dst Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 (edited) I wanted to write this topic for a long time but I always delayed thinking things will change. So the issue is with some of the current quests. For a while now we have almost 2 types of quests: 1)Write an essay on which side of the bed the grasan sleeps 2)Spam..aaa find player x then find player y then find the place where the grasan drinks his morning coffee and PM the quest creator. The first type of quests are ok as long as you don't exaggerate. But let's be serious. Some of the subjects for the essays are pure stupidity. Not to mention that I feel like this kinds of quests show that the ones who put them are lazy. Pff....and then they call themselves quest creators! It's the easiest way out: Yay! I have a quest! Write me how I brush my teeth in the morning. I will not give name. They know who they are. I understand: in the past the RPCs were under a certain pressure to put quests up but now there are no excuses. Also those kind of quests are highly subjective. And they encourage "I wash your hands and you wash mine". The second type are ok as long as you give some decent hints. But writing vague things that apply to 20 players is not good. Imagine that I spam all those 20 players. Then 5 more players spam the same 20 players. For those 20 players it will be highly frustrating. And for the ones spamming. We have the tools now. Don't go putting up quests just so you can give out the wps and to get the shiny goldly Q doc. It's not mandatory to make a quest as soon as you get the wps. They will not go away if you don't use them. Just do fun and interesting quests. I was even thinking of making a sub forum somewhere (ok...I was going to ask Chew to do it ) where we can grade quests (since we are graded when we solve quests but for the moment we cannot grade the quest creators). This will hopefully give us a image of what players like/think/bla bla. Oh...and if you are wondering: I did my share of both quest types. Did I enjoyed them? No.But that did not stop me from doing them if I really wanted that WP. Don't get me wrong: there were quests where I had to write essays but they were good. I can give examples here but it's not the time. Not yet. So I am wondering what types of quests do you like. Edited November 12, 2009 by dst Sparrhawk, Fenrir Greycloth, Blood Prince and 1 other 2 2
AqlBeast Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 Interesting topic. I like it. Hope to see the rating. Thinking of a puzzle series quest Chess Contest still continues.
Udgard Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 Oh, and 3rd type of quest: the solve grasan's secret codes one. Personally I think all 3 is fine, but as been said, sometime the first two are rather unreasonable. I've seen quests asking people to write essays in a ridiculously stupid length, and while I've seen some pretty good find person A stuff, there are also those clues that can be applied to 3 out of 5 people you meet. Personally, I think I like the third (puzzle) type best right now, because although some are ridiculously hard, they're much fun than writing a bunch of essays (well, good topics are fine, but remember those ridiculous ones?), or spamming people randomly. With the new MD codes, there's a large possibility for other kinds of quests though (remember the drachorn chase? it can be done again much easier this time with the md script), and I'm looking forward to them.
asryn Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 Actually there is a place to rate a quest already; when you go to spend a WP in the shop it asks you to rate the quest that rewarded it before you spend it. But when you click that link it just says 'coming soon'. I wonder how hard that would be to implement? It would be nice if you couldn't spend the point until you had rated the quest, and also nice if there was a text box for written comments in addition to a rating. Of course, this doesn't do anything about quests that don't reward WPs, and it doesn't let you rate a quest unless you won, which might defeat the purpose. Maybe this should be part of the new quests page instead? In any event I like the idea of encouraging feedback; I think it might actually be quite helpful for quest creators to know what works and what doesn't.
AqlBeast Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 One Mur can't do "mur" things at once I am ready to rate the quest kekekke
dst Posted November 12, 2009 Author Report Posted November 12, 2009 Imagine this: you try a quest and you fail. Or simply don't get the wp cause you are too late/etc/bla bla. In this case you can be mean and give the quest a bad mark. Not to mention that you can give bad marks to quests even if you don't even try them. So I agree that the rating should be provided by the ones that solve them. Not by everyone. Or we can grade quests on the forum but not in the game ( I mean for the ones that don't solve them). As for that link: of course I know it. But you cannot use it right now so...we can say that it's not there. Fenrir Greycloth 1
Azrael Dark Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 Well pretty soon I'm going to publish a quest that hopefully deviates from template A and B (and template C). So please be gentle! It's my first quest, I've just got to work out the rewards. But yeah, with all this new MDScript stuff a new dimension is definitely added to what type of quests there will be. I just wish I too had access to some of these scripting features because as of right now, I'm relying on a lot of screenshots to verify if you've done what I've asked you.
Kafuuka Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 I really hope people aren't trying to get the shiny gold Q doc as fast as they can without regard for quest quality. I waited a long time to get it and paid a WP, but that argument isn't going to stop anyone I guess. What about: if your quests are poor, you won't get new WP codes? The essay type I have mixed feelings about. Sometimes I love writing and sometimes I feel like someone is letting me do their research. If the essay is related to MD 'secrets', is the only part of the quest, will be ranked and only the top x will get a reward, I'm not going to write it. Do your own 'research'! Find person x type. The riddle part I get, but if actually finding the people online is the hardest part of the quest, something is very wrong. People live in different timezones.. This counts for the quest creator too. If I can't find you to start the quest, then you'll have one less participant. Back when RPCs could be traced this was both ridiculous and redundant, with people claiming 'it is part of the quest.' Spending one credit or asking a person who had spent that credit, really difficult to do, unless you are a newbie and don't know the feature exists. Codebreakers: I've seen the same letterswitcharoo code used enough times to write a script to assist me when guessing the key. First solver wins, others get nothing: months ago Gargant asked me if I could help him change this into 'person who took least time', unfortunately neither of us had much time to collaborate. But if I am not mistaken the MDscript allows you to track the time taken. @Azreal: if you are lucky, maybe someone with script access wants to assist you? (I currently don't have access: don't need it right now and the rules and price might change still)
phantasm Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 i agree with kafuuka. It cost me a WP and I hope people think a well earned Q-doc with my first quest, that dst herself among others did. It would be a shame to see people giving away WPs for that reason if indeed that reason is what's going on. I think essay quests are fine under certain circumstances. Those type of quests are good for festivities and holiday times. Find person X and then person Y i actually find some of the better quests. Yes it's hard to catch people at the right time, unless you chose people who are on often. I think these quests are great if designed in the right way. Go find person X and look at their log, then say you took something from them isn't the right way. These quests are designed to RP with the character. Often times they have a dialog or a idea of what kind of RP they want to take place in order for them to hand you the "item". For the non rper i could see how that would be aggravating, but for those who enjoy rp it is a great way to expand not only your friendships, but your rp skill with those who have been in the game longer than you and may have different rp talents.
Malaikat Maut Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 I'm actually a fan of essay quests. In my short time here, I've hosted one and participated in three others, two of which I have won. However, I agree that there is a need for diversity and I will strive to include some unique elements in my next quest.
asryn Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 [quote name='dst' date='11 November 2009 - 11:57 PM' timestamp='1258012623' post='47271'] Imagine this: you try a quest and you fail. Or simply don't get the wp cause you are too late/etc/bla bla. In this case you can be mean and give the quest a bad mark. Not to mention that you can give bad marks to quests even if you don't even try them. So I agree that the rating should be provided by the ones that solve them. Not by everyone. Or we can grade quests on the forum but not in the game ( I mean for the ones that don't solve them). [/quote] Sure, of course you could. Just as you could give a high rating to any quest you solved, since it obviously worked reasonably well for you. If the goal is to improve quest quality, then I would argue feedback from those who struggled, or even those who chose not to attempt for some specific reason, might in some ways be more valuable than from those who succeeded. And if someone just wants to write 'this quest is stupid', then you roll your eyes and ignore it. The biggest drawback I see is that some quests have stages and if you never accessed the later stages then you never saw the whole quest. Maybe what is needed is to ask people to select an option when they vote - solved and won, solved but too late, tried and failed, didn't try. And provide some way of matching the option they choose with their rating and comment. That way if you want to look at only the input of those who won you can (and I agree that would sometimes be useful), but you would also have the option of considering all input.
AqlBeast Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 The problem with letting only players who solved the quest rate the quest itself are categorized as voluntary bias and undercoverage, statistically speaking. Maybe what we need in MD is a statistician who does random survey among MD players. The survey info gathered may be provided to MDNP to be printed monthly. This may also attract more MDNP audiences as well. The way I figure it. Players are friendly enough to chit chat a few sentences. Encountering and inquiring them on a random bases at a random location within MD may provide a nearly unbias result. The followings are a possible outcome: 1) the player doesn't know the quest 2) the player knows and won the quest and give a rating 3) the player knows and lost the quest and not give a rating 4) the player knows only knows about the quest and give a rating Factors that may affect the rating: 1) player have won the quest and is inclined to give high rating because of favoritism 2) player have lost the quest and is incline to give low rating because of contempt 2) player know about the quest and gives a rating base on their opinion of a good or bad quest With a truly random survey, the average rating of the survey may give a somewhat "true" rating of the quests. And with the uses of a margin of error we may have up to 90 or 95 percent confidence that the true rating of the quest lies somewhere the interval of confidence found for the rating on the quest.
Kafuuka Posted November 12, 2009 Report Posted November 12, 2009 Last time i tried to do a survey, 13 people filled it. I can only hope Mur reached more people with his surveys, although he stopped doing them quite fast as well. For the king elections, 100 votes was the target. 100 is not a large number when talking about statistics. For surveys where there is less possible benefit, should we expect to get 100 observations? Of course you could give a reward for filling the surveys, eg. 1 credit for every 10 quests rated. This however comes at the cost of 1 credit for every 10 quests rated and less accurate ratings: some people will enter random numbers, caring only about the credits. Interpreting statistics is not as easy as people like to think. If you look at the IQ thread, you'll notice people have very funny ideas of statistics. I suspect IAB wanted to fit a bell curve through a three modal sample, ignoring that it should be a t curve. Printing the raw results of small sample statistics will lead to large misunderstandings. Regardless, I think it is feasible to automate this partly, for future quests using MDscript. The keys allow us to verify if people attempted the quest and won. A survey system would only have to be set up once, if enough thought is given to the formulations of questions and what we want to test with them.
AqlBeast Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 A good survey when carried out randomly should not need that much number of players. 100 players is a far-fetched amount for MD's population that are online. Both the answer and the problem of a survey lies with the margin of error. A low number of responses from players means a higher margin of error, and a high number of responses from players means a lower margin of error. Based on the population of MD that are online, which is usually between 250 to 300 players. Out of a pool of let's say 300, an acceptable amount to sample may be one tenth of the pool, which average around 30 players. After all, most surveyers only select a random amount of 1000 people out of a population of 100000 people. The margin of error is fairly acceptable for an amount of 30 sample from a pool of 300 players. But certainly unresponse sample may create a problem for the survey as well as stated by Kafuuka. But hopefully the time alloted (possibly a month the same time for MDNP) may compensate for this bias method. (Not done writing going to edit later on)
cryxus Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 *pouts* i had a great quest ' i know a few people can testify... but it cost me too much because i ran it as a group because i wanted to put a new spin on it... i thought it worked out well but it drained me as a quest giver, especially with the low numbers that actually participated... Also, on a tangent i gotta say im not a fan of giving out WP for highly subjective material, like essays, without at least posting them and having a vote... it bugs me to be honest, so now i'm gonna stick away from those quest. Oh and also i wanna say that i had went to do Blackwood Forest's quest and i chose the research branch and he asked me to research him and post it on the archive... just for the record im not gonna, i think it's the absolute most selfish and pompous quest request i have ever been given. I pride myself in being a great researcher, but c'mon... I absolutely hate quests made for selfish reasons (part of the reason i dont like subjective quests is because it's really hard to tell). I love quests that incorporate several layers of styles into it, like Shadowseeker's map quest. My favorite types are the ones that actually have the feel of a puzzle or something that contributes something to the realm... the latter of which i havent seen in some time in MD... that being said i hope that sometime soon one of those shows up... maybe i'll make one myself sometime soon . P.S. sorry if my writing seems bad, i have a huge migraine.
AqlBeast Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 My quest is starting next week. I think you will like it very much Cryxus as well as any other puzzle lover and brain teaser type of quest
Fenrir Greycloth Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 I admit to doing the first template as a practice run fo quests. My current quest is actually that. A quest. It is a choose your own adventure style quest. It's really hard to run.
Phantom Orchid Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 [quote name='Fenrir Greycloth' date='12 November 2009 - 06:27 PM' timestamp='1258079242' post='47333'] I admit to doing the first template as a practice run fo quests. My current quest is actually that. A quest. It is a choose your own adventure style quest. It's really hard to run. [/quote] Is it so hard when you accept coin (and keep them) from questors and then decide to stop the quest?
Fenrir Greycloth Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 I've already explained to you that the quest is on hold until I can get more time to earn another wp. As it is I get maybe Five minutes here and there to go online.
Pipstickz Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 And, Fenrir, will MRWasabi be getting his reward for your pain festival quest any time soon? He STILL has no creatures.
Fenrir Greycloth Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 He has had his reward since the end of the FoP. Him and Grido.
Master Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 WoW ! I just recieved 3 WP codes some weeks ago ! I made my first 2 quests ! ( I want to add that i don't have questing experience , i have never made a quest before this ...) And already I'm getting targeted for it ?? Ok i gues I'm out of the B category since after finding player X and then Y and the place where the "grasan drinks his morning coffee" you actually have to do some "thinking" and only then PM me. But for Cathegory A .... STUPIDITY is not the word i recomand you use DST !!! You are being objective .... everybody is .... But i have put a LOT OF ROLE PLAYED BASED WORK because of the second quest. ( I'm actually now sick of always talking in blue and brackets and not being able to express my own way in the MD world because of my second Quest ). Yeah, the quest rating is not a bad ideea , but we ALREADY have that when you click a player's name and vote yes or no if you like that player's quest. To grade it would be much difficult. ( not impossible though ). And because i only saw Type A B and C ( oh and D where you just have to answer questions about MD and MD Players ) in MD what else type of quest should i build ? ( ACTUALLY i already have a quest in mind ( cathegory E i think ) for this but it needs a lot of MD script work, and i don't know who can help me with it since i don't posses the clickable modification option. )
Grido Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 (edited) @Fenrir, although you seem to have removed yourself from the forum messages(only just found out) i was sending you asking what it was, and if you could remove the PL from me. Edited November 13, 2009 by Grido
Root Admin Chewett Posted November 13, 2009 Root Admin Report Posted November 13, 2009 [quote name='Phantom Orchid' date='13 November 2009 - 02:33 AM' timestamp='1258079602' post='47334'] Is it so hard when you accept coin (and keep them) from questors and then decide to stop the quest? [/quote] [quote name='Pipstickz' date='13 November 2009 - 04:12 AM' timestamp='1258085541' post='47340'] And, Fenrir, will MRWasabi be getting his reward for your pain festival quest any time soon? He STILL has no creatures. [/quote] If you have Issues with fenrir about how he runs his quests then talk to him privately or make a new topic so we can all talk about it. This topic is about quests generally.
Kafuuka Posted November 13, 2009 Report Posted November 13, 2009 [quote name='AqlBeast' date='13 November 2009 - 01:42 AM' timestamp='1258072971' post='47326'] A good survey when carried out randomly should not need that much number of players. 100 players is a far-fetched amount for MD's population that are online. Both the answer and the problem of a survey lies with the margin of error. A low number of responses from players means a higher margin of error, and a high number of responses from players means a lower margin of error. Based on the population of MD that are online, which is usually between 250 to 300 players. Out of a pool of let's say 300, an acceptable amount to sample may be one tenth of the pool, which average around 30 players. After all, most surveyers only select a random amount of 1000 people out of a population of 100000 people. The margin of error is fairly acceptable for an amount of 30 sample from a pool of 300 players. But certainly unresponse sample may create a problem for the survey as well as stated by Kafuuka. But hopefully the time alloted (possibly a month the same time for MDNP) may compensate for this bias method. (Not done writing going to edit later on) [/quote] Should we really base on the MD population online, which is a small sample of the MD target audience? If we do that, then the true error margin will be bigger, and that might make it seem less a problem to have a large estimated error. However t statistics care not about the ratio of estimator/true value. Furthermore, you cannot rely on large numbers and assume things to be asymptotically normally distributed. We already have three nominal categories: winners, losers and idlers. (ok those might sound a bit bad...) For a lot of quests the winners will be extremely limited in number. It is not impossible to get good conclusions out of that kind of data, but it is a lot more complex than having 100 observations and ignoring the difference between 1/(n-1) and 1/n and such. Can we really expect 30 observations for each quest? What do we want to measure? Difficulty, reward, reward/difficulty, originality, fun? @Cryxus: your quest was fun. If you want puzzles, did you try Cutlers' quest? Or are we talking about a different kind of puzzles? @Master: Dst said she wanted to write this topic for a long time, wouldn't that rule you out as a specific target?
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