Please, devs, protect the authors

To more clearly show the math of and how unbalanced it is, here is an example arc that starts off by getting a 1 star play and then 7 5 star plays after that. The rating is shown as each rating is applied.

1) 1 = 1 Star
2) 5 = 3 Stars
3) 5 = 3.66 (4 stars)
4) 5 = 4.00 Stars
5) 5 = 4.20 Stars
6) 5 = 4.33 Stars
7) 5 = 4.42 Stars
8) 5 = 4.5 (5 Stars)

So that’s seven 5 star rates to just get to 5 stars, but it’s worse than that because any ratings other than a 5 will bring it right down again. To continue the example:

9) 4 = 4.44 Stars (rounds to 4 stars)


As others have pointed out, this combined with the less than perfect search system means that for the most part only 5 star arcs that have a decent number of plays already get more than the rare play. The above example should illustrate how easily one person can damage an arcs rating.

WN

I don't think destroying the anonymity of the system is going to fix it. That's "fixing" it by allowing intimidation into the mix, allowing silly drama games to be played, even moreso than are already being played.

The key is to have an anonymous system that allows for depicting a reasonable approximation of an arc's quality. An overhaul to the system, which unweighs the extreme end votes, or collects them in such a way as to allow for relative tastes and interests to be wieghed in. Like Netflix's rating recommendation system, for instance, to use a working example (but not the only way to do it).

(Thinking about it more... a Recommendation engine instead of a Rating engine would be far, far better. The game lets you rate arcs, even using 1-5 stars, but what it serves up to you are arcs that other people with similar rating patterns to you also rated up. Like farms? It'll deliver all the arcs people who also like farms gave 5s. Comedy? Drama? Same thing. It'd understand the whole "Different Strokes Fer Different Folks" thing, and a 5 from one person may not be a 5 for you.)

Of course, that's a hell of a thing to implement. It takes a lot of careful thinking and design work to get it right and a lot of time to code it in a way that won't break. On top of that, you have to decide what to do with the existing ratings, some of which are perfectly valid... it's a non-trivial thing.

If the devs decide to address this, I think they can get it right. Particularly if they work hand in hand with the players and authors, to make a system that suits as many of them as possible. (Can't please 'em all, of course.)

I'm hopeful that such an overhaul will be coming in the Freedom era. Until then, I'll work with what I have.

Yeah. A collaborative filter system would be MUCH better than the current one.

Just eliminate the ratings. Drama gone. If people want to see their name up in lights, give them a way to pay Paragon Points to market their AE arcs. Or, you know, market them the way farmers market theirs...word of mouth.

I wonder if you had something similar to a channel system...

I form an AE "Group" called "Hercules' AE Story Group". I get to invite people to this group and designate who can rate. submit, or remove arcs from the group. The Devs then add the AE group field as a searchable field.

Player B, on the other hand, can create a group called "Cool Fire Farms", the obvious focus being farms.

Result:
*You have a trusted group of people who will give fair ratings.
* You can search for arcs that belong in this group only, reducing the amount
of garbage arcs that you have to filter through.
* A 4-star is no longer a guaranteed "no one will look at my arc" death sentence.
* As a player, If I think that groups' members give high ratings for arcs I think suck - well, I can avoid that group's arcs.
* If you think your arcs arent given a fair shake, you can leave the group, automatically losing the ratings associated with that group.

Been saying the same things for months, Arcana. They don't get it; they don't want to get it.

It's a valid point, and a perspective I hadn't considered. The core problem is a glut of stories to play, combined with an inability to find the ones you want. Skewing the ratings up or down doesn't change that.

That's why I'm thinking an overhaul based on recommendations and users with similar tastes is key. That way, you're led to the arcs you're most likely to enjoy -- not just "The top X arcs visible in the window sorted by rating."

The fact that people CAN knock an arc down several pegs into the land of obscurity is a flaw with a straight rating system and rating sorted display in general. No amount of bias will change that. We need a new approach entirely.

Gonna take time to get that, time to do it right. As long as this is on the devs radar, and they are willing to accept that what we have right now is not working, I'd be satisfied for now.

I think worrying about ratings is fairly pointless right now. Currently, unless a player is aware of, and willing, to use the threads in this section, or an off-site source, to find story arcs to play, odds are they won't find any before hitting their frustration threshold.

That is what the devs have to fix first if they want to protect the authors. It's also what most angers me with the devs and keeps me from bothering taking time away from plotting for my long-running FRPG campaign to write more arcs. They already have searchable tags. How many man hours could it possibly be to add one that says "story-based arc"?

The fact is, though, unless there is a wave of actual story players, the devs are not going to create a new ratings system that costs them any time. I'd say the best we could hope for would be a change to displaying the median rating of an arc, rather than the average. That would at least require greater numbers to attack.

I think a big part of the problem is that there are two distinct groups of people using this system, each for drastically different reasons, but they're both forced into sharing one resource for sorting, rating and feedback.

One group cares primarily about the entertainment value an arc provides. They like the rewards too... who wouldn't. But I think if it came down to either playing for no rewards or losing the Architect system completely, much of this group would rather play without rewards than forever lose access to the collection of stories they've come to enjoy.

The other group cares primarily about the reward value of the arc. They might enjoy a good story, but if it came down to either losing the ability to add custom text and costumes to an arc, or losing the system altogether, I think the majority of this group would give up the customization in a heartbeat.

There is some overlap between the two groups, some players who enjoy both aspects equally or who prefer one or the other on different days. But the trouble comes from the fact that the majority of players who use this system fall firmly into one category or the other. Each believes that the other's preferred arc style is a useless waste of time, and that their own makes the most sense. And they're both right... the two play styles are so different, that their arc lists shouldn't be lumped together in the first place.

Which is why I think that any solution would have to involve separating all Architect arcs into two different lists - Farms and Stories. (But come up with a less obvious name than Farms; something like Action maybe.) Just go ahead and give each playstyle its own database, clearly marked as such, and the two can go about their own business without interfering with one another anymore. There's just such a fundamental difference in their respective goals and playstyles, that it seems counter-productive to force these two communities to share the same workspace and the same set of tools.

For example, when an author publishes their arc, it defaults to the Farm tab, unless they deliberately change the setting to publish it to the Story tab. Clearly explain at the top of the Story search field, that the primary goal of this list of arcs is to tell a story, and if you're looking for a faster pace with more action, you'd be best suited searching the other list.

Searching in one will not show any arcs published in the other, and vice versa. And they would have to be separate lists too, because the type of players who will give a story-based arc a poor rating because it "gave bad xp", is exactly the type who will not notice or use search tags or descriptive keywords to distinguish between two types within the same list.

Just do away with the rating system.

I agree that the solution would be some sort of division between content and farming arcs. Rating on various criteria can be used for this, have a specific rating for XP and story separately, for example. This can probably even be done automatically: the system could see what kind of XP an arc makes and allow players to sort stories by XP vs. playing time. That could help remove the need for rating farms manually, which will probably make everyone happy. Farmers will get a definitive answer to their one question, and will not need to interfere with other ratings.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eva Destruction All that really needs to happen to put a stop to the 1-star bombing is to disallow the rating of arcs you haven't completed.

I shouldn't be forced to go through an entire shoddily written arc (possibly so difficult to win that it would be hard for any non-uber character to go through) just to rate it as bad.

^^ Since when does a 1-star rating automatically equate to griefing and/or harassment? If someone sincerely ranks you 1-star because the game is asking for them to register their vote/opinion after finishing/quitting an arc, they register it via a single-star, you are going to report them for having an opinion you don't like and call that harassment?

Good grief....are you really so vain as to think that your opinion is of more value than someone else's, and if they disagree with you that disagreement constitutes a case of harassment?

Seriously, if this is your rationale for getting a persons name when they rank you, the devs would be well served to just eliminate AE entirely. That's totally overboard and reeks of someone who assumes that they must be the producer of perfect content and anyone who disagrees with their own self-assessment should be penalized.

If the devs classified 1-star ratings as griefing/harassment, then why did they ever _ALLOW_ for 1-star ratings in the first place?