I want to focus on the "not too motivating" appreciation of the evolver's effort. As the point calculation system applied since the born of the new site favors top teams, members who belongs to the second or third teams (at a given puzzle) usually get almost nothing. This made them uninterested in evolving solutions, decreasing the number of evolvers, which made the situation even worse.
In order to change a little bit (even this solution may be not motivating enough) and beside it to handle situations where a lot of persons are involved (hundreds or thousands), i suggest a new point calculation formula.
According to: foldit.fandom.com/wiki/Foldit_rankings
the used formula is
Points = math.max(1, math.ceil(((1-R/N)^5)*X)), where
N : number of competitoors - 1
R: final rank - 1
X: points the puzzle is worth
In my opinion this formula gives too little if N is small (under 30), and too much if N is high (above 150).
I suggest a little bit changed formula, which in excel is:
X*(1-R/N)^(1+IMLOG2(N))
and in Lua:
Points = math.max(1, math.ceil(((1-R/N)^(1+math.log(N)-math.log(2)))*X)).
I totally agree to the description of the problem. If I see I can't reach the first half, I often skip evolving at all. I guess its the same for other players, when I see that e,g, puzzle 2239 had only 7 evolvers. A more motivating formula like the one above could help.
On the old web site the calculation was based on the number of soloists and I did not find any information as this was changed.
It was changed without any remark. But I see the problem at the team level too. Motivating better smaller teams is also a goal of my observation.
It's a fact that the new system attracks less potential evolvers.
Arguments for the current formula: Too many evolvers for the same (gaining) puzzle might be of lower value added: if a team member of a big team shares a gaining solution and all team members evolve it 2 points just before the end, this might use a lot of CPU for a limited scientific outcome: Foldit gets a number of not interesting quasi similar results. With the new very discriminating system, players of a current gaining team get a high incentive to try to evolve it. Even numerous players of a poor result team have no interest to use ressources to evolve this solution: there is more incentive to try other solutions on soloist in this case.
Arguments for old formula: With old formula based on the number of soloists, evolving rewarded always more than not evolving. Moreover there was less competition (more cooperation) between evolvers of the same team, because every contributor received score in the same range.
I'm not able to evaluate the new proposal by Sandrix72. If it can solve the problem of too few evolvers for a specific puzzle, it's good.
Hey all, thank you for the discussion here. We are talking about this internally and are looking into ways to make the evolver scoring feel more fair and rewarding.
I fear a bit more complicated to implement, but I think it would be fair sharing evolver points between two players: the one who evolves and the one whose solution is evolved. A good evolver score normally can only be achieved, if the evolved solution already has a good design.
I wonder if a better criterion for evolving would be not score gain, but a change in structure: perhaps based on the rmsd of the backbone positions. But no doubt this would create its own set of problems.
To me, evolving has always seemed less important in the ranking of players than soloing. For example, for a long time there was a Soloist Hall of Fame web page that listed the total global points earned by each soloist. I liked this Soloist Hall of Fame because the point totals never decreased, even if you stopped playing Foldit for several months or more. Why was there not an analogous Evolver Hall of Fame web page? Also, evolving is one of the big selling points for being in a group, and evolving often helps groups rank well in the group competitions.
One problem with evolving happened to me several puzzles ago. I started the puzzle late, so I didn't think I had a good chance to make a worthwhile solo solution. I also didn't have lots of time to play Foldit. Evolving seemed like the best way I could contribute, so I started working on the top-scoring group-shared solution. I was able to evolve it, but it seemed like each time I did, there was already a new top-scoring group-shared solution even better than my top-scoring one. It felt like my efforts really didn't matter, and this got me down for a while, but I kept playing, loading the top-scoring solution each time and trying to evolve it. At some point late in the puzzle, like magic, my best score was the best score in the group. I shared my top-scoring solution, and before long, others in the group had either evolved it or passed it.
Below are some benefits of evolving:
(1) I see what my teammates' solutions look like, which gives me ideas for my own solutions.
(2) I get lots of practice finding ways to raise the Foldit score, even for proteins that are already very well folded.
(3) Science-wise, I am exploring the energy landscape of the protein near the shared solution I started with. This gives the scientists explicit information about how the Foldit score changes, for example, when I change the rotamer for a particular sidechain or move certain atoms closer together. Proteins in nature aren't just rigid objects. Many are very dynamic structures that change shape as they do their jobs. The top-scoring solution doesn't give the whole picture. Odds are, the protein conformations I explore when evolving are different from the ones my teammates explore, so together we all give a more informative picture of how the protein behaves than any of us would get on our own.
