There are a lot of topics being included into this thread which may become confusing and they should perhaps be separated and discussed in context.
I would like to point out that I disagree with the following suggestions AuntDeen, and I don't want to vote the topic down.
If Beginner puzzles are truly meant for beginners, I'm perplexed at why the veterans who have "asked to have access to it in order to help new players" have their scores counted for global rankings. I really don't think that it can boost a new player's confidence when they have a next to impossible time hitting top twenty, which is always crowded with veterans. Perhaps anyone with over 150 global points should be able to play but not rank. Those of us who are over 150 can then choose to stay away from it if they don't like QTTN (and many of us don't).
There is no definition of a 'veteran' (that I am aware of) and certainly as someone who has only been folding for a few months as opposed to years, it was somewhat surprising to see players with over 2 years experience doing beginner puzzles, and evolving them in large numbers. But it makes winning all the sweeter.
If you don't like QTTN don't play them.
It only took me a short time to get over 150 points however I still consider myself to be a beginner folder and I learn a lot from doing QTTN.
People also have a 'next to impossible' time competing with people who are happy with short puzzle length because they run multiple clients on several high powered machines with lots of high speed bandwidth, which gives them a big advantage on a short duration puzzle.
IMHO
spmm - I was quoting from the beta_helix comment that I replied to…
"1 month-long Beginner puzzle (that non-beginner Foldit players will only need to play for a few days over the course of that month; these used to be only for <150 but veterans asked to have access to it in order to help new players)"
Perhaps beta could define it better than I can since he is the one who used the term - but he seemed to define it as people with scores over 150.
As it now stands, because of the decision that beta_helix and the other foldit devs have made concerning this ability to have "veterans" "access" the Beginner puzzles, it is my understanding that if we do not play, it affects our ranking. If I'm wrong about that - I'd really like to know!
I rank very poorly on these, I don't get them, I don't like them, and I spend as little time as possible on them - whatever, just my personal preference, and that of some others.
I have a high-powered machine, but it is a Mac - which has very rarely allowed me to run a full lua script without crashing (most Mac folks have that problem). I can only run one client at a time, or the first one crashes instantly.
We all have our preferences, our focus on what we wish to learn at any given time, and our limitations.
:-)
Thank you all for your input on this, we are about to bring back the Multi-Round New-Exploration-Score Puzzles so we want to gauge what is too much (in terms of puzzles up) and too short (in terms of puzzle durations) without having anyone resort to breeding more sheep ;-)
Please ask your teammates to post their preferences if they have not been represented in the above discussion, thanks!
To clarify about the Beginner Puzzles, I simply meant that I don't expect non-beginner Foldit players, veteran Foldit players, >150 Foldit players (basically all of the above) to play a Beginner Puzzle for very long, so the month-long puzzle deadline doesn't really count as a puzzle being up for a month.
We didn't even used to have Beginner Puzzles up for anyone with >150 global points, and we agree that it should in no way be worth as much as a normal puzzle that is up for 1 week.
Hopefully this has now been addressed with this: http://fold.it/portal/node/989585#comment-10842
Beginner puzzles are up for 4 times as long as normal puzzles, but only worth half as much as 1 normal puzzle… so hopefully that resolves any issues about them contributing too much to the global rankings.
I like a max of three at a time.
o.k., new comment now that casp is over. i think puzzle size and expiration date change how many puzzles we can do at one time. little puzzles with many days= more puzzles. 3 plus the qttn is usually good as long as they expire at different times. right now, i'm a little bored. could use another puzzle. my 2 cents.
