Rating a first release of a game.

[ThunderRob]

This will either get alot of love or alot of hate..HAHAA..story of my life...BUT..I am of the humble opinion,that F95Zone figures out a way to have rating/reviews stay closed until a second update is released..i read alot of reviews and so many are on first releases of games..often with less than 5 minutes of content.Some are so elaborate it is almost like it is from a "friend of the dev".. Now i'll admit to having made a review on a first release of a game..BUT..the dev(somethingsomethingCake) already had a completed HIT on his hands and the first release was massive AF.
But to give a 5 star rating to game with 5 minutes of content is sketchy AF or just plain stupid AF..SO..i say do not have the option to rate/review a game until it has a second update(bugfix update does NOT count)

 

[Felicityskye]

They could probably find a way to split reviews. For example, the staff of F95 could give users who sound like they know what they're talking about an official reviewer status. Then they could separate reviews into official reviews and general audience reviews. Therefore the nonsensical general spam review scores won't effect the actual quality review scores.

 

[Fantabaldu]

This will either get alot of love or alot of hate..HAHAA..story of my life...BUT..I am of the humble opinion,that F95Zone figures out a way to have rating/reviews stay closed until a second update is released..i read alot of reviews and so many are on first releases of games..often with less than 5 minutes of content.Some are so elaborate it is almost like it is from a "friend of the dev".. Now i'll admit to having made a review on a first release of a game..BUT..the dev(somethingsomethingCake) already had a completed HIT on his hands and the first release was massive AF.
But to give a 5 star rating to game with 5 minutes of content is sketchy AF or just plain stupid AF..SO..i say do not have the option to rate/review a game until it has a second update(bugfix update does NOT count)

I absolutely agree with you , in my thoughts it's impossible to make a review at first release only after a few minutes of contents.
Especially if at same time there are reviews, one with 1 star and the immediately after a second one with 5 stars,maybe done only on subjective feelings or worse , with some early reviews made not on the game but on the developer.
Moreover , some negative reviews ( without sense most of times ) ,made after a so small content , can have a bad light for the a Developer's work and not at all respectful of the work done by an author.
I don't have a solution here to propose , maybe like suggests ThunderRob to wait a second release , surely it would be fairer, to wait more contents before a review can be written.

 

[I'm Not Thea Lundgren!]

I personally think that there should be a minimum word count for reviews.
A one-star review saying - this is shit, doesn't tell readers anything.
The review needs to have useful information on it.
Maybe a rating system for reviews? Kind of like, how useful was this review? Then the people who give the best reviews could gain an official reviewer status, as was mentioned previously.
Additionally, how about restricting review privileges to those that have been on the forum for a specific time (a year maybe) or have a certain amount of posts or likes?

 

[Akamari]

I see the reviews as potentially useful feedback for the dev. When is the best time to give feedback? 0.1 version. That's when a game can still be easily shaped into something better.

 

[redknight00]

I personally think that there should be a minimum word count for reviews.
A one-star review saying - this is shit, doesn't tell readers anything.
The review needs to have useful information on it.
Maybe a rating system for reviews? Kind of like, how useful was this review? Then the people who give the best reviews could gain an official reviewer status, as was mentioned previously.
Additionally, how about restricting review privileges to those that have been on the forum for a specific time (a year maybe) or have a certain amount of posts or likes?

We have a minimum character count, delete reviews that pad it with useless words to reach it.

You can also like reviews you find useful.

Restricting reviews defeats the purpose of a forum, everyone should be allowed to voice their opinions (unless they are bad boys and get temporarily locked from reviewing).

Now the review section is up for reform eventually, it's just that the work list is longer than klx's dick.

 

[Ragnar]

You have a point, but then we have Ranting at a first release of a game.

 

[ThunderRob]

We have a minimum character count, delete reviews that pad it with useless words to reach it.

You can also like reviews you find useful.

Restricting reviews defeats the purpose of a forum, everyone should be allowed to voice their opinions (unless they are bad boys and get temporarily locked from reviewing).

Now the review section is up for reform eventually, it's just that the work list is longer than klx's dick.

so the work gonna be done within minutes?

 

[ThunderRob]

that's why i did this as a general discussion thang and not clog a game thread that happens to have a 5 star rating for 193 seconds of gameplay...its just something that grinds my gears...i can see the issues with it all..a truly outstanding huge first release..like the somethingsomethingCake example i used of course deserves a rating after even a first release because it already has more content than 80% of the games here...i'm just ticked that a game i sneeze and its over is getting 5 stars..its fishy AF..or plain stupid...i have no answers..just wonderment..maybe this thread can pop up some ideas that actually help the demigods that run this fine establishment..who knows.

 

[Hadley]

I really don't care about reviews. I look at the Like/View Ratio. The Reviews here are pretty stupid, because people don't like Games if there is a fetish in there they don't like or if there is a fetish missing that they like.

 

[somebodynobody]

Have something like a boiler-plate review model.

[Version of Game] : Chapter 1, episode 1, version 0.000000000002

[Rating] : 14 stars, it killed my family.

setting, game play, UI, story, characters, amount of scenes you got/type (since tags/genre can include things not in game yet), overall thoughts, 2d/3d image quality, misc, amount of time you played, etc.

Just a very general starter place for people to use and others to quickly read through and see if the game is their thing and easy to weed the devs plants or the extreme haters out, but still leaves people to do their own thing and write how they feel.

 

[Adabelitoo]

I will release a game in a few weeks and I can totally agree on how useless is rating the first release of a game. What I usually do with any game is play the current version (I try to plan games with 3 or more updates), and then wait for the next version to be released and once I ended the update it's rating time.

I tried to make in-deep ratings but to be honest I don't know how much importance people gives to the ratings or if they only see the starts numbers and that's it. Maybe having the option to see the ratings with the most likes at the top and not in a chronological order, or maybe having the option to rate only the current version of the game and not the entire game.

 

[Avaron1974]

Any reviews done for a 0.1 or 0.2 I completely ignore.

They are either fanboys/fangirls of the dev or far too easily pleased/upset for their opinion to be worth my time reading.

It made me draw the line when I saw a 0.1 being hailed as the best game ever made.

 

[おい！]

I know myself that version numbers of games do not mean a lot, I have played some that have been listed as version 4, 6 or 7 and seem to last as long as this

in the way of content.

 

[obsessionau]

The best rating and review system I have seen was on MyAnimeList.

In their system you could rate it out of 10 and record when you last watched it. Which I think would be really useful for how VN's get released. If I played 0.6 I probably want to skip 0.7 and 0.8 if it was just two weeks ago. Also I don't need to write a review just to express/keep track of my interest.

I could then compare my ratings with other users and see where we differed. This was great because I could easily find other users who had similar ratings (and tastes) to mine and keep an eye on what they had watched and liked that I hadn't seen yet.

I don't think the current rating/review system on here is really usable for anything whether it be a version 0.1, 0.6 or 1.0 as what I enjoy appears to differ from the many on here. Sadly I am forced to go by how much I like the games screenshots. If they have good taste in picking screenshots, hopefully their VN making skills match!

 

[prrt]

unless there is a new slonique game.
Then everybody right away know what they think of the game (and what will be future ).

 

[Xanado]

I've only done one review so far but my opinion is you shouldn't even review something that's still a work in progress. Now I know that's not how the site or adult games work so I put down my first review but at least I waited until the game was passed the 0.5 mark. Give the games some time to stew before reviewing OR put down the version number you are reviewing.

 

[HopesGaming]

From a dev's perspective, 0.01 reviews are a great tool to see if your game is on the right track.
But also a great confidence boost as you are absolutely clueless to have your game will be perceived once you release it.
Without reviews (the in-depth ones), you have to go through a chaotic thread filled with different opinions. And the negative people tend to be the loudest and hence you could get the impression that these negative people may actually be right when in fact they could just destroy the whole project.
Reviews are simple and give a better overview, imo.

Now from the players perspective;
There are tons of new games being released nowadays. Without the review system, you have no idea which one of these is promising or which one is in fact just bs money grabs. The reviews are on the current version and if a 0.01 gets 5 stars it's a very promising new game and if it's low stars then the odds for that game being bad is rather high.

And despite what people may think, people are not easily given 5-star reviews out right and left. Sure, you can find some examples on some few games that have gotten these, but overall, and especially with unknown devs, people will say bs when there is bs to be seen.
Example, look at the current game thread. Is it all filled with 5 stars? Not even close. And the few 5 stars there are is mainly from one or two votes and then you can kind of figure it out yourself if it's valid or not.
But look at you can find some games with several votes already and those have 4+ ratings.
Those are few among many and without reviews, you would not notice such games.

I can not see the reasoning for removing the reviews for 0.01. >
For me, it sounds like people were expecting 0.01 with good ratings to be full-fledged games ready to be played for several hours. Those are not the faults of the review system itself but rather some peoples views upon the review system.

 

[icesun]

I'd like to start off by saying that early reviews can be a nice orientation for people who like to get an impression of a game before downloading it themselves, so I'm all for reviews for any stage of a game, but:
Having something like the google play store review system ("this review was done for an older version") would help a lot, or (if that' something our staff would be able to code) an automated line on top of each review like

This review was done for [v.x.x.x]*.
(the version number being taken automatically from the OP or make a hidden attribute for it if that's possible and having that part update itself if/when the review gets edited)

would be sweet, especially if the reviews aren't sorted by date of writing alone but taking "current version reviews" on top.

And while it's obvious that this can't eliminate unwarranted fanpraise or trolls, everybody here should have/develop an eye for those for themselves, imho.