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Vermil

Option for a mod maker to respond on ID Games?

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Probably crazy and outside the realms of practicality, possibility etc. But how likely is it that the ID Games Archive could have an option for a mod maker to respond to the reviews? Or a separate field where users (including the mod author), can comment on a wad without rating it at the same time (which may be easier)?

I mean, over the years, I reasonably often see mod makers 'rating' their own mods in order to respond to reviews.

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I would love the option to comment without giving rating. I kinda despise the idea of associating works of art with numbers or stars or whatever.

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I think the thing to recognize is that the reviews section is not a comment section. It's not intended for a back-and-forth discussion or debate. They're supposed to be reviews, and the idgames interface has design features that try to enforce this (only a single review is allowed).

If you allow the mod author to respond to reviews, it follows that the reviewer should then be able to respond to those responses, and so on. You basically change it into a Youtube-style comments section, and we all know what a terrible idea that is. The idgames interface already tends to lean a bit too far in that direction. It doesn't help that anonymous reviews are permitted and of even non-anonymous reviews don't have the name of the author clearly shown.

It's also slightly redundant because the forums exist to permit discussion. New releases are announced in the newstuff chronicles and discussion happens there, so there's plenty of opportunity for authors to respond to comments and criticism. It's a better medium for discussion than the idgames review section. In summary, I understand your desire to see this but I think it's a bad idea.

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I agree ratings should be optional. Even non-authors may want to make comments without rating the WAD to add info or as Memfis implied, because they don't want to rate it. Sometimes I refrain from commenting because of the obligatory ratings. It could still be limited to one comment per user, which would limit tendencies to chit chat.

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It would be neat if we had a subforum that was totally automated, that created a new thread with the wad's name every time someone uploaded their work to /idgames. Then, if anyone wanted to actually discuss the wad, they'd follow the link on /idgames to Doomworld.

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schwerpunk said:

It would be neat if we had a subforum that was totally automated, that created a new thread with the wad's name every time someone uploaded their work to /idgames. Then, if anyone wanted to actually discuss the wad, they'd follow the link on /idgames to Doomworld.

I like this idea a lot and I wouldn't want comments in the reviews area.

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I think the thing to recognize is that the reviews section is not a comment section.

Oh really, and where does that stated on the page? I see no "REVIEWS ONLY" sign anywhere there. Hell, there's no explanations at all. Comfy.

If the front-end is designed for reviewing, then why there are no more text editing options like lists, bold text, strict through text, underlined text? That little white box is not really suited for writing a complex review.

What kind of review is a one-liner like "It's shit", "Meh", and "It's good" and why these are allowed?

Why can't you "review" without rating a wad using some randumb rating system, which is used both for single maps and for 32 maps megawads? No, really, think about it for a second "reviewers", you rate a single map, and a 32 map campaign, using the same rating system.

It's not intended for a back-and-forth discussion or debate.

That's right designers, enjoy your "It sucks" "reviews" silently. Not a single response. Because... i guess debates are bad and Internet is not for communication.

Debates? What debates are you talking about if you can't leave a single message without rating a wad, even if it's your own. And what if you really need to respond or provide some new info? Hell, what if you just want to say thank you? Nope, upload a whole new readme, and maybe people will read it in that small box. Just as always, everything for your comfort, providers of content! I mean mappers.

It never was intended for dialogues, and this is why it's complete crap.

You basically change it into a Youtube-style comments section, and we all know what a terrible idea that is.

Because comments exist only on YouTube, and every space under a video is always like a cesspool.

I guess you've never seen other mapping and modding related sites with (real) reviews, like Func_Msgboard or LvlWorld? Man, they sure suffer from ability of people to communicate!
Oh wait...

Also, what about moderators? I'm sure /idgames glorious moderators will definitely manage to keep order even if *gasp* more that one "review" will be allowed.

It's also slightly redundant because the forums exist to permit discussion.

Gee, but why there's no ability to rate the map on the forum? It is clearly very important, it wouldn't be present on /idgames otherwise.

there's plenty of opportunity for authors to respond to comments and criticism.

Oh, so now you call them comments, gee, and i thought they are reviews! So let me get this straight, if someone calls my map shit or great, must i copy the comment from the /idgames page and paste it on the forum to respond?

You must register to post on forum, you must not to post on /idgames. There ya have it.

/idgames proves to me that most websites added ratings not because they are an essential part, but to become WEB 2.0 compatible and make authors and visitors do some stupid shit for the sake of doing it.

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As shallow and idiotic as a review like "it's shit" may be, it's still technically a valid statement. It's not constructive, because you can't really use it to become a better mapper, but it's still someone's opinion of your work.

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What I like about the idgames archive is that the ability to write your thoughts on the wad anonymously with no opportunity for author response means that people are free to speak their thoughts without overly aggressive uppity authors devolving the whole thing into a dramafest that nobody really wants. If someone thinks it's shit, they can call it shit and life moves on.

As the author your opinions on the work is just as meaningless as everyone else's. I don't feel like the idgames archive would have anything to gain from allowing authors to respond to comments. Why give one person more opportunity to express their opinion than anyone else?

I actually find the ratings system useful. It exists because such an enormous repository of files benefits from having some way to promote the decent stuff and weed out the crap, and there's no central authority that is willing, or could even be trusted, to do it in a way that's effective as just crowd-sourcing the whole thing. The ratings system and people's thoughts and reviews have definitely helped me avoid wasting my time with shit and while the opinions on display are diverse enough that you'll never agree 100% with what's said, on the whole I find myself agreeing with the overall consensus. It's also interesting to see when some people like or dislike wads against common consensus and I enjoy reading their thoughts on the matter if they write a review for it.

If you want actual constructive criticism make a forum thread. That sort of thing is what the forum's for. If you can't accept the fact that a bunch of people in the world are going to look at your work at respond with "0/5 shit" then you don't have the balls to handle making your work public. Besides, there's nothing worse than a hugbox full of big egos when it comes to trying to make quality work. Just ask Deviantart.

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a valid statement. It's not constructive

Well, there you have it. How can it be valid if it's not constructive? If you had a problem with a map you can state the problem. "It's shit" tells nothing at all, just like "It's a masterpiece", mapper will not be able to tell what makes people say these things if he'll look back at his work.

"I died and my last save was 10 minutes ago, FUCK THIS MAP, 0/5". This can be one of the reasons for "It's shit" comment/rating. Because it's always the game's fault. Thank you game reviewers for teaching us that. (OH, and trust me, there are far more worse reasons out there, just read one of those gamer confessions thread on any forum, even this one)

If you want actual constructive criticism make a forum thread

See, everyone understands that there is no constructive criticism on /idgames Archive.

no opportunity for author response means that people are free to speak their thoughts

Wow, you should really do something with that social anxiety.

overly aggressive uppity authors devolving the whole thing into a dramafest

Gee, well if "reviewers" are such experts, why can't they prevent this dramafest? Why is it always mapper's fault?

It exists because such an enormous repository of files benefits from having some way to promote the decent stuff and weed out the crap

Yeah, except the system does not really weed out anything, all maps stay where they were placed, and only someone can decide himself to not download maps below some score.

I pity people who need a recommendation to download or skip a 2mb level or campaign for their supposedly favorite game. They should find a new hobby.

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Harmata, no offense, but I think you just provided an excellent example of why submitters shouldn't be allowed to reply to reviewers' remarks. :/

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Harmata, no offense, but I think you just provided

Any arguments? No arguments, no offense, but no respect either.

I am familiar with this

This one is like a third thread that reveals problems with /idgames Archive that i saw since i'm here.

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Harmata said:

Well, there you have it. How can it be valid if it's not constructive? If you had a problem with a map you can state the problem. "It's shit" tells nothing at all, just like "It's a masterpiece", mapper will not be able to tell what makes people say these things if he'll look back at his work.

"I died and my last save was 10 minutes ago, FUCK THIS MAP, 0/5". This can be one of the reasons for "It's shit" comment/rating. Because it's always the game's fault. Thank you game reviewers for teaching us that. (OH, and trust me, there are far more worse reasons out there, just read one of those gamer confessions thread on any forum, even this one)

See, everyone understands that there is no constructive criticism on /idgames Archive.


The thing you seem to miss is that in order for someone to actually provide constructive criticism they need to have a deep understanding of the thing at hand. If I eat a cake and it's horrible, I can say that it's awful but I might not have the expertise to go into exactly why it's horrible, because I'm not a chef. But someone saying that the cake is bad is still a useful thing for other cake eaters to know. Everyone knows there's no constructive criticism on the archive because that never has been and never will be its purpose. It's not a place for communicating with the author, it's a place for letting other potential players know what they're in for.

Harmata said:

Wow, you should really do something with that social anxiety.

I never review anonymously so I'm not sure what this ad homiem attack is supposed to achieve.

Harmata said:

Gee, well if "reviewers" are such experts, why can't they prevent this dramafest? Why is it always mapper's fault?

Because they're not experts, that's the whole point. It takes two to drama. The author gets his chance to say what he wants in the text file.

Harmata said:

Yeah, except the system does not really weed out anything, all maps stay where they were placed, and only someone can decide himself to not download maps below some score.

I pity people who need a recommendation to download or skip a 2mb level or campaign for their supposedly favorite game. They should find a new hobby.

There are so many wads out there that you're kidding yourself if you think the vast majority of players have the time to play them all. It's almost as if doomworld's idgames archive frontend comes with the sort of useful features like searching and rating in order to solve exactly this issue. Imagine that!

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schwerpunk said:

It would be neat if we had a subforum that was totally automated, that created a new thread with the wad's name every time someone uploaded their work to /idgames. Then, if anyone wanted to actually discuss the wad, they'd follow the link on /idgames to Doomworld.


I also like this idea.

As shallow and idiotic as a review like "it's shit" may be, it's still technically a valid statement. It's not constructive, because you can't really use it to become a better mapper, but it's still someone's opinion of your work.


If people tell me what I'm doing is shit and leave it at that, there's things I can learn from that, based on the amount and frequency of these comments:
Is there something offensive about my stuff?
Is something I'm doing niche, and am I doing a good job at making that niche obvious so people don't have the wrong expectations?
As an individual, am I being overly abrasive in certain circles and leading people to want to troll me?
As well as the obvious, is my stuff actually shitty?
Whatever the intent, it's always an extra data point, some additional information that can help me improve if I look at it correctly.

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If I eat a cake and it's horrible, I can say that it's awful but I might not have the expertise to go into exactly why it's horrible, because I'm not a chef


You cant' simply taste a cake and suddenly realize that it's awful. You can bite a cake and then puke because it's too sweet/salty and then say to the chef that it's too damn sweet or salty. Or, you can take a bite and brake your tooth of some piece of metal that somehow got in there, and then say that "This is awful! There's a piece of metal in muh cake! I'm so fat!". See, reasons.

I never review anonymously so I'm not sure what this ad homiem attack is supposed to achieve.

Well sorry, it's just that you said:

What I like about the idgames archive is that the ability to write your thoughts on the wad anonymously

Huh? You or not you, it still smells like inability to discuss something with people, smells like basement.

The author gets his chance to say what he wants in the text file.

Pff ha ha ha, what's next, telegraph? Doves? And all because someone is too lazy to implement normal messaging...

It's almost as if doomworld's idgames archive frontend comes with the sort of useful features like rating

But it's not useful, it's broken.

What's the border for you, what is too low score for you to not download?

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Is there something offensive about my stuff?
Is something I'm doing niche, and am I doing a good job at making that niche obvious so people don't have the wrong expectations?
As an individual, am I being overly abrasive in certain circles and leading people to want to troll me?


And why can't they tell you the reason directly? And since they didn't, are you sure it's not you imagining a problem because "OMG critics!"?

As well as the obvious, is my stuff actually shitty?

If there are shitty things, along with craptastic, retarded and uncool (look at all these categories!), how can you tell what's shitty and what's not? Damn, i would like someone to write down the order of thoughts when someone is deciding what is shitty and what is not.

And how can you tell if your map is shitty AFTER someone's comment, if you couldn't do it BEFORE said comment? Again, looks like simple anxiety.

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Look, there are good reviews and there are bad reviews. You've got to trust most of us are able to tell the difference in quality from one to the other. Simply allowing you to bark back at reviewers won't make comments like "it's shit" less likely. If anything, they may increase in frequency.

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Harmata said:

Any arguments? No arguments, no offense, but no respect either.

His argument is that no good can come of free commenting on /idgames. Instead of one retard saying "it's shit" and being done with it, the pages will fill up with idiotic and ultimately pointless flamewars. Your tirade in this thread is a perfect example, as he said.

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I mean this in the least douche-bag way possible but I really don't see what the big deal is. I mean, the whole purpose of the "Wads and Mods" forum is to discus wads and mods and to get your constructive criticism there.

Am I missing something? I honestly do think I might be out of the loop here.

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Harmata said:

You cant' simply taste a cake and suddenly realize that it's awful. You can bite a cake and then puke because it's too sweet/salty and then say to the chef that it's too damn sweet or salty. Or, you can take a bite and brake your tooth of some piece of metal that somehow got in there, and then say that "This is awful! There's a piece of metal in muh cake! I'm so fat!". See, reasons.

I offered a pretty common metaphor (I don't need to be a chef to tell you your cake tells like shit) because you seem to find it awfully difficult to understand simple concepts. Also there are lots of reasons why a cake may be bad beyond "it's filled with dangerous objects" that take a lot of nuance to understand, like texture, consistency, flavours that the eater may not be able to describe because they've never tasted that ingredient before. If the chef wants a detailed useful description of what's wrong, they should ask an expert.

Harmata said:

Well sorry, it's just that you said:

Huh? You or not you, it still smells like inability to discuss something with people, smells like basement.

All you had to do to understand that the sentence was posted in a general context was to read the next series of 9 words in the sentence you rather conveniently forgot to quote. Even if somebody does have social anxieties, it's still beneficial to allow them to have a way to leave a rating. Not just in the internet but also in real life it's very easy for cliques, fanboyism and emotional attachment to develop that leaves many people unable to leave any sort of comment without being hounded and shouted down that can render these sorts of crowd sourced rating systems worthless. Leaving no opportunity for this to happen kills that dead.

Harmata said:

Pff ha ha ha, what's next, telegraph? Doves? And all because someone is too lazy to implement normal messaging...

How many times do you need to be told that this isn't supposed to be a place for two way discussion? If you want two way discussion there are all sorts of places you can go to, such as this forum. I hope you didn't think that when I said the author could say what they wanted in the text file you thought I meant that that was a way for them to respond to reviews...

On your final point for what it's worth I think the archive would work better with a simple thumbs up/down system rather than 0-5 stars but this discussion isn't really on topic.

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Melon said:

How many times do you need to be told that this isn't supposed to be a place for two way discussion?

But it would be neat if it was or if there were some place like that. And no, forum threads is a bad alternative. You have to specifically look for them. You can't respond in the old threads because of a stupid rule and have to clutter the forum by creating new ones instead. Having one centralized page for discussing a wad would be so much more convenient.

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Simply allowing you to bark back at reviewers won't make comments like "it's shit" less likely.

Why can they are allowed to bark and i'm not allowed to bark back? Why "What a shitty map" is allowed but "It's still better than you mum" from author of the said map is not?

Fun fact, if someone ELSE will respond to "It's shit" with "It's still better than you mum", it will stay there. No, really, my responses to shitposting were deleted, but comments under Blood on marble are still filed with some randumb comments. What the hell is this? Did he just saw same IP and deleted my posts because of that? Well excuuuuuuse me, /idgames Archive, it's not my fault i didn't know that "It's not intended for a back-and-forth discussion or debate", i thought it's just a lousy comment system circa 1994. Cause sure looks like that.

Or he has a problem with me personally? This is why he deleted my responses but left other not map related stuff, and of course, the precious comments like "The map has a crusher, 0/5"? What a quality "review", 0/5 rating just for one element in one place on the map. Yep, the map is pure 0, nothing else to see or do there. Is someone tired of some type of monster? Your map has that type? Catch that 0/5 vote, mate, even tho you stated that it's [that type of monster] map in the readme! And shhhhh!

tl; dr; the commenting and rating systems at /idgames Archive don't work, some people like shit thrown at them, mods without control suck.

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Harmata said:

Fun fact, if someone ELSE will respond to "It's shit" with "It's still better than you mum", it will stay there.

Not always.

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His argument is that no good can come of free commenting on /idgames. Instead of one retard saying "it's shit" and being done with it, the pages will fill up with idiotic and ultimately pointless flamewars. Your tirade in this thread is a perfect example, as he said.

Ugh, i didn't require arguments for "no good can come of free commenting on /idgames.", i required arguments for "your comments here are stupid", which you didn't provide too. Also, i didn't have a tirade, my first post here was a response to another post. My tirade was in that "Oh it's so not nice" thread, you slowpoke.

My problem is that mods allow comments like "It's shit" already but then say that "It will become only worse if mappers will be able to respond". YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW IDGAMES, stop protecting us from shit if you are already breeding it.

Also there are lots of reasons why a cake may be bad beyond "it's filled with dangerous objects" that take a lot of nuance to understand, like texture, consistency, flavours that the eater may not be able to describe because they've never tasted that ingredient before.

You can't say that the cake lacks an ingredient if you never tried that ingredient. If you did try it, you should have no problems telling that. Good God mang...

Even if somebody does have social anxieties, it's still beneficial to allow them to have a way to leave a rating.

Sure, lets base our educational system on needs for mentally disabled or people with one arm. You're just want to have the last word, it happens on the Internet.

I hope you didn't think that when I said the author could say what they wanted in the text file you thought I meant that that was a way for them to respond to reviews...

Still doesn't justify the broken systems.

You ignored my "rating border" question.

I mean this in the least douche-bag way possible but I really don't see what the big deal is. I mean, the whole purpose of the "Wads and Mods" forum is to discus wads and mods and to get your constructive criticism there.

We're talking about commenting and rating system of /idgames Archive.

Not always.

Too often.

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Harmata said:

Why can they are allowed to bark and i'm not allowed to bark back? Why "What a shitty map" is allowed but "It's still better than you mum" from author of the said map is not?

You have a penchant for engaging in artless, horrible dialogue on the internet. Which is perfectly fine. To each his own, whatever floats your boat and stuff.

But I really don't think /idgames' comments system needs to be made any worse than it already is.

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Ding ding ding! We have a winner.

And Harmata, stop misunderstanding people on purpose. Your posts are literate enough that I know you can't be that obtuse.

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i think harmata is a staunch believer in the status quo of /idgames and intentionally goes full retard to show us the horrors of back and forth conversations in the review area. it's a great service he does for doom and he should get a custom title for it. the only other explanation i have involves small bits of silica in his lady parts.

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You have a penchant for engaging in artless, horrible dialogue on the internet.

What an ass (as in animal) you are DoomUK, i wrote two giant posts with arguments why it is wrong to put DNF and DN3D on the same level, you completely ignored those arguments, called DN3D a trashy game and called me a troll. You are ignoring what i say without ignoring my posts, because they still entertain you. I don't want to talk to you again, ever.

Also, totally awesome mod that brings the DNF shown in 2001 trailer to DN3D just came out, check it out: http://www.moddb.com/mods/duke-nukem-forever/downloads/duke-nukem-forever-2013-10-version

And Harmata, stop misunderstanding people on purpose.

God i wish i could punch you in the nads. No replies till tomorrow people, i'm going to bed.

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Harmata said:

... No, really, my responses to shitposting were deleted...

Oh, ok. Now I see whats going on here.
...
Personally I wouldn't mind seeing something akin to what schwerpunk suggested. It would keep the silly squabbles out of the reviews and would fix the problem that Vermil mentioned.

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