By my count there are now 100 live boards.  Cool beans.

Great stuff and a brilliant effort from the designers.

I think we'll need a board sorting / categorisation / tabs system sooner rather than later...

Yes, WE probably will. Perhaps WE should get on that ;)

How much sooner than later is soon in this case?

I've been trying to avoid it to be honest... after chat and scenario enhancements was the plan.

I know there's been some discussion about the format of such a system. Can someone outline what they believe the general consensus is? ..or perhaps Tom can give us an inkling of what he's got planned.

I believe Tom is waiting for more data to accumulate before an organized board ratings page makes sense, but I was thinking that some of that data could be built right into the menus for each category of board.

What will the default sorting criteria be?  Do people think it would be tacky to include numerical data or GearStars along with the thumbnails, or should it not be unlike the current boards page in terms of look and feel? Will there be options for sorting by different criteria? I don't like alpha as the default, but it should definitely be available.

BTW, What are the categories?

Is there a thread already devoted to this?

The general idea is that the page will be tabbed (like the tabs that appear on the tournament view page).

The Tabs will act as filters on the view

Default | Most Popular | Top Rated | Recent | By Difficulty | Geographical | Favorites | Search

The Default view will be a quick view into the top rated, most popular, recently added boards and your favorites. Probably also the last 5 boards that you started a game on so you can quickly create a new game.

Potentially I might incorporate the concept of tags (e.g. Map / Fantasy / Arcade / Puzzle)

The Search will allow filtering the view for gameplay types, rules, fog settings, Designer etc etc.

The tricky bit is going to be making sure that the system can't be gamed, that popular boards over the long term are easy to find (e.g. WarGear Warfare) whilst also promoting newer boards. It needs to be an automatic filter much the same as the way the open games list currently works to limit spamming automatically.

RE: |difficulty|.  I assume that other member rating categories were discussed originally because the mechanics of Tos would have been used as a reference point, so I'm wondering, why just 1 rating and a comment? Wouldn't it have been nice if there was a "complexity/difficulty" scale to select from?  On the other hand, perhaps it's such a subjective/delicate area that you want to have a knowledgeable committee handle the chore.

Consider that someone uses dice modifiers and something like, oh ..I don't know, a barren feature  to create a checkers game.  One that plays almost exactly like checkers, where 0 and 1 sided dice took the influence of the dice out of the game.  Now if you were to base complexity on deviation of the rules from the original, this could be considered quite complex.  On the other hand ..it's checkers.  A second grader can play it.

Will complexity be a scale, or perhaps you plan to use descriptors?

Easy:  Plays just like the original.

Moderately Easy:  Almost like the original, but with a twist or two (like fog).

Medium: Likely to have a number of modifying features (like dice modifiers, artillery, etc), but they tend to be clearly marked on the board.  Gameplay is reasonably intuitive.

Medium Difficult: Likely to have a number of modifying features, but some of them may change the nature of play quite significantly.  Study of the board and rules is recommended before play.

Difficult: Careful study of the board and rules is highly recommended before play.

Sick: Do you really want to play this board?

Hmmm..  Where would the checkers game fit into the above rubric?

M57 wrote:

Hmmm..  Where would the checkers game fit into the above rubric?

I would think your checkers and the like (Darts/Five, games without any dice luck at all) should be categorized separately.  I would call them Strategy boards and make a special "difficulty" for them.

Well on ToS the only measure that was used in rating boards was the overall rating, the other ratings were effectively discarded.

tom wrote: Well on ToS the only measure that was used in rating boards was the overall rating, the other ratings were effectively discarded.

I thought the other two (Graphics and Gameplay) were used in some minor way on WF, but perhaps not (I can't think of it and can't find anything supporting this)...

Adding another measure on the Rating wouldn't be a bad idea for difficulty, as long as it's not a slope to filling out a form for a Rating (not entirely sure how it would be, but keep it simple).

So are you suggesting a quantitative value based on a site wide survey? I'm starting to be of the opinion that the developer and "committee" should decide on the category and difficulty rating, which simply gets tagged to the game, especially if you end up categorizing games by descriptor. I think I'd much rather want a list of Medium Difficult games than games rated by members between four and five points of difficulty.  What the heck does that mean?

If people want to, they can always dispute a rating in their evaluation comment.  Why would a developer want to misrepresent difficulty anyway?  It's in their best interest to get it right.

There are some objective standards for difficulty that could be used as a baseline, these include use of: capitols, attack/fortify/view borders, border modifiers, negative (adjustment) continents, one-way borders, custom card levels. Sure we can think of others.

Take any of these that are programmatically identifiable and give em a +1, add it up, assign arbitrary 0-2 easy, 3-5 as medium, 6-8 as hard, 9+ as ludicrous. Call it a day.

The problem with your criteria is that boards like "Steal the Bacon" would rank much lower than they really should. Yeah, there's a capitol (+1), but the number of attack/fortify/view borders is ridiculously small, there's no border modifiers, no negative continents, no one-way borders, and I doubt there are custom card levels. So, it would end up with a +1 (slightly harder than Risk), which doesn't really describe it. Meanwhile, boards like Antastic would rank higher because it has significantly more borders than half the boards here, even though it's really not *that* hard of a board. God forbid if someone ported the old Texas board over here...

I think you'll need a combination of self-reporting, ranking from reviewers, and ranking from general players, and even that won't be perfect. Reviewers, by definition, are going to be more experienced than the general populace, so they're either going to underestimate the difficulty ("Ah, that's just like Risky Kong! Cake!") or they'll overcompensate ("Ah, that's just like Risky Kong! That must mean it's impossible!"). Board designers, meanwhile, won't really have an accurate feel for how difficult their board is - they'll have play styles in mind, but it's only a matter of time before somebody tries to "break" it (see the past few Mongrel boards). General players, meanwhile, are probably going to treat some boards fairly ("Ah, that's like Risk, only bigger! I'll give it a +2!") and some boards less fairly ("Ah, that's just like Risky Kong! I hate that board! I'm going to give it a +Texas$!").

Y'know, the more I type, the more I realize there probably isn't a "good" quantitative solution. We might just have to pick a "good enough" qualitative one, accept that it'll be a loose guideline at best and hope.

The worst part, now that I think about it, is that board difficulty rankings from general players is going to be highly dependent on who they play. If they're playing Kjeldor, for example, against a bunch of newbies, they'll think it's just a really big Risk board. If they play it against Vataro, on the other hand, they'll think it's an instrument of anal torture devised by foul demons from Hades.

Oatworm wrote: 
Board designers, meanwhile, won't really have an accurate feel for how difficult their board is - they'll have play styles in mind, but it's only a matter of time before somebody tries to "break" it (see the past few Mongrel boards). 

I disagree.  I think (good) board designers intrinsically have a sense of the difficulty of their boards. How could you design a board that is mechanically sound, fair, employs good use of choke points, dice modifiers, capitals, unit limits, and bonus allocations if you didn't?  Sure, designers may not get it perfect, and it becomes the job of players to "break" it or find it's deficiencies, but I don't think that necessarily says anything about a board's fundamental level of difficulty.

Perhaps we are not on the same page when it comes to defining difficulty.  I think of it in terms of a standard Risk player's ability to fundamentally understand the mechanics of a board. It has nothing to do with their ability to play it well, or understand the subtle strategic implications of a particular design feature.  The extent to which a person understands the mechanics of game-play of a given board is what should inform the criteria for its specific level of difficulty.

As I said before, I think designers should have a lot of say in rating their board's difficulty.  It's in their best interest.  Maybe part of the problem is the use of the word rating. I think we tend to get caught up in the "a rating is a score" paradigm.   This is admittedly not the best analogy but think of it like movie ratings. Do you think the producer of a G-rated movie isn't painfully aware of what it will take to get the G rating?  I'm not suggesting that developers be given sole discretion, but I think in working with the reviewers the proper designation can be assigned.

An additional advantage of this method is that the criteria for a specific rating can be meticulously debated and even refined.

I think we should think of and treat ratings not dissimilarly to the way we do categories.  Do you think we will let players vote for what category a board should be in on the upcoming boards page?  Of course not. I'm going to guess that Tom doesn't want to have to personally categorize every board that hits the site. So who's going to do that?  It should be a committee decision.  ..and once again, I think the board designer should have significant input in that decision.  

Damn, "Anal Torture Devised by Foul Demons from Hades" is the map I'm working on!

I don't know if there is a quantatative way to rank them but try if you like. I don't want to judge the difficulty of my own maps. I think WG: TG is pretty straight forward in general gameplay but it's what you do with it that counts. (never had an ex girlfriend say that to me).
I really think maps should just be grouped by theme, style and/or territory counts (small, medium, large, really large, why did I join this 2 months ago). I think map makers can classify their maps under those criteria and also if we notice we are lacking in a category we can stop doing our jobs, get divorced, ignore our children, set the Tivo and start making maps!

P.S. Join my Tournaments!

Yertle wrote:

M57 wrote:

Hmmm..  Where would the checkers game fit into the above rubric?

I would think your checkers and the like (Darts/Five, games without any dice luck at all) should be categorized separately.  I would call them Strategy boards and make a special "difficulty" for them.

I was thinking this also.  So here is my proposal for dividing up the difficulties of the boards.  This is very similar to the one Kjeld proposed in another thread -

Standard: Any board that plays like standard Risk (take over and defend continents),  and could have the following enhancements: Fortify to any connected, number of fortifies, keep 6 cards Elimination Bonus and/or fog.

Wrinkled : Any board that plays like standard Risk with up to 2 or 3 of the following enhancements: Capitals, overlapping/non-adjacent continents, negative bonuses, special borders (vision/artillery/one way - if they are used extensively then they may count as two enhancements right there.), unit limits on territories, cyclical card structure, limited attacks, return to attack from fortify/placement, abandonment, ability to keep reserves, keep more than 6 cards,  die modifiers and probably some other stuff.

Warped: Any board that vaguely play like Risk (get and defend areas) but extensively uses the Wrinkled enhancements

Degenerate: Boards that don't play like Risk.

To give an idea:

Standard: Antastic, Australian Risk, Battle USA, Bloom, Mars, Notebook Paper Dungeon, Tree of Life

Wrinkled: Biohazard, 4Play, Assassin, Atomic Transporters, Britain of Old, Hordes of Africa, Risk Vs. Reward, Steal the Bacon, Wargear Quest

Warped: Across the Great Divide, Kjeldor, Brick in the Wall, Castles, Bowling

Degenerate: Darts, Five, Spy vs. Spy

Standard: Any board that plays like standard Risk (take over and defend continents),  and could have the following enhancements: Fortify to any connected, number of fortifies, keep 6 cards Elimination Bonus and/or fog.

Wrinkled : Any board that plays like standard Risk with up to 2 or 3 of the following enhancements: Capitals, overlapping/non-adjacent continents, negative bonuses, special borders (vision/artillery/one way - if they are used extensively then they may count as two enhancements right there.), unit limits on territories, cyclical card structure, limited attacks, return to attack from fortify/placement, abandonment, ability to keep reserves, keep more than 6 cards,  die modifiers and probably some other stuff.

Warped: Any board that vaguely play like Risk (get and defend areas) but extensively uses the Wrinkled enhancements

Degenerate: Boards that don't play like Risk.

In my mind, these are design descriptors (categories) as much or more than they are difficulty ratings.

Warped and Wrinkled are kewl terms, but think of your general audience here, and more specifically visitors to the site.  Difficulty designations should be words like Easy, and ..umm  .. Difficult.