mmm the difference between 'good' and 'bad'... ah i remember the hours of study i did on the subject, in the context of fine art. answer i came up with? it's all subjective; one man's chalk is another man's cheese. this goes for pretty much all things which are 'consumed' - food, films, music, ofp missions, the whole shabang.
it's all down to standards. the architect raised this point, using BIS missions as the standard, which i agree (since we're all used to playing them) is a good comparison to begin with. karantan makes a fair point about the 'means' of mission making - i for example am a fair distance away from being able to record my own lipsync files. i'd
like to, certainly, but at present i'm making missions without. are they bad because of that? perhaps, but that wouldn't be the only reason.
getting back to the original point made, concerning the scoring system. i think it was maybe gubes who posted the reviewing 'rules' a while back, and i was struck by just how much weight was put on the technical aspects of the thing just
working, nevermind gameplay - are there missing addons, are the objectives ticking off properly, all that stuff. i think 'gameplay' and 'enjoyment-factor' were stuck in at the very end as points to round off on, not to base a score upon, and it was stressed even then that these were subjective evaluations.
do the scores help? i suppose they do, although many posters above have mentioned that the reviews (and comments by other players) are more important and realistic indicators of whether a mission is worth downloading than the score the reviewer gives.
tastes will differ. to take a good (albeit sacrilegious) example, 'unimpossible mission' has achieved a 9/10 score. well deserved, for many reasons. however (sorry gubes) i have played it all of twice, couldn't get past the first two minutes, and so haven't played it again. i certainly wouldn't award it a 9/10 if that score was based on my enjoyment of it. now whether that's because i'm not good enough at playing the game, or too willing to give up, or because it's too hard, is largely immaterial, because as a mission designer i recognise the quality of the editing, the storytelling, and the fact that he was trying to explore a concept using flashpoint. chalk and cheese, once again.
'abandoned armies' by thobson has attracted similar attention from the regulars, for similar reasons - trying to push the boundaries of what is possible, while still retaining that storytelling, atmospheric potential that flashpoint offers. many players would take one look and say "fuck running around an island for days on end, i want to blow things up! where are the objectives? what am i supposed to do?!" but as far as providing an atmospheric free-roaming experience goes, he's bang on the money.
there are those players who refuse to play missions requiring addons, those players who insist on playing only ultra-realistic combat simulators, those who shout the loudest when sci-fi is mentioned
for my part, i thoroughly enjoyed 'knight jump' by karantan, so much so that i 'borrowed' one of the ideas in the mission (collecting a radio and some documents), just because it was so well done, and it's now in pretty much every mission i've made. i can't remember what score his mission got, and frankly i'm not sure it matters. all i know is i downloaded it, played it, and enjoyed it immensely.
at the end of the day, i think that's all it comes down to. will players avoid low-scored missions? perhaps they will. will some players download them regardless of the score? perhaps they will. does the current system work? does it really matter? we all have access to an immense source of varied talent here at our fingertips. 'good', 'bad'... doesn't matter, so long as it works. this is an editing site, first and foremost, with the benefit of being able to see the results of that hard work in the same place. we'll all judge for ourselves in the end whether we like it or not, scores or no scores.
Topic: The mission scoring "problem" - the matter of taste (Read 7568 times)
