Moving to hive

compleatgamester (44) · 7 years ago (edited)

As an (amateur) game designer, I can tell you that the whole Steem system sucks from the perspective of game mechanics.
It has to be redesigned from bottom up.

First, flags have to go. No flags. Or if they remain they have to be completely without any material effect. Otherwise we have a dystopian future where someone can quite literally BUY censorship powers. I don't like your review of my product, I'll just flag you to invisibility. People are sick of censorship, that's why they're seeking new social platforms... and here you give tools for ANYONE with deep enough pockets to silence anyone they wish.

Second. Trending and hot pages have to be SEVERELY redesigned. For example, there should be a category for posts which have a lot of votes of small SBD value. Popular vote, democratic vote if you will. One account, one vote.

And this is just the beginning. Of course the system is designed to be cutthroat capitalism, but there are reasons why cutthroat capitalism never worked for the majority of the population, especially over time. It is all fine and dandy in the beginning, when the playing ground is fresh, but it very quickly devolves into a system of eternal, untouchable monopolies, cronyism and all-powerful robber barons, a game where newcomers have no future. In other words, from a game designer perspective - this is fantastic if you're making a game with a definite end. On the other hand, this positive feedback loop is terrible for a game which is supposed to last indefinitely. Really, I have a hunch people who designed this concept never played a MMORPG in their life...

$7.44

anarchyhasnogods (68) · 7 years ago

no capitalism has ever worked for the majority of the population lmao

$1.00

10 votes

suprepachyderm (56) · 7 years ago

^Lol ok. you just commented on a post that you did not upvote, and upvoted your own comment on that post. But socialism totally works, right?

$3.25

7 votes

anarchyhasnogods (68) · 7 years ago (edited)

have you ever heard of the term capital accumulation?

With a system based on capital accumulation you must push for the highest rate of profit or eventually be pushed back to the levels of working class. I must stay ahead of this if I ever wish to make change in society, this is just one of the reasons capitalism is destructive. The problem is not that socialism does not work, its that capitalism must destroy everything else to survive.

$0.99

5 votes

suprepachyderm (56) · 7 years ago (edited)

Yeah, I can understand why you upvoted yourself. What I don't understand is why you did not upvote the post you are commenting on. Surely he "must push for the highest rate of profit or eventually be pushed back to the levels of working class" as well. Why didn't you consider that and upvote his post? Aren't socialist suppose to be empathetic? Isn't that suppose to be the reason why you are a socialist? I didn't even agree with it and I upvoted (as a capitalist) just because I appreciate genuine thought.

I have read socialist books. It's hard to make it all way through most of them. They aren't that good. I do not like Stirner. I can't take someone serious while they are using the word spook.

The Conquest of Bread did a decent job of not being complete shit, though.

$0.02

anarchyhasnogods (68) · 7 years ago

"Why didn't you consider that and upvote his post? Aren't socialist suppose to be empathetic?"

wow you are dense lmao.
its because revolution is the only way to save the tens of millions who die of poverty every year. All money that does not go to leads to more death. The most empathetic thing to do is not upvote the post of somebody not fighting for revolution

$0.99

compleatgamester (44) · 7 years ago

Lolz @ you capitalist oppressors, both of yous!
I see all them dollars flyin around my post and me getting only cents!
I cry for justice! Revolution! :D
"Stand up you victims of oppression..."

$0.00

jensm85 (48) · 7 years ago

Sorry this is a very bad thing you are spreading here.

$0.00

compleatgamester (44) · 7 years ago (edited)

What, a joke? You actually downvoted the post because you a) don't get the joke and b) don't agree with it politically? And this carries real material damage to me?
You feel that you are justified in doing physical, material damage to my wallet just because you do not agree with me, because you "think" that I am doing "a very bad thing"? I don't recall internationalle being illegal, and I don't recall that making jokes is illegal. It is your opinion, and you exercise your power to materially hurt me because I have a different taste in humor?
Now imagine a person with opinions that you feel the worst possible - and that person buys a few hundred thousand dollars worth of steem and goes after you and your posts. Just because he can, he doesn't like your sense of humor, your political opinions or just doesn't like you personally. Just imagine that.
You just perfectly illustrated what is wrong with the downvotes system as it is now.

$0.22

5 votes

compleatgamester (44) · 7 years ago (edited)

And now for something personal: I LIVED through a goddamn communist dictatorship and I know what goddamn censorship and getting bullied for your opinions really is. My great-grandfather died in a communist "reeducation" camp for making "wrong jokes" and writing "wrong poems". And you DARE to downvote and therefore materially assault me for posting a "wrongthink" tongue-in-cheek joke about communism??!
Can you even perceive in that pea-brain of yours how "ironic" that is?!

$0.00

kevinwong (76) · 7 years ago

what's wrong with downvotes? reddit has downvotes. learn to take a negative opinion.

$0.31

compleatgamester (44) · 7 years ago (edited)

I have no problem whatsoever with negative opinions. The problem appears when you give everyone a gun and completely free license to use it in order to enforce their opinions.
Downvotes and flags should stay imo.. but they have to be defanged, deweaponized. Otherwise you achieve completely opposite effect from free exchange of opinions. Would you be as vocal with YOUR opinions if you knew that everyone knows where you live and if they chose to they can blow your brains out, with no liability whatsoever?
That's a great system for one thing only - total self censorship. Everyone posts only what is "safe" to everyone. In other words, inspirational quotes and pictures of cats. A social network which fosters this kind of community through its mechanics will not survive the upcoming realignment of the market.

Personally, I prefer systems which do not add up upvotes and downvotes but keep them separate. This creates a nice derived indicator of how "controversial" (in other words, interesting) a post is. In Steemit downvotes could be recorded, maybe even their steem value, but not deducted from the value of the post. Users could then filter to not see posts which have too many relative downvotes or are too controversial (difference between upvotes and downvotes). This would allow giving negative opinions through voting system without creating an ideal playground for actual cyber bullying. (No, I do not consider someone saying something nasty to me "bullying". But if someone directly and materially damages me just because he can then it is real, actual bullying. In their attempt to create a "self regulating" platform, steemit creators have actually constructed a bully's paradise, a place where I can BUY the power to take away your income and shut you up)

But all this is actually quite old discussion. Early MMOs went through exactly this phase almost 20 years ago with harsh death penalties in PvP and gear loss through death. They quite quickly realized where this is leading long term (hint: no, it's not prosperity and steady inflow of new players) and that's why almost no online games today feature this mechanic. As I said, under the hood all social networks are MMORPGs. Ignore the expensive lessons learned from decades of development and research in these games at your own peril.

$0.24

kevinwong (76) · 7 years ago (edited)

That's a great system for one thing only - total self censorship. Everyone posts only what is "safe" to everyone.

I can't think of a more safe space than a place without those "weaponised" flags. Steem is a shared social space. We are social animals. Play the game, and be smart about it. If you really want to say something so much (hopefully it's not hate speech, because many supporting freedom of speech usually fail to understand the difference) - just say it? Of course in a place where it's a shared social space, you're guaranteed to have opinions flying in. I wouldn't run into a random village, taking a piss everywhere, spraying graffiti all over without expecting consequences? Plus, you said "everyone posts only what is safe to everyone". Who is everyone?

Edit: had my points jumbled up, might come back to this later.

This would allow giving negative opinions through voting system without creating an ideal playground for actual cyber bullying. (No, I do not consider someone saying something nasty to me "bullying". But if someone directly and materially damages me just because he can then it is real, actual bullying.

How is it materially damaging? Post payouts are not even paid out before it's finalised by the end of X days.

And then you mentioned about MMORPGs - don't they have items where people can buy to become more powerful and be utilised in part of a game? But okay, besides semantics and drawing parallels to MMORPGS , guns, cyberbullying, and censorship (which always gets twisted around here, because content actually stays on the chain regardless, and downvotes are not even exercised wholly by one single authority), flagging is just a tool for a decentralised community to self-regulate the supply distribution. Of course it can be abused like anything else.

But as a game enthusiast, you're actually proposing the total inability for community members to reduce potential payouts, leaving out an attack vector for exploits on so many levels. So what if flags are "defanged", giving everybody else ways to exploit the game up to "unlimited" earnings? With a community board just stating inconsequential opinions.. then what happens? It's not likely the relevant community members that are adding to the abuse/exploit gonna correct themselves - they're the ones doing it in the first place. This is will kill the entire system. Even worse is that it allows self-voted spam to go unchecked.

As for your perception that flags create a "cyberbullies paradise", consider these:-

Power have to be bought into - this improves the value for everyone else.
Downvotes are just as much a scarce resource as upvotes. Sometimes I even downvote comments that I don't want seen at the top of my posts, or anyone else's just to arrange the ranking. Is that cyberbullying? That's just perception.

This creates a nice derived indicator of how "controversial" (in other words, interesting)

Controversial does not mean interesting btw..

I've likened Steem as an MMORPG, but like everything else, even if we can reason out intelligibly that X = Y, doesn't mean that it's all 100% the same, like how you're trying reason out that what worked or didn't work for MMORPGs is entirely applicable to something like Steem. Not nearly the same thing.

$6.52

suprepachyderm (56) · 7 years ago (edited)

"First, flags have to go. No flags. "

Lmao. No.

We have had no problems because when someone is illegitimately censored large stakeholders get involved.

"Trending and hot pages have to be SEVERELY redesigned." I agree with this, your idea is ok but a lot more than that can be done. I think we should be able to follow tags as well.

"And this is just the beginning. Of course the system is designed to be cutthroat capitalism, but there are reasons why cutthroat capitalism never worked for the majority of the population," this is dumb.

"into a system of eternal, untouchable monopolies, cronyism and all-powerful robber barons, a game where newcomers have no future." even dumber. god forbid that the early bird actually get the worm.

steemit is not an mmo.

$0.00

compleatgamester (44) · 7 years ago (edited)

steemit is not an mmo

Of course it is. It's a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. It is Massively Multiplayer Online and it is a Role Playing Game. Your account is your character. You are roleplaying it. All social networks are MMORPGS. No difference in the underlying reality whether you're an axe wielding Orc in Wow or an artist on imgur. From the systems perspective it's the same thing. And the most fragile and complex mechanisms in MMORPGs, by far, are their economies.

But it's not like these things haven't been studied extensively for almost two decades now. There's billions of dollars in these games' economies. Virtual moneys way before this crypto wave. To ignore all this experience and knowledge and just plunge ahead with your whitepaper written on a piece of toilet paper and no knowledge whatsoever what happens when you introduce a currency into a heterogenous, anonymous population following an arbitrary set of rules is... not smart.

But ok, let's start at the beginning... 1999 to be precise. Yes, almost 20 years ago.
He who doesn't know history is doomed to repeat it.
http://www.mine-control.com/zack/uoecon/uoecon.html
The In-game Economics of Ultima Online
Zachary Booth Simpson, Origin Research Fellow
7 Apr 1999

$0.00

https://steemit.com/gamble/@gaby-de-wilde/improved-rules-for-the-royal-game-of-ur

gaby-de-wilde (45) · 7 years ago

I mis the days when one could write a short blog post with little effort and easily earn hundreds of steem dollars. It's so sad everyone has abandoned the project, it looked so promising. Then again, the graphics are not very good are they? The game mechanic is supper hard even if you are a pay to win player with deep pockets. I suppose all games not publishing expansion packs are doomed to be abandoned. We all log into our steem accounts for that nostalgic feeling and all the lovely memories from back when it was a thing. A window in time for us to look back to the golden days.

I'm joking of course. This MMORPG never had golden days and lets hope it will never get any given that the pie was sliced up in advance.

I'm here not for the money but to see a content ranking system build in the wild. I consider myself able to produce content of some type of quality. So far the system has not been able to populate my postings with an audience with a single exception.

While a poor data sample the interest in this posting suggests the community is up for debating the building of a more challenging game.

I suggest making up and down voting cost a percentage of the wallet and taxing each transaction of the kind. A huge account can still pump up a smaller secondary one and that account can pump up an even smaller one and so on. The whale will have to again pay the tax every step of the way.

Be serious for a moment? Give me 1 cent for my effort? Are you fucking kidding me?

If you see a street performer, do you ever give him 1 cent? What kind of response do you expect if you did? Oh ghee thanks man!?

No guys, you better hold onto that 1 cent if it really means so much to you.

Even the dumbest MMO randomized rewards. Valuable drops are things one can use in the game. Preferably consumables.

$0.00

firedream (61) · 7 years ago

To redesign, there is one major problem to be solved...What is in it for the whales?
FD.

$0.00

compleatgamester (44) · 7 years ago (edited)

Well it's survival, innit?
It's the old wolves' dilemma from game theory.
Wolves want to eat sheep. But if wolves do eat all the sheep, they themselves will starve...
As wolves are, by definition, selfish they will have to eventually go against their nature and feign altruism to stave off extinction.
I don't know what's the retention rate for the platform, but steem $ value is dropping. If the whales want to retain their gains they will have to make concessions otherwise they will quite literally melt away.
Whether they are capable of this, I don't know. Saint Darwin will judge them in the end, just like all of us. There is no cheating natural selection.

$0.00

firedream (61) · 7 years ago

Game theory applies here also, but like at prisoners dilemma.
Since uninformed players are trying to maximize their income, the optimum solution is missed.

No other explanation of flagging while it is a sacrifice of VP that can be used for, at least self-upvote.

FD.

$0.00

compleatgamester (44) · 7 years ago (edited)

Prisoner's dilemma is fallacious for all practical purposes. It presupposes that both (all) actors are perfectly selfish and therefore sociopathic (aka "perfect" according to Chicago school of economics at least). However, dominant sociopathic tendencies are statistically recorded in only 5-10 % of population, the rest being "abnormal" "sheep" or just plain normal folks who juggle selfishness with genuine altruism. (I guess there is a proportion similar to that of the wolves of "super-sheep" or "martyrs" who are overwhelmingly altruistic but I couldn't find any research on that, I guess self-sacrificing saints are not as interesting as serial killers and sociopaths next door)
Anyways, Game Theory is very interesting and even practically useful but only if you take into account the realities of human animal.

As for flagging... I've done some thought experiments on it and I can't say I've found a truly satisfying solution - IF our goal is a stable, permanent social system (And that is an assumption. It is perfectly possible the original purpose of steemit is to fleece as much as you can and run, a classical pyramid scheme - but not a social space of any permanence). Anyway you turn it, it is introducing weapons into anarchy. Never a good thing unless you're into Mad Max style juvenile dystopian fantasies. Kindergartens function only because children are forbidden from having knives. Primate group dynamics take hold very quickly and Lord of the Flies scenario becomes inevitable. Primates are a nasty animal order in general, better not give them guns if you don't absolutely have to. And if you do, at least give them toy guns.

$0.07

firedream (61) · 7 years ago

For me, the prisoner's dilemma is tested and proved here with facts and data.
There are 2 people, Person A and Person B.

Person A : Greedy and selfish but totally legal ( not fair ) according to the system. Posts 10 times a day with discussable content and self-upvotes all his posts with maximum power. Consumes %6 of the reward pool alone with approximately 3000SBD. If he didn' exist, everyone's income should be theoretically higher by %6.
Person B : Rejects this situation, knowing that if Person A is stopped, everyone's income should increase by %6 including his.

With above conditions, the game starts.
Person B requests Person A to decrease the number of his posts to 4 times a day which should mean %60 decrease in Person A's income.
Person A rejects this and Person B starts downvoting Person A stripping approximately %20 of his income back to the reward pool. ( 600 SBD )
The pay-out table of this game is as below :

As you can see, there exists a much better solution for both parties ( reject-not flag ) but the parties, trying to maximize their income, applies the non-ideal solution.

I have written a more detailed post on the reward pool and flag wars.

I am really happy when I find intelligence on this planet.

FD.

$0.00

dineroconopcion (64) · 7 years ago

@berniesanders Noted! But you should be more specific, what is consider "Trash"? Because every day I checked on Trending and all I see is trash so I joined the bid bots party. @ausbitbank downvoted 1 of my post and told me that it was shitpost which I have to admit it was.

So for my latest post I try to do better:
The ABYSS | Next Generation Digital Distribution Platform

So please do take a look and let me know if that is trash too?, Could you please show all of us at least 10 posts that are not trash?, this way we all can learn from "Quality" content 😀

I'm willing to do my best to not post trash, but Im not sure what is trash or not according to you and other police whales in this place. So please educate us as I dont want to be getting downvote by the Steemit police. The last thing I want is to be fighting wars which I can't win.

With the said, thank you for warning us. Hope that you see my comment and be kind enough to reply as I would really like to know what I can post and promote like a mad men without being downvote by the people running this shit show called Steemit 😘

$3.17

6 votes

ausbitbank (73) · 7 years ago

FYI, that last post really isn't much better. I see a single paragraph (91 words) that wasn't directly copy pasted off this shitcoins promo page. Try harder - we don't need another kingscrown.

$0.15

5 votes

dineroconopcion (64) · 7 years ago (edited)

Ok @ausbitbank see you in trending 😀
What Deserves To Be On Trending? What Is Trash and What Is Not?

$0.00

meno (73) · 7 years ago

for someone who wants to be a leader for the Hispanic community you are struggling to see the cost of your words.

What I'm trying to say, is that even if you have a point to make, even if you were correct about certain things, the moment you resort to lower yourself to this level, you defeated all of your arguments.

En mi opinion no deberias dejar que tus emociones dominen tu lenguaje. Nadie relevante te va a escuchar.

$1.23

dineroconopcion (64) · 7 years ago

When did I say that I want to be a fucking leader? Are you stupid?, I dont let my emotions control my action, Im just realistic and say things how I see it. @ausbitbank is just another greedy cunt that dont like to see others profit from Steemit. I'm lowering myself replying to a nobody likes you. Do you think that I care if a whale respond to me or not? Couldnt care any less.

Do you know what freedom of speech is? Is me being able to express myself the way I want to Like saying you comment is so fucking stupid, you are just another scary cat too afraid to stand to some poor whales. Do you see?, I couldnt care any less about someone else opinion of me. Im not a pro, not a guru, not a fucking leader. And people that watch my videos already know that because I tell them this. You argument is invalid, come back when you have something better to say bitch

$0.00

ocrdu (71) · 7 years ago

May you be successful in your endeavours. After all, how many whales still care?

I wonder if commenting on your posts gets me blacklisted elsewhere. Not that I care much about such things, just wondering.

$0.29

schattenjaeger (71) · 7 years ago

I've heard rumblings that bernie and I are the two most hated Steemit members. :)

I wear it as a badge of honor.

$0.00

fbslo (70) · 7 years ago

Can I contact you on steem.chat to report some big abusers anonymously?

$0.04

introvertspeaks (51) · 7 years ago

This is how the Steemit trending tab looks like.

$0.00

samueldouglas (54) · 7 years ago

Ha!!@berniesanders, it's like you read my mind. But of course, you didn't have to, because lots of people are talking about this very issue.

I don't have enough voting power to make much of a difference. And I haven't been here that long. But even I can see two things:

The unmediated pay-for-votes system has turned the trending page into the Shopping Channel. FYI, I don't think that's going to be great for growth. (Unless that was the plan all along).
Lots of minows/plankton are getting pissed off when they perceive that the content getting big payouts is significantly more shithouse than what they are producing. Once there are enough of them (us - who am I kidding, you all know I'm one of them), and they figure out the right lever, things might get pretty interesting.

The whales/bots/bot owners have a lot of power; so much that people feel like there is nothing that they can do. But that's just here, on steemit. I mean FFS, even I have more twitter followers than @ned. Disgruntled plankton trying to level the playing field need to think outside the square and work out where else the biggest steem stakeholders are amenable to persuasion.

$0.00

farhan12 (43) · 7 years ago

Haha yes dude right market is boring me now

$0.00

laserade (29) · 7 years ago

LOL, bernire sanders... This guy (the real person) is horrible cynical hypocrite. And an actual communist. Thats far worse than nazi.

$0.00

dirge (62) · 7 years ago (edited)

communists want liberation and equality for all humans.

nazis murdered millions of jews, communists and anyone that didnt fit their biological supremacist bullshit.

But nazis are worse than communists. lol.

Bernie the politician isn't a communist. He's a social democrat at best. I'm an actual communist and I'm telling you this. Your views are backwards.

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laserade (29) · 7 years ago

nazis killed around 17mln of their enemies.
communists killed around 90 mln, most of their own who had improper viewpoints.
So you were saying something or someone just farted?

I actually come from a country that was under communism.
You dont know shi*.

My parents still remember lack of toilet paperand everything else.

$0.00

dirge (62) · 7 years ago

Ok. I’ll engage with your comment. I just want to say that Stalin would probably have killed me, too.

Memes are not a substitute for truth.

Sure, the toilet paper situation you describe is absurd, but it exists around the world today. Instead of there not being toilet paper, people can’t afford to buy it. Or, replace toilet paper with other commodities that the world’s poorest are unable to purchase or procure. So yeah, your example highlights an absurdity, but it doesn’t prove anything.

It’s also irrelevant to the proposed ‘90 million’ number. This figure is propaganda. I’m not denying there were deaths under 20th century ‘communist’ regimes. Yes, there were executions and worse. But the 90 million number is contested by historians, both on the right and the left.

The majority of deaths under these regimes come from famine. Now, if you want to argue that these famines were orchestrated by their respective governments (Russian and Chinese), then the weight is on you to prove that. I’m of the opinion that these regimes didn’t try to personally murder millions of their own citizens, because that’s absurd. Again, the majority of deaths under these regimes were a result of famine, and the conditions of that famine were not intentional or desired.

As for the actual numbers, the total deaths from executions in the soviet union is, officially, less than a million. Is that shocking and horrifying? Yes. But its not 90 million.

That 90 million number you’re touting is from lazy research. Reactionary scholars, in an effort to paint the worst picture possible, lumped together all policies, civil wars, terror campaigns, land reforms, famines, wars and more. Point being, it’s not very specific or helpful at understanding history and the reasons for what happened. It claims that 90 million were intentionally murdered in some insane conspiracy to…what, exactly?

These regimes wanted people to work. They wanted to build industry. Developing productive forces was their primary goal. Why would they want to kill millions of their own citizens, when that’s the opposite of their intended goal.

Worse, this 90 million number actually gets people, like you, to believe that communists are worse than Nazis. You’re now claiming that Nazis, who explicitly want to murder the disabled, jewish persons, leftists, and anyone that disagrees with their psychotic race-purist fascist project, are less bad than communists, who want equality and freedom.

$0.00

hefziba (56) · 7 years ago

Even though I think most of the trending posts that were bought are shit, you do have to have balls to pay that much money on one post, and pray not to get into a loss or get downvotes. @Yalapappi shows that you still need to interest people to end with a followers and profit and even chbartist gets a lot of replies. So the upvotes are not only about the curation.
Yes it’s annoying, but this is how steemit works. Downvoting because it is shit, I feel, is wrong in this case, because they do have a following. it’s a loophole, and works, if you have money and the guts.

$0.00

samueldouglas (54) · 7 years ago

You do know that @yallapapi is powering down, right? Given that he did it after failing to get as many views as he wanted on his posts, I guess that kind of proves your point.

$0.00

hefziba (56) · 7 years ago

I though he was doing great, I calculated how much he spend on bots versus the payout and he was in the plus ( have the calculations in a blog)
So then I don’t understand why he is powering down. Maybe he needs more steem to buy bots, as it is becoming more and more expensive to get onto the trending page

$0.00

samueldouglas (54) · 7 years ago

Well, he's posted again, just to prove me wrong :)
I do detect a definite change of tone though.

$0.00

steemingmark (55) · 7 years ago

Thanks again for sorting the trending page out for some reason and its mostly dump!

$0.00

sobur112 (31) · 7 years ago

I am new here.

*>**How can I contact with my favorite author/blogger via steemit exept the reply option?***

And as I see most of the time, Persons with higher **SP** gets more opportunity. Even if they post valueless posts,they are getting tons of money out of that.

Even, I haven't learnt any good thing from them.

**So, no Idea how to engage in best type of blogging here. Is only posting any type of content is the way to be successful?**

***How can I get more engaged in blogging with good performance? Please direct me in the right way possible!***

$0.00

sobur112 (31) · 7 years ago

I am new here.

*>**How can I contact with my favorite author/blogger via steemit exept the reply option?***

And as I see most of the time, Persons with higher **SP** gets more opportunity. Even if they post valueless posts,they are getting tons of money out of that.

Even, I haven't learnt any good thing from them.

**So, no Idea how to engage in best type of blogging here. Is only posting any type of content is the way to be successful?**

***How can I get more engaged in blogging with good performance? Please direct me in the right way possible!***

$0.00

sulaiman86 (26) · 7 years ago

Fair

$0.00