A lot of text, narrowed down to "First of all, that doesn't provide me the player with any idea of how how good the quest may or may not be."
As always, you'll be searching for the quests that have already gotten endorsed (as it is now, reviewed) by others then.
I'll be one of those players giving everyone the benefit of a doubt and maybe have the chance to be the first to endorse a good (if new) quest.
Rescue in Rainwall, ID: NW-DRQK3HKVV Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3 The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC(3 Quests) Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63 Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
I do this a lot too. And every one of you should really be greatful, or else I might have caused a few heart-attacks, seizures, and strokes. Or possibly starvation due to people trying to read the whole post in one sitting without taking a break to eat.
As always, you'll be searching for the quests that have already gotten endorsed (as it is now, reviewed) by others then.
Then how is the system different then what we currently have? Other then I can narrow down the type of quest I want to play. Don't get me wrong, being able to narrow the list down based on tags or other filters would be nice.
But every thing else so far has been more or less semantic changes of the current system. Thumbs up, stars, endorsements, ect... Are all to a point the same thing really.
The idea of letting the author add tags to the quest that could be searched for could work, but does have some issues. First of all, that doesn't provide me the player with any idea of how how good the quest may or may not be.
I don't care if you think your quest is lore heavy, dialog heavy, and romantic, if the quest is bad.
Yes categories would help narrow down the type of quest you see in the list, but wouldn't do much to tell you what other peoples opinion of the quest is. There's also the issue of people putting as many tags as they can in order to get the quest to show up in as many lists as possible.
In order for a system to be useful, there needs to be some way for people get an idea of how good/bad the quest is without having to read 15+ reviews. I'm not going to spend 5+ minutes reading reviews for as many as 15 different quests to find out if that quest is worth playing or not.
I understand wanting to get rid of the 5 star rating, but I think people need to remember the star rating is there for the players and not the authors. I don't give reviews or ratings because I want to make the author feel warm and fuzzy or like I've slapped their face. I'm doing it to let other players know what I thought of the quest.
To be honest, i have never really paid any attention to the star reviews, i go through about 10 foundry quests a day, just random ones down the lists, and most of them are 0 - 3 stars, but even so, the star rating to me is not really important.
Don't get me wrong, i am not having a go at the Authors who get upset with the low ratings or "Troll authors" who rate 1 stars to lower the competition, i just think maybe we ought to look at the star rating less and just look at the HELPFULL reviews, and yeah i know reviews can be undermining to, i was reading a forum post the other day about an Author complaining about a player who had reviewed with the comment "Stop smoking weed" or something around those lines, yeah, you'll get that but you know...just ignore it, in one ear out the other as they say, we should just pay attention to the reviews that say, "This was a problem" and/or "This could be fixed"
I said that your quest was "technically and thematically complete" and even though I despise lore breaking comedy quests that I was not going to give it a 1 star based on that one minor setback.
I hate Jazz music, but I know Miles Davis is a 5 star jazz musician.
I hate comedy quests, but Dzogen makes some 5 star comedy quests.
Also, my one complaint about bills tavern ( that it is linear ) is absolutely true. You could have asked me what changes I think you could make to your quest to make it not so linear, but instead you went and gave my non linear quest a 1 star review, criticizing it as linear.
My other complaint was not really a complaint, but more of an observation. The story in bills tavern is thin. It is a hack and slash quest. One of my favorite quests in the foundry is a hack and slash quest with almost no story whatsoever. It is called Ork Fortress, and the story is you go to an ork fortress and kill all the orks inside.
The story of bill's tavern is you go to bill's tavern, and kill all the brain eating zombies inside. The story is pretty thin. You could have asked me what changes I think you could make to the story to make it a bit more fleshed out, but honestly I do not think the quest needs any more story, just like I do not think Ork Fortress needs any more story.
--
My only complaint about your QUESTS is when they break lore.
My only complaint about YOU is when you act like a petty child.
Saying that is totally worth you 1 staring all my quests.
I wasn't only responding to you here. I've gotten a lot of one star hate. In fact, I believe I hold the dubious distinction of being the most one starred author in Neverwinter, many from authors in this forum. Maybe that's why one stars don't seem like that big of a deal. You sort of realize after the first couple hundred that everyone has their own opinion and whatever.
You don't like lore breaking quests which is cool and a valid perspective. I get a lot of one stars from people who say my quests are lore breaking. So I put in a warning saying to not ever play my quests if you want lore. People still one star me for being lore breaking. So I'm not sure what else I can do there. When we get tags in search that should help mitigate this issue somewhat. Unlike others I don't think lore is better than humor, or humor is better than lore. They're equally valid perspectives. (I would also hope that humor and lore could work together sometimes)
The only thing I disagree with here is your assessment of Bill's Tavern having a thin story. Consider it has all the important elements of a story you learn in school - a beginning, climax, and an end. Some character development and dialogue. A consistent theme. Also it gives your character motive. And a bit of humor. All in 15 minutes or your money back.
The point is, story =/= wall of text. Those are two very different things. I imagine we'll just have to agree to disagree on the story aspect of Bill's which is fine.
As to the rest, I guess I misunderstood what you were saying then as I took words like "hate" etc as a personal affront. Your opinion is valid. I apologize for any revenge skewing in my review of your quest and will rerun it next time I get online.
Then how is the system different then what we currently have?
The difference would be that:
- You now have set categories to search for, making quests of those genres more accessible.
- It would also mean less "1-star" trolling, you can not just "1-star" someone because there is no such thing you can just either give an endorsement or not give an endorsement. You'll still be able to leave a comment, though.
- You'd be able to see which quests may have similar content to the ones you've played and endorsed before. Assuming you only endorse quests you like, you'll probably be positively surprised.
Rescue in Rainwall, ID: NW-DRQK3HKVV Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3 The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC(3 Quests) Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63 Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
The idea of letting the author add tags to the quest that could be searched for could work, but does have some issues. First of all, that doesn't provide me the player with any idea of how how good the quest may or may not be.
I don't care if you think your quest is lore heavy, dialog heavy, and romantic, if the quest is bad.
Yes categories would help narrow down the type of quest you see in the list, but wouldn't do much to tell you what other peoples opinion of the quest is. There's also the issue of people putting as many tags as they can in order to get the quest to show up in as many lists as possible.
In order for a system to be useful, there needs to be some way for people get an idea of how good/bad the quest is without having to read 15+ reviews. I'm not going to spend 5+ minutes reading reviews for as many as 15 different quests to find out if that quest is worth playing or not.
I understand wanting to get rid of the 5 star rating, but I think people need to remember the star rating is there for the players and not the authors. I don't give reviews or ratings because I want to make the author feel warm and fuzzy or like I've slapped their face. I'm doing it to let other players know what I thought of the quest.
Make no mistake here. I don't give a rats backside if my 1 star rating hurts your feelings or not. Same goes for how good a 5 star rating makes you feel. I do it for one reason and one reason only. So that other people looking for quests can either play it because I think it's worth playing. Or so they can avoid it because I think it was <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
Any system that makes it more difficult for players to find enjoyable quests, is a bad system.
.. why do you care what other people's opinion of the quest is? Are they you? Do they like the exact same things as you?
If we had tags, (and I trusted the tags), I'd never pay attention to star ratings ever again.
Frankly, I don't care what 10, 100 or 1000 of my "fellow" players thought of the quest, what "quality" they thought it was. Every single rating is subjective and purely personal opinion and mine probably don't match yours. In fact, I'm pretty sure that when it comes to content I'll enjoy playing, what I'm looking for is probably in an extreme minority, so all of those quests that have 1-stars by them? You know what, I might really like those because I'm well aware that what I like isn't liked by the masses.
I don't trust anyone's opinion over whether or not I'm going to like a piece of media other than my own. That applies to video games, movies, books, TV shows, music, whatever. I don't care if you think it's the best thing in the world or the worst thing in the world. Makes no difference to me. I'm still gonna try and it see if I like it.
So ratings are useless to me. Give me tags and categories so I know where to start looking. After that, I'll try ones that look interesting or that I've been referred to by trusted friends who have an idea of the sorts of things I like.
A 5-star rating from a thousand random people on the internet doesn't mean I'm gonna like it. And whether or not I like it and I enjoy is is the only metric of 'good' or 'quality' that I care about.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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cipher9nemoMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
To be honest, i have never really paid any attention to the star reviews, i go through about 10 foundry quests a day, just random ones down the lists, and most of them are 0 - 3 stars, but even so, the star rating to me is not really important. (...)i just think maybe we ought to look at the star rating less and just look at the HELPFULL reviews
The problem isn't the rating as players see them, it's that they lower your average rating, thus dropping your quest within the lists of the catalog. Since you can't search for specific meta-tags yet, you're left either playing what appears near the top or searching for a specific quest. That's what those authors are complaining about: 1 star trolling as retaliating or just to demote others' quests if they're competing with a quest that goes to the top of the lists.
If a quest has 10 five-star ratings and then gets 1 one-star rating, its average rating goes from 5 to just over 4.5.
- You now have set categories to search for, making quests of those genres more accessible.
Which while very useful doesn't tell me if the quest is any good. Just tells me that the author thought it was funny.
- you can just either give an endorsement or not give an endorsement
Which is the same thing as a thumbs up, which is really nothing more then a 0-1 star rating vs a 1-5 star rating.
- You'd be able to see which quests may have similar content to the ones you've played and endorsed before. Assuming you only endorse quests you like, you'll probably be positively surprised.
Systems like that seldom work well IME. I've had a lot of truly <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> music show up in Pandora for example. But it would be nice to see in the system still the same.
If we had tags, (and I trusted the tags), I'd never pay attention to star ratings ever again.
Again, the tags are in of themselves meaningless, there's no way you could actually trust them. Just because the author thinks the quest is story driven, doesn't mean the story will be enjoyable. Or that a quest tagged as funny will actually be so.
Every single rating is subjective and purely personal opinion and mine probably don't match yours.
Which is the whole point behind the rating system, a single rating doesn't mean much. But the avg rating of 500 people will give you a decent idea of how well the quest was liked.
Makes no difference to me. I'm still gonna try and it see if I like it.
Then don't use any sort of rating system, just pull up the big list of quests and pick one at random. Myself I like to improve my odds of finding an enjoyable quest/story/movie/whatever by looking at what other people have said about it.
If something has 50 reviews and 0 thumbs, or 1.5 stars avg, odds are I'm not going to like it and will move on. Perhaps it's something good and I missed out on it, perhaps not, but odds are that I'll find something else I'll enjoy more.
If a quest has 10 five-star ratings and then gets 1 one-star rating, its average rating goes from 5 to just over 4.5.
If a quest has 10 5 star ratings, that means the author has gotten his guild mates to rate it 5 stars, and doesn't actually mean the quest deserves the rating it has.
One thing a tag system would do, that just occurred to me and would be a positive. Is it would make the list of quests I see smaller, because I could filter stuff out. That would make the difference between a 4.4 and a 4.8 rating much less meaningful.
Which while very useful doesn't tell me if the quest is any good. Just tells me that the author thought it was funny.
This is not meant to tell you if the quest is any "good" (which is totally subjective), this is only meant to categorize in order for you to be able to search for the quests more effectively. ALL quests will need to have one tag.
Which is the same thing as a thumbs up, which is really nothing more then a 0-1 star rating vs a 1-5 star rating.
It really isn't. It will only tell you that this many people love the quest, (again, totally subjective) and the ones who don't endorse won't show at all. There will be no comparison to other quests because there will only be a number of endorsements, not how endorsed everyone thinks it is.
Just because the author thinks the quest is story driven, doesn't mean the story will be enjoyable.
Or that a quest tagged as funny will actually be so.
Again, your opinion is totally subjective - A quest you deem funny is not funny in someone else's eyes.
If the quest was MEANT to be funny according to the author, and you did not find it funny, then you are free to go ahead and not endorse it.
Rescue in Rainwall, ID: NW-DRQK3HKVV Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3 The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC(3 Quests) Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63 Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
Author 1 (0 plays) Author 2, you are disgusting. Trading for reviews. Go to Hell
Author 2 (6 plays) I'm sorry you're mad. I reviewed your quest, and gave it five stars. Hope that helps you get more plays.
Author 1 (1 play) That's even worse, giving out a dishonest review. Shame on you. I gave you one star because you're a jerk.
Author 2 (7 plays) Wow, I take my five stars back. 1 star. No one is going to play your quest with THAT attitude.
Author 3 (0 plays) Author 2 is an A-hole for giving Author 1 a bad rating. I'm giving him two stars because even though his quest is the best I have played, he's a horrible person, and should be banned.
Author 4 (28542 plays) Wow, Author 2 has made a really awesome quest. Five stars. Since I'm so successful, and have so much extra AD laying around, I'm going to have a contest.
Author 2 (9 plays) Thanks for the encouragement Author 4! Your contest seems like a good idea, it might help me get more favorable reviews after those jerks down-voted me. I think I'll try it out.
Author 1 (2 plays) Author 4 is ruining the game! How dare he hog the best list with his contests?!
Author 3 (1 play) Author 2 is worse! Buying good ratings! He should be banned!
Author 2 (18 plays) Look, I'm just trying to get back the adjusted rating points I lost from you guys trolling me when I was trying to help you. Hate me if you want. I don't care.
Author 4 (29132 plays) Authors 1 and 3 should stop being so jealous and petty..
Author 2 (29 plays) I agree with Author 4.
Author 5 (800 plays) Play my quest and knock ogres off a cliff! Derp!
Author 2 (41 plays) Why hasn't anyone said anything about Author 5?
Author 1 (3 plays) Author 2 is being an Elitist jerk! Maybe your quest sucks and people would rather knock ogres off a cliff! I rated Author 5's quest five stars, by the way.
Author 3 (2 plays) Me too! Knocking ogres off the cliff is the best map ever!
If a quest has 10 5 star ratings, that means the author has gotten his guild mates to rate it 5 stars, and doesn't actually mean the quest deserves the rating it has.
One thing a tag system would do, that just occurred to me and would be a positive. Is it would make the list of quests I see smaller, because I could filter stuff out. That would make the difference between a 4.4 and a 4.8 rating much less meaningful.
Straw-man argument. Not all quests with ten 5 star ratings will be that way. Please, don't try again to argue for the sake or arguing.
There will be no comparison to other quests because there will only be a number of endorsements, not how endorsed everyone thinks it is.
But there is... Unless you can't see how many reviews there are. If I see that 10 out of 85 people endorsed it, then I'll know what other people think.
If you don't include the number of reviews you have two issues.
First is, what does a 6 mean? That means 6 people liked it, but that doesn't mean much.
Second is if you can sort by number of endorsements, then you have some quests listed higher then others. Sure you can't lower the number of endorsements so you couldn't lower the quests spot directly. But you could up vote a bunch of other quests trying to push them above that one, which has the same basic effect.
Again I'm all for some sort of tagging system, because the more filters you can use, the easier it is to find stuff you're likely to enjoy. But I don't see how a upvote system is really that much better then a 5 star rating system.
But there is... Unless you can't see how many reviews there are. If I see that 10 out of 85 people endorsed it, then I'll know what other people think.
That will mean that there are people out there who love the quest you are looking at.
Chances are that you will as well.
Every system has it's flaws. I'm not saying this system is flawless, but it's a lot better and less "unfair" than the current system.
Also, why care so much about what other people think?
We'd surely be a lot happier if we all made up our own minds about things.
Edit: Also, I'm not even sure what the purpose would be of showing every play, only the endorsements would matter really.
Rescue in Rainwall, ID: NW-DRQK3HKVV Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3 The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC(3 Quests) Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63 Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
Which while very useful doesn't tell me if the quest is any good. Just tells me that the author thought it was funny.
Which is the same thing as a thumbs up, which is really nothing more then a 0-1 star rating vs a 1-5 star rating.
Systems like that seldom work well IME. I've had a lot of truly <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> music show up in Pandora for example. But it would be nice to see in the system still the same.
Again, the tags are in of themselves meaningless, there's no way you could actually trust them. Just because the author thinks the quest is story driven, doesn't mean the story will be enjoyable. Or that a quest tagged as funny will actually be so.
Which is the whole point behind the rating system, a single rating doesn't mean much. But the avg rating of 500 people will give you a decent idea of how well the quest was liked.
Then don't use any sort of rating system, just pull up the big list of quests and pick one at random. Myself I like to improve my odds of finding an enjoyable quest/story/movie/whatever by looking at what other people have said about it.
If something has 50 reviews and 0 thumbs, or 1.5 stars avg, odds are I'm not going to like it and will move on. Perhaps it's something good and I missed out on it, perhaps not, but odds are that I'll find something else I'll enjoy more.
This man makes complete sense. Like it or not the review system works as an objective measure of the subjective preferences of the community.
Once you get enough ratings, your rating won't really budge. The judgement of the community is final and serves as a good bellweather for other community members so they don't waste their time.
That's not true. I'm sure there's people out there who enjoy all kinds of things I don't. So the fact that someone enjoyed it, doesn't mean a thing honestly. I'm sure there's someone out there who enjoyed Highlander 2...
Also, why care so much about what other people think?
I don't really care what other people think, I'm just looking at improving my odds. If 90% of 250 people found something enjoyable. Then odds are I will too, it's not a given by any means. Just an improvement in the odds.
Likewise if 90% of 250 people think something is bad, then again the odds are I won't like it. I might, but odds are against it.
Like it or not the review system works as an objective measure of the subjective preferences of the community.
...so they don't waste their time.
I disagree - Most people won't get "enough" ratings as it is and I think many are disappointed because of this, hence much of the bitterness in past threads and in this one.
Also, there are no tags at the moment, meaning that, for example, my story quests compete with someone elses arena quests.
Now, most of the player base may be players who just love to grind their way to max level to enjoy whatever they enjoy at that level.
But for the rest of us who don't care about player level or gear score but would rather indulge ourselves in some splendidly thought out and well-crafted Foundry quests with tons of lore and story, this doesn't work.
It wouldn't work the other way around either, which is why we're having this discussion. We'd like an improved system.
Rescue in Rainwall, ID: NW-DRQK3HKVV Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3 The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC(3 Quests) Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63 Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
You'll still be free to not try out quests that have yet to be endorsed.
I don't see the problem you're proposing with the suggested new system?
If you really don't want to take your chances, you can wait until more players have played and endorsed the particular quest you're interested in.
Edit:
Must sleep, but I hope to read many more interesting suggestions, arguments and solutions by the time I'm back!
Later!
Rescue in Rainwall, ID: NW-DRQK3HKVV Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3 The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC(3 Quests) Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63 Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
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xhritMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
The only thing I disagree with here is your assessment of Bill's Tavern having a thin story. Consider it has all the important elements of a story you learn in school - a beginning, climax, and an end. Some character development and dialogue. A consistent theme. Also it gives your character motive. And a bit of humor. All in 15 minutes or your money back.
I guess "thin" was perhaps the wrong way to describe it. The story in bill's tavern is minimalist; you have managed to strip everything down to its essential quality and achieve an elegant simplicity. Like I said, adding more story to the quest would not make it better; the only thing that I would change about the quest is to make it fit lore.
Which, honestly, would not take more then changing few lines. D&D is such a huge and strange place almost anything can happen. Even 'Secret Agent 34' is plausible within the forgotten realms lore. The Red Wizards of They are descendants of wizards fleeing Atlantis. Six teenagers from Brooklyn fell through a dimensional gate at the bottom of a haunted roller coaster, and were then chased by the dark goddess Tiamat for three years before finally returning to Earth on the night they left.
You could have easily had Seal team 6 come through a magical portal at the bottom of a haunted roller coaster; their mission to detonate a nuke, in an attempt to close the gate...
Strict adherence to obscure D&D lore, and all the zany humor your quests are famous for.
That's not a flaw in the system, and doesn't mean the system doesn't work.
Also, there are no tags at the moment, meaning that, for example, my story quests compete with someone elses arena quests.
This however is a flaw with system, and adding in some sort of tag system could do a lot to improve the visibility of quests. Because that is the real issue here, how visible a quest is.
The problem with the star rating system, is the list can simply be to large, and it's hard to find the mission you want if you look at 4+ star quests only. Because you'll see the 4+ star rated grind, hack-n-slash, dialog driven, RP focused, lore heavy, ect... quests.
Being able to narrow the list down so I only see 3+ star rated quests that are tagged with say dialog and lore, would mean a smaller list of quests that I'd likely enjoy. Meaning the quests that match those criteria are more visible to me.
The idea of letting the author add tags to the quest that could be searched for could work, but does have some issues. First of all, that doesn't provide me the player with any idea of how how good the quest may or may not be.
I don't care if you think your quest is lore heavy, dialog heavy, and romantic, if the quest is bad.
Yes categories would help narrow down the type of quest you see in the list, but wouldn't do much to tell you what other peoples opinion of the quest is. There's also the issue of people putting as many tags as they can in order to get the quest to show up in as many lists as possible.
In order for a system to be useful, there needs to be some way for people get an idea of how good/bad the quest is without having to read 15+ reviews. I'm not going to spend 5+ minutes reading reviews for as many as 15 different quests to find out if that quest is worth playing or not.
I understand wanting to get rid of the 5 star rating, but I think people need to remember the star rating is there for the players and not the authors. I don't give reviews or ratings because I want to make the author feel warm and fuzzy or like I've slapped their face. I'm doing it to let other players know what I thought of the quest.
Make no mistake here. I don't give a rats backside if my 1 star rating hurts your feelings or not. Same goes for how good a 5 star rating makes you feel. I do it for one reason and one reason only. So that other people looking for quests can either play it because I think it's worth playing. Or so they can avoid it because I think it was <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>.
Any system that makes it more difficult for players to find enjoyable quests, is a bad system.
I understand your point. Some type of tagging could work if we could figure it out. Just understand where you are talking about how *you* give out 1 stars and 5 stars is just unfortunately not the way everyone does it. Should it be? SURE. but that's the entire issue here lol. Lots of folks are giving out 1 stars from an entire range of motivations... from actually not liking a quest, to a revenge rating to hurt someone, to simply grief or troll someone, sometimes even ACCIDENTS. I had a person who loved the quest and gave it 1 star. I inquired with them and they didn't even realize they did it and re-ran it and up'd it! lol. To me I just hate what it leads to.
That will mean that there are people out there who love the quest you are looking at.
Chances are that you will as well.
Every system has it's flaws. I'm not saying this system is flawless, but it's a lot better and less "unfair" than the current system.
Also, why care so much about what other people think?
We'd surely be a lot happier if we all made up our own minds about things.
Edit: Also, I'm not even sure what the purpose would be of showing every play, only the endorsements would matter really.
I'm not sure that I should even take this denial of ratings being meaningful seriously, so I will just say that as a player I agree with Vanor. I like the ratings system, it is a very useful gauge that cuts through a lot of time. And still I manage to retain my own mind and judge for myself what is and what is not enjoyable. Fancy that!
Some of you seriously need to trust the general player base more.
from actually not liking a quest, to a revenge rating to hurt someone, to simply grief or troll someone
But there isn't really many good ways to stop that from happening, not with out potentially causing more harm then good. Sure you can stop the trolls perhaps, but at what cost?
Because if making the system more resistance to troll/grief reviews means the system is less useful to the player base, it may not matter how many upvotes you get, if no one bothers to play foundry missions, because it's too hard to find good ones.
While I understand why you all want to see changes. I will say that letting the authors decide how the system works is most likely a bad idea. Because authors are too invested to be completely impartial. It's completely understandable, I'd be the same way. But the fact is that writers often make the worse critics.
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ellindar1Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 0Arc User
I'm not sure that I should even take this denial of ratings being meaningful seriously, so I will just say that as a player I agree with Vanor. I like the ratings system, it is a very useful gauge that cuts through a lot of time. And still I manage to retain my own mind and judge for myself what is and what is not enjoyable. Fancy that!
Some of you seriously need to trust the general player base more.
Yeh, its just a shame that how you feel about it itsn't how everyone rates. Like I said above. Just doesn't work out in the real world. Too many temptations for abuse, and it is abused. A lot. It needs to go.
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runis12Member, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited July 2013
My current multi-tasking is making it difficult to keep up with the speed of this thread. Too many times have I started typing something to have someone already express it a minute before. But I'd just like to say interesting points have been made and I'm grateful for the people who are striving to stay on topic, civil, and constructive. Personally, I wouldn't care to look at star ratings if a proper, reliable search engine was available.
Comments
As always, you'll be searching for the quests that have already gotten endorsed (as it is now, reviewed) by others then.
I'll be one of those players giving everyone the benefit of a doubt and maybe have the chance to be the first to endorse a good (if new) quest.
Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3
The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC (3 Quests)
Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63
Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
I do this a lot too. And every one of you should really be greatful, or else I might have caused a few heart-attacks, seizures, and strokes. Or possibly starvation due to people trying to read the whole post in one sitting without taking a break to eat.
Then how is the system different then what we currently have? Other then I can narrow down the type of quest I want to play. Don't get me wrong, being able to narrow the list down based on tags or other filters would be nice.
But every thing else so far has been more or less semantic changes of the current system. Thumbs up, stars, endorsements, ect... Are all to a point the same thing really.
To be honest, i have never really paid any attention to the star reviews, i go through about 10 foundry quests a day, just random ones down the lists, and most of them are 0 - 3 stars, but even so, the star rating to me is not really important.
Don't get me wrong, i am not having a go at the Authors who get upset with the low ratings or "Troll authors" who rate 1 stars to lower the competition, i just think maybe we ought to look at the star rating less and just look at the HELPFULL reviews, and yeah i know reviews can be undermining to, i was reading a forum post the other day about an Author complaining about a player who had reviewed with the comment "Stop smoking weed" or something around those lines, yeah, you'll get that but you know...just ignore it, in one ear out the other as they say, we should just pay attention to the reviews that say, "This was a problem" and/or "This could be fixed"
Hmm, I think i will stop writing long posts now.
I wasn't only responding to you here. I've gotten a lot of one star hate. In fact, I believe I hold the dubious distinction of being the most one starred author in Neverwinter, many from authors in this forum. Maybe that's why one stars don't seem like that big of a deal. You sort of realize after the first couple hundred that everyone has their own opinion and whatever.
You don't like lore breaking quests which is cool and a valid perspective. I get a lot of one stars from people who say my quests are lore breaking. So I put in a warning saying to not ever play my quests if you want lore. People still one star me for being lore breaking. So I'm not sure what else I can do there. When we get tags in search that should help mitigate this issue somewhat. Unlike others I don't think lore is better than humor, or humor is better than lore. They're equally valid perspectives. (I would also hope that humor and lore could work together sometimes)
The only thing I disagree with here is your assessment of Bill's Tavern having a thin story. Consider it has all the important elements of a story you learn in school - a beginning, climax, and an end. Some character development and dialogue. A consistent theme. Also it gives your character motive. And a bit of humor. All in 15 minutes or your money back.
The point is, story =/= wall of text. Those are two very different things. I imagine we'll just have to agree to disagree on the story aspect of Bill's which is fine.
As to the rest, I guess I misunderstood what you were saying then as I took words like "hate" etc as a personal affront. Your opinion is valid. I apologize for any revenge skewing in my review of your quest and will rerun it next time I get online.
Bill's Tavern | The 27th Level | Secret Agent 34
The difference would be that:
- You now have set categories to search for, making quests of those genres more accessible.
- It would also mean less "1-star" trolling, you can not just "1-star" someone because there is no such thing you can just either give an endorsement or not give an endorsement. You'll still be able to leave a comment, though.
- You'd be able to see which quests may have similar content to the ones you've played and endorsed before. Assuming you only endorse quests you like, you'll probably be positively surprised.
Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3
The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC (3 Quests)
Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63
Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
.. why do you care what other people's opinion of the quest is? Are they you? Do they like the exact same things as you?
If we had tags, (and I trusted the tags), I'd never pay attention to star ratings ever again.
Frankly, I don't care what 10, 100 or 1000 of my "fellow" players thought of the quest, what "quality" they thought it was. Every single rating is subjective and purely personal opinion and mine probably don't match yours. In fact, I'm pretty sure that when it comes to content I'll enjoy playing, what I'm looking for is probably in an extreme minority, so all of those quests that have 1-stars by them? You know what, I might really like those because I'm well aware that what I like isn't liked by the masses.
I don't trust anyone's opinion over whether or not I'm going to like a piece of media other than my own. That applies to video games, movies, books, TV shows, music, whatever. I don't care if you think it's the best thing in the world or the worst thing in the world. Makes no difference to me. I'm still gonna try and it see if I like it.
So ratings are useless to me. Give me tags and categories so I know where to start looking. After that, I'll try ones that look interesting or that I've been referred to by trusted friends who have an idea of the sorts of things I like.
A 5-star rating from a thousand random people on the internet doesn't mean I'm gonna like it. And whether or not I like it and I enjoy is is the only metric of 'good' or 'quality' that I care about.
The problem isn't the rating as players see them, it's that they lower your average rating, thus dropping your quest within the lists of the catalog. Since you can't search for specific meta-tags yet, you're left either playing what appears near the top or searching for a specific quest. That's what those authors are complaining about: 1 star trolling as retaliating or just to demote others' quests if they're competing with a quest that goes to the top of the lists.
If a quest has 10 five-star ratings and then gets 1 one-star rating, its average rating goes from 5 to just over 4.5.
Hammerfist Clan. Jump into the Night: NW-DMXWRYTAD
Which while very useful doesn't tell me if the quest is any good. Just tells me that the author thought it was funny.
Which is the same thing as a thumbs up, which is really nothing more then a 0-1 star rating vs a 1-5 star rating.
Systems like that seldom work well IME. I've had a lot of truly <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> music show up in Pandora for example. But it would be nice to see in the system still the same.
Again, the tags are in of themselves meaningless, there's no way you could actually trust them. Just because the author thinks the quest is story driven, doesn't mean the story will be enjoyable. Or that a quest tagged as funny will actually be so.
Which is the whole point behind the rating system, a single rating doesn't mean much. But the avg rating of 500 people will give you a decent idea of how well the quest was liked.
Then don't use any sort of rating system, just pull up the big list of quests and pick one at random. Myself I like to improve my odds of finding an enjoyable quest/story/movie/whatever by looking at what other people have said about it.
If something has 50 reviews and 0 thumbs, or 1.5 stars avg, odds are I'm not going to like it and will move on. Perhaps it's something good and I missed out on it, perhaps not, but odds are that I'll find something else I'll enjoy more.
If a quest has 10 5 star ratings, that means the author has gotten his guild mates to rate it 5 stars, and doesn't actually mean the quest deserves the rating it has.
One thing a tag system would do, that just occurred to me and would be a positive. Is it would make the list of quests I see smaller, because I could filter stuff out. That would make the difference between a 4.4 and a 4.8 rating much less meaningful.
This is not meant to tell you if the quest is any "good" (which is totally subjective), this is only meant to categorize in order for you to be able to search for the quests more effectively. ALL quests will need to have one tag.
It really isn't. It will only tell you that this many people love the quest, (again, totally subjective) and the ones who don't endorse won't show at all. There will be no comparison to other quests because there will only be a number of endorsements, not how endorsed everyone thinks it is.
Again, your opinion is totally subjective - A quest you deem funny is not funny in someone else's eyes.
If the quest was MEANT to be funny according to the author, and you did not find it funny, then you are free to go ahead and not endorse it.
Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3
The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC (3 Quests)
Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63
Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
lol funny. that's pretty much it in a nutshell.
Bill's Tavern | The 27th Level | Secret Agent 34
Straw-man argument. Not all quests with ten 5 star ratings will be that way. Please, don't try again to argue for the sake or arguing.
Hammerfist Clan. Jump into the Night: NW-DMXWRYTAD
But there is... Unless you can't see how many reviews there are. If I see that 10 out of 85 people endorsed it, then I'll know what other people think.
If you don't include the number of reviews you have two issues.
First is, what does a 6 mean? That means 6 people liked it, but that doesn't mean much.
Second is if you can sort by number of endorsements, then you have some quests listed higher then others. Sure you can't lower the number of endorsements so you couldn't lower the quests spot directly. But you could up vote a bunch of other quests trying to push them above that one, which has the same basic effect.
Again I'm all for some sort of tagging system, because the more filters you can use, the easier it is to find stuff you're likely to enjoy. But I don't see how a upvote system is really that much better then a 5 star rating system.
IME yes that is exactly what that means. I've seen it enough times to simply avoid anything with that few 5 star ratings.
Don't tell me what I can or can't do, or that I can't express my opinion.
"I've seen it enough times" doesn't mean it's fact.
Arguing for the sake of arguing gets you nowhere. You took my hypothetical situation to argue for the sake of arguing.
Hammerfist Clan. Jump into the Night: NW-DMXWRYTAD
That will mean that there are people out there who love the quest you are looking at.
Chances are that you will as well.
Every system has it's flaws. I'm not saying this system is flawless, but it's a lot better and less "unfair" than the current system.
Also, why care so much about what other people think?
We'd surely be a lot happier if we all made up our own minds about things.
Edit: Also, I'm not even sure what the purpose would be of showing every play, only the endorsements would matter really.
Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3
The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC (3 Quests)
Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63
Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
This man makes complete sense. Like it or not the review system works as an objective measure of the subjective preferences of the community.
Once you get enough ratings, your rating won't really budge. The judgement of the community is final and serves as a good bellweather for other community members so they don't waste their time.
Bill's Tavern | The 27th Level | Secret Agent 34
That's not true. I'm sure there's people out there who enjoy all kinds of things I don't. So the fact that someone enjoyed it, doesn't mean a thing honestly. I'm sure there's someone out there who enjoyed Highlander 2...
I don't really care what other people think, I'm just looking at improving my odds. If 90% of 250 people found something enjoyable. Then odds are I will too, it's not a given by any means. Just an improvement in the odds.
Likewise if 90% of 250 people think something is bad, then again the odds are I won't like it. I might, but odds are against it.
I disagree - Most people won't get "enough" ratings as it is and I think many are disappointed because of this, hence much of the bitterness in past threads and in this one.
Also, there are no tags at the moment, meaning that, for example, my story quests compete with someone elses arena quests.
Now, most of the player base may be players who just love to grind their way to max level to enjoy whatever they enjoy at that level.
But for the rest of us who don't care about player level or gear score but would rather indulge ourselves in some splendidly thought out and well-crafted Foundry quests with tons of lore and story, this doesn't work.
It wouldn't work the other way around either, which is why we're having this discussion. We'd like an improved system.
Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3
The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC (3 Quests)
Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63
Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
How will you know if you don't try?
And how do you know that you will enjoy the things "most people" enjoy?
You'll still be free to not try out quests that have yet to be endorsed.
I don't see the problem you're proposing with the suggested new system?
If you really don't want to take your chances, you can wait until more players have played and endorsed the particular quest you're interested in.
Edit:
Must sleep, but I hope to read many more interesting suggestions, arguments and solutions by the time I'm back!
Later!
Chef's Challenge, ID: NW-DGTKIBVF3
The Dreamfall Campaign, ID: NWS-DEB7Z9IJC (3 Quests)
Ogre: For the win!, ID: NW-DR5O3PD63
Cults and Culture, ID: NW-DCLSFYSQ2
I guess "thin" was perhaps the wrong way to describe it. The story in bill's tavern is minimalist; you have managed to strip everything down to its essential quality and achieve an elegant simplicity. Like I said, adding more story to the quest would not make it better; the only thing that I would change about the quest is to make it fit lore.
Which, honestly, would not take more then changing few lines. D&D is such a huge and strange place almost anything can happen. Even 'Secret Agent 34' is plausible within the forgotten realms lore. The Red Wizards of They are descendants of wizards fleeing Atlantis. Six teenagers from Brooklyn fell through a dimensional gate at the bottom of a haunted roller coaster, and were then chased by the dark goddess Tiamat for three years before finally returning to Earth on the night they left.
You could have easily had Seal team 6 come through a magical portal at the bottom of a haunted roller coaster; their mission to detonate a nuke, in an attempt to close the gate...
Strict adherence to obscure D&D lore, and all the zany humor your quests are famous for.
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Feast of the Moon | Rising of the Dark | Shadow of the World | Everdark
That's not a flaw in the system, and doesn't mean the system doesn't work.
This however is a flaw with system, and adding in some sort of tag system could do a lot to improve the visibility of quests. Because that is the real issue here, how visible a quest is.
The problem with the star rating system, is the list can simply be to large, and it's hard to find the mission you want if you look at 4+ star quests only. Because you'll see the 4+ star rated grind, hack-n-slash, dialog driven, RP focused, lore heavy, ect... quests.
Being able to narrow the list down so I only see 3+ star rated quests that are tagged with say dialog and lore, would mean a smaller list of quests that I'd likely enjoy. Meaning the quests that match those criteria are more visible to me.
Like exploring a crashed spaceship.
Yeah, 'story' is nebulous but things like 'maze' or 'puzzle' or 'red wizards of thay' might help people find things they want.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
I understand your point. Some type of tagging could work if we could figure it out. Just understand where you are talking about how *you* give out 1 stars and 5 stars is just unfortunately not the way everyone does it. Should it be? SURE. but that's the entire issue here lol. Lots of folks are giving out 1 stars from an entire range of motivations... from actually not liking a quest, to a revenge rating to hurt someone, to simply grief or troll someone, sometimes even ACCIDENTS. I had a person who loved the quest and gave it 1 star. I inquired with them and they didn't even realize they did it and re-ran it and up'd it! lol. To me I just hate what it leads to.
I'm not sure that I should even take this denial of ratings being meaningful seriously, so I will just say that as a player I agree with Vanor. I like the ratings system, it is a very useful gauge that cuts through a lot of time. And still I manage to retain my own mind and judge for myself what is and what is not enjoyable. Fancy that!
Some of you seriously need to trust the general player base more.
But there isn't really many good ways to stop that from happening, not with out potentially causing more harm then good. Sure you can stop the trolls perhaps, but at what cost?
Because if making the system more resistance to troll/grief reviews means the system is less useful to the player base, it may not matter how many upvotes you get, if no one bothers to play foundry missions, because it's too hard to find good ones.
While I understand why you all want to see changes. I will say that letting the authors decide how the system works is most likely a bad idea. Because authors are too invested to be completely impartial. It's completely understandable, I'd be the same way. But the fact is that writers often make the worse critics.
Yeh, its just a shame that how you feel about it itsn't how everyone rates. Like I said above. Just doesn't work out in the real world. Too many temptations for abuse, and it is abused. A lot. It needs to go.
I want to explore a crashed spaceship! Where?!