would it be worth just going full steam in the way of reviews and rather than having a 5 star system, have it be based on recommendation and whether or not you do or don't recommend it? then there's a percentage based on how many of the votes rate it favorably. it might also be worth having "interested/not interested" instead of recommended or even on top of recommended as a less intensive "pre-review" for demos showing that, whether you've played it or not, you'd be interested in giving it a go when it comes out.

MFGG's current rating is demonstrably bad, so I think it would be better to throw it out entirely in favor of a binary rating system.

I disagree - binary rating systems don't work well for user-submitted content. There are many games on MFGG that aren't good enough for me to give a "recommend" vote, but aren't bad enough for me to downvote.

[quote="VinnyVideo"]I disagree - binary rating systems don't work well for user-submitted content. There are many games on MFGG that aren't good enough for me to give a "recommend" vote, but aren't bad enough for me to downvote.[/quote] you can apply that same logic to a star based rating system, the point is to reach a consensus on whether or not the game's worth playing, not necessarily if it's of quality. a game being fun is more important than if its polished.

I think a star based system works better for this site.

If we have to have scores, make 'em out of five. 1 = Terrible 2 = Bad 3 = Average 4 = Good 5 = Amazing Anything else is unnecessary. No half-points either, those are just stupid. Make reviews more free flow, though. Remove all the separated sections, have a main review form and a tagline, and that's it. Can't tell you how many times I read a review with "I don't know what this means" in the Pros and Cons section...

[quote="Zero Kirby"]If we have to have scores, make 'em out of five. 1 = Terrible 2 = Bad 3 = Average 4 = Good 5 = Amazing Anything else is unnecessary. No half-points either, those are just stupid. Make reviews more free flow, though. Remove all the separated sections, have a main review form and a tagline, and that's it. Can't tell you how many times I read a review with "I don't know what this means" in the Pros and Cons section...[/quote] I think a 5 star system was the plan actually, there was a discussion about it some time ago.

Yeah, a 5 star system is basically confirmed. "Recommend or not" is a neato suggestion, but I'm with Vinny; it's not good enough. Perhaps a like button (and dislike button?) for people who don't want to review the game?

Any score-based system is inherently flawed, because two users who hold the exact same opinion on a game will give it a different score. Some people believe that a game is judged by subtracting flaws from a perfect score, whereas smart people add merits and subtract flaws from a middle-score. If there is no standard (and instating one would necessarily make a massive amount of existing reviews invalid), then the review scores are meaningless.

there would still be a review alongside the recommendation, i never said to not have that and i guess less people here use steam than i expected wills got the right idea- the binary rating system gives you an overarching percentage rating out of 100, which i think is much more valuable. it also promotes actually reading the review, and not just looking at the final thoughts and score.

I agree that one of the problems inherent to a rating scale - whether the proposed 5-star system or the existing 10-point system - is that each reviewer calls "balls and strikes" a little differently. Suppose you played a game and found it to be reasonably enjoyable, but serious flaws hampered the experience (a game like [url=http://mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&param=02&c=2&id=32310]this one[/url] or [url=http://mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&param=02&c=2&id=29506]this one[/url] comes to mind, but there are many possible examples). One reviewer might give it a 4/10, another might give it a 6/10, and another one might give it a 9/10. That's a pretty wide range of opinions, and this disparity is reflected in the review scores. However, if you're browsing the mainsite, you can look at the average score of 6.3/10 and come to the conclusion that this game will probably offer a decent (but potentially flawed) gameplay experience. As long as the sample size of reviews is reasonably large, the average score should provide a reasonably accurate gauge of a game's quality, at least relative to other fangames released during a comparable time period. Of course, some games don't attract a good number of reviews, but we hope that streamlining the review process will encourage people to submit more reviews.

How about having a beta tag for games in beta? That way we can know if it's a beta.

[quote="Thatgamerguy2234"]How about having a beta tag for games in beta? That way we can know if it's a beta.[/quote] [url=http://mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&param=01&c=2&o=&filter=6.47]We already do.[/url]

making a game's current status more prominent on the game's listing itself would be a very smart idea, whether that be a beta or a demo.

And how about a fan art section on MFGG?

[quote="Thatgamerguy2234"]And how about a fan art section on MFGG?[/quote] The main site is for hosting games and resources, art can go on the forums as always

a fan-art gallery could be fun, actually, but not necessarily in the resource hosting department. having a dedicated fan-arts board could serve to attract younger members as a "gateway" into fangaming.

[quote="Mit"]a fan-art gallery could be fun, actually, but not necessarily in the resource hosting department. having a dedicated fan-arts board could serve to attract younger members as a "gateway" into fangaming.[/quote] Plus, we have a sprite section, so it'd make 100% sense to do it.

Hey to everyone talking about a rating system Don't we already have that? the 1.0-10 thing. Or is there something wrong with that?

@thatgamerguy: fan-art is different from sprites in that sprites can actually be used in games. fan-art wouldn't be used in games most likely, and would be there simply to enhance the community. @parakarry: it's pretty much near universally agreed that a score out of 10 is excessive and we should refine the reviews system. there's better ways of handling it as we've been mentioning with a score system based out of 5. personally i think a binary system would help enforce the written reviews themselves to be better and have a better overall consensus.