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Not all storygames are equal. This is an indisputable fact, so why do all storygames get an equal amount of featured comments? The most popular games on the site are generally on the longer side, and have thousands of completed playthroughs and comments, yet have the same amount of featured slots as some shitter's "whattt" that will get taken down in a week. Another result of a larger amount of comments on bigger games is that the bigger comments--those not worthy of replacing a feature while simultaneously being much higher quality than the rest of the rubbish--will quickly get buried under a pile of "good!!" and "pOOpy i cant win i hate it omG1". It's especially jarring to go read Gryphon's 3k word comment and the two other detailed featured comments and then see a flood of only one-line/paragraph reviews.

Introducing: scaling featured comments! The values can be tweaked, but I think that we could start with one additional featured comment for every length increase of two. For example, a 1/8 length story retains the default three, but a 5/8 will have a fitting five featured slots, and the giants such as Eternal or DMW will get six (maybe we add another featured slot for 8/8 length games, but I feel like six featured comments is probably the most we want, since there should still be an element of competition and we don't want too many features to conceal the important "lol" of the grassroots commenter).

This will encourage more people to write big, comm-fishing effortful comments for longer games, and the implementation of this rule will open up so many slots on older games that will encourage people to go back and replace some of those featured comments that were written by NPCs that don't even exist anymore.

Plus, if someone actually uses reviews to judge whether they should play a game, then they have more curated knowledge about some of these larger storygames that might convince them to commit to the game, or they might find that one element that would've ruined the game for them if they had started, saving them some time.

Also, this feature doesn't have any potential for abuse, since only mods can feature comments. If anyone can see any real downsides to this, go ahead and say something, but I tried to analyze this issue holistically and have determined that this will definitely be a change for the better!

I agree with this suggestion since I will, at times, look at the reviews to judge whether I should play the game.

And also, more featured slots mean more people writing comments. If a story already has 3 featured ones, you're not as incentivized to write an in-depth one as you otherwise would be.

I mean technically we can feature more. We just have a limit of 3, like the story sections are limited to 7 featured stories.

I was a little confused at first, but this has clarified 'autism' as the driving motivation, thank you.

Autism is the driving motivator behind a lot of CYStian activities

The source of all our culture 

I kinda got used to seeing just three featured comments. If I really like something, I'll still feature it and either replace a comment, or unfeature it in the same motion so the person gets a commendation still for their work.

Also I think I would prefer 5 over 6 for some brand new change like this. Something about 5 is so much more aesthetic, imo.

Everyone who bothers with featured comments does this, old ones get cycled out all the time while anything with real effort put in gets the comms regardless. I had no idea this was being treated like a competetive sport where good games get ignored because somebody wants that quick and easy feature spot and doesn't think there's any other way.

I'm not sure how common that is though, might just be a Cel thing.

At any rate, if anybody wants to feature more than three comments, they can just do that. I don't think having hard numbers to remember for different game lengths is going to appeal, especially when there's not THAT much difference between them until you get past the 6/8 range.

I don't think you'd have to remember anything, it would be enforced in the same way the current limit is.

The current limit is enforced by counting to three.

The complexicity of this site continues to amaze me

complexicity

I can barely count, did you think I could spell

Perhaps it's just me, but counting to three does not seem to demonstrate "complexicity"

sarcasm