Proper Rating Etiquette

I will admit, 3/5 does sound like a somewhat strange rating to give a mod, especially if you absolutely love the mod and you find no issues with the mod whatsoever. That said, I think 4/5 is perfectly normal, but that's just my opinion. I think people should give their honest thoughts about mod whether it's negative or positive. Just because a lot of people really love or hate mod doesn't mean you have to give it a low or high rating. You can give a mod the rating you want to give it.

 

Are you serious?

 

There are 3/5 ratings on that mod, but they had a modicum of legitimacy because they were complaining about something. Though, it was usually something unrelated to the mod, such as how the game's engine renders reflections.

 

Here is a perfect example of the mom ex boyfriend thing
This dude (cut pics so we can't see the name but it's 4 stars) gave me 4 stars cause he didnt had his road cruiser version of the Etk k series
I mean some rate are stupid and some are not

 

C'mon dude, don't discourage yourself.
I think it's pretty good, it reminds me of these coupe utilities (or "utes") that were made for the Australian market:

 

to add to what Aitorror is saying, I think another problem is people rating a mod before they download it (which I admit even I am guilty of in the past).
take my 200bx gavril V8 swap mod.
it was, to be realistic, terribly done, with that fire starting bug (caused by I think overstressed beams), and the engine not really mounted in the car, and no actual custom meshes at all.
and yet it has a perfect 5 star overall rating somehow, because people perhaps like the idea of the mod, and go ahead and rate it before they've checked for bugs or imperfections, which is what the review system should be for, if anything.

 

Just going to add my two cents... Basically I agree with what @Ai'Torror is saying.

Pretty much all mods are rated too highly. Mods which are worth 3-4 stars are rated 5. There is no constructive criticism, just meaningless praise to the author.
I'd much rather a 4 star review with some constructive criticism than a 5 star review saying 'nice'

Although, on the other hand, mods which deserve a high rating are getting 1-3 star reviews as the reviewer is demanding stupid stuff or there is an obvious bug on there end.

I do believe there should be a separate section with approved reviewer ratings which help users know which mod is worth downloading and let the modders know where to improve.

 

That's kinda like the restaurant scenario, where 5 stars is excellent and 1 star is run of the mill/just ok. IMO I think the academic system is a better match, where a perfect assignment is a 100%, a few minor mistakes is a 95, and then as you start to get into bigger and more inexcusable issues, start seeing C's and D's. Even where there's a few mistakes, you still get an A, and it just so happens that there's 5 academic letter grades and 5 stars

I appreciate your input and agree with there being too many reviews demanding dumb stuff or people not taking 30 seconds to clear their cache before a writing out a one star "omg broken!!!" review.

 

Short answer is you just cant fix people being absolute trolls on the web, its simply not fixable, but its just so dang funny at the same time for some of the horrific reviews and they make me laugh

 

Global ratings can be so biased they are borderline irrelevant as they are. As mentioned, there's rarely a middle ground, so reviews are generally faint praise (5 stars) or pure derision (1 star), with nothing inbetween.

Do we really need them? Right now it's way too easy to misuse the system in either direction.

Are players really that qualified to rate a mod with just a general 1-5 rating? Shouldn't various aspects of the product be evaluated, like, articulated reviews on certain e-commerce websites, where verified customers can rate overall quality of the product received, functionality, ease of use, packaging, adherence to description and so on?

Or... Steam has the Recommended/Not Recommended up-and-downvotes. Something similar wouldn't solve the issue at hand (people would still downvote out of spite, but (sic) "stupid people are inevitable") but it would be more coherent with the habits of the userbase of the repository. It would also produce a more credible and usable overall rating: a well-received mod would still be "highly recommended" even if it received a handful of baseless downvotes, while a couple 1-star reviews would skew the weighted average rating a lot more.

Rating system can either be made more refined to stimulate well-reasoned reviews, or simplified further to cater to the simple-and-quick habits of the playerbase. As it is, it's abusable and kinda meaningless.

 

Funny I find this here. Fine ok. I'll address this once and for all.

1. I gave multiple mods of yours great ratings, seems you only look at the negative one which isn't particularly bad anyway. go look at the 4 and 5 stars I gave ya while you're at it.

2. I gave your map 3 stars because it was plain, normally I'd give one star for this, most people would, and a one star rating would've been fair since you already got like 15 people's 5 star ratings for no real reason other than it being thematically fresh and/or "first" to make it. Anyone with mapmaking skills can whip up the exact same thing in like 10 minutes. A map with just sand is not hard to make.

2b. My reasoning if you didn't gather, but felt like I didn't need to elaborate on at all, till now. A plain map that literally takes 10 minutes to make is not something I get particularly hyped about. It's like browsing through a list of emails and everything's just spam. Naturally I want to remove the spam and see only the good shit. I feel like other mapmakers who put a lot of time, even days some of them (would you believe) into their maps are getting no traffic because of these low-effort mods that spam the feed. Is my 3 star rating justified yet?
Yes it sucks for everyone that my written opinion is your mod wasn't worth 5 stars to me. lol

3. Going onto that person who gave you a one-time 3 star rating for a map with just sand then to rate them bitterly negatively without even trying the mod, just to say your petty "fuck you" is only the most immature thing ever. Eye for an eye has never really worked for anyone even if you could think it's a good way to do things. It doesn't work out let me tell you. I've been that route before.

4. "but maybe he will know how it feels." You don't know how I feel, but I'll tell you, I knew how it would feel, because I've already felt that feeling many times before from having other things I make being "not good enough to please literally everyone". You're more than wasting time reaching into some void there.

5. FPS isn't an invalid criticism, at all. Especially when other maps do just fine. Yes my PC is arse by all standards of pc gaming today, but it's not like money and time grows on trees to buy a new one. I have a life to worry about too yknow. Not to forget there are people who don't know how they could improve their mod, until you tell them, so lighten up about it, for crying out loud. Most people I imagine are just trying to help here. Just take it for what it's intended to be: Constructive criticism.
--- Post updated ---

 

As a modder I personally don't give a damn about the majority of ratings anymore. It's just another status symbol that's completely useless most of the time, especially on the mod repository.
When the comment contains something I can use to potentially improve either the mod, my skills as a content creator, or both, then I'll take note of it. Otherwise, I ignore it.

If all you care about is a glorious 5 star rating and your status, you're not focusing on what really matters; Improving.
Ignore the entitled kids who gripe about everything in sight, and ignore the mindless praise of those who really don't care.

Sometimes constructive criticism will come as mean and nasty feedback, but don't let that discourage you. Figure out what they're pointing out and work on improving.



When I do give mod reviews, I do my best to be reasonable with them. I usually give an explanation as to why I took away stars, explain the various issues in detail, and provide advice on how to resolve said issues.

They're also set up usually following this model;
5; Absolutely flawless, almost dev-quality or better.
4; A few issues, could be polished but otherwise solid.
3; Multiple issues, generally feels unfinished, usable but not always enjoyable.
2; Poorly made, rushed, unenjoyable and sometimes even unusable.
1; Same as 2 stars but generally causes game-breaking issues, or doesn't even load in.

 

This is actually a good point. Most of us, we get into modding because we want to improve our games and fun right? So where did this whole ass idea that modding is all just a popularity contest come from? That we should all get 5 stars on everything no matter how bad it is? If you actually got 5 stars on everything, every single time, without fail, soon enough it would be devoid of meaning. Because way I see it, if you do modding for popularity, you're not focused enough to make your best work. You might make a few good mods, but you probably will spend a lot of time not getting it right. A lot of time. And you will feel disappointed that you didn't get it right. That will discourage you from making fun things in future. If you don't care about the ratings at all, not having that pressure, it frees the mind up to work and really focus on things you want to work on, which here is your skillset of course! Which just helps you git gud faster overall. Also, there's really little point to reach for popularity here as its not sustainable, it requires you establishing popularity then making ONLY quality mods every so often so your fanbase doesn't die out, and you get into this naive mindset where you become touchy when everything doesn't go as planned and/or you don't get that 5stars rating every time... That's the probably the upkeep of trying to maintain status here. I imagine it's not all that rewarding for even the best of modders, I reckon at some point they realize they don't do it for status. Perhaps a rather large part they do it for themselves to learn something new and/or to give a bit back to the community. Not doing modding right unless you do it for yourself. Popularity is an afterthought at best, it really is just a rather short-lived high.

I would actually say, instead of making that the primary change, allow users to change their ratings and also allow them to make a comment without a rating?

And allow people to use those emoticons on the actual post like racedepartment (IIRC) does, so you'd see the post has like 500 thumbsup, 333 hearts, 4 funny, 1 beer,
then underneath will be the same 5 star reviews,

that leaves the review section to be a little more flattering

2) No wait, screw that. New idea, ok here: Just get rid of the star system altogether!
Let the post emoticons be, but add new coloured tags: bugs(1 2 3 stars), broken, unfinished .
However a 3 star bug tag requires a comment of sufficient length (say 200 characters).
These tags can also be removed, as with new update to the mod will notify the tag placer so they can review the mod again, change or remove tags altogether, a bug tag can go green and awesome when it's fixed it'll be bug fixed, and the comment attached to that is moved.

People can bump up their ratings with either stars or emoticons, so that part doesn't change, sure, but if the mod has lots of "bug" tags, it lets people know what they're in for long before they even click download on it. They can simply scroll past the mod onto the next one if they see 100 bug tags on a new car mod, for example.

On the flip side, a content creator is more likely to fix his mod with these tags in place, compared to just masses of 1 star reviews, which there is no point in fixing as the reviews wont change.

It's questionable then if the comment section should be attatched to a thread post on the forumns instead. I liked some parts of the comments section over threads. Lots more comments on the visible area of the page.

 

I'll go ahead and say I actually agree with most of the points on this thread, even a few of the conflicting ones, but that I also feel like most of the problems could be solved with a touch of math magic with regards to the star system. One less-than-perfect review shouldn't offset dozens of perfect ones. Four five-star reviews? Five star mod. Twenty five-star reviews and one four-and-a-half star review? Four-and-a-half star mod. I agree we shouldn't get too up in arms about how our creations are perceived, but it does seem like an unusually rough system just from that factor alone.

And I do feel like generating discussions with mods again would be a good idea.

I disagree, as that sounds like a fairly complex system that the devs likely won't want to develop, most reviewers won't want to use (which may be a redeeming quality, but I digress), and that will be more difficult to compare mods with. There are also the questions of how to divide the ratings of the mod. Concept, execution, and miscellaneous? And how could one enforce users rating all factors independently of one another, e.g. rating all three with three stars even though the concept was worse than the execution?

I wholeheartedly agree, and It's also better for measuring how to make something better. I recall releasing a scenario to plenty of unspecific praise, but when I watched a let's player cover it, I got much more detailed feedback and was able to fully polish the scenario.

 

Easy solution to all of this:
Delete the review system and make the mod checking process more rigorous, as to keep actually bad mods from making it onto the front page.
The this problem would cease to exist.
You want to talk to the author about a bug? There's a discussion tab buck-o, use it.

 

Some mod creators don't create a discussion tab, though (either because they feel it doesn't need one or like me they don't know how), forcing people to either PM the creator or write a bug report in their review.