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One Star Rattings
drakedge2
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 0 Arc User
Hello Players of UGC content,
If you are going to post a 1 star review for someone's crafted story please let them know why you rated it that way by sending them an ingame mail. How could the quest be improved in your eyes? Was there too much combat? Too little? Couldn't figure out the puzzle?
Please do not simply click the one star on the review with out telling us why you thought it was bad. We can never improve the quest with out your feedback.
Let us know so that we can address the issues that make sense to address.
If your complaint is that there is no sound, or that the loot sucks, this is out of our control entirely.
Thank you,
One of the Foundry Story Writers
If you are going to post a 1 star review for someone's crafted story please let them know why you rated it that way by sending them an ingame mail. How could the quest be improved in your eyes? Was there too much combat? Too little? Couldn't figure out the puzzle?
Please do not simply click the one star on the review with out telling us why you thought it was bad. We can never improve the quest with out your feedback.
Let us know so that we can address the issues that make sense to address.
If your complaint is that there is no sound, or that the loot sucks, this is out of our control entirely.
Thank you,
One of the Foundry Story Writers
A story driven quest, with a fun and challenging amount of combat, that takes you into the world of Planescape, carefully hand crafted by me.
Post edited by drakedge2 on
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Comments
Not sorry enough not to do it anyway, obviously. You've got a worthwhile topic you want to discuss. Why not create a separate thread for it? Why hijack this one so that drakedge2's questions might end up completely ignored? In my opinion, that's just impolite.
The "review" feature that comes in game is no where near long enough to allow for actually helpful reviews to authors, that is why it is a good practice to send an in-game mail to the author if you have helpful, constructive feedback. I would go so far as to suggest that everyone never give a 1-3 star rating to a UGC mission unless you also send an in-game mail explaining why.
If the quest was fun but had a lot of in foundry fixable bugs, like say a table that was floating above the floor, but had no reason to be floating other than being misplaced, than a 3 star is acceptable, but let the author know about the bugs in mail, pm, or forum.
In my opinion a 2 star is for a quest that has a great concept, but needs a lot of work, conversations are broken, encounters don't work right, various other FIXABLE bugs but still had a story that i would like to see fleshed out.
Personally i reserve 1 star ratings for quests that have little to nothing in them, little to no story rhyme or reason why you are there, and countless waves of hard mobs that are poorly placed.
Naturally no stars go to the ones that are impossible to finish because... you can't finish them haha.
To me a 5 star rating goes to a quest that I had a lot of fun with, I enjoyed the story, the encounters were fun, the environments were engaging, there were side quests to play with for the explorer type player, and various other little enjoyments.
My complaint here comes from the three people that gave my chapter 2 quest, a quest that took 24 hours to build, one star but didn't leave any feedback. So I don't know if there were broken encounters, they died and respawned in a void? I just don't know what went wrong for them in the quest. Maybe they didn't like the story? Maybe they played chapter 2 before playing the prologue or chapter one and didn't know what was going on?
The point is, with out feedback we can't know if there is a problem in the quest, or what can be done to improve it. No matter how many times we play our own content, we can't find everything ourselves.
** Edit Mokah posted while i was typing this **
I agree with Mokah, and that is the point I am trying to get across, if you are going to give a low star count to a quest, tell the author why, constructively. Like say I gave a quest 3 stars because i had fun but there were misplaced items in odd places that broke my immersion. I would make note of where these items were and mail the author letting them know.
Even then though, I will give a quest a good star rating based off of its potential should i come across any of those easily fixed bugs and glitches in their quest. Something that can be fixed within an hour or a couple minutes in the foundry doesn't deserve to have its star count knocked down.
there are always going to be people who Troll your stuff only for the sake of doing it.
My 1 star comment telling me to go F myself does not help me fix any issues that people have encountered. It's distasteful and impolite but there is little anything we can do about it. Except I do believe it breaks the ULA, however that does not stop some one form making multiple accounts and continuing to do the same. It's sad that people have to act that way.
Ravenloft
Look for@Apocrs1980 or visit the main page here or Ravenloft here
Sadly that is true lol. I guess I just got a little sad because there were 3 one star ratings with out comment on my chapter 2 this morning. When I painstakenly built the best limbo that the tools will allow me to. People had suggested i made more custom maps, so i made limbo and the gray wastes completely from scratch which took an increadibly long time haha.
I just wanted to know why they thought it was bad. Perhaps you are right and they were just trolls.
On a side note, very few people even read. This includes coming to the forums and reading this thread or any instructions you may have in your quest description or the quest in the game.
Spam 1 through dialogue, click everything, this is how most people play.
I took note of some of the quests you guys have put up in the Foundry and I'll do those soon. I always leave feedback and I don't like leaving anything low for ratings. If I feel the quest is terrible, I'll just send an in-game mail to the handle of the creator and, very diplomatically, put my 2 cents in. The other day I got trapped in one and had to abort it completely to escape. I sent the creator a tell and told him the problem and in 10 minutes he had the thing fixed. Crazy. It impresses the heck out of me how awesome most of you Foundry creators are.
I'll probably sound like a complete butt kisser here, but you guys really are creative and imaginative. I'm sorry Trolls try to crush that spirit.
Forum Trolls getting you down? Click here to access your personal Forum Ignore List.
Personally, I only give out these ratings ingame (did the same thing in COH):
*****: If I enjoyed the quest. Even if there were problems, I can point them out in my review or a PM / email to the author.
****: If the quest has problems, but is still enjoyable. Only if I know the author is OK with it and/or the quest has enough plays so a 4-star doesn't hurt its chances of being noticed.
*: If it's an obvious griefing quest (zone in, get swarmed by 50 mobs, die before you finish loading)
If the quest is actually bad (and I wouldn't recommend it to others), I don't give it a rating at all. I may send the author a PM or email if I feel they'd be receptive for it (e.g. the quest is a huge slog to get through, and there's an obvious way to make it work a lot better)
That's it. Of course I'm much more strict when it comes to actual reviewing... but honestly, the star rating system is bad enough on its own, and I don't want to compound problems by giving someone a 3-star (or even 4-star) review if he only has 3 total plays on his quest. That would destroy any chance of the quest ever getting noticed, right there... not to mention disincentivizing the author from making any future content (or improving on that quest).
Getting good content to players in the Foundry - challenges and solutions
Handle: @zaphtastic
The author put his quest out there on purpose, and it should be reviewed honestly. If it's got problems that aren't easily fixable (or that you don't think will be fixed), rate it low. If you think the issues are small and easily fixed, do what you want. You're not just trying to inform the author of how to improve his quest, you're also improving the Foundry sorting and giving other players an indication of whether or not a quest is worth playing.
If absolutely no effort was put into a quest or if it's completely unplayable, that's a 1.
If a quest has potential, but has big design issues that makes you not enjoy it at all, that's a 2.
If a quest is mediocre, with nothing really great and nothing really bad, it's a 3. Alternatively, this also goes for good quests with bad design flaws, or bad quests with moments of greatness.
If a quest is enjoyable and fun but not inspiring, that's a 4.
If a quest is something truly special, it's a 5. That doesn't mean it's perfect. It means you finished it with a smile on your mouth, having had a great experience throughout.
If everyone rates quests with 4, 5 or nothing, that means all averages will be 4 or higher. That doesn't benefit anyone.
This is how I see it as well. If a quest is not ready to be released, then you should not release it. What we REALLY need is a way to publish a quest so we can play it on Live(to take full effect of the pathing and AI that is not on the Foundry testing) but make it not show up in the list.
But for a quest that is released as finished, rating it high because it has "potential" does the entire Foundry a disservice. Some of the 4-5 star quests I have played in the Foundry do not deserve those ratings, but people are just to nice. "The quest was bugged, here is 4 stars for the work"
The fact is, if everyone has 4-5 start ratings then we are back to square one. Instead of the 3 stars quest being at on page 100, you will have 100 pages of 4 star rated quests.
How does this help the player from finding those truly great quests when they are bunched in with the mediocre "potential" quest.
If you want to talk about ratings inflation, consider that it's no longer possible to rate quests that you haven't completed. I (and I would assume most other players) am going to quit mediocre-to-bad quests instead of slogging through 40 minutes of unfun content just so I can give it a 2-star. That means I can't rate the quest anyway, so in practice most people are rating quests highly by default. Now, I understand why it was done this way (to counteract griefing), and I don't necessarily disagree with it. But IMO that distorts the landscape far worse than a small handful of authors (and let's not kid ourselves, this forum community is insignificantly tiny compared to the playerbase) giving others 4/5stars ingame.
And that's what it boils down to. If you're reviewing a quest that's someone's first honest effort (and therefore probably a 4star, maybe even a 3star when using the star system as intended) and you're the first or second reviewer, you've basically doomed this quest to never be seen by anyone, ever... and probably losing a potentially great Foundry talent. I don't want that. And that's why there was an agreement between most COH authors to 5-star each others' quests when we played them... or not rate them at all.
Getting good content to players in the Foundry - challenges and solutions
Handle: @zaphtastic
So you'd rather destroy the rating system than give authors (and other players) honest reviews? If you're giving a quest a 3-star rating, even if it's the author's first quest, why should you be concerned about that quest's future? You clearly don't feel it deserves to be in the top of the lists then, so why should you pretend that you want it to be? That author can take your (hopefully well-founded) criticism, fix his quest, and republish a copy of it if he wants to get a fresh start. This is NOT your responsibility to handle as a reviewer. Sabotaging the system won't fix it. Quite the contrary. If the author can't take honest criticism well, he probably shouldn't be an author in the first place either.
I understand you've got the best intentions at heart, and the rating system as it currently stands in Neverwinter is incomplete and thus has problems, but your "solution" is anything but. I would strongly recommend that players disregard your method, as it would only further devalue the system. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
'Destroying the ratings system'? No. If you're looking at that way, it's already "destroyed" by not letting people rate a quest unless they finish it (in COH, if someone played a bad quest, they just stopped 5 minutes in, 1/2-starred it, and moved on). In the end, what a few authors in the community (what, ~100 people?) decide to do is basically nothing.
Ultimately, if I don't like a quest enough to give it a 5-star under a 'normal' system, I won't rate it at all.
Getting good content to players in the Foundry - challenges and solutions
Handle: @zaphtastic
This comic also ties in with Zaphtastic's earlier post on "4-star hell", and suggests that his rating system is the correct one if you want to help an author: 5 stars to recommend, 4 stars to support. Not a lot of people are going to bother with 3-star content, so a 3-star rating will be almost as much of a condemnation as a 1-star rating.
It is SUPPOSED to be a valuable tool to help players find the BEST content. If they only play 10-15 Foundry quests in their entire time in Neverwinter Online, then it should be the 10-15 better ones.
if you devalue the rating system however, you now have players, who do not know or care about all these insider stuff on how we rate content, seeing a 4-5 star quest that DESERVES 3 or less stars, playing it thinking it is complete and polished, and are left feeling that the entire system is <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> if even high rated quests are bad.
You end up turning away a lot of potential Foundry players, thus starting the entire circle of underplayed quests over again.
I am still of the opinion that if you want to release a quest, and you want it to play well, be reviewed high, then you take the time and effort to get it right. If you don't, or are just learning, then you take the criticism, and fix it, then create a duplicate and start from scratch, or you make a new one using what you learned.
As for not finishing a quest that is bad is even worse then inflating reviews, because now you are not depreciating a quest to where the average player will rightfully turn away from it. And often times, these quests everyone quits still have alts, or friends playing, giving them 5 star reviews just to inflate the ratings.
No, if my quest sucks, tell me it sucks, rate it how IT DESERVES to be rated, and if I go in a corner and cry about it, then I picked the wrong hobby.
This is my stance coming from both sides. As a player, I hate having to sift through a ton of 4 and 5 star content, trying to find the ones that are actually 4 and 5 stars. But I will also play 3 star quests that look or sound interesting. As for 1 and 2 stars, I will stay away from unless I get a specific request to play them, in which case I will give a true and honest review. But in my spare time, I want to be assured that if I have time for one or two quests, I don't spend that time trying to sort out the not fun 4 stars to get to the actual fun 4 star.
As an author, I know the sting of your hard work not being played. I worked for over 100 hours so far on my quest, it has a whopping 11 plays, 3 stars and no reviews. I know it had it issues, and while I would love feedback on what it could use, I don't wan't false ratings. So I am re-tuning it, adding some more and trying to make it worthy of 4 stars. I don't want it to get inflated to 4 stars by generous people if it is not worth it, because I feel it soils my name. More people may play it, but then more people will see my name and associate it with a crappy quest that did not deserve it's rating.
In the end, I rate people how I want to be rated. On my merits alone.
The best thing you can do is play a quest till the end, rate it how it stands in it's current form, then give feedback to the author. Because your responsibility is not only the fellow Authors, but to the audience your trying to serve and giving them reliable information to base their decisions off, otherwise you run the very real risk that most players think the Foundry is full of sub-par quests getting overly high reviews for no reason, which turns them away
Yes a few authors might get turned away. But such is life. I really don't think the people that will give us the best quests in the game, will be the ones getting turned away so easily. Often people get turned away because they don't know how or have the desire to fix what was broke. They feel they have already given everything they have and it fell short. It is sad yes, but to keep the Foundry-Player relationship strong in the long term, you can't always be generous and give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
A dedicated author however, will take the feedback and keep going and improving and not let an un-played, low rated quest stop him from churning out the next Featured quest.
And ultimately he will have a larger audience in which to play his quest, because they can learn to trust the ratings.
This a 1000 times. The rest of your arguing your pointless semantics are missing the big picture. It's not about you Foundry developers. It's about the Foundry players. The current star system is so inflated I refuse to play any more Foundry quests. I'm currently spending real world money power-leveling Leadership purely so I can not fall behind on the xp curve of regular leveling, that is the extent of my aversion to the Foundry.
I played 2 Foundry quests, both rated above 4.5 stars. 1 was not completeable due to a bug in the last fight (though to be fair it was piddling and mediocre even before I got to the show-stopping bug). The other was barely competent and the entire 30 minutes I was playing it I was checking the time to see when it would finish. Both were inferior to Cryptic quests. Cryptic quests are inferior to The Old Republic and The Secret World from a story perspective (the game makes up for it in other areas). Hell they're inferior to a good chunk of the Lord of the Rings Online quests. This helps frame for you how little I thought of those Foundry quests from a story perspective.
Anyways the point is from a players perspective you guys need to stop playing unique snowflake with the star system. That needs to be on the dot accurate, otherwise you start churning players like me who get burned a couple times and don't want to risk it again. And that's a shame as I was really your primary demographic. I read all quest text, I explore every nook and cranny (especially in dungeons). I'm the guy in vent telling you to get aids and die if you're rushing me through story content I've never seen before (**** pugs).
Hell I put up with LotRO and TSW's ****ty-*** combat purely because they are such excellently crafted worlds. I should be eating out of you guys' palms but instead I'm avoiding the Foundry like the black death. Why? Because I can't trust the stars.
TLDR: Stars need to mean something otherwise **** you I've got plenty of other content to throw my time at. That's my honest if tactless response.
Your experience has a LOT more to do with people being unable to rate quests if they drop them halfway through the run. In a broader sense, it also has a lot to do with the stars meaning different things for different people (to put it more bluntly: expect quite a few 'farming' quests to rise to the top, with those quests containing nothing but endless waves of mobs optimized for xp/loot. THAT is what the playerbase actually wants.)
Other causes:
- most players just playing the first 10 or so quests, and having lower standards. "I had fun, and everyone else says this quest is great... so I'll give it 5 stars!" The ones who don't have fun... don't complete the quest, and thus can't rate. See above.
- ditto with featured quests. "The devs highlighted it, so it must be great!" When I had a DC in COH, almost every single rating I received on it was a 5-star (not that it mattered, since as a DC, it was permanently highlighted as a '5+star' arc), even though I would've expected at least some 4-stars due to how it forced the player into a pre-set role.
- friends and guildies 5-starring quests because they're friends and guildies.
- (eventually) authors using alts to 5-star their own stuff. It's a f2p game, comes with the territory.
None of those reasons have anything to do with my 'proposal', as it were.Getting good content to players in the Foundry - challenges and solutions
Handle: @zaphtastic
More popular = better. Simple as this.
For a start, ok - rating in stars, but after, dunno 100 plays, "popularity" should be dominating factor of quality of quest.
In this case couple morons will not trash down with 1-star rating good quests.
Old "Blood and Sand: Unchained" quest
Played more than 100 000 times!
> TRY IT NOW!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ecy4o6JqLc
Loot yes. Sound: No. You could link a recommended music track that fits your adventure in it's description. (On something easy to access for everyone like youtube)
-Epic Dread Vault Crushed.
Characters (Dragon): Axer (60 Guardian, Leader of Crush It!), Controller (60 Wizard), Warlocker (60 Warlock)