to do well. All things considered, I do not post enough to keep anything on the first page anyway...

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I don't really care for aircraft challenges. I like those where it's pretty open to interpretation, and you can go at the solution in different ways.

This is kinda off-topic, but what do you think of this challenge idea:

Spoiler

A challenge where you have to get as much science in science mode as possible within 3 days.

 

[Nich]

Kind of falls into the been there done that.

Kind of becomes a part spam because Minmus and Mun are reachable in 3 days with enough Dv.  Not sure about back but I am sure someone would find a way.

Kind of a pain because the obvious end point is to farm every biome on Mun and Minimus to be competitive.

It might be a little interesting because the best entries would probably have 30-40 mun and minimus and back flights all running very close together

[Guest]

I think that a general rule of thumb for when you want to make a challenge is to ask yourself "Would I do it?". Honestly.

[Guest]

Time, really.  How much time is involved versus how much interest I have in the challenge.  Take Jool 5, for instance.  This sounds like a great challenge until I think about all the design work and tabulating delta-V and prototyping and testing and making everything fit correctly and reducing part count that by the time I get around to flying the mission (yet another tedious affair) I'm losing interest fast.

I like simpler challenges.  One of my favorite was "How far can you get on a Mainsail?" which stipulated that the only lower stage engine you could use was a single Mainsail and that it had to get you off the pad.  Not sure why more people didn't do that one...  Another was the Apollo-style Moho challenge, which I failed to finish because I tried out video editing and capture at the same time and focused on other things instead of finishing the challenge.