Tweak the coolness formula

[mkalam-alami]

Current issue mentioned by @ttencate:

But if somebody (especially a large Jam team) is very active with rating, they'll continue to be at the top.

Maybe we should get it closer to the official LD sorting formula. Relevant IRC log:

[21:36] <sorceress> D = 50 + R - 5*sqrt(min(C,100))
[21:36] <wan> r=ratings, c=coolness, d?
[21:37] <sorceress> yes. d is the variable by which the games are sorted. 
        the lowest sorted are front paged.
[21:37] <sorceress> so initially, 1 rating given earns 5 ratings back
[21:40] <sorceress> the idea was to reward unenthusiastic people for taking part
        in the rating process, and at the same time to prevent enthusiastic people
        from "stealing" too many ratings from the pool.
[21:41] <sorceress> so diminishing returns
[21:41] <sorceress> with a balance point at 25 votes, which is what was deemed
        "the goal" at that time for people to get to

[mkalam-alami]

Ok so I did some research.

Some numbers

• The average comment count for LD35 for an entry was 18.8, and the median is 15.
• The average "comment score" was 1.54 points.
• The official ratings formula yields the following:
  • 1 coolness (= giving away 1 rating) yields back (in theory) 5 ratings.
  • 4 coolness => 10 ratings
  • 25 coolness => 25 ratings
  • 50 coolness => ~35 ratings
  • 100 coolness => ~50 ratings (at this point you need to rate 4 games to get an additional rating)

Finding the right formula

This is up to debate, but I think we can aim for maybe a bit less, but longer comments per entry than in previous LDs. That would mean we could steer the formula towards about 25 points per entry.

Good news, the ratings equation is already balanced at 25... BUT, while in the past we needed to strongly push entries toward getting enough ratings (in order to get ranked), this is not the case at all for comments. We need to find the right spot between boosting inactive people/nerfing overenthusiastic ones and being fair to everyone.

Possible solution

After mashing some numbers in Excel I ended up tweaking the ratings formula with constants. Here's a combination that looked good for me:

Overall score = 74 + 8.5 * sqrt(10 + min(Given points, 100)) - Received points

By assuming all comments are worth 1.7 points, this yields:

• 0 given comment => 1 received comment
• 5 given => 7 received
• 17 given => 17 received
• 30 given => 25 received
• 50 given => 35 received
• 100 given => 53 received (at this point you need to comment on 3 games to get another comment) * Above 100p given (roughly 60 given comments / 40 received), additional given comments are ignored.

So the initial boost is less obvious, and overall the curve is closer to a linear one, while still nerfing & capping big commenters.

Opinions welcome!

EDIT: Fixed suggested formula

[mkalam-alami]

I just applied the formula, see: http://feedback.ld.intricati.com/?event=ludum-dare-35.

This looks much better, yielding games that genuinely look unfairly ignored.