Nibbits more of a Starcraft Vacation.
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Nibbits more of a Starcraft Vacation.
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Recently, I've been convinced by Azala to revisit this site and upload some maps. In the beginning, I disliked this site as it is just one big database with hardly any way for a person with no Starcraft knowledge to tell which maps are the best.
At the time, the most popular maps were all Fastest money maps, which furthered my theory that even though this website is one of the biggest and most impressive map database I've seen, it does not cater to the people that actually play Starcraft.
But after revisiting this site, I really admire your goal, which is to be the best SC/SC2/WC3 map database. Since you do actually listen (I think), I'll give you my opinions. Value them or not, it is your choice. :P
Most of us (hopefully) have been on vacations before. We signed up on a tour company, and we followed the guide who took us through the cities/countries in which we wished to travel. It is a great way to spend way too much money, and try to travel and see the world for ourselves.
But, I'm sure many of us know that we're merely tourists. No matter how great the tour guide was, how organized the itineraries were, or how delicious the food was, we will never truly experience the culture of the city/country that we've visited.
When you join a tour, the tour guide takes you to the most precious, and characteristic "attractions" of the city/country. Like, if I went to Beijing, I'd have to visit the Great Wall of China, the Tian An Men Square, the Forbidden City, and the Underground City. But really, do the people of Beijing really visit these places? Do they really take the Great Wall of China, which is actually in the outskirts of Beijing, into their everyday lives? Or even the Forbidden city, which is now basically closed off except for workers and tourists.
When I see the maps, the ratings, and the forums of this website, I feel very much like the website can serve, at its best, a Starcraft Vacation. Nibbit's current system of uploading as much maps as possible, and have a nifty algorithm to test the popularity of maps by # of downloads, falsely represents the Starcraft community.
No one, other than the handful of SENners on this site, plays Diplomacy Empires. Also, no one, other than me and Azala (and that is if I asked him too :P), plays Playground Tag. Yet these two maps are on the top 10. Though I'm esctatic that one of my maps is rated on the top 10 out of over 10 thousand maps (!!), I also realize how this website totally misrepresents Starcraft on Battle.net.
So now, as I've come to terms with your rating system, I can maybe give some ideas that I have to make this website better represent Battle.net nowadays. Here we Go!!
1) Rating System
One thing that bothers me the most is the rating system...
Terrain??Units? SOUND???? No one on b.net cares about those. And I don't even know what you mean by "Units".... As in are the units balanced? or are their unit names cool and colored with stacked text?
Following Gametrailer's rating methods, Terrain and Sound both fall under the "PRESENTATION" or "PROFESSIONALISM" of the map. Presentation would also cover things such as the atmosphere, unit names, map names, and many sorts of things. This is a more correct rating of a map.
"GAMEPLAY" is also another important aspect. While you may think gameplay falls under Replay Value, it doesn't. Take RUSH episode 1, or ANY RPG's.. They may all have great Gameplay, with interesting spells, stories, and etc. But to be honest, once you've finished them, there's no reason to play it again.
"CREATIVITY/ORIGINALITY" may also be included, but not as important as the first two. This is what draws new people in. Out of All the Defense maps that are on this site, why is this map so special? Well, because this map has a REALLY ORIGINAL way of doing things. And voila, instant pwnage map.
"REPLAY VALUE" - Good call by you. No comment other than to say that this is also very important. A map (like for example Cat and Mouse) can be easy as heck to make, with no professionalism, or originality. But you just can't stop playing it.. LOL
So please consider changing ur rating system....
2) Popularity of Maps
I know you've done a ton of algorithms to figure out a way to best represent popular maps. But it is counter-intuitive. First of all, the most popular maps in this website will be the maps that are the most frequently downloaded. On battle.net, it is the map that is most frequently played that becomes popular. If I wanted my map to be popular, I can simply download it many times to pump its popularity.
Also, there are only a handful of people on this site that actually participate and contribute. The others just download and/or upload their own maps. Because of this, the ratings/downloads are generally biased. The ratings is not a big problem, as I think it doesn't affect the ranking of a map, but the downloads sure do.
Think of it this way, if a map is very popular on B.net, I'd probably be able to find it and DL it on B.net instead of googling it, coming here, and downloading it here. Although downloads do represent a map's popularity to some extent, it is definitely not the best.
So in this case, I'd offer a "Favorites" system. Every person should be able to have limited/unlimited "Favorite" tags that they can put on their "Favorite" maps. Since you really can't do an algorithm out of how many times the map's actually played, it is best to have the users contribute. If one has limited "Favorite" tags (maybe 1 per level, starting with 5), the user will have to pick his/her absolute favorite maps. This would also give incentive for the users to personalized their accounts. Maybe ask them why they think it's their favorite map. Also, others can then view the maps he/she likes the best, and move on from there.
The only problem I see with this system is that the user will probably "favorite" his/her own maps. Which should be shunned somehow :P.
Anyway, I know you've done a lot, and adding another system will probably make you go bonkers, but I really do feel the current system doesn't work very well. The "Favorite" system is a cleaner, more discrete way of rating the popularity of a map, but it is still flawed. With the same problem as the downloads/ratings, there are only handfuls of people currently that would use the "favorite" tags if this were to be implemented. And if this happens, the same pattern of problems will arise again, as maps liked by that handful of ppl will eventually be highly ranked.
3) Community
Lastly, I feel that Nibbits is not strong enough to represent a growing community. To be rank, it's more like a dump, where map makers try to put as many of their maps in here as possible and hope that there'll be downloads. Though there is clearly nothing wrong with this, it does move away from building a website community.
One thing that I hate and love about StarEdit.Net is that it is a strong community. It's usually the same people doing the same things, and people like to discuss, argue, play mafia, and such with each other. And they occasionally make and submit maps. (the thing I hate about it is that it is very seclusive, i.e. only ppl that've been there for a long time can thrive.)
Nibbits fail to bring out any community aspect, and people who'd come on this website will basically find the map they want, and leave. Nothing more.
To overcome this problem, it will require work from the moderators/you, dcramer. You will need to contribute your own thoughts, give reviews/featured maps. Have Maps of the Weeks, or upload random trivia and stuff, starcraft related or not. With this, there'll actually be more things to do other than uploading/downloading maps. And THEN, and ONLY then, should you expect REAL contributions, REAL ratings, and REAL rankings.
hope this helped.. my fingers are tired. :P
~Unholy
This is an excellent post and I'll probably slowly respond to it over the following days (dont have time to read it in depth at the moment). One thing I want to point out quickly is how we deal with rankings:
The idea:
The rank of a map should reflect on how popular it is in the community right now, as well as its quality, and age. This means the list should refresh a lot.
The way it works:
1) Downloads are tallied daily, and are semi unique (we have some protection schemes to stop people from "pumping up the downloads").
2) Rankings are generated for different aspects, such as rating, downloads, age, etc.
3) Overall ranking (which is what you see) is generated based on aspect*weight. This means that something like # of downloads, which is the closest possible stat we have to times hosted, weighs more than how new the map is. At the same time, this means that newer maps have a chance to rank higher than older maps, as long as the criteria is somewhere in the same level (ratings/downloads).
4) I *do* hope to track the stat for "times hosted" at some point in the near future. I just don't have tons of time to commit to that. Overall, I think we do the best job of automating based on what we have. Though the algorithm might still need some tweaking.
Anyways, I will read over the rest of the post and give more feedback (and possibly even implement suggestions/changes) hopefully this weekend.
Thanks for this GREAT post :)
While more categories might be added on the rating system I for one think that the ones currently there should stay there. I have been busy rating maps as I sort out some of my map folders (so far Sports and Movies) and have been sure to rate and comment on all of the maps I've uploaded. I don't think we should remove the ratings people have bothered to put up yet, maybe just add more categories at some point or something.
I'm not sure that everyone is trying to post every map up they can--some people's databases have just been dumped on to nibbits but other than that I think people primarily upload maps they like or think are good. For instance when I sorted my Sports map folders I only kept 26 of them as "good" and then other 109 went in an outdated versions/crappy folder that isn't in my starcraft directory to help reduce lag when I join games. I rated/commented on all of the sports maps that were on Nibbits I considered to be good (including category tags, making it easier for other people to find them) and then uploaded the few I had that nibbits didn't have.
For Movies I am currently doing the same thing, I think categories is what ultimately will make good maps easier to find out of all the rest as someone browsing will see them (category lists aren't 1,000s of maps yet after all) and can then comment/rate maps that they like.
I sent dcramer a link to a site that does keep track of maps hosted on battle.net but its actually kinda sad---the top 20 maps hosted are almost all melee maps, and a lot of them are fastest maps. Python 1.3 is first, and the ICCUP version of it is seventh, only occasionally does a UMS map crack the top ten in the low 400 times hosted. So yea, I'm not sure how much that would help with getting good maps ranked highly.
Anyway it's good to have another person contributing to the site--as you said there aren't a lot of people doing that. But an community takes time to build.
I wouldn't agree with adding a "time played" algorithm, as it would take too much time, and it will not be what people are looking for. Again, if it's played a lot on B.net, then they can find it on b.net. So, the sweet spot is sort of in-between.
It's not always bad to take a Vacation XD.
@BW_God .. Maybe i was just blinded by the sheer number of versions of the same map :\...
Also, I've forgotten to mention about the addition of the map categories...
Just want to say that .. it's AWESOME and I really appreciate you doing that :D..
Well one thing w/ the "times played" stat, if we can track it, is that it would just be weighted like everything else. We could say "times played accounts for 20% of the overall ranking". It's not like the most hosted map would instantly be on top, it'd just be another factor we could include to judge how popular that map is within the entire community.
Did you check your pm dcramer? Someone is already tracking the times played stat...nearly 24/7. I sent you a link.
Accounts might be a good way around that, but then people would have to make sure there putting their aliases on here for it to count them all.
Yea, it could be a factor but not really required.
I personally think the "Favorites/Hearted" system would work well once a good community has been built.
I know you've done TONS of work behind the scene, but it is time for you to step up and do some Featured stuff like Map of the Week and Reviews...
People like to read other's opinions :P
I think your map database is quite robust as it is. It only needs some polishing. Maybe building a good community is the next best step? (but then again, there aren't many ppl left on SC.. but i'm sure when SC2's out, a community can be easily built on this website (or on any website for that matter))
EDIT: HEY HEY weird glitch: If i use parantheses (unshifted form of {} .. I can't even type it) .. the words inbetween them don't show up.
Favorites are almost done. I pushed live some changes today which put the framework in place. Just have about an hours worth of work and I can get them live including daily email updates.
Also pushed live a new maps page in your account http://nibbits.com/account/maps/ and improved the projects page to show stats.
Once favorites are live they will also be included in the ranking algorithm.
Also in regards to reviews/etc -- I barely play WC3 and don't even play SC, so it's not likely *I* personally would ever do them :)
You can always have azala to do them heheheheheheheh.. >:)
whip him to shreds
I give very short comment/reviews on all of the maps I play as I sort my map database and upload stuff to nibbits. I also usually come up with a few good description paragraphs. I think as more people post maps with information, and more current maps information is filled in will be fine. People can read other's opinions on maps in comments after all.
Just asking sirs but, do you still play starcraft ?
I'm a fan ^^
yea i agree that nibbits needs more involvement from its community. I just recently joined and there isnt much goin on inside the forums and whatnot. 90% of the maps uploads have no comments on them, its like ppl just dl and never bother to come back and make suggestions. I think that everyone who uploads maps here should be more involved. I think a monthly map-making contest would also be a nice idea.
I was hoping to partner with SEN on their map making contests, but they don't seem to quick in responding :)
I'm willing to hear suggestions on anything you guys would like to see that may help improve the site.