Cramchakle wrote:

Since you asked:

Non-standard Gameplay Features: None, Some, Many.

Pretty much 11's system exactly. Feel free to just go back to his earlier post about adding +1 to some value for each type of non-standard feature you have and then putting them against some scale.

It gives people an elegant, quantitative/qualitative distinction they can use to make their own judgment on how "difficult" or "Risky" or "wrinkly" or "advanced" whatever the crazy *stuff* else you people have been chasing each other around in circles on for what feels like 100 pages worth of posts (but in reality is not yet even 2).

Interesting mix of thoughtful input and insensitive commentary, but of more concern to me - inappropriate use of language.    I wouldn't want my child reading this thread.  Please re-read the Terms and Conditions of the site.  I could be wrong, but I think you may have crossed the line.

http://www.wargear.net/settings/preferences

Turn "Censor Swear Words" to "On". I think Cram and myself and some others on the forum sort of rely on other players using that feature as they feel appropriate. With regards to the Terms and Conditions, I don't know that I'd make the case that casual use of curse words necessarily is 'obscene' or 'vulgar' but I guess it's pushing the envelope in some respect.

If the Forum Censor is Off by default, that should certainly be toggled.

I don't really mind casual use that much. I think the attitude coupled with the swearing was what got my attention. It is admittedly a fine line.

I edited it, I don't think it's necessary in the situation and looks bad for someone visiting the site IMO (which the filter is NOT on for visiters).

If tom wants to change it back then that's his call.

Other than that, I think I agree with Cram's (and others) overall point. Keep it simple.

Yertle wrote:

Other than that, I think I agree with Cram's (and others) overall point. Keep it simple.

I believe we are all pretty much on the same page about that point.  The questions we are debating:

Should we have one category or two?

What are they and what is the criteria?

Should it (they) be scalar, or a list of 3-5 descriptors?

Who decides what the ratings are for each board (what is the process)?

I write pretty much exactly as I speak. What can I say, I'm a casual swearer. It's more a point of emphasis for me than it is any kind of profanity -- a little bit of color in an otherwise drab conversation, if you will. Everything's relative, I suppose. My flourishes are your offense.

I'd apologize, but I've never been one to care at all about the delicate sensibilities of lady ears. I keep a lid on it all day at work; the internet isn't about to be a forum where I censor myself. Especially not when the computer can censor me for me.

M57 wrote:  Should we have one category or two?

Two. "Riskiness" and "difficulty", though somewhat related, are orthogonal.

M57 wrote:  What are they and what is the criteria?

"Riskiness" - How close something is to original Risk rules. Reading through the thread, it definitely seems this is quantifiable. Dice modifiers, one-way borders, artillery, capitals, and so on would all count "against" a board's Riskiness.

"Difficulty" - A qualitative assessment of how difficult a board is to understand at first glance. The more I think about it, the more I suspect it would be a combination of the board designer's opinion on the subject and the board review team. If we allow ordinary players to rank difficulty on boards, it should probably be a separate ranking since it's more likely to be gamed (WF ranks this board as a 3 out of 5, players rank it 4.2 out of 5).

M57 wrote:  Should it (they) be scalar, or a list of 3-5 descriptors?

"Riskiness", if we stick to that name, should probably be descriptors; a Riskiness of +5 either means it's "extremely Risky", as in "extremely like Risk", or it's "extremely Risky" in that it's "extremely NOT like Risk". I'm not picky on what descriptors are used. Difficulty, on the other hand, should be a scalar.

M57 wrote:  Who decides what the ratings are for each board (what is the process)?

Like I said earlier, I think it would be a combination of the board designer and the reviewers. Presumably the board designer would be working with the reviewers on the board, so it shouldn't be hard to achieve some consensus. An additional "players ranking" could also be applied, but, like I said, that should remain separate from the "official" ranking.

I agree with those who assert that type of game and difficulty of understanding the mechanics are independent and need to be distinct.

Difficulty of understanding the mechanics is most important to newer users who we do wish to keep. As has been suggested 3 levels (easy, medium, difficult), maybe 4 is all you need. This would also be useful for choosing from a set of maps to introduce your friends to the site.

We, the experienced users, as well those starting to really get into the site, would benefit from a type breakdown, and here I think we could safely start a new thread because here we are likely to have differing suggestions. A sample category breakdown: mappy/Risk-style (include Eve, Bloom, Resident WG, Rent is Due which aren't geographic but ARE Risk-like), capture the flag (capitol-centered), deterministic (darts and five), race (3-legged and Chain Game), manuever duels (nonrace duels? Episode I, Duck Hunt, Spies, Remote Control), cap-influenced for lack of a better name (Smurfs, Plink, King of the Mountains).

Anyway, that last paragraph would belong to the above mentioned hypothetical new thread. Of course, dimensions such as size and fog could be icon'd, but I do think a good categorical breakdown is worthy of being tabbable.

I can't remember where I read it so I'll have to bring it up here as somewhat of a non-sequitur, but regarding player reviews and ratings of boards, might it be possible to rate the rater?

I thought one of the ratings had to do with how much they posted, but I was thinking maybe in terms of their overall ratings' deviation from the norm.

Yeah, but who's gonna rate the rater raters?

Don't rate the rater, rate the game

Ok, back on topic. Check out the reviews/ratings for "Across the Great Divide" for an example of part of what the problem is.

OK, I checked. Playing devil's advocate here, what exactly is the problem?

You've got one guy calling it boring who didn't bother to rate it. You didn't know how to rate it so you left it unrated, which seems fine to me.

Two people rated it Great and one person rated it Terrible. Three people are not nearly a large enough sample size to determine what the board 'should be' rated. The person who rated it Terrible has played a fair number of games and has left a rating for a half dozen boards, from terrible to superb.

Since ratings are opinions I can't think of any way to devalue the Terrible rating, it's just as valid as the other 2 Great ratings.

To sum up, I know what you mean... but ultimately if someone just doesn't like a board *for any reason* then they should have the right to rate it poorly, as long as it's done honestly.

tom also mentioned that once the quantity of ratings hit a certain level then he would think about adding in some sort of Bayesian type analysis to them. I'm not up on exactly what that means but I think it speaks towards what are worried about.

Hey IRoll, fix your damn avatar.

IRoll11s wrote: OK, I checked. Playing devil's advocate here, what exactly is the problem?

Since ratings are opinions I can't think of any way to devalue the Terrible rating, it's just as valid as the other 2 Great ratings.

To sum up, I know what you mean... but ultimately if someone just doesn't like a board *for any reason* then they should have the right to rate it poorly, as long as it's done honestly.

tom also mentioned that once the quantity of ratings hit a certain level then he would think about adding in some sort of Bayesian type analysis to them. I'm not up on exactly what that means but I think it speaks towards what are worried about.

I'm not really complaining.  I just think there's a need for the rating system we've been talking about, and this particular board helps to illustrate that point.

To be sure, a board that you and/or I think is incredible may be someone else's nightmare, perhaps because of its complexity. That's the weakness of the current system.  Many boards will be subject to a spray of ratings which, at least by looking at the graph, tell the casual observer almost nothing.

On the other hand, this same system has it's advantages for those who care to read individual posts in order to evaluate their differing points of view.

Well, I hate to do it anymore, because any suggestion of added complexity usually results in a 19 page back and forth between a handful of people niggling over what the definition of 'is' is. But here's what I think would be an interesting and useful system.

First, we need to break out the aspects of a board that people can have an opinion on, and then in their setting allow them to determine how important those things are. For example, a person might have an opinion on:

General Gameplay (fair, fun)
Graphics
RISKINESS (Sameness to RISK)
Uniqueness
Complex Rules
Size (Small, medium, large map - arbitrary at this point in the discussion)

Add to the list as you will (here's where you kids get to argue ad nauseum about what goes in the list).

Ok, so now we've got that list. In your settings, you get 100 points to spread amongst those features to describe what is most important to the user. Basically, you're building a weighting profile.

Now, when people go to the map rating screen, they are presented with the same list of categories, and the 10 star rating system. The player thinks the graphics sucked, and gives it 1 star for graphics, but found the gameplay almost exactly like RISK and this person LOVES RISK so they give it 10 stars for RISKINESS.

In fact, they love RISK so much that they weighted RISKINESS with 99 profile points. And they really don't care about graphics, which is good, because they allocated all their weighting to RISKINESS and only had 1 to weight graphics. So behind the scenes we run an algo that creates a composite rating for the map based on the fact that the person doesn't care about graphics, so the rating of 1 has little effect on the composite score, and the rating of 10 on the RISKINESS gets more weight because the person LOVES RISK! The algo would crunch all the categories to come up with the composite.

Bonus round: Players could sort maps using a tab which ranks them as though everyone has the same weighting as they do, so they get a custom list of maps presumably in the order that they will like them the most.

RISKINESS (Sameness to RISKYBACK)

ftfy

Yes, reading this conversation has confused me due to the usage of a word similar to my screen name but the opposite of me.

Thought I'd bump this one up. As the topic points out, we are at 100+ boards. The Boards page is getting unwieldy and I'm wondering what the status of the categorizing/rating system is.

Yep nothing has happened so far... IRoll11s was making some noises about looking at this for me - 11s?