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10:38 pm
October 8, 2009
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threshold
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| Member | posts 12 | |
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Vladaar said:
Post edited 9:57 pm – July 5, 2009 by Vladaar
Post edited 9:59 pm – July 5, 2009 by Vladaar
Post edited 10:00 pm – July 5, 2009 by Vladaar
Post edited 11:22 pm – July 5, 2009 by Vladaar
hey I don't know who is doing this, or care to know myself, but I noticed Threshhold mud got
bombed with negative votes. I don't know that mud from anything, but I know when a assassination
of a mud rating is taking place. My mud was done exactly the same way a month ago. When
I am talking getting bad votes, I'm talking 30 votes of 1 in one or two days. A few of my
players that voted daily got so upset they won't even come to this website anymore.
I have purposely been giving Threshhold 5's lately, to try to help them back, but they got
assassinated, so thought I would bring it to light.
Vladaar
Vladaar, I just noticed this post of yours. Thanks for noticing and taking action to try and counter it. That's pretty cool of you.
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10:49 pm
October 8, 2009
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threshold
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Molly said:
By the way, something rather weird is going on with the list at present. How did Treshold suddenly manage to get around hundred votes in a couple of days, when the total high over a 3 months period is over 700?
Your obvious efforts to constantly downvote Threshold aside, I don't see why you'd even bother trying to call that weird. Threshold has over 100+ people logged on regularly, and over 1,000 different people login every day. All it takes is a couple people mentioning MudGamers on an OOC channel and bam. There you go.
In fact, now that your people aren't able to downvote Threshold as easily, I've noticed Threshold players have become a lot more interested in bothering to vote. It was almost pointless in the past with the constant downvoting.
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8:39 am
October 9, 2009
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Molly
| | 4dimensions.org 6000 | |
| Member | posts 17 | |
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That is priceless, given the fact that my Mud received about 30 negative votes during the same time period that your own got 100 positive ones.
I have no doubt at all where they all came from.
And I called it weird, because all those votes were a sudden change from your normal voting pattern, just at the time the list was about to reset. You are obviously good at the 'meta game', but you play it dirty.
I have been trying to play it nice, which you might have noticed if you had bothered to read the rest of the thread as well.
Believe it or not, regardless of what my players may have been up to, I've never downvoted any mud myself – including yours.
I actually think that Treshold is a pretty good mud. (I think that you are a total jerk, but that's another matter).
I also respect Orrin's idea of creating a website that is good for all muds.
But it only takes one bad egg to ruin a good idea.
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Molly O'Hara of 4 Dimensions
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9:32 am
October 9, 2009
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Gotrek
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| Member | posts 50 | |
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It's seems to me that the ratings game just isn't working (I don't have a MUD up on here for voting yet, mind). All it seems to be is people looking to give competing MUDs 1 star, while you give your own 5 stars. (Even if you cut down voting to one MUD per day to get rid of the downvoting, you are still not getting an accurate vote!) It might be best to drop the ratings altogether or, more prudently have a panel of game critics review MUDs upon request and provide a rating (where by the displayed rating would be the average of each of the game critics individual ratings).
It could be made publicly known which MUDs a critic is tied to (either as staff or a long time player, though the first more so than the latter), so it's visible for everyone else when a conflict of interest might occur.
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4:51 pm
October 9, 2009
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KaVir
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KaVir said:
2. Display the “Most Popular Games” above the “Top Rated Games”, and give it some flashy icons of its own – perhaps little coloured cups or medals or something. Make it look like the primary voting list, so that the negative votes actually appear to do the mud more good than harm. Putting the emphasis on quantity over quality may also help bring in more traffic.
I noticed “Most Popular Games” is now above the “Top Rated Games” – thanks for listening to the feedback, Orrin. I do still think it would look better if there were some icons beside the games, though, so that both lists stand out (visually) about the same. I suggested cups/medals previously, but in retrospect that might look a little bland, and it doesn't really show anything useful.
But what if there were a selection of little 16x16 icons for different styles of gameplay, and each mud could choose up to three of them based on whatever three elements they felt most strongly represented their target audience? So Molly might pick a boots icon (exploration), a thought bubble (puzzle-solving) and a funny hat (roleplaying). I might pick a crossed-swords icon (combat), a blood-drop icon (PK) and a thought bubble, etc. A social MUSH might simply choose the same teddybear icon three times – duplicates would be fine for muds that wanted to place emphasis on a particular style of gameplay. These three icons would then be displayed alongside the mud names in the “Most Popular Games”list, in exactly the same way as the rating stars are displayed in the “Top Rated Games” list.
Hovering the mouse pointer over an icon could display a text label of what it represents – but as long as each icon was distinct, I'm sure players would pick learn them fast enough, and it would let them see at a glance roughly what sort of game each mud was (not to mention allowing them to easily visually scan through the top 10 for specific features). Perhaps you could also allow searches to be filtered based on their icons.
The icons wouldn't need to cover every feature, and would only be intended as a general indication of what you could expect from the mud (a funny hat icon would indicate that the owner felt roleplaying was an important part of the game, but a lack of that same icon wouldn't indicate no roleplaying – only that the mud owner felt three other things were more important). You'd need someone to create the icons of course – but perhaps you could hold a contest for it?
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5:24 pm
October 9, 2009
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Orrin
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The icons idea sounds neat, but to be honest it's a more involved change than I am really looking to make at this time. If the objection is that top rated games stand out more I can just remove the star images so the two lists are comparable – the most rated showing number of votes and top rated showing the average score out of 5.
Gotrek – the ratings aren't going to give an objective measure of a game's quality. At best ratings provide an indication of a game's popularity, so if a game is top rated it means that they have sufficient players who are sufficiently motivated to rate their game frequently. What rating and votings systems do is drive traffic to the site. This is good for me as a site owner because it means I can potentially get more revenue from advertising (AdSense at $10.43 and counting!) and it's good for games on the list because while the majority of those coming to a site just to rate a game will leave immediately, there are always going to be some who may decide to look around and potentially try another game.
Originally I wanted the ratings to be like a kind of review database and you probably remember that you could only ever rate a game once and this was restricted to members only. I got some very vocal feedback asking for a more TMS/TMC style regular voting system and that's how things have evolved the way they have. Personally I don't really get any benefit from the increased traffic (as evidenced by my AdSense earnings!) so I'd be fine with going back to the original system of one rating per game per member, but that's not without its own set of problems. For example, I'd likely have the problem of people creating multiple accounts to rate their favourite game and of course the casual user who just wants to play a game and rate it would be forced to register to do so.
The suggestion of some kind of independent review process is a good one in principle, and I do rather like it given that the initial concept of the site was to provide a platform for games which were 'original and playable' – somewhere in between mudquest which was set up to showcase 'quality' (and free) muds and the likes of TMS/TMC which have no restrictions. I also think pitching the site like this would help set it apart from the big boys.
However, there are some major problems with having an independent panel of reviewers. The first is that nobody is really independent and there are bound to be arguments over choice of reviewers for particular games. The second is that it can take a long time to properly review a mud and it can be difficult to find people willing to devote the time to do so. The experience with mudquest and with TMC staff reviews lately would suggest that these efforts are likely to fail.
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11:29 pm
October 9, 2009
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threshold
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Post edited 9:31 pm – October 9, 2009 by threshold
Molly said:
You are obviously good at the 'meta game', but you play it dirty.
Give me a break Molly. Last time I checked your mud had 6 people online. You really don't want to start throwing stones about suspicious vote surges.
And *OTHER* users of this site have specifically noticed 4D voters downvoting other muds – including Threshold. If you don't want to face the embarrassment of being called out, then make some effort to get your people under control.
You are still just bitter about when I outed you for sockpuppetry on TMC. That was what… 10 years ago? Let it go. Sheesh.
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5:35 am
October 10, 2009
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zivilyn
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I'd really dig the idea Richard had about voting for the particular aspects in the game which you enjoy. I'm not sure if I mentioned that here or at Kyndigs ages ago… but yeah, it'd be more of a 'what do I like about this game' vs a the usual 1-X rating game. And it'd completely stop the down-voting. Although, coming up with 10-20 aspects might be challenging at first.
- Dave.
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  Zivilyn/Skol/Dave
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11:24 pm
October 14, 2009
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Molly
| | 4dimensions.org 6000 | |
| Member | posts 17 | |
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I think KaVir's suggestion of adding some icons to visualize the main focus of a Mud is a really good one.
It wouldn't really mean an upheaving change of the site, and it wouldn't really affect the voting, because people would not vote for the icons, But seeing as the list partly was created to attract a new audience to text Muds, and since there are so many different types of games listed, it would provide an easy and quick impression of what focus each Mud has on the gameplay.
Hopefully it wouldn't mean too much extra work either. The main effort would be to decide which icons to provide, and to find suitable images from some free website, or perhaps get someone to design them. The choice of which four icons to use, would be left to the game owners.
KaVir already outlined the main ones – Combat, PK, Exploring, Questing, Puzzle-solving, Roleplaying, Socializing… I could think of some more, for instance Crafting, Collecting, Politics, Religions - and most likely other Mud owners would come up with more suggestions.
I have to protest to one detail in KaVir's post however; we'd never choose a RP symbol to represent 4D. In fact, what goes for as roleplay in 4D would most likely be scoffed at by a RPI Mud, or most likely by any RP enforced game too. On the other hand, our players might probably scoff at the idea of 6+-line poses. As for me, I say; to each their taste.
Bottom line, maybe there should be two icons for RP, perhaps using the traditional comedy/tragedy masks for enforced RP and the 'funny hat' for more casual 'roleplay encouraged.
And perhaps that goes for PK too – there is a big difference between full and restricted PK when it comes to the gameplay.
Anyhow, I think this is a great idea, one that I really wish the list owner would pick up on.
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Molly O'Hara of 4 Dimensions
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10:57 am
October 15, 2009
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KaVir
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| Member | posts 25 | |
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I know Orrin has said this change is more involved than he's looking to make at this time, but I still think it's an interesting idea to discuss – maybe it'll be viable in the future, but even if not it could provide inspiration for another idea.
I'm sure there would end up being be more icons, but I'd suggest keeping the categories fairly broad if possible. The comedy/tragedy masks would indeed be a better icon for RP, I agree – but I think splitting up roleplaying into separate categories might be too specialised (if the roleplaying is really casual, the "socialising" icon should suffice).
The idea isn't to judge the intensity of the features, but simply the emphasis the mud owner places on them – in other words, the icons are relative to the other features of that particular mud, rather than to the features of other muds. There's no reason why a pure PK mud couldn't pick the blood-drop icon three times for example, if they feel that PK is the sole focus and selling point of their game. Equally, it's possible that a mud with a lot of PK might not even have the icon, because they've three other aspects of gameplay which they feel are more important.
I invite you to try this experiment: Think of one word or a common mud acronym to describe each of (what you feel are) the three strongest selling points of your mud. Yes, I know you can think of many more! But if you could only list three, which would they be?
Personally I'd definitely take 'combat' and 'PK'. The third is more tricky, as there are a lot of things I feel are important – but I'm sure the same is true of every mud, and the point of this exercise is to focus on just three. I think for the third I'd probably pick 'roomless' – which for icon purposes would probably be 'world'.
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