Sometimes it’s tough navigating through feedback. And sometimes it’s not. My long time gaming friends, and many others, think there’s a problem with the Rating system. We know because they told us it sucks (in a friendly way).
Before I explain the problem to everyone, let me just say we agree. We’re doing the fix tonight.
Oh, and while we’re here… we do like negative feedback. Yes, oh yes! Keep slapping!!
What’s wrong? Overall grade
The issue is coming from the overall grade for a game. At the moment it is the total of the first 3 grades you pick (Art / Tech / Gameplay) when rating a game. The problem with this system is that a game can be better, or worse, than the sum of its parts.
For example, the artistic and technical values of Counter-Strike 1.6 are rather low, but it doesn’t really matter because CS is first and foremost a multiplayer shooter with a gameplay so powerful it can be replayed for ever and ever. For that, and in my view, Counter-Strike should get an overall grade that’s very close to the maximum. But the way Ratings have been working, I had to give it 20 out of 30 (Art: 4, Tech: 6, Gameplay: 10).
We know a lot of people on Gamocracy had the same issue. This resulted for example in Khao giving the original Quake 10 in Art, Tech and Gameplay because he wanted the overall grade for the game to be the perfect 30/30.
Fanboy at work: Khao gave Quake a 10 in Art… Yeah, right!
What’s up? Edits!
So we’ll be changing that tonight: from now on, the final grade will be determined independently from the others, out of 10.
This is my Rating for CS. Tonight, Rémi will turn the 20 into a 0.
Then I will turn the 0 into a 9. Or a 10. I haven’t made my mind up yet...
This means that Ratings that were already posted will see their overall grade reset to 0, while the rest (other grades + text) will remain the same.
That’s why we need your help: we’re looking to get all ratings edited in order to change the overall grade from 0 to any value between 1 and 10 that you see fit. Editing Ratings will cost no Action Points between the moment Rémi updates tonight and early next week (Monday, most likely).
It would be amazing that you let your friends who happen to be Gamocracy testers know about that. We believe the change will definitely help the overall quality and meaning of Ratings.
Hmm, I thought that sometimes the overall score does not really match the real value of the game, but I didn’t go that far in figuring what is actually wrong and what could be done to make it better. Now that I see what you are going to do, I agree with it, and so I’ll do my part in editing the ratings.
Definitively a great improvement. Same as GODJonez, I felt sometimes stuck with the old rating system, trying to balance scores to get to right total. Separating the overall score from each scoring category make the rating itself easier and more understandable for both user and reviewer. Keep up with the good work :) !