Change "High Quality" to "Basic" and "Popular" #5540
Comments
|
As a side note, the current Ladders The maps I would move from High Quality to Popular are all in the Ladder:
The High Quality maps I would not put in Popular are all not in the Ladder:
For what is worth, as I don't know how it was decided what games to put in ladder, but I suppose it was popularity. |
|
I've never really liked the "high" and "low" quality categories, IMO we should not be making quality judgements on maps. I think the intent is really to split maps into three: popular, completed, in-development. A fourth category between in-development and 'completed' might be merited to indicate a map is being balanced and fine-tuned. "in-development" maybe is questionable. The intent certainly was for map-makers to create a shell map repository, add it to the map list, and push updates to their repository as they worked on it. Currently it seems the adding to map repository is the very last step instead of first. Eventually, looking to the future, map hosting will be out of github and would be an upload process from in-game. So perhaps that keeps the 'in-development' category pertinent. We could certainly for now keep track of popularity manually. Eventually we can automate it. I don't think I agree with the term "basic". Seems like we are probably in agreement the current categories are not great, seems next steps would be to agree to new categories and then make those updates. |
|
Basic is substantially a must have. If you go just with popular, then you have only Classic, Revised, v3, Global surely in popular, and Classic only barely so. Then you would have all the Europe, Pacific, v4, v5 1942 and v6 1941 either likely or surely out of popular, unless you define popularity in a way to empty the word itself of its meaning (already, a game that gets played once a week, and you can easily stay in lobby for 24 hours finding noone to play with, is probably not something anyone would consider popular). And you also don't want to bury Tutorial and The Pact of Steel. I don't care about the name, if not Basic, then "Standard", or something else; but you need to keep all the World War II together really, I think. |
|
Understood, a concept of "core" maps. Though, if maps within that core are not played all that often, why should they be given special positioning? Agree we'd want tutorial to be in its own place. The messaging prompting new users to download Tutorial might be broken. It's intended new players see a pop-up asking them if they want to DL it. That might be sufficient of a call-out. |
|
A renaming of all of it would be better. Popular live played maps etc. atm we are also differentiating between PBEM PBF and Live play. You are both correct @Cernelius and @DanVanAtta |
|
I think the real discussion should be about Maps that work LIVE and/or better PBEM. to get a clearer picture. Cer is quoting what is played in lobby as a standard. Does that make them "Core" or "Great maps? |
|
I'm fine with the suggestions except would leave these maps in popular if for no other reason than to have some variety outside of WW1/2 and these have all been popular at some point to some degree: I would also make popular the first tab and basic the second tab. |
I think this way we drift again into cluesness, with the additional issues of giving people wrong information, telling them something is "Popular", because we wish it would (to have more variety or whatever), while we know well it is not (it is a fact that if you join the lobby almost always you see exclusively WW1/2 games being played). In the moment we expand to maps that are played maybe around once a month, that is really hard to keep track of without an automated system. For example, I can think of a few maps, namely Battle for Arda, Cold War, Domination, Great War, Ultimate World, Big World Variations (specifically the NekahNet mod, though in the past also the Smallman mod), New World Order Lebowski Edition, NWO Variants (specifically the Smallman mod), Rome Total War, WW2v3_Variants (at least for offering mods allowing you to combat move before purchase) (we could add Feudal Japan too, but just because of me; and, of course, whatever things I'm playtesting lately) that are about as rarely played, or maybe more played, than what at that list. Aren't we, then, taking out of that list just our personal favourites, selling them as popular? I mean, if we want to have more variety, we could theorically do it without dropping consistency with a "popularity" concept, by expanding it to a minimum of 1 game per month, but, in this case, I think we would really need an automated system to do it, as there are a lot of borderline maps I cannot guesstimate if they are within or without such limit. While this was the same in the old Sourceforge repository list (I guess to push very good custom maps over the well known staples), I don't think it would be sensible to cut custom maps in twain by putting a "Core" section in between of the popular and not-popular part of them, also since there are two Core maps, namely Revised and Global, that are definitely amongst the most popular games you can count on the fingers of one hand. So, not to penalize popular core maps, such "privileged" section should stay before the generic "Popular" one, I think. Also, it would be at least good deciding how the basic section is preferred to be called. Some ideas: |
|
I think "New World Order Lebowski Edition" is actually a map that comes very close to being played once per week, but I guesstimate a little under that. |
|
Saturday evening on Europe, thus about the peak in TripleA lobby users presence. These are the games in progress: 4: World At War Only WW2 or WW1 themed games being played (not a surprise). I'm not sure if this is the consequence of people liking such scenarios at the expense of anything else, or just no other games yet existing that have captured the interest of the masses. Before Imbaked made his WW1 map (almost a variant of the Domination FFA), we may have said that people only want WW2, yet now "Domination 1914 No Man's Land" is consistently one of the most played games in the lobby; definitely top 5, I say (and several variants of it have been made, that are virtually never played by anyone, instead). While making a good quality map is already not too easy, making a map that is fun and engaging to play is a rare achievement; so the "World War" dominance may as well be merely a coincidence. |
|
I even actually think Domination 1914 No Man's Land is affirming itself as the most popular custom game (that means the most popular game after Revised and Global). Currently in lobby there are 4 of them, as opposed to only 1 WAW, 1 NWO and no Big World (beside a lot of Revised and Global). However, it is still a match with WAW for the position, I think. Anyways, what I was proposing here was to go with popularity, instead of the method of somehow picking a bunch of maps and saying these are the best ones. If that method is preferred, instead, to give more variety or whatever, just close this issue. I would certainly suggest against naming a section as Popular just to, then, purposely adding clearly unpopular maps to it. Finally, whatever the method, I suggest popularity to be in line to what people would see as popular. For example, I think that if you would ask anybody if NWO/WAW are popular, he would say yes, while if you would ask if TRS is popular, he would say no. |
|
Also Domination 1914 No Man's Land is a good example of the rustiness of the current/old method, as that game remained even in Experimental for many years, while most High Quality maps were clearly less popular than it (though it had a lot of issues, before @ron-murhammer fixed it). |
|
Another example of next-to-fully used servers, the day after Christmas (and with actually 0 private hosts). These are the games in progress: 9: World War II Revised I just think that if we want to go with lobby popularity, we will have to limit that section to only a handful of World Wars only maps, as this is what it is popular, under any reasonable definitions of it. |
|
Have we considered classification based on type of map? e.g. have a WWII section, a Fantasy section, etc. For popularity, why not just add a column for it and let people sort by popularity if they want to? We could populate the data from server stats if we have them. It could just be a ranking. Though one challenge is when there's multiple variants of a map, they would split the ranking (e.g. if there's a map and a variant of it with combat step first, then they would split the rank). For that, it would probably be good to have "Variant" be supported first class in the game UI - rather than appearing as separate maps. Although, perhaps we can start with popularity based on the map zip, rather than the map itself to avoid the variants splitting the vote. |
|
@asvitkine I believe you are saying "map" to mean "game". In all the course of this issue, I was talking about the maps only, not their games, albeit, of course, when looking at the data (as well as my screeshots of the lobby), you are looking at the games, then you sum the games popularity to get the map popularity. So, for example, the popularity of the World At War map would be the sum of the popularity of the World At War game and of the WAW 1940 game (maybe I should have made that clear, but, so far, a single game accounts for 99% or more of that map's games in all popular cases, except only for the "balanced" etc. mods of WWII Global, that would go in "basic" anyways, with all other WWII maps, under my suggestions). I totally agree the variants should have their own section, but since they indeed used to have it and the current main developers deleted it, I didn't bother raising this matter. Maybe that would be better discussing in a separate issue, if you want to try to push for that. |
|
Another example is the fact that "World War II Revised" map is certainly popular (actually, quite clearly the most popular map of TripleA in lobby), thus both the "World War II Revised" game and the "World War II Revised LHTR" game would benefit of whatever ranking the map gets, despite the fact that the "World War II Revised LHTR" game is very unpopular (and clearly accounts for less than 1% of games played on that map). Though that would not matter, under my proposal, as the "basic" section would be first ranked, so this map would go there, no matter its popularity. That's the other reason why I said such section cannot be anything else but the first one, otherwise you would actually downgrade a map like "World War II Revised", if you would not put it in a "popular" section listed as first (very unfair). Anyways, yeah, of course, since what you download is the map, that can have whatever number of games inside, the map would be the one to be rated and, of course, it seems obvious to sum the popularity of all its games, when doing so. I guess I should have made this clear, though it just seemed obvious to me. Sorry if I've been not clear enough, but I think at least @DanVanAtta and @ron-murhammer understood what I meant. |
|
Just to add some data, games in progress on 0 am, on 2 january Greenwich Mean Time (1 am for Central Europe): 7: World War II Global 1940 2nd Edition |
|
Looks like actually "Lord of the Rings: Middle Earth" (the "Middle Earth" map) (the small one) is experiencing a little of a revival, as of late, and might be within the 1 game per week metre. |
|
This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. If there is something that can be done to resolve this issue, please add a comment indicating what that would be and this issue will be re-opened. If there are multiple items that can be completed independently, we encourage you to use the "reference in new issue" option next to any outstanding comment so that we may divide and conquer. |
|
It has been a long time since I saw all bots full on an European afternoon (6 PM Central Europe)!
Here are the most played games, at the moment: Therefore, here are the most played maps, at the moment: Surprisingly, no World At War games at all. So, here it is my updated list, if going with the metre of at least 1 game per week: Basic: Popular: The difference, from what at the first post, is that I've added the following maps: Certainly "NWO Variants" is played well more than once per week, lately, while the other ones might be within the minimum. I think that's a good amount of variety, isn't it? |
|
@Cernelius I think that's fairly close then to the additions I proposed. Not sure I'd include the 2 NWO mods or both big worlds. I'd also want to review what is popular in PBF here: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/category/65/play-online-axis-allies |
Lately the "New World Order 5 Nations" game is being played consistently.
The basic Big World is not much more popular than Big World 2. Talking about "basic", since the Big World map is used as main reference by the TripleA rulebook, I'm actually thinking that should stay in basic, really. So, just update my suggestions by having "Big World" in "Basic" instead of "Popular" (only as long as "basic" is before "popular", because, of course, whatever is both "basic" and "popular" should stay in the highest of the two, for fairness). |
|
Theorically, also the two "Europe" and "Pacific" maps should be in basic, though they have never been finished, but, truth to be said, no single basic game in "TripleA" is finished, as not everything works exactly or has all the features as the "intended" rules. So, nobody can really say "how much" a game needs to be "unfinished" to stay in Experimental, really (if the requirement would be 100%, then 100% of TripleA basic games, comprising Classic and Revised, would be in Experimental, with Europe and Pacific). All the games examples you can find here can be considered "basic" games, as being games whose behaviour gives be basis of most TripleA rules: Long story short, up to you if to add the "Europe" and "Pacific" maps to "Basic", I don't feel like suggesting in favour nor against it. |
|
This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. If there is something that can be done to resolve this issue, please add a comment indicating what that would be and this issue will be re-opened. If there are multiple items that can be completed independently, we encourage you to use the "reference in new issue" option next to any outstanding comment so that we may divide and conquer. |
|
Based on the last couple of weeks, "Domination" would be added too ("Domination 1901" is experiencing a revival). It also makes sense since this map is an original and the popular "Domination 1914 No Mans Land" a map modification of it. |
|
Lots of players on 9 pm Greenwich Mean Time, and my first screenshot that is actually not enough (too many games to stay all on screen!), thus I've taken two.
Most played games (in progress): Most played maps (in progress): |
|
Despite the apparent lack of interest, I still think that the best way of telling highest quality and good-yet-not-highest quality maps apart is by gauging popularity. I've been made noticed that the 28 bots (excluding passworded) are all busy, so I took an informative screenshot on 7.20 PM Greenwich Mean Time.
Most played games (in progress): Most played maps (in progress): Pretty conservative situation: the three most popular maps are Revised, Global and v3. |
|
What about having the server track popularity of maps and just have the
download UI sort by popularity? Then we can get rid of quality as a
concept? Or maybe still have some way to tag "experimental" maps but
otherwise just sort by popularity?
…On Sun., Dec. 20, 2020, 2:39 p.m. Cernelius, ***@***.***> wrote:
Despite the apparent lack of interest, I still think that the best way of
telling highest quality and good-yet-not-highest quality maps apart is by
gauging popularity.
I've been made noticed that the 28 bots (excluding passworded) are all
busy, so I took an informative screenshot on 7.20 PM Greenwich Mean Time.
[image: 20201220_001]
<https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/19562310/102722719-48c89580-4303-11eb-9a14-b5eb025fca19.png>
Most played games (in progress):
6: World War II Revised
4: World War II Global 2nd Edition
2: New World Order
2: World War II v3 1941
1: Big World : 1942 v3 Rules
1: Big World 2 : Blance of Power
1: Iron War
1: Minimap
1: New World Order 5 Nations
1: Warcraft: War Heroes
1: World At War
1: World War II v3 1942
Most played maps (in progress):
6: world_war_ii_revised
4: world_war_ii_global
3: world_war_ii_v3
2: new_world_order
1: big_world
1: big_world_2
1: iron_war
1: minimap
1: nwo_variants
1: warcraft_war_heroes
1: world_at_war
Pretty conservative situation: the three most popular maps are Revised,
Global and v3.
—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub
<#5540 (comment)>,
or unsubscribe
<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAEJ4AKJPXZYRDUZKJJX43SVZHHBANCNFSM4JPC66WQ>
.
|
|
Sorry for the lack of response to appears as lack of interest. We should find a sustainable way to achieve this. For the moment I think it's more a lack of available capacity to do anything about it. If we build a system that relies on us manually counting games, it'll be hard to sustain over the long term and could be 'wrong' if we create bias by polling at specific intervals. @asvitkine , i think your suggestion is about right. I think maybe we might still benefit from 2 or 3 categories: main, new, and experimental (ie: broken). Really though, we probably should remove the broken maps from download if nobody is working on them - which would lead to two categories. |
That sounds cool, but it would need a switch to relist alphabetically any time, to help you find a map you are searching for. Beside that, I think it is still needed a section for the maps that are actually too experimental or not that good. However, your proposal could allow to consolidate the "high" and "good" quality categories into a single category ordered by popularity. As long as one takes a simple popularity metre, like an estimated 1 or more games per week played on that map, I think temporarily guessing about it can get results close to perfect already. It is really not that hard to see what users actually play, if you are in the lobby frequently. To exemplify this, I'm going to take another screenshot at 10 PM Greenwich Mean Time today. If this issue is still interesting to any developer, I guess I'll reopen it. I agree it is not important, but I believe the "high" category always was some sort of untouchable section for all the maps that veq considered being the very best and were not shipped with TripleA itself because, I assume, of volume size download limits (basically, I believe they were the maps equal to the ones preinstalled except that they weren't preinstalled). I've never understood what is the new system based on, once that system is obviously not anymore in place (I guess @ron-murhammer at least partially took over there, since I remember he/she made some relisting, but I'm not sure how much). |
|
And I would still suggest having a "basic" (or some other name) section, to avoid all the "World War II" maps (v1 to v6 and others) being dispersed in between of a huge list of other maps, since they greatly vary in popularity amongst themselves. |
|
I do agree that ranking maps on quality is problematic and subjective. Because of that it's not clear how a map would change category, it is subjective. A single ranking by popularity and/or being able to re-sort by title seem like reasonable ways to change this. I wonder if we can also have some sort of additional meta-category like "era" or something like that to help tell maps apart. My thinking is the 'experimental' is kinda akin to 'new'. But if a map is not actually new, and not actually being worked on, it seems it is there as a glorified XML example of maybe working map concepts but otherwise unplayable. My inclination is that this category be purged and we have instead a 'new' category for maps that are truly new. If the 'new' map is abandoned before being playable, it is removed, if it becomes playable, then it goes into the list. Having a 'new' category helps with popularity as the map does not yet have an established popularity. A last dimension, RogerCooper mentioned this, we may want to have an editorial review and ranking of a map. Essentially a team within TripleA to give the map a 1-5 star rating on how good it is. If we do this, maybe we don't have to purge as many maps and they simply get the 1 star rating for not being playable. Roger does this in his map thread where he reviews a map on how good it is. |
|
I don't think so. I don't feel like there is much of a quality difference, currently, between the "good" and the "experimental" sections, actually, but I don't play most maps, in general (let's say I'm picky about what I'm interested in). My guess is that the main reason whether or not a map is in one or the other is whether or not the mapmaker or anyone asked to move up to good after having his map in the repository, initially. |
|
Situation on 10 PM Greenwich Mean Time (I guess close to when most Europeans are finishing their games and most Americans are staring theirs).
Most played games (in progress): Most played maps (in progress): The most played maps are, now, Global, World At War and Revised. |
|
Situation on 9 PM Greenwich Mean Time (2021/01/12):
Most played games (in progress): Most played maps (in progress): The most played maps are, now, Global, Revised, Big World 2 and World At War. |
|
If storing a map index in database instead of in a file, we need a way to manage the categorization of maps. I don't know how to solve this readily and I don't like the idea of map categorization being a centralized task. There are a number of challenges and problems to solve if map categorization is centralized (ie: managed by the map admin team):
My best thought on this currently is perhaps we want to make 'popularity' be a sort ranking for maps. Players can then view maps within a category by name, or by popularity. Another similar sort dimension could be our editorial rating of the map (something like a one thru five star rating). As for categorization, we would need to think about its purpose and perhaps we can let map makers self categorize maps. I think map makers would be fully capable and motivated to indicate when a map is still being worked on vs considered complete. The categories I can think of would be:
I think we could probably auto-calculate 'new' to be 'complete' and marked as completed within the last 60 days. Pretty neat? Fundamentally though the shift to categorization would be a way for map makers to tell players how much change they can expect on a map and whether the what stage the map is in development-wise. If we go this route, we can embed the category as an attribute in the Thoughts? |
|
As per what I said so far, I think the current distinction between "good" and "experimental" being, as I understand it, sections for well completed and either not so well completed or non-completed maps, respectively, might be good enough or else is just out of my proposal. I'm not sure if dividing the "good" between "new", "complete" and "balancing" and dividing the "experimental" between "incomplete-but-we-are-on-it" and "incomplete-and-abandoned" is really workable, in the moment I'm not sure that the much simpler current distinction is really doing much to distinguish between good and not-so-good maps. I mostly just believe this is not part of this issue (which, as the title reads, is only about the "High Quality" category) I opened, and I'm not much opinionated about it at the moment. Going back to what I have so far believed is my suggestion, obviously, an automated system to gauge popularity and list maps prioritizing more popular ones over less popular ones (which could be done after merging the current high and good quality categories into one) is likely the best solution in order to have an actually more-than-just-good category. Ideally, I think this should be based on the playtime in the lobby and the number of players involved (a game played for 12 hours with 4 players should better count 6 times a game played for 4 hours with 2 players, otherwise simpler maps would be over-rated (like Revised having maybe many more games played than World At War, but every World At War game should count more if you can play a number of Revised games, instead)). Of course, maps having multiple games should have the total popularity of them. In this case, I would suggest popularity being the default listing, instead of name. Instead of any "new" section, I would rather have a listing based on when the map was latest updated, but this should take care to exclude every change not specifically related to the map itself (like not bumping all maps that had some deprecated elements updated). Whereas it would be cool having a record of the initial releases of the maps too, I guess this is not possible or else feasible for the many maps which existed before the current repository. My simpler proposal of renaming the current "High Quality" to "Popular" and having in it only the actually popular maps, based on judgment, whilst moving all the basic maps to another likely highly static category for them only, was within the limits of what seemed to me simple enough to be actually done. I don't believe spending too much effort on such matter is worthwhile. |
|
Are we assuming that quality is a measure of how often a map is played on
the bots, vs. single-player? I've never once joined the lobby or played
online vs. anyone, all my play has been vs. the AI. Do we have a sense of
what the usage distribution is? I imagine that there are maps that it makes
more sense to play vs. AI than a human opponent, and the criteria mentioned
would basically leave them out in the cold.
I suggest that a "tagging" system, along with some self-rating by the map
creators, might be the way to go. You can automatically tag a map as
"popular in multiplayer", which should serve to identify which maps are
getting play online.
Thomas
…On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 12:33 AM Cernelius ***@***.***> wrote:
As per what I said so far, I think the current distinction between "good"
and "experimental" being, as I understand it, sections for well completed
and either not so well completed or non-completed maps, respectively, might
be good enough or else is just out of my proposal.
I'm not sure if dividing the "good" between "new", "complete" and
"balancing" and dividing the "experimental" between
"incomplete-but-we-are-on-it" and "incomplete-and-abandoned" is really
workable, in the moment I'm not sure that the much simpler current
distinction is really doing much to distinguish between good and
not-so-good maps. I mostly just believe this is not part of this issue
(which, as the title reads, is only about the "*High Quality*" category)
I opened, and I'm not much opinionated about it at the moment.
------------------------------
Going back to what I have so far believed is my suggestion, obviously, an
automated system to gauge popularity and list maps prioritizing more
popular ones over less popular ones (which could be done after merging the
current high and good quality categories into one) is likely the best
solution in order to have an actually more-than-just-good category.
Ideally, I think this should be based on the playtime in the lobby and the
number of players involved (a game played for 12 hours with 4 players
should better count 6 times a game played for 4 hours with 2 players,
otherwise simpler maps would be over-rated (like Revised having maybe many
more games played than World At War, but every World At War game should
count more if you can play a number of Revised games, instead)). Of course,
maps having multiple games should have the total popularity of them.
In this case, I would suggest popularity being the default listing,
instead of name.
Instead of any "new" section, I would rather have a listing based on when
the map was latest updated, but this should take care to exclude every
change not specifically related to the map itself (like not bumping all
maps that had some deprecated elements updated).
Whereas it would be cool having a record of the initial releases of the
maps too, I guess this is not possible or else feasible for the many maps
which existed before the current repository.
------------------------------
My simpler proposal of renaming the current "High Quality" to "Popular"
and having in it only the actually popular maps, based on judgment, whilst
moving all the basic maps to another likely highly static category for them
only, was within the limits of what seemed to me simple enough to be
actually done. I don't believe spending too much effort on such matter is
worthwhile.
—
You are receiving this because you commented.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub
<#5540 (comment)>,
or unsubscribe
<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABB5HANQLMLYZUSW2UE3KATS5EC3VANCNFSM4JPC66WQ>
.
--
Thomas Leavitt
Internet enabled since 1990
|
As far as myself goes, yes, as long as by "bot" you mean any host (automated or not) connected to the lobby.
I think AI and non-live (PBF and PBEM) play are different things from live play so should be kept separate. I've nothing against having 3 popularity orders (live, correspondence, solo). I guess it would be needed something asking consent to the solo player to send data to tell what he/she is playing and I think we can mix the games played solo with AI, solo with no AI (I mean you take everything and play against yourself at the risk of developing a sort of split personalty in the process.) and so-called hot-seat (virtually impossible to tell apart from solo).
Nope.
Yep.
I think it is better to keep with the lobby vernacular, primarily. Since in the lobby you never reasonably play solo, "multiplayer" identifies a game with 3 or more players, not a game with 2 players (which is how most games are played in there). Also, according to
So I'd reserve the term "multi-player" for games with 3 or more players, so I'd not call games with only 2 players as "multi-player". |
|
Use whatever terminology makes sense to your target audience.
I would point out that in common gaming vernacular, "multiplayer" refers to
being able to play against one or more players over the Internet, and that
you'd never see anyone distinguish between playing against one player at a
time vs. playing against 2 or more players at the same time. The binary is
"single player" (human against AI) and "multiplayer" (human against human).
Situations where one "human" player plays against one or more AI players
via an online lobby, who substitute for what would otherwise be a human
when no other human is available, are still referred to as multiplayer
games, just against "bots". Other situations, such as local multiplayer
over LAN, or "hot seat" playing, are normally considered to be specialized
cases. Whenever you see someone demanding "multiplayer" in a Steam forum,
they're asking for the ability to play against other players online, not
for hot seat or LAN functionality.
Thomas
…On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 1:05 AM Cernelius ***@***.***> wrote:
Are we assuming that quality is a measure of how often a map is played on
the bots, vs. single-player?
As far as myself goes, yes, as long as by "bot" you mean any host
(automated or not) connected to the lobby.
I've never once joined the lobby or played online vs. anyone, all my play
has been vs. the AI.
I think AI and non-live (PBF and PBEM) play are different things from live
play so should be kept separate. I've nothing against having 3 popularity
orders (live, correspondence, solo). I guess it would be needed something
asking consent to the solo player to send data to tell what he/she is
playing and I think we can mix the games played solo with AI, solo with no
AI (I mean you take everything and play against yourself at the risk of
developing a sort of split personalty in the process.) and so-called
hot-seat (virtually impossible to tell apart from solo).
Do we have a sense of what the usage distribution is?
Nope.
I imagine that there are maps that it makes more sense to play vs. AI than
a human opponent, and the criteria mentioned would basically leave them out
in the cold.
Yep.
I suggest that a "tagging" system, along with some self-rating by the map
creators, might be the way to go. You can automatically tag a map as
"popular in multiplayer", which should serve to identify which maps are
getting play online. Thomas
I think it is better to keep with the lobby vernacular, primarily. Since
in the lobby you never reasonably play solo, "multiplayer" identifies a
game with 3 or more players, not a game with 2 players (which is how most
games are played in there).
Also, according to
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/multiple
and every English dictionary I can recall "multi" means at least more than
only 2.
very many of the same type, or of different types
So I'd reserve the term "multi-player" for games with 3 or more players,
so not call games with only 2 players as "multi-player".
—
You are receiving this because you commented.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub
<#5540 (comment)>,
or unsubscribe
<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABB5HAL6GQQHKQR62H3DCO3S5EGW5ANCNFSM4JPC66WQ>
.
--
Thomas Leavitt
Internet enabled since 1990
|
|
Categories moving into a database instead of a publicly accessible file makes category management a major problem. Secondly, I would like to remove any upkeep cost to maintaining categories. Failing any other ideas this means it would be up to the map maker to define the category. In this respect, "WIP", "Done" and "Abandoned" I think are useful. |
|
My suggestion about popularity is that it be a sort-able data point within a category and not a category itself. |
|
As has been stated, popular would be the way to go. All games in one category. Then you might want another category "Newest" or w/e and then a "Solo" one. Those games would still be in the all in one category. Idk if that would cause problems though, being listed twice, even if in different categories. Newest could be 6 months or w/e from initial upload. Idk how you'd do solo, but my guess is those are probably fewer and could be sorted by popularity as well. Maybe some sort of questionaire ? Where the AI is, have a button that says "Solo" or something ? Obviously optional if players clicked it, but would be only one more check, so you'd get some feedback anyway. Would depend on how labor intensive to keep track of. At any rate, just some thoughts : ) |
Re: CategoriesOne category or three could both make sense: { done, wip, abandoned }. If there are other ideas, please share. The above categories are largely to indicate the completion status of a map. A good thing for a map maker to control on their own. Recall that map upload is intended to be done early and often for easy sharing and testing while map making is still in-progress. We certainly also have a lot of maps that are in an incomplete state or just were never properly finished (and arguably should be removed entirely, but in the meantime they do create a clutter problem). Presumably those helping to play-test a WIP map would want to find those maps and download frequently. Having an easy way to find those maps would be of benefit and give other players a preview of which new maps are coming along. Re: PopularityI think being able to sort by editorial rating is much more likely to happen than having a sort by popularity. If we could sort by popularity, why would it need to be a full-blown category? Popularity does raise a lot of questions and challenges that are not trivial to solve, hence editorial rating I think is much more feasible. In some ways, editorial rating is what we have today, where 'best' equates to maps that have a 5 star rating. Similar to popularity, categories I think are unnecessary if we can sort by rating. |
|
Popularity and rating are completely different things, especially since persons don't know what they like. If you go by rating, I can easily see, for example, the @jdimeo "Over The Top" map getting a rating higher than "Revised", because it is so professionally made that almost everything else in TripleA seems amateurish compared, except that "Revised" is played many times a day, whereas I don't think that "Over The Top" gets played once a month in the lobby. One thing is what someone will tell you that he or she likes. Another thing is what someone actually like enough to play again and again. |
|
Thanks for the shout out! Like @tvleavitt I've never played a game in the lobby and I've been a TripleA player for years. I exclusively do PBEM and PBF. We actually loved discovering fun new maps like Middle Earth and Star Wars, which we found b/c they were in the "higher" tabs (of course we made our own mods of both) but have never played a map/game marked "experimental". So I completely agree with @DanVanAtta that we should categorize by status (WIP vs. done) but then rank by several metrics (popularity, alphabetically, whatever). Let me throw another idea into the pot though. How about tags, like GitHub issue labels. So you can see: So you can order by popularity in the lobby, but filter by one or more tags. Perhaps new tags have to be approved by the map admin team so we don't have tag sprawl. Edit: I think I'm restating @tvleavitt 's original idea now that I re-read his post... |
|
The maps server project is getting into a more advanced state and details of how to manage categories are needed. These are the questions to focus on:
|
|
- who should manage categories?
A combination of map "admins", makers, and users; admins seed the initial
list of tags, map makers / owners tag their games on creation, end users
tag games based on their perceptions; map "admins" must approve newly
created tags to prevent abuse, but otherwise have no administrative
involvement unless something anomalous happens (malicious gaming of the
system for whatever reason to whatever end, for example). Tags are
presented as a "cloud", with the most commonly used being more prominent,
perhaps a fixed set of tags might be prioritized for display, such maps
tagged as "Core", i.e. the "Basic" category in Cernelius' initial post, and
a maps tagged as "Popular In the Lobby" based on periodic surveys, etc.
(admins would exercise judgment over the former, and periodically compile,
either programmatically or automatically, the latter). Those tags would be
"reserved" and only applicable by map admins. Maybe others would be
reserved to map makers "balancing needed", "under development", etc.
- what are categories used for? What is their purpose? What is their
benefit?
DIscovery, ease of filtering content: show me all maps relating to WWII,
show me all Free For All Maps, show me all two-player optimized maps, show
me all fantasy theme, show me all non-WWII themed maps, show me all maps
using various rulesets, show me the newest maps, show me the most played
maps, show me the highest rated maps, show me the maps best suited for
"solo" play vs. AI, show me maps still under development, show me maps that
are looking for balance playtesters, etc. The benefit is metadata beyond
the map description and title itself that lets you find the maps most
suited to your interests, or that are the highest quality (using whatever
emergent definition the community applies).
- how and where are categories defined and changed?
Some initial "seed" framework of tags and associated maps would be defined
by map admins, in consultation with map makers / owners, then the let the
end users take over, and of course, map admins could participate as well
- are categories and sort rankings (EG: popularity, name, tags, rating)
orthogonal (ie: similar but unrelated) concepts?
I think tags give you multiple types of metadata: what a game is about, how
well done / popular it is, what stage of development its in, etc. Maybe
have a very simple, "thumbs up", "thumbs down", "meh" set of ranking tags.
- What is the list of categories?
You could have a tagging brainstorm session of some sort... a lot of them
have already been suggested here.
Thomas
…On Thu, Feb 4, 2021 at 11:41 AM Dan Van Atta ***@***.***> wrote:
The maps server project
<https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/projects/17> is getting into a
more advanced state and details of how to manage categories are needed.
These are the questions to focus on:
- who should manage categories?
- what are categories used for? What is their purpose? What is their
benefit?
- how and where are categories defined and changed?
- are categories and sort rankings (EG: popularity, name, tags,
rating) orthogonal (ie: similar but unrelated) concepts?
- What is the list of categories?
—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub
<#5540 (comment)>,
or unsubscribe
<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABB5HAO7GVY3UGNBYOGRR33S5LZ7VANCNFSM4JPC66WQ>
.
--
Thomas Leavitt
Internet enabled since 1990
|
|
@DanVanAtta My proposals/guesses:
However, we could eventually rig up some cool automations, e.g. a bot that would move the "Game of the Week" tag to different maps depending on which one was played most in the lobby that week. Or the map admin team could use "Editor's Pick" to highlight a particular map they want to draw attention to
(I was composing this the moment he responded- we're on the same page!) |
|
To recap my understanding, the tagging idea seems very similar to the github issue list and its tags. EG: Clicking a tag filters by that tag, the title of each visible and tags are shown together. Similar to github issues, issues have states that are beyond tags, like 'open' and 'closed'. IMO the completion status of a map is akin to this. It is this aspect that I want to nail down. Additional goals:
Tags can introduce a number of problems, particularly if they are free-form text. For example "ww2" "world_war_ii" and "ww_ii". IMO a composite tag would be a good thing so it is of type "category:value", eg: "era:ww2". I don't know how to solve the normalization problem and I would be really concerned about that, perhaps by having a white list for at least categories and maybe value as well. I do want to put tagging to the side for the moment, I think I would agree that is probably the right way to go for categorization but a large number of details need to be sorted out for whom would do it and how to normalize it so it is useful. I think my question is then, which categories, if any, should be constant and defined outside of the scope of tags? I have been thinking {wip, complete, abandoned}. I have noticed some maps noting they are abandoned or incomplete in their descriptions. Overall I think the first priority is to either determine whether categories should be dropped (in which case we'll have one giant list going forward), or what those categories are. With the move of categories to database we also need to figure out how that data will be seeded, my initial thought is IMO the next priority would be to prune the maps, I suspect out of the 150 that something like 40 are completely un-playable and just should not be in our list anymore and are clutter (so archive and delete them). For expectations, the next and third priority IMO would be enhanced categorization and filtering. I will move on to another TripleA project before tackling this, someone else would need to determine the fine-grained details to this and pick it up or this would likely have to wait some time. |
|
I feel this issue is being expanded far beyond the initial proposal. Maybe its title should be changed. This is an example of why having a "Popular" section or something telling users what are the maps which people like.
I think what at this issue is less important for people that play single player or play by e-mail with one or more friends. In the moment you are playing alone or with a fixed group of people, I don't believe it matters as much to you what the rest of the world is doing (though it is surely a good indicator or what are likely the most interesting games at which you likely want to take a look first). That is why my suggestion was basing poplarity upon LOBBY popularity only. I've also the feeling that most play by forum games are with persons already matched before posting to the forum. |
|
It seems like this should be trivial to integrate into the lobby code
itself. Have a statistics gathering script run every 5 minutes and log to a
centralized source (database table of some kind), have a query execute when
someone looks at the "Popular Maps" page (with cached results if
performance is a concern) that presents results for Now, Last 24 hours,
Last Week, Month, Year, All Time, with filters for "This Server, Your
Language(?), Your Country. Over time as interest among developers makes
possible, this could be prettified with visualizations and charts (which
might be easy if pre-built widgets can be located). This could run in an
iFrame on our primary web host to avoid load on the bots if that's a
concern.
Thomas
…On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 4:34 AM Cernelius ***@***.***> wrote:
I feel this issue is being expanded far beyond the initial proposal. Maybe
its title should be changed.
------------------------------
This is an example of why having a "Popular" section or something telling
users what are the maps which people like.
der_schwerpunkt has joined
(13:17:21) wertywertdr: anyone want recised?
(13:17:24) wertywertdr: revised
(13:18:06) der_schwerpunkt: new to site. looking for '42 v 5 TE
(13:18:25) Cernel: that is rarely played but good luck
(13:18:43) Cernel: Revised is almost the only small map played in here
(13:18:46) der_schwerpunkt: What is popular? (and why?)
(13:18:52) wertywertdr: i dunno
(13:19:04) wertywertdr: i guess its more mainstream
(13:19:05) Cernel: amongst the small maps, like v5, only Revised is popular
(13:19:13) wertywertdr: so more ppl play it
(13:19:34) der_schwerpunkt: small maps? what would be large?
(13:19:50) Cernel: large maps are Global or bigger
(13:20:09) wertywertdr: yup
(13:20:25) Cernel: amongst those, there is more variety
(13:20:53) wertywertdr: its also takes way more time to finish one match
(13:21:07) der_schwerpunkt: need to spend some time exploring. '42 v 5 is
a global map, of course, so large means more players in a single map?
(13:21:15) wertywertdr: eh
(13:21:21) wertywertdr: 1v1 works fine
(13:21:54) Cernel: the popular ones are Global, World At War, Dominations
No Man's Land, Big World v3 Rules and Big World 2; Total World War has a
few players that like it
(13:22:39) der_schwerpunkt: thanks much - I'll do some looking at those
akka1 has left
(13:23:57) wertywertdr: anyone want revised?
(13:25:03) wertywertdr: 804
Jazzy has joined
(13:26:38) wertywertdr: 804
I think what at this issue is less important for people that play single
player or play by e-mail with one or more friends. In the moment you are
playing alone or with a fixed group of people, I don't believe it matters
as much to you what the rest of the world is doing (though it is surely a
good indicator or what are likely the most interesting games at which you
likely want to take a look first). That is why my suggestion was basing
poplarity upon LOBBY popularity only. I've also the feeling that most play
by forum games are with persons already matched before posting to the forum.
—
You are receiving this because you were mentioned.
Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub
<#5540 (comment)>,
or unsubscribe
<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABB5HAP74PO2OSBDGIQOWR3S6ZWTZANCNFSM4JPC66WQ>
.
--
Thomas Leavitt
Internet enabled since 1990
|
|
Thanks for the feedback and thoughts. I agree that tags is a good way to go, but I don't know if it makes sense to jump directly to that kind of system. I think we can still be on that path. In favor of conciseness, I'll be terse, but in sum this issue I think is now closed:
It's coming time to now decide how categories are going to be managed. Implicit to that is knowing what the categories will even be. I think this is actually most easily solved by removing all categories and replacing the concept with a sortable rating system. I've opened this forum thread for follow-on discussion: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/2665/rfc-map-rating-to-replace-map-categories |
I think it is rather hard to cut a distinction between what is "high" and what is "good" quality, especially it doesn't appear there is anyone willingly to take a strong hold of the repository, categorizing maps (let me know if this is not true).
For example, should any of the @FrostionAAA maps be regarded as "High Quality". All of them? None of them? I've not much an idea how that is going to be decided, beside looking at what people actually plays.
So, I think that, in the name of fairness, it would be easiest to go with just popularity, to determine the higher echelon of the repository.
Other than that, a new section for the "World War II" maps etc. should be added, to keep them coherent; call it "Basic".
The matter would be defining popularity. In my opinion, the best would be some sort of automation that gives the statistics about the games started in lobby. Lacking that (and not being sure if it would be feasible doing it for not automated hosts), I think one could go with somewhat consistently looking at the lobby and seeing what games are played with a minimum apparent frequency.
I would set the frequency for popular at a minimum of averagely at least 1 game per week started in the lobby.
Under this definition, these would be my proposed categories:
Basic:
The Pact of Steel
Tutorial
World War II Classic
World War II Europe
World War II Global
World War II Pacific
World War II Revised
World War II v3
World War II v4
World War II v5 1942
World War II v6 1941
Popular:
Big World
Big World 2*
Domination 1914 No Mans Land
New World Order
Total World War
World At War
*This is the only case of a map that would get upgraded to "Popular", under this suggestion.
Hence, the following maps would be downgraded to "Good Quality" (if I'm right they don't meet an average of 1 game per week in lobby):
270BC
Civil War
Middle Earth
Napoleonic Empires
The Rising Sun
Again, this is not at all any kind of personal judgment on the value of the maps (for example, I don't like "Big World 2", personally, and the only reason I would be upgrading it is because I'm under the impression it is within the 1 game per week metre). If anyone thinks I've missed some popular enough map, or I've added some that shouldn't, just say it. Of course, this would be a dynamic listing. If, overtime, a map falls from grace with the players, it should be downgraded, eventually. It cannot be a very reliable process, unless automated, but I think it would be way better than the current practice, or absence thereof.
I know that this proposal is ignoring PBEM completely (of which, without automation, only PBF is really visible), but PBF is split amongst at least 2 forums, so that would add some complexity if you would also add some minimum level of PBF popularity for a map to be "Popular" even if not meeting the minimum level of lobby popularity. Also games played with direct connections, with the artificial intelligence and hotseat would be ignored. Again, not a perfect system, just I think better than current.
As a final note, I would also consider adding "Capture the Flag" and "MiniMap" to "Basic".
If the developers agree with this proposal, I can proceed pushing the list change right away myself.
The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: