In all seriousness, ratings on bloomilk are mostly a farce. It's been that way since the WoTC days. Squads and characters get downvoted due to; butthurt over lost games, dislike of a game mechanic or thematic element, even dislike of particular players or designers. Conversely, some stuff gets more praise than it deserves.
You just can't put too much stock into bloomilk ratings.

Let's try and gatekeep this small community even further by discouraging public posts even more so! It doesn't matter if it's a farce in general, just downvoting every post pushes people away. People like BZNintendo and FlyingArrow are what everyone in this community should strive to be.

It's not possible to downvote public posts. My comment "I rated this post as a 2 w/ raspberry face," was a joke demonstrating the ridiculous nature of bloomilk's rating system. It was intended to be dismissive of bloo's farce of a rating system . . . not this post. Unfortunately, my humor does not translate well in these forums. I apologize for any misunderstanding and have deleted that portion from my post.

Bloomilk has a system for rating squads and characters. That is what is being discussed here.
People have always downvoted squads and characters on here without any good reason.
Virtually, anyone can create an account (or a few) and "1 bomb" squads and characters for any old reason.
Back in WotC days, the #1 player in the world would constantly have all their squads rated as a 1.
I'm not trying to shut anyone down, but you just can't take the rating system seriously.

FlyingArrow and BZNintendo are both great dudes.

"Raddus Radius" by gandalfthegreatestwizard (1 vote) Average Rating: 1.00 (1 comment)
kiki
6/5/2019 9:08 PM
How do I delete someone else's squad?
http://www.bloomilk.com/Squad/204011/raddus-radius
Not sure why this squad has an Average Rating of 1 . . . sure looks suspicious kiki

"Sorry to bug you" by Darth O (3 votes) Average Rating 3.67
Here's an example of downvoting due to "Blast Bug" (game mechanics) even though the squad itself is fine.

"Rey and Kylo, Force Bonded Allies" 2019 Gencon 2nd place (21 votes) Average Rating 3.62
Here's an example of downvoting due to TLJ film, the designer's thematic choices, and it's winning Regional events.

"Roger Stone of SWM V2" 2017 Gencon Champion (20 votes) Average Rating: 7.50
Here's an example of downvoting due to a highly competitive player and a winning squad.

Boba Fett, Bounty Hunter (379 votes) Average Rating: 8.85
Here's an example of downvoting a top-level WotC era piece.

"Speedy Cannon" 2008 Gencon Champion (268 votes) Average Rating: 7.73
Here's an example of downvoting a top-level WotC era squad.

Yeah... not going to name names, but if you look back around KotOR era, somebody was going around chucking 1's and 2's at amazing pieces that were both thematic and powerful for the time.

It bugs me too, more so for the WotC-only squads. Folks returning to the game (quite reasonably) focus on WotC pieces, at least at first, and I feel like the one-bombing risks pushing people away before the really become part of the community.

One way to combat this is to keep a look out for your fellow WotC enthusiasts and rate them well whenever one of their squads show up. It doesn't get ride of the problem, but might help mitigate it.

But in the end, trolls will be trolls. Look on the bright side - if your squads are being one-bombed, you're in the company of champions and superstar pieces

I wish we had a category rating system, then it might have a chance of some meaning. Power level rating, thematic rating, overall enjoyment rating. Something like that. As a designer, each of these categories would be vary helpful. But people use these interchangeably, in addition to other not-so-valid reasons for rating something high or low. So it literally amounts to meaning nothing.

As is, just ignore it. Nothing can be done that wouldn't be herculean efforts and potentially garnering more animosity (who watches the rating watchmen?)

Surely with it being such a small community the scores are less than meaningless? I would put literally no stock in any score given to a squad these days.

Being someone who prefers WOTC to the newer stuff I have found that I pretty much keep quiet around here as the majority of players prefer the v-sets. I'm not complaining. It just is what it is. In fact when I see a Wizards only squad I try to make an effort to rate (fairly) and leave positive feedback. I do not harass v-sets players as I respect their right to like what they like.

Enough about me.

I will say the "hate voting" was definitely a thing on this site long before Destiny of the Force was ever revealed and despite this game being what I consider a pretty awesome and good natured past time there are always going to be trolls that love to share their misery with online anonymity, for whatever reason.

A parallel I have noticed is in a MMO that I play sometimes called Elder Scrolls Online. There are actually quite a few folks that play simply because they love the stories, were Skyrim fans, or just enjoy the game play. Some of them are really good too and like to experiment with their character builds. Then you have your meta players who expect you to only use the highest damage per second build possible and if you don't you are likely to get kicked from a play group (there are also tanks and healers and they have their expected roles as well). My point is that these kinds of people tend to be around in most math/based gaming communities and, as annoying as they are, the best thing you can do is ignore them.


A good friend of mine (also a site member) and I have discussed at one point trying to make an alternate site that is very similar but exists solely for the Wizards pieces. Personally I would love that as it is all I am actually interested in. Maybe it could be a brother/sister website that runs off of cloned software and pretty much only contains collection tracking, squad-building, and commentary/feedback. Just an idea but if enough of are down for it and someone has the know-how I would be willing to provide some financial support as I can. And to be clear I am not saying this to get under anyone's skin but for me such a site would be desirable because I would know new squad posts actually have only wizards pieces in them, viewing characters would only include wizards pieces, and I wouldn't need to worry toggling features to Non-VSets (just a few examples). The community would certainly be small but we would at least all be on the same page.