RMN V4.5 (AND BEYOND) FEATURE IDEA LIST

Posts

edchuy
You the practice of self-promotion
1624
author=Archeia_Nessiah
But the potential problem with this is discouraging writing full-fledged reviews.

The way I see this is the following:

- People who are willing and capable of writing a review will do so, regardless. That also implies they are willing to meet the RMN standard of reviews and undergo the approval process.
- Having an alternate system with a lower entry barrier requiring comments with a minimal requirement can only encourage more feedback from those who normally won't or can't write a review to submit, which is good for the game developer. Obviously the key is for the rating and corresponding comment to have the rater identified so that they can be held accountable for them.

EDIT: One final thing, the alternate system should only be available for games that have downloads available and only 1 per RMN member per game.
Perhaps something as simple as a thumbs up/down system where 'x' amount equals a medal or ore. So, say you start with none, then go bronze<silver<gold or, if you get only negatives none>coal>rock>potato.

potato<rock<coal< Empty <bronze<silver<gold

or a bar like on various other sites with green/red to show likes/dislikes.

Separated from reviews but still shown. Lumping them in with reviews cheapens the fact that people went out of their way to write up what they thought and provide feedback, that they're sharing their thoughts. Those thoughts should count more because they indicate that a person has (most likely) at least played more of the game and have a better idea of what its worth is than those who just skim over a page of pictures and clicked a button because it looked pretty.

I think that informed opinions should mean more.

Brady
Was Built From Pixels Up
3134
I'm with alterego on the star rating thing. A huge number of games go without any kind of star rating despite having hundreds of downloads because not enough people want to write detailed reviews that meet staff standards, and this only hurts the overall library of games on RMN knowing that only the popular/well-advertised/exceptionally good games are getting any star ratings at all. The majority of games that are maybe not fantastic but still good are being left at "unrated" along with any terrible games and never seeing any extra ratings.

There surely are ways to admin this though so that everyone wins. Off-hand, the two ways I could think of are:
-Giving separate rating systems for "free ratings" and "reviewed ratings". On the Games page, a game would have two wee star-bars instead of one, showing the general "quick rating" a game has and the more detailed "reviewed rating" as well.
-Allowing people to rate it only if they've downloaded the game, to prevent people rating it based on profile/images alone.
author=Liberty
Perhaps something as simple as a thumbs up/down system where 'x' amount equals a medal or ore. So, say you start with none, then go bronze<silver<gold or, if you get only negatives none>coal>rock>potato.

potato<rock<coal< Empty <bronze<silver<gold

or a bar like on various other sites with green/red to show likes/dislikes.

Separated from reviews but still shown. Lumping them in with reviews cheapens the fact that people went out of their way to write up what they thought and provide feedback, that they're sharing their thoughts. Those thoughts should count more because they indicate that a person has (most likely) at least played more of the game and have a better idea of what its worth is than those who just skim over a page of pictures and clicked a button because it looked pretty.

I think that informed opinions should mean more.


I'm totally in favour of keeping these two things separate. the "like" bar or whatever we're calling it could be a good indicator of first impressions and general support or anticipation, as a counterpoint to reviews which (naturally) go a little more indepth. knowing how the game strikes people at a first glance could easily be useful for a developer, since the first impression is one of the Big Important Things to Remember About Promoting Your Shit.
I think the staff would probably accept a review that just said "This game has mediocre plot, excellent gameplay, and terrible graphics, so I give it 3 stars. For more details, watch my Let's Play video series."

Yes and no. Reviews and Let's plays are indeed essentially the same thing, but writing, and making videos take different skills - different qualities make them good. A Let's play is more spontaneous, while a review has to be more carefully crafted, so I'd prefer a LP didn't pass up as a review like that. What we could do is to formally integrate LP's under the review tab, effectively closing the gap between the two, but with written reviews still taking precedence. You know, "together, yet apart".

I don't see anything wrong with have a "like" system e.g. people being able to "like" a game that they have played, but not rate it with any type of star rating. I think ratings should be tied to reviews (and extended to Let's Plays and other video reviews).

That makes a nice novelty feature, but it don't really tell you much, does it? A number rating system, however, is a more accurate point of reference. To begin with, it invites to a deeper reflection than just 'liking' something. And the more of us who rate honestly will offset the ratings of those who didn't, instead of remaining a comparison (Amount of likes vs amount of dislikes). - If you want some kind of safety measure on this, that's Ok. But I think it's important it remains a number rating system.

Edit: Actually, Liberty's idea is good. But reversed. Leave Gold, Silver, Bronze, etc. medals to reviewers. Points for everyone else. =P
author=alterego
Those make nice novelty features, but they don't really tell you much, do they? A number rating system, however, is a more accurate point of reference. To begin with, it invites to a deeper reflection than just 'liking' something. And the more of us who rate honestly will offset the ratings of those who didn't, instead of remaining a comparison (Amount of likes vs amount of dislikes). - If you want some kind of safety measure on this, that's Ok. But I think it's important it remains a number rating system.

you just described reviews, which already exist. I don't mind the implementation of a second separate form of statistical feedback designed for first impressions and community support.

e: reviews literally are thoughtful feedback, though. something that just involves hitting a button, meanwhile, is quick and easy and can't be enforced to be thoughtful so numbers are meaningless. numbers are just a way to summarize the points in the review -- taking them out of that context makes them completely useless and arbitrary. better to make it a binary like/don't-like sort of thing.
The thing is that reviews (the way I see it) are more oriented to potential players rather than to developers. And good writing and a nice sense of humor are often regarded as good review qualities, something you will rarely find in a general feedback post. I, for example, could write a textwall about the Pros and Cons of a game's graphics, story, etc. but I wouldn't be comfortable submitting that as a full-fledged review. This makes me feel out of the loop because I think I'm perfectly 'qualified' to rate a game, but the additional effort to give that post a review format doesn't come easy to me. And it's not worth it just to be able to rate a game.

Yes, what matters is the feedback, the number is superfluous after all. Hence why I don't understand the reluctance to make rating more available. But I'd still prefer the less arbitrary system over the more trivial one.

Edit: tl;dr: Equal right to non-reviewers! We're not second-class citizens! xD
Some options to customize our project project withtout having to know CSS.
For example on deviantart, people use premade journal skin.
I don't really agree with your idea on what reviews are alterego. I write mine very oriented towards the developer, but include humor so any potential players know what they're in for.

I'm also very for two ratings. Leave the review system as is and make it the official review so there's still an emphasis on it. Then have an impression rating requiring you have commented on the game page with feedback. You could have some words specifying that the comment is attached to an impression rating like how the warned comments look. Then have a spot under the official rating about the average impression rating.
I'd like the tagging system to get a little more love. some ideas:

  • "games like this" panel on a game's page, showing a list of other games with similar tags
  • show how a game is tagged on its page (is that already somewhere? I might just be blind...)
  • allow users to tag games (only when rating?) + some kind of encouragement to use existing tags rather than making up new ones (minimum metascore requirement to create new tags?)
  • easier searching of tags - that little multi-select list is a little unwieldy (maybe even giving certain tags their own pages? horror, sci-fi, etc)
I like the thought of being able to customize the game profile without having to know CSS!
http://gamejolt.com/games/platformer/super-doki-doki-world/9946/#user-comments

^this highlights why ratings without a review suck.

Also, check out any app on Google Play and see the vast number of 1-star ratings because they end user can't get the thing to run. I hate that.

A 'Like/Recommend/Favorite' system avoids that last issue.
Seiromem
I would have more makerscore If I did things.
6375
I'd love it if the site could harness the energy of the universe to offer complete control over the minds and hearts of all societies.

If that's beyond your capabilities, I'll second/third things like Custom color schemes, following users and game profile customization without knowing how to use CSS.
I'm also very for two ratings. Leave the review system as is and make it the official review so there's still an emphasis on it. Then have an impression rating requiring you have commented on the game page with feedback. You could have some words specifying that the comment is attached to an impression rating like how the warned comments look. Then have a spot under the official rating about the average impression rating.

Heh; I'm on the fence on this separated ratings idea. It's not the best solution, but for the time being it may be a step in the right direction. Maybe if it works out we could work towards making it all one single rating system in the future, I dunno... But at least I think both ratings should be averaged together and then that result become the true 'official' rating. Because if you have two ratings, unless you display them side by side on game profiles and searches, etc. it may lead to some confusions.

^this highlights why ratings without a review suck.
Also, check out any app on Google Play and see the vast number of 1-star ratings because they end user can't get the thing to run...
A 'Like/Recommend/Favorite' system avoids that last issue.

So some people are idiots. Got it. But that's why we have rules and mods. We cull the dumb ones and we bring the rating system closer to the people, so ratings don't go unchallenged for lacks of reviews. Besides, good Apps still get severely out-rated? by 5-4 ratings, so all in all I say the system is accurate... Likes and favorites won't have the same effect.

Edit: Also, don't 'subscribers' already do a good job at serving as 'likes' or 'first impressions'? And where did the facebook buttons go?
well I have many things in my locker, I almost use it like for most of my things since its pretty easy to use. most of them are images so I would like to have the option to see it like it is now or to see a little thumbnail...

I wouldn't mind if this isn't done really, just throwing the idea if that helps.

what it could help in the CSS is to leave an already css script with comments saying
#This is the fontsize
Font-size: higher than 8pt
#this is the background
Background: foots

I mean, it is nice for having easy web desing without having to use css, maybe there would be like different made themes, that would be a cool thing I could even offer me as a volunteer to design a little, but if it really is like a whole page made it would very cheap and generic and I don't how great that sounds but it sounds worthless for me.
author=TDS
no matter how many times I press the "Public" button to make it private or the update button it stays public.


it doesn't work for me either. i never noticed that until now. i also can't make a private file public.

an option to just tag the image as private before it's uploaded would remedy this problem.


or just fix the root cause of this. no need to create a work-around. the feature is broken. it might have started when the delete/update function was changed.
MrChearlie, I'm pretty sure you can see thumbnails in your locker already. Unless you meant something else?

I'd also like to see a sort of 'x people found this useful' thing for scripts, resources and articles/tutorials on the site.

If I do an LT or LJ, I'll usually have a round-up of points at the end, like a review. I also write my reviews more towards giving feedback than entertaining the players, though informing them of issues and the like is in mind as well.
And where did the facebook buttons go?
they are still there...
It'd be nice if we could post comments on Download pages. I know that most, if not all, post a blog entry that they released a demo, but sometimes there are so many blog entries that one might have problem finding the corresponding blog entry. And maybe when pressing the "Blogs" tab on the game's profile would bring only a list of blog entries: I don't like browsing through pages where some blog entries are extremely long.
make the game page background easier to change without the need to know CSS.
for commercial games to have a 'buy the game" button (outside link button) for convenience.
making notice easier to view without going to the notice page. (same as the notification button on Facebook)