auntdeen Lv 1
From the perspective of someone who has been relatively successful in scoring in NC, and who has done her share of both complaining and problem solving (nailing down bugs)…
We have some facts here that all of us can agree on, whatever our perspectives.
First - we are all finding it difficult to re-establish our rhythm.. by this I mean from hand fold to finished (cemented) protein.
I had been relatively successful with the following pattern - hand work & tweaks in .2 CI, maybe an overall rebuilder script - at .4 CI some mild banding - 1.0 CI more rebuild, banding, drw and whatever else.
I still feel that the method has value, but point by point… handfolding has been difficult because of rebuild (better now)… rebuild scripts were difficult, also better now… banding scripts - what you use to band the protein are still problematic. We know for a fact that wiggle is still inefficient or not quite right, because walking works again - sometimes surprisingly well.
But the hardest thing is that the client keeps changing, and there are almost too many options / choices now - 4 flavors of wiggle added to the option of which CI to use - that is a fact. The devs may be tweaking the scoring functions behind the scenes, because almost every puzzle, even of the same types, reacts differently from each other.
And because of the crashes and hangs, and that many are only able to run fewer clients because of over heating, it's difficult for most folders to fully explore these options to begin to get back into a method that works for them.
The filters have caused overheating issues since they were introduced, and that has continued/gotten worse in NC - but overheating is not limited to mutate puzzles.
Another fact is that we still have a lot of bugs.
The jury is still out on whether the latest devprev update has accomplished anything, for two reasons - many can't devote the clients to test as they used to, and puzzle 854 was released at the same time. Wiggle on that puzzle is horribly buggy, but that's what many used to test the devprev release.
How we approach these issues, and these facts, is how we personally react to frustration. Some of us don't handle it well, some are always optimistic. The full range of reaction is valid - it all stems from the same frustration with the facts.
And our opinions of whether or not these facts can be resolved in time for casp is valid opinion, wherever you fall on the scale. The fact is, because of the above issues, many have cut down the number of clients they run - and the number of puzzles they can devote time to. There is varied opinion on whether the NC will be better for scientific accuracy - or cause the better solutions to go unexplored because of less players running fewer clients.
And a sad fact here - there are fewer players logged into chat - the numbers have declined to 64 in vet at this writing from a relatively consistent over 100 before NC. Global is down dramatically, also.
Every player applauds the devs for trying to bring better accuracy to the game. But another fact is that every last player would like to see that accuracy integrated into a solid, playable and enjoyable game that is stable, and does not cause computers to overheat. The last fact is that we simply don't have that game right now.