Popular Post effdeegee Posted July 11, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted July 11, 2020 Hey, folks. After using about 20 guides in a row that are absolutely riddled with errors, I feel I need to ask about what's going on here. Are these guides being accepted based solely on the fact that there wasn't one on the site at the time? Or is it more like just glossing over them for swear words because The Guide Team already have so many things on their plate and this volunteer work falls low on the priorities list? Please pardon me if that sounds like I'm being a jerk. I'm genuinely concerned and curious. 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sikutai Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 (edited) Spoiler Yes, lots about quality lately. I usually use guides from playstationtrophies.org or PowerPyx. Edited July 11, 2020 by Sikutai Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Sergen Posted July 11, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted July 11, 2020 (edited) I’ve seen plenty of crap guides over the years but even guides people deem to be good have their issues. It’s very rare I see a guide mention how many people you would need in order to boost the online trophies for a game, their solution regularly tends to say something like “you can boost this trophy, refer to the boosting thread” for games that require around 6 people to boost. That information is important to me so I can ask the relevant people without asking too many people. The worst guide I’ve seen on this website did successfully get removed when I messaged members of the guide team about it, that was the Street Fighter X Tekken trophy guide. There are plenty of outdated guides like it that some day I’ll probably send more messages about. I’d say the “accepting the guide because there isn’t one on the site” mentality was probably something done by early guide team members when the guide system first launched. The guide team and quality standards have changed since the launch of the guide system. I tend to often find the best information about various trophies on TrueAchievements, if the game is multi platform then more often than not there will be a better solution to the achievement than any trophy guide for that game. Edited July 11, 2020 by Sergen 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoveInHell Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, Sikutai said: Reveal hidden contents Yes, lots about quality lately. I usually use guides from playstationtrophies.org or PowerPyx. I seen quite a lot lazy written guides from PowerPyx tbh, I don’t use them anymore. The ones on playstationtrophies have always helped me the best but I tend to find one on here first and if there is none or I see some kind of bad explanation I would go to playstationtrophies. Oh and xboxachievements is helpful too but often lazy written as well. 1 hour ago, effdeegee said: Hey, folks. After using about 20 guides in a row that are absolutely riddled with errors, I feel I need to ask about what's going on here. Are these guides being accepted based solely on the fact that there wasn't one on the site at the time? Or is it more like just glossing over them for swear words because The Guide Team already have so many things on their plate and this volunteer work falls low on the priorities list? Please pardon me if that sounds like I'm being a jerk. I'm genuinely concerned and curious. Sometimes I don’t understand either. I feel like maybe the Guide Team might feel pressured to accept some guides so that people who look for a guide this site will pop up first so thats more visitors here? And as for the people who have a badly written guide, I feel like they just rushed it and wanted to be first and/or expect some people to know everything about the game already. Some people just suck at explaining like I found a lot of guides where it would be so much better if they added a screenshot of what you’re supposed to see but “thats too much work” I guess. Also it must be hard accepting so many guides when they haven’t possibly played the game themselves. Edited July 11, 2020 by LoveInHell 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sikutai Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 31 minutes ago, LoveInHell said: Also it must be hard accepting so many guides when they haven’t possibly played the game themselves. This. I also imagine that is difficult. Respect to the well-paid employees here. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lonemankane Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 Well from what I know and have done with guides and I have done one guide and a mini guide for some games I find that the guide team love making sure you detail everything right even things that don't really need details such as kill x amount of so on, I mean just not writing on it should be good enough to know that the trophy detail on the trophy itself is good enough. same with just talking normally such as how I am now you can't do it due to them wanting to look good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post UlvenFenrir Posted July 11, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted July 11, 2020 Im so glad this thread was brought up. If i have to research and use google while using a trophy guide then the trophy guide isnt very good in my opinion. You should be able to find all the information within a guide without having to look up 10 different sites no? I always end up on a different guide/youtuber/trueachievements when using the guides on here or on pst because they rarely ever cover everything you need to know. I dont mind doing some research on my own but that just means i also cant really favorite a guide as “a good guide”. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cleggworth Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 3 hours ago, Sergen said: It’s very rare I see a guide mention how many people you would need in order to boost the online trophies for a game, their solution regularly tends to say something like “you can boost this trophy, refer to the boosting thread” for games that require around 6 people to boost. That information is important to me so I can ask the relevant people without asking too many people. I agree with this. I don't boost games often but when I do its very rare to find any information out there on how to do it. How many people, methods, a roadmap to make it efficient... Another pet peeve of mine is a guide that is mostly videos 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackTorito Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 (edited) I also agree, it’s kinda difficult honestly since the mods can’t have knowledge about every single game, and there is so many guides being published at the same time. But yes, overall, I think PST.org are the most detailed and polished, though they certainly have less guides and more specialized people. One of the weakest points about the guides around here, I reckon would be the roadmaps, which are usually not as detailed, and I think is one of the most important parts of a guide. I also think people here try to rush so many guides, specially new releases, which ends up in a lack of quality. This is also caused because we don’t usually have press copies here like PPyx, and sometimes two guides are written at the same time for a new release, so people rush it as fast as they can, I know it wouldn’t be as “democratic” but I don’t think is good that 2 guides can be up for the same game. Overall, I agree with OP and would be interesting to debate on how to try to improve the quality within the margins of what the Staff can do. Edited July 11, 2020 by BlackTorito Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Theladozz Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 (edited) Having trophy tips back would solve this imo. It would probably make guides completely obsolete for a lot of games. Another possible feature for this would be if users could make inline comments in the guide, which would highlight the text that the user commented on, and if you click on it the comment would be shown in a popup window or something. Users with the correct permissions (maybe guide writer, admins, mods and guide team) could then resolve the comment which would make it disappear, otherwise it's there with the additional info. If anyone has worked with confluence pages, they know what I mean But let's not kid ourselves, none of this will ever happen Edited July 11, 2020 by Theladozz 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MMDE Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 (edited) You know, you can comment on the guides if there's any issues with them or you got any tips! Edited July 12, 2020 by MMDE 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BadRep24 Posted July 11, 2020 Share Posted July 11, 2020 (edited) 13 hours ago, BlackTorito said: I also agree, it’s kinda difficult honestly since the mods can’t have knowledge about every single game, and there is so many guides being published at the same time. Especially the fact I created a guide for a game called DEADBOLT, which is a niche game (only like 0.5% know about it) that the guide team will have no idea what it is all about, except for me and the others who had prior experience to the game. I've experienced that game on PC and it was freakish. For mainstream games, the guide team will know mostly about the contents of it. It's pretty much the niche games that will pose a challenge to the guide team when it comes to evaluating someone's trophy guide before being published. That might be the guide team's weakness, and one of the reasons these kinds of guides will take a few days to be submitted, because niche trophy guides are wholly different than mainstream trophy guides. I had to use what I've experienced from that game for the guide. Back on topic, I've looked at the guide of Plague Inc. Evolved here on this website, and it had some errors that I can't help but to fume myself. The NAZG trophy didn't make any sense, because the only way to trigger it easily will be to start on India, but not Saudi Arabia. Then, Disease Master requires you to complete the Shadow Plague, as well, because of patch 1.02 (Shadow Plague update). And the guide said it was "small chance", but it is a mandatory requirement, as well. Then, because of Patch 1.07, you are required to complete 25 Scenarios on 3 Biohazards for the Scenario Master trophy. In the guide there's only 20, which is outdated. It's pretty much outdated and I tried to comment them within their guide, but there's no response. Edited July 12, 2020 by BadRep24 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post BlindMango Posted July 12, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted July 12, 2020 (edited) There are a few reasons for this: Being a member of the guide team is a volunteer position, and some days we spend hours working on just giving feedback to a few guides. It can at times be a very tedious and tiring process telling people they need to do basic things like spellcheck their guide, tell them they have to explain what every trophy means (include detail), telling them their guide has unfinished sections that they didn't check over, that they clearly didn't re-read it, telling them we can't publish a guide with plagiarized content (and checking for that), etc... I wish you could see what doesn't get approved, only then will you understand what does get approved is a goldmine by comparison. There are guides that are amazing, good enough, barely make it (after many tedious revisions), and a whole bunch of guides that you never see that wasn't even close to publishable. There are tons of guides that get submitted to us that are unfinished, filled with spelling errors, no details (one or two vague sentences a trophy), are written nonsensically, are rushed, and so on. We have to filter all of that and tell every single writer detailed information about what to fix, why they need to fix it, and how to fix it. Sometimes our feedback is more detailed than the guide itself to put it into perspective of what we get in the review queue. We don't own all 10,000 games so can't always verify or check for exact details for each and every game, however we always try to stress explaining "who, what, when, where, and how" for every trophy and it's typically easy to see when a guide achieves this for the most part or fails miserably. If a guide has a certain way of conveying details, typically the writer will explain what they need to, but sometimes it slips through the cracks. When we tell some people they need to be more detailed in some areas, some complain that adding a few more sentences here and there is too much work and would rather delete the guide rather than spend 30 more minutes to one more hour on the guide. I have seen great guides which have had hours poured into them get deleted by the writer because they didn't want to add a couple more things to it in the end that will match the readers quality standards. We screen guides for curse words, nonsensical wording, spelling errors, and patterns like that. However guides can be edited after they're published, and sometimes that's what causes what people think of as oversight of things like that. Sometimes we will spend 30 minutes giving people helpful feedback of all the things a writer needs to improve, then 15 minutes later they resubmit the guide thinking it will get published because they added 1 or 2 sentences somewhere in the guide. We then have to tediously keep unpublishing it and telling the writer to please spend more time improving the guide. They will keep resubmiting it skipping multiple things and rushing it. This process happens over, and over, and over, and over again with a single guide and typically guides of lower quality have gone through many revisions that barely changed anything each time and got to the point of "good enough". Some people want to get a guide published, but don't spend enough time to make the guide what it needs to be. It's not the easiest thing to convey to the writer all the time, especially if they're just a kid wanting to make a quick guide for their favorite game or something. Once a guide is good enough to publish, we will still typically still have to spend an extra 15 - 30 minutes or more fixing formatting related things that were missed like putting spacing between paragraphs, fixing headings, making things look neater, fix things the writer skipped in our feedback, fix errors that were still missed a second time, etc... That may not sound like much, but when we get several submissions a day, it adds up. The guide review process isn't easy - it's extremely tedious when half the guides don't just have some game details errors, they are submitted to us with spelling errors and a bunch of unfinished things. I also want to say the above points don't really apply for most of our regular guide writers (if you think we're referring to you, we aren't lol). We give 95% of guide writers feedback on their guides and for the good writers it's usually a few quick things we can't normally fix ourselves - this is normal. Again this mainly refers to rushed guide submissions, and there are a lot of them. It's all about managing the wait time and keeping the review queue as well managed as we can with what has been an explosion in new submissions over the past year (a number of which never get published). This is why the tips system should come back alongside guides because not everyone wants to write an entire guide. I should say that if you see an issue with a guide, please tell someone from the guide team about it, make a post in Guide Writers Headquarters, or leave a comment in the guide itself. If something is wrong, let somebody know - that's how there is improvement. If nobody points out an issue with a guide, we won't know about it as we don't have enough time in addition to everything above re-looking at 2,700 published guides if they account for a game update, among other things. An extremely high quality guide is actually way more of a rarity than people think. You either need someone really obsessed with a game, it needs to be their paid job (like strategy guide writers), or they need to have been writing guides for a while and understand how to format details well, and so on. Hopefully this helps Edited July 12, 2020 by BlindMango 19 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JNSpradlin Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 I really wish the site would allow commenting on trophies again. Yeah it is usually filled with nonsense, but sometimes those comments help out immensely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danceswithsloths Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 (edited) I've found many guides on this site to be extremely useful and helpful. I've also found a couple with errors or incomplete information though, so I could understand your frustration. I really enjoy the formatting of the guides on this site, so I usually prefer these guides. Plus they update with my trophy list, and reflect which trophies I already have, which is nice. Like MMDE said, feel free to leave comments on the guides about incorrect info or whatever, I've seen lots of fixes come through as a result of just a quick comment on the guide. Edited July 12, 2020 by danceswithsloths 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MMDE Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 (edited) 44 minutes ago, JNSpradlin said: I really wish the site would allow commenting on trophies again. Yeah it is usually filled with nonsense, but sometimes those comments help out immensely. You can comment on the guides! If there's no guide, I recommend you either make a thread about it or you can even make a small gameplay guide. Perhaps a bit large, but here's a gameplay guide I posted that wasn't actually a normal trophy guide: https://psnprofiles.com/guide/6444-unepic-essential-guide It was posted before the Trophy Guide and Trophy Walkthrough. Edited July 12, 2020 by MMDE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JNSpradlin Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 9 minutes ago, MMDE said: You can comment on the guides! If there's no guide, I recommend you either make a thread about it or you can even make a small gameplay guide. Perhaps a bit large, but here's a gameplay guide I posted that wasn't actually a normal trophy guide: https://psnprofiles.com/guide/6444-unepic-essential-guide It was posted before the Trophy Guide and Trophy Walkthrough. I know that but I bet you 99% of people do not know you can comment there. Sometimes a comment on a single trophy is warrented Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
effdeegee Posted July 12, 2020 Author Share Posted July 12, 2020 1 hour ago, BlindMango said: *snip* Hopefully this helps You went above and beyond with this response, Mango. Thanks a bunch. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wackt1 Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 how do i help edit guides if im not on the guide team. There is a couple i do wanna fix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otonio_Bruno Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 6 minutes ago, wackt1 said: how do i help edit guides if im not on the guide team. There is a couple i do wanna fix You don't. It doesn't work like that. Post a comment in the guide you might want to suggest a fix, if the author doesn't answer, try messaging him in the forums. If no answer at all, move on with your life. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FilooGaroo Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 I really think it is our responsibility to flag errors in trophy guides in the other hand - if a guide writer has been flagged more than 10 times, he should not be allowed to post them anymore there is a balance to have here between the 2 rationales Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AffectatiousDonk Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 (edited) I think this site does as well as can be expected considering the amount of guides they put up. They have the best formatting linked to your profile. They can only work with what is submitted. No person can play every game and the people that tend to play the most are usually to busy, not interested or working on their own projects to write for the site. You have to remember that most of the writers on here only write a few guides, write from their own perspective without collaboration and have no contact with the developers or publishers for inside information and help. Everyone knows there is no money in it but I assume the sense of giving back and helping is more than enough. I would encourage the guide team and the writers on this site to reach out to the devs particular for indie or B grade games. They are usually quite interested and often unaware that these guides even exist. The best course is to follow the guide writers you have found to be best suited to your trophy hunting style. Also don't limit yourself to guides by playstation writers. There are many wonderful guides on both Xbox and Steam that have evolved as most games are on those platforms well before Playstation. Also I suspect many guides on here and other sites owe alot to them, whether they acknowledge it or not. Goodluck & Happy Gaming Edited July 12, 2020 by AffectatiousDonk 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackTorito Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 @BlindMango I think it would be a good idea to link every post with the rules and how to write guides/format them on the “create a trophy/gameplay guide” starting screen. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Tothoro Posted July 12, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted July 12, 2020 (edited) I used to be on the Guide Team for XboxAchievements (back when they were still Xbox360Achievements). My username was Neverender in case anyone wants a rabbit hole to go down. I reviewed and published over 100 guides during my time on the team and I also wrote several. I stopped because I used to be a student with a lot of free time and, well, now I'm not. There are a few reasons things slip through the cracks and BlindMango did a good job of highlighting them. However, what I will add, is that there seems to be a lower threshold for quality now than there used to be. One specific example that sticks with me is the Bahamut trophy in Final Fantasy VIII (and more broadly that guide as a whole): Quote THE Dragon King Bahamut is a staple of the Final Fantasy world and without a doubt the best part of any of the games. Bahamut can be found in the Deep Sea Research Center and needs Ragnarok to access. Fly to the SW corner of your flat map. Interact with the glowing core in the middle of the first room on the side that is facing your TV screen. To walk up to it without fights, wait for the core to not be glowing. You'll be asked some questions. The first answer is "It's not our will to fight." So, of course, you will get into a fight with a Ruby Dragon. Beat the Ruby Dragon to be asked a second question and answer with "Never." Fight with another Ruby Dragon. Once defeated, you get the final question. The correct answer is a hidden answer that lies below the two answers - "It's our nature." If you mess up on any of these questions you'll have to start back from the beginning and fight the Ruby Dragons again. Answer the three questions to have your shot at the glorious reason to even play a Final Fantasy game, Bahamut the King of All-Dragons. Show him you are worthy of his time, attention, and presence. Need to collect before the Point of No Return in Stage 8. Beyond the fanboy-ish comments, this says nothing about strategy for the battle and barely describes how to get to it. Even without context, the quality of this specific solution is very questionable. It's understandable if an editor doesn't know every in and out of a game, but looking for strategies for boss fights (or even, "This boss is a pushover, mash attack and you'll succeed without issue" if the boss is easy) would be common sense nonspecific to an individual game. It's honestly shocking to me that something like this made it through to the site proper, but it was published about a week after the game came out. Between PowerPyx, PlaystationTrophies, Knoef, and the plethora of other sites it seems like the priority is trending toward punctuality over quality. A quality guide in a month is better than a bad guide in a week, but why on earth would someone spend the time to write a high quality guide if one of questionable quality is published while they're trying to write it? More specific and pertinent to this topic, people notice when this becomes a trend and it damages the site's reputation as a source for good guides. Edited July 12, 2020 by Tothoro Typo 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoveInHell Posted July 12, 2020 Share Posted July 12, 2020 (edited) 6 hours ago, BlindMango said: Hopefully this helps Thank you for explaining. ?♀️ 3 hours ago, BlackTorito said: @BlindMango I think it would be a good idea to link every post with the rules and how to write guides/format them on the “create a trophy/gameplay guide” starting screen. Great idea, I was missing this too. I think this would help people out a lot, writers and the guide team. Edited July 12, 2020 by LoveInHell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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