londerwost

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I have a 20-30 arc that might fit the bill. It needs some feedback for the i15 changes.

Info here

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Wings of Deception, arc ID #101926

Rated 3 stars.

Played with level 30 elec/dev blaster teamed with a tanky PB on easiest diff. I tried playing with a level 12 and level 13 but found it to be impossible on the easiest diff setting so I would categorize this arc as NOT lowbie friendly.

I feel like I might be generous with the rating in this one but there is a lot of effort put into it so I have to give credit for that. Beyond that, I found this arc to be disjointed, confusing, and a little lacking. The few brief lines of dialog we are giving by the contact does keep us on track but only with the barest of effort. I found myself constantly checking for clues or looking at mob details or checking back at the mission send off text to see if I could figure out what was going on.

The lack of detail seems even more apparent when there are complicated inside plugs like "reticulating splines." Castillo has a great amount of detail on the mob but seems to come out of no where. Why spend so much time on who this Castillo is and give only the briefest of connection to the story?

Some of the general immersion was also confusing and might need to be looked over and smoothed out. "Search the First Base" which turned out to be and open area was really confusing. The nav gave the clue that it's actually the delivery point that we are searching, not the base.

Ultimately, I do not see how this arc could be final. It needs a lot of work. It has good potential although the gotcha character might seem out of canon with the CoH story which could irritate some people. I would seriously go over the story and make sure you actually have one before assigning missions to it, maybe make an outline and write out what you are trying to do before you put it to the actual arc.

There is effort put into this, and that is obvious, I just think it needs a lot more work to make it a full functioning, smooth story arc.

Sorry I don't really have a good tl:dr for this. Make sure your story flows and is something more than paper thin. Try to explain why certain things happen (Manticore?? WTH??), foreshadowing would be necessary for this arc, which has a mystery feel. Check your arc, play it a lot, just make sure it's smooth before you call it done.



EDIT: On a side from this review:

I'm sick so I may have more time to play some arcs. I am having fun trying these out and think that even the simplest of arcs is still way better than the dev created content in the game. I'm going to bed but here's the queue:

If we have time, later this week:
A Proper Heist, arc ID: 82059
City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon, arc ID: 18775
Captain Dynamic, the Great, Faces the Great Face, arc ID: 190069
Teen Phalanx Forever!, arc ID: 67335

And sometime this week (maybe weekend) I will personally make time for:
All Consuming, arc ID: #261148
The Amulet of J'gara, arc ID: #1709
(I've been wanting to try Lazarus' arcs)

At some point these will get reviewed:
Lockdown, arc# 250142
BE Prologue: Gangs United, arc# 250480
Quatrexin's Quandary, arc# 246604
Justice_Blues' Low level triligy, arc#4727, 70801, 255895 (might want to play a couple of our arcs for doing this one :P )

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Check out my Halloween Night Arc:
Arc Id #227436
Arc Name: Halloween Night
Faction: Neutral
Difficulty: Middle level depending on what happens in it
Levels:1-30
Synopsis:
On a dark and stormy Halloween night, you decided to knock on the door of that scary house down the street. How were you to know that a real witch lived there, and wouldn't be happy with you bothering her. Oh well, maybe some good candy will come of this. [HFMA]

1 Mission. Lots of Trick and Treat items (Glowies)

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Ok, the mission worked this time, stupid i15! And I hope that you take this as constructive criticism.

Rated 3 stars.

Played eng/eng blaster, level 12 teamed with a level 13 arch/mental blaster on the easiest diff.

This is another example of a one mission arc that does not take full advantage of the limited space available for your story. I think the writing is good but there seems to be a disconnect or absence of detail between the intro text and the mission itself.

Who are the Helsing? Where did the dentist come from? What's up with the rogue witches? There could be foreshadowing for all of these things in the mission details before they are introduced. I think there would have been less confusion if you had kept just ghosts and Tuatha but then it wouldn't have been as much fun. Give some more details about your custom characters (if not in intro, send off text, than in the mission begin clue).

Adding cast animation to the mobs around the main boss was a nice touch and basically made me forget about the frustration I ran into with the stupid i15 bug.

The treats were a unique way of doing trick or treat. I thought it was a fun, short arc that I could easily find myself taking a group of my SG mates into on Halloween. However, I'm gonna be greedy and ask for more before I do.



tl:dr

* Give some foreshadowing about what to expect before we enter the mission (why are the custom mobs there?).

* Add some more 'meat' to the story, at least in the intro (clues and mob details are nicely done).

* With only a little more detail and foreshadowing I could easily up my rating to 4 stars.

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Wow, I guess I should have read faster. Had this up meaning to post, and all five spots filled already. Next time then.

edit: okie dokie.

Arc Name: Ctrl + Alt + Reset!
Arc ID: #137561
Level Range: 15-30
Missions: 4, fairly small maps
Description: Foreshadow didn't see this coming. He sent you to retrieve a temporal artifact and now you're stuck in a time loop and have to figure out how to stop it.

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Rated 5 stars.

Played with eng/eng blaster at level 11 teamed with shield/fire tank at level 14 on easiest diff setting.

I'm sick so I don't really feel up to picking apart this arc but I can tell you I had fun, only had a slight leaning toward boredom with the idea of repeating the mission but found that it was well done so it wasn't bad. I would have rated at 4 stars but because of the difficulty of pulling off a "ground hogs day" type arc, I gave it a 5.

I would HIGHLY suggest changing ALL of your boss fights to boss only to complete. The reason for this is simply continuity. We defeated the boss, he said "OK you can have it" and we didn't have anything. Only after beating the minion did we get the clue. I think that was the only thing that was confusing in each mission. Even the named boss at the end was confusing because we defeated him and still didn't know who he was until after we defeated the minion.

Otherwise, great job! Lots of fun.

Thanks Airhead! This certainly has some helpful ideas for how to improve my arc and I will seriously look at what can be done. I have a feeling I will probably have to bite the bullet and make a souvenir for the ending, fill in some gaps.

I hope you understand that part of the problem maybe the limitations of the arc format itself. A lot of the room for text is maxed out which is why I tried to use clues to fill in the rest. I wanted to keep it short yet interesting enough for a lowbie while at the same time put some humor in there for people who really search deep into the detail (you found the "mudkipz" easter egg but missed the other ones ).

I'll certainly follow the advice that can be instituted into my arc (and correct those damned spelling errors) and really appreciate you taking a nice long look at my arc. Makes me feel good that someone spent there time on it!

EDIT: Ok I made some changes to the arc, corrected some errors, and cleared up a few things. And as I suspected, some things are just going to have to stay because of limitation of space and/or map type. But I think I hit on most of the points you made. Feel free to take another look. I even added a souvenir.

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Feel free to try 13986 - Save the Spiderlings.

It's only one mission and designed for low levels. Lowest level that I know of that did it was lvl 2. It's best with one person, but a duo can certainly do it. Just a bit more chaotic.

Edit - I15 added a bug that makes your "friends' act a bit wonky. Don't worry about that too much.

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2 stars.

Played on level 10ish enrgy/enrgy blaster teamed with 12ish shield/fire tank on easiest diff setting.

I hate giving bad ratings. But I feel that this arc could be filled in a lot more. Single mission arcs are very difficult to get right because you only have a limited amount of space to work with which is why I feel strongly about this. The intro is very brief, albeit humorous, but it doesn't give me a good solid reason to save the spiderlings. What am I doing this for? I also think that you can utilize clues more to make this single mission more interesting, or drive the player on to do more.

I also noticed that the last spiderling just says "spiderling" something (mk II?) when it should say something that gives direction, like "save the last spiderling." This is a common error and can easily be fixed.

I thought the matlock joke was pretty funny but it's not enough to carry a single mission arc.

tl:dr

1. Fill in some more background into the story. Make use of clues if possible to help with this. It's only one mission, give me as much meat on the bones as you can utilize.
2. Give me a good reason to save the spiderlings.
3. Fix the nav for last spiderling.
4. I will be more than happy to re-rate if changes have been made to the arc.

This single mission arc has promise, give it some more and I think it'll be among the best.

EDIT: Going to bed but next up on the list (maybe tomorrow night):

Halloween Night, arc ID #227436
Ctrl + Alt + Reset!, arc ID #137561
Wings of Deception, arc ID #101926

If we have time, later this week:
A Proper Heist, arc ID: 82059
City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon, arc ID: 18775
Captain Dynamic, the Great, Faces the Great Face, arc ID: 190069
Teen Phalanx Forever!, arc ID: 67335

And sometime this week (maybe weekend) I will personally make time for:
All Consuming, arc ID: #261148
The Amulet of J'gara, arc ID: #1709
(I've been wanting to try Lazarus' arcs)

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This arc is 4 missions; might run a little over your 60 minute limit as a result. It should be soloable or duoable for anyone 15+.

Arc Name: Teen Phalanx Forever!
Arc ID: 67335
Keywords: Solo friendly, Complex Mechanics, Comedy
Synopsis: The Teen Phalanx is on a recruitment drive, and they've extended an invitation to a teen version of your hero to try out! Do you have what it takes to join Paragon City's most prestigious teen superhero team?
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 15-20, 20, 20-25, 29-30 (mission levels gradually increase to "level" you up)

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Not rated.

Sorry, this arc was lots of fun but it was obvious early on that it was going to take over an hour so we stopped half way through. We want to be able to rate more arcs and this one is just a little bit too long to squeeze in with all the other arcs.

We'll try it another day when we have more time.

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"Two Households Alike" (#126582) is a level 20-29 arc that should meet your qualifications. My other four current arcs are all targeted for higher levels.

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5 stars!

Played a level 10 enrgy/enrgy blaster teamed with a level 12 shield/fire tank set on the easiest diff setting. This brought us up to 20 but was not an issue (we would have switched to more appropriate level if it was).

This was a lot of fun to play. I personally like when stories unfold in the way that this one did. I don't want to spoiler it, but I was a little surprised by the custom mobs in the last mission! And the epic clashes were nicely done (I'm working on an arc that needs epic battles but I'm having a hard time with it, maybe I could ask your advice). The custom mobs were not hard and the elite boss was beatable, which is good because we can set up our own diff if we wanted too, which gives the player more control.

Layout has a nice flow to it and only got a little complicated with the addition of characters but was not hard to follow. Maps were short, sweet, and fun to play.

The only complaint I have is minor and does not affect how I rated (probably the same thing anachro found); some of the sentences are a little awkward (namely the intro dialog and last clue in arc). If you know what you are trying to say, they sound fine, but if you try to read them straight, one might have to stop and restart the sentence for it to make sense. And the bosses in the second mission almost got killed by patrols. But that was kinda funny. Minor stuff, I don't think it has any real effect on the overall gameplay.

Good job!

I'm the other half of this reviewing duo. I'm more of a seat of the pants kinda reviewer. I will look at the overall feel of the arc. Any nit picky little things will NOT effect how I rate but if it appears that there was little effort put into proof reading then I will mark down.

Example: I won't mark down if you don't have a souvenir but I will mark down if your arc has "3 find 3 ninjas" or just "ninjas" when it should say "3 ninjas to save" or "Find the last ninja."

I will also point out, on the side of rating, anything that might need improvement as more of a suggestion. And if I do rate down for lack of proofreading or anything that can easily be fixed, I will be more than happy to re-rate if changes are made to the arc. Just let me know when you've made those changes.

tl:dr I'm mostly looking at, did I have fun playing your arc and did you put effort into it.

This way you can have two different perspectives from two different people for your arc.

EDIT: My hellions arc is currently bugged. Stupid i15. Last mission is supposed to be timed but it fails when you rescue the hostage so that's no fun. I noted in the arc with (bug!) note and will update once the devs fix it.

I don't know exactly when this started happening but all the negative feedback I've gotten started after i15. Basically, my arc is two missions, last one is timed.

This mission is failing before the timer is up. Only objectives in the mission are, disable bombs (glowies) x4, rescue hostage, defeat boss. I moved it from a 45 min timer to a 60 min timer but still failing. Last test failed with 55 min left on the clock.

This is a lowbie arc with only hellions in it. Anyone else seeing this? I can't figure out how to fix it and I have 33 votes at 4 stars so I don't want to start over if I can help it.

EDIT: I disabled the timer for now so at least I'll stop getting negative voting. But the timer is kinda important for my story.

Bought our tickets around Jan and it looks like it wasn't too soon. This is the fastest I've ever seen the tickets sell out (entirely sold out over a month before start).

We'll be there yet again and I'm glad to hear we AREN'T doing the whole dancing/pocket D in RL thing. Panel sounds like fun!

Shall I make another "Free Hamster" sign?

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when will people learn that it is not farming itself that is bad it was the exploit that went unchecked that was bad. all farming is not bad, it actually helps in most cases. if it weasn't for people who take part in this you wouldn't have half the stuf in the market to purchase.

again, the only farming that was wrong was the farming using the exploits that were removed. and ata this point, since a mission can't be removed if it was an exploit alot of the bad missions are still on the MA. you also have to take into account that peoples ideas of farms are completely different.

case in point: i am working on a story arc that will have 3 missions to it. right now i have 1 mission complete and have it published to get feedback on it so i can make appropriate changes to it before i go any further with the other 2 missions i want to add. is it possible that my first mission could be seen as a farm? sure, if the self righteous against farming person does it because it is on an outside map or whatever reson they want to use that fits their idea of a farm. was it made as a farm? absolutely not. it has all lt's but not easy ones as the "gang" and an eb/av in it that isn't very easy to defeat.

the second mission will have 2 eb/av's in it probably with the same lt group and the third mission will have 3 eb/av's with the same lt group. both will be inside missions as the first mission the baddies haven't made it to their base yet, the second mission will be a sub base and the third will be their true base.

anyways just to reiterate on why there are still so many farm missions showing in the MA, it is because the creator of the missions can't take them down. if they can't be taken down they can't be removed from the system. that is my understanding of how it is at this point.

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Your example does not appear to support your claim.

Also, if you are making a farm that does not employ some sort of exploit that increases your reward to risk factor, then you are a piss poor farmer who will probably not get much attention (or ratings) on your map. This is why the farmer/exploiter argument is ridiculous.

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Exactly. Constructive criticism is awesome. "Too many commas" is for lols.

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I'm rating this entire thread 1 star because you said lol with a plural 's.' This does not conform with my requirements for a good thread. No sir, I didn't like it.

Does it count if I don't have a desk?

<.<

>.>

Gaming laptops FTW!

Yikes, seems like a good reason to have this forum "do not purge."

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Arc Name:Can't We all Just Get Along
Arc ID:31519
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Masque
Difficulty Level:Fun, funny and fast
Synopsis: You must stop the epic battle between the PvPers and the PvErs, by any means necessary. Special Guest Stars include: Desmodos, Death Conqueror, Hip Hopper, Madame Pistacio, Me and everyone's favorite fly/phase Mind/Ice Dom.

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Completed at max diff; 50 bots/storm MM w/ 33 Crab Spider LK'd up

As Masque describes it, fun, funny, and fast. Has a lot of little tid bits that you will recognize. I was laughing as a particular mob and one of the lines from a boss. I would recommend this one. Didn't see any errors or issues with the missions. 5 star'd.

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First dialog of text from the rat, "fluffy Bunnies and Face eaters" which seems like it can't decide if it's a title or a description. Also "1 Bunny Badges" and "1 PVP IOs" sound awkward. There was in depth text around the Bunny Badges glowy but absolutely no text on the PVP IOs glowy.

Personally, I would have included descriptions on the custom mobs and clues to help people who aren't in the loop. Unless this map was only designed for the few people who know what's going on.

End was a little flat, too sudden. Maybe add another mission where they either make peace or break out into another epic fight. Otherwise it feels like it's been cut short.

R U A pure heeler?

LOL

heelzors kan't solo nub

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It would have been nice if this is what happened to mine. I could have handled it.

BUT, I received ZERO feedback on what was wrong with my arc. And I will repeat ZERO feedback. All I got were 2 star ratings and not ONE SINGLE person gave me any indication as to what was wrong with it.

How is someone suppose to improved their arc if no one leaves feedback?????

So I just unpublished it and gave up.

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I tried your arc and I have to say it is decent but it needs some TLC. I ended up giving a very conflicted 3 stars because I really wanted to give it 4 stars. I would say spend a little more time on it, add more details, make sure the flow of text works and is free of grammar/spelling errors. I think everything visual works and the custom mobs are great! The plot has good pacing and the story is good. Just polish up the text, add more details (descriptions) and I promise to give you a better rating.

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I would definitely be interested in seeing those stats you were talking about that pertain to 5 star ratings and very large arcs.

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Here's a sample of data I took from May 18th:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
arcs VS S M L VL
5 3 486 446 941 1107
4 1006 6305 2620 2766 2677
3 1383 3040 1005 667 649
2 385 876 301 151 128
1 193 692 199 92 77
</pre><hr />

This is a breakdown of rating by size. This is all freely available information, by the way, if you're crazy enough to collect it: the devs are not generous with their datamining information, even with (maybe especially with) me. Note the interesting pattern that if you exclude 5-star arcs, most of the ratings regardless of rating-stars are for small arcs: this suggests that small arcs are played more often than any other size arc (they are at least rated more often). My guess is that VS arcs are much less likely to be good stories *or* good farms, and players are realizing that.

However, 5-star arcs don't fit that pattern. Since there is a clear skew towards Small sized (by flag) arcs, the fact that most 5-star arcs are VL (and the longer the arc the more 5-star arcs it has) implies that there is a very strong bias away from giving smaller arcs a 5-star rating. In fact, VS arcs have trouble getting even a 4-star rating.

There's a lot of data points I'm trying to keep track of as often as I can remember to. But given the various sources of uncertainty in the data (in terms of trying to extrapolate to information I don't have access to) I'm still gathering as much information as I can before I draw any conclusions, as suggestive as the data I have currently seems to be (also, I'm collecting more data now than when I first started, as some of the early data began to show signs of patterns I didn't expect - for instance, there's just the slightest hint that the day of the week you first publish can influence your rating, but the signal is not strong enough with my current data to conclude its statistically significant).

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Thank you for posting this, I really appreciate it! It's actually kinda freaky how the numbers significantly skew like you said.

EDIT: I would rationalize that very large arcs are not only more of a commitment but also possibly played by teams. Because of this there might be larger volume of 5 star ratings for those arcs. As far as small arcs, I think the opposite is true where more people are willing to play these because they are quick and easy (at least that's why I like short/medium maps).

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This thread is not about you.

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Never claimed it was, my dear londerwost.

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Now you do sound like a troll. Maybe we were wrong?

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Actually, the most reasonable interpretation of the data is that statistically speaking the average rater perceives the average arc to be closer to 3.6 stars rather than 3 stars, and ratings skew towards that number. The curve is also much sharper than expected for a normal distribution, which implies that the skew is quite strong (suggesting people are reluctant to give out 5s, 2s, and 1s).

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It seems like we are assuming that there are more 4/3 votes when there could actually be more 5/1 votes. How did you come to this conclusion when we are looking at averages? You can't conclusively separate 4/3 star ratings from 5/1 star ratings in an average, can you?

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See my previous post: short answer is that a) I'm specifically talking about averages above, and not specific votes, and b) there is *some* evidence that 5-votes are not more common than the averages suggest. Some of that is buried in the information that can be gleaned from the MA, however.

In all cases, we're generally talking about statistically likely theories, not demonstrative proof of individual voting patterns.

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Thanks, Arcana. This makes sense although I admit my eyes kept crossing while reading your details.

I would definitely be interested in seeing those stats you were talking about that pertain to 5 star ratings and very large arcs.

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This is old news. We've figured out that HA is not a griefer but rather just weird.

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I've known he's just weird for some time now. He ... I ... we ... wouldn't have it any other way.

I do rate harshly, I readily admit; my personal tastes seem to differ greatly from much of the community. And I don't pull any punches, so to speak. But I receive actual thanks from time to time, and often invitations to revisit a modified arc. I love that. So I'm going to stay weird.



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This thread is not about you.

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OK having looked over Heaven's Agent's review of the arc, and seeing what ludicrous things he's docking stars for, I'm absolutely convinced he's just a troll - nobody can actually be this petty and overanalytical and be serious about it.

Some highlights include (paraphrased, and this is only a handful of them):

"Arc did not go in depth to explain every nuance of Red Shift's time travel plugging all possible interpretations of it against possible plot holes by over analysis of the arc"

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After I read this, I couldn't believe a word you said.

You start off by saying that you may paraphrase BUT everything you attribute to Heaven is in QUOTES. Quotes mean that something ISN'T paraphrased.

So I don't believe you when you say Heaven "griefed" this arc because it didn't meet EVERY NUANCE and ALL POSSIBLE INTERPERTATIONS ... and OVER ANALYSIS ...

I believe those are your words, not his, that you're placing in HIS quotes.

And if you can't believe the messenger, you can't believe the message.

The fact that you and your SG all played and loved an arc doesn't mean that everyone else will - or should. The intensity of your anger at Heaven for what is, basically, his opinion leads me to believe that you are NOT some disinterested party defending a stranger's MArc.

Don't know what your hidden agenda is, but I don't believe a word you say.

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This is old news. We've figured out that HA is not a griefer but rather just weird.

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Actually, the most reasonable interpretation of the data is that statistically speaking the average rater perceives the average arc to be closer to 3.6 stars rather than 3 stars, and ratings skew towards that number. The curve is also much sharper than expected for a normal distribution, which implies that the skew is quite strong (suggesting people are reluctant to give out 5s, 2s, and 1s).

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It seems like we are assuming that there are more 4/3 votes when there could actually be more 5/1 votes. How did you come to this conclusion when we are looking at averages? You can't conclusively separate 4/3 star ratings from 5/1 star ratings in an average, can you?

I have nothing to add to this thread except for the fact that I found this insanely funny.

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I would be curious if the devs could mine the raw stats on how many people vote 1 vs 3 stars.

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As of the last time I checked, of the arcs that were rated at all, 9.69% were rated 5-stars, 55.79% were rated 4-stars, 23.71% were rated 3-stars, 6.46% were rated 2-stars, and 4.34% were rated 1-star.

(28.22% of all arcs were unrated at the time)

This is not the same thing as an answer to your question, but its generally suggestive.

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This is a little different than what I was going for, as you stated. 55% of all arcs at 4 stars is different than say, 55% of people voted 4 stars.

I'm willing to bet that you'll actually see a reverse bell curve with most individual votes being 4-5 stars than 1 stars being next. Which still supports my point (if it's true) that most people vote up or down as it is.