NTC3'S PROFILE

They actually look pretty nice now. Again, good on you for updating!

Wow, you are indeed doing different characters after all! Ones with wholly different animations and stuff, too! Out of curiosity, are the upgrades and stuff still limited to Pan, or not? Not that many people would fault you if they were limited, since it's a whole lot of content already. All the other stuff in programming sounds cool, too!

@Toaster_Team: This was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek post, but basically, the page I linked to was simply a list of all reviews there on RP, ordered by date. You weren't supposed to understand the words, since they're not important there, but simply look at the numbers. The system itself is technically just a percentage one from 1% to 100%: what makes it different are how much lower these numbers are compared to what you get from most critics. Just go there again and scroll down the list until you reach, say, the middle of 2014. You'll probably come away more than a little shocked, but its loyal users appreciate just that aspect of it. Simply put, you wouldn't be able to maintain such requirements in a 2-3 gradation system like Eurogamer's.

And as for that Makerscore argument... honestly, why is it still going? Not much is going to change, and it's just not cool. Your game, by contrast, is quite cool, so why not spend more time working on it instead? If you're stuck somewhere, say so, and I or someone else ought to help. :)

author=Sooz
HOME is popular on tumblr because it's a fixfic for OFF, which has a (deserved) huuuuuuge fandom. It isn't popular among RMN regulars because it honestly isn't very good or notable when decoupled from the fandom.

Yeah, I'm aware of that backstory. Still, I do think it's a little strange that the community's unconscious response has essentially been to ignore it completely and let Tumblr/other fans set the entire narrative on it.

@ nhubi: Thanks for the detailed reply. In fact, I think it might well be best to just move the engines, contest maps and such into their separate, "non-game download" category, so that they wouldn't distract from the real games that need reviewing.

As for defunct downloads, it's certainly a thing that needs to happen as well. I've already stumbled upon an example with U.S.G. ~A New Beginning~: a featured game, where not a single download appears to work. If there are hundreds of such examples, it certainly needs to get sorted out sooner rather than later.

In fact, can we make it an unofficial goal to clean these up and get the reviewed percentage to, say, 80%, by the website's 10th anniversary? That would be a nice round number to form an official Community Awards in a permanent, agreed-upon capacity, one that would also decide on both the "inside" categories we have for fun,and the "professional" categories like interface, while Misaos would be more about the categories everyone can have a reasonably informed opinion about.

author=Toaster_Team
Steam has that kind of system and it works well. People recommend or don't recommend something and explain why in their reviews.

Ahahahaha, very funny. By your logic, Steam could go a step further and remove all gradations, making it all about the words written. It doesn't, because there'll always be lots of people who are just looking to download a game quickly and have no time to read, regardless of the scoring method. Two-gradation system only benefits mediocrity by making it appear as good on the surface as the actual good games, or even the year's GOTY.

That's exactly the reason Steam uses it, of course, as it makes selling games easier, essentially lumping in the people who thought the game was GOTY-level great together with all the people who thought it was just mediocre, but didn't want to give it poor score, and all the shades in between. It basically stacks the deck against negative reviews, and so the most common score you'll find is "mostly positive", even when taking all the EA garbage, etc. into account.

In the long run, this simply devalues positive feedback and actually hurts the talented creators on the whole. People end up sticking to the genres they know they'll like and not experimenting with others because there's no way to tell average apart from great, or wait for the professional reviewers they trust to get around to the game (which is often never, given the volume of Steam release output.)

author=Toaster_Team
Also, 0.5 stars is a lot worse than not recommending a game. This explains why there's such an emotional response to such a score. Same thing with giving a 5 star rating. A lot of people such a high "score" isn't deserved and react accordingly.

Well, if it deserved it, it deserved it. As simple as that. No need to muzzle the range of reviewer expression. Oh, and what will you do with the hundreds of scored reviews that are already on here? Somehow, I doubt you'll see many people whose games' 2.5 scores will necessarily turn into "not recommended" (exactly akin to 1/0.5 star games) happy about it, just to give a straightforward example

I think the biggest problem is the variety of review philosophies (Does 5 mean "well made" or "outstanding" or even "perfect"? Is 3 a passing grade or a failure?) and there's not a lot one can do about that without becoming some kind of reviews dictator, which strikes me as less fun than what the powers that be here do already.

author=Toaster_Team
Actually, I'd also get rid of the MS, I don't understand the purpose of it.

Well, there are plenty of things whose purpose is not immediately apparent. People used to not understand why massless particles like neutrinos could exist, but now they turn out to be crucial for some of the most intricate particle physics calculations. Closer to home, some might question why "rpgmaker.net" needs to spend its bandwidth on Ruby visual novels and GameMaker platformers, but both contribute quite handsomely to it in the end, don't they?