"It's going to be very interesting to see it in its—I was going to say 'in its final format.' But, you know, that's probably not the right word; because most things aren't final until we stop doing them."
Yeah. This morning, before listening to Snoutcast, I made some tweaks to the 2-Tone Game, you know, that theoretically-already-finalized puzzle hunt from a few years back. I changed the ending of that one puzzle to work around an unfortunately-placed planter (and hopefully recapture some puzzle-iness that had been lost). And I changed some computer-stuff about the way the web site works. (Thanks for giving me a few years to get around to upgrading to the High Replication storage system, App Engine team! It took me a while, uhm OK more than a year, but I got to it.)
Octothorpean will change, I'm sure. In theory the straightforward-beginning puzzles will tech new folks what they need to know to understand the not-so-straightforward later puzzles. But this hasn't been tested. The only new-to-puzzlehunt folks who have tested the later puzzles…were that group of new folks who were joined by more experienced puzzlehunters partway through their test. Good for their progress; not so good for experimenting. So, uhm, it might work, might not work. Prrrobably it will work in some places, not others.
Suppose it's a few months after the site goes live. Suppose I look at the stats and notice that lots of people make it through the Morse section; but lots of people make it halfway through the Semaphore section and then give up. That would be a sign that experts can handle it but it fails to teach new folks; a sign that something about that section could use some attention, some changes. Ever-changing, full of life, like a heap of compost…uhm, I'm not sure I like where that metaphor's going. Anyhow.
