Maybe there could be a free three month Premium Membership offered when a board gets approved by the review board.  I'm not saying this because I'm a designer and want more free membership time.  I don't need it. I'm on the five year plan and I'm working hard to give back my significant monetary winnings from board design competitions in the form of free memberships via tournaments. I think the site needs to support and encourage ALL designers.  Board production is down, and I don't think that bodes well for the site moving forward.

So I'm thinking that if there's a payoff for ANY board that gets approved, then perhaps the criteria for board quality can rise as well.  For this reason, I'm not advocating switching to a membership immediately.  There would need to be consensus by board reviewers regarding standards, etc. so the system wouldn't be abused or taken advantage of.  There are enough boards out there now that quantity is not as important as quality.

Just throwing the general idea out there.

I kind of feel like the contest is enough right now.  If you make a decent map, you're almost guaranteed to be in the prize money, certainly for the themed contest.

If anything, as a designer, what would encourage me the most is if more people played my maps.   That's a bit more complicated to encourage, but I think there are things that could be done.

The #1 thing that IMO would encourage players to try out new maps, is if there was an easy way to play unranked games on a map.  I think a lot of players don't want to try new maps because they know they are likely to lose their first few games.

Another thing that might help is improvements to the rating system.  As that could help players find maps they would like.  I think we could take a lot of cues from amazon here.  

• Amazon marks reviews as a "verified purchaser".   Our reviews should be marked as "Played N game(s) at time of review".  And even better if they are weighted a little.
• We should be able to vote on reviews "helpful/unhelpful"  Then reviews are sorted by most helpful & maybe weighted a bit extra & maybe an achievement for getting enough helpful votes on your reviews.
• Players who rate maps could get a "players who ranked maps like you, also liked these maps" sort of like "Customers who bought this also bought ...".

In addition I think there should be better "on boarding" for newbs.  Some helpful popups when you join (and triggered at specific moments down the road), a mentoring system., a way to "advertise" tournaments that have a prize attached. 

Ozyman wrote:

If anything, as a designer, what would encourage me the most is if more people played my maps.

Agreed. There are a large number of boards right now, probably 90% of which don't get played more than once a month, if that. Mostly, I feel like I see the same boards come up all the time in the games list. It's kind of not very motivating as a designer to pour a huge amount of time into a board just to have it collect dust on a shelf somewhere.

Now granted, it does provide a certain motivation to make a better board, one that is more popular and more enjoyable. But it's really difficult to get quality feedback from players that can provide designers the kind of information we need to make better boards. So I will second Ozy's call to improve the rating and review system -- there need to be more reminders to review, the system needs to be streamlined, and people need to be able to upvote or downvote reviews based on quality (and that upvoting/downvoting should be reflected in the reviews weight). All of these changes will encourage people to put more time and thought into their ratings and reviews rather than just, "It was ok, I played once and lost".

Kjeld wrote:

It's kind of not very motivating as a designer to pour a huge amount of time into a board just to have it collect dust on a shelf somewhere.

+1  - This is a big reason why lately I cannot get motivated to work on maps, and when I do I just want to do something simple.  Makes me so sad to spend 10s of hours getting a complicated map perfect and then it hardly gets played.

And although I think the reviews are big part of it, when I look back at ToS, and I feel like players there played a lot more variety of maps, and the review system there wasn't much (any?) better.  I really think being able to play unranked games is why players felt more comfortable branching out.

I don't know if Tom has a philosophical reason for not liking unranked games, because it seems like such an obvious thing to have.

Ozyman wrote:

And although I think the reviews are big part of it, when I look back at ToS, and I feel like players there played a lot more variety of maps, and the review system there wasn't much (any?) better.  I really think being able to play unranked games is why players felt more comfortable branching out.

There was no review system at Tos, was there? If you could hit the post button, it went live. If you put it up for sale, and it was crap, no one would buy it.  That said, there was probably more of a variety of maps for a number of reasons, one being that the 'standard' map was a joke. Apparently, the owners of the site were wary of law-suits.

I don't know if Tom has a philosophical reason for not liking unranked games, because it seems like such an obvious thing to have.

When the # of players was smaller, there was more of an argument for only having ranked games, but I agree that WG needs unranked games.  I even wonder that having only ranked games intimidates a good number of players and scares them away.

>There was no review system at Tos, was there? If you could hit the post button, it went live.

There was no board review system, but I was referring to players being able to review boards.  From what I remember a player could give a star rating (1-5) and write some text and that was it.

I hope Reich sees this thread. Cramchakle. The board rating system at that site was basically his favorite thing.

Ozyman wrote:

>There was no review system at Tos, was there? If you could hit the post button, it went live.

There was no board review system, but I was referring to players being able to review boards.  From what I remember a player could give a star rating (1-5) and write some text and that was it.

We should probable try to make a distinction between Review and Rating.

M57 wrote:

Ozyman wrote:

And although I think the reviews are big part of it, when I look back at ToS, and I feel like players there played a lot more variety of maps, and the review system there wasn't much (any?) better.  I really think being able to play unranked games is why players felt more comfortable branching out.

There was no review system at Tos, was there? If you could hit the post button, it went live. If you put it up for sale, and it was crap, no one would buy it.  That said, there was probably more of a variety of maps for a number of reasons, one being that the 'standard' map was a joke. Apparently, the owners of the site were wary of law-suits.

I don't know if Tom has a philosophical reason for not liking unranked games, because it seems like such an obvious thing to have.

When the # of players was smaller, there was more of an argument for only having ranked games, but I agree that WG needs unranked games.  I even wonder that having only ranked games intimidates a good number of players and scares them away.

I am certainly more cautious about playing a new board because of ranking.

Ozyman wrote:

I kind of feel like the contest is enough right now.  If you make a decent map, you're almost guaranteed to be in the prize money, certainly for the themed contest.

If anything, as a designer, what would encourage me the most is if more people played my maps.   That's a bit more complicated to encourage, but I think there are things that could be done.

The #1 thing that IMO would encourage players to try out new maps, is if there was an easy way to play unranked games on a map.  I think a lot of players don't want to try new maps because they know they are likely to lose their first few games.

 

Another thing that might help is improvements to the rating system.  As that could help players find maps they would like.  I think we could take a lot of cues from amazon here.  

• Amazon marks reviews as a "verified purchaser".   Our reviews should be marked as "Played N game(s) at time of review".  And even better if they are weighted a little.
• We should be able to vote on reviews "helpful/unhelpful"  Then reviews are sorted by most helpful & maybe weighted a bit extra & maybe an achievement for getting enough helpful votes on your reviews.
• Players who rate maps could get a "players who ranked maps like you, also liked these maps" sort of like "Customers who bought this also bought ...".

 

In addition I think there should be better "on boarding" for newbs.  Some helpful popups when you join (and triggered at specific moments down the road), a mentoring system., a way to "advertise" tournaments that have a prize attached. 

These all sound like great ideas! For the last bullet point you could also connect them with who favorited boards.

Ozyman wrote:

The #1 thing that IMO would encourage players to try out new maps, is if there was an easy way to play unranked games on a map.  I think a lot of players don't want to try new maps because they know they are likely to lose their first few games.

Another thing that might help is improvements to the rating system.  As that could help players find maps they would like.  I think we could take a lot of cues from amazon here.  

• Amazon marks reviews as a "verified purchaser".   Our reviews should be marked as "Played N game(s) at time of review".  And even better if they are weighted a little.
• We should be able to vote on reviews "helpful/unhelpful"  Then reviews are sorted by most helpful & maybe weighted a bit extra & maybe an achievement for getting enough helpful votes on your reviews.
• Players who rate maps could get a "players who ranked maps like you, also liked these maps" sort of like "Customers who bought this also bought ...".

Played N games and variants has been suggested before.  Rating the Rater is a little weird, and while I don't dislike like the idea of a N people found this helpful/unhelpful feature, I don't think it's necessary. For the most part, I find the ratings of my boards to be quite detailed and would say most would fall in the "helpful" category, even the more critical ones.  It's pretty easy to sus them out without a 'helpful/unhelpful system in place. What concerns me more are the rogue - Two words/two stars ratings.   A la.. "It sucks"  But in my experience these hit very infrequently, maybe 5% to 10% of the time, so..

I believe I proposed some time ago an ever-so-slightly more complex throw-out-the-outliers system, which would keep all of the written ratings on the boards, BUT the calculated mean would not include an equal # of top and a bottom ratings.

Games 1-20 throw out 2, 21-40 throw out 4, etc..

 This would mean that a board would not get an average rating until it has received three reviews, which seems reasonable.

If we wanted people to rate board more, I think putting a link on the game page would encourage them to do so. 

I know I review boards in spurts, because I have to try hard to say something intellegent. and I'm not always up for saying something that matters,

but I would certainly click on a (# of stars out of ten) if it was on the splash screen from the board, or even built into the (you won!) dialogue, or somewhere in player.  (you know, like netflix has, where you just click on the star)

I have been active in trying new boards and some of my favorites will remain perpetually on my games list. How does rating a board help it get played more? Is there some kind of notification that is posted on a community wall? If you want an old board to start getting more attention then I think it is up to the veteran players to start games on them. This site doesn't give too much incentive to dig up an old board partly because those boards already have their rankings filled high and tight. So the action remains in the new and most popular boards.

Ancient Isles remains as my favorite map (I will get around to writing a review now that I know it's important). If we could get some more maps with similar game play I would definitely promote their play.

Abishai wrote:

 How does rating a board help it get played more?

On the Boards page you can filter by Popularity or Rating, but I doubt that most people do this. The Icons are not really clear/obvious enough.

i too wish there was more variety in the open games. when i have the time i go and create a bunch, but that's bit a bit hard to come by lately (i've even fell to the single digits in live games). 

i've oft wanted to take the time to go write a review/rating on each board, but like ratsy says, sitting down and doing an intelligent review/rating is daunting. i just need to start doing it. BUT it doesn't do anything other than give the map maker a warm fuzzy. the reviews/ratings don't help the general masses pick out a different board. 

The 'home' page at least has the latest board designs that go live, so they might get a bit extra umph out of the gate.

i kinda think we should cull the boards a bit (needs a special 'review' team to do that though i think) if we pared down the number, maybe we get more of the better less played boards more visibility.

it would be interesting to hear tom's POV -- does he see (or care much about) similar issues to what some of us are seeing? does he see others that we're not seeing? other things that are more of a concern for him? 

weathertop wrote:

i kinda think we should cull the boards a bit (needs a special 'review' team to do that though i think) if we pared down the number, maybe we get more of the better less played boards more visibility.

I agree with this 100%.  A number of boards are just not that good either because of graphics or play-ability (including many of mine).

I'd propose a two or three tier system of some sort where all boards are available but only the best boards are showcased.  Many details would have to be worked out on in this, but I think we have so many boards (of varying quality) that it is paralyzing for people to start playing them.

And I also think the rating system is not useful.  I have proposed in the past that at the end of every game a player is asked to provide a rating on the board.  (Similar to rating each transaction on e-bay.)  You could ask 3-4 questions on graphics, play-ability, etc.  I would have these requests come up as a "turn" in the players queue - so you would rank it every time you played the board.  (With enough ratings you could sort them based on scenario, number of players, fog level, etc.)  

Doing something like this would generate much more information about how players feel about each board.

Amidon37 wrote:

weathertop wrote:

i kinda think we should cull the boards a bit (needs a special 'review' team to do that though i think) if we pared down the number, maybe we get more of the better less played boards more visibility.

I agree with this 100%.  A number of boards are just not that good either because of graphics or play-ability (including many of mine).

I'd propose a two or three tier system of some sort where all boards are available but only the best boards are showcased.  Many details would have to be worked out on in this, but I think we have so many boards (of varying quality) that it is paralyzing for people to start playing them.

 

And I also think the rating system is not useful.  I have proposed in the past that at the end of every game a player is asked to provide a rating on the board.  (Similar to rating each transaction on e-bay.)  You could ask 3-4 questions on graphics, play-ability, etc.  I would have these requests come up as a "turn" in the players queue - so you would rank it every time you played the board.  (With enough ratings you could sort them based on scenario, number of players, fog level, etc.)  

Doing something like this would generate much more information about how players feel about each board.

+1 to all.  Many if not all of these suggestions in one form or another have been made in the past, so I think a re-examination of the larger issue to occur.  I've considered retiring a few of my boards, but then I'd probably lose one of my designer achievements, and I'm much too vain.

+1

weathertop wrote:

i kinda think we should cull the boards a bit (needs a special 'review' team to do that though i think) if we pared down the number, maybe we get more of the better less played boards more visibility.

 

I agree with this in principle and I've thought about suggesting it before. The board pool has become both a bit stagnant and unwieldy in my view. But every time I start thinking about it I run up against some problems I can't think of easy solutions to.

Example: If we were to 'retire' a board, it certainly wouldn't be fair to let people keep the CPs earned on that board, because those CPs would be forever locked in. But it wouldn't be fair to take them away, either - they earned them.

right asm - that's part of my "details to work out".  We do have some CP's floating around from retired boards and certainly don't want to make that worse.   (I have 1!)  That's why I was thinking "two tier".  Rankings are still on all boards, but only the best are readily available.

Could we have a special CP ranking just for "good" boards?  (I really don't want to re-open the "best ranking system" discussions though)  Any other ideas?