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[pablito]

I have an opinion on one of these points, and I'm afraid it's because I have a high standard for MS games. So my opinion may sound like it comes from a purist and from my high horse, but I also feel like I've earned a high horse in this specific topic. I'd disagree on the need for a challenge database. One thing I like about this community is that challenges feel fresh and there's a lot of innovation in the challenges. Skypevivors and some long-standing facebook series often rehash the same series of challenges every single time. I know that there is a database for skypevivor challenges. This is helpful because those challenges should last 5 minutes and challenge design is a wayside element in skypevivors, and they do not have the intensity of MS games.

I am hesitant about a challenge database, as it may inadvertently encourage mods to rely on it more as a first step than encouraging mods to develop new challenges, new challenge types, new challenge mechanisms, etc. Granted, mods may not use it as a first response and only as a back-up, and I anticipate that argument. However, modding isn't supposed to be easy. It's gotta be tough because it's quite the commitment. Having to click through a challenge forum to find different challenges, especially when you have to click on individual games is a serious pain. Another serious pain is fool-proofing challenges and finding every single loophole. I think as a mod, past game research has to be a necessary step to become a decent mod to practice those clerical and perusing skills. Reading all the past games and all the different rulesets teaches the skill of how to write challenges and rules. It can be beneficial to see how past games have made mistakes in not anticipating all loopholes and how to learn from those mistakes. Having standardized rules helps, but doesn't teach that skill. However, all this time commitment can be an obstacle to getting new mods. My suggestion would be to research some good games/challenges that had well-written rulesets and see how that can help for your game as a mod. And then research some bad games/challenges that had poorly-written rulesets and read the spec forums or post-game hashing to see how that could have been improved. Any past "cancelled challenge" should be required reading for new mods.

I think having a standard ruleset for some very typical challenge formats such as fastest time jigsaw puzzles, trivia brackets, highest score flash games could be helpful to have in specific cases. There are several challenge types that have been utilized almost identically for at least 4 games in the last two years (I'd venture that half of that is CC stealing from himself though). I think that might be the aim that CreativeMod and Vash are going for with the typical challenges. I'm not opposed to that, because while I'm not a fan of any type of recycled challenges, I know those types of challenges will be reused. I'm not sure that having a comprehensive challenge database is going to be worth the time to create though when there's Bororbudur, all of Medevac/One World, Babar challenges, KSS challenges, etc. If anything is done, it should be for a challenge type done 3x or more.

Standardized overall game rules is a good idea.