Featured, Quality and Balanced

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ptbptb
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Are these mod flags set by bmbl alone, or is there some procedure to nominate mods for them? Specifically, it strikes me that the balanced flag should be capable of being acquired by most mods that aren't in the godmod category. All you have to do is nerf powers / increase price / increase rarity (or whatever) until people agree that it is balanced.

There don't seem to be very many mods with any of these flags set, maybe there should be some sort of review of how it all works?
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Aury
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Well, the balanced flag is usually awarded after someone like atarlost [who's our balance expert] finds that they approve of it... I think it's just atarlost; d1gdug, who does the flag-adding, only sets the first two flags (featured and quality) on his own judgement. Alterecco does the same.
D1gdug and Alterecco are the two xelerus mods if I remember right. Join us on irc.

BTW - most mods actually can't attain the balanced flag until they've had all balance issues worked out; though most people might see it and say 'oh, that looks balanced', there could still very well be various balance faults that might not be immediately evident. Balance in transcendence is controlled by many factors.
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ptbptb
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Wolfy wrote:BTW - most mods actually can't attain the balanced flag until they've had all balance issues worked out; though most people might see it and say 'oh, that looks balanced', there could still very well be various balance faults that might not be immediately evident. Balance in transcendence is controlled by many factors.
It would be nice to get feedback on balance issues - but I suppose that's only possible if they actually use the mod for long enough.
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alterecco
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A lot of the discussion regarding flags goes on on irc, where several of us idle. Digdug and Taben are capable of adding all three flags afaik, and I am able to feature and quality approve (as I know zip about balance). I am not sure if Atarlost has any priv's, although he probably should.

I am not sure if there is any better place to review these things. It usually helps to be able to do things in almost realtime. Feel free to post suggestions though, both for alternative processes, and about flags for mods.
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Atarlost
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I have authority to quality or balance approve, but haven't done so. I don't play very much anymore and don't download many new mods.
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Aury
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Wait? so all I got is a power that's currently broken and you guys can actually do stuff? -_-
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Currently they're beeing changes made on the background side. And there will be some new system for the mods so for now the discussion is obsoloete.
But currently the following people have rights:

digdug & Taben:
delete mods, edit mods, reupload mods, delete comments, submit functions, edit functions, delete functions, set feature flags, set quality, set balance flags

Atarlost, alterecco:
submit functions, edit functions, delete functions, set quality flags, set balance flags

Prophet:
submit functions, edit functions, delete functions

OddBob:
edit functions

Azar Wolf:
higher upload limit

Currently noone else approached me and asked me for further rights! But I cannot decide out of the blue who wants to help so I need the people to tell me that they want to help ;)
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Aury
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doh! I never realized it was based on a 'go over and ask to volunteer' basis XD... I was under the assumption that it was based on 'were you active at the time people were being appointed'

PS - bimble; you are going to fix the time-out limits, arn't you?
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Aury
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From today (July 13 2010) in IRC regarding (some of) Xelerus' new features:

1) Reviewer's choice Sidebar/Flag – a special flag applied by Monthly Mod reviewers (Myself and possibly one or two others), mods that score a rating of over 90% (or some other arbitrary value signaling a good score that I/we will decide on later) will be flagged as Reviewer's choice mods and can be seen in said Sidebar.
2) New Tag-Based filtering – both the old version numbering and categories system will be replaced by a (check box?) based Tag system; just check the tags that your mod applies under (new weapons, playership for version 1.01 for example). Certain members will be able to add new Tags – if you feel something should be a tag, just contact them! Transcendence version numbers will be Tags! Search will now be Tag-based.
3) User rating of mods – still pretty up in the air, but we're highly likely to get some sort of mod-rating system
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ptbptb
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Wolfy wrote:3) User rating of mods – still pretty up in the air, but we're highly likely to get some sort of mod-rating system
I've seen a number of problems with user-rating in various sites. I'm not against user-rating but I think you will need to watch out for them.

Rating escalation. Suppose you have a rating of 1 = Useless and 10 = Brilliant. 7 is actually quiet a good score. But there's a tendency for people to think, this is a good mod so it should have a higher score than the others. Before you know it 7 is a bad score and most mods have a 9. I know one site where this went on so far that on a rating from 1 to 10 you could rate files as 8.5, 8.75, 9.00, 9.25, ... just because they needed a way to differentiate the top end of the scale.

Rating to 'make the score right' rather than 'rating objectively'. Same system, suppose you have a mod rated 8.5. If someone thinks that is too high they might vote 1 deliberately, even though they actually think it should be rated around 7. Voting the maximum / minimum allowed is, statistically, the way to make your vote count once so this is a very common abuse.

Snap judgements. Some people will vote on a very short test of a mod, or even before downloading it! In a sort of "Another god mod - Zero!" attitude.

Nobody home. It's common to find sites where 10, 20 or more people download a file before one of the votes. You can't force people to vote, and if few do then the score is much less meaningful.

Some of these can be guarded against by technical methods, but ultimately it comes down to the culture of the community.
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alterecco
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I for one vote for the "live or die" voting system. Three choices. Don't vote, don't like or like. It might not end up as nuanced as a larger scale, but I think it is sufficient. There might be some issues with it though?
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ptbptb
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alterecco wrote:I for one vote for the "live or die" voting system. Three choices. Don't vote, don't like or like. It might not end up as nuanced as a larger scale, but I think it is sufficient. There might be some issues with it though?
It's probably the best combination of simplicity and practicality.
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Perhaps in the future when George begins collecting game data the installed mods could be incorporated somehow. Very few people leave comments on mods, more often it's questions on how to get it to work or reporting a bug that may or may not be caused by the mod in question. Voting will probably have a higher rate of participation if it is kept simple (thumbs up/down)

Expanding to a rating system (1-10 stars/thumbs) is not necessary until we get a few thousand members and dozens of mods being released each month.
Coming soon: The Syrtian War adventure mod!
A Turret defense genre mod exploring the worst era in Earth's history.
Can you defend the Earth from the Syrtian invaders?
Stay tuned for updates!
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Aury
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As I said before, 1-X rating system simply won't work; ESPECIALLY on a larger scale! Look at youtube, tesnexus, and other sites all following the same trend; converting from a 1-5 star system to a Like/Dislike system. It was even scientifically shown that 1-5 star systems simply don't work (I think the article was in scientific american, not sure though).

Also, just an update as to who is doing what at the moment on xelerus;
Bimbel/Bmbl - all
D1gdug/Digdug - bcdefgh
Alterecco - bcdefgh
Taben/Betel - bcdefgh
Azar Wolf/Wolfy - bcdfh
Atarlost - cgh
Prophet - g

Code: Select all

| a | Post News
| b | Delete Mods
| c | Edit Mods
| d | Edit Screenshot
| e | Reupload Zip
| f | Delete Comments
| g | Delete Functions
| h | Edit mod Categories
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Workstations & Render machines: Threadripper 3990X, 128GB, 6900XT | Threadripper 2990WX, 32GB, 1080ti | Xeon Platinum 8173M, 48GB, 1070ti | R9 3900X, 16GB, Vega64 | 2x E5 2430L v2, 24GB, 970 | R7 3700X, 32GB, A6000
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