[Suggestion] Liking Residences

Discussion in 'Suggestion Box Archives' started by azoundria, May 4, 2017.

  1. I heard it suggested to give XP for building.

    One way to accomplish this would be to reward players with XP when their creations are visited or people like them.

    ie You can add a simple /like command. When executed, the player whos creation you are standing in will get some XP. Each player can only like a creation once.

    In this way, there can be a highscore list by player, by empire, and by build, which encourages competition. It also encourages community sharing of creations. If more than one player helped with a creation, they could share the XP somehow to encourage collaboration too. You could even publish creation of the week on the website from this data to give everyone something cool to check out.

    It would really motivate people to build great things, especially when people feel that their creations inspire others and are recognized.
  2. I moved your reply to its own new thread, as this is actually an interesting idea in general for all builds (Town and Empires)
    I don't think this is a good idea for rewarding XP, but could have a leaderboard of liked Residences.

    But let's twist the idea a little bit. Instead of Simple likes, we can have a 1 to 10 rating scale, and give different categories to vote on a residence.

    Shop/Design/Game

    We can do monthly and Lifetime ratings for residences.

    We can then use these ratings to influence the /shop command too.

    I like this idea overall! Going to make a ticket for it :)
  3. That sounds like a horrid idea to me, assuming that we're talking about making more liked shops getting higher chances to be visited through /shop.

    I mean... It would basically mean that smaller shops will get even less chances to get noticed. In order to get customers (or likes) you'd have to be noticed, but in order to be noticed you'd need to advertise (and I think plenty of players can do with less of that) or get players to find your residence through the /shop or /v +shop command. Yet because of the likes those other shops got they already have an advantage on you to begin with.

    Of course I do make some assumptions here, but I can't help wonder if this wouldn't unbalance quite a bit of fair play, and create a lot more noise from players advertising their shop (or other builds) simply to gain more likes.
  4. Maybe instead of design break it up.... nature, mystic And what ever name fits build such as say a museum or a head office...
    FadedMartian likes this.
  5. That's a bit too complex.
    607 and FadedMartian like this.
  6. I think a like has some advantages over a vote from 1 to 10 though,
    First of all, when a res is still in progress, and players vote on the res as 'bad', it takes down the average for when the res is finished. This could also be for instance when you have a shop and you are on holidays, leaving your shop unstocked for a bit and getting a lower average because people dont like unstocked shops.
    Also, a like can show which resses are kinda popular and really nice, for instance if I have a couple friends who give my res 9/10 ratings, there is not really a way to tell the difference with an awesome res where there are a couple houndred 9/10 ratings (or you would have to show the amounth of votes but then those ratings wouldnt really be seen as an accomplishment when there arent that many votes)
    Lastly, likes keep it more positive. For instance, if there are some people who are in a really bad mood or dont like you for whatever reason, getting 1/10 ratings on your res can be discouraging (just like getting dislikes on a post wouldnt be a good idea on the forums)

    Anyways, that is just my thought about it :)
  7. Sorry for a double post but my previous post was specifically about those likes influencing /shop, nothing more or less.

    +1

    Seems like a cool idea, and it also gives players a better impression if their residences actually get visited (and/or appreciated) at all.

    Well, maybe it can be left in the players control?

    For example (even though this isn't new): maybe a like sign. So basically the player needs to place a sign somewhere which other players can then use to share their liking. Or perhaps a residence flag to turn the option (command) on or off?
    haastregt and PhoenixAffinity like this.
  8. I said influence, not control :p

    More like, if its rated poorly, to reduce it.

    If your shop has a score of 1 out of 200 votes.... then we absolutely should be devaluing sending players to it looking for a shop.

    It would let the players solve the bad +shop tag problem.

    And there would always still be a random element to it. Small shops would still be found, and then they can get rated.

    But yes, this rating system would increase chat asking for people to rate their residence, but it won't be much different than current request, and would be subject to same spam rules.

    I think a healthy balance would be around 65% "high rated" shops, 30% "unknown shops" and 5% "bad shops" as the result of typing /shop in the random balance.
    607, bloodra1n, jkrmnj and 2 others like this.
  9. We can combat abuse risks. Things such as 1 vote per IP, don't allow people to rate if they don't have move/shop or if they are ignored by the owner, etc.

    While I understand the idea of positive only, that removes the ability to use it as a way to weed out bad residences.

    And we would not show who rated you what. It would just simply be a monthly/lifetime average. So no worries of personal arguments over "Why'd you rate me 1!!!"

    Also we will show total ratings.
    haastregt, 607, jkrmnj and 2 others like this.
  10. I had a hunch that there was probably more to it, as such my added comment about me assuming a lot. This I can definitely agree with, and sounds like an awesome idea!
    607 likes this.
  11. I am a fan of the scale based system instead of likes for a few reasons.
    1. Things change and a popular residence one month might become terrible the next. For example, a shop that opens with massive amount of stock but quickly loses it all. During that first week it might get hundreds of likes throwing it to the top of the lists, but get none afterwards. Because of how likes work, there would be no way for players to establish that this build went bad. Another example is that a residence might look really cool one week but the next the owner tears it down and builds something bad.
    2. Scales allow new residences to be noticed. Imagine there are two residences, both equal in quality but one is newer than the other. In the ratings system, one could have 100 nine star ratings and the other could have 2 nine star ratings. At this point, the system could give a slight preference to the new residence since it seems promising but there isn't really enough data on it. Someone goes to visit a random high ranked residence and goes there. They see that it is good and give it another 9 star rating. This happens over and over until both are at 100 nine star ratings or more. If this were like based, that new residence would be almost indistinguishable from a bad one and never really have a chance to become popular.
    3. This brings up the next problem: doing nothing and doing something negative are essentially the same thing. In a world where residences are ranked based on likes as opposed to likes simply being ways of showing support, being apathetic will actually hurt the other player. In a scale system, there are no assumptions about intention because every possible intention has a separate action.
    Initially, the system would be pretty broken and unbalanced since everyone would just rate their friends positively. Over time though, more people would rate and things would normalize. worse case scenario, a few people would have to visit a bad residence but that is still a step up from the current system since everyone now could visit that bad residence.

    I also agree with the person above who mentioned that it should be opt-in based. One possibility would be that by making your residence searchable with one of the tags, you are opting into the rating system. This would also integrate really well with the categories since players would establish as many categories as needed without needing any extra developer interactions. This would also fix things like +shop being sprinkled with some pretty bad shops.
    I really like the idea and hope something comes from it.
    607, ShelLuser and We3_MPO like this.
  12. We would need to factor in something that scales the # of votes accordingly, so that 1 person receiving a 10 doesn't put them at the top of the board with a single vote.

    Maybe like a minimum votes to appear on leaderboard / be factored into shop calculations.

    Could do some math like like your score is treated as a 5 + 0.1 for every > 5 vote you got and -0.1 for every < 5 vote, with min/max to your actual until you hit 20 votes, and then your actual score is used.
  13. Oh, quite frankly I'm pretty sure that this will happen anyway, which is also why I responded in the way I did up there. One way or the other, scales or single entries, it's always going to be unfair

    I mean....

    Courtesy of XKCD

    Doesn't mean that it can't be a fun feature to have, I think it will be. But beware of what you're going to do with the results ;)

    (edit): Ninja'd by Aikar :)
    Bunjimon348, haastregt and 607 like this.
  14. And then, I could see us doing lifetime rating awards. "Received 50 Positive Ratings" giving Tokens!

    That would be cool :)
  15. You can do that by making it so the bottom 20% of the votes and the top 20% of the votes don't get taken into account. That leaves 60% of the average votes to define if a res is good or not. This is called 'trimmed mean' and aims to filter out the 'outliers'. https://stats.stackexchange.com/que...all-an-average-that-does-not-include-outliers

    Rewarding good builders of residences that are great to visit is essentially the same as punishing bad builders of residences which are not so great to visit (dirt shacks, anyone?)
    If I understand correctly, Aikar aims to make the /v +shop command more relevant, which can be done by either rewarding good builds or punishing bad builds. The result is the same. I don't believe that aiming to show more relevant results in a shop command is a bad thing or as ShelLuser said:
    I don't believe it's unfair to filter out unrelevant results. When someone makes something that people see as worth visiting (or liking it in general), then it will even itself out.

    I'm looking forward to see ways implemented for better and relevant shop searching/finding. +1 from me.
    haastregt and We3_MPO like this.
  16. So if someone hired someone to build say a mall. How would it work if someone voted for that res?
  17. The two aren't really the same once you throw apathetic people into the mix. My argument is based on the assumption that only a small percentage of players will actually be motivated to vote.

    If you make a system based entirely around giving likes, not voting would be the same as disliking. Likewise, a system with only dislikes makes not voting the same as liking. This comes down to these systems being binary in nature. You are either doing something positive or negative for the res. There is no way to say you don't care.

    Imagine a new shop that comes into existence in the like system. It is absolutely fantastic but has 0 likes so far. 10 players find it and use it in a week. They are all busy or forgetful so they don't bother liking it. At this point, the system sees a shop that has been around for a while but has no likes, so it must be bad. This shop is now towards the bottom of the list with little chance of getting back up. In a system based entirely around punishing, you get the opposite effect where a bad shop will be thought of as good because those people didn't bother voting.

    There is a better way though. Imagine that same shop in a scale system. The system can easily see that people didn't actually provide their opinion on it and won't assume their opinions. This gives the system the ability to hold off on judgement for new shops or residences until people actually rate it.
    Pab10S, 607 and We3_MPO like this.
  18. Very interesting!
    After reading the first couple of posts, I was in favour of the likes method, but having read the rest, I do think the scale rating system has got some significant advantages! :)

    Perhaps 1-5 stars would be better, though. In the end, it doesn't matter too much, but I could see most people giving either a 1 or a 10, with only a few giving 8's, 7's, 4's, et cetera. A rating system with 5 options would be enough for that, I think.
    We3_MPO and jkrmnj like this.
  19. One think i could see is people that would pay others or tell others (even new players to emc) to like their reses....
    607 likes this.