Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Consensus opinion I suppose. You get a bunch of people together to decide what measures they want to call quality. Not everyone will agree, but if a majority do, than that is "quality" until they stop agreeing on it.
D&D 5E 5e and the Cheesecake Factory: Explaining Good Enough
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Maybe, instead of sniping this one exchange, which was congenial and limited to a narrow topic (ie, popularity does not provide evidence for or against being of high quality), you could read my other posts, too, where I provide some answers to this. Or, maybe, you could provide some ideas you have, and there could be some discussion? I dunno, your call.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Pretty sure this is not how it works. Do we evaluate the quality of how safe a car is by consensus? What you have here is how popularity is determined, not quality.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
Sure. A bunch of people evaluate various factors and come to opinions on how safe the car is. Then they tell you how safe it is and we have to trust that their opinions are correct.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
I'm amused how measurements magically turn into opinions so that you can preserve the argument. I mean, they have anatomically correct dummies that have advanced sensors that can measure impacts and tell you if injury (and how severe) occurs, then they actually crash cars and take those measurements, which show if and how people are hurt in those crashes and how the safety features work to reduce those injuries, but, hey, it's really just opinions, right?
jmartkdr2
Hero
The measurements aren't opinions, but the value of the measurements is. How important is safety? Objectively, without citing opinions, how much should we value safety?
Can you give a definition of "the best steak" that doesn't factor in any sort of opinion about taste? What makes for a good movie. discounting the experience of the viewer, since that's subjective?
Oofta
Legend
Big difference between defining quality of a car in terms of safety and quality of written material or a game though.
I'm amused that you keep trying to focus on verifiable physical measurement as opposed to subjective opinion.
On the subject of "quality" it depends on what you are looking at. The quality of a history book & work of fiction showing an alternate history could both be good but if you used the wrong scale they are likely to fail miserably. Your example of mcdonalds if rated on speed/price/etc vrs the points @EzekielRaiden made in 227 is a good comparison. Bob might feel like 5e meets the perfect sweet spot for tactical combat by minimizing it to the point of near omission, but Bob would be very wrong to misconstrue that minimalization as an example of quality support for tactical combat. Bob could say that he likes the tradeoffs & focus on meeting the needs of other elements rather than having tactical combat elements all that involved but it is that balance & other elements obtained through the minimalization he is saying are quality not the minimalized element itself unless he redefines quality or tactical combat. No matter how good the binding printing & price are on that alternative history work of fiction are it will never make it a quality history book
Mcdonalds has improved dramatically in recent decades if you only focus on specific menu items, but even menu items that are pretty good are rarely examples of a restaurant's "quality" for the same reason yelp & others have both a star rating & a $$$$ rating. If Alice says that she's in the mood for a really good or quality fried chicken sandwich even if the mcdonalds crispy chicken sandwich is one of their better menu offerings it's unlikely to meet the standards for "quality". In that situation Alice can acknowledge that the crispy chicken sandwich is one of their better offerings & sometimes hits the spot when she's in a rush. Likewise Bob can admit "yea your right it's a pretty weak fried chicken sandwich compared to that other place".
For whatever reason in regards to 5e in particular there are a lot of elements that without question were minimalized or even removed where someone can say a things like "I feel the lack of x is a problem where wotc could have/should do better even as an optional rule or some variant UA" only to be told how the practically missing pillar is an example of quality design before talking about all of the benefits of that tradeoff or how the missing element affects other aspects of the game. Bob would be hard pressed to argue why the one "$" yelp rating for mcdonalds makes it a good fit for someone who says "where can I get a quality burger" in an area with a good selection of restaurants
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Different question altogether from the evaluation of how safe the car is -- ie the quality of the car's safety. It's a good question, but not the same one.
The US, and many other countries, alongside the meat industries, grade meat for sale. I'd say that a high quality steak cannot be grade D meat, but rather Prime. How it's cooked, what it's seasoned with, which cut you pick, yes, these things are preferences. But the presence of a preference in some areas doesn't mean that everything is preference.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Of course there is, they are different things. But, the argument was that quality is only a matter of preference. Easily proved to be false, hopefully discarded, and now we can actually look at things without that canard floating about and differentiate what counts for quality and what counts for preference.
You mean when assessing quality? Are you amused that because it argues against the position that quality is only preference/opinion, or something else?
I can look at a game, and without any regard to my preference, evaluate if it's mechanics and features achieve the goal the game sets out to do. I can, without regard to preference, evaluate the grammar and spelling of the text to determine if the editing was of quality. I can, without regard to preference, analysis how the rules are laid out -- are related rules placed conveniently, or do I have to flip between pages to find them. I can analyze the rules to see how and what authorities are granted and how those interact -- is it coherent, does it fight itself? These things are not preferences, but I will absolutely bring my preferences in after this analysis to see if I want to run this game. I find that FATE is a high quality game, and I don't want to run it. My dislike for some things doesn't mean I need to call the game low quality.
And, ultimately, this is what the "quality as subjective opinion" argument leads to. If my subjective opinion of a game (ie, do I like it) is that I do not, then, according to what you've explicitly said, it is of low quality. You caveat this with 'for that individual' but then have also talked about quality as a consensus or generally determine status. You can't have it both ways -- you can't say quality is in the eye of the beholder and claim 5e must be of good quality because so many people like it. Like logically can't, obviously you're more than capable of actually saying this.
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