Voting system for plat/100% time and difficulty (instead of guide writer estimates)

[Guest]

By far the worst thing I see in guides in general (mainly powerpyx) is the estimated number of hours. seriously, it is assumed that the player will do a speedrun and try to get the trophies all in a totally unexpected time for a first playthough. games that, when played for the first time, can normally reach 50 hours are reduced to 20, games with the duration of 20 being reduced to 5-10 hours. For me this is the worst aspect of most guides.

[B1rvine]

Here's a good guide for how to rank difficulty : 

 

1 : Super Easy "difficulty" that anyone can platinum / 100% (including your mom.)

2 : Easy difficulty for any "Generic Gamer."

3 : Easy difficulty for any “Trophy Hunter.” Moderate difficulty for generic gamers.

4 : Moderate difficulty for Trophy Hunters. Challenging difficulty for generic gamers.

5 : Challenging difficulty for Trophy Hunters. Very Challenging difficulty for generic gamers.

6 : Very Challenging difficulty for Trophy Hunters. Hard difficulty for generic gamers.

7 : Hard difficulty for anyone, including Trophy Hunters.

8 : Extremely Hard difficulty for anyone.

9 : Nearly Impossible for anyone.

10 : NecroDancer, etc. Reserved for special titles only.

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by B1rvine

[iriihutoR84]

I like how TrueAchievements does it. After you have completed a game to 100% you get a notification on the site: "Congratulations on completing Game X. Please tell us how long it took." Click the message and you are taken to "My Completion Times" where you can easily fill in your completion time for each game you have 100%'d. The most commonly picked completion time is displayed as the estimated completion time on the site. You also have access to a graph to see how spread out completion times are. The advantage of this system is that you can't rate the completion time unless you have actually 100%'d the game so there will be no votes from people who aren't knowledgeable. Difficulty could also be handled the same way.

[that_dude_cam_ps]

Hey everybody

 

Thanks for all your comments and constructive criticism!

I honestly just wrote this on whim in my hotel room after work last Thursday, but it's always fun to see people's reactions, whether positive or negative.

It is interesting though, that the poll results are a large majority in favor of this feature (58,5% as of writing), while only 21% of voters want to keep things the way they are.

Kind of sounds to me like PSNProfiles should introduce this feature.... ? But again, this was more of a fun suggestion and I understand that it would take work to implement.

Maybe a compromise would be to leave the guide stats as an "optional personal" estimate, so we have the best of both worlds...?

There are also still so many games that don't have guides on PSNProfiles, so this would inform players about what they're getting into according to plat/100% achievers.

Anyway, I would love to see it, as would many others apparently!

 

Either way, I just wanted to take a minute to respond some comments, as one does ?

 

On 4/15/2021 at 4:03 PM, DaivRules said:

LOL that a voting system is science "voting system!!! (science, yay)" and not just collected voter bias.

Do you actually like my idea, or are you trolling me...? ?

 

On 4/15/2021 at 4:09 PM, ThatMuttGuy said:

If you want to know difficulty, generally, the rarity can paint a good picture. However, that's not even always accurate either. 

Plat rarity is too ambiguous: Take RDR2 for example, that game is not hard, it's just sooo freaking long and the MP drags on, so the rarity % is really low. A lot of lesser known indie games also often have low rarity %. And some games that are generally considered pretty hard, like Bloodborne, often have a disproportionately high rarity % due to a dedicated fan base.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 4:16 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

I think crowd sourcing difficulty rating would only be 'Science' in the same way that a Twitter hashtag is 'Literature'... 

........what?!  this would have made more sense if you compared it to Twitter polls?

 

On 4/15/2021 at 4:18 PM, anotherfangirl said:

I often compare it with other guides like PowerPyx and playstationtrophies and I think it fits very well. I wouldn’t change it.

Having to compare the difficulty and time to plat/100% to other sites is already indicative of the problem I'm addressing: you're effectively cross-checking stats to see, if multiple other sources are similar enough to corroborate their validity. You're collecting data from multiple guide writers, who have played the game, averaging out their opinions to inform an average time to plat/100% and difficulty. That is what the poll function would do. Just saying... ?

 

On 4/15/2021 at 4:36 PM, Sardavanua said:

I like it the way it is. I usually trust the guide writers, because they know what they're talking about.

 

A voting system is just unecessary I think. It never really worked out on the .org forum for example. Almost every game has the most votes on 3,4 and 5. Then there's the person who instantly gives it a 10, because he can't be bothered with actually playing the game.

And last but not least there's the elitist who gives the game a 2 no matter the difficulty, because to him everything is so easy and everybody needs to know how easy the game was to him. 

 

Trusting a single guide writer to determine difficulty is certainly not a bad thing... but even the mighty PowerPyx can have wild stats in his guides. Demons' Souls (Remake) for example, he says people "familiar with the PS3 game" can plat in 25-30 hours. No. Way. In. Hell. The original is from 2009, so even if you played it back then, how could you possibly remember everything like Character Tendency and World Tendency?? Plus you have to beat it twice for the plat. You would need a nigh on perfect play through to even attempt that time. Just one of many examples...

I think, if enough people question a guide's difficulty, maybe it should be adjusted to reflect a majority.

Outliers like 1s and 10s wouldn't affect the average, most of the votes are just "trolling" anyway.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 4:56 PM, PooPooBlast said:

Not sure why everyone is shooting down the idea. More work for mods?? I personally would find a playtime stat to be useful if the calculations are done correctly and in a standardized non-haphazard way. 

 

Even better, having a range for playtime would accommodate for as you said, the fast and slow players. 

 

Atm I don't even bother looking at playtime estimates nor difficulty ratings on the site because they're both vastly different from mine. It's literally one person's opinion versus having a poll with some mathematical modelling that at least can bring it one step closer to being standardized. I mean heck even regarding difficulties on other websites, I've seen the mafia 1 remake being as high as 6.5/10 which made chuckle. Same with the Yakuza series.. and so on. 

 

Anyway, not sure what system hltb.com uses but I found their stats there pretty useful for me as I tend to finish games around the range they propose based on their aggregate ratings.  

 

Overall, I think having a playtime would be great because that's less likely to deviate as much as difficulty ratings given that the game length is based on what the devs created which is set in stone. Contrast this to the subjective difficulty ratings which would likely end up being whack.

Finally someone part of the poll majority has made it into the comments to side with me  Thank you for your support in the matter!

 

On 4/15/2021 at 4:58 PM, JoniP said:

Only letting players who actually finished a game vote reminds me of this:

 

People who have not plat/100% a game can't accurately state how difficult it is, or how long it takes.

Great example: Sackboy: A Big Adventure is a fun, generally pretty easy co-op platformer. Beating the game is trivial for most people. BUT to plat it there is one trophy, "String it Together", that may make it unobtainable for many, which only becomes evident after the main story etc. Another good example: Wolfenstein 2. That game is arguably not the hard as a FPS, but the plat is extremely difficult due to a single trophy requiring you to beat the whole game on the hardest difficulty without dying. People voting should have the plat.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:01 PM, BGriff1986 said:

*If* the calculations are done in a standardised way then yeah, it could maybe be a benefit. But the very nature of an opt-in poll on the internet means it’s never going to provide a standardised sample

Well I guess if you wanted a truly standardized sample, you would have to define a voter demographic and every game would have to have that same demographic vote on it. But that's obviously not feasible.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:07 PM, mataningo said:

In terms of difficulty, you can't argue, if the game is hard, then it's hard, you cannot change that. for some it can be much easier if they got the skills required and/or with a little bit of luck, and for others it can be a lot harder.

 

Estimate time for plat/100% is doubtable, but I'm sure the one who make the guide is aware of that, and he's simply putting in the average time it will take to complete the game.

Is a Soulsborne game as hard to a veteran player as it is to a Soulsborne newbie? Difficulty is totally subjective, so a game is not inherently an 8/10. It's X/10 to each individual, that's why polls would help find an average vs. a guide writer determining the difficulty based on his perception.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:28 PM, LancashireLad87 said:

 

Some guides especially those that were made many years ago are grossly in-accurate, for instance I've been playing Bayonetta recently and the guide states 40 hours which even for an average player would be excessive. I'm not the only person to comment about that either, it's no fault of the writers but it's not something you can accurately portray. 

 

This is a good point, older guides are often never updated and game updates, dead servers, etc. can definitely influence both time and difficulty. Polls could keep the stats more current. For example maybe a game was a 4/10 at launch according to 200 voters, yet 4 months later exploits were patched out and now it's 7/10 according to the next 2000 people.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:31 PM, PooPooBlast said:

That's a valid criticism but wouldn't you say that it's still better to get an aggregate score as opposed to having the guide writer propose his playtime alone? And I did mention earlier that it's definitely not perfect but it's one step closer to it being standardized than having 1 person decide the estimated playtime

 

And having a playtime system wouldn't mean that we'd get rid of the author's estimate. We can have both at the same time for those who find it useful.

Exactly.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:37 PM, mataningo said:

I totally agree, it happens a lot with some guides. In that case, maybe in the time he played it, the game was more challenging. in today's world, games can change drastically with a simple fix.

Exactly, my point above.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:40 PM, Helyx said:

The rarity percentages and fastest completion times are already displayed. If that's not good enough, you'll never truly be satisfied.

I commented on rarity above and the "quickest time to plat" is just the difference between the first and last trophy. For longer games that could be two weeks. How many hours was this person playing a day? 2-3 hours? 10 hours? Nobody knows.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:40 PM, LancashireLad87 said:

It would be better to take an average of all the platinum achievers who can track their platinum time and find the average from there. As Bayonetta in this example tracks your playtime via the save data. 

This would be the same result as plat achievers voting.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:41 PM, DaivRules said:

Play times would only be accurate if the systems properly tracked exact play time and allowed a user to see that. And difficulty accuracy will never be solved because difficulty can't be boiled down to a number, implying it is quantifiable, because all the inputs and contributing factors can't be quantified either. Nothing gets this closer to accurate because accuracy is a technical description and nothing about this is being addressed technically.

Luckily the PS5 tracks and displays total play time on a system level. The future is here

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:48 PM, mekktor said:

I like the idea, but something that would need to be figured out is what to do with games that have a wide range of answers depending on how you play the game. For example a puzzle game that is 8/10 difficulty, but only 1/10 with a guide. Or a game like Jak II which is 20 hours legit, but 1 hour with an exploit. Taking a weighted average of these just gives you a meaningless number. At least if the guide writer chooses the values, they can make sure it's appropriate for the method used in their guide.

A guide can tell players, if there are exploits to extremely reduce difficulty / play time. But generally it would be more desirable not to reflect these in the voting system, because I assume the majority of trophy hunters are honorable knights of the sacred symbols ?

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:54 PM, PooPooBlast said:

Regarding playtime, having a single number will change of course but that's why having something like a range would be better.

 

Not to mention I don't see why having an estimated playtime that's a bit dynamic is a bad thing. With enough votes, that number will reach a plateau or a value that's not likely to wildly change once a large sample size have casted their votes. 

Exactly.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 5:57 PM, B1rvine said:

Although, so PSNP stays "competitive" with general alternatives, maybe it should just be put in.

I agree with this. According to the comments, there are a lot of people that also check pstrophies.org for voting results on games, so there is definitely a demand for it and the "competing" sites offer it.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 6:04 PM, sweeping-lamp3 said:

Sounds like a good feature.

 

The current way I estimate 100% completion time is by going to the 100% list for a game I'm interested in.  Then, I go to the middle page to view a range of 50 players' time.

Thanks for the support   But that really only works with shorter games. Anything longer than 20-30 hours and it's hard to tell how many hours a day you have to play to achieve the plat that quickly.

 

On 4/15/2021 at 6:12 PM, HYPERS said:

guys, sly won't add it.

 

anyways, I think we should have both. a guide can show several time savers that would greatly reduce the time it takes to platinum. there could also be a collective vote for people that have the platinum, not just have the game. but the time on the guide is better.

I know, unfortunately, it will probably never happen... Still think it would be awesome to have!

 

On 4/15/2021 at 6:40 PM, LOWERCASESUCKS said:

I see what you've done here you clever goose.

 

Luckily though, I voted for votes.

 

Imagine voting for no voting. Yikes.

*honk* *honk*  Yes, imagine voting against voting... madness!

 

On 4/15/2021 at 6:33 PM, Shmeefly said:

Its pleasant reading posts like this, it reminds me im not the only one who is ocd about my life of gaming, ive voted in favor because why not, my vote can only help you in your quest so you have it, but personally i dont care too much about this particular thing because ive learned to not take guides so literal on time to plat etc, i swear these guys either make up random digits so it looks like theyre amazing doing it all 20h quicker than everybody else lol, or read off in game clocks which are commonly inaccurate and dont ever inc loading times etc so i usually grab all the info i need on these stats by scanning a few forum posts or scanning multiple gudes to gather more of a collective estimate which ive found slighty more reliable, but mainly because difficulty or time just doesnt ever deter me from playing what i want, if i want a plat il get it, i know im skilled enough for most games so i just crack on at a steady pace n do me, im not saying this wouldnt be a welcome implementation though, who doesnt want more accurate reading eh, however, ive put up a poll before and im under the impression the site operators are either 'way too busy' with a massive backlog of site improvements, or simply dont care enough about implementing most of them, ive heard theres countless user voted features sat collecting dust and a lot of them fairly quick and relatively easy to implement, but years later still we wait. 

I wanted something specific like you, but quickly realised i was over hopeful, then settled for a simple alternative, all i want is a drag and drop feature on my trophy list (the same thing already implemented in the trophy cabinet) so i can place my games in the right order alphabetically... 

One missed decimal here, one roman numerical there and everything is out of order, i even spent a couple hours renaming everything on my list correctly and sent it to sly, literary a 10 minute job to correct the missed dots etc but i was pawned off and told to 'create a poll', which i did, n those who voted, voted in favor of what i initially wanted, yet im still waiting for confirmation of the much simpler alternative of the drag n drop added to our lists, i just made my own list in my desired order ftw, good luck though i hope you get what you want, anything like this only improves psnp, the same as what i want, im baffled why half these requests werent already designed on creation of psnp, on the other side tho, there is a lot here and its still a good site so thumbs up to them, just sour i dont have what i wanted which is the case for most i guess hehe

Yeah the site it definitely excellent and well-designed either way. But there are features missing, such as the game polls I've suggested. Still, thanks for the support

 

On 4/16/2021 at 9:13 AM, kevao97 said:

By far the worst thing I see in guides in general (mainly powerpyx) is the estimated number of hours. seriously, it is assumed that the player will do a speedrun and try to get the trophies all in a totally unexpected time for a first playthough. games that, when played for the first time, can normally reach 50 hours are reduced to 20, games with the duration of 20 being reduced to 5-10 hours. For me this is the worst aspect of most guides.

Same here

 

On 4/16/2021 at 10:20 PM, iriihutoR84 said:

I like how TrueAchievements does it. After you have completed a game to 100% you get a notification on the site: "Congratulations on completing Game X. Please tell us how long it took." Click the message and you are taken to "My Completion Times" where you can easily fill in your completion time for each game you have 100%'d. The most commonly picked completion time is displayed as the estimated completion time on the site. You also have access to a graph to see how spread out completion times are. The advantage of this system is that you can't rate the completion time unless you have actually 100%'d the game so there will be no votes from people who aren't knowledgeable. Difficulty could also be handled the same way.

This similar to what 'm suggesting, just that I'd like to see an low-high average vs. just one number. But yeah, exactly. Other sites have it as well... 

Edited April 22, 2021 by that_dude_cam_ps
Spacing

[that_dude_cam_ps]

On 4/16/2021 at 9:33 PM, B1rvine said:

Here's a good guide for how to rank difficulty : 

 

1 : Super Easy "difficulty" that anyone can platinum / 100% (including your mom.)

2 : Easy difficulty for any "Generic Gamer."

3 : Easy difficulty for any “Trophy Hunter.” Moderate difficulty for generic gamers.

4 : Moderate difficulty for Trophy Hunters. Challenging difficulty for generic gamers.

5 : Challenging difficulty for Trophy Hunters. Very Challenging difficulty for generic gamers.

6 : Very Challenging difficulty for Trophy Hunters. Hard difficulty for generic gamers.

7 : Hard difficulty for anyone, including Trophy Hunters.

8 : Extremely Hard difficulty for anyone.

9 : Nearly Impossible for anyone.

10 : NecroDancer, etc. Reserved for special titles only.

 

I love it: trophy hunters vs. "generic gamers" LOL ??

On 4/15/2021 at 7:24 PM, DrBloodmoney said:

I think back then, guides were written on the basis that the player would play the game legit, and only refer casually to the guide at times, or when they got stuck, and the difficulties and times were based on that.

 

Now, the assumption seems to be that the player will follow the guide to the letter, at all times, and will use it as a prescriptive set of instructions rather than a reference.

 

You can see that most pointedly in the guides for Adventure games - almost all of them have a difficulty rating of 3/10 or less, and a time to complete stat that reflects following a walkthrough to the letter, and doing no deviation from the prescribed ’mainline’ path.

take a look at the guide for Day of The Tentacle -  2/10 and 6 hours to plat.

 

Without using a guide, those numbers are preposterous - in fact, even using a guide sometimes (ie. only when you get stuck) they are still absurd - I played that game a bunch when it originally came out, and I reckon it took 50 hours at least to finish at the time. 

Case in point!  

[that_dude_cam_ps]

On 4/15/2021 at 7:36 PM, MaeveWileyy_ said:

Personally, I think the guides should include both the guide author's opinion and the players voting.

This would be a good compromise.

On 4/15/2021 at 7:55 PM, dieselmanchild said:

I totally support this! In fact, I was just discussing this in a thread a few hours ago, so I’ll repeat the gist of what I said there.

 

I really love PSNP’s guide format and think it’s superior to other sites in most ways. But one aspect where it’s vastly inferior to the guides on PlayStationtrophies (PST) is in the estimated time to platinum & the difficulty rating.

 

I often find that PSNP guide estimates are way off, and this is because the estimates in the guides are nothing more than the opinions of the author, and doesn’t reflect the reality for the average player. PST uses a community voting system, where users who have finished a game can vote for how long it took them to obtain the platinum, and how difficult it was for them. It then takes the averages based on community input, and those numbers get inserted into the guide.

 

Furthermore, I love that PST allows users to comment in the voting threads. I always skim through these comments when researching a game because you can learn a lot of crucial information about difficulty or time estimates, or other important information that might not appear in the guide.

 

I think adding community averages on PSNP would vastly improve the quality of guides on this site. There is no reason not to really!

I agree,of course

[that_dude_cam_ps]

On 4/15/2021 at 8:14 PM, PhyrxianLibrarin said:

Sounds like somebody just took a class in statistics!

 

I get where you're going with this, but I doubt this would produce any more accurate results than the current system. Time and difficulty are both extremely subjective, especially when you're comparing across many genres and many people who like or dislike those genres. And if you only allow people who've already platted/100%'d the game, you have a self-selection problem where people who like the game or are better at the game will be the only ones voting on it. If you want this to be remotely accurate you have to have a statistically significant number of responses. That probably means you have to open voting to people who haven't finished (or even haven't played) the game, and then how do you filter out the noise?

 

Say MLB 2022 or whatever comes out. 30 baseball fans know all the rules and players, so they rate it 2/10 difficulty and 20 hours. 30 football fans think baseball is slow and boring, so they rate it 8/10 difficulty and 60 hours. You run the math and judge it 5/10 and 40 hours, which is actually less accurate than either of the two groups!

 

Compare that to the guide writer explicitly saying "if you follow this guide it will take approximately X hours and be Y difficult", which adds the context that the "scientific" method is missing.

That's why you would have to require people to plat the game and a minimum sample, maybe even in proportion to game popularity. 

[PhyrxianLibrarin]

6 hours ago, that_dude_cam_ps said:

That's why you would have to require people to plat the game and a minimum sample, maybe even in proportion to game popularity. 

 

That's just another form of self-selection. Remember that the difficulty is displayed in the context of a guide; if the only people who can vote on difficulty are people who've already platted it, they're going to vote on the difficulty of platinuming it without a guide, like they did. So the guide might say 7 or 8, but the existence of the guide itself makes the platinum easier. Is that any more accurate than the current system? What happens if you don't get a minimum sample? Lots of people on this site don't use the forums at all. And the PST plat difficulty threads, the best comparison to this idea, often only have like 20-ish responses, which is not even close to enough to be statistically significant.

 

Your proposal takes advantage of the so-called "wisdom of crowds", but I'm not convinced that applies here. Averaging eliminates random errors in the values, but it doesn't address systemic errors that come from the entire crowd at once. If members of the crowd are able to influence each other's values, or if the crows itself isn't particularly diverse (both of which apply to these forums), the advantages of this system start to disappear. Social influence can cause the average to be even more inaccurate than normal. James Surowiecki (the guy who literally wrote the book on the wisdom of crowds) himself said this technique works best when there is a correct answer to the question being asked, and there isn't one here.

 

Frankly, I think the real solution is to remove difficulty from the guides entirely. Bad measurements are worse than no measurements at all.

 

And as for whether people are trolling you, do you really think a choice between "voting system!!! (science, yay)" and "guide writer estimate (biased opinions, booooo)" is a particularly unbiased poll? If I was your stats professor I'd be very concerned.

[Helyx]

8 hours ago, that_dude_cam_ps said:

For longer games that could be two weeks. How many hours was this person playing a day? 2-3 hours? 10 hours? Nobody knows.

 

Just look at the time stamps.

 

 

Like I already said, if the current "fastest achievers" and "rarity" percentage isn't sufficient, then you're just gonna remain unfulfilled in life.

 

[Deadly_Ha_Ha]

As a guide writer my opinion is, who cares. I will say though that at the point that the guide writer took the time to write the guide, their opinion by itself as to the game's difficulty deserves to be seen separately from the general voted-on difficulty. If you want a community difficulty as well as that then ok, but I personally would not simply replace the author's rating with the community's rating

Edited April 22, 2021 by Deadly_Ha_Ha

[Silocia]

How does adding a voting system make it less biased? 

 

I've seen voting systems before and they become useless quick because people start to lie about the difficulty or time taken to make them seem better than everyone else.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Silocia

[starcrunch061]

I've mentioned this in other threads, but I don't like the idea of a poll for difficulty. Ignoring the large percentage of people who will just troll the polls, what are we expecting? A large segment of people think that time should be considered in difficulty estimates, and a large segment does not. This will skew poll results even among people who vote with "honesty and integrity" (to quote the instructions on another site). Further, hardly anyone even bothers voting in those polls anymore. Moreover, you'll run into the "who should vote" issue. Can I not vote for the difficulty of the SMB plat because I don't have it? I mean, it says something that I don't have that plat.

 

100% completion times could work (slightly) better, but I don't really trust them, either. One of the big problems is the bloke who follows none of the time-shortening hints in the guide, only to later say, "Your 100% estimate is way off!" (and guide writers know what I'm talking about). One I often cite is Star Ocean: The Last Hope. My estimate on the time for that plat is 450-500 hours. But, you'll see people say it's a 1000-hour plat, because...it's a big number, I guess. It's nowhere NEAR 1000 hours, but people just seem to think that once you pass 100, it's all the same, anyway.

 

Another example I can think of is Nioh. It took me around 175 hours to get the 100% in that game. But I'm pretty sure that, had I used a different build, or different armor, I could have easily cut 25-30 hours off the time. I didn't want to, and that's on me. But it makes my own opinion of the time needed for the game somewhat less valuable than the person who has written a streamlined guide.

 

As far as "science" goes, I don't see how the averages of time or difficulty among an unclear sample somehow work everything out. I honestly trust more the opinion of a guide writer who has completed the plat over the multitude of voices that I know nothing about.

 

Anyway, my two cents...

Edited April 22, 2021 by starcrunch061

[tonkie18]

I just take guides as an estimate.. and as a general rule add around 10 hours on because I’m really bad at games ?

[anotherfangirl]

8 hours ago, that_dude_cam_ps said:

Having to compare the difficulty and time to plat/100% to other sites is already indicative of the problem I'm addressing: you're effectively cross-checking stats to see, if multiple other sources are similar enough to corroborate their validity. You're collecting data from multiple guide writers, who have played the game, averaging out their opinions to inform an average time to plat/100% and difficulty. That is what the poll function would do. Just saying... ?

Even with a poll function I’d still compare the results here with the results on playstationtrophies, so it wouldn’t help me. And I think PowerPyx and the people here show that you can rate a game in a realistic way. I prefer one user (who wrote the guide) telling me how hard it is compared to 100 people with many people voting a 1/10 because players just have to know how easy it was for them and people rating it a 10/10 because the game is a multiplayer grind.

 

That’s just my opinion though, to each their own. I love psnprofiles because it’s different from many other forums.

[DrBloodmoney]

24 minutes ago, starcrunch061 said:

I've mentioned this in other threads, but I don't like the idea of a poll for difficulty. Ignoring the large percentage of people who will just troll the polls, what are we expecting? A large segment of people think that time should be considered in difficulty estimates, and a large segment does not. This will skew poll results even among people who vote with "honesty and integrity" (to quote the instructions on another site). Further, hardly anyone even bothers voting in those polls anymore.

These are all good points - and totally remind me of one particular pain in the ass who used to frequently write reviews on the UK amazon store.

 

It was a five star review system (as everyone knows) but this douche would start every review with a paragraph about how “5 Star systems don’t make mathematical sense because it has no middle ground”, or some such (wrong) nonsense, “so all my reviews are out of 4” ?

 

basically, if he loved a product that had only a couple of reviews at 5 star, he would be dragging the average down by a good chunk...

...not because he didn’t like the product....

....but because HE DIDN’T LIKE MATHS ?

 

Edited April 22, 2021 by DrBloodmoney

[SerEriol]

I can't believe this hasn't been implemented yet, and is the main reason why I usually don't refer to this site apart from looking at profiles.

 

Creating 2 sticky threads per game, one for difficulty and one for estimated time to platinum, is a must. The poll system is great and people can post their own experience below, which is very uselful to read before starting a game. Guide writer's estimate can stay there and be an extra.

 

To people who don't like the feature, just skip it, that's all.

[GoldenShaka]

I'm only agree about the time one, it could be accurate, because people don't usually mess with their time spent.

BUT, difficulty is a whole other universe. it's not just about the trolls, but also the subjectivity is HUGE.

Just a mere  example, which I've read tons of times here.

"OMG, this stuff is impossible, I don't think that I will ever beat that challenge, dungeon, boss, etc

Then checking the Most Recent platinum thread:  Fairly simple game, Difficulty: 3.5 out of 10"

I would prefer that the guide tells me right at the header how many playthroughs require, if you have to beat it on all difficulties, and how heavy is the grind.

[DaivRules]

30 minutes ago, SerEriol said:

I can't believe this hasn't been implemented yet, and is the main reason why I usually don't refer to this site apart from looking at profiles.

 

Creating 2 sticky threads per game, one for difficulty and one for estimated time to platinum, is a must. The poll system is great and people can post their own experience below, which is very uselful to read before starting a game. Guide writer's estimate can stay there and be an extra.

 

To people who don't like the feature, just skip it, that's all.

Someone inevitably creates a Trophy Thoughts thread for every game that pops up. If people here were concerned about making their opinion known about their rating for their personal difficulty rating or their estimated time to platinum they could post them there it would be on topic. 
 

Conversely, if they’re that concerned, but not far enough to make a guide on their own, they can leave comments in any posted guide and the guide writers, just like your thread suggestion, would be free to adapt or ignore those as well. 
 

More thread fodder for every single game (and region these days) that comes up sounds like an inefficient and wasteful endeavor for something that only seems to be an issue for the absolute minority (likely a fraction of a percent) of games when we have two existing approaches to addressing the suggestion. 
 

Polls for arbitrary ratings with no qualifications to participate is the opposite of useful statistics. All you’re collecting is randomness at that point. 
 

[GrantVernonHart]

I always found that guide also misleading and need to be created again because the guy who create the guide is not here anymore/never back to psn/psnprofiles for years

[SerEriol]

1 hour ago, GoldenShaka said:

I'm only agree about the time one, it could be accurate, because people don't usually mess with their time spent.

BUT, difficulty is a whole other universe. it's not just about the trolls, but also the subjectivity is HUGE.

Just a mere  example, which I've read tons of times here.

"OMG, this stuff is impossible, I don't think that I will ever beat that challenge, dungeon, boss, etc

Then checking the Most Recent platinum thread:  Fairly simple game, Difficulty: 3.5 out of 10"

I would prefer that the guide tells me right at the header how many playthroughs require, if you have to beat it on all difficulties, and how heavy is the grind.

 

Yh, you can keep referring to the guide editor estimate and ignore the thread if you don't trust it.

 

46 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

Someone inevitably creates a Trophy Thoughts thread for every game that pops up. If people here were concerned about making their opinion known about their rating for their personal difficulty rating or their estimated time to platinum they could post them there it would be on topic. 
 

Conversely, if they’re that concerned, but not far enough to make a guide on their own, they can leave comments in any posted guide and the guide writers, just like your thread suggestion, would be free to adapt or ignore those as well. 
 

More thread fodder for every single game (and region these days) that comes up sounds like an inefficient and wasteful endeavor for something that only seems to be an issue for the absolute minority (likely a fraction of a percent) of games when we have two existing approaches to addressing the suggestion. 
 

Polls for arbitrary ratings with no qualifications to participate is the opposite of useful statistics. All you’re collecting is randomness at that point. 
 

 

Threads usually focus on a specific topic, only a fraction or an aspect of a game, while I'm interested in 1 thread gathering other users experience related to overall platinum difficulty. When I read the threads on this site I hardly ever find that kind of complete info, it is much simpler with a dedicated thread. 

 

We don't care for random votes, we can elaborate our own vote by reading the posts, which are the most important thing. At least this is my experience in 10 years of trophy hunting.

 

Edited October 17, 2021 by SerEriol

[DepthsKeeper]

I guess this feature deserves to be implemented here. A few points:

1. Rarity != difficulty. For instance, check Project CARS and Catherine rarities. Catherine is much harder but less rare. There could be different reasons for rarity: the platinum could be long, grindy, buggy, hard, involve a lot of different activities which an average player will not play, etc...

2. Hardcore platinums are more about quality, not quantity (quantity is not a bad thing, it is simply a different way to view your collection). These ratings does not count the actual efforts of getting the platinum. By introducing voting system you are introducing a possibility to new kind of rating.

3. A new way to interact with users. These polling system can be useful to integrate the users into this project more. I guess, it is useful

4. A possibility to introduce hardcore (from 7)/long (100+) platinum counters. Increasing a platinum counter vs increasing a hardcore/long platinum counter is totally different (for me, at least  ).

5. Scattering is as important as average because it provides more info. Also, when people vote they can describe their choice. It is very useful then you are estimating difficulty/time.

6. Provide an ability to count a vote only when user got this platinum/DLC (DLC should have different difficulty/time). Because 1 trophy can make a platinum difficult (hi, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus). Force user to explain extreme votes (especially 9 or 10) by writing a comment: it will help to avoid trolls (but, as a drawback, more work for moderators, especially at start).

7. I know at least 1 web site where it works. People tend to poll honestly because this feature provider an option for the people from the people. Of course, there can be exclusions (you can guess why Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a good example), but it's fine. There is no ideal things in this world. Check the screens below Sorry, I don't get how to correctly apply an image here, link from a hosting is red  , But as an example the stats for 

Horizon: Zero Dawn - 3.63 (3342 votes), 50+ hours (3334 votes). DLC: 3.91 (906 votes), 25+ (910 votes).

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - 9.45 (88 votes), 100+ (98 votes). DLC: 6.25 (60 votes), 10+ (60 votes)