Tasks / Push It To The Limit (One More Time)
Complete a 25 point (or lower) task as if were worth 200 points. Push yourself to the limit, take your time to do an over-the-top completion. Decide what the next steps are in making that task Amazing. Think Epic Collaboration, but pushing a low level task to (and beyond) its limit.
Do not use a previous completion for this task.
Do complete this with your full heart in SF0.
1 to 100 players
25 points
Level 2
Created by Ink Tea
3 completed :: 3 in progress
Interested in collaborating on this: (no one yet!)
this task is retired
Comments
Thank you so much, guys. It's something that I see as defining my current philosophy for playing sf0, and I want to push others to consider it.
And (not but)
As a universal guiding philosophy, I must respectfully disagree. Too much perfection too much paralysis?
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
Art & Fear
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot—albeit a perfect one—to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
on the other hand of course
There was once a king who loved the graceful curves of the rooster. He asked the court artist to paint a picture of a rooster for him. For one year he waited, and still this order was not fulfilled. In a rage, he stomped to the artist’s studio and demanded to see the artist.
Isabelle C. Chang Tales from Old China, 1969
Quickly the artist brought out paper, paint, and brush. In five minutes a perfect picture of a rooster emerged from his skillful brush. The king turned purple with anger, saying, “If you can paint a perfect picture of a rooster in five minutes, why did you keep me waiting for over a year?”
“Come with me,” begged the artist. He led the king to his storage room. Paper was piled from the floor to the ceiling. On every sheet was a painting of a rooster.
“Your Majesty,” explained the artist, “it took me more than a year to learn how to paint a perfect rooster in five minutes.”
Who is right? Neither is universally right, naturally, any more than yours is wrong. But food for thought for some people who I do honestly fear read this and others' work and comments, and then consider doing no task at all as possibly better than many tasks of varying quality.
"The casual player can be hardcore" --Raph Koster, Ultima Online/Areae.net
How about this. After the next points reset, I will play like your quantity potters. As much, as fast as possible- I will spend no more than a day on any task completion. But here's my perspective- I like the work I've done thus far. And of the five tasks I've completed (including the one I collaborated with you on), four of them hold the little "high score" fleur. I can imagine how dissatisfied I will be when I go for quantity. Some folks (like yourself) can do quantity and quality. Some of us... not so much so.
I'd prefer a lower quantity of tasks done, to see only things that people worked their tails off for. That's just me. I've seen when people just throw out a bunch of stuff, including prior completions, completions with as little documentation (or as little thoughtful documentation) as possible. It doesn't float my boat. I do prefer not to do a task than to do a less than exciting task. That shadow I outlined at Como isn't the only possible task completion I've left behind.
I'll give it a go, though. After the next reset, I will complete At Least two tasks a week, with no attempts of pushing it to the limit.
I didn't mean to imply ...goodness gracious what is it with people these days? Maybe next era you should join the HC, they love these kinds of extremes, just ask Poon (that nattering nabob! He knows what he did. He knows...)
Straight up, let me assert you sound like I'm pushing this on you as a prescriptive. It is not. It is descriptive of the possibilities.
Secondly, let me further state that the lesson I took from the the two interesting parables (and why lessons gleaned from parables do tend to irritate and dissatisfy people is completely beyond me) is not in fact the lesson of quantity over quality. No! I believe that far too many people fear they cannot "appropriately" deal with a task, or be sufficient in their creativity and "quality". They then substitute what amounts to the nobility of doing nothing out of "respect" for -the community -the other artists -their ideals.
Did I accuse you of doing that? I most emphatically did not! Did you hear me accuse you of doing that? I regret if you did! It would appear you heard me say instead "you must complete as many tasks as you possibly can because that will make you good." I read the combination of letters differently! Nothing so drastic is suggested here:
But this does not change an essential fact that it sounds like you think either I'm denigrating your work (unimpeachable work!) or demanding you play a different way. Well, it's neither, I say your response is an uncalled for swing of the pendulum after one serious moment of questioning or debate. One serious question is hardly enough to change your whole playing style now is it?Neither is universally right, naturally, any more than yours is wrong. But food for thought for some people
Ok. Fine, I misunderstood.
I guess your pot-throwing parable did make me believe you thought that quantity is better than aspiring towards something more.
I don't take the game so seriously as to worry about what my style is for a three-four month period. I wouldn't stop being me outside of the game, wouldn't stop going above and beyond in non-game activities. My reaction was not one of anger, but disagreement and a demi-scientific proposal. You're looking for a way to make everyone feel comfortable, I'm looking for a way to make everyone feel inspired. I guess I don't care about being inclusive- you elect to play the game. I'm not trying to be exclusive or snobby or intimidating or inaccessible. I'm not trying to scare people into not trying. I'm trying to inspire them to think bigger, to be prouder, to go beyond following rules, filling out forms, and making quotas.
Did anything I said truly make You more comfortable, really? Meh, I think you have misinterpreted my goal if that's all I came down to after reading--certainly comfort ain't my top priority, and I'd probably have tried harder if I was seeking comfort in this conversation. You want people to think bigger; I feel like that cuts both ways and I'm not going to hesitate to challenge anyone.
I accept your proposal, on scientific grounds, of course. October 1, we'll begin the study.
I'll also have you note that I did one task for practically an entire month in May. Take THAT, quantity!
Fine. Be Particular- "comfortable" was the wrong word. You're trying to make the game more accessible, then.
Ye gods, Burn. You're taking this much more seriously than I, and taking it much more personally than I, too. I did say that some of us don't do quantity and quality the way you do- I'm not suggesting that you slack on quality.
It's important to me that you recognize I've never taken this conversation thread personally, including right now, tra la la!
I can certainly see where that would be interpreted that way, dang. My jibe about the one-task-in-a-month is as much pointed at me as anyone else: I just spent all this time talking about the potential merits of working toward quality-thru-quantity when I realized I was hardly an exemplar...
If I may skim your comments and inject my own thoughts largely regardless of what they said, I think that I - and many other people - am pretty good at taking something, adding to it, honing it, and making it better. I have a much harder time starting from scratch, especially when the stakes are high. If I may, again, be so bold as to conflate your two arguments, I expect that some of the best completions of this task will come from people who started out just getting the necessary "t"s crossed and "i"s dotted for a 25 point task, and then decided to keep going. Anyway, I'm going to attempt that - we'll see how it goes.
Perhaps this task should should be disapproved if it doesn't get a certain amount of votes within a week or month. I really like it and I think it should encourage more creativity and not just quantity
i don't think we can expect sf0 and task completion to mean the same thing for any two people or groups of people. doing a fun project (say building a fake tree or altering a bus stop) is a lot of fun for me, but i don't think there is too much virtue in such tasks. sure, i would prefer to look through a praxis that isnt filled with some sort of crap like alphabet soup, but ulimately i think its ok to have fun with it in your own way, even if it means posting crap like regular animal documentation.
makes me think. what if points were eliminated and we all only played for votes or just plain old fun?
Whenever possible I like to think of task completions as a piece of art, or some sort of representation of my silly essence. I like this task, because I feel like it approximates the way I would like to approach every task. Doing something really really cool always ends up being exhilarating, and rewarding in and of itself. People always come through and give out tons of votes when someone does something amazing. When I see people here doing things the best that they can I get inspired, and then hopefully I respond by doing things that inspire others. I have come to admire those players who continually go above and beyond the expected, and have tried in my own way to follow their lead in showing what I think the spirit of sf0 should be. It certainly has been great to see these same people respond positively to what I have been doing.
was to give all my lower point tasks as much time and attention as possible and wait for someone else to make a comment along the lines of WoW! you sure did put a lot of effort into completing this task! Only then would I submit that task for this one...
I'm happy this conversation is happening.
I'll kill all of you! I'll kill every single one of you! I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore! Converse about that, you sorry sons of bitches!
Ok, seriously though, I think Lowteck's vision is aligned pretty well with the utopic future mentioned on the About page.
OTOH, I don't know if I'm ready to just give up points altogether--or votes or some measure. Not because I need them (though I do, for gott's sake some of you go vote already)--but because it's a clever way to have fun in a way that's different from other individual or collaborative creative activities.
As Ink Tea has pointed out numerous times, she doesn't (and we don't) need SFZero to go do creative art and stunts and so on, we can do them on our own. Anyone could transform the bus stops of our cities into galleries of madness without needing a point value assigned. Any more than you need a board game of Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble or Settlers of Catan to have an excuse for getting together with some friends and spending a pleasant evening kibbitzing.
The points add a layer to these kinds of activities--competition works as a framework for spurring activity and, unbelievably or not, making things more fun. Now it seems pretty clear from my experience, that SF0 is less fun if someone or several someones spend their whole time pursuing just the points. But making the points just "go away" would strip this of a certain indelible character that I appreciate about the game, though I no doubt would continue to play.
Suppose we start creating and submitting tasks of varying levels that are worth zero points? Wouldn't that force those tasks to be judged on vote-value alone? And if a player wants it to be a high-scoring task, they'll work their butts off to create a living task that flowers in points? I mean, that's one way to interpret what Campaign Trail did-- turn a 15 pointer into a 140 pointer. Well?! Why not a level four or five 0-pointer that the person has no obligation to complete, but really wants to to impress us.
Hell, I'd volunteer a couple of the tasks I created (only a few of which are getting done with any regularity, btw) to be reset by the game to Zero value and challenge us in this discussion to complete them and farm them for vote-points, or not, as you see fit. Anyone?
I like your vote farming concept- I think the game would do well to have a larger assortment of 0 score tasks that are more involved than making wallpaper. Especially now in this era of unlimited voting...
i don't know how you keep managing to write a discertation for every comment but i like what ya says.
oh come on, you don't even wanna play that, do you?
I have no shame about being a newby, and I give mad props and limitless respect to those who have been tasking far longer than I.
But if you're counting votes only, even all-time vote totals, I continue to proudly say,
"Screw points - go with votes!"
All time is the only scale I've been playing on. doesn't everybody get it?
I mean, I know how to use the other views, I just don't.
And to you, I was jus' steppin, is all. You don't got nothin to be ashamed of, I'm just ... what's that again? Frontin, yeeeahhhh...
those typography skills are too l33t to hide, spar...
I think he means that despite you changing your name all the time, even parading as other players, when you use your elite skills to make your text bigger and bolder, it gives away the fact that it's you writing comments.
Suppose we start creating and submitting tasks of varying levels that are worth zero points? Wouldn't that force those tasks to be judged on vote-value alone?
Just for the record, I've tried submitting a few of these tasks in the past. Maybe they were just bad ideas for tasks, but none of them have made it so far. =(
I am going to post an event forthcoming for the thumb war
Its not about the points.
http://sf0.org/missselah/Pilgrims-Progress/
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I love you.