Post 3 of Hopeful’s experiment; post your design for yesterdays daily and also post how much it scored above or below your personal average. I summarized my reasoning behind my theory in this post as well.
My design received a score that was .15 below average so if my theory is accurate, this would mean it received significantly less than half the votes. It’s frustrating because one of the highlighted designs looked fairly similar to this. On the other hand, there were lots of different designs that were great, so I can fully understand how this score happened.
As a recap on this experiment, I wanted to remind folks why I think our designs start at our average score (your personal average score at the time votingstarted) and then move up and down based on votes:
1) DH’s explanation of how scoring work says that everyone’s design gets randomly matched and all designs in that challenge get the same number of matchups. But DH does not tell us what score is our ‘starting score’ or tell us how many matchups. So my theory is consistent with the official DH explanation. Further, someone recently shared a DH explanation where they said the votes caused your “average’ to move up or down.
2) I find it easier to get higher scores when my average score is higher. And when my average is above 4.85, I tend to get quite a few 5’s.
3) my theory would explain why some designers are able to ‘stay’ at around 4.85-4.9 for their average score when the rest of us get ‘unfair’ low scores. If you start with a 4.9 average score, you only need to get a little more than half the votes to get a 5. But someone with an average score of 4.0 would need to win almost all matchups to earn a 5.
4) my theory explains why you see dump rooms with high scores when you are voting. I think these are dump rooms submitted by designers with very high average scores. So, even though it’s a dump room, it started the voting process with a score of 4.95 and was voted down from there. The voters who see the design early in the voting process will see a dump room with a 4.95 score.
5) my theory explains why we sometimes get these shockingly low scores on some daily challenges. I think a lot of us agree that dailies are more risky when it comes to scoring. I think this is because more people participate in dailies so our daily designs are subjected to a larger number of matchups. If my theory is correct and our designs start at the average score, more matchups means the design has more opportunities to move farther in one direction. For instance, if a downvote causes you to move .1 down (I don’t have a theory on how much it moves, this is just a hypothetical) and there are 10 matchups, your final score could be a whole point under your average. But if you were doing a challenge that is not a daily challenge, maybe you only got 3 matchups. In this case, no matter how bad your design was, your score could only move .3 down from your average. So I see that my nondaily scores do really stay near my average score.
6) From DH’s perspective, it’s a good idea to start people at their average score because this benefits long time players, players who either spend money or watch ads so they can buy LE, and folks who fill a lot of the bubbles. These people get a significant advantage because they are often the ones with high average scores. But it’s an ‘earned’ advantage just like the benefit of accessing more art as you level up. Plus, DH doesn’t want designers frustrated and quitting the game. And voting can be arbitrary (especially when voters don’t even try to pick the best design), so this algorithm tempers that arbitrariness and ensures good designers retain a pretty high score. Players do not tend to get too frustrated when their score is at least ‘near’ our average score because this is the type of score we expect.
My design received a score that was .15 below average so if my theory is accurate, this would mean it received significantly less than half the votes. It’s frustrating because one of the highlighted designs looked fairly similar to this. On the other hand, there were lots of different designs that were great, so I can fully understand how this score happened.
As a recap on this experiment, I wanted to remind folks why I think our designs start at our average score (your personal average score at the time votingstarted) and then move up and down based on votes:
1) DH’s explanation of how scoring work says that everyone’s design gets randomly matched and all designs in that challenge get the same number of matchups. But DH does not tell us what score is our ‘starting score’ or tell us how many matchups. So my theory is consistent with the official DH explanation. Further, someone recently shared a DH explanation where they said the votes caused your “average’ to move up or down.
2) I find it easier to get higher scores when my average score is higher. And when my average is above 4.85, I tend to get quite a few 5’s.
3) my theory would explain why some designers are able to ‘stay’ at around 4.85-4.9 for their average score when the rest of us get ‘unfair’ low scores. If you start with a 4.9 average score, you only need to get a little more than half the votes to get a 5. But someone with an average score of 4.0 would need to win almost all matchups to earn a 5.
4) my theory explains why you see dump rooms with high scores when you are voting. I think these are dump rooms submitted by designers with very high average scores. So, even though it’s a dump room, it started the voting process with a score of 4.95 and was voted down from there. The voters who see the design early in the voting process will see a dump room with a 4.95 score.
5) my theory explains why we sometimes get these shockingly low scores on some daily challenges. I think a lot of us agree that dailies are more risky when it comes to scoring. I think this is because more people participate in dailies so our daily designs are subjected to a larger number of matchups. If my theory is correct and our designs start at the average score, more matchups means the design has more opportunities to move farther in one direction. For instance, if a downvote causes you to move .1 down (I don’t have a theory on how much it moves, this is just a hypothetical) and there are 10 matchups, your final score could be a whole point under your average. But if you were doing a challenge that is not a daily challenge, maybe you only got 3 matchups. In this case, no matter how bad your design was, your score could only move .3 down from your average. So I see that my nondaily scores do really stay near my average score.
6) From DH’s perspective, it’s a good idea to start people at their average score because this benefits long time players, players who either spend money or watch ads so they can buy LE, and folks who fill a lot of the bubbles. These people get a significant advantage because they are often the ones with high average scores. But it’s an ‘earned’ advantage just like the benefit of accessing more art as you level up. Plus, DH doesn’t want designers frustrated and quitting the game. And voting can be arbitrary (especially when voters don’t even try to pick the best design), so this algorithm tempers that arbitrariness and ensures good designers retain a pretty high score. Players do not tend to get too frustrated when their score is at least ‘near’ our average score because this is the type of score we expect.