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So I've been working through some of the stories on the site and I have to say, there's a lot of garbage haha. Anyway, I've been featuring comments (and modifying tags, etc.) as I go. I've been awarding points but I haven't always been sending out messages to accompany the awards so check your points every once and awhile to see if you've gotten any new featured comments.

I also wish y'all weren't so generous with your ratings. There's no way that this story (http://chooseyourstory.com/story/conquest~3a-chapter-i) deserves a 5/8. No way in hell.

To be fair, the description for a 5 is "Not the best, certainly not the worst", so it could be anything from a really good story that wasn't particularly long to an absolutely terrible story that didn't have any spelling mistakes.

Sure but the description for 8 is "it will bring you enlightenment" so anything that enlightens you should be an 8, and anything that doesn't, shouldn't. Therefore, many HORRIBLE stories should be 8's because they enlighten you on how not to write.

The description for 6 is "it's worth every cent" but since you're not paying for it, literally every story that entertained you even a little should warrant a 6, right?

In reality, you're rating stories against other stories. A 5 indicates that the story is one of the better ones on the site and that there are only three levels of stories better than it.

Compare the story I linked to, to Braak the Briton, and you'll find that Braak is CLEARLY better. So Braak gets a 6. Now compare Braak to something like Survive the Zombies, which is again clearly better, so it gets a 7. Now compare Survive the Zombies to Magus: Betrayel and Magus is definitely better, so it gets an 8 (sorry, Killa!), but then compare Magus Betrayel to OMS and OMS probably wins that one by a landslide, so it's a 9 now. Then compare OMS to Ground Zero (or in your mind, probably Dead Man Walking) and Dead Man Walking gets a 10!

Basically, by rating poor storygames with moderately high ratings, you stop doing the best games justice. If we all reserve our high ratings for the best storygames, we'll get more accurate representation of quality.

 Well put.

My rating scheme:

You gave Eternal an 8 right?

Eternal is a 7, last time I rated it. But I'll be giving it another go with all of the new stuff at some point in the near future.

Okay. I think the shadow guard path is better than the soldier path. It has considerably more depth.

Yeah, good scheme. I've probably rated games a lot better or a lot worse than what they should be depending on the quality of the games I read before them. To me though, if the quality of writing in a story is good enough that if it were published in a novel, I'd buy the book, read it all the way through and enjoy it, then it's an 8 to me :)

I'm intrested in what you gave Death Song. That's another great story.

6!

And I get the feeling that someone reading this comment would say: "Seriously?? Only a 6?" But to me, a 6 is a really good rating. As in, in order to get a six, I had to really enjoy your story-game. Death Song was really amazing (especially the true ending) but it didn't inspire me to the same extent that a couple other Endmaster stories did. I really liked it though.

Basically in terms of my writing scheme, there are small increments between 1-5 and between 6-8. But the difference between 5 and 6 is very significant. Ideally, I wouldn't have such a schism but with only 8 segments, it's my only choice. Basically, the difference between 5 and 6 is respect and love. I respect a 5, the author tried hard and was capable but it didn't make me really love it. A 6 is the same except that the author succeeded in what they were trying to do (in my mind).

Although, I think Death Song has to be a 7 after all. I do love 6s but Death Song really, really does a fantastic job integrating with Necromancer and that final ending was so touching.

Considering  you give 8s to only one or two stories on the site, a six is pretty high. Though, Ideally, the ratings should probably be up to 10, since 8 seems like a rather random number.

Given how much praise you've given the writing style of Magus, I can't really be offended when you say it's better than Survive the Zombies lol.

I would be curious what rating you actually gave my game (and all feature games actually) though, given that you seem to put much more effort into critiquing them than most on the site.

Personally I just go based on how much I liked it vs things I think they could have improved on. I also tend to give most games a decent score if it seems like they put effort into it, even if I didn't really think it was good, so they're encouraged to continue trying. Like, had I gotten anything lower than a 5 with my first story, I probably would have just given up, considering the effort I had put into it. I would have just determined that I wasn't cut out for writing and stopped there (or I just wouldn't have published anything I made later). So provided it seems like they put effort into the story, I'll generally give it a decent score.

That's nice of you and I understand why you'd do it, but for me, it's more important to honor the works that are truly amazing than it is to pander to a delicate ego. I know that personally, if someone had rated my early storygames highly and then something I was more proud of later on only a little bit higher, I would be more dissatisfied than if I had gotten originally horrible reviews/ratings (as I did) and then later on gotten really high reviews/ratings.

But I'm not one who is very prone to give up on anything creative that I really enjoy doing so I'm sure that's not the way that everyone feels.

If you guys want to follow my ratings as I update them (I'm planning to slowly re-rate every storygame on the site):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Amp7wYl4vmsGdDlCMndCUXIyN0xoU0tpRTR6R2ljS1E#gid=0

(Added a chart in the second tab haha)

Yeah, that was hilarious.

Lol! No offence, but that game scared the hell outta me... Actually that was probably the idea :p