Reviewing User Created Content!

[Disasterrific]

I've been thinking a bit about this, and I suspect the devs might already be a step ahead of me on this on building a dedicated forum and/or other upload tools etc., but here goes nothing.

2~ or so months down the line, we're going to be having a lot of user-made dungeons, levels and other stuff, and ultimately the only way to sort the wheat from the chaff is to have the community give feedback and scores. While it makes sense to have one overall score, each dungeon is going to be good at different things, so I reckon we should have a number of other categories. I was partially inspired by the DROD series (http://caravelgames.com/Articles/Games.html) where lots of users make their own dungeons. They have a system where there's a score for the overall quality and fun, and also a "brains" rating for puzzling.

What we do want is something that could equally well apply to a single half-level puzzle or a 50-level epic. Anyway, here's my ideas for 4 review criteria:

CONSTRUCTION
How much effort has the designer put in to delivering something new? If there are new game components such as items, wallsets or enemies, are they interesting, well-conceived, well-designed and implemented? Is it just another dungeon, or does it stand head and tails above the rest as something special? This would also include how well finished and tested the dungeon is. Sloppy building and bugs should also play a factor here. On the whole, a player shouldn't be able to break the dungeon or screw themselves over without going completely out of their way to do so. Ultimately, I guess this would be how much the artisan has fulfilled their role as the architect of the player's adventure.

ENGAGEMENT
Is it fun? Is it interesting? Is there good story-telling and progression? Even if the story is sparse, do you still forget you're just sitting at home in the dark in front of the gleaming monitor and keyboard? This measure will tell if you're just going through the motions to get to the end, or whether you really care about what you're doing at this exact moment. Are you transported into the game, ducking and diving and scrapping for your life, or are you just piling up keys for yet another fetch quest? Are you motivated to comb the dungeon for that last secret, or have you given up, knowing it's just another cheap shot by the designer?

BRAINS
This is a tricky one. I deliberately avoided calling it difficulty because I don't think being brutally difficult in a simplistic way (e.g. millions of enemies in a wide open room), or taking advantage of your power as Master of the Dungeon to punish the player unfairly makes for good actual "difficulty". This measure should be one of how clever the game is, rather than how clever you have to be to beat the game, if you see what I mean. Good, satisfying, innovative puzzles, combat situations requiring quick and smart thinking over simple brawn, item distribution and balance that doesn't flood your inventory nor leave you frustrated with the drought. Most players aren't here for a no-brainer and simplistic design isn't going to satiate the needs of your cranium, so these are all things that would come under "brains".

SCORE
Sometimes breaking everything down bit by bit just doesn't cut it. Sloppily made, unoriginal and stupid, the dungeon might still be brilliant when all the elements come together. A technically brilliant dungeon might just not cut it when you look at the sum of its parts. This one is purely subjective, down to the whim of the player, hell, it may even be the best measure of judgement on the table!

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Anyhoo, feel free to make suggestions for changes, new/combined/totally-overhauled scoring categories, etc.

[Bees]

Only thing I would suggest is to stick to a low scoring scale, like "0-3" (sub par, average, above average, must-play) rather than 1-10 (or heaven forbid a percent scale). As the granularity of scores increases, their meaningfulness decreases doubly quickly.

[Leto]

Only thing I would suggest is to stick to a low scoring scale, like "0-3"

Second that.

I would love to see some wiki site, listing the custom dungeons, their ratings and beeing a reference site for the editor/modding hints etc

I think the forum can get really confusing if we try to list and rate all the user created content here.

[Disasterrific]

Definitely - 1 to 5 stars was what I had in mind, but cutting it down even further makes plenty of sense.

Yeah, don't think a forum would quite cut it. Leaderboards for top dungeons and maybe some kind of hall of fame for long-popular ones or the ones people agree on as classics wouldn't be too much to ask for.

[Thels]

CONSTRUCTION
How much effort has the designer put in to delivering something new? If there are new game components such as items, wallsets or enemies, are they interesting, well-conceived, well-designed and implemented? Is it just another dungeon, or does it stand head and tails above the rest as something special? This would also include how well finished and tested the dungeon is. Sloppy building and bugs should also play a factor here. On the whole, a player shouldn't be able to break the dungeon or screw themselves over without going completely out of their way to do so. Ultimately, I guess this would be how much the artisan has fulfilled their role as the architect of the player's adventure.

I for one would like to see this one split up in two.

Custom props: The presence and quality of custom props, such as new monsters, new items and new wallsets. Some people love to see these, while others won't care much, as long as the puzzles are interesting.

Dungeon quality: How well the dungeon itself is set up logistics wise.

[Bees]

I think the people making dungeons and the people making custom props are two different groups, so dungeons and wallsets should probably be reviewed totally separately. Especially since custom wallsets will probably be released to the general modding community to be reused wherever level designers deem appropriate.

The only nod to custom wallsets I would include in a dungeon review is whether or not the atmosphere of the dungeon suits its appearance.

As for wallsets and custom props, I would judge them on these criteria:
Asthetic appearance
Cohesiveness
Performance

[arconis]

There should also be combat difficulty (do you have to be good at combat to complete this dungeon?), as I'm sure there are going to be some dungeons that are designed to push you to the limit combat-wise. This isn't a good or bad thing, just something I think would be useful to know before downloading a dungeon.

[Darklord]

It would be nice to know up front the level of difficulty for timing puzzles and such to.

I know some people out there are looking forward to playing dungeons without tough timing puzzles.

Daniel.

[Disasterrific]

I agree but that sort of thing is more of a comment you'd tag on to your score. I also factored it in because a poorly designed or ludicrously difficult timing puzzle would count as "cheap" in most people's books. If it was genuinely clever and fun then it wouldn't be an issue.

You might also want to include a spider rating.

With the editor it will be possible for frustrated players and benevolent designers to adjust timing (maybe even put out a seperate version for the temporally challenged?). Still designers should aspire to that golden level where the puzzle represents a reasonable but surmountable challenge to someone who has at least finished the original dungeon.