Due to future site changes regarding the publishing of movies that previously would have been rejected due to being a "bad game choice", as discussed in
this thread, it may be necessary to change the current formula that is used to determine the number of player points. If you are already familiar with this player point formula that I am talking about, please skip ahead to the part below the === line. Otherwise, keep on reading.
You may have noticed the number in parenthesis right after certain people's forum rank. These are the number of "player points" this person has. If you have a published TAS at this site, the rating of this TAS determines the number of player points you get for this TAS. The total number of player points determines your forum rank. Details about the forum rank system can be found
here (this page will be edited if the system changes) or [url=
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=179250#179250]here[/url] (this page won't change and describes the system used as of this post).
Here is a short description of the outlined formula to determine player points, outlined on those pages:
numberofplayerpoints = (movierating^2.5) * (numberofauthors^-0.5)
This formula has two aspects:
1) The number 2.5 makes sure that for instance one movie that was rated an 8 provides more player points than 2 movies rated a 4.
2) The number -0.5 makes sure that you will get fewer player points if the TAS has more authors. For a two-player TAS, you get roughtly 0.71 times the points you would have gotten had it been a single author TAS.
===================================================
There are two reasons (but feel free to add others) why we should consider adjusting the current formula:
(1) The number of ratings is not a factor in the current formula. (A movie that has an average rating of a 9 with 30 ratings gives the same number of player points as a movie with an average rating of a 9 with only 2 ratings.)
(2) The addition of published "vault" movies. (Should a vault movie and a "regular" movie provide the same number of player points if they have the same rating?)
Note that (1) and (2) may be related. This will be discussed later when looking at a possible answer to (2), but lets first look at (1):
How should the number of ratings affect the player points you get for that TAS? There are a few things that may sound reasonable:
#1 Since an average rating of a 9 with 30 ratings should be more valuable than a 9 with 2 ratings, one would think that more ratings should mean a higher number of player points given. Especially runs with very few ratings should be penalized, as the rating may not be very representative.
#2 If a TAS with a certain number of ratings gives a representative rating, it should get about the same number of player points as it gets now.
#3 To avoid deflation of player points due to TASes with few ratings getting less player points, TASes with more than the representative number of ratings should get slightly more player points than currently.
#1, #2 and #3 can be taken into account by changing this part of the current formula:
(movierating)^2.5
to:
(movierating)^(A- (B(A-2.5)/X) )
"X" is the number of ratings that the movie received
"B" is the number or ratings that is deemed to provide a representative rating of the TAS. If X=B, the formula reduces to (movierating)^2.5 which means you will get the same score as before. If X is lower than B, you will get less player points than before for this movie. A good value of B may be between 10 and 15.
"A" is a number that influences what fraction of the player points you get for X<B and how many player points you get when your TAS has a large number of ratings. If X is significantly higher than B, the formula reduces to (movierating)^A. "A" should be higher than 2.5, but probably not higher than 2.6.
Now lets look at problem (2), the addition of vault movies. As pointed out in a
post by goofydylan8, it may be easier to create a ton of vault movies and get more player points than spending your time trying to perfect a star movie. Effort and high rated movies should be awarded, which is why a single movie with an 8 rating provides more player points than two movies with a 4 rating, but should this scale be adjusted to account for vault movies? Should a different change be made to account for this?
One option would be to just multiply the player points that a vault movie would give by a factor lower than 1. Nice and easy solution which prevents the potantial problem that goofydylan8 raised.
On the other hand, if a solution to (1) is implemented, where TASes with more ratings get more points, does this not already solve the problem? Vault TASes are bound to get fewer ratings and lower ratings. Both have a significant effect on the player points... do we really need another factor lowering the points for vault movies? You can also wonder why a vault movie that gets the same number of ratings resulting in the same average rating as a non-vault movie deserves less player points.
This discussion will hopefully generate some posts with opinions on:
1. When taking the number of ratings into account when calculating the player points, what features should such a formula have? Are the ones (#1, #2 and #3) listed in this post good? Any objections or additions?
2. What do you think about the concept alternate formula that I posted (in bold the bold font), which takes the number of ratings into account? Is is good, do you know some tweaks that could improve it, or do you have a completely different suggestion?
3. How should the player point formula deal with vault movies? Will taking number of ratings into account be enough, or are additional measures required to prevent the issue that goofydylan8 raised?
Also, if you have some suggestions/ideas for the player points/forum ranks system in general, those are of course also welcome!
