One final thought…. we need something fun for the players every so often. Either a science issue that is current, or something just goofy. We had a Tall Ship parade into Philly yesterday,with the last "ship" being a giant rubber ducky. The tall ship people were really bummed that "everyone" came to see the rubber ducky (bigger than a galleon) until they realized it increased the crowd by a multiple. How do we hook new players and get them to stay? What will keep someone from being discouraged when they do not progress as fast as they would like?
http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/06/what_the_duck_worlds_largest_rubber_duck_to_return.html
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Hi, i had posted this in the recommendation area, but i thought i would also post it here too. i would love to see this game be brought to the Facebook game platform. it would get a lot of game play from people who want puzzle games to play while on Facebook. i think that would be awesome.
hey, what about puzzles involving the use of the Neanderthal genome project? puzzles which show the way their proteins fold compared to Modern Humans?
Currently we have a small "revisiting" puzzle (1104) ending one day, followed by a large hand-folding puzzle (1105) ending 36 hours later. Then a medium-sized design puzzle (1106) ends the next day.
I'd like the puzzles to be spaced more evenly, ending 36 to 48 hours apart. Also it would be nice if the easier "revisiting" puzzles would end between the larger and more difficult puzzles. This might meaning delaying the start of the next revisiting puzzle a couple of days, but I could live with that.
Some type of calendar or even a general statement about upcoming puzzles would also be helpful. For example, we've had a flurry of hydrogen bond network puzzles recently, which required new techniques. Will there be more of these HBond puzzles in the near future, or will they go the way of contact map puzzles? A simple statement like "expect some new ED puzzles in July" would go a long way.
More information on our scientific progress would be appreciated. How much progress actually occurs. How often does progress occur(I fear it's far less than most players believe)? Is there something we can do as players which can help generate faster results? We get 3 types of puzzles: baseline puzzles to refine rules for future puzzles, scientific puzzles which might save a life someday, and busywork puzzles only given to us because there is nothing better available. Knowing which puzzles help you the most can help players allocate their folding time more appropriately.
We all joined for the science but stayed for the game. While I enjoy a good rank up as much as the next person, there are plenty of games with the same level of instant gratification, the long term gratification is why we continue to chose Foldit over other entertainment.
As a side note. Have you considered recruiting some of the long term players to assist in preparing puzzles or generating results. I'm sure there are some menial tasks which can be accomplished by volunteers, allowing your paid employees to handle more difficult/restricted tasks. I would say anyone who has folded continuously for 4 years or more most likely has your best interest at heart and could be trusted to complete repetitive tasks on non-confidential items.
a facebook version is a great idea.
Some recommendations:
1) you don't have to mantain a rotating puzzle schedule the way the Foldit client does. Puzzles can run long term similar to our current "Contests" or simply never end. An absolute best would be almost assured and would be a great source for your database lookups
2) generally use only smaller puzzles or "beginner" puzzles at least in the beginning to keep new player anxiety low.
3) You don't need all the tools. A small subset of our current tools would be fine. Keep it simple. Even simpler, less exact calculations could be used.
4) You don't need such a robust tutorial or even any tutorial. Trial by fire on small puzzles with few tools would not be overwhelming
The goal would be to create a simple to play, simple to maintain game who's only real purpose is to draw players to the foldit client to get the real "meat" of protein folding
I agree, spacing of the puzzles is sometimes … well … challenging. Particularly for those of us who are 40 hours at work and do this evenings and weekends. Good point about fine-tuning the releases to have small/large spaced evenly as well.
Oh! Just thought of one more possible really cool thing: How about a specific page of "Best Recipes" - recipes that are most useful for… (categorized by puzzle type, function, etc.). This would be a great way of introducing new players to the tools that can help them the most, quickly. This I think would be an improvement over the search function for scripts that currently exists.
The Foldit wiki has a number of pages where
people list their favorite recipes, for example:
Favorite recipes
http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/Favorite_recipes
Recipes
To prevent the loss some of the greatest recipes,
we'd like you to record some of your favorites here!,
along with links and how you personally…
http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/Recipes
Recipes - table
A table of the recipes with more votes or
average vote > 4 sort by type of recipes.
http://foldit.wikia.com/wiki/Recipes_-_table
I think I've also seen a list of recipes used
most during one of the CASP competitions.
If anyone finds such a list, please post its
link here.
I think the all.macro file that stores each player's
Cookbook keeps track of which recipes we use the
most. I think text in all.macro like below:
"uses" : "13"\n
near the end of an entry for a recipe means the recipe
has been used 13 times. Perhaps data like this could
be sent automatically to the Foldit site now and then.
Foldit could list the most popular public recipes used
for each puzzle. Foldit could also accumulate recipe
stats for different puzzle types (perhaps over the
past few months for each puzzle type). Foldit could
list the recipe names, recipe numbers, and how often
each recipe was used for each puzzle and puzzle type.
Perhaps on each recipe's page, there could be a listing
of total uses so far. Foldit could do this for public, group,
and even personal recipes. Foldit could also list the number
of different players who have downloaded each recipe.
