The ingratiation part is ridiculously true, i've had people rate my maps high and instantly stop when I would not do the same for them (because I did not think the map deserved it). The amount of times I have talked about a concept or map and have had people try to shoehorn themselves into helping is absurd, it's like the dudes who clean your car without asking then get pissed when you don't pay them or want their help. Honestly a lot of the reason I do not participate is not because of insecurity, but because I do not feel like having day long conversations with people about why a map they made of floorblocks sucks ass, or why I don't think their 20th forerunner map is unique, they take it too personally and its a waste of time. Id rather ignore the trash then actually help because not only are some of them so uninterested and un-invested in Halo its a waste of time to spread knowledge, but because a good amount act like forging is a job and that they are perfect (everyone has potential to suck sometimes) , they also tend to not do a damn ounce of critical thinking and self research and instead of thinking why something is bad,or how to fix something, they confront you with annoying ass questions in conversations. I gave one kid advice and they contacted me everyday for help instead of thinking, yeah no thanks ill just ignore forge maps then deal with that. I only feel inclined to give reviews if its a map I am interested in and in a position to review (minigames, infection), and most importantly I know the forger is smart enough to understand what I am saying and use what he thinks would help the map. A lot of it has to do with dealing with the person you gave the review too, or a map being so utterly bad it feels like a waste of time. Why would I spend time on a review if someone couldn't even take the time to make it visually appealing. TLDR-Its not because of insecurity, its because the aftermath of often dealing with a forger is annoying, it takes a good amount of effort, and the creator will often think you are full of **** anyways.
Well it seems that the entirety of Forgehub wants one thing and War wants another. Sadly, I think we already know who is going to get what they want. (It's not us)
Maybe there should be a requirement to post a certain number of reviews before you could upload your own map? In order to be given access to uploading your own ****, you would be required to submit map reviews for 3 or 4 different forgers, something like that. Forgers could have some kind of "verified" or "unverified" status, sort of like pornhub. Butts would be hurt, complaints would be had, and membership would drop, but the people who remain would be those who are actually participating. Members who haven't reviewed other maps could still sit in the forum section and whine about problems with the Halo 5 sandbox, like they already do, and the maps section could be reserved for people who care about the current maps. Would be a win-win right? On a serious note, however, one addition I would like to see to the map review section is a drop down with one of two options - "I have played this map" or "I have looked at this in forge". I think that one of the reasons people don't write full reviews is that if you've just looked at a map in forge, then it feels like you aren't qualified to fully review it. So what do you do in order to overcome that? You get a lobby together and play a game. In order to do that you now have to find 7-15 other people to play a legitimate match on it. How long is that gonna take? Do you happen to be at your xbox in a party at that specific moment? Probably not. So what you do is you shelve the idea of reviewing that particular map for another time. It gets pushed to the back of your mind and maybe you DO intend on putting it in a lobby later and giving it the time of day. But you don't because there is a whole slew of logistical obstacles to overcome before you actually played it. The other way around this is to just post a review of the map as if you've played it, even though you haven't. How many reviews are like this? How many people have just looked at something in forge, and then rated it based solely on that? I suspect it is most of the reviews on the site. So what if we removed the stigma associated with posting forge pass through reviews by just acknowledging if the reviewer has played the map or looked at it in Forge? Being good at Forge is about level design, it is also about art, and it also about just working within the confines of the program and the object budget, etc. If someone leaves a review based just on looking at it in Forge, that's fine with me. Maybe they can offer some suggestions on the art pass, or how to optimize to help with frame rate. A review based on a pass through in forge is completely valid, as long as it is known that the review is given in that context. As a forger, I also want to know what context my map is being reviewed in. If a written was designated as "I have played this map" or "I have looked at it in forge", then I would be able to better judge the feedback that was given and the review would be more constructive. Personally, I'm kind of a crappy Halo player and I never feel like I am qualified to talk about certain elements of gameplay. I join testing lobbies and get trashed for it all the time. Sometimes I try to give feedback about maps in that context and I know I'm not being taken seriously because I'm not that great at the game. However, I've built plenty of maps that have had frame rate problems, and I've solved those problems. I work professionally as a filmmaker and can dish out legitimate advice on lighting and aesthetics. It would be in your best interest to listen to my feedback in those specific areas, and take it with a grain of salt in other areas. What stops me from giving reviews most of the time is the feeling that I'm obligated to have opinions about things I'm not qualified to criticize, and so I feel like it's not my place to post a review without having a lot of experience playing on the map. Then, although I intend to play all these great maps and give feedback, I just don't get around to it or it gets pushed to the back of my perma-stoned brain. Just my personal take on it.
i feel like the solution was already mentioned a few pages back and anything extra is just going to make it complicated. 1. Reviews should not be anonymous. That will increase drive by posting and confuse the author when they receive conflicting feedback. Accountability is indeed important. 2. Reviews should not be "more thorough" in the sense that you give the person more options. They should instead be simpler and more concise and do more with less. 3. Requiring people to review maps before they post one is dumb. Nobody should be required to leave a review, and most of those people are unlikely to be familiar with level design. I feel that a binary system for upvoting and downvoting along with the split into separate categories for "judging" would accomplish that just fine. All the bases are already covered. If you want to use "Excellent, Fair, Needs Work" for those categories instead of 5 stars, that could work fine as well.
The part about requiring reviews was a joke. But I strongly agree with points 1 and 2. What I was getting at was just a check box for I have played it vs I have looked at it. That little bit of context would be helpful IMO.
People who want to review maps "quickly" shouldn't be empowered to do so. That almost guarantees that they didn't play it or even look at it thoroughly and are just scrolling through the page to click on something that catches their eye. The tags are fine in theory provided they work alongside a self sustaining system. If you want something more specific than a star rating, you can use the tags for each category. So the Art category would have the "Too Dark" tag, and the Performance category would have the "heavy FPS drops" tag. I'm starting to think that a typed review should be required though. --- Double Post Merged, Jul 10, 2017 --- I like the check box idea. I forgot to mention it when i typed that post.
Yes. This tag and star system seems convoluted. If you want to provide reviewers with sub-categories for uniform composition so be it, but reviews should be reviews. If a rating must be attached let it be binary.
That comment wasn't aimed at you. It was a general comment. I can see how you misinterpreted it though since I was quoting your post. I can't ignore the fact that that was a pretty hostile response from you though. Oh, for sure some people have used reviews as a tool for ingratiation. However, it's certainly not the only reason or the primary reason people collectively submit reviews. There are many reasons to submit reviews. Some of them are self serving, others are selfless. Sometimes even self serving acts can be of value to others, so I don't like to totally discount them (just my perspective that I don't expect anyone to share). Saying that nobody really cares about helping the community is a gross overstatement...and what right have you to claim you know anything about another persons intent after scolding me for assuming something about your comfort zone? I can truly only speak for myself in saying that I have no interest in being friends with the most talented forgers. I've been entirely focused on two things...or 1 thing in two forms. I've been focused on learning. Virtually all of my time within this community has been spent trying to learn things myself, or trying to help other people learn. The friendships I've developed over the years have been with people that were definitely not considered amongst the best forgers at that time. Xandrith, who's by far the person I've been closest to in this community, was essentially not known by anyone in the forge community when we began interacting. That interaction resulted in a friendship, but was always primarily focused on learning and sharing ideas. Go ahead and ask these other talented forgers how much time I've spent with them in lobbies, and how much of that time I've spent trying to develop friendships with them. I've, generally speaking, had no interest in finding friends (though I have found friends). I believe that anyone who wants to be involved in the community should be, and anyone who doesn't shouldn't. Pretty straight forward. I wouldn't want anyone to participate that doesn't want to, so I can't agree that I should want everyone to participate. There's nothing wrong with being rewarded for involvement. Making that reward overt isn't necessary though. There are plenty of non-overt rewards (some of which I've already mentioned). My general opinion is that if someone requires an overt reward, then they are participating for the wrong reason. A person that requires that would be someone who's opinion I wouldn't trust. I see no reason to incentivize reviews, because I feel it encourages people to participate for the wrong reason; it encourages them to participate for the public reward, and not for the learning opportunity it offers both the reviewer and the forger, or the opportunity it creates to advance the overall quality of the work this community produces. You seem to be completely contradicting yourself also. On the one hand you seem to look down on people who submit review for ingratiation purposes, while on the other hand suggesting that people should be rewarded for submitting reviews. I've explained why I think the overt reward is worse. I'm curious...why do you think submitting a review for ingratiation purposes is worse? Well thank you for lumping all of us people into one. I am not a collective. I've always welcomed and respected everyone's opinion. If you're seeing us as a cumulative entity and not as individuals, reconsidering that perspective might be beneficial.
You had me at Pornhub. You don't have to be good at the game to understand gameplay. If they don't value your feedback, that's their choice. And probably their loss.
@xzamplez you stole my line! He had me at PornHub too. Back to business...I really appreciate the feedback and am glad to have everyone's opinion on this here. I know it may seem a bit complicated to have a four section star reviews section but removing the requirement for 'text reviews' alleviates some complication to this process. This balances out our current system where users are forced to write text based reviews. The tagging system is not required and should not be confused as a "review". These are going to be helpful for filtering maps and establishing data on both the user and creator end. Imagine these tags as Discord style emoji's at the foot of your map page. Its not going to affect your map score at all.
I don't agree that people should be able to leave reviews without explaining themselves. At most, a "Highly Recommend" button because all you're doing is giving your approval. Not just dogging the map without explanation.
Yeah, I'm not too hurt by it really. Just an observation. I think a tagging system would be less convoluted than it appears. On the backend, building all the options and categories would be a good amount of effort, but to the person leaving the review it would be a matter of selecting from several multiple choice answers, basically. On the one hand it seems like more work than writing a review, but it also requires way less thought. Another thing that I think is worth mentioning is that a written review is one thing on a web browser, but an entirely different ask of people on mobile. Typing stuff on your phone sucks, and is frustrating enough to make you abandon writing a detailed review from that device. Any time an extra hurdle is created to prevent someone from doing something, people are gonna fall off. What if ratings and reviews were two separate things? Perhaps with different weights in terms of the map's overall star rating. You could leave a simple review by rating the map 1-5 in several categories, or you could leave a written review. Written reviews could be considered more significant and affect the total score more than a simple rating. I think it's true that feedback is much more helpful when it is written out and requires the reviewer to put thought into it, but at the same time if there isn't an 'easy' way for people to affect the overall ranking of a map, then the scores become less meaningful. If someone posts a map and it gets two 10/10 reviews from friends, everybody knows that means nothing in terms of the quality of the map, but it still appears with a 5 star rating. That's the bigger problem that needs to be solved, IMO. If you want in-depth feedback, it's always gonna be better to go into a lobby and show it off or run it by people whose opinion you already trust. I think legitimate feedback is best when it's part of a conversation or 'face to face' encounter, not written online. I don't think the problem here is the quality or scarcity of people's opinions, it's the fact that if you're a noob sometimes you make a map and literally no one comments on it AT ALL. Because writing a review requires so much more effort than just saying "yes this is cool" or "no this sucks", no one takes the time to do it. When you realize that the amount of comments determines its 'hotness", and that getting any review at all is basically an accomplishment in itself, then it seems like an impossible mountain to climb sometimes. The site and review system should be designed to make it easy to share opinions and to encourage new users to participate, above all else. I'm for anything that makes it more accessible.
People don't like the 5 star system, so you want to make a 4 category < 5 star system? Then on top of that a 12 option system to the side? This just became the least intuitive thing I could imagine. Maps should have a recommend button in place of the like button, and that is IT. This allows maps to trend, and be extremely easy for users to contribute to the process. If they would like to elaborate their thoughts, they do it in the comment section where it actually belongs, not a separate review tab that weights the map with terrible opinions. Not to mention this would extremely simplify the community favorites selections each month.
As a reviewer I want write out my thoughts, as a forger I want to be able to read people's words. I think it's a shame this site has gotten away from written feedback and WIP threads. In my experience people in lobbies are either spouting out their thoughts and all you get is complaints about spawns or intentional design decisions that make them uncomfortable, or they are afraid to say what they really think and are really wishywashy and unhelpful. Insight that really matters to me comes from the thoughtful reflection of written advice. And I'm trying this on my phone write now--its not that hard. Maybe this system will make it better for players but I doubt it. As a player I see myself searching for the best 4v4 room based maps. I don't need to know about the lighting and the theme, I just want to know which maps are better. And if I do care how it looks there are pictures. For reviewing (ie feedback) no multiple choice test will replace, or even measure up to a sliver of well thought out and reasoned critique. For rating it's simple, do you enjoy this map, would you recommend it to a friend? Yes or No. Like i said--if you want to make a form with headings like Art and Layout for written reviews so there is a constant format for forgers to weed through--so be it, but I am not interested in doing a 343 style survey on my friends' forge maps, nor am I interested in reading the results from one of my maps. Obviously I'm not participating now, but with this tag and star system you are proposing I'd be more likely to ignore the review and rating system all together and just leave a comment.
This is no different than the current system. I dislike the current system because it's ambiguous. Right now there is nothing stopping me from going on Scavenger and leaving a 1 star review solely to take it down from a 10.0 average. I don't think it's a 10/10 map, but the system has no way of quantifying that because it's based on arbitrary whims and personal preferences, and not a consistent template. All of the suggestions I've proposed would simply make it less ambiguous. Also, I disagree with those of you suggesting to make reviews more accessible. If people don't leave reviews because they "feel they don't matter" or "it's too much work", then I don't want them leaving reviews at all. Making it "easier" for them makes the feedback less valuable. If you can't articulate what you like or dislike about the map beyond what you see in screenshots, then you have no business contributing.
Suggesting that everything be removed except a reskinned like button is dumb. There are plenty of maps that I'm not going to "recommend" for XYZ, and you're expecting me or anyone else to comment why? There are also plenty of map posts that I "like" that I would not automatically "recommend", so I don't think you really believe that. Categories are not "unintuitive" provided they are straight-forward. There needs to be a consistent way for people filter their thoughts and for others to parse their feedback at a glance. I am more likely to comment if I "fill out a 343 style survey" because I don't have to explain myself in every single post.