Option for a mod maker to respond on ID Games?

That... feels pretty reasonable, in my opinion.
Of course, you could just post your stuff'n'shit in WADs & Mods subforum for further discussion, bitching and pondering.

But some small author comment box for bugs missed in the release and maybe direction to new version (plus maybe give some advice if players are stuck, and, yes yes, flaming too if you wanna have that) could be nice addition, too.

i think the idgames reviews should have a rating

schwerpunk said:

I still believe most mappers here -- and probably elsewhere -- are receptive to more detailed, critical feedback, so I stand by my autothread subforum idea. It allows authors to respond (whether to thank, elucidate, or flame) to comments without cluttering up the review section of /idgames.

There would be abuses from authors that can't handle criticism, sure, but it wouldn't be infecting anything other than its own little subforum. And, worse case scenario, the thread can be sent to Post Hell.

I dont know. I'm not sure every mapper makes a release with the intention of getting people's thoughts on it. I think sending a PM to someone who has a negative opinion about your work will yield far better reults. And if they don't think so they can make the thread themselves. For example I've released a bunch of Happy Birthday wads to /idgames for two purposes:

1. To document my line of Doom mapping works on a website that isn't as fragile as a single hard drive or a file sharing service
2. To have a permanent link for the person who the birthday map was made for.

Going by my comments section for most of these releases, which were kinda evenly matched with people saying "40oz is a great mapper, keep it coming!" and people saying that I need to burn in hell for constantly flooding the archives with diarrhea, I can expect that some of my maps would erupt into massive flamewars between players, shooting back and forth at each other either commending or berating the most insignificant details of the map, and eventually burning into personal comments about me as a person.

If that subforum existed, I'm sure even after years of these wads being released, if I needed some source of reading material about how to improve my mapping, I'd probably retreat to that subforum to see what people are saying about my maps.

This goes doubly so for really notorious people in the Doom community, such as Erik Alm or Tormentor667 -- people who have widely known names among us Doomers. Their wads would probably still be receiving feedback to this day. I think it could be really discouraging for them (myself included) to look at what's being said about their levels, with the most recent posts being from a few people mildly defending the authors, versus another person exclaiming their putrid hate for the person just to get their point across.

This probably won't happen all the time, but I've observed forums and youtube comments sections long enough to somewhat predict where these types of things are going to go.

printz said:

"It's shit" comments mean that the player wasted their time playing a disappointing map. It's a hint.

It's a hint of communication breakdown. Being disappointed implies you expected something and got another thing instead. So why exactly were they disappointed? We (the mapper, the other readers browsing /idgames) need to know!

"I don't like your Sandy Petersen-style texturing." is better than "It's shit!" That tells other players (who do or don't like that aesthetic) if they should play or ignore that map.

"Too many killer ambushes, not enough health." is better than "It's shit!" Now only really skilled players will try to tackle this map, or at least the others will know to try lower skill level.

When you just post "It's shit!" that means you expect the whole world to read your mind, to figure out what displeased you so. But we're not going to go through that effort, you see... you're just not that important. So instead your comment gets filed into the "noise" department.

There's been a lot of discussion in the three weeks since my earlier comment but I still stand by what I originally said. It's not a comment section. The reviews are there to serve players, not authors. The subforum idea sounds quite good, though I don't really see why the newstuff review threads can't just be used (necrobumping rules don't apply to the news forum).

At most I'd support abolishing anonymous reviews and attaching names to reviews in a way that is more obvious. That would help cut back on bad / abusive reviews.

fraggle said:

The subforum idea sounds quite good, though I don't really see why the newstuff review threads can't just be used (necrobumping rules don't apply to the news forum).

Newstuff threads aren't about just one wad. It would be a mess. And it takes some effort to find the newstuff thread about the wad you're interested in, epsecially if it's some popular project that is mentioned often.

Not always, but I use anonymous comments a good deal, and not for one-word asshole comments. The advantage in them is that it makes us read each other's comments without thinking stuff like "X wrote this, X sucks, I'll ignore it" or "Y wrote this, Y is awesome, so it's got to be right".

They also encourage people who have nothing to do with the forums or those who don't want to bother signing up to to comment. Bloodshedder can already see IPs, so any anonymous abusers that don't use obfuscation are already identifiable.

The discussion unfortunately drifted toward "like a forum thread" versus "rating comments for the players". Partly this is due to how Vermil opened the discussion with "for a mod maker to respond", but I think the simpler possibility of an option to not rate while commenting is a good idea, without changing the general nature of the comments.

Memfis said:

Newstuff threads aren't about just one wad. It would be a mess.

It seems to work perfectly fine as is.

And it takes some effort to find the newstuff thread about the wad you're interested in, epsecially if it's some popular project that is mentioned often.

Given that the /newstuff tracking interface is obviously tied in to /idgames, it shouldn't be too difficult to add a TNC thread link to the /idgames pages.