New Omnibus "Choice of Games" app

Okay, sorry about that. It seemed like a significant problem, and I wanted to see if other forum users were affected, but next time I’ll keep it to email. My apologies. :zipper_mouth_face::sweat:

It’s ok! It was a quick fix for us, we have a means of instantly updating the app with fixes like this, and it only impacted two games. I’m sorry yours was one of them, but really, emailing us is better (we’re not checking the forum 24/7), especially if you don’t have an iOS device yourself and are getting information secondhand.

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Okay, thanks for letting me know! It looks like her game has been reset, but at least she can access it now. Thanks for the quick fix!

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Had a quick question/suggestion @dfabulich @Mary_Duffy @jasonstevanhill

I’ve noticed that in the new Ratings sort on the omnibus, it strictly takes rating average into account, but does not factor in number of reviews like most ratings systems do. This is problematic for a few reasons:

  1. It unfairly punishes popular games. Popular games get rated more and have a high potential for slight variance, while unpopular games are less likely to be purchased or completed, and when they are it’s usually by more hardcore fans of the game in particular rather than an average reader. Example: A certain werewolf game has 48 ratings with an average of 4.8 and is sitting in 31st place (might as well not exist) while another has a single (1) rating and sits at 13th. That’s… crazy. Absolutely broken system.

  2. It’s easy to manipulate. In this system, an unpopular game that has no ratings at all can suddenly become number 1 over top of a game with hundreds of ratings even if that game has only 1 review less than 10/10. Almost all ratings sorting systems take number of reviews into account for exactly this reason.

Please consider revisiting the way these are sorted. Thank you for your time.

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The ratings we have on file are overwhelmingly positive. On a scale from 1-10, the average rating is 9.15, which rounds up to 5 stars out of 5. As a result, when we incorporate the number of reviews in the “sort by rating” score, it rapidly turns into “sort by number of ratings.” (We currently break ties by number of ratings; the result is that the top 16 games all have a “perfect” 5.0 rating, sorted by number of ratings.)

A certain werewolf game is still rated #7 in the default sort, Bestselling. Our Bestselling games are our most popular games; you’ll notice that they’re all highly rated as well.

Our goal for the “sort by rating” system is to help players explore low-popularity games that are well-liked by those who play them. We think we have quite a few of these “hidden gems,” and we want “sort by rating” to highlight them.

I agree that there are some games that are sorted higher than I think their quality warrants, especially the games with exactly one review. But I think those games are worth a try; as people play them, they’ll eventually receive more reviews, and they’ll find their appropriate ranking.

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Hey Dan, I appreciate the response! That line of reasoning makes sense to me and at least I understand now what you’re trying to do. I still feel that it unfairly punishes games that do well by burying them, but I can appreciate what you’re trying to accomplish. Thank you for taking the time to respond, I really appreciate it.

I really love the omnibus apps. I was wondering if there is a way to filter for unpurchased titles? If no, would it be possible to add a way to filter for unpurchased titles? I have almost all HG and a majority of COG games, so it’s hard for me to keep track of which I do and don’t have in an easy to see manner. As of now, I go into search then change the view to detailed then I scroll until I see a price tag as opposed to the “play” option then read the description then keep scrolling to choose. If there is a way to filter for unpurchased titles, it would really help see and choose titles to save for and buy, especially for those that are at the point of getting into the much older titles that usually don’t come up in the top half for the filters bestselling, numbered reviews, or top rated.

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Can you play the games offline with the app?

Yes, you can as long as you are online upon initial opening of a title.

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