When twenty plus ppl entered
Which is why I keep bringing up on occasion questions of how to get it back on track so itās more manageable. Thereās also the fact that the sophistication of the presentations are climbing each week.
If we were to decide (poll maybe) this is going too far (right now it actually looks like every round equals a standalone competition) I suggest going back to blurbs+pictures and maybe review for the winner. This should cut the results time by few daysā¦
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lol I canāt remembder how to make a poll on this forum 
Someone has to be the first to try to not surpass the previous roundmaster even though this is hard when the challenge has gained the notoriety and popularity it has. God speed to that poor fellow 
okay then. @kubboz give the next round back to me 
iāll promise to try to make it short. just like politicians, emphasis on PROMISE, and TRY
Iām not sure about the other roundmasters, but what I did in order to have the reviews ready fairly quickly was to start them before the end of the competition in the order that I received them. When the deadline was reached, most of the reviews were already finished and I had it all ready to go the next day. Of course my reviews werenāt extraordinarily long or anything, and there wasnāt any image editing involved.
i/we did just that. but still went a week over. so thatās 2 weekās worth of work. by 2 guys lel
time wise.
Iāve had a plan since about round 7 of this as to how Iād try to handle my reviews in the end, should I ever win one. At least in theory, Iād be able to provide decent-quality reviews and yet still make a reasonable deadline.
Part of that plan has involved seeing just how I can handle a car review (and it seems I can do alright with that, I suppose) and at the same time, playing the āwhereās that carā game in my rather crowded design inventory. I seemed to do fine without a deadline looming over my head for two āEverybody is a Reviewerā reviews, including one that involved some in-character, so Iām feeling okay on that front.
As for design plans, the hardest part for me will be to choose just one of the 12 different car-types I could want built out of my design-starter list, followed by forming the backstory around it.
But I anticipate Iāll be a long time waiting on getting to put any of those to use. I donāt win things.
I actually think we need to keep this as a high difficulty challenge and turn it into a monthly challenge. We have more challenges going ATM then you can poke a stick at. The DRC and HLC will always be 2 week turnarounds so that a set of results is posted each alternating week. The new ATC is a very fast paced once a week comp as well. We also have the Automation Aero challenge and the Dalnit-Bralka Rally going as well.
So my question is why would we dumb down this Challenge that has evolved to be this important to the community when there are other fast paced challenges that cater for fast turnarounds?
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I donāt think itās really been dumbed down. The 1-week deadline makes a focus on speed and precision necessary. If these took a month, thereād be a lot more min-maxing of car designs and a lot less chance for different winners. Not to rip on you at all, but the Drag Racing Challenge is an example of min-maxing. A lot of those who won DRC win again, and again, and again.
Meanwhile, in the CSR, we deal with a lot more varied challenges and varied winners. Thatās what makes the CSR good, the 1-week turnaround, where each challenge faced is completely different. When we can go from designing a daily-driver for the guy who really wants a supercar, to designing the ultimate cheap truck, to designing a high-profile luxury sports car in very little time, itās amazing.
If it took a month between challenges in the CSR, I think itād lose a lot of the charm it has. While the long delay between rounds is mostly down to reviews, thatās mainly because we all want to do the CSR justice. And itās popular. Weāre seeing 20+ entries in a challenge that was created to spur new life into the challenge forum because:
We had too many dead challenges, and too many challenges that run for a month or more.
Would the CSR be anywhere near as popular if it were only once a month? Probably, but at the same time, I think itād be even worse on time constraints for the guy running each individual round, it opens up too many chances for an open-beta drop or game update mid-round, and slowing down the hand-over rate means even less chances to win in a competition thatās gotten ultra-competitive.
I really donāt want CSR turning into a āIāve got a month to do this, letās min-max the carās stats to oblivion and back in order to get my 5th win in a row,ā shitfest of impossibility. Itās fun now because everyone has a chance, however slim, that weāll be doing something theyāre good at, and if theyāre not interested, wait a week or two and try the next round.
Ok I feel I should clarify. Keep the one week deadline for entry but give the host another 1-2weeks to do the reviews and possibly limit the amount of entries each round.
The main draw and catch with these challenges though is that there isnāt one. Imposing a cap would do a disservice to the CSR.
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I remember a 70s car challenge that had a 15 entry cap and a 1-2 week deadline (so fast compared to all the 2+ week deadlines at the time) and the entries filled up within a few days, leaving many who were interested stuck on the sidelines.
Whatās different about the CSR compared to most challenges is whatās been somewhat pointed out earlier: itās different. Most challenges are a race of some kind, where maxing out sportiness within certain limits is essentially whatās going on. I personally prefer the challenges that have me design a consumer car of some kind, rather than yet another track car.
The push for a quick turnaround helps keep the appeal to this challenge as something that can be returned to again and again for something different. While I understand the long delay for reviews due to people wanting to make the most of their chance as roundmaster, I havenāt seen anyone complain about reviews kept in a short paragraph and without any Photoshop work on the cars. The ā1 week turnaroundā as a lenient rule (it did used to be enforced rather strictly) allows the challenge to not sit idle for too long, so I think itās better to have it want to be short but with extensions when needed than being long with a lot of down time during some rounds.
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Totally agree with all of you - If I were to win a round of this challenge, and decided to host the next round, Iād also rather review every car as soon as I received them, but Iād keep it concise and honest in each case.
Edit: whether or not this thread reverts to a fast-paced contest or continues to rely on time-consuming but deep writeups, CSR must remain enjoyable for all hosts and entrants.
question is, what do people want?
- going back to the roots of simple-to-do challenges and quick turnaround time?
- high-quality and complex results but takes a long time to do?
i say, we need a poll
In my opinion, the beauty of the CSR is that it varies from person to person. Some take a long time with reviews, others bang them out on time. Some challenges are easy, others are hard.
If the CSR has evolved from being quick one-week-enforced rounds to one week plus a little for reviews, thatās fine by me.
I just donāt want to see it stray too far from the roots it has. I kinda like the one-week-submission format, it keeps the pace up by being self-limiting. If it ran for more than a week, itād need a numbers cap, and those really arenāt fun, having been on the wrong side a few times where I thought, āGee, if only Iād gotten there a day sooner, Iād have been in this.ā and then criticizing the under-performers harshly because I couldāve done better if they hadnāt dropped a day-one-stinker.
(and yes, this is why Iāve trained myself to have such immediate results when a CSR comes up. Too many challenges where trying to do it right means that youāll fall on your face instead by being excluded.)
At the same time, I think we need to establish an acceptable maximum timeframe for writing the reviews. I know thatāll unfortunately limit the depth of some of the reviews, but I feel that perhaps compromises must be made in order to keep the challenge going.
Iād like to propose an idea:
We keep the 1-week to build and submit, sticking with the core that has worked for so long. We offer a 4 day expected turnaround for reviews, unless the current roundmaster requests an extension for the remainder of that week (a 3 day extension, making a total of 7 days, total turnaround being 14 days.) That should allow enough time to write up a suitable set of reviews and yet still keep the pacing up.
Edit:
I also feel we need to have a pre-established strategy in place, in the event a roundmaster exceeds the 7 day review turnaround time limit. The 4 day soft cap should be exactly that, a courtesy call, but not a demand. On day 7, we should see reviews, and if theyāre not up by day 8, we need some way to fairly draw a new roundmaster. It sounds harsh, but Iām not the kind of guy to dance around the bushes to avoid a difficult topic. If I were running a round and promised reviews by day 7, Iād expect people to be pissed at me if I decided to put up reviews by day 9. Itād also give incentive toward content first (numbers, placing, etc.) and then making it pretty.
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but itās already at a 2 week turnaround right now. as i said, itās now a bi-weekly/2 weeks turnaround
but even at 2 weeks turnaround. we are already having this conversation. which means some of us are already feeling like itās a bit too long.
maybe 2-4day reviews result? so it has to be a really short reviews.
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I just threw an idea out there. My main thought is this:
It takes us a week to build it, but not everyone takes a week, most of us can knock a CSR car together in a few hours and have it in the upper half. I voted for 4 days, because thatās roughly half a week. Four days should be more than enough time to knock together some reviews. I voted to offer an extension of three days if it was asked for, implying that the current roundmaster did what you and Rk38 did, where you were in constant communication with those of us in the round. The idea being that itād be a āHey, do you guys mind if we take a little extra time to finish these reviews up?ā instead of dead space for a week or more.
At the same time, having that sword hanging over every roundmasterās head, that if you donāt get your reviews out by the end of week two, we come up with a fair system to select the new roundmaster, and you lose your chance, that should speed up the review process.
As for a fair system, my vote would be random number generator with an exclusions rule.
Essentially, everyone who entered the round that fizzled is entered into the drawing. A number is assigned to each person who entered. A random number generator draws a number, and if that person has won one of the CSRās within, say, the last 5 rounds, theyāre excluded in the interest of not having someone just running round after round after round. If youāve been excluded, draw another random number.
As for why exclusions instead of letting that person pick the new roundmaster, itās to avoid popularity being a way to get in.
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