Can we make it so platinum achievers can vote on the difficulty of a game and also show that in the guides?

[Kittet3]

2 minutes ago, mekktor said:

 

No, it can't. You have no idea what went into the number that a particular guide writer chose, so no way to know how to scale it. With user voted ratings, you get consistency across games. You know that if racing game A is 2 points higher than racing game B, it's because game A is harder, not because the guide writer is bad at racing games.

 

What I don't understand here is why people would even argue against this. Even if you can't see the benefits, what do you gain by trying to stop it from being implemented? Especially if you end up with both the guide writer and the user voted ratings? Sometime it seems people want to argue just for the sake of it.

I fully agree with your top point, but will play devils advocate a little on the bottom point. The site has limited resources to implement new features, so it's better to fully discuss any proposed features even if they don't have any disadvantages. Does the benefit of this feature outweigh the cost and opportunity cost of developing it? It's important to see all sides. 

[audiopile]

Difficulty is subjective and relative so averaging through user input makes senses. 

[Helyx]

I rate this thread 5/7.

[TJ_Solo]

50 minutes ago, mekktor said:

 

No, it can't. You have no idea what went into the number that a particular guide writer chose, so no way to know how to scale it. With user voted ratings, you get consistency across games. You know that if racing game A is 2 points higher than racing game B, it's because game A is harder, not because the guide writer is bad at racing games.

 

What I don't understand here is why people would even argue against this. Even if you can't see the benefits, what do you gain by trying to stop it from being implemented? Especially if you end up with both the guide writer and the user voted ratings? Sometime it seems people want to argue just for the sake of it.

 

And changing it from one writer's opinion to the opinions of many only adds more people whose thought processes are equally as enigmatic.

 

You people seem to be confusing polls and "majority" opinion as a means to turn the subjective into an objective quantity..

[NathanielJohn]

11 minutes ago, TJ_Solo said:

 

And changing it from one writer's opinion to the opinions of many only adds more people whose thought processes are equally as enigmatic.

 

You people seem to be confusing polls and "majority" opinion as a means to turn the subjective into an objective quantity..

 

No one is confusing anything with "objective", we're saying that polling makes the ratings more consistent. Polling multiple people cuts down on the variance in the difficulty ratings, which makes them more consistent and representative of the population's views on the games' difficulties as a whole. This is the basis of the entire field of statistics.

[TurtlePM]

5 hours ago, Quink666 said:

 

Hahahahaha thanks for making my day! Love that DSP gif!

 

Yeah but if only platinum achievers can vote on it or people with high completion i think you would get a fairly accurate rank/time. On other sites it seems to work fine but anyone with a account can vote there since there is no way of checking if you own the game or have the platinum. 

 

Yeah you can check the comments but few actually do unless they have questions.

 

I’m not against this idea, on the contrary  I’m just making this observation that there are already some stuff/feats that people don’t recognize or not used properly.

 

- comments should be used as a personal opinion about the guide itself, where users could debate around the rank or time to platinum; instead its full of “thank you” when this should be reflected on “favorites” or “rank stars”;

- some people add the guide to the “favorites” but they don’t give any star as rank;

- different votes of difficulty: “with guide it’s a 1, without a guide it’s a 5” - people are there to read a guide, obviously that if the structure of the guide/walkthrough is well written and detailed, this “without a guide” information is useless... and lame  

 

So if this idea goes forward, it’s better that people know what’s its purpose and how it works

 

It might be useful to someone. Not me personally. But more realistically, this will end up like a IMDB or Metacritic, with a mixture of overacting people + the sincere ones. The “completionist” user might be as terrible voter as a rookie. A racing completionist might give a 3/10 to a game that it’s an absolute 8 to someone that’s new/not-so-good at the gender. This last person might be mislead by a score.

Edited December 25, 2018 by TurtlePM

[AJ_Radio]

This is nothing new. Playstationtrophies.org has done this for a long time. Most games on that website have polls on what people felt the overall difficulty was and how long it took them to platinum. 

 

Dead Space 2 and Vanquish have been given a 8 and 9 out of 10 in difficulty because of one trophy on both their lists that a lot of people struggled to get. Having people vote on a trophy guide on difficulty will reflect the average. 

 

To be honest I don’t know why people on here haven’t asked for a difficulty rating poll on games with trophy lists. 

[PooPooBlast]

45 minutes ago, NathanielJohn said:

This is the basis of the entire field of statistics.

Thank you!

[Lordguwa]

i would prefer the chance to give input on game difficulty it would help future platinum hunters.

[Tekyumeeee]

It's a cool idea. I like seeing how the votes are distributed over playstationtrophies and I think a system like that would work great here. I feel like a good amount of people would participate in voting, and if it could be limited to people that have actually earned the platinum, that'd be a nice bonus as well.

 

However, if it were something easy to implement, I'm sure it would have been done by now. Still, I'd like to have more than one other site to refer to with difficulty ratings. Games don't seem to get many votes on playstationtrophies anymore, which can make it a little more tough to get an idea of a given game's difficulty.

[TJ_Solo]

1 hour ago, NathanielJohn said:

 

No one is confusing anything with "objective", we're saying that polling makes the ratings more consistent. Polling multiple people cuts down on the variance in the difficulty ratings, which makes them more consistent and representative of the population's views on the games' difficulties as a whole. This is the basis of the entire field of statistics.

 

That's an assumption and the way recommended by this topic also asks for way to limit that input to just the platinum achievers. 

This issue noted about the single writer's opinion is also present on playstationtrophies.org forums.(note the guides themselves are still personal estimates.) Some people don't agree with the polls and think their opinions are more true/accurate. 

 

There's no solution to what is being actually seen here other than accepting opinions, as a group or individually, vary. 

Do you see my arguing about statistic theory?  Nope. I said multiple times that regardless of the system in place the problem the topic suggests exists will still exist. However, instead of railing against a single guide writer's estimations such a person would complain about results of the poll. Which repeats this whole circle again. 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 25, 2018 by TJ_Solo

[nyonmyan]

People who write guides should be required to in-depth describe the difficulty and its specifics.

For example, many rhythm games have "low" difficulty, but they are impossible to complete for people with slow reaction time. Guide writers should also note if RNG accounts into difficulty and if grind can offset difficulty or not.

1-10 score is just a very lazy and ineffective system, especially if it's a one man opinion.

[ex10097]

I agree. The option for voting difficulty and completion time would be a neat addition, though a rating of 1-10 doesn't give a very accurate estimate as skill level can heavily differ from one person to another. So maybe separate voting lists by noobs and regular gamers for a game. Plus, it would be better if guidewriters specified the difficulty and grind depending on the type of gamer. For eg, Let's Fish Hooked On has a difficulty of 2/10 and a completion time of 35-45 hours, also the guide says it's a simple and straightforward platinum. But never does it say how mind-numbingly boring and grindy the game is. Finishing World Tour Mode consisting of nearly 35 freaking rounds was boring enough, and maybe some replaying as the fish can totally glitch out on you. Now imagine doing the same thing three more times! With the same content in each round I might add. At worst you might be able to skip 1 or 2 matches in each tournament depending on how well you played but still a major annoying grind.

Or Hatsune Miku Project Diva X. Seeing as I was able to eventually platinum both Diva F and F2nd, thought X would only be a slightly difficult challenge as its difficulty rating was 7/10, but I believe it deserves a full 10/10. Trying to complete those Extreme Songs with three challenge effects in play is impossible for me. Especially that Ultra Hard Medley, but a few other songs like Holy Lancer Boy are still not passable to me

[NightRusticDawn]

After working in great detail with the statistics and polls on trophies dot org, all I can say is.

 

There is no way that you will get the outcome you are looking for, polls about difficulty will never align to the score you are wanting it to be.

It's first of all a minority that votes which doesn't help things as it make it so there are less people that use such feature than you can imagine.

Trolls is one issue, what someone Thinks should be the difficulty is added to the polls because you can never distinct the two from one and another.

The most common practice on trophies dot org polls was to make alternate accounts, same IP and vote more then once on the same poll to try and change the

"Average" difficulty rating.

 

There is the issue that people don't Read the guides anymore but simply only looks at the stupid pictures with numbers on them to get a feeling how

the game is, which is bonkers. If you can't elaborate a thought well enough and to Read the guide and just go by it's difficulty and time rating you won't get any better

information from others peoples random numbers and time estimates in a separate poll.

 

The Polls on that site (trophies. org) has been dead since a long time ago, barely anyone is active enough to give it a full representation.

Also the issue comes with, Polls Discourage people to try new games and talk about games which is a big issue for a community,

if you wanna get a feeling about the difficulty you should make a thread and talk to people, try and get their honest opinion and go from there.

 

Polls like this doesn't add anything, so you don't trust the person that made the trophy guide but you trust other random strangers? Doesn't make sense.

Make up your own opinion Or ask people as the ones that are genuine will take their time to reply and be honest about it.

 

 

[Alternatewarning]

As a guide writer, I would love a poll like this.  I always struggle with choosing the difficulty and time rating.  For me this was easy but I don't really stray from puzzle games, JRPGs and Visual Novels.  While most VN have no difficulty by design, the other two will vary a lot.  Personally, I think I'm rather good at puzzles so I try to scale up the difficulty for someone who's not so good.  For example, I recommended a game to a friend and said the puzzles were "pleasantly challenging".  To her, they were so hard she rage-quit the game.  And for time, well I am a very, very slow gamer.  So I try to scale back the time to make up for that.  Still, I'm not sure how well I've scaled them.  Now I haven't written too many guides so far, but regardless.  I wouldn't mind a poll and I wouldn't mind changing the ones I already have up.

[Happy]

I generally believe that this is a good idea. That being said, there’s situations in which two peoples experiences may vary significantly. For example, The Binding of Isaac is a pretty rough platinum on the current patch, somewhere around 8 or 9/10 imo. Meanwhile you could previously circumvent most of the difficult segments by playing on older patches. So another player might only have found the game to be a 4 or a 5/10. 

Now the average calculated by the system proposed here would end up around a 6 or 7/10, which doesn’t accurately reflect the experience of either player. The guide writer has the means to clarify this whereas someone merely voting on the difficulty does not. 

If there is some way to incorporate this new system into the comment section of the guide that allows users to explain the reasoning behind their votes if deemed necessary i would strongly be in favor of its inclusion. 

 

tldr: Difficulty is a complicated concept that can depend on a lot of outside factors so voting on the difficulty would be great as long as there’s an option to explain your reasoning.

[Phoenixgaming1]

As someone who has written and is currently writing more guides, I would love to see a difficulty rating next to my own determined from the readers to compare. As I played and platinumed some games such as the Uncharted games and would say they are a 3/10 in difficulty I've had friends tell me that it is about a 5-6/10 in difficulty. So seeing 2 different views would be great for guides since they are a big part of this website.

[X_Wizi_X]

Having just the game on profile means nothing. How can you vote a platinum difficulty BEFORE getting the platinum?

 

 

 

Said that, good idea man.

 

 

Edited December 25, 2018 by X_Wizi_X

[PooPooBlast]

1 hour ago, Happy said:

So another player might only have found the game to be a 4 or a 5/10. 

Now the average calculated by the system proposed here would end up around a 6 or 7/10, which doesn’t accurately reflect the experience of either player.

Exactly and that's why a large number of voters are usually needed to prevent skewed data like these. Now imagine some other person gave it a 4. So now we have 4,5,7  and the average becomes 5.3. As we continue to add more players that number will eventually converge onto a specific mean. 

 

You might be saying well the final result does not match mine. It might not, true, but theoretically speaking, it'll match the majority of voters' opinions or at least you get a ballpark figure for the game or it'll be closer to what you expect the difficulty might be. 

 

And one last thing:

Would you rather have one person's opinion (the guide publisher) or as many people as possible to get a better idea?

 

And as a suggestion, next to the publisher's opinion and the voters' opinions we can have the distribution of the votes to see where the majority of the votes lie. Extra stats won't hurt!

Edited December 25, 2018 by PooPooBlast

[fastflowdaman]

17 hours ago, Quink666 said:

Only platinum achievers can vote so we can get a more accurate difficulty.

 

17 hours ago, Kittet3 said:

I don't think it should be limited to just platinum holders, but rather anyone who has the game on their profiles?

 

I think it'd be perfect to have both.

 

Anyone can vote and the site shows the avg difficulty of what everyone voted plus also the avg difficulty of what all plat/100% owners voted.

 

Edit: the "anyone" pool should include plat owners' votes as well. Just for the record 

Edited December 25, 2018 by fastflowdaman

[Elvick_]

There's no real way for this type of thing to have any meaning. I find Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection harder than everyone else apparently. But on .org people think Ben 10 is 5+ and I thought it was piss easy, but then the guide there says to use a worse character than the one I did. Like much worse... to the point you can skip multiple phases of the final boss because you do so much damage compared to other characters. At range.

Also find that one jet-ski game harder than everyone too. Some day I'll platinum that bs. [Riptide GP2, took awhile to find the name in my list lol]

13 hours ago, mekktor said:

 

No, it can't. You have no idea what went into the number that a particular guide writer chose, so no way to know how to scale it. With user voted ratings, you get consistency across games. You know that if racing game A is 2 points higher than racing game B, it's because game A is harder, not because the guide writer is bad at racing games.

 

What I don't understand here is why people would even argue against this. Even if you can't see the benefits, what do you gain by trying to stop it from being implemented? Especially if you end up with both the guide writer and the user voted ratings? Sometime it seems people want to argue just for the sake of it.

It could very well be that everyone who voted for racing game B is a fan of the genre, and that's the only people who played it. While game A is more popular in general and so got more of an audience outside the fans of the genre. So no, it really doesn't say that it's harder.

Go play Ben 10 and tell me that's a 5-6 like some people on .org believe. User reviews are just as useless. A lot of people seem to vote based on annoyance levels, rather than if something is truly challenging.

2 hours ago, Phoenixgaming1 said:

As someone who has written and is currently writing more guides, I would love to see a difficulty rating next to my own determined from the readers to compare. As I played and platinumed some games such as the Uncharted games and would say they are a 3/10 in difficulty I've had friends tell me that it is about a 5-6/10 in difficulty. So seeing 2 different views would be great for guides since they are a big part of this website.

Depends on what you mean. Uncharted if you go directly to Crushing is way harder than if you start on easy and work your way up. Or even start on hard. Knowing the game makes Crushing far more doable. Which is why ratings are kind of pointless, you don't know how people are coming to the vote.

I've played through each Uncharted [sans 4/LL] normal > hard > crushing and on crushing is always the one I die the least on and normal has me dying constantly. I don't know the game on normal. By the third playthrough on Crushing I know the controls, I've honed my skillset in that game, I know how best to deal with certain enemies,  I know where certain weapons are located in the levels, etc. So I fly through without much problem.

If I'd never played before and jumped into Crushing, it would be hard as hell. Since part of the difficulty is not knowing the game. I think this is true of many games. The more you play it the easier it becomes. But a lot of people want the fastest possible way to earn a platinum, which ups the difficulty of it. Deadpool PS4 comes to mind as well. Saving the hardest difficulty for NG+ is a great choice. Sure it adds more time to the game, but I didn't really have as many issues with the game as other people did who found it impossible. (specifically PS4 version since the PS3 version won't let you start on the hardest difficulty without first beating the game; I never played it on PS3 though)

[Soyvideojuegos]

I like this idea

[Matrim_Drasgen]

Having both would be ideal. Community involvement is always a plus. I do not think an anyone can vote would help as it would just open the gate to all no matter if they played the game or not. At least with platinum owners, you reduce the amount of people who can even vote. Will you still get votes that are trolls? Sure. However, I think if you added a comment section for these new votes so that an explanation had to be given before the vote could be submitted, it would lower those types of votes. You could also go further and before the vote/comment would submit, a Mod reviewed to make sure they weren't trolling and/or their comment makes sense with their vote. Yes, I know that suggestion increases their work and takes time, not fair nor possible for it to be implemented but at least it would limit the random votes.

 

Back in the more practical, a breakdown of the votes would be nice as well to show how those platinum holders are voting. Agree that this service would take resources to create and possibly maintain but it does have an appeal. Adding it doesn't hurt anyone and wouldn't take away from anyone's experience or their choice to use the guide/go for a platinum either with the exception of another feature being delayed or possibly not implemented at all.

[Dragon-Archon]

I like the idea of having both the guide writer's estimate and an estimate based on community votes. There have been times when I was unsure what difficulty rating to use and how many hours to add, as people following the guide would definitely get the plat faster than I did (and I also like to explore/collect/defeat everything the game has to offer, which adds a lot of hours to the playtime).

 

As for being eligible to vote, I'm inclined to say people that have obtained the platinum trophy, as they have a much more accurate idea about time and difficulty. Of course, difficulty is still very subjective, but an average of community votes should be much more accurate.

 

@nyonmyan idea about giving more info about the difficulty rating is good too, though RNG, grinding, and generally time-related things shouldn't affect difficulty at all, unless the grinding must be done against powerful opponents that hard to defeat.

[NathanielJohn]

Do you even need to plat a game to write a guide for it here on PSNP? I could have sworn that I'd seen some guides by people who hadn't platted the game.

 

If so, it seems a bit backwards that someone currently can write a guide and *solely determine* the game's difficulty rating without having platted it, but perhaps when votes get implemented people would need to platinum it to vote? Why? If I spend 50 hours playing a game and give up on it since it's too hard for me to complete, I don't get to provide that information in the form of a vote?

 

I agree that there should be *some* barrier of entry to voting, but PS3T has used 75% trophy completion as its rough guideline for writing a guide and voting, and that seems like a way better solution than requiring someone to plat the game.