Castle Paradox

Rinku · Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 690

i just want to point out that this grading system certainly isn't intended as a tool for some to feel superior to others, as iblis and others said/implied. there is a difference between a) pride in knowing that you are one of the better game designers and b) thinking that makes you a better person.

there are plenty of good people who aren't good game designers (like jsangspar and harlock, for instance, and maybe gilbert) and plenty of people who are good game designers but not good people (like that guy who made fat frog).

but the idea i meant is to see yourself as improving and to get a more objective idea of how good you are at game design. i like the suggestion that instead of average grades, or next to them, would be something like:

F average - rank=releases games before they are ready
D average - rank=cuts corners
D+ average - rank=beginner
(and so on to)
A+ average - rank=better than miyamoto and kojima combined

other than that i agree with most things that cn, jsh, and gizmog have said.

(actually i'm happily impressed at cn's response, at first i didn't totally like castle paradox because of what i saw as its community-orientation as opposed to game design orientation, but it's actually now in some ways better than zant was.)

RPGCreations · **E Pluribus Unum** Joined: 18 May 2003 Posts: 345

After reading Chaos Nyte's words, there is only one problem I see about this system in the works. The majority of reviews I have read are 'wish-wash' and subjective. The review grading standards have been random, 'the game had such and such and it wasn't fun, F', verse 'the game had such and such and it wasn't fun, but at least it had something, C'. I would like to know if you plan to set review standards, who you will allow to review, and if your standards will be objective, based on fact, not opinion pieces.

I and Minnek argued a while ago about the possibility of a 'best game' for the ohrrpgce, which quickly turned into another fact VS opinion argument, with him taking the stance of everything being relative based on perception-reality, not absolute reality. As a game designer, whatever review he could write based on his beliefs is null and void. Setu-Firestorm is similar, and appears to be very respected amongst the caslte familiars, yet he has kicked me from the irc channel several times for no rational reason I can discern, save for he might disagree with the side I took against Minnek mentioned earlier. I come to discuss game design and I get jokes and kicks. Will someone like him be allowed to review in this system?

I would very much like to know the system's current design. For the past few months I have been unsure if I even wanted to have a CP jade release. There are less than 20 people I know from the ohrrpgce that I would like to send a copy to, you included. This system sounds like a good deciding factor, making the choice to release or not an easy one.
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Rinku · Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 690

i agree with rpgcreations / charbile but will add this: of course you'll have bad reviewers who don't finish the game or who don't think about the grade given, but reviews have to go through a screening process by the moderators, who don't let just any review in. they could weed out the more wishy-washy reviews. eventually only the good reviewers will get reviews through. (and this is off topic, but i agree about setu, he seems to kick people out of paradoxlounge a lot).

even the best reviewers can't be totally accurate in reviewing games; i actually now favor a review system without grades and cardinal numbers, based on ordinal numbers -- first, second, third, and so on. so if i review a game i would say 'this is among my top 10 favorite ohr games' or 'this is in my top 100, but not my top 10' or 'this is definately my second favorite ohr game'. i tried to do that with septaweekly using a logarithmic scale, where A means 'top 1%', B means 'top 10%', C means 'middle 50%' and so on. i think this is a more objective way, because you aren't saying 'this game is 100 parts out of 100 parts good' you are instead saying 'this game is top notch, in many of its aspects no game surpasses it, it's 1st among all the games i've played'.

i'm not saying that you should totally reform the review system, of course, but i'm just saying that other grading systems may be better. the reason cp uses grades and not numbers at all is possibly because it was inspired by ohr monthly doing so. but perhaps A could be specified to be the equivalent of 'in the top 1% of ohr games' and A+ could also mean 'it achieved what it was going for perfectly, no game surpasses it for what it is'. this type of grading system doesn't make it less, but more, objective, because it's more of a fact that a game is 'the best i've ever played' than it is that a game is '100 out of 100 points'.
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Komera · Joined: 07 Feb 2003 Posts: 711

If people are still offended by the grades system as proposed by Rinku, I do have a small suggestion which is partially inspired by KaZaA. As those people who have used KaZaA will know, users are given ranks by participation level which only reflects the user's most recent week of participation. My proposal: the user's grade reflects the average grade of the last 5, 10, whatever number reviews. That way if a new person uploads a horrible game and gets a horrible review, his grade would be low... and as he starts making better games and more reviews are made... the horrible reviews are eventually pushed out of the quey and the grade improves.

Of course this would be highly dependant of people writing a lot of reviews.
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Iblis · Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2003 11:32 am Post subject:

An idea for standardizing reviews: The reviewer doesn't give the game a letter grade. He/she still puts in all the scores and stuff, but the CP staff would read the review and assign a letter grade based on the content of the review. This way, the letter grades could all be based on one standard system of criteria.

I also like Komera's idea.
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Setu_Firestorm · Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2003 1:47 pm Post subject:

Yeah, I've been meaning to get back with you Char.

I realized I came across as a real jerk, even though Minnek and I were just messing around. I lost count of how many times I've been kicked from #paradoxlounge just from everyone in the room having fun "pushing the red, green, and purdy buttons."

I was messing with you, man. I don't dislike you or Fyre. But I wanted to apologize for coming across as a butthead.
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Eggie · Joined: 12 May 2003 Posts: 904

Yeah, but say someone makes a crap-ass game, and then they have a bad title, then everyone will think that all their games suck, and never support them. That bad title will stick with them.

LeRoy_Leo · Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2003 7:29 am Post subject:

Good point Eggie. I thought something similar, but I didn't know how to say it. I think grades should rate participation rather than game quality. (Like what someone said) However, that would make even good game designers look bad... I don't think this was a good idea. Grades would make a wrong impression of someone. You can't judge a book by it's cover, or rather you can't judge a game designer by it's over all grade/rating. Neutral

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Eggie · Joined: 12 May 2003 Posts: 904

My point has been told.

madhatter · Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2003 12:42 pm Post subject:

If a tool that allows one's grade to be hidden so nobody can view it, then I think everyone'd (does that contraction exist?) be happy. Those who want it to be shown can show it, and those who don't want it to be shown don't show it.

Captain Action · Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2003 4:42 pm Post subject:

Well, Eggie, if you're afraid that people will shun you because you have a bad track record of making games, then you should strive to make the best games you can possibly make to avoid unfavorable scores. If you have a habit of just throwing crap together without putting any thought into what you're composing and calling it a game, then I doubt people will think very highly of you anyways.

I second Komera's idea, as it reflects a person's current game designing abilities rather than their past performance. If a person started off in the community as a stereotypical "Newbie", with mindless and boring games that nobody wanted to play but soon realized the error of his or her ways and went through an enlightenment of sorts and began making S-class games of commercial quality, it would be unfair to said game designer to have a C overall grade when he or she clearly deserves an A.
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Shadowiii · **It's been real.** Joined: 14 Feb 2003 Posts: 2460

But that still requires a lot of reviews to be written, which doesn't really happen. I mean, we have over 100 now, but we still have bairly made a mark on the gamelist (plus quite a few are reviews of the same game from different perspectives). However, if this WAS to be implimented, I still believe that the score should go away after a period of time.

BUT, it is still possible for me to get on there and review a game released a while back (like my reviews of And, Never Go West. Me, etc.) which could taint a score. I mean, I could produce some crap now, have no one review it, release something amazing later, and then have someone review BOTH giving one and F and one a B.

Maybe it could be by game update date, but that feature hasn't even been implimented into the game list...

GAH. Anyway, none of this can happen until the review problem is fixed, so I guess it is just speculation anyway.
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Eggie · Joined: 12 May 2003 Posts: 904

jabbercat · Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2003 1:53 pm Post subject:

what would fenrir be? SA++++?

Shadowiii · **It's been real.** Joined: 14 Feb 2003 Posts: 2460

FFH's average is C+, actually. Honestly, few people review his games, which is too bad. I haven't reviewed Timestream Saga yet because I haven't even gotten close to beating it.
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