ID:2673328
 
Applies to:BYOND Pager
Status: Open

Issue hasn't been assigned a status value.
I know this subject have been brought again and again over the years, but I would like to, again bring attention to this.
BYOND improvement as an engine is amazing and flawless, I have dedicated decades as a game designer here and probably will continue for an extra amount of years because I can recognize how good (and underestimated) this engine is.
However byond as a platform have been forgotten for years, and as a loyal developer I am really starting to get worried about its issues;

Before I start I want to point out that, as a platform byond is also amazing, mainly because we have enough space for a long time of display on indie games here, and in a long run (year example) the profit on a byond game can be better then a steam release; (saying this cuz of Azusa's experience.)

However, I find it extremelly difficult to reach players and shout out quality contents in byond as an engine, and find its methods of "listing" extremelly abused/unfair, and limiting our advertises to forum posts, within byond, and 3-4 lines of texts on feed is kind of a absurd waste of potential money.

Games Listing Order
Alot of games uses/enforces multikeys and alts and alot of other tricks to get a better positioning at byond pager, and its common due to the pager design for players to assume the games with higher numbers to be the "best games" or only ones worth trying for real, when anyone who been playing games here longer know its not true.
Showing "tiny picture, tittle, player count" tells nothing about the games, but the player count, and, well, if you can increase that number with bots, well you will get all the attemptions.
Mainly when thats the most popular ordering thing for games, and, I wonder why player count is the most relevant measurement for this platform's sorting;

No other platform I worked with is that simple.
I honestly suggest removing the player count from hub tittles, and replace its number with a player's review score, (but this shouldnt be a listing order factor. To avoid obvious abuses/unfair problems)

The "feed" needs to be revamped, game's in byond need to get a certain attemption in this platform/comunity for it to grow, so "Game Updates" (forum section) posts should appear there to everione; (yes, everyone) and have also a review ranking system on it, letting ppl vote positive/negative on updates posts, and that would "side" raise/decrease the overall game's score with the overall reviews. So games being constantly worked on would get a deserved spotlight, and would also promote people to know more about whats going on the game's engine.
Posts with updates/changes with little content would end up getting low amount of reviews/views and its scores wouldnt be so high and would show less;

Honestly most of monetized byond games are currently going for patreon/steam instead of byond's native subscriptions/credits (well, byond's fee hurts.) But, I say this for myself, if games that earn more $ through byond's native subscriptions gets also counted as a higher score in the listing order, I would defiantelly focus at designing more content for byond's subscribers knowing the tax would be "worth it" (everyone wins)

And, Game's activity should also be taken into account, in this we should score the players count from different ips, servers uptime, etc (not necessarily having to show real numbers for this one) and having this also score on the visibility, in my opnion this one should have a max/minimum limit to count, example: uptime servers of 3 months would be the max, (since it already shows the game is active.)

Last one is a "featured" banner space/page in the pager, where developers can buy/earn display focus (like it was ages ago)

Then, taking all of these areas into account (and maybe even more, like hub recent views etc) and using all those datas to score up-down the games, it would be really amazing to promote some re-ordering of the games visibility on the pager.

TLDR Please change the listing order of byond games, I don't want to design games planning on to keep the highest amount of AFK players for the longest time, and promoting them to use the highest amount of alts.
I want to design quality and fun games.

(sorry for my english, 5 AM, didnt review this yet)