3.9-3.5 stars meaning

[ARU1048]

Today I got curious about people's opinions. In general, what does a 3.9-3.5 star rating mean to you?


A) The game is generally good, but has a certain fetish/mechanic/aspect that some people strongly dislike.

B) The first versions were very bad, but the latest updates have improved the game considerably (or vice versa).

C) It's decent, but it received a wave of people who were overly critical about the game, either due to its content, due to controversies with the author, or just bad luck.

D) The game is good, but very short/limited in its implementation of its idea.

E) Other (Give your personal opinion).

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Could be any of A-D. The main thing to look at is 1-star reviews, which are pretty much always wrong and useless but give you an idea of what drove that particular moron to deem the game worthless. Usually it's a rant about their expectations not being met. Which means that first, the game drew that idiot's attention, and then it looked appealing enough for them to play it. So mainsteam-looking games are more susceptible.

A: Star Knightess Aura is in that range, and it pretty much looks like a H-JRPG, which are usually rapefests with trivial gameplay. So when they play it for 2 hours and there's no H, and then they check the thread to find out MC doesn't get dicked until 15 hours in, they get irate at the time they "wasted" doing RPGM combat with their pants down.

C: I can think of an archetypal example and its review section is a bombed-out wasteland of 1.7. It would be a 3.5-4.5 game without the DRM and the paid features, and the toxic dev.

Now if a game both looks and plays mainstream, then the rating is probably a good indication of the overall quality relative to other similar games.

 

[anne O'nymous]

In general, what does a 3.9-3.5 star rating mean to you?

The same that 5.0-3.9 and 3.4-1.0, nothing actually significant.

 

[TheSagMan]

I usually avoid games that are below 3 because I assume they have one of the following: Paywall, no content, bugs, chinglish or really bad grind. Almost everything above is the same to me.

 

[NeonSelf]

3.5 - Is a good game with lots of reviews. I'd read some bad reviews, to understand, what flaws people noticed in the game. Often its just some minor things, that people like to complain about but I dont care at all.

The dumbest reason to lower game's rarting is because of its graphic quality. Yes, it may look like child's doodles and thats ok. Because everyone can see screenshots and decide for themselves if they like it or not.

 

[Brosewood]

It means you should read the reviews (which I'd argue is true for all games). Unless a game is hovering around the 1-2 score, it might still be worth checking out depending on the context of the review.

A good example is Newlife. Most of that games lower reviews are because it's not making as much progress as people feel it should. Whilst that isn't an invalid opinion, I'd argue Newlife has plenty of content for a new player to sink their teeth in and his probably one of my personal favorites.

Even using my own game as an example, one of the reviews weighing my score down is commenting on bugs that I have since squashed. Sure, it was a truthful review at the time it was written and I deserved the criticism considering it was the full release of my game, but it's only somewhat relevant due to the fact that there are still a few minor bugs I've yet to resolve.

 

[That other person]

I don't believe in ratings. Most decide to give games a lower rating because the content they like is not in it or the one they don't like is in it. There are few that are honest.

I've seen plenty of games that have 3 stars and are actually better, some with 5 starts that barely have anything going on. People's reviews sometimes include "potential" which... is not something to take into account unless there's a fair amount of content on the version you played, but saying it has potential when there's barely anything just because of a promise for a future update is dumb.

I have reviewed a few games. My logic is always "Did I enjoy the current content overall? How much?" and that's usually my rating... which I explain too instead of just being like "Great game, looks good. 5 stars!" I also decided now to be clear about what version I played in case the game takes a dive of a cliff later on.

My advice is to simply ignore most ratings and check the game properly and the comments on the thread. Never ever care about the rating, not on these games or normal games.

 

[tanstaafl]

The tastes and wants in this particular area of interest are so broad that, other than graphic critiques and bugginess reports, I ignore literally everything else said about a game.

 

[CaptainBipto]

Today I got curious about people's opinions. In general, what does a 3.9-3.5 star rating mean to you?


A) The game is generally good, but has a certain fetish/mechanic/aspect that some people strongly dislike.

B) The first versions were very bad, but the latest updates have improved the game considerably (or vice versa).

C) It's decent, but it received a wave of people who were overly critical about the game, either due to its content, due to controversies with the author, or just bad luck.

D) The game is good, but very short/limited in its implementation of its idea.

E) Other (Give your personal opinion).

E. Other (ALL OF THE ABOVE)

To me, those .5 or .9 ratings, all say that people have their personal opinion about what the game does or does not provide and are not always relevant to being an actual review of the game.

Read all of the reviews and see what they say. Honest 1 and 5 star reviews actually exist and the only way to find out what is going on is to actually read them.

 

[ARU1048]

Could be any of A-D.

Well, I know that, all the options I mentioned are viable, I was more like referring to which of those reasons is the most common for a game to receive a rating of 3.5-3.9 stars

 

[Death Panda]

what does a 3.9-3.5 star rating mean to you?

E) It means jack shit. There's no one out here setting a standard for what a 5 star, 4 star, etc game is and even if there were no one would pay attention to them. It's absolutely insane to suggest that 10% of the rating scale is somehow significant.

I will say that you are putting way too much emphasis on people who are hypercritical vs cheerleaders who are not critical at all. The ranking system for ratings is weighted so that more reviews = better.