Ratings

[RossoX]

Steam actually has a few features that improve the review system.

I use steam a lot and have written many reviews there myself, as well as using the reviews in order to see what I will buy or not, and I can confidently say that their review systems are as imperfect as any:

• "One of them is sorting reviews by how many people found them helpful": A review being "helpful" is subjective. Many crappy meme reviews are placed at the top of a game's page because people found it to be "helpful". In the same vein, there are also a lot of tear-jerk bait reviews (things like "my life has changed/been saved by this game"). So if we can't trust people to be unbiased or malicious when writing a review, how can we trust people to be able to tell apart the truly helpful reviews from those low effort ones?
• "the other is having two separate ratings for a game, one for the last 30 days and one for all time": This also doesn't solve the problem, it just segregates the scores between "biased old reviews" and "biased newer reviews". With that said tough, having this separation could help readers by showing what is the general consensus on the game's recent versions specifically.
• "Steam also does only thumbs up/down votes": I disagree. At the very least, it would also need a middle-ground or neutral option. This is in fact something that many reviewers on steam ask for when witting their reviews; sometimes you think a game has potential but is not there yet, and other times you disliked a game but can see its qualities... for both of those cases a neutral option on steam would be applicable and more appropriate.

The key takeaway here is that no matter which new mechanic or feature one comes up with in trying to improve a review system, it will always have flaws due to the simple reason of them being created and managed by humans. The very fact that every single site/forum/platform in existence has a different variation or different mechanics of scoring systems is itself testament that there just isn't a catch-all solution to the issue. The best we can do is add some patch-ups here and there and hope that the readers themselves have a good judgment to properly sort the actually helpful from the trash.

 

[Rezi7272]

Ratings always was and always will be highly subjective, because of that don't be suprised even if ratings will be changed, there will be almost same amount people, who dislike fetish in that particular game and will give the game a lowest rating.

As for missing out games, which are you can consider good, you need find review, which represent information what YOU think is important.

The only way to pick games based on review, no matter how strange it sounds is find good review\reviewer. And likes are not very helpful, since review with lowest rating will probably have the most positive likes.

 

[telotelo]

it's funny to had people actually still based their decision to try some games on rating
we had standardized op here which can actually tell the gist of the games
as long as there is proper tags, representative screenshot, and some notes (changelog if still in development). . .
it's usually more than enough to decide if the game is worth to be downloaded or not
you can also ask some question fast in 1st page before you decide (as long as it's not off-topic )

tbh am rather let them ditch the rating feature from this site because that's some room for misuse and we all know it
no matter how sophisticated the system are the bottomline of this feature is still shit in reality
it's in fact just some collection of opinion converted into 1-5 points no matter if you give some 'weight' to them
old utube used to do this 5star rating system, but now the do like / dislike and we know how that thing worked out
as mentioned above the rottenshit expert reviewer also had their misuse

so why would some1 do that for pirated games? isn't the reason to pirate them is to try it firsthand?
i know if the game will cost me any, i prolly need to see review/rating first or maybe, pirate it (just for some quick research)
so having a rating is actually counterproductive to our beloved site, a lot of free stuff just got cropped out by this
fortunately as you experience more and finally can form your own opinion and see your own taste. . .
the rating, in the end, didn't matter
there are people who actually play selectacorp and make a good review on it, who am i to judge

so, you didn't agree with some low review on recent games you enjoyed? why bother?
the review didn't matter, what really matter is you already played it
should you write your own review to counter that low review?
just find another game

i frequently encountered the 1st page of games i was downloading full of people. . .
actually waiting each other out to try the game, something like 'is there any good in there' or 'i'm waiting for review'
some fucking pussy hang around together and harping about their precious time rather than do the proper job
don't be like them, download and experience, and maybe rub one out while at it

Spoiler: fuck the rating

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[CocoVC]

Spoiler: fuck the rating

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I thought about that suggestion (as I am dealing with curators on Steam), but I can foresee a lot more "mods/staff" complaint threads appearing.

 

[Deleted member 1370694]

I wished Steam would allow sideway thumb ratings. A prime example would be to me the game Deadly Premonition. The story, plot and characters, especially the main character Francis York Morgan, were outstanding, but almost everything else was atrocious, especially the technical aspect, gameplay, controls. Essentially it was the most terrible game, but would have been a great movie or series.

 

[Spacc123]

The reason that I think (unnecessary) bad reviews are 'worse' then (unnecessary) good reviews is quite simple:
Bad reviews make people miss out on, potentially, good games. Good reviews could be a waste of time at most.

I rather waste time than miss out on good games.

Also, I know reviews are just a small part. But there are so many games, you have to filter on something. And genre/tags are also being abused. How many games have a genre and actually only 2 seconds of actual content in that genre.

 

[realakali]

I rather waste time than miss out on good games.

To avoid missing out on games, just play all the games that interest you based on other factors (artwork, tags, developer, whatever). It's going to be a waste of time at most.

I don't look at ratings at all. I look at tags to figure out if I am interested in the content, or if there is something I really don't want to see.

 

[jamdan]

Harsher or negative reviews are easier to do.

When you dislike something, you can go on and on about why it's so terrible.

But when you like it, you can't really explain why you like it. You just do.

I think it'd be helpful to allow .5 stars too. The way it is now, 3 stars is average and 4 stars is good. But that leaves out an entire level "Above Average".

Other things that would make the review system here better.

- Sort the reviews. As it is now, as far as I can tell at least, you can't sort the reviews. You have to manually look back through the pages. Sort by rating and sort by how many likes it got, sorting by time period would be good too. But that leads me to this.

- Some reviews, mainly the dumb negative ones that are a sentence long about nothing or vise versa, are useless. There should be a way for users to rate the review itself. If the review is deemed to be a shitty review, it gets taken down by the mods. The reviewer can then get a "Reviewer Rating" that let's people have an idea of who is full of shit and who is good when it comes to reviewing.

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

Harsher or negative reviews are easier to do.

When you dislike something, you can go on and on about why it's so terrible.

But when you like it, you can't really explain why you like it. You just do.

I don't think that's quite right. Either you're good at reviewing or you aren't. I can write detailed reviews on why I like a game just as well as on why I think a game is terrible. It is true though that obvious and "objective" flaws like bad render quality are easier to point out and criticize than more complicated subjects like storytelling. Often times people can recognize that a game has "bad writing" but can't really say why exactly or what could be changed to fix it.

Some reviews, mainly the dumb negative ones that are a sentence long about nothing or vise versa, are useless.

I would argue that there are a lot more useless positive reviews than negative ones. It's just that people mentally filter those out and don't get upset by them, while a negative review, no matter how well written and argued it is, will piss people off if they're a fan of that game.

 

[Staimh]

Talking about good vs bad reviews

I have only ever given 5 star reviews (only 6 to date) because I don't feel confident giving a review to a game I haven't completed (including attempting most of the optional paths). And I'm only going to play a game to that extent if I like it.
So if I dislike a game I stop playing it (and I believe am not best placed to review it).

As such I pretty much always ignore reviews of 3 stars or less on the basis it seems unlikely the reviewer has deliberately continued to play a game out to the end while disliking every minute of it.
Obviously if there were professional critics I might expect them to play to completion but pretty much everyone on this site is playing games by choice in their own time.

This doesn't invalidate lower starred reviews it just means I don't expect them to be based on the full game experience.

So the only reviews I will take note of are 5 star (maybe 4 star) and which look like some effort has been put in (eight to ten lines of comments minimum).

 

[arcaos]

I wonder if there could be an “I used cheats/mods” tag/score for reviews. There are a lot of games that I enjoyed but only after some tweaking. All the reviews of Lab Rats 2 pointed to mods and that helped me find a way better play experience.

 

[CrazyForgeStudio]

I never play a game here based on rating, neither normal games and neither movies, there are a lot of things with good ratings that I find boring, TV shows, movies, games.

 

[tanstaafl]

I came to make a post with this exact title. The aim of the post was similar, but not exactly the same, but why start a brand new thread when one already exists right? So I'll just resurrect this thread and say what I was going to say here.

I've written several reviews over the years, and I do tend to read the ratings as well. But usually only after I've played a game. When I pick a game it's because the concept caught my attention or the art was good, or at least had a unique style. I don't tend to agree with a lot of ratings, especially in regards to content like adult VNs. The range of tolerance for writing, art style and quality, and kinks is so broad that it would be a rare thing to find someone that agrees with my peculiarities.

What usually inspires me to write a review is if the game is exceptionally bad or is exceptionally good. I think it's more an outlet for myself than any kind of attempt at warning people away or to prop up a game.

Am I alone in this?

 

[nulnil]

I came to make a post with this exact title. The aim of the post was similar, but not exactly the same, but why start a brand new thread when one already exists right? So I'll just resurrect this thread and say what I was going to say here.

I've written several reviews over the years, and I do tend to read the ratings as well. But usually only after I've played a game. When I pick a game it's because the concept caught my attention or the art was good, or at least had a unique style. I don't tend to agree with a lot of ratings, especially in regards to content like adult VNs. The range of tolerance for writing, art style and quality, and kinks is so broad that it would be a rare thing to find someone that agrees with my peculiarities.

What usually inspires me to write a review is if the game is exceptionally bad or is exceptionally good. I think it's more an outlet for myself than any kind of attempt at warning people away or to prop up a game.

Am I alone in this?

Same. The only time I saw a review that truly got me to play a game was for Futa Dix (Fix?) dine and dash. Then I realized how much I hate japanse-hentai artstyle.

The only time a review truly mattered was for Lifeplay. Very rarely do I think there is absolutely no value in a game, and I'm more judgemental than most people on this site.

 

[Anthony11553]

rating alot of things 1-2 stars isn't a bad thing, in most mediums a lot of things are gonna fall into that category