CSR Suggestions

Community Challenges & Competitions
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This topic is not designed to attack anyone but as more of a way to discuss ways in which to format my be improved. If you get offended then sorry, I don’t mean to.

There have been a few contentious responses recently to CSR rounds that have gone on, who’s fault it is doesn’t matter but how we can improve the product for host and participant is. I personally think that CSR is almost becoming a victim of it’s own success, people love entering them which has become very apparent with the last few CSR rounds. What I want to make sure is that we can keep this up!

The rapid nature of CSR is one of the founding principles of CSR and I don’t think we should change that. The freedom that the host has to review and build the challenge is also one of the appeals of CSR as well, once again I don’t feel this should be changed.

One of the things that we could look at is giving hosts a week to put up a challenge and have feedback before starting it. During the planning phase there is another CSR round running. So the process would go like this:

This would allow for the community to give feedback and hopefully clear up any issues that may exist. This means that the winner of 90 would host 92 (if they wish) and so on.

The other thing that we may need to look at and this may way need a lot of discussion is that if we get over 40 or 50 or 60 entries we give a little more time for reviews. Currently it is set at 72 hours but if we extended this for an extra 24 hours per 10 or 15 when you get more than 40 entries that might help with hosts providing more complete reviews to each entry.

They are just a couple of suggestions, but fell free to discuss below. Please keep it civil, all we are trying to do is make this better not shame or attack anyone.

Last I would like to thank @strop for allowing me to post this, this isn’t to say anything is fundamentally (because it’s not) wrong it’s just to have a healthy discussion

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If I’m not mistaken, the privilege of hosting a CSR is given to the winner of the previous one. So, how would this work?

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As far as I understand, It would skip a week. So the winner of CSR 90 would host CSR 92 while the winner of CSR 89 would host CSR 91 etc.

People would still get to host A CSR, just not the one immediately after the one they won - but a week later.

My main concern is how will allowing potential contestants to give feedback on the challenge affect the challenge difficulty, it’s vision and the process itself - will people try to morph the theme of the challenge to their liking this way or otherwise abuse it to make it easier for themselves?

It’s a good idea overall though, it would allow more time and therefore more thought and preparation to be put into each round.
While I don’t think there is anything wrong with the way things are now, this seems like it would make life easier for hosts to really nail the small details down.

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I think the fundamental rules of CSR are okay, but there are some issues.

Within 24 hours of the previous round ending, make a new thread with the title [CSR current round]: title of the round

This rule is really the main issue and it usually comes to be an issue when an inexperienced host comes along.

While I agree more time is needed for planning a CSR round, I dont think a week worth of planning is really that necessary. Maybe instead of having CSR rounds coming one after the other, there should be more downtime between each round. Maybe 3-4 days where the host of the next round can think of a round, put it up and maybe have some feedback on it before the round starts.

By also having some downtime between each round, people with more experience hosting would be able to think of new ideas.

Another benefit of having downtime between each round is that it would become more enjoyable. I feel the current idea of having one round right after the other would lead to faster burn out and more salt.

CSR is a good challenge with good fundamental rules, but it was made during a time where the number of active users on the forum wasnt that high, and with the sudden and current increase in the number of new players as well as the return of some older players, CSR has been showing signs of strain. cough round 82 cough.

In regards to this, the host will still have the final word on what they want the challenge to be. There’s also the fact that noone really wants to make CSR easier for themselves because that would be boring and people like a challenge.

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I dont know if they way I was proposing was right but I think giving some time for feedback (also finding of loopholes) might be good especially for new hosters :slight_smile:

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IMO, if you enter a CSR round and are willing to host if you win, you should have an idea and a rough set of rules ready when you enter your car into the current CSR anyways. You have quite alot of time to make a general challenge and rule set in the week or so that a CSR runs.

Alot of the recent CSR complaining is done by people who cant accept that there car was not as good as they thought it was for the round. The other recent big CSR that failed(CSR82) was just due to poor time management on top of of the largest CSR ever.

TLDR

  1. If you enter a CSR and know you may want to host, have a challenge idea and basic rules ready when you enter your car, not hastily slap together an idea when you win. Anyone can win that enters.

  2. If your car loses, dont complain, look at the actual complaints and improve your car for other CSRs or other comptitions instead of blaming the host for having a “wrong opinion”.

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I’ve always felt that entering CSR and being willing to host meant you had at least an idea in mind, and some basic restrictions in mind. There’s no need to rush the CSR, it’s fast-paced enough, and splitting between two winners will add confusion and drama.

Plus, look at it this way: Let’s say person A wins CSR this week, and on your schedule, person B wins it for next week. Person A is kinda new to this, takes their time to set up a challenge, runs it, and it does okay. Person B, however, is one of the forum’s “old hands,” someone who’s been in CSR many times, knows what they’re doing, maybe even has a round already typed up, spreadsheet and all. They’re ready to roll in an hour, but now they’ve got to wait two weeks because they’ve won CSR 99, so they’re running 101, and Person A is currently doing 100.

While most of us might wait, someone with less patience might not, and thereby your schedule ends up all screwed up if person A and B are reversed. If the only thing that changes with who’s running it is how long they’re willing to wait, you may end up with CSR 100 and CSR 101 running at the exact same time.

This has long since been a controversial point in CSR history, actually. It’s typically expected in CSR that you review as they arrive, because otherwise you’re going to drown in reviews by the end. More importantly, it’s accepted to have a short-list of entries that get a better review, while mentioning in one way or another what made you decide to drop the other cars. After all, if you were looking for a Japanese sports car, you’d already drop Ford and Chevy and Dodge, and you wouldn’t look at a Honda Odyssey or a Toyota Prius. So why, in CSR, would you look at cars that don’t fit what you’re looking for? If someone throws in a total wild-card entry, they’re doing it to be funny, or to just have fun. More importantly, those of us who throw in total wild-cards understand we’re always at risk of being binned in round 1 of the cuts.

Now, I do have some suggestions, but they’re different than changing the way we play the CSR.

1: As a community, let’s remember first and foremost that this is a game. We’re supposed to be having fun, not throwing salt and shade at each other because our car got dropped. Let’s also not provoke such things by making crude comments as the round host about the cars, unless it’s explicitly stated that these opinions are from your character, not you directly, and you make that disclaimer at the top of the reviews post. I’ve had to do that before, it’s not hard to do.

2: This comes up every time someone mentions changing CSR, so I’m just continuing the trend. Instead of changing CSR, remember that it’s always possible to start your own challenge. Theme it around buying a new car, give similar requirements, but now the time and reviews are all in your hands. Feel like you want two weeks to take in entries? Go for it. Need another week to finish the reviews? It’s your challenge, tell your competitors “Hey, I need another week to finish my reviews.”

The usual problem with CSR is that everyone has a loose plan of what they’re going to do if they win, and so everyone sits on their perfectly-good challenge idea because ‘I might win CSR’ is stuck in their mind. I’ve run a couple of those kind of challenges in the past. They can be a lot of fun, and you still get a ton of entries because people want to join challenges, they want to build cars and have fun building cars.

I know this ran longer than I expected it to, but I felt it had to be said.

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What I think is underestimated in general is judging the creation of someone else.
This is something that was discussed by the devs in the past, that it would be nearly impossible to find proper judgement for styling and design. If you think back to the big competition, three people were judging together and Killrob, DerBayer and Norman took it very seriously and judged carefully and not rarely disagreed with each other.

Yes, CSR is a fun competition, everyone should have fun entering, fun looking at what others come up with and the host, preferably, should have fun in telling a story and comparing the cars.
In reality though, “people’s whining” is perceived as a problem. And it will remain a problem.
Some people are new to the game, others just enjoy making a car, but don’t want to invest much time or effort (which is also totally fine), while others do take a lot of time to realize several ideas.

I don’t see how you can expect the latter category to not care about what feels like an unfair judgement. That’s where you want everyone to react the same way and not “whine”, despite them having a completely different amount of emotional investment.

To be fair, it isn’t easy for a host to realize who put in how much effort or who cares more and might get butthurt by a snarky remark. That’s part of the issue, which would keep me from entering again.

To make it clear, for me personally, I do not care about winning, reaching a specific round or not getting “instabinned”, but I do want my creations to be seen and ideally somewhat understood. And in the end, I think the more focus we put on the design part, the more difficullt it becomes.

I have absolutely no issue when someone else has e.g. better fuel economy than my car and wins, but I will always get touchy when someone judges my design or our artwork in what I feel misses the mark by a mile.

TLDR; I think focusing heavily on the design part and judging cars alone on that fact, is a slippery slope and you can’t expect people to not feel one way or another about it.

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To be fair, a lot of this matters on how the person complaining gets his message across. If it’s a civilized, motivated request for more feedback or a geniune critique, then I’ve mostly seen it being taken up and satisfactorily responded to. The issues mostly appear when the person having emotional investment just stops being civilized and/or passive aggressive, and basically appears butthurt.

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The second judge wasn’t DerBayer, but Pyrlix.:wink:

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I take it I didn’t take it all that seriously myself then? :stuck_out_tongue:

Still observing to see what comes out of this, really. Carry on!

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I feel that the more recent Cases have had a decent amount of focus on styling and I personally think that’s a good thing.

People generally (or at least the people I know) will normal down a list of car by stats but actually choose the one they want from styling. Being what it is, a competition about buying cars, I think judging on styling is quite important.

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Damn… sorry @pyrlix

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True, I forgot you joined for the final rounds, yes? Didn’t mean to leave you out, I just have only seen one video with you as a judge, pretty sure you were careful too :stuck_out_tongue:

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Here’s the thing though. CSR stands for Car Shopping Round, and the vast majority of decisions that people make when shopping for a car are subjective and at least strongly swayed by design. While people normally have rough criteria they want the car to meet (such as fuel economy as you pointed out), what they want or like in styling is huuuugely variable. Take the latest Civic Type R for example - whilst I know some people who love the design, I think it looks like it was designed by a hyped up 13 year old Fast and the Furious fan who took inspiration from the wreck of a high-speed crash… Neither of us are wrong, but if it was an entry in a CSR, the first person would probably have it as a finalist whereas it would be instabinned by me.

If the competition wasnt mainly judged on design, then there would be no need to post an advert, rather you’d just list stats… And to be honest, expecting people to not judge cars on the design is kinda unrealistic.

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