Suggestions for rules for OcUK's Top 20 of all time (again)

Chris [BEANS]

Chris [BEANS]

Chris [BEANS]

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Righto,

Haven't really used these forums much over the last few years. But I always come back for a quick butchers or if i need opinions or advise, and over the few years I've been here I've got a lot out of it.

There's not a lot I can do to return the favour but it can't hurt to put a little effort into the community occasionally so I'm going to do another 'Top 20 of all time thread' similar to :-

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17470183

The last time I did it, it was well received but there was some debate over the voting system.
The main problem is that, for example Grand Theft Auto III would get less votes than, say, Mafia, because fans of the GTA franchise might be split over which incarnation of GTA is their favourite.
Therefore GTA III might get 10 votes, Vice city 10 votes, and San Andreas 10 votes. Then Mafia with 11 votes would knock the entire series out of the chart.........
(pure example!! please don't make this thread about GTA Vs Mafia!! :p)

So............. the community has grown and I'm expecting a good few more votes than last time, plus there are three serious consoles on the block that didn't figure last time.

So in general i'm looking for suggestions on rules for voting and classification, but in particular how to treat series. i.e. Does a vote for GTA III count as a vote for GTA III or for 'GTA the series'??

Cheers

:)

P.S. Now games are split into two separate forums i've posted this in each forum, hope that's ok Mods??:eek:
 
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How about a total tally for 'GTA the series' with subsections of 'GTA III, Vice city' like so:

Grand Theft Auto Series (Total votes: 30)
GTA III: 10
GTA Vice City: 10
GTA San Andreas: 10

and so on, so the GTA series would be in the top 20 but people would also be able to see the most favoured single game of the series.

Another way might be to grant people an additional vote if they vote for a series, to be used on one of the games in the series: They would use say, one out of their two original votes on the GTA series, and since they chose a series, they would be allowed another vote to choose their designated game from the series. This way the series will certainly be in the top 20 but each one of the games may not.

Kinda new here so I don't know how this works, but I thought I'd give it a shot :)
 
Chris [BEANS];12974993 said:
The main problem is that, for example Grand Theft Auto III would get less votes than, say, Mafia, because fans of the GTA franchise might be split over which incarnation of GTA is their favourite.
Therefore GTA III might get 10 votes, Vice city 10 votes, and San Andreas 10 votes. Then Mafia with 11 votes would knock the entire series out of the chart.........
Click to expand...

That's fine though, isn't it? I mean, that strikes me as how it should be. It's a top 20 games of all time list, not top 20 franchises of all time. GTA 3 and GTA SA are substantially different games; it'd be kind of like if you tried to lump votes together for Fallout 3 and the 1997 original. Perhaps not to the same extent, but you see my point.

Edit: I'm down regardless though because I am a big listmaking fanboy.
 
edit: Actually the original system wasn't too bad as you vote for 10 games, so ignore most of what I wrote below.
Might be nice to see a ranking system of some sort introduced for the 10 votes though.

MURDEROUS G said:
That's fine though, isn't it? I mean, that strikes me as how it should be. It's a top 20 games of all time list, not top 20 franchises of all time. GTA 3 and GTA SA are substantially different games; it'd be kind of like if you tried to lump votes together for Fallout 3 and the 1997 original. Perhaps not to the same extent, but you see my point.

Edit: I'm down regardless though because I am a big listmaking fanboy.
Click to expand...

I think the point is that, for example, the majority of people might prefer Vice City to Mafia. HOWEVER, some of them prefer GTA3 or SA even more than VC. So in this example, theoretically, you could have a situation where in order of preference you have:

11x
Mafia
VC
SA
GTA3

10x
VC
SA
GTA3
Mafia

10x
SA
VC
GTA3
Mafia

10x
GTA3
VC
SA
Mafia

Now, Mafia gets ranked above all the GTA games - yet out of the 41 people sampled, 30 of them think Mafia is the worst game of the 4.


One way this type of situation can be mitigated, is to have a system where you vote for a group of games in order of preference. So, instead of just picking your #1 game, you pick say, your top 4 games, with #1 getting 4pts, #2 getting 3pts, #3 2pts, and #4 1pt. That way Mafia wouldn't rank so highly as it would only score 74pts, compared to Vice City with 123pts. You get a more balanced view and it helps in situations where a large number of people like a particular type of game / franchise, but their votes get spread too thinly and don't take into account secondary preferences.

edit: to take my theory to an extreme, theoretically you could have a situation where EVERYONE thinks Vice City is the second best game of all time - under the original system, it would receive zero points and not even make the top100 games of all time. Meanwhile one guy thinks Big Game Hunter 2002 is the best game of all time, and thus it would appear on the list


As a general aside, it'd be nice to see a top games list without the console games in there.
 
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i found the voting seriously flawed. its the reason why gta was above ocarina of time :S . you cant mix stuff, you could do a best series or franchises poll if you want. i've never seen a voting system like that one which says a lot... either you do a top franchises-series poll or top games.
 
Definitely have a points system, where 1st place gets 20 points, 2 - 19, etc, down to 20th, who gets one point.

Maybe re-weight the points at the top end so that maybe 1st = 22 points or something.

That's about the best way to do it though.
 
As it's "of all time" how about some weighting system for newer games. If 20 people vote for an old game like Ultima Underworld or Dune should that be worth more than 40 people voting for L4D, for example, because it's still so early in it's life cycle? i.e. 'the newbie phase of wonder' I beleive it's called in technical terms. Or other such games of the moment.

Or just not allow games that have only been released in the last couple of months at all.
 
Ok, it seems like a points system per vote is the way forward, and it's every game for itself.....

So how do people feel about having 5 votes each.

Top vote 10 points
2nd 8 points
3rd 6 points
4th 4 points
5th 2 points

Seems pretty fair............. right??
 
mart981 said:
As it's "of all time" how about some weighting system for newer games. If 20 people vote for an old game like Ultima Underworld or Dune should that be worth more than 40 people voting for L4D, for example, because it's still so early in it's life cycle? i.e. 'the newbie phase of wonder' I beleive it's called in technical terms. Or other such games of the moment.

Or just not allow games that have only been released in the last couple of months at all.
Click to expand...

I disagree, games should be judged purely on merit and not get extra weighting simply because of their age. Lets be honest here, Elite would clean up :)

I understand what you are getting at though (trying to not let the chart be dominated by the flavour of the month), but if you look at the chart from 2005, that didn't really happen. Banning games from the last few months might just serve to alienate a few people from voting who (rightly or wrongly) feel that say L4D is one of their favourite games ever.

Bleh, while I've been writing this post I've started to come round to your way of thinking a little :) I still think weighting based on age is fundamentally flawed, but I wouldn't be averse to trying to cut out people voting for the latest games simply because they are fresh and exciting and being played at the moment.
 
Chris [BEANS];12980083 said:
Ok, it seems like a points system per vote is the way forward, and it's every game for itself.....

So how do people feel about having 5 votes each.

Top vote 10 points
2nd 8 points
3rd 6 points
4th 4 points
5th 2 points

Seems pretty fair............. right??
Click to expand...

May as well use 5-4-3-2-1pts, the results would be identical (just every game would get half as many points).

Personally, I think a scaling like that is a bit too 'extreme' in that it doesn't put enough value on extremely good games which didn't quite grab enough top spots. Or in other words, a game which got one top vote and nothing else would have as many points as a game which appears in 5th place 5 times.

I'd prefer something like this:

1st: 7pts
2nd: 6pts
3rd: 5pts
4th: 4pts
5th: 3pts

Essentially what that does is recognise the fact that for many people, their top 5 games of all time are actually pretty close together (in other words, their 2nd favourite game ever is only twice as good as their 5th favourite game ever - not 4x as good). It also stops 'freak' games which have a couple of adoring fans but are generally not that well liked by the public at large doing too well.
 
Other 'top X games' votes I've seen appear to deal with the sequels issue on a game-by-game basis, depending on how different the games are. So a vote for, say, Doom 1 would be counted with the votes for Doom 2 as they're very similar games. However, a vote for GTA (the original) wouldn't count the same as GTA 4 as you wouldn't even recognise them as being related.
Unfortunately that only really works if you're all in a room together deciding, so I vote it's done on a game-by-game basis. Might not be fair to GTAs, but doing on a franchise basis gives rise to problems with games like Half-Life 2 and Portal (they're utterly different, but share story elements) , or Crysis and Far Cry 2 (both essentially sequels to the same game, if very different). Plus, with franchises there's usually one that stands out that would be voted for anyway.
Edit - nice to see this back btw
 
So would you count things like Final Fantasy as a series or not? Since each game is entirely different to the last? Different chars, different quests, different plot and different worlds.

The only thing that holds it together is the name and the fact they're all JRPGs.
 
and it's every game for itself.....
Click to expand...

so all formats..? cool so Nintendo 64, Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum, Playstation, Megadrive, neo Geo, Dreamcast, Acorn electron...etc?

Arcade machine versions as well?

:)
 
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