iPhone version support/feedback thread: Ep. 3

[KylePoole]

As the original thread was getting quite long, here is the new official support thread for the Episode 3 update of the iPhone port, featuring the Dead Water campaign and OpenFeint integration with achievements.

[Zerovirus]

Agh darnit. My sprites didn't make it, it seems. But then I hadn't finished them yet...

EDIT: Are you intending to update the sprites? Please?

Also, the sidebar still doesn't show a unit's alignment which really should be shown.

[KT421]

About halfway through the Installing part (3/4 of the way through the icon bar), the 1.3 patch install quits, asks for my iTunes password again, and starts downloading from scratch. I've left a 1 star review on the App Store because this negatively impacts my whole phone.

As a side note, how much are those 5 star reviews costing you? They're so obviously fake it hurts.

[Zachron]

About halfway through the Installing part (3/4 of the way through the icon bar), the 1.3 patch install quits, asks for my iTunes password again, and starts downloading from scratch. I've left a 1 star review on the App Store because this negatively impacts my whole phone.

As a side note, how much are those 5 star reviews costing you? They're so obviously fake it hurts.

And the issue you described sounds more like a problem with your phone than a problem with the app...

Critical thinking at play here, you can't pay the majority of the people to rate the app good and still pull a profit(bear in mind not ever rating comes with a review, and the reviews can be rated too), and even if pulling a profit is not the aim, there exists no motive to operate at a loss either. Only a relatively small number of people will anonymously rate a game good if they really think it's crap, JUST because it's already 5 stars... even if they WERE paid to rate it good. Amid the millions of people it could be, even if only a few thousand purchase an app, who's to know you made a negative vote? And even if you could just bribe apple to give it a good rating(or filter out bad ratings), the figures we would be talking here would outstretch the total capital investment of the entire Wesnoth project(bear in mind this is a non-commercial project, and the commercialism of the iphone port is a unique situation within the project) ten-fold. (We're talkin' the figures here, on the scale of the ginormous bribes Disney theoretically gives to the FCC, ESRB, and whatever other censors might be lurking to keep a G or E rating on every project they want it on(in case you hadn't noticed that Disney gets the "G" rating on material that any other movie making conglomerate would get a "PG-13" rating on)... not that I believe Disney actually gives those bribes; I just think those people are just stupid folk who don't even bother reviewing the material and just slap on whatever rating corresponds to the target age group... but I shan't continue any further on this tangent.) Even if you are only bribing critics, bogus reviews do not come cheap.

No! The reason this app has 5 star ratings at the itunes store is that it is awesome. Pre-existing Wesnoth fandom has been an insignificant factor, seeing as, for more than 90% of the people who have downloaded this app, this is literally their first exposure to Wesnoth; additionally, the majority of pre-existing Wesnoth fans don't own iphones. That is to say, this game, with all it's glitches, imperfections, and quality lost in translation, is pulling 5 star ratings on it's own merit.

By the way, it is very immature to believe that someone is conspiring with someone just because their viewpoint on a situation is discordant with yours. Disparate viewpoints come from disparate experiences on a matter... In short, it's most likely a problem on your end.

[Zerovirus]

Still looks like 20/20 fivestar ratings on the store here. If he voted a one star, I don't see it.

[Zachron]

The page probably sorts them by "relevance." If 1/20 of the reviews had been one star, then one review on the page would likely have been one star. If thousands of reviews have been written, and only a few of them had one star, then there would most likely only be 5 star ratings on the front page, should that be the vast majority of the reviews(enough that less than 5% of the reviews were less than 5 stars). Now the itunes store may do this differently, I'm going more based on how I've seen it done on other sites. Still a whole front page being nothing but high reviews does not happen easily.

[Zerovirus]

Don't think that's it. There's a graph on the left hand page, right now 100% of the votes are at 5 out of 5. Doesn't matter really; such high scores can't really be damaged by a singular one.

[Gambit]

Oh but you guys it's just so obvious!

-back on topic now plox-

[Zachron]

Then it may have been ignored on account of how vast the majority is against it. Extraordinary values are often disregarded in automated statistical analysis algorithms...

Way off topic tangent

That is to say, while the vote has probably been recorded, unless a whole lot more scores of 4, 3, 2, and 1 start to appear, the score of 1 will be discredited. You can see this all the time on statistical graphs. Individual dots may be all over the place, but the curve will only follow correlations in density of points. A little circle apart from the curve would indicate a density of points around a place not on the curve, or a parallel correlation... Sufficient quantities of discordant values will warrant representation, but one or two accounts out of a few hundred, or one account out of as few as 20, will not warrant representation to the same extent. Take for instance, 5 out of 100, this indicates the possibility of a 5% opinion, and will warrant representation on a graph, but 1 out of 20, does not indicate a 5% opinion because the the sample was too small, and the 5% of the smaller group could represent a mere 1/2% of a larger group, or maybe a larger portion of a larger group... Even if the algorithm is designed to represent something as small as 1% of the sample, 1 out of 20 could represent 5% of a sample, but without 2 out of 20 there can be not correlation drawn. So the absolute smallest portion of a sample of 20 out of which a correlation can be drawn is 10%. When samples are larger, the precision becomes better, so in a larger sample small quantities can be represented better. 1 out of 100 bears more significance than 1 out of 20, because 1 out of 100 would be a more precise statistic and likely more accurate. Still an oddball without similar values nearby cannot be correlated. In other words, some things are just special.

Edit:
This [section] tab is awesome. I'll use on my long, drawn out tangents from here on out.

[Zerovirus]

Too long but I still read. Right. Either way it doesn't matter all that much.

(Rest @Kyle) Game's smoothness and playability has drastically increased- I'm a bit curious how you achieved this, even though, as a non-coder, I probably won't understand much of what you say anyways. Besides that, not much to say. Might test multiplayer out and report back in a minute.

EDIT: The skirmish menu's map thing is a bit... Um. Maybe you should take all the options, put them on a separate screen with a link labeled "Advanced Options" and replace that space vacated with a minimap or something. Also, the scrolling up and down aren't too... Fancy. A bar disappears up top and a new one manifests seeming out of nowhere at the bottom. Looks weird.

Also. LISTEN. You MUST update the Drakes. The new graphics are so much better. Seriously, if you do nothing else to upgrade the core programming to 1.7 or 1.8, at least update the graphics. Please.

[Zarel]

No! The reason this app has 5 star ratings at the itunes store is that it is awesome. Pre-existing Wesnoth fandom has been an insignificant factor, seeing as, for more than 90% of the people who have downloaded this app, this is literally their first exposure to Wesnoth; additionally, the majority of pre-existing Wesnoth fans don't own iphones. That is to say, this game, with all it's glitches, imperfections, and quality lost in translation, is pulling 5 star ratings on it's own merit.

"for more than 90% of the people who have downloaded this app" <- how do you know this?

Even if this were true, how many of the people who rated the app were pre-existing Wesnoth fandom?

I tried iTunes once, it didn't seem like you needed to own an iPhone to rate an iPhone app...

So the rating could very well be due to the preexisting Wesnoth fanbase.

[Zerovirus]

Oh come on, you don't trust the people who rated? I can state for a fact that, even if they're hired to say that the bugs are fixed, they're justified- the game DOES run a billion times faster now. -shuts up because getting into a logic skirmish with Zarel is pretty much a bad idea-

[Urs]

Hey guys I have an awesome idea: let's accuse the guy who ported Wesnoth to the iPhone OS (something people had been whining about on the forums for ages) of manipulating the app store rating system to artificially boost the score. In order to give our argument credibility, we should claim the reviews are fake on the premise that they tout significant improvements in the game, an assertion we can call into doubt because ...?

Or maybe Wesnoth is just an excellent game that deserves five star reviews.

Furthermore, if Kyle really did pay people to post false reviews, why didn't he do it for his other games?

[Zerovirus]

Read all of the description. Tower defense maps seem pretty cool.

Not sure how people will deal with the Ooze campain by itself though. It's a substantially shorter campaign than any other update yet. People might not respond too well...

I'm not sure how far Doofus has gotten, but maybe Bad Moon Rising could be considered as it's never going to make mainline anyways; Doofus's work should totally be rewarded.

[Zarel]

Oh come on, you don't trust the people who rated? I can state for a fact that, even if they're hired to say that the bugs are fixed, they're justified- the game DOES run a billion times faster now. -shuts up because getting into a logic skirmish with Zarel is pretty much a bad idea-

I said that the statement "90% have never played Wesnoth before" needs a bit of evidence behind it.

Of course I trust the people who rated, but convincing other people to trust the people who rated is a bit harder than making up random numbers on the spot. Personally, I think Kyle Poole did an excellent job (although I don't see why he should be paid more than any other Wesnoth contributor who've done excellent jobs), and the iPhone port is a great game, and improving all the time, but fabricating evidence really doesn't help that viewpoint.