Getting Too Cryptic?

Not too many, but I have seen a few "Awesome _______" and I don't know what to do with those. I guess they're fine if they're in the beginning of the game, but when its an intermediary panel and it just says "Awesome guy doing awesome thing" you know it's going to have nothing to do with the drawing before no matter what you draw.

I'm guessing that this could be the side-effect of having only 40 characters max for a description. There will bit a bit of abbreviations, contractions, verbs with strong definitions, and the occasional description with no spaces on them.

You also have references that involves a lot of people, like sports teams, superhero clubs, armies of drones, and so on.

I suppose one idea is to lengthen the description somewhat but maybe have a 30-second "research period" to at least absorb the message into your head before the actual 10 minutes begins. Just tossing that out there-- I'm sure there could be better ideas.

I mean, I don't mind it the way it is now but that could be interesting.

my drawings are way too cryptic these days :(

I just attempted to draw a "man murdered by eating utensil bandits". I think I did good.

Yeah, the difficultly of the descriptions is a major problem.

Planning to try a few things to help resolve it. The first is simply adding some tips to the description page. That will show up today.

Next is adding a "dustcatcher" status to panels. When a lot of players skip a particular panel it'll become a dustcatcher and be removed from the system. The creator of it will get a notice so they can get an idea of what descriptions work or not, but there's no penalty or anything.

That should help keep the difficulty down and keep things moving along better. What happens now is that simple descriptions get picked up quickly and difficult ones clog up the queue and you see them over and over again. Generally they have too much detail or are too specific.

We'll see how this works out and what kind of panels end up as dustcatchers. One thing that might be fun is to actually keep them in the system, but only show them to higher level players or those that opt-in. They could have a bonus modifier attached to them so players who do them will get extra reward (assuming it gets upvoted/liked).

I think that sounds like a great plan, Reed.

I like the dustcatcher idea.

I like that idea!

I wouldn't mind taking on the challenge of doing some of the Dustcatcher panels. I think the results might turn out interesting if I can pull it off!

I'd opt-in occasionally. Some of the more complex descriptions I've seen have appealed to me.

http://drawception.com/viewgame/by6ddxay5n/chichi-serves-goku-divorce-papers/ And here's what it actually was.

I have been wondering this myself. I've been submitting and drawing less and less over the last week and I cant tell if I've burnt myself out, or if the prompts themselves have changed. I know for a fact that I'm a lot pickier in which prompts I do, I can tell by looking back at the first ones I did and knowing full well I wouldn't even try them now.

That said, people seem to be trying to cram in the max possible descriptors into their prompts and it makes me not all that enthused to try and fulfill. Right not it feels like I have a checklist of requirements I need to meet, and its choking out the creative aspect. Even with the reduced characters, people just abbreviate, which can make it even harder to tell what I'm supposed to do.

I guess I'm just venting, but its frustrating only submitting a couple panels a day when I'm trying to do a whole lot more.

I disagree with the dustcatcher suggestion. I highly doubt it will work out.

I agree with dusctcatching whole-heartedly. And KxRook, are you me from another dimension? You speak how my heart feels....

KxRook, yeah, I get frustrated with the ones that are TOO specific, too. People putting in things like generic character's skin color or ethnicity (unless they're white, which is sort of weird, and I don't know how someone decides that a rough smiley face is of a specific ethnicity anyway apart from dark-medium-light), or what they're wearing, or hair colors or what the weather is like unless it's obviously super important to the scene, or things like "with blue rectangle in corner" or "with sun with smiley face" makes me feel more like I'm trying to cram things in and pass a test than being given a prompt with enough freedom to be creative. I don't see a ton of prompts that are too strict for me, but I have seen quite a few. Being new, though, I didn't know that was a new trend.

@varkarrus, I think the dustcatcher is worth trying. Even if it doesn't work, there's no reason Reed can't roll back to the previous iteration of the software.

Instead of arbitrarily declaring any given panel to be a "dustcatcher," why not assign a bounty to every panel which gets larger the longer it's skipped? BUT - you say - won't this encourage people to draw useless squiggles for the sole purpose of capturing a bounty? NOT if the bounty is a multiplier!

In other words, as a panel gets skipped over and over again, it becomes worth x1 more for every 10 times it's been skipped. So if a panel has been skipped 50 times, it has a x4 "difficulty multiplier" attached to it, and any points the panel receives are multiplied by 4. Do a 5 second squiggle, you'll get 0 points - and 0 x 4 = 0.

I would say it gets a x0.2 multiplier instead (starting at x1 of course)

I like the dustcatcher, but Im not sure about a point multiplier added to it.
How would the multiplier work? Would it only apply to that panel, or the entire game? I would assume these panels(descriptions) would go into a separate area. The bonus for doing them could be something along the lines of more time and or tools.

I have always been very selective on the panels I choose (playing since end of April and only have 33 games). I skip alot, and most of my chosen panels are ones I do after seeing the prompt multiple times. And much of my skipping is done in the hopes of returning to a panel I passed recently. I understand I am not the typical player. My total games played doesnt even come close to many players daily games played. But I do log on daily in search of a panel to draw and to watch submissions. The completion rate has slowed considerably. I remember having a difficult time keeping up with completed games as they finished. Now several minutes pass before a new one finishes.

I skip a bunch lately now that new games can't be opened til we make a dent in what's opened.

Some of the references people are listing are soooo obscure it's just frustrating. I don't even really enjoy it any more because of it.