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Your rating system is messed up.
Teala
Member RarePosts: 7,627
Why does your MMORPG rating system allow for people to give a game all 1's. Any ratings from a person on this website that gives a game all ones should be diregarded by your rating system I think. It is crazy that good games can take a nose dive in ratings because a few jerks decide to give a game all 1's in the categories.
Maybe you should consider a new system or one that doesn't allow it. Just an idea.
Comments
/agree
I think the same thing should go with some game promoters who rank all 10s on a game, great idea.
Yes. That's why the ratings on this site should quite frankly be disregarded for the most part. Fanbois
and haters
are far more vocal than civil respectable gamers
. Thats why I always try and be objective and carry my fire extiguisher to put out flames
A system where people who put all 1's or all 10's (UNOBJECTIVE) rating should be ignored, unless thats the type of ratings you want on this site?
I agree that the rating system could use some sort of amendment. The problem, like you say, is the fact that the rating average is easily swayed by dishonest fanboys. The ratings of those who try to be objective about a game are undermined by morons who think that Guild Wars deserves "ALLL 1000'S!"
It also creates a sort of bad cycle. An otherwise objective player looks at an overly high rating, and wonders if he should rank it all 1's just to counteract the fool who probably rated it the maximum. This isn't what the rating system should be.
Personally, I think the current system should be scrapped, and replaced with a simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down option, with the percentage of the results displayed as a game's community score. It's a simple, understandable system that doesn't cater to extremism. The current ratings can still be there, but they could be restricted to individual reviews and should have no bearing on the overall average. In this way, users can still detail their thoughts on a game within their personal reviews for other readers to see, but it won't negatively impact the reflections of the community at large.
Just some thoughts.
I might suggest the following:
1) A person's rating is only good for say, 1 month. You must re-rate a game every month to keep your opinion counted. Given how MMOGs evolve monthly, it only makes sense to try to disregard old ratings.
2) Don't use an average, use the median (i.e. 50th percentile). Averages are very biased by the extremes, medians are not. For example, the avg of three 8's, a 10 and a 1 is 7. The median is 8, which is probably more accurate. Adding another 10 or a 1 would not change the median (in this case), but changes the avg to either 7.5 or 6.
I concur. It's one thing to support your favorite current or future game but voting in the extreme does a disservice to the game. I'm not sure of a way to curtail the extremists but their single vote should not sway the overall average as much as it apparently does.
Arman
I can't agree with this more. It's absolutely ridiculous that people are allowed to take potshots at a game they haven't even seen yet. It's childish behavior to an extreme by supposedly somewhat mature (and I use that term loosely) adults and teenagers. Good games suffer because of this!
I think that if you are going to hype a game, you should be required to comment on why you rated it the way you did.
IMNSHO, people who rate games a 1 out of spite or just to be antagonistic or even to sabotage a game's rating should just grow up. What is the payoff for the person who does something like this? I think a lot of people need to go talk to Dr. Phil!
Maybe in order to avoid abuse in the hype area, you could limit the lower figure to 5 as stated above since the games are not finished and beta is not even out yet. I think this would at least help limit the damaging of a new game before it is even available for testing.
I agree with Papakilla. Anybody who can find that much wrong with a concept probably doesn't really need to be playing MMORPG's. And I say concept because these hype ratings are based on games which are not completed. Therefore it is impossible to know enough to fairly rate it 0 or 1. Just my opinion.
I agree with that, too. It seems like most just get a sick kick out of trying to ruin something for people or they are so obsessed with a game they like that they'll do anything to kill the competition. There definitely needs to be more guidelines for making hype ratings fair.
The suggestion to eliminate votes from 1 to 3 and 10 might start to eliminate some of the skewing that occurs now. There is probably no truly accurate way to compute rankings, but some of the abuse could be eliminated.
Originally posted by Greyd
"Personally, I think the current system should be scrapped, and replaced with a simple thumbs-up/thumbs-down option, with the percentage of the results displayed as a game's community score. It's a simple, understandable system that doesn't cater to extremism. The current ratings can still be there, but they could be restricted to individual reviews and should have no bearing on the overall average. In this way, users can still detail their thoughts on a game within their personal reviews for other readers to see, but it won't negatively impact the reflections of the community at large."
I love that idea. Perhaps there could be a third option, making it up/in between/down, to allow for a more mixed response? It would be a little more complicated, but I think it could still work if the 'in between' votes were worth half of the 'up' votes. For example, say a game got:
Up: 50%
In between: 30%
Down: 20%
(Every 'up' percentage would be worth 1, every 'in between' 0.5 and every 'down' 0)
Its overall score would be 65%, with the exact %'s for each option shown on the ratings page. If two games had the same score, the one with the most 'up's would get top bunk. I think this system would help limit fap-voting by fanboys, the only real problem I can see is that it would be a drastic change to the community voting system and so would probably require other changes elsewhere to properly work.
Alongside this, I believe there should be lesser attempts to address this issue, common sense things that would work just as well on their own. Things like displaying the site rating alongside the community one on the front page for the highest ranked MMORPGs, and demanding a higher user ranking, say 20/100, before users can rate games. Additionally, if anything substantial is to be done to improve the rating system, which I sincerely hope there will be, all community reviews and ratings should be cleared, all games should start off with a clean slate community-wise.
Anyhow, these are just my ideas...
EDIT* Argh, quote messed up...
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Really NordicBearskin, full name wouldn't fit...
Although a thumbs up or down is certainly an indicator, it does not allow for people to express much in the way of "how much they like" or "how much they anticipate" any particular game.
I guess I would favor the methods that disallowed extreme votes especially those on the hype value.
Well, I'd suggest keeping personal reviews as they are (And a person's mean score would be openly displayed next to the review), just have the up/in between/down system affecting the community rating instead of the actual review.
I feel that community game ratings are already too close together, most games are generally in the 6/10-8/10 range. Disallowing extreme high and low scoring would only make this problem worse, and besides it wouldn't really solve the problem, there would still be widespread fanboyish 'fap-voting', it just wouldn't have quite such an extreme effect. (Plus a game may come along which deserves a very high or low score)
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Really NordicBearskin, full name wouldn't fit...
it seems like a good idea however... wat other system is there to use
if it were possible/easy then i would suggest doing it but from what ive played instead of ratings diving down they mostly rise TOO high! Some games get 5's and 6's and they are almost unbearable lol! I like the sight... a few flaws i geuss... found some cool games that were fairly rated. Ratings should be monitored before submiting them and if they are unrealisitc then u should lower the rank of the user. If the problem with the user continues delete there acount? Maybe to dirastic? i dunno
Sounds like a lot of gray area to me. So you basically leave the ability to give all 10's as some kind of "trap" that if you do it you will get your rating deleted and eventually be banned? You can't possibly expect us to try and judge the person behind the rating and determine if they get to rate a game a certain way.
Or perhaps we should send out agents to monitor and supervise all 200,000+ members and make sure they are playing the games thoroughly enough before they use our rating system. We could also do police background checks and call them at home for a 1 on 1 interview...I hope you see where this is going....if not I think Kim Jong Il might have a cabinet position open for you
I think if you look at it from our perspective and consider that we get hundreds of ratings in per day and no real way to know to what extent the user has played the game we are doing all that we can and still be fair to our members.
We require that people have at least a rank of 5 and limit the amount of ratings they can do per day to 2. We also have a curve which helps fight against all the weighted votes.
The bottom line is that all games are subject to the same system - therefore their scores are all relative to one another. Another way to think about this would be a car in a race with a flat tire would not be fair - unless you gave all the cars flat tires...then it is. So even though the system allows for abuse to some extent - all games are exposed to this abuse and at the end of the day it should be fair.
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