33 réponses à ce sujet

[Aesir Rising]

Dark0ne- wrote...
<snip>
Remember that the toolset is
a priviledge, not a given/right.
<snip>

Dark:

The topic is about the Projects site and it's weaknesses. But since you bring it up:

A toolset is what kept NWN and Morrowind in the hearts & minds of players for as many years as it did, thanks largely to the ever-expanding collection of user-created content to use in single-player (and especially in the case of NWN, multiplayer and persistent world servers) games.

That vocal minority you obliquely refer to is certainly a minority - a minority of players that create content that is used by some significantly larger magnitude of players. Your PR friend at Bethsoft may want to take another slice at the data re: Morrowind and Oblivion to see if those toolsets drove any sales or not before spouting off about the hassle of dealing with players that aren't satisfied with turds.

But whether or not you agree, let's talk about the here and now:

Without a toolset release, bug fixes created by the community to fix the StillNotFixed crossbow dex bug wouldn't exist. If this were the case, and your poor PR contact was with BioWare, I'm pretty sure s/he would be pissy about the constant complaints from users that realized crossbows were still bugged x months after release.

I'm off to post in that other topic mentioned by Allan Smith though. At least that one won't likely turn into a topic about how much I should be thankful for the opportunity to give money to BioWare.

Modifié par Aesir Rising, 19 janvier 2010 - 11:59 .

[Dark0ne-]

How very touchy you are, Aesir. Indeed it is about the project site and you'll see I nicely linked my initial concerns regarding the complaints with the toolset with the complaints of the social site in paragraph 3. Thanks for the heads up, though.

RE: taking another look at the data, you might want to do the same. Some 5m sales of which only 20% are PC sales (so 4m people are willing to pay money for "turds"), and an even smaller % of legal sales actually modding. Work out where I'm going with this yourself.

Without a toolset release, bug fixes created by the community to fix the StillNotFixed crossbow dex bug wouldn't exist. If this were the case, and your poor PR contact was with BioWare, I'm pretty sure s/he would be pissy about the constant complaints from users that realized crossbows were still bugged x months after release.

So you're talking about the problems faced by PR staff across most of the gaming industry each day since the dawn of the new millenium where releasing buggy, unfinished games became the norm.

Unfortunately it seems you're arguing my own point for me, except you've taken some offense some where. I wouldn't really host 25,000 odd mods for 4 different games if I didn't believe in the power and usefulness of the SDK, would I? Perhaps you think I would...

Good luck in the other thread; I hope you bring more to that one than you did this.

PS. if you paid for the toolset/user created content you might want to ask for your money back. Just saying.

Modifié par Dark0ne-, 20 janvier 2010 - 01:41 .

[Challseus]

Just wanted to add some suggestions for a possible ratings system, while I'm at it. 

First and foremost, I am a proponent of a 1-10 (.25 increments) scale, or 5 stars (1/2 star increments), or something like that. A simple thumbs up/down system, or something like it doesn't tell me anything, as a module player. I need some granularity to make a decision, especially if I'm potentially looking at 1000+ mods.

Some will point to NWVault's 1-10 scale, and say that it was inflated, and that most "good" mods were always scored 9 or higher. I would counter that while that maybe true, everything was still relative. So the best of the "good" mods were 9.80 and higher, while the worst of the "good" were 9.10 and lower.

Assuming we get a new rating system, I think we should allow users to post comments along with their rating. Then, like NWVault, you should be able to view all "vote" comments. It's great to be able to sift through the fluff to get to the reviews themselves.

Finally, a question. Are there going to be official moderators for the projects section? You know, someone who will move around projects that are categorized wrong, delete obvious troll votes, etc? In fact, perhaps you shouldn't be able to vote if you don't have an account...

Well, that's all for me at the moment.

Modifié par Challseus, 25 janvier 2010 - 01:30 .

[fluffyamoeba]

I still think 0.25 increments for a 0-10 scale is way too small. 40 possible scores is way too many and leads to everything rated between 8.75 and 10. 0-10 should be whole number only. I think really 5 stars with no 1/2 stars is the most we should have. It's also consistent with the thread rating system. But any rating system is better than the current system



I thought you could only vote if you had an account anyway. I'd go as far as only letting people vote who have registered the game - that way creating 20 accounts to upvote your mod gets expensive

[ladydesire]

Challseus wrote...


Assuming we get a new rating system, I think we should allow users to post comments along with their rating. Then, like NWVault, you should be able to view all "vote" comments. It's great to be able to sift through the fluff to get to the reviews themselves.

They already can comment on your project, if they want to, so I don't see that this is really needed. Also, I agree with fluffyamoeba that we don't really need the quarter point vote splits or half stars.

[Sunjammer]

There are a couple of considerations to be balanced the voting system has to:

• encourage players/users to vote and comment
• provide a relative scale for comparisons
• provide useful feedback to the author
• minimise "perfect 10" sydrome
• minimise abuse

The current system probably only achieves the first (and only for positive votes): the "green plus vote" for want of a better name is anonymous and doesn't require a comment which makes it easy record your approval.  Unfortunately you cannot quantify it your approval, rescind it or register your disapproval. Consequently it misses all the other requirements. Both author and the community have to use other metrics to try and gauge value: approx. votes per download, approx. downloads per view, number of vowels in title or whatever.

A 5 star system (preferably without half stars) can achieve all of these (especially if it is done by way of a little pop-up with an (optional) "feedback" field which automatically creates a new comment when submitted.

The 5 star system keeps it simple enough that people don't have to worry about what the 40 different increments mean and by including a textual equivalent for each star rating (5=great, 4=good, etc) it hopefully avoids "less than a perfect 10.0 is disapproval" situation which existed on the Vault.

The 5 star system can be used to group project ("I want to see all 4 star or better project) and can still a produce fine/granular relative scale for comparison purposes simply by including the average expressed as a decimal or percentage. If I get 5 x 4 stars and 1 x 5, I have a 4.17 star average or 83.3% so you might see:

Little Red Riding Hood Redux [color="#ffff00"]****[/color][color="#c0c0c0"]*[/color] (83.3%)

With a little tool tip which can appear when you hover over the stars saying 4.17 Stars!

Add the ability to search/view by star rating; a "Top [project type]" (with a minimum number of votes) and "Hall of Fame" (with minimum number votes, downloads and/or months available as final) and an expanded Featured Project/Project New section and we might finally be getting somewhere.

Modifié par Sunjammer, 26 janvier 2010 - 11:31 .

[Challseus]

ladydesire wrote...

Challseus wrote...


Assuming we get a new rating system, I think we should allow users to post comments along with their rating. Then, like NWVault, you should be able to view all "vote" comments. It's great to be able to sift through the fluff to get to the reviews themselves.

They already can comment on your project, if they want to, so I don't see that this is really needed. Also, I agree with fluffyamoeba that we don't really need the quarter point vote splits or half stars.

Here's my reasoning for posting comments with votes: Twilight. When you go to the first page, you'll notice there's something like 1300+ comments. I'm not sure about everyone else, but when I'm searching for modules, I like to only read the voting comments. Many of the other non-vote comments are bug reports, conversations back and forth between the author and potential players, etc. I don't care about all of that, I just want to see what people are saying when they rate the module. In my opinion, it's a nice extra to have.

As for the .25 and/or 1/2 star increments, I'll concede that they aren't needed.

[Allan Smith]

Good discussion here guys. The feedback is good, and will help as we work to improve things. Just want you to know that I am still monitoring this thread, and your comments are not falling on deaf ears. Keep it coming! Hopefully once Mass Effect 2 settles in a bit, we can devote some more time to working through things. We are in this for the long run, and want to make this site work much better for you, the builders.

[FalloutBoy]

Challseus wrote...

ladydesire wrote...

Challseus wrote...


Assuming we get a new rating system, I think we should allow users to post comments along with their rating. Then, like NWVault, you should be able to view all "vote" comments. It's great to be able to sift through the fluff to get to the reviews themselves.

They already can comment on your project, if they want to, so I don't see that this is really needed. Also, I agree with fluffyamoeba that we don't really need the quarter point vote splits or half stars.

Here's my reasoning for posting comments with votes: Twilight. When you go to the first page, you'll notice there's something like 1300+ comments. I'm not sure about everyone else, but when I'm searching for modules, I like to only read the voting comments. Many of the other non-vote comments are bug reports, conversations back and forth between the author and potential players, etc. I don't care about all of that, I just want to see what people are saying when they rate the module. In my opinion, it's a nice extra to have.

As for the .25 and/or 1/2 star increments, I'll concede that they aren't needed.

Ugh! The comments page is horrible. It is sorted in the wrong order and there is no button to jump to the end of the list so that you can read the recent comments. Plus there are way too many different places that you can add a comment. If you want to look for recent feedback on your project you have to check the discussions, comments (scroll to the end one page at a time), and every screenshot you have posted.