Personal preference for fetisches affecting review score

[sabadongelov]

In addition to reporting the offending reviews, you can also block users so you no longer see their reviews or posts. The review will still be there, but at least it's one fewer low-quality review for your eyes to slide past.

The tag system is less "this is a significant part of the game" and more "this is in the game." While you can know exactly what to expect from tags such as 3DCG or Kinetic Novel, tags such as rape cover a wide variety of cases. Whether the events are 10% avoidable rape, 90% avoidable rape, or 25% hardcore unavoidable rape, they'll all get the tag. Or consider pregnancy: one already-pregnant LI, two LIs you can impregnate, or a game based on pumping out infinite babies all get the tag. Some games can still be enjoyable even if you're indifferent to the main kink, while others don't have anything to offer aside from the main kink. Reviews can (theoretically) help differentiate between the two since "Outrageous tits 5/5" is just as uninformative as "Outrageous tits 1/5," and something like slow-burn corruption might be your speed while "virgin fMC gets groped, now she's guzzling cum" really isn't. The review system isn't the best, but there isn't really any system which would be the best so I just put more weight on individual reviews than the overall score.

I use the average score to determine if a game is worth looking into, meaning I'm not likely to get to reading individual reviews if the general score is too low. That said, yeah, I usually look for the latest low-score reviews to get a better understanding of the games weaknesses, and in so doing can get a feeling for to what extent the game has been tanked based on the reviewers being morons.

Reporting the review is probably a good idea.

Then again, the impression I'm getting from your post is that you're going off on the one line hot takes that are choc full of hyperbole. If you're talking about wordy reviews that are just centered around "Where's mah incest?" then maybe have the confidence that people can spot that bull-honky and will move on to the next review after reporting/ignoring it. While I don't really pay attention to reviews on this site, a cursory glance of some recently updated games have shown fairly well reasoned & written out reviews, both positive and negative, with the more reactionary ones seeming to focus on content being cut from a game (which, depending how it's done, can be considered a fair critique.) So I'd say the system seems to be working.

As I pointed out above, I use the general rating to determine if a game is worth lookin into. Being able to spot bull-hunky doesn't help in that respect.

 

[sabadongelov]

Developer here.

In my opinion there are two types of "Fetish Hate Bombs" (FHBs?), i.e. bad reviews based on hated fetishes and not on the total merits of the game.

1. Vindictive. These type of bad reviews are by people who hate a specific fetish and actively search games who have these tags to hurt them. They probably only played enough of the game to write a nominal review but they never intended to enjoy it in the first place, only to bomb it as a punishment for using the offensive fetish. From my experience such "FHBs" are rare and F95 staff easily handle them once found.

2. Fetish Surprise. These type of FHBs are written by people who were surprised to find a fetish they react negatively to. I will never write such a review (I will simply stop playing the game) but even as a developer I understand where the "Surprised FHBs" come from. Fetishes touch very deep places in our souls and what might be immensely delightful to one person can be immensely offensive to another.

I don't know about actively searching out games with tags the reviewer hates only to tank the game, and maybe it was a "fetish surprise" for the player, but if that fetish was properly taged, then it is in no way the devs fault and completely the fault of the player him-/herself. And sure, to err is human, but if you do, don't take your frustration out on the game by giving it a bad review. Actually, you shouldn't do that even if it wasn't properly taged, as it isn't helpful to other people looking into the game, but I can to some extent understand the anger that the "fetish suprise" might generate in that case.

Sidenote: Have played your game, enjoyed it, keep up the good work!

 

[Meaning Less]

Also, why would devs try to hide what their games are really about? What would be the point of that? It sounds much more likely that it's an honest (or maybe lazy) mistake rather than some sort of underhanded scheme to fool people into playing games that contain stuff they don't like.

It makes completely no sense, that's why it is called Paranoid Personality Disorder, some people live in a world where everyone is trying to get them.

Sadly common sense and logic doesn't help people suffering from it.

 

[sabadongelov]

It makes completely no sense, that's why it is called Paranoid Personality Disorder, some people live in a world where everyone is trying to get them.

Sadly common sense and logic doesn't help people suffering from it.

Not to mention the fact that most games on this site isn't even uploaded by the devs themselves, but rather by pirates... But maybe the devs and the pirates are in cahoots?

 

[snookums.d.panda]

As I pointed out above, I use the general rating to determine if a game is worth lookin into. Being able to spot bull-hunky doesn't help in that respect.

Fair enough. I'm one who generally ignores the whole aggregate scoring as a metric, mainly because it's typically paired with the mindset that if it's not scoring at least 80% then it's complete garbage.

 

[Meaning Less]

Not to mention the fact that most games on this site isn't even uploaded by the devs themselves, but rather by pirates... But maybe the devs and the pirates are in cahoots?

You would be surprised, I've questioned a few of those and usually they also feel the same way about moderation, uploaders, and every other user that isn't as paranoid as themselves, to them everyone is in on it...

And if you think about it, that's why any game that "fools them" by any plot twist or thing that they weren't expecting will also affect them harder than everyone else, they are extra sensitive to any sort of betrayal in general.

I do feel empathy towards people like that but they are pretty hard to deal with, so reporting is the best thing you can do really.

 

[RogMR]

I'm talking about games that are correctly taged. That can mean a game containing *both* rape and romance (I, for one, like that particular combination). If you're a romance lover who hates rape, that's your cue to avoid that particular romance game. Or hey, take a chance on the rape being avoidable and play anyway*. But if it turns out the rape isn't avoidable, then refrain from tanking the game in the review section just because it contained what it said it would contain.

* Or even smarter, use the search function to search the thread for the term "rape" to see if it's been asked and answered whether or not the rape is avoidable. For controversial fetishes, that's usually the case unless the game is brand new. If it is avoidable, play to your hearts content, if it isn't, stay away.

As the first fetish you mentioned was rape, I mentioned 2 good DEV's that avoided the wrong audience.
Good writer for RAPE game. But if they try to romance it, I find it hard to make sense. And it will affect the grade.

When someone gives 1 star because of fetish.. Report.

But when mixing GOOD/EVIL path. An audience may find the GOOD path rubbish. And the EVIL path is fantastic. Or vice versa. Anyone who tests path 1 and path 2. It can lower the game's grade.

Rape/Romance. It can have a good romance path and a rubbish rape path.

Male MC GAY/BI/STRAIGHT. "Come Home" Game. A good game straigth male or bisexual male. But not much content for gay audience. There's a chance that a gay man will play and give a low grade for lack of content. It would be important for the DEV of this game to say only 15% of porn content is gay. Why a random male gay player, who discovered f95 now. And downloaded Come Home, specifically looking for gay content. Why would he give it a 5* if there are 1-2 scenes for him? I, male straigth, can give 4.5-5*.

What hurts the ratings of many games are the "small paths". Because the average player is lazy and won't read 50 pages to find out if it has 1 or 5 female/male domination scenes, 1 or 5 rape scenes, 1 or 5 gay, incest, scat, or any other tag. Or "no more Girl A path or Girl B path this update".

Changing 1 million people (players in potential) is impossible. The only solution is for DEV to try to find the right audience for DEV writing style. And the main thing is to say if 80% is path X. And that only 20% is path Y. Surely you like path Y will enter the game knowing that there won't be much content in the game. And possibly won't misjudge.

Vae Victis. Rape Fetish game. Worth a try for players of rape fetish. Straight rape path is good. Gay path. I don't know. A strategic part, which may not be interesting for some. I would be surprised at a nice romantic path at Vae Victis. So, if I were in the DEV's place , I think it's smarter to avoid. Because it would do more harm than good. (Taking advantage of the presence of the DEV of this game).

A Mothers Love is one of the rare games that manages to have a good romantic/good evil path.

I'm one who try RAPE games when the DEV knows what he wants in the game. I tested the 3 Rape games I mentioned, but when a "story unfolds" comes along and then RAPE doesn't make any sense... for me it ends up being a game with a BAD STORY. I've seen thousands of non-sense plot twists. So it's poor writing quality, in MY OPINION. But I know it's a popular thing for many gamers or movie viewers. So I'm not going to say that plot twist is "overrated" because my opinion is in the minority in that regard.
-
Meaning Less: you just want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing. So your opinion is completely irrelevant for me.

 

[JoeTheMC84]

No, I seldom read very old reviews, in the cases I'm thinking about, the tag existed when the bad review was placed.

Also, why would devs try to hide what their games are really about? What would be the point of that? It sounds much more likely that it's an honest (or maybe lazy) mistake rather than some sort of underhanded scheme to fool people into playing games that contain stuff they don't like.

It is true that the developers aren’t the ones who control tags and sometimes they have nothing to do with the threads of their games here. Someone else just copy pasted a discription from Patreon or elsewhere. So, often times it can be a simple mistake or someone being lazy. However some developers do lie.

As to why: often it is down to money. Promising a harem game or a romance game can get more early followers, this means more money. It isn’t just the AVN side of things that does this. Even some triple AAA games have lied, or released dubious promises. Fable is such an example, but there are other as well. So in this part of the industry, with even less accountability, obfuscation all the way to down right lying happens a bit more often.

It is rare, but it not as rare as we, as consumers, should want it to be.

 

[coffeeaddicted]

Vae Victis. Rape Fetish game. Worth a try for players of rape fetish. Straight rape path is good. Gay path. I don't know. A strategic part, which may not be interesting for some. I would be surprised at a nice romantic path at Vae Victis. So, if I were in the DEV's place , I think it's smarter to avoid. Because it would do more harm than good. (Taking advantage of the presence of the DEV of this game).

I am trying this out today. Never heard about it. If its like you said, it maybe something for me. Though i am not a huge fand of strategy or sim.
As for romantic, a little Stockholm syndrome would be not bad in it self i think. It can not be a real romance though. So far i like pretty much only Dirty Pool. It had the kind of abuse system i would like to see more often.

 

[sabadongelov]

You would be surprised, I've questioned a few of those and usually they also feel the same way about moderation, uploaders, and every other user that isn't as paranoid as themselves, to them everyone is in on it...

And if you think about it, that's why any game that "fools them" by any plot twist or thing that they weren't expecting will also affect them harder than everyone else, they are extra sensitive to any sort of betrayal in general.

I do feel empathy towards people like that but they are pretty hard to deal with, so reporting is the best thing you can do really.

Yeah, if it really is a pathology, then arguing will probably only get you that far.

 

[sabadongelov]

As the first fetish you mentioned was rape, I mentioned 2 good DEV's that avoided the wrong audience.
Good writer for RAPE game. But if they try to romance it, I find it hard to make sense. And it will affect the grade.

When someone gives 1 star because of fetish.. Report.

But when mixing GOOD/EVIL path. An audience may find the GOOD path rubbish. And the EVIL path is fantastic. Or vice versa. Anyone who tests path 1 and path 2. It can lower the game's grade.

Rape/Romance. It can have a good romance path and a rubbish rape path.

Male MC GAY/BI/STRAIGHT. "Come Home" Game. A good game straigth male or bisexual male. But not much content for gay audience. There's a chance that a gay man will play and give a low grade for lack of content. It would be important for the DEV of this game to say only 15% of porn content is gay. Why a random male gay player, who discovered f95 now. And downloaded Come Home, specifically looking for gay content. Why would he give it a 5* if there are 1-2 scenes for him? I, male straigth, can give 4.5-5*.

What hurts the ratings of many games are the "small paths". Because the average player is lazy and won't read 50 pages to find out if it has 1 or 5 female/male domination scenes, 1 or 5 rape scenes, 1 or 5 gay, incest, scat, or any other tag. Or "no more Girl A path or Girl B path this update".

Changing 1 million people (players in potential) is impossible. The only solution is for DEV to try to find the right audience for DEV writing style. And the main thing is to say if 80% is path X. And that only 20% is path Y. Surely you like path Y will enter the game knowing that there won't be much content in the game. And possibly won't misjudge.

Vae Victis. Rape Fetish game. Worth a try for players of rape fetish. Straight rape path is good. Gay path. I don't know. A strategic part, which may not be interesting for some. I would be surprised at a nice romantic path at Vae Victis. So, if I were in the DEV's place , I think it's smarter to avoid. Because it would do more harm than good. (Taking advantage of the presence of the DEV of this game).

A Mothers Love is one of the rare games that manages to have a good romantic/good evil path.

I'm one who try RAPE games when the DEV knows what he wants in the game. I tested the 3 Rape games I mentioned, but when a "story unfolds" comes along and then RAPE doesn't make any sense... for me it ends up being a game with a BAD STORY. I've seen thousands of non-sense plot twists. So it's poor writing quality, in MY OPINION. But I know it's a popular thing for many gamers or movie viewers. So I'm not going to say that plot twist is "overrated" because my opinion is in the minority in that regard.
-
Meaning Less: you just want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing. So your opinion is completely irrelevant for me.

I'm sure that combining certain fetishes/fantasies that are kind of on different ends of the same spectrum can be difficult and therefore should only be done if the dev is confident he/she can pull it off. If they don't manage to do it, then the game will be a mess and it's in my mind fair to critize the game for it. But, BUT, each case still has to be evaluated on it's own merits! You can't just say "this game contains both rape and romance, therefore automatic one star!", which I've actually seen a reviewer do. Also, if devs were to follow your guidelines slavishly, then most games would be hyperfocused towards one or a few complementing fetishes and rarely give the player any real choice. I don't think that would lead to better games overall. Many of the best games are the ones that are more complex and manage to combine different fetishes or give the player meaningfull choices that lead to very different outcomes.

As far as I remember, Vae Victis does give the player the option to rape or romance/seduce in almost every case (every case? Can't remember clearly), so the player can go for always rape, always seduction/romance or some rape, some seduction/romance. Kind the opposite of what you say a dev should do. But I think it works fine in that game. And the dev probably has a much larger potential audience than he would have had the game been only rape.

 

[sabadongelov]

It is true that the developers aren’t the ones who control tags and sometimes they have nothing to do with the threads of their games here. Someone else just copy pasted a discription from Patreon or elsewhere. So, often times it can be a simple mistake or someone being lazy. However some developers do lie.

As to why: often it is down to money. Promising a harem game or a romance game can get more early followers, this means more money. It isn’t just the AVN side of things that does this. Even some triple AAA games have lied, or released dubious promises. Fable is such an example, but there are other as well. So in this part of the industry, with even less accountability, obfuscation all the way to down right lying happens a bit more often.

It is rare, but it not as rare as we, as consumers, should want it to be.

Isn't it more likely that such "lies" are the result of the dev originally thinking they would make a certain kind of game and then, for whatever reason, change their mind mid-development? Because I can't think promising things that you don't deliver on is a good strategy for securing patreon payments. You don't get a huge patreon following just for saying that you're going to make a game containing a certain fantasy/fetish.

That said, I'm sure you can find some example of devs lying purposefully, I just can't imagene that it's anything but very rare.

 

[sabadongelov]

Fair enough. I'm one who generally ignores the whole aggregate scoring as a metric, mainly because it's typically paired with the mindset that if it's not scoring at least 80% then it's complete garbage.

I think it works decently. Games with low scores are seldomly good and games with high scores are usually at least decent.

 

[sabadongelov]

Many "weaponize" reviews based on petty vendettas, perceived slights, jealousy - the list of "reasons" never ends, honestly.

Happens a lot on forums like Royal Road where there is competition for money / views. Once had a guy review one of my stories - but none of the stuff he mentioned was *actually* in the story. When I pointed it out, he just made a bunch of arbitrary, nonsensical excuses then doubled down.

What annoys me is how moderators of forums like that don't even see this as a problem and allow fraudulent or inaccurate reviews to stand (even when noticed or brought to their attention).

Yeah, I've run into the moderator problem too. No wonder there are so many reviews that are clearly breaking the rules of the site.

 

[Doorknob22]

As far as I remember, Vae Victis does give the player the option to rape or romance/seduce in almost every case (every case? Can't remember clearly), so the player can go for always rape, always seduction/romance or some rape, some seduction/romance. Kind the opposite of what you say a dev should do. But I think it works fine in that game. And the dev probably has a much larger potential audience than he would have had the game been only rape.

There are no commercial considerations for me allowing Dominance and Seduction options in most stories and I don't care if they help sales or harm them: adding options is something I enjoy doing since as an author I love exploring specific situation from different perspectives. While my game is famous (or notorious) for its rapey content, the seduction flows tend to be deeper as I have a chance to explore the characters personality and back stories which is harder to do in the darker paths. Talking to fans in Discord, I know that many of them play the game in Seduction mode and ignore the Dominance flows.

As for the original topic: fetishes may affect review scores, both in a negative and a positive ways. Fans of a fetish might rate a game higher since it addresses the fetish they enjoy or punish a game for including fetishes they don't. Moderators review the reviews upon receiving a Report but it's not always easy to prove that a score was based upon the reviewer's personal preferences of fetishes.

 

[nulnil]

Fetishes are why games should be rated on how the present the adult content, their gameplay, and their visuals. Anyone who complains about a fetish either didn't look at the game's settings or didn't see he was playing "rape NTR racist something inflation vore".

 

[sabadongelov]

There are no commercial considerations for me allowing Dominance and Seduction options in most stories and I don't care if they help sales or harm them: adding options is something I enjoy doing since as an author I love exploring specific situation from different perspectives. While my game is famous (or notorious) for its rapey content, the seduction flows tend to be deeper as I have a chance to explore the characters personality and back stories which is harder to do in the darker paths. Talking to fans in Discord, I know that many of them play the game in Seduction mode and ignore the Dominance flows.

On a general note, I think devs who have a clear vision of what kind of game they want to create and who follow that vision even if critiqued by players who really want to make the game into something it isn't, will make better games than devs who bend over backwards to accommodate critical players. That being said, a dev shouldn't stop listening to his or her fanbase, as there can be valuable contributions from the players input.

As for the original topic: fetishes may affect review scores, both in a negative and a positive ways. Fans of a fetish might rate a game higher since it addresses the fetish they enjoy or punish a game for including fetishes they don't. Moderators review the reviews upon receiving a Report but it's not always easy to prove that a score was based upon the reviewer's personal preferences of fetishes.

You're right, the problem goes both ways. Some games review score gets juiced by the games catering to popular fetishes. Had all fetishes/fantasies been equally popular, it probably wouldn't have mattered as much, as the undeserved bad would be cancelled by the undeserved good. But since that isn't the case, people scoring the extent games cater to their fetishes and fantasies rather than the quality of the games, will lead to games with popular fetishes being overrated and games with rare fetishes underrated.

 

[Doorknob22]

On a general note, I think devs who have a clear vision of what kind of game they want to create and who follow that vision even if critiqued by players who really want to make the game into something it isn't, will make better games than devs who bend over backwards to accommodate critical players. That being said, a dev shouldn't stop listening to his or her fanbase, as there can be valuable contributions from the players input.

Both points spot on. Whenever I see a new developer asking in the General Forum "what games people want him to make" I facepalm myself. Can anyone imagine Kurt Cobain asking random people on the street what music should Nirvana play? "Guys, do you want Rock? Hip Hop maybe? R'N'B? What music you guys want us to write?"

And yes, your other point is also correct. Developers need to know when they are in the wrong and not stubbornly insist on their ideas, dismissing everyone else's. Finding the balance, however, is hard