My SUGGESTION list

[Shiroo]

Hello there,

I've been on a boards for quite some time (firstly smithy's then custom's) and I think I have some suggestions worth sharing. Some of them might have been suggested before, but I couldn't find the particular thread or reply.

 

The suggestions are not sorted by importance, just how they came to my mind

 

1. DLC MANAGER

 

I know this isnt suggestion for board. But it is for the developers and programmers. I know that back on smithy's there was this project, a program where you could add you custom dlcs and disable / enable them anytime you wanted. But it worked only for RS1, and it was only beta. I do believe it is very important that we as a community have to create program of this sort. It will much more easier to seperate trash from good customs. To disable/enable songs. But I think the most important feature should be UPDATER for customs. Im no IT guy, I have no idea how it should work. But when I was playing HoN (heroes of newerth), there was huge amount of mods on the boards. And the modders (normal people like magna charters) were constantly updating these mods, so someone created very similiar program, where you could manage these mods and update them only by clicking some button. 

I know that if we wanted to do something like this the files would be have to moved. And there will have to be lots of work. but I think it is number 1 suggestion, to create something like this.

 

If this is already done and somewhere on boards, you have the permission to kill me, and im sorry.

 

 

2. CUSTOMS RATING

 

There has been lots of disscussion about this matter. And we all agree that there has to be approved section. ETC. ETC. I know the mods are working on this, so I dont have to write more.

But this is 2nd priority, to improve everything, I believe.

 

3. DIFFICULTY SEARCH

 

The next thing im going to talk about is Difficulty. It is very nice what Championship is doing ---> delivering songs to people who want to learn more, and making it as a competition. I think every dlc should have difficulty stars (or whatever really) where the creator of DLC writes the difficulty of the song in 5 categories

 

maybe: 1. Begginner 2. Advanced 3. Intermediate 4. Master 5. Pro

 

4. GENRE SEARCH

 

It has been disscused before. And I think you know what I mean by this. Add genres to songs and add search option

 

 

5. ALBUM FAVORITE

 

I think it will be nice to separate favorites. For example I like the artist MUSE which i put star next to, and everytime someone does muse song the color will pop up. Yes this is amazing. But it could be slightly better if there was option to Favorite only particular album. Many people do soundtracks, or 'jam projects' and there is a possibilty that I dont like the author of the song, or I dont even know the author, but I know I will like the album. So I want to have 'jam' project highlighted in order to not miss anything.

 

 

6. REWARDS

 

I've experienced this on other boards and I believe it is an amazing idea. I think there should be awards on the board. Monthly, yearly. Whatever you chose. The main category should be -> of course, something related to customs. I think magna charters should be judged and reviewed. If they get award for 'best custom of month' or whatever, it increases the moral of the whole contributor community. People would like to win award like this. And maybe the vote should be public. Moderators chose 5 best songs of the month. Maybe more, im just thinking oud loud here. And people would download them and vote, for the best tone, best chart, every part of the custom that is important. 

 

maybe there should be award for, most consecutive customs uploaded, or most customs uploaded. Or something that rewards the constant update of songs. You'll have to get creative with these. 

 

And of course theres rewards for the public. For people who use this forum to share their ideas and talk. etc. etc. You should reward them too, for coming here. 

 

On MUSE boards it looks something like this

 

http://i.imgur.com/ZHOQX4M.png

 

just an example. 

 

[Motive]

Wowowow!  :)  All my thoughts above, support the every word. Very important and necessary for my it is 2,3,6.

[Hootzager]

I like the suggestions, and I too have been calling for a rating system.  I think a rating system will work better than an "approved" section.  I know Smithy had the approved section, but if the criteria for approving a custom isn't tight enough, what's the point?  I think all uploaded customs should have to follow approved criteria before being listed in the DB anyway.  They should all have the same standards and features of official DLC (proper audio quality, defined sections, DD, Riff Repeater, PC/Mac version, artwork, preview, etc).

 

After that, a rating system will allow the community to decide what's good quality and what isn't.  

 

A rating system would also allow you to add rewards (or, what I interpret as title distinctions based on your example) to users who upload good work.  Using a scale of 1-5, each custom should be rated by the community.  You can then take the ratings for all of a charter's uploaded customs, and get the average rating of their work.  Any charters with an average of 4 stars or higher should be given some distinction.  Charters who have an average of 2 stars or less will be "warned", informed, or notified that they are uploading subpar work and suggestions can be given by the community (using the already existing feedback system) on how to improve their customs.

 

To me, that provides incentive and motivation to produce good customs with a high standard of quality.  You could have a section of "Featured Charters" or a top 10 list, which would function much like the Leaderboards in all of our favourite games.  We all know people are willing to put in the hard work in order to see their name at the top of the list.

 

 

 

Also, for the difficulty suggestion, who decides what the difficulty is?  If the charter is a well-experienced guitar player they may feel a song is easy to play, when someone less experienced would find it harder.  Difficulty is subjective, and is different for everybody.

 

Look at how the difficulty system works inside Rocksmith right now.  When you list songs by difficulty, and then play one, they will move around in the list depending on how well you performed that particular song.

 

 

Anyway, good suggestions.  I just think they need to be expanded on in order to provide the results you're looking for.

[firekorn]

A rating system is useless, what do you note? the song the overall quality? how do you make sure every do this correctly? And a standard can be a pain in the ass for those who creates especially those who start, if you can't put your first bad work and collect feedback you won't get better and you won't rework on the song, that will probably slow down the cdlc upload rate and i don't want that to happen, i want million of custom available i'll do the selection myself after or help the charter if i badly want the song to meet my own standard.

 

The problem with crowdsourcing (for rating or notating or approved something) is that you have to be clear on the actual criteria you use and make sure it is actually used by everybody when they do it.

 

If a kind of "approved" system is created, it has to be smartly done and need to be easily modified to not fall into SA path.

 

The difficulty is really personnal, some can't pick fast but easily do chord change, some other can't do shit on arpeggios and others have just some minor difficulties on certain tech so everyone has his own difficulties and will completely change the perception of the difficulty, i don't say it's a bad idea, but if it's implement, keep in mind that the author will simply put what he think the difficulty is or simply put the first on the drop list.

 

About the manager, there is some talk over and over again about that in the chat but it's not that easy to develop.

 

About your other suggestion i don't see anything more to say, maybe just the fact that the genre should only be a drop list to make sure everyone don't put improbable genre that nobody will ever found or re-use...

[Hootzager]

A rating system is useless, what do you note? the song the overall quality? how do you make sure every do this correctly? And a standard can be a pain in the ass for those who creates especially those who start, if you can't put your first bad work and collect feedback you won't get better and you won't rework on the song, that will probably slow down the cdlc upload rate and i don't want that to happen, i want million of custom available i'll do the selection myself after or help the charter if i badly want the song to meet my own standard.

 

 

Yes, you would rate the overall quality, based on what the community deems good enough.  If the song already meets the "approved" criteria (what I suggested should be the same for official DLC), then the rating is a supplemental tool to determine if the quality of work is good enough.

 

What if a custom gets approved because the person/panel/whatever approving it only played the first 30 seconds?  What if they don't notice that the tab dynamically becomes off-sync as the song continues (which happens in a lot of the customs)?  What if they have 100 customs to approve and don't have time to do it properly?  What if they're playing on a laptop or headphones, or a lower quality sound system?  They may not notice that the audio quality is poor.

 

There are so many criteria that are subjective when it comes to approving a custom.  What you deem acceptable may not be acceptable to me or others.   And conversely, what I deem acceptable may not be the same for you.

 

And for those of us who can't edit the customs ourselves, we're left with subpar work.  Leaving comments for the author only helps if the author either agrees with your comments or suggestions, and on top of that, only if they're willing to do the work to change them.  If a charter sees feedback about errors in their custom, and their custom is rated at 2 stars, they should be motivated to improve it.

 

If they don't want to improve the custom, and it gets removed, other charters are then free to upload their version.  With the current rules in place, somebody could easily hijack songs by posting poor quality customs and proper versions can't be uploaded because the mods don't allow duplicates.

 

It doesnt mean much to me if 1000 customs get uploaded if 999 of them aren't done properly.  I would prefer to have a rating system and a filter so I can browse only the 4+ star customs.  Those users who choose to ignore the ratings can do so without anything changing for them.

 

Either way, with an approval system or rating system, standards have to be established.  You can't just stick an approved label on something because you like the song or the charter.

 

In the end, Rocksmith is a learning game.  What's the point of learning how to play a song if you find out what you learned was wrong?

 

 

Anyway, these are all just my opinions.... Everyone has their own criteria they're looking for when it comes to learning a song.

[firekorn]

 

If they don't want to improve the custom, and it gets removed, other charters are then free to upload their version.  With the current rules in place, somebody could easily hijack songs by posting poor quality customs and proper versions can't be uploaded because the mods don't allow duplicates.

 

 

Nop they can't hijack anything... you are entirely authorized to post a CDLC of an already done CDLC (there's already some double of some songs) if they are different (meaning you made the new one yourself and not jsut copy and paste the CDLC already existing).

 

Double can't exist with OFFICIAL DLC because that is illegal that's all otherwise, please share your work!

 

 

Either way, with an approval system or rating system, standards have to be established.  You can't just stick an approved label on something because you like the song or the charter.

 

But that's how it turned out on SA. If you crowdsource the approval/rating all people won't follow the standard. If you do it by a limited amout or people, they won't be able to do it correctly, they won't have enough time to go through everything correctly...

 

 

In the end, Rocksmith is a learning game.  What's the point of learning how to play a song if you find out what you learned was wrong?

 

That's available for tabs too and it didn't stop anyone to learn with them. I agree that learning a wrong tab is bad but you'll hear it, delete the custom and move on to the next one. And if you're serious you'll even get back to the charter.

 

Oh and it's easy to blame the charter for not modifying their work but come on i haven't seen any of them not doing it yet and when you look at the feedback many people give i can understand that people won't rework on the custom, when someone just say : "wrong tab" or "bass incomplete" etc. you don't know where to start or what to do from there and it's frustrating for both.

[Teinashu]

 

If they don't want to improve the custom, and it gets removed, other charters are then free to upload their version.  With the current rules in place, somebody could easily hijack songs by posting poor quality customs and proper versions can't be uploaded because the mods don't allow duplicates.

 

We allow multiple versions of the same song. Nowhere in the rules is it stated that you can't release a second version of a song allready in the database.On the subject of a rating/approved system. A rating system is out of the question since people will rate based on the artist or the song. This is what happened when SA introduced their 5 star rating system. Trolls came along and ruined it.We have some ideas about an approved system. This is still in internal discussion though. Searching on Genre is a difficult thing to do with the amount of sub genre's out there.Even if we would bring the number of genre's down to a certain amount via a dropdown field. Some people will see a band as rock, while some one else thinks it's metal. ect ect.Like Firekorn said, Difficulty is all relative. What I find easy, you find hard. An Award system is in the works.There is some talk about a DLC Manager, I would love it. If someone with programming experience wants to work on this. Sent me a PM.The new search engine will have some extra sorting options for favorites. No ETA on that yet.

[Hootzager]

I'm not saying the approval system should be crowdsourced, just the rating.  I think the criteria for approved customs should be decided on by the founders of the site (because it's their site) as well as by a group of charters who have a history of doing good work.  You yourself (firekorn) do great work with the customs, and so (to me) your standards of work are high enough that you should have input on what it means to be approved.

 

But the rating system is subjective for each user, and acts as a filter.  That's all.  Like I said, you could have mods remove customs that fall below whatever threshold is too low (such as 2 stars for example), or you could choose to leave them there.  But a rating system will allow users like me to filter out the customs we feel would be subpar.

 

 

Sure, trolls can come along and add bogus ratings, but they do that now in the comments anyway.  And if a troll rates a song 5 stars because they like the song, and I rate it 2 because it was done poorly, the ratings will eventually even out.

[Karmeleaux]

Like Firekorn said, Difficulty is all relative. What I find easy, you find hard.

 

Agree on most of your points, but an alternative here is having the OPTION to fill out a searchable 'Rocksmith techniques' used in a song. So like if you want to practice or just like songs with arpeggios or two-handed tapping, you're able to click and find songs that charters have marked as having them. In addition, there might be some not Rocksmith options, such as 'frequent/multiple time changes' or something like that. Just an idea, as per usual I know the system might be a lot of work for little pay-off, but it's just a suggestion that's more precise and objective than 'difficulty ratings.'

[Shiroo]

 

 

Either way, with an approval system or rating system, standards have to be established.  

 

In the end, Rocksmith is a learning game.  What's the point of learning how to play a song if you find out what you learned was wrong?

 

 

 

I'm not saying the approval system should be crowdsourced, just the rating.  I think the criteria for approved customs should be decided on by the founders of the site (because it's their site) as well as by a group of charters who have a history of doing good work.  You yourself (firekorn) do great work with the customs, and so (to me) your standards of work are high enough that you should have input on what it means to be approved.

 

But the rating system is subjective for each user, and acts as a filter.  That's all.  Like I said, you could have mods remove customs that fall below whatever threshold is too low (such as 2 stars for example), or you could choose to leave them there.  But a rating system will allow users like me to filter out the customs we feel would be subpar.

 

I absolutely agree with this. There HAS to be some standard set and I dont really mind if it is through award system, or rating system, or approved system. You all made pretty good points about all of them. I personaly believe that the best thing would be if there would be people, who are trusted to rate the song properly, and only they would have the power to make it approved. I found this worked nicely on SA. I know it gets quite a lot of work, but I always got some constructive feedback from the mods and they always told me what to do, to make it approved. Maybe we should join the award system and approving system. If a contributor or an user gets a certain award, maybe through some test (i dont know really) and the mods would find he is suitable to give ratings to customs, it might work like that. Im saying that only selected people would have the access to rate or approve the songs while the others could filter the songs by rating, but could not vote.

 

Maybe it would work if there were 2 kinds of ratings. Something Like rotten tomatoes has. Ratings from critics and ratings from common people. That way, people feel they have the power because they can give something thumbs up/down, also the user ratings would spread faster. And for people who really care about the quality of the song, there would be also this option to search by rating of the 'chosen' people. Though as I am writting this, I dislike it already. So im not sure why im not gonna delete it. Its still an option. 

 

 

That's available for tabs too and it didn't stop anyone to learn with them. I agree that learning a wrong tab is bad but you'll hear it, delete the custom and move on to the next one. And if you're serious you'll even get back to the charter.

 

Oh and it's easy to blame the charter for not modifying their work but come on i haven't seen any of them not doing it yet and when you look at the feedback many people give i can understand that people won't rework on the custom, when someone just say : "wrong tab" or "bass incomplete" etc. you don't know where to start or what to do from there and it's frustrating for both.

 

From my personal experience I can say that I have witnessed and expierenced quite good enough amount of people who stopped working on customs or didnt updated them (sometimes at all). You see, I created The Muse Project which covers over 70 custom Muse songs. It is collaboration and work of many contributors. And while I was leading it, there were always some people (and it isnt that small of a number) who came, promised to make a song. Eventually did it with wrong tab, no tone, terrible sync, missing instruments and promised to keep it updated, but it never happened and when they saw the amounts of work they just left. So now, theres maybe over 20 Muse songs which are like that. Personally I would delete them all, because it gives absolutely no satisfaction to the people who play it. And also it brings the dissapointment to people who are excited to see the song, but nothing comes of it. But, obviously, its not possible to delete them. It would be fascist. Maybe, in 3 years they will come back to finish their job and their work will be gone. right.

 

So thats why i am saying we need some kind of separatiion. As a contributor I know that the updating is sometimes frutstrating during the lack of feedback or the wrong formulation of an issue. But I see it as a duty to improve all of my customs, fix the nonworking ones and work on the feedback people gave me. Because what is the point of making customs, if you wont do it properly. I can see houndreds of people who download my songs and they do not write any feedback, so I feel I shall make customs which do not need feedback or improvements and upload only the version that everyone would be satisfied with. I know that we dont live in utopian world and it is not possible, but we should want to get as close as we can to it. 

 

There are houndreds of people who download the songs and dont comment, and they might be absolute begginers, they dont know the correct fingering, or if the sound is good, or if the tab is any good. They feel that if contributor has uploaded it,  so therefor it HAS to be correct. So I think we, as contributors, have the responsiblity to provide the best learning material for the public.

 

 

 

I kinda got lost in my thoughts so dont be mad. Just my ideas and opinions :) 

 

Cheers. 

 

Thanks for the disscussion flowing. Its good we talk problems

[Liquidlizard]

Don't do subgenres, just basic genres... but the one problem there is with the genres, is that we would have to assign all the current 5,500 or so submissions a genre... which would be an absolute pain.

[Karmeleaux]

Don't do subgenres, just basic genres... but the one problem there is with the genres, is that we would have to assign all the current 5,500 or so submissions a genre... which would be an absolute pain.

There's a lot of problems with genres, I don't think it's a realistic option. There's just way too much subjectivity in it.

 

What do you do for a custom of Laguna Sunrise by Black Sabbath? They're a 'metal' band (this itself is probably sorely lacking for a lot of people here), but placing the song under metal isn't really accurate. What about songs that draw heavily from multiple genres, but not really in the vein a progressive or novelty song does?

 

For that point of reference, where does the site draw the line between genres and subgenres? I know on my iPod I have reggae, ska, and ska-punk (none defined as 'subgenres' on Wikipedia) tags and personal criteria for what goes where with the feeling that the lines need to be drawn, but well I just have a metal genre that I throw anything that fits my vague criteria for metal. I'm sure many people here would at best toss them all into ska or reggae and be done with it, but have thrash, death, and symphonic sections for metal (which ARE defined as subgenres on Wikipedia, but let's face it the term 'heavy metal' is almost completely meaningless).

 

As Teinashu said, (like difficulty) there's no real objective definitions. Heck, look up almost any band on Wikipedia and it probably has them in three or more genres on their front page.

 

In the end, I feel either genres are too broad and almost all-encompassing to really of any help for people looking (like I can deal with some thrash and symphonic metal but I don't have much interest in a lot of what gets classified as death, and I wouldn't really want to see any of that while browsing through all songs marked metal), or so specific and narrow that many people won't know what they mean (as mentioned above).

 

I don't know, I feel I'm being overly dismissive because I don't think anyone disagrees with that it would be cool to find stuff in the same vein as a song one's interested in, but I think there's a lot of issues in the way of a genre sort. I do wish there was a way to easily discover similar music to any specific CDLC, but I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of solutions with the system in place.

[papillon]

For a rating system all what firekorn wrote - an open system will not work at all, the criteria will never be clear enough, too many false ratings and most will not be interested to give a rating at all - it will be the same as with normal feedback. If I would write about the Anvil rating system and how it was done I would get my 2nd warning point.

 

The songmanager for rocksmith 1 was a great tool from dredd - it started with DD remover and then evolved to what it was in the end. The backend to read the information from the customs used the toolkit lib and it added some features to manage all your customs.