How does everyone else rate challenges? When I rate the difficulty I just go by how much of my fleet is left:
~90% one star
~70% two
~50% three
50% four
and five stars if I lose*
*unless its over something silly i.e. I forgot it was a map where shields don’t work
Rating how much I enjoyed the challenge is where I have problems. Lately I’ve just been setting it equal to the difficulty rating on the reasoning that overwhelming victories aren’t exciting and therefore not enjoying. But, sometimes its not so cut and dry. For example, I just played a challenge that I beat easily the first time but it employed missile cruisers that tried to kite my fleet. I tried to make fast cruisers that do this before but failed miserable and concluded it can’t be done; the challenge gave me hope that there might in fact be a way and I just haven’t figured it out yet. I reasoned that even though it wasn’t hard, if it taught me something new or gave me a good idea then it was more enjoyable.
Does anyone else even give the ratings this much thought? The only reason I do is because a higher rating may make more people try the challenge and I would hate to see a good one get pushed to the bottom of the list because it was unfairly or inconsistently rated.
Yes, I give thought to how I rate challenges. I rate high enjoyment if it does anything I haven’t seen before even if my fleet crushes it. This so that hopefully others can also get the enjoyment seeing a novel deployment strategy.
On difficulty:
1-Star: My fleet sustained no significant losses on the first try (only fighter casualties, or limited frigate casualties if I’m running a swarm fleet).
2-Star: My fleet sustained significant losses but still won on the first try.
3-Star: My fleet lost on the first try.
4-Star: I had to create a new ship design just to cope with this challenge and/or it took ~3 attempts.
5-Star: Exceptional difficulty, requires numerous attempts and tactical revisions (I’ve given this out once or twice at absolute most - sadly, it seems like most of the players posting challenges of this caliber aren’t very active anymore).
On enjoyment:
1-Star: Zero-engine fleet with no innovative twist.
2-Star: No innovative tactics and no significant challenge to keep interest.
3-Star: Little or no effective innovation.
4-Star: Reasonably effective and innovative fleet/ship/tactical design.
5-Star: Creative and challenging, awesomesauce!
Difficulty and enjoyment often go hand in hand (unchallenging challenges are rather unenjoyable), but there are some fairly challenging but extremely boring fleets out there (zero/one engine corner campers, I’m looking at you!). Ideally no challenge should take more than 2 attempts (see what made your first one fail, revise accordingly), so I tend to rate high on difficulty when I fail a challenge more than once. Because my primary interest in the game is learning new tactics and strategies, I tend to rate highly on enjoyment when I encounter something effective that I hadn’t thought of before.
1 Star: Beat it on the first try
2 Stars: Beat it on the second try
3 Stars: Beat it with 3-4 tries
4 Stars: Beat it with 5-8 tries
5 Stars: Can’t beat it in 8 tries
Great, then you beat my latest challenge on the first attempt D: I guess trying to make a fleet that can cope with a little of anything, can’t cope with too much of anything. I was pleased it could at least beat the frigate swarm challenges I found, which normally smack down pure-cruiser defenses.
As for my approach to rating challenges… Pretty similar to Corbeau’s, except a little more forgiving on the difficulty - since I beat most challenges on the first try, I’ll often give three stars for a challenge I think gave my fleet a good run for it’s money, even if I did pull out a win first time around. However, if a fleet has a very obvious, gaping hole in it’s defence (i.e. fleets you can beat with fighters alone are a classic example, or very slow fleets that don’t have missiles, or frigate swarms fleets that can’t cope with a sprinkling of rocket fighters… Then it’ll get 1 star difficulty, no matter if it managed to beat my first attempt. Enjoyment I rate more subjectively on - if anything interesting happens in the battle it’ll get 4 or 5 stars, if they surprise me, same, if they do something I’ve never seen before, same, even if it didn’t work out. Zero engine fleets usually get 1 star…
Difficulty:
5 - Took me multiple attempts to beat, needed to design a new ship, immune to my crappy spam tactics (after losing 5 or 6 times I’m always tempted to send in the frig spam or ultra-long range missile cruisers).
4 - A few shots to beat but no new designs or tactical thinking needed. Or beat first time but by a very narrow margin.
3 - Did my fleet some damage.
2 - Barely scratched me.
1 - Stupid or test challenges that are just one frigate or suchlike.
Enjoyment:
5 - Almost exactly the same criteria as difficulty: if I have to make a new ship or come up with a new tactic, I’d say that’s pretty enjoyable. I’ll never give a five score to a single-design fleet though.
4 - Must have all of the following: good mix of ship types and weapons, good challenge, interesting deployment and tactics.
3 - Must have three of the above criteria.
2 - Slow, spammy fleet that nonetheless displays some creativity (multiple weapon loadouts, for example).
1 - Cheap, single-weapon spam, and / or no engines.
I like to think I’m pretty consistent with my ratings; the more consistency we get the easier it is to find good challenges, right?
Well given the unfortunate number of low ratings I seem to give out…
Difficulty:
1 Star: 90% or more of my fleet survives
2 stars: 80% or more
3 Stars: 70% or more
4 Stars: Trashes my fleet but I still win on the first pass.
5 Stars: It takes multiple attempts to beat.
Semi Arbitrarily I’ll add additional stars if it’s good against some of my standard fleets, but destroyed by others.
Enjoyment:
This is nearly arbitrary.
1 Star: Boring, no challenge at all.
2-4 Stars: The arbitrary range. I had fun, but maybe it’s the 5th plasma fleet in a row, or maybe my kitten wasn’t baked well enough and I have an upset stomach.
5 Stars: If you got 5 stars on difficulty, you got 5 stars here.
Automatic 1 star Difficulty and 1 Star Enjoyment: Brick fleets of no engines or movement. I tend to use very slow fleets myself, But at least they’ll reach the enemy or die trying within a day or so…
Tribe challenges tend to get bonus stars in enjoyment. I enjoy turning space hippies into pretty clouds of Plasma.
I like destroying lots of ships. Those sort of challenges usually are more enjoyable. But generally its how man proper tactical revisions i need to do. Half the time i forget to set a formation or some such and quickly admit defeat. I dont count those.
5 star diffuculty is reserved for challanges i have to create whole new fleets just to beat. Which is rare.