McDonalds and Burger King are popular. Do you think that's a good indicator of how good their food is?

No, the number of votes they have is nothing more than an indication of how many votes they have. It may also imply more voters, although that's not something you can be sure of.

Yes, a lot of people like McDonalds as well.

Point taken, the_logos.

We send very few to TMS, and receive very little traffic from TMS. But I don't see desiring a higher position as being ego-driven. Of course it feels great to have the visibility, but the majority of our new traffic comes from reviews and word of mouth.

The first page is what voters see after casting their votes.  Folks who just voted hunt for the game they just voted for.  If they find it, great. If they have to keep looking through pages until they find it, that's fine too.  But no matter what the intention of the listing is, they will remember how far they had to look before they find it.

I was not continuing the thread to bring forth objections to the current system or its participants, merely to point out that there are other methods and measures.

Uhh.. there's no direct relationship formula for it, but like I said, if they have a lot of votes, generally they have a lot of players. If you don't believe me, try it. For the most part each of the muds in the top 5 have more players than 6-10 which have more than 10-20, etc.

That's my point. And there are many, many, many players who care more about having players to play with in addition to having newer features, decent areas, and over all, just having fun than they do about playing in a "quality" mud with "original" features with complex stories or text clouds. There are also many players who do prefer quality written areas, quality deep stories, and maybe even clouds, but most of these players play a different mud (there are 100s of such muds) from each other because everyone's perception of quality is different from the next.

So let me get this straight. You believe that "how good a mud is" is based on how many players it has rather than...how good the mud is?

Does that mean that if someone opened up a stock Diku and it had ten thousand players online at all times, you would consider it to be the 'best' mud around?

KaVir, I thought we already had one of those. <3M

---

And in response to reading this thread, I'll shoot my support to KaVir on this one. There are many MUDs out there that lack the funds, the amazing web-design, or other general flashiness that can sometimes attract lots of players (much in the same way Graphical MMORPGs do); many of those MUDs have quality staff, decent-sized playerbases, and code/gameplay that doesn't crawl, is unique and fun, and does things that no other MUDs do.

I won't go as far as to say that large MUDs can't reach the same level, because that's obviously been proven not true - however, I have played many places, and I do believe most large player-based MUDs sacrifice some of their creative energies on the flashiness and community aspects of their game. That does tend to attract many more players, true - however, it is not necessarily a direct reflection on the quality of their gameplay itself. The most innovative and creative MUDs I have ever played, nearly all probably had lower playerbases than 100 avg(which for most MUD owners, would still probably be a dream.)

Back to the subject of the post; I do not find it wrong to encourage players to vote, but I do not think it should be hard-coded into the game to remind players that it is their duty, or the sort. A simple attachment to whatever equivalent of a "Message of the Day Board" saying 'You can vote for us at xxx!' is as automated as I would ever feel personally comfortable with.

Yes, I do. I believe it takes a good mud, to get and to keep players. And having players makes it better, at least for me, because I don't like to mud in a dark corner of cyberspace with only a couple of players. Of course you don't agree with me. That's fine. What do you think makes up a "good" mud?
Diku stock would obviously never reach ten thousands, and not even ten, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

No, but then, McDonalds and Burger King are also very cheap compared to what most food critics would regard as "good" food. Most text MUDs are free, and thus competing on somewhat equal footing as regards the sacrifice (time/financial/etc) the player is expected to make in order to play the game.

There is a very strong correlation between # of votes and # of players in a MUD. It's hardly a perfect correlation, but I'm sure you'd agree that if we went down the list of MUDs on TMS and mapped votes to population, we'd see an indisputable trend whereby the MUDs with more votes have more players than the MUDs with less votes.

--matt

Here's something I did for the past hour, and that I will look further into later tonight.



Aardwolf: IN(206), OUT(88), RANK(1), PLAYERS ON(451)

*Achaea: IN(186), OUT(62), RANK(2), PLAYERS ON(249 visible)

Midievia: IN(131), OUT(111),RANK(3), PLAYERS ON(619)

*Lusternia: IN(122), OUT(42),RANK(4), PLAYERS ON(82)

Threshhold: IN(70), OUT(51), RANK(5), PLAYERS ON(?**)

WoTMUDIV: IN(65), OUT(23), RANK (6), PLAYERS ON(62)

*Aetolia: IN(55), OUT(25), RANK(7), PLAYERS ON(119)

DiscoWorld: IN(51), OUT(9), RANK(8), PLAYERS ON(154)

Armageddon: IN(44), OUT(15), RANK(9), PLAYERS ON(?**)

*Imperian: IN(41), OUT(14), RANK(10), PLAYERS ON(126)

NewWorlds: IN(39), OUT(49), RANK(11), PLAYERS ON(79)

CarrionFields: IN(38), OUT(20), RANK(12), PLAYERS ON(42?**)

Solace MUD: IN(32), OUT(19), RANK(14), PLAYERS ON(12)

Icesus MUD: IN(30), OUT(8), RANK(15), PLAYERS ON(105)

Daedal Macabre: IN(25), OUT(11), RANK(16), PLAYERS ON(10)

Shattered Kingdoms: IN(23), OUT(11), RANK(17), PLAYERS ON(24)

The Eternal City: IN(24), OUT(11), RANK(20), PLAYERS ON(?**)

Awakened Worlds: IN(17), OUT(18), RANK(26), PLAYERS ON(32)


*Iron Realms Entertainment
** Unable to harness a statistical number, due to roleplaying blocks




This is just a small sampling I took between the hours of 4pm-5pm EST today, logging into each of these games to find the sample of logged-in players. Where possible as an option, I checked to make sure the current number of logged on players did not stray more than 30% from the Max Number of the Last 24hrs.

I will return later tonight and do some basic stat analysis and maybe draw some graphs to see if there's anything interesting we can get from this information, but I'm sure if you take a look for yourself, you can see that there is. I will note that many of these MUDs had message-reminders ingame for players to vote, and all had a special place on their website for players to vote. I have also noticed a trend while watching the votes change in the past day or two - the trend is for the larger MUDs at the top to garner 30+ votes in a very short period of time, then slow down. This has even managed to happen with some much smaller MUDs on the list, though I will again save all of this for a more in-depth analysis after I sober up tonight. <3

For the record, you might as well list us as "??", since there's no way for a new character to see a sizable percentage of the players who are on, and you'll thus get inaccurate readings.

Valq - done, bud. I was pretty sure I asked a staff member for the number on your MUD, but I honestly cannot be 100% sure that my memory is correct, and so **'d it as asked. I did go out of my way to try to receive the full numbers for the MUDs surveyed, though.

---

Well, I got home too late this evening to do any real stat-work, and I'll be travelling tomorrow, so here's a brief(not-so-brief) glance;

Just a few things to take note of are tendancies between 'Ratio of [Total Recent Votes: Players Logged on] between 4pm-5pm'. Just at a glimpse, it would seem that the average trend for this is probably 2:1 at this particular time frame. The more interesting things to note are the MUDs that sported more total votes than their players logged-on. This infers repetative, dedicated voting by a small playerbase.

Other trends can be seen, also - with most of the larger MUDs filling the top slots (except for a few MUDs like RoD, etc), and then some comparatively small MUDs(Solace and Daedal Macabre, for instance) holding consistant slots in the top 10-20(they still hold those slots now, 12 hours later).

---


One suggestion I could make, and I am unsure if this has been made before; perhaps go to a system more akin to MudConnector's, where there is a verification code required for every vote. It is possible to create bots to vote, and while it not might be a large contributor to the top 5-10 slots, a small group of players using bots could easily affect slots 10-25 voting-wise. Couldn't hurt to require some sort of verification, no?


---

While having a large playerbase that you remind often enough to vote is likely to help you receive more votes/hits to the site, you can see around 1/4th of the top voted sites appear to exist outside of this rule, relying instead on smaller, dedicated playerbases whose populations have a much higher percentage in voting, and who are more likely to vote again-and-again-and-again.

My assumptions would be that physical reminders(both in-game and website) seem to be the primary instigation for voting(duh). Also, an enthusiastic playerbase who is dedicated to voting for the MUD also seems to prevail, and this is especially true with around 1/4th of the top MUDs on the vote list. While you could argue that MUD quality tends to co-incide with voting pattern, I can say that my immediate reaction to the majority of MUDs on this list that I either revisited today(had been a player before), or visited for the first time today is this; I've seen better MUDs, with no recognition on this voting list. Some of these listed are amongst the best MUDs out there, yes - in no way, however, would I say that the voting list or playerbase sizes of some of these MUDs are an accurate rating of which MUDs are the best-of-the-best out there. Some of the most amazing MUDs I've ever seen do not even have one vote. Of course, this is all glazed over by the great fog of subjectivity, but I think you can see where my conclusion would be pretty on.

Reader's Digest: The Voting is mostly affected by 1) ingame/website reminders to vote, 2) playerbase size), and 3) percentage of voting-dedicated players, in that order. Reviewing the MUDs at hand shows instances of none of these attributes necessarily being a direct reflection on game quality.

Actually, it would hurt. I don't vote on TMC because it takes too damn long to actually vote, and that seems to be the general feeling from most of our players. I think TMS's system is fine, while it is possible to make a bot, such sudden large numbers of extra votes(expecially from similar subnets) will get noticed.

Quote (DonathinFrye @ Dec. 28 2005,18:50)
Excellent idea. It would make it a lot harder to manipulate the votes and might have some effect on the outcome.

I agree that TMC's system is a big pain in the butt.

It's tempting to say that the simple fix would be to whap one of the offending games with a rolled up newspaper when the data suggests a problem. But the flaw there is you don't want, say, an unscrupulous person writing a bot that votes obnoxiously for their favorite game's competition.

You can, of course, restrict IPs that the bots came from, but those tend to be pretty mobile.

Ultimately, a TMC system probably blocks bots very effectively, but it probably cuts their traffic by a sizable fraction. It might not be in Synozeer's interest to do that, unless he thought that the extra list integrity would draw in more people (who might think voting at present isn't worth it).

Just as an FYI - Armageddon's "players logged in" will -usually- average around 30-60 during times EST when most people are awake and in the general proximity of a computer. Peak time (as of the last time I played) was around 10-ish EST at night.

Arm has no in-game prompts to vote, and compared to the top 5 muds on the list has a small player base (I believe the last time any of the senior staff members answered a query from a player, the answer was less than 400 accounts). In the three + years I did play, I never saw more than 125 players logged in, and that was only once, for a period of an hour or so. So figure an "active" playerbase of around 250 and it's probably a reasonable guestimate (though most likely not accurate).

Voters on Arm do so -primarily- because they sincerely like the game and want to see it remain on the top 10 list.

Barring threats, which I'd imagine are pretty rare, and rewards, which haven't been legal for years, isn't that why people from every MUD vote?

--matt

Isn't that a rather circular argument? It's a good mud because it has lots of players, and it has lots of players because it's a good mud?

Many different things - and each person is going to have their own definition. The same is not true of a 'popular' mud, however. To be popular, a mud will have to appeal to a wide audience (which means more refinement of the commonly accepted features rather than having innovative and cutting-edge features) and a great deal of promotion (which usually means spending money, and/or being well-established).

It could be argued that EverQuest is little more than a Diku with pretty graphics. However assume I'm talking about a stock Diku without graphics: According to the argument you were making previously, were it to gain sufficient players it would suddenly be considered a 'good mud', even if the game itself were still completely stock.

A circular argument? And? What is there not to understand about it? Or do you purposely try to pick out individual parts of a post without reading and trying to understand the whole post? Simply, a mud has to be "good" to hundreds players for hundreds players to play it. You can call this appealing to a wide audience if you want. Sure, there are some muds out there that are "better", but they are only "better" to thirty or so players, not to the majority of mudders. If you still don't understand, I suggest replying to the first three questions of this quote, as they will look very confusing alone. Be sure to include some negative mention to money in muds, as that will gain additional attention and keep this thread going longer than it needs.

(Hajamin @ Dec. 28 2005,06:20)
Valg @ Dec. 28 2005,13:11
And who says they have to adopt TMC's system, which I agree is a bit over the edge?

But there must be simpler ways to stop the spamvoting from bots, which, as Hajamin pointed out, do exist.

For instance  the simple method of having to interprete a letter code seems to be pretty effective.

Or. better still, demanding an account with a valid e-mail address before you are allowed to vote. It would take a few minutes to register that address the first time, but after that voting will be quick and  simple again.

Would this result in less total hits on the site? Maybe.

But it would also result in a much more accurate listing, which should be in the interest of all mud owners, (except possibly the habitual cheaters). And it also would give the site a much higher status, which should be in the interest of the Site owner.

And as an extra bonus, requiring that all those who want to vote also need to create an account might actually lead to a traffic that really is a traffic, not just an illusion of it (i.e. hit-the-vote-button-twice-a-day-after-being-reminded-by-the-mud-code). In the long run more accounts could even lead to better discussions, which wouldn't hurt, since apart from the advertisment posts and the occasonal flamewar, the boards seem pretty inactive lately.

Anything more complex than this would lead to less traffic coming in to the site.

TMC's system is insanely pain to vote in, and would cause people to just stop voting and coming to the site.

The needing a registered account could be effective, but some people are reluctant to give away their email addresses due to fear of spam mail. Plus just that one time added step could deter people from voting.

I didn't specifically say that I know there are bots out there, I hope there aren't but the fact stands that it IS possible to create one. At the same time, it IS possible to detect them.

Have I been living on another planet, or doesn't TMC only require you to enter a matching letter code in to vote? I just logged onto their website and voted for a MUD just now - the prompt showed me a typical anti-bot letter code that I had to match, and I did so, then clicking on "cast my vote".

If you are trying to argue that TMC's 15-20 second long voting process is too much work, then I'd say you don't care about voting very much at all. Otherwise, you may just be unaware that the voting process on TMC seems relatively easy. Or, I could be a moron, and I could be completely wrong about the TMC system, somehow - I just don't see how, though.

I believe a higher integrity-protected voting system is always something worth striving for.

And KaVir again reflects my feelings on the difference between a 'good' MUD and a 'popular MUD'. In order to appeal to the masses, there is a certain amount of your creative energies which have to be suppressed and/or used for the appealing itself, and not for cutting-edge and original/exciting gameplay. This is very rarely untrue, from my long time of having played a large, wide variety of MUDs.