Replace the 5-star Rating System

I have considered that actually. I’d thought about making a “private” rating and a “public” rating for a while. The private rating would have been whatever scale you wanted, and the public would be what our scale now is. I just thought it took away from the simplicity of the site too much.

I actually kind of like this aspect of the 5 star scale. I didn’t want people to think too hard about it. A 6 and a 7 on a 10 point scale are the same thing to me. You might have been in a better mood because of something that happened at work when you played the game you gave a 7 than when you played the game you gave a 6. They probably deserve roughly the same score. That’s how I like to think about it anyway.

I always kind of point at the top 250 list on Grouvee (Top 250 games on Grouvee) as a little bit of validation that the rating system is working. Final Fantasy VI is the top rated Final Fantasy game, and that is the correct answer :slight_smile:. In all seriousness, I think the games that people feel the most strongly about are at the top of that list.

This is an interesting idea. I think it would overcomplicate things on a site like this, but I like the thought. There’s a site out there called goodfil.ms that people give two ratings on a movie, critical quality and rewatchability. It’s a cool way to rate movies, but I don’t know how something like that would work on Grouvee.

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I like the 5 stars system. The like/dislike of sites like Steam or, maybe, Netflix, are wonders for them, but at least for me it wouldn’t work. I want to be able to see not only which games I have enjoyed, but also which games I have enjoyed a lot, or the most, etc. At Steam, Netflix, the issue is really about two things, whether you buy the game/product or not, hence the like/dislike charm.

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Believe it or not. I AM Himuton, the OP. Going by my new ID, I still have some concern about the 5-star Rating System.

With all due respect, I’m ill with the text description when the mouse pointer hovers over each star rating. Peter has stressed he’d loved it, even the typo for 1-star Rating (Didn’t Like It All) which is missing the word “at”.

Here is Cinemayward’s way of putting Star Ratings: Movie Rating System - cinemayward

Impressed by the minimalistic “one-word” approach, may I ask Peter to consider changing the Star Rating description as follows?

★★★★★ Favorite
★★★★☆ Great
★★★☆☆ Good
★★☆☆☆ Disappointing
★☆☆☆☆ Enraging

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It’s an interesting idea. These types of things are difficult because they are highly subjective, and rating a game is highly personal. For example I would have trouble with the two and one star categories if labeled disappointing and enraging. Both seem highly situational. For example most games that I rate one or two stars will fit into the categories of didn’t like it at all and mostly didn’t like it. While there are various reasons I will feel those two ways, the description didn’t like generally applies. Disappointing and Enraging would fit my experience with games I disliked less frequently. For a game to be disappointing I need to have a prior expectation. But plenty of games I’ve played and disliked don’t fit into the category of something I had high hopes for going into. Thus “disappointing” may apply some of the time, but not all of the time. This also applies to Enraging. Few games, even games I thoroughly did not enjoy, were enraging experiences. So it would be hard for me to picture scenarios where I would label a game as such.

None of that is to say that your choice of descriptors is wrong. Rather it’s to point out the fact that selecting language to quickly distill an experience into a single word signifier is a difficult proposition. The reason being that each of us differs so greatly from each other that no one system will work for everyone. My take on the existing star descriptions is that they are just as apt as any other set of words because we lack a single way to describe the meaning of one through five stars. And as the person designing the site, @peter simply needed to pick and stick with one. It becomes a matter of recognizing that, given no one system is perfect, you have to settle knowing full well that some people will agree and others will not. That’s not to say that it is permanently fixed in place. Rather, it’s just a recognition that this choice is one made between a rock and a hard place. There is no easy answer, and no right answer. There is simply just a lot of compromise.

As for the lack of the word at, I suppose I can’t fault you for your feeling on that, lol.

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Too add to what @bmo just said, that rating would be also problematic for me at the high end of the spectrum. Many games I would rate 5 stars are not “favourites” by any stretch, but just games that are very good, don’t have any big flaw and enjoyed a lot.

The wording in the site as it stands for me is next to perfect (I would give it 4 starts (?)). It’s very similar to the way psychology questionnaires are made, which is a pretty solid leg to stand on.

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My two cents:

★★☆☆☆ Disappointing
(Bad but playable)

★☆☆☆☆ Enraging
(Bad and unplayable)

  • Work against the player.

Cannot launch
Game breaking glitches
Unfair AI

Prime example: Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X 2 (PC). I want my money back.

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Addiction makes the discrimination between 4-Star and 5-Star.

★★★★★ Favorite
(Great + Addiction)

★★★★☆ Great
(Great, period.)

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Fair enough. But I’ll admit that there are plenty of games I’d award one star that I dislike but are perfectly playable. This is the nature of my general problem with rating systems. What constitutes a single star to one person can be very different than to another. Which is why I say no system will fit everyone. What works for one fails for another, and vice versa.

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Yeah, I agree. In fact, I think everybody’s meaning for each of the stars will be different, and may even change with each game. For instance, the “addiction” factor mentioned above. I consider most of the games I have given 5-stars to, not addictive.

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I actually really like the 5-stars-system or any numerical rating system. I don’t care what one games’ rating is. I only care about my ratings, the system give me a neat way to sort it out a bit better and to find stuff easily according to my arbitrary enjoyment level that i arbitrarily put on a game with my arbitrary meaning of the number. It’s okay.

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I’m coming back to request having the infamous typo fixed: One-Star DESCR (description) “did not like it all”. To better align it with Two-Star DESCR “mostly didn’t like it”, it should become “didn’t like it at all”.

By the way, I discovered an old thread on the Gamespot forum against the inflated 10-Point Rating Scale but for the 5-Star Rating Scale. Quite a few users have worthwhile ideas about Stars.

Quote Gamespot User “drekula2” on Stars:

★☆☆☆☆ = bad (not recommended at all) - why do we need 4 spots on the 10 scale to say the same thing?

★★☆☆☆ = mediocre (recommended in exceptional circumstances)

★★★☆☆ = good (recommended for the fans or on sale)

★★★★☆ = great (recommended)

★★★★★ = excellent (strongly recommended)

On the other hand, my take on Stars:

★☆☆☆☆ = hated it

★★☆☆☆ = disliked it

★★★☆☆ = mixed feelings

★★★★☆ = liked it

★★★★★ = loved it

Nevertheless, I’m still believing in [:+1: Liked / :-1: Disliked Rating] after careful thought. It may worth experimenting on ALONGSIDE ★★★★★, instead of taking it place.

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yes. One thing I dont want with 10 stars is the dillemma of which side of the even-numbered spectrum does it fall upon. mostly good 6 or mostly bad 5. in theory there is more granularity but i find myself being inconsistent enough with a 5 star system (i have rescored things) so i know i wouldnt get any benefit out of it. I just care about it for sorting my shelves using filter->view. :slight_smile:

But… i like the idea of subcats somewhat…

I could vote a game:
5 for graphics
4 for sound
2 for gameplay
1 for story
3 for overall design/other
add it up divide by total cateogires and you get a whopping three. bump up or down any one of those elements by 1 point and you get .2 increments, (which i certainly wouldnt be able to judge manually)

This is how old magazines like nintendo power and gamepro worked (also five star systems) IIRC

could be somewhat nice to see that (especially if we can see how people tend to score titles) but site is fine for my sorting as is.

grouvee secret prototype star system (currently in beta):

1 did not like it all
2 like it one bit
3 bad
4 better than bad
5 almost good
6 good
7 better
8 real good
9 less than perfect
10 perfect

11 (grouvee gold ronly rating)

So far, I only know two games that go to 11. Strafe and Half-Life 3

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That last sentence gave me a good laugh.

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I come from a site that does not have the 5-star Rating System enabled and for me, this seems much more easier. I would not have an issue having to change but definitely would have an issue changing all the ratings from start to finish yet again.

As a personal suggestion, I could love seeing a “Priority” tab so I can show people in what games I am active and in what games I’m not. (Ex: Priority: Low/Medium/High)

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That’s the FAVORITE shelf on Keep Track of My Game’s website.

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Totally agree with that. it would be nice to ‘weight’ things in different ways or mark them with an html color highlight or something to stand out. (custom html color highlights would look really cool and probably wouldnt be THAT involved to do You could maybe even do other things with that down the road if the games show up in different places on the site and are tagged with an html background color: I just want to make Fallout 4 #BFFF00 :smiley: )

i currently just use the star system for this purpose. wishlist, backlog and played, as a makeshift priority/weighting system. (With grouvee sorting is priority 1 thing that matters!) but one cannot ‘show’ that this is why you star things, it just shows that you gave a game X amount of stars, and its not that easy to see what shelf a user puts a game on unless you are on that shelf and see the game. :smiley:

not sure what best way to do a weighting system would be though. A person might be sloppy and have 30 things on the playing shelf. and the people who start many but finish few would have trouble with using grouvee. priority tick things would just be more micro managemnt for that kind of user! :thinking:

Maybe something even as simple as a cluster of 5-10 game boxes in a corner you added to playing shelves ‘recently’ that you can click ‘i am playing this and bla bla bla status today’ to dd a status update.i would use a very simple mobile app built around ‘whats playing’ and quick links for status entries with this in mind (just saying)

I still think in theory it would be good for grouvee to somehow ‘police’ users and monitor playing shelf and have rules in place that at some point either move them to the backlog or suggest that you do so :laughing:

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Just to throw in my 2 pennies. I like having a system to rate games. I’m not opposed to changing the rating system but if it’s taken away completely, I will be leaving the site.

All the best!

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I don’t believe there is a current plan to remove the rating system. Any plan @Peter might have for a change is likely in the distant future, if at all. I wouldn’t worry yourself too much.

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The rating system isn’t going anywhere, so stick around a little while!

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No worries. I’m planning to :slight_smile:

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