Victims of Architect ratings griefers

You've spent hours playing AE mishes to unlock the good content. You spent days or weeks slowly building a good story with twists and turns. You repeatedly go back to each customizeable critter and tweak it over and over until its perfect.

You put it all together, test it, then publish it for the world to see. You get a few friends to rate it so it's on the radar. You're very proud of your carefully tailored creation. You wait for others to play it and await the praise and feedback which is your only payoff for all your hard work.

And then....somebody chooses your mission and zero rates it, dropping you instantly into the masses of 2 and 3 star stories that nobody will want to play. No comment, no feedback - just a grief rating. And now nobody even knows to look for your story.

Sound familiar? If so, welcome to my world. I'd like to set up this post so those who have been unfairly ratings griefed shortly after publication can have a chance to let other players give them a fair shake. I'll look for arcs on here, play them, and give a good, honest ratings feedback. If I don't like it, I'll let you know, but I won't give you a grief rating if you've put a lot of work and effort into making a real story.

So here's my arc - #131158, Dr. Sigler and the ChronoJumper.

Post your grief story here, and lets help the other grief victims out there to give their stories a fair shake.

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So getting friends to artificially rate you 5 stars so that your arc gets played by others is ok?

How do you know you were griefed? Honestly your arc could be really bad but you think it's good since you are the creator.

I'll play it right now and see if you truly got griefed or deserved the rating you got.

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So getting friends to artificially rate you 5 stars so that your arc gets played by others is ok?

How do you know you were griefed? Honestly your arc could be really bad but you think it's good since you are the creator.

I'll play it right now and see if you truly got griefed or deserved the rating you got.

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That's a fair response. I figured if I had one friend rate it, at least it would have a chance at getting noticed. I had one legitimate rating right after that too, so I feel alright. I didn't have 20 friends give it an artificial rating though - he played it and struggled with mission 4 (as I designed it to be).

I appreciate the point of view, didn't think about it from that perspective. I look forward to the feedback. I'm all about the story, not the difficulty (if there's an EB/AV, let me know up front!) or the farming.

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Happens to me whenever I get to the front page, but I'm looking at hundreds of votes so at least they're only setting me back to a 4.

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Gave you 4 stars. Very good overall. The boss in the 2nd or 3rd mish (can't remember, took a break for dinner) took out my pimped out nightwidow in 1 hit with his nuke which was a shock lol.

Not sure if you got griefed though. With very few plays your arc wouldn't be one targetted for griefing by the cartels.

Only thing I can think of was that someone soloed it or tried and kept getting killed by the bosses (they were tough). They probably got fed up and gave it the low rating.

But good job. I'd play it again sometime.

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I've got two arcs that have been wandering between 4 and 5 stars. When they're at 4 stars, I occasionally get the "someone has rated arc {name}" which means someone gave 0-2 stars but mostly get a bunch of 4 and 5 star ratings (based on tickets received). But when they hit 5 stars showing as the average, the number of "someone has rated arc {name}" suddenly skyrockets.

If someone plays my arc and honestly believes it's worth 0 stars, so be it, even without feedback. By the idea that people are making that decision so much more when it hits 4 stars seems unlikely. So, yeah, there is voting rating griefers. And nothings being done about it.

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My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout

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Not sure if you got griefed though. With very few plays your arc wouldn't be one targetted for griefing by the cartels.

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Like I said, it's only happened when I've been on the front page. I was the highest rated arc, right there under the Dev's Choices when WHAM a glut of 0's and 1's. As soon as I hit 4 stars, they stopped. Then, when I briefly got up to 5 again and took that top spot? Another rush of them.

I've never had anyone admit to less than 3 stars on my arc, but I've gotten a ton of 0s and 1s when I was on the front page, and only then.

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This is one of the problems with the kind of rating system for user made content and not at all unlike the greifing/ spaming that plauged The Movies Online for it's entire life. You'd get a movie up into the top 10 for the genre and then there'd be a rush to smack it down or people who would 1 star it out of jealousy. What really hurt them wasn't just that but that part of your 'rank' was determined by views, so you'd also have people going out of their way to write the kind of thing that got looked at just to look at, either insanely offensive (which as long as it wasn't a protected group was allowed) or ridiculus, or whatever. At least here it seems we're rated strictly on stars which feels a little more fair.

Me? I'll be happy to lead teams through my missions and get some fun feed back from them as they do. SO far no complaints except from that one farm team....

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One problem with the above GadgetDon, and it's a design problem.

Some people finish an arc and don't want to rate it. Maybe they're just "playing through" or what have you. I'm one of those. I didn't realize until later that whenever I completed an arc and failed to rate it, the individual was getting a 0 star rating.

Personally, I think the interface is counter intuitive. Most ratings are 1-5 stars, with 0 stars indicating "not rated." Unfortunately, the Devs decided on a 0-5 rating scale, and failed to put it in bold print.

Anyway, yes you might be being targeted, but then again you may just be the victim of ignorance/apathy. And you know what they say about ascribing malice to things that could more easily or likely be explained by apathy or laziness.

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And you know what they say about ascribing malice to things that could more easily or likely be explained by apathy or laziness.

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On the other hand, this is a video game on the Internet. I'm wholeheartedly ready to believe that people are maliciously voting things down.

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And you know what they say about ascribing malice to things that could more easily or likely be explained by apathy or laziness.

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On the other hand, this is a video game on the Internet. I'm wholeheartedly ready to believe that people are maliciously voting things down.

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Since there are people out there saying "I'm maliciously voting things down," and I've seen the evidence with my own eyes, I'm inclined to believe it, too.

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Some people finish an arc and don't want to rate it. Maybe they're just "playing through" or what have you. I'm one of those. I didn't realize until later that whenever I completed an arc and failed to rate it, the individual was getting a 0 star rating.

Personally, I think the interface is counter intuitive. Most ratings are 1-5 stars, with 0 stars indicating "not rated." Unfortunately, the Devs decided on a 0-5 rating scale, and failed to put it in bold print.


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Actually, I don't think what you're describing is the way it works. The way I've seen it explained is that you get a zero star rating by clicking 1 star, and then that 1 star again. Simply not rating an arc doesn't "zero-star" the arc.

EDIT: Can't find a Dev quote on the above (although I'm sure there was one), but ParagonWiki describes how to 'zero-star" an arc here .

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re: "I didn't realize until later that whenever I completed an arc and failed to rate it, the individual was getting a 0 star rating."
-> Really? I didn't know this either and it shocked me. I have played a lot of arcs and quite liked some of them but would only go to the effort of rating it if it had probs or was exceptionally good.

I think giving a default of zero if the arc gets an 'ignore' is a bad mistake. I suspect many simply don't realise this. It might not be intentional bad reviews.

SuperTim

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It is not all griefers. Some people out there are just hard graders especially for 5-stars. They are like teachers who don't like giving 100% for anything. I can understand. They play a 5-star and ask themselves "sure it's good but does it deserve a 5-star?" as opposed to playing it and saying, "wow this is really good so I'll give it a 5-star". It's not unfair, but just tough.

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Professionally certified pessimism expert

Statesman is someone who shouldn't rap ever, even if he's trying to help people out. -IolitePhoenix

Check out my Infinity toons at the Vis Viva family web page.

I believe Positron has said that you can't accidentally 0-star an arc. If you don't rate, it's just no rating. I have had someone run through one of my arcs, fail (due to a bug that I have since fixed), and not rate it, and my total number of ratings didn't change.

0 and 1 star ratings do happen. I refuse to believe, that if you have an arc that is at least remotely coherent and playable, that a bunch of people would decide it deserves 2 or fewer stars, when you're sitting at 5. Really, most people's standards aren't that high.

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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper

Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World

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I believe Positron has said that you can't accidentally 0-star an arc. If you don't rate, it's just no rating. I have had someone run through one of my arcs, fail (due to a bug that I have since fixed), and not rate it, and my total number of ratings didn't change.

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You are correct. Not rating an arc does not give a zero rating. I believe in order to get a zero rating, you have to click the first star twice.

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re: "I didn't realize until later that whenever I completed an arc and failed to rate it, the individual was getting a 0 star rating."
-> Really? I didn't know this either and it shocked me. I have played a lot of arcs and quite liked some of them but would only go to the effort of rating it if it had probs or was exceptionally good.

I think giving a default of zero if the arc gets an 'ignore' is a bad mistake. I suspect many simply don't realise this. It might not be intentional bad reviews.

SuperTim

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Like I said, this isn't how it works. The poster to whom you're replying is mistaken.

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Anyway, yes you might be being targeted, but then again you may just be the victim of ignorance/apathy. And you know what they say about ascribing malice to things that could more easily or likely be explained by apathy or laziness.

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I think the apathy/laziness part is that voting griefers never look past the first page or two for top-rated arcs to downrate.

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And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines

Pretty much, yeah.


What's funny is, this kind of behavior does NOTHING for their own stuff. It'll still be buried in the morass of arcs on the following pages.


Plus, if you've one group 5-starring someone's new arc, at the same time as another group doing the same for one of their own, they'll start going after each other's arcs to bounce them out of the top spots.

And they both end up with 3-star averages... virtually guaranteeing that, as far as page placement is concerned, the sum total of plays to those arcs will be ... those two groups. No one else will ever see them unless someone advertises them.

Now, if they'd advertised from the beginning, and solicited honest opinions instead of engaging in Ratings PvP, they might BOTH be on the front page, as long as the arcs themselves warranted it. But instead, neither of them are.

Ahhhhh.

I love the smell of irony in the morning.

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"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."

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It is not all griefers. Some people out there are just hard graders especially for 5-stars. They are like teachers who don't like giving 100% for anything. I can understand. They play a 5-star and ask themselves "sure it's good but does it deserve a 5-star?" as opposed to playing it and saying, "wow this is really good so I'll give it a 5-star". It's not unfair, but just tough.

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You're not getting it. I'm not saying "this only happened to me" or even "this is a theory of mine."

Everyone I know whose arc has gotten to the first page with any significant number of votes has seen the exact same thing happen. You're getting nothing below a 3 star, ever (because your arc is obviously pretty good). You're seeing constant messages giving you 20 or 25 new tickets as the ratings keep coming in. You can do the math on ratings vs. tickets earned and it averages to four point something.

Suddenly, your arc is sitting under the Dev's Choice. In my case, I probably had around 300 votes at the time, so that was a heck of a lot of 5 star ratings. The moment it pops to that first page? 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, etc.

So you're bumped down to 4 stars as an average and the 0's and 1's instantly stop. Not slow down, S. T. O. P. You never see a rating below a 3 again, but that is a one out of one hundred kind of vote. Almost exclusively 5 star votes with the occasional 4.

Now, let's say you get back to the front page (which I did again around 350 or so votes). Guess what instantly happens? 0's and 1's until you're back to 4 stars and then they instantly stop again, never to return.

It isn't that this mythical group of really picky players only browse the first page, it's that they ratings grief in a vain attempt to get their own stuff more attention. This isn't a theory of mine, it's something that people have come out and said they do out of their own mouth-breathing pieholes.

The 3's and 4's aren't griefers. The 1's and 0's that only appear when you hit the front page are.

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It happens to everyone - unfortunately.

For every 5 star mafia member there's a 1 star goon.

Personally, I'd like to see the rating system go since it's really no indication (because of the abuse) of how good or bad a AE mission truly is.

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Post your grief story here, and lets help the other grief victims out there to give their stories a fair shake.

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Try wearing a DC star on your arc. I'll see two teams' worth of zero-stars vote me down all in one block (I know I didn't get stars because, when logged in, I'll collect them on the spot). No commentary, no critique, just 14-16 people who decide to give you hate. My first arc's stars is averaging somewhere around 3 stars right now, by my guess. Sure, I have people who give their reasons for not liking it, and THAT's fine; but from the general flow of rankings and positive commentary, I'd assumed it would be in the 4 star range from the positive/negative critiques that I've logged.

I'd LOVE to have it where a zero and one star force commentary, but then the concern becomes whether or not you'll do "star griefing" in retaliation - who knows, the system's a great idea, if you presume all gamers are positive individuals who act for the public good. The real world, in comparison, sucks. =/

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Turg, it sucks that it happens to you, there is no excuse for that kind of behavior, but at least Dev's Choice arcs are locked at 5 stars. For people whose arcs aren't locked, a few ratings griefers can easily reduce visibility. You're getting one-stars out of spite, jealousy, or as a knee-jerk response to "Well this isn't the best MA ARC EVAR, fail!" People who aren't Dev's Choice are getting griefed as a form of ratings PvP. The first is an emotional response from childish morons. The second is a calculated attempt to reduce an arc's visibility by selfish jerks.

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Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper

Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World

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I'd LOVE to have it where a zero and one star force commentary, but then the concern becomes whether or not you'll do "star griefing" in retaliation

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I think you nailed it here. I love leaving positive messages for arcs that I enjoy and highly rate. That's a no brainer. I'll even leave messages if I think an arc has great potential but left out an easily fixable key ingrediant that could really take the arc to a new level (imho).

But I wouldn't ever leave a message for an arc that I found to be truly bad... and by bad I mean that someone has taken less time creating their arc than it takes for me to play it. The ones that have "exrehwejej" as character discriptions.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that people take the time to READ the description of the mission before they enter - and that act alone would stop many low ratings. I had one guy who high-rated my arc and asked me to try his. But when I read his discription he told everyone upfront that they would need a team to complete ... so I passed it by. Enteriing an arc that truly advertises itself as tough, parody, fantasy, sci-fi ... if you do NOT like that genre ... should clue people in to take a pass at playing your arc. But some folks can't take the hint ... and then low rate you ... because they didn't "enjoy" your mission. And that sucks.

As for the OP's contention that people are singling out front page arcs, I only wish I were on the front page so I could be as frustrated. Like so many others, I poured everything into my arc in hopes it would be spotted by a dev and given the DC ranking ... but early on went from a 5-star rating down to 4-star where its stayed all this time. So congrats on wavering between 4 AND 5. Guess I'll have to try your arc, too. (AFTER I read the description, though.)

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Turg, it sucks that it happens to you, there is no excuse for that kind of behavior, but at least Dev's Choice arcs are locked at 5 stars.

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Eva: They're not. The DISPLAY shows them as five stars, but behind-scenes, they retain a "real" star rating. For instance, when the "Builder" series went live, I only earned the first 4 badges; I didn't get "Master Builder", which awards for 100 ratings of an average of 4 stars or higher. That's one of the gauges I'm using.

IMO, I'd much prefer the "real" star rating to be visible in an arc at all times, because it's unrealistic to "lock" an arc at five stars. If it's a perception issue by the Devs, they should "gray out" those stars, but have the raw rating available in the mission description.

Anyway, just sharing yet another angle of ratings griefing. The conspiritorial side of me thinks all of this (the farming blitz, the over-cooked drama responses, the star cartels, etc) is an attempt to sour our COH experience in light of new games coming out. But, as usual, everyone thinks I'm insane.

*puts tinfoil hat on to protect himself from VIPER psi-troops*

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