What happened to constructive criticism?

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I see so many posts on games that just blast the Dev for their renders or their story or whatever but they do not provide anything useful. What is the purpose of that? I do not get it. If there is no one out there making a game you want to see, then make one yourself. I, for one, do not have the time or ability to make a game so I enjoy what other people are putting their time into. Admittedly, I have put a negative comment on a game for a Dev who likes to abandon games. It was not an attack on the games he makes, just his penchant to move on to a new game when he gets bored. This is pretty much just a venting post but after seeing all the hate on a daily basis, I needed to get it out.
 

Gomly1980

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Jul 4, 2017
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Inflated sense of self importance.

The same reason people go into threads and say "i'm not playing this" .... they think their opinion means something.

Anyone with a bit of common sense knows it doesn't. If you can't give reasons why in a constructive manner then you aren't saying anything we need to read.

You get those that think games should cater to them and only them. I have seen in a few games some character models get shit thrown at them because some people don't like how they look. It doesn't matter if anyone else likes them they demand the dev change it to suit them.
 

WhitePhantom

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I wish more people would give constructive feedback, it so much more helpful.

I've had people on my game say "this is shit", well thanks, what are the chances of it ever improving it for you, absolutely none because you've given no detail whatsoever.

I've also had people comment and say "hey this, this, this and this don't make sense, they're wrong, I don't like this for this reason etc". I remodelled an entire character from scratch because lots and lots of people were saying they look awful, and if everybody is saying they look awful and very few people like them, maybe I need to take a look at that, and that one character was one of the first things I made in Daz and she was pretty rough looking. If people are saying "this doesn't make sense" or "this is missing", I'll take it on board and a lot of the time go back and edit or fix it if I agree with them, or at least keep it in mind when I'm doing something similar in future if I don't.

So, although I can only really speak for myself, constructive criticism also means your criticism is actually listened to and read, where just saying "it's shit" achieves absolutely nothing, so I have no idea why people do it, other than they just want to get it off their chest.
 

thecardinal

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Jul 28, 2017
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Most devs seem to have no problems with constructive criticism. I try to encourage it by responding to people with issues/questions and improve the game for next time.

A character in my game has vitiligo (a skin condition) and I have had multiple people point out that she was ugly. Don't know why they played the game when she is on the banner and the screenshots but whatever.

@tluciotti, was that developer Slonique? They don't come around f95 anymore because of the "trolls" here but they love trashing people's projects in other parts of the net.
 

Goudachan

New Member
Aug 1, 2018
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Well, it's a bit sad to just bash the work of others with a simple "it sucks" but sometimes there are people really helpful. Since English is not my first language, the first time I made a game I had a LOT of typos, and this user that played the game made me a Word document with screenshots showing my mistakes with the correction at the side. I messaged him thanking for taking his time to do that, also I added him to the credits of the game.

Developers also should state they want feedback, so people jump on the bandwagon of "feedback mentality", I'm pretty sure most people are cool, but a negative comment hits harder than a positive one.
 

Kaiww

Member
Jul 8, 2018
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I think people should step down and look critical at themself. Most Devs are indeed working with very low resources and alone. This means for me the Dev is free to do with his game as he wants.

Constructive criticism would be awesome but sadly people expect that a dev, which is mostly working in his free time and his games can mostly be downloaded for free, is supposed to do what the player want to. To be Honest....why does the Dev should give a dam what you want ? It's his fu.... game ;)

I am always happy if for a Game that i like an update is made which i can appropriate. If that's not the case then it is my god dammed problem not the problem of the dev.

If you do not like a game you can surly say so and say why, but you have no right to bash or tell the dev what he has to do different joust to please YOU.......

That is only my humble opinion of course. ;)
 

VNON

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Sep 25, 2016
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i think because a lot of devs will only follow the money, :D their top patreons
polling on thier patreon page, changing the plot for their patreons, etc

while free costumer doesn't listened, they go berserk mode :D
imho
 
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TheFallacyGuy

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Oct 16, 2017
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What really gets to me is when there is some kind of particular fetish there is always some person posting why they won't play it because of it.
"Hey, this game features a man involuntarily transform to a girl so I'm not playing this." Like, wow, it's almost like this game's fetishes wasn't tailored to suit your particular tastes. What a shocker!
I mean, even if you are posting it in a respectful manner, it's still just such an inane and useless comment. "This fetish doesn't turn me on!" ok... what can I or the dev use that information for? Why should I care? Are you so histrionic that you feel the need to comment on every thing?
 

GuyFreely

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May 2, 2018
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I'll play a little devil's advocate for a moment. There is some value in raw ratings. If people take the time to review it and say 1 star: it's shit. That's not exactly an invalid review. The same as someone saying 5 stars: It's great. I mean theoretically you would even want the people who love your game to tell you WHY they love your game, but I'm guessing you aren't as bothered by that. It's human nature. The point I'm making is that with enough raw ratings, it SHOULD balance out. Even if it's just thumbs up or thumbs down. If I look through your game thread and 30 people felt the need to stop by and say it's shit, there might be something to it. If one or two people say it's shit and dozens of other people like it, meh, ignore them. Now this isn't very useful to the developer, but it is useful to the potential player. As someone trying to decide to spend time and maybe money on a game, every data point serves a purpose.

I don't think most people care if you make your game better or even make your next game better. They will just play something else if they don't like it. You can't make them care about you. Will people yell at you for including futa in Futaland Fuckery? Probably. Will people tell you your game needs incest or NTR or whatever the fuck they prefer? You betcha. In my experience, people are generally terrible for any number of reasons. You have to try your best to not let shitty people get to you.

If you make a game and everyone tells you that your renders are shit, but don't say why, then guess what you can do? Go to the forums, post some of your renders and ask people what you can do to make them better. I've been on here long enough to know that someone will tell you. Be proactive. If you seek out the feedback, you can probably find it.

That being said, I think all feedback should be constructive. If you have something to say, then take the time to say it. Sorry if this comes off as a bit high and mighty, just trying to provide a different view.
 

TheFallacyGuy

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Oct 16, 2017
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I'm gonna be that annoying douchebag who responds to a post bit by bit.

I'll play a little devil's advocate for a moment. There is some value in raw ratings. If people take the time to review it and say 1 star: it's shit. That's not exactly an invalid review. The same as someone saying 5 stars: It's great. I mean theoretically you would even want the people who love your game to tell you WHY they love your game, but I'm guessing you aren't as bothered by that. It's human nature. The point I'm making is that with enough raw ratings, it SHOULD balance out. Even if it's just thumbs up or thumbs down. If I look through your game thread and 30 people felt the need to stop by and say it's shit, there might be something to it. If one or two people say it's shit and dozens of other people like it, meh, ignore them. Now this isn't very useful to the developer, but it is useful to the potential player. As someone trying to decide to spend time and maybe money on a game, every data point serves a purpose.
I can see your point, but unfortunately we are humans and humans are stupid creatures. We have a thing called negativity bias, where we perceive negative impressions as more important and they stand out more in our mind than the positive impressions. Ever wondered why comments on YouTube/Reddit/Tumblr/the entirety of 4chan is always such a shit show? It's due to mostly negativity bias. It's also due to anonymity. Imagine all of these "this is shit" commenters were all playing the game while the developer is in the same room, and they had to tell them face to face that the game is shit? If that was the case how many do you think would actually go through with it? Probably not many. The lack of personal responsibility on the internet makes it easier to be nonconstructive and rude.

It's true that the quantitative research of those kind of comments can be valuable for a general picture, but for any sort of valuable insight in WHAT to actually do, the dev will need good thought out qualitative research. The thing that tips things into the negative scale is that due to our negative bias there is more of a justification in the commenter when it comes to negative stuff. Especially if the negativeness is contrarian. That means that there is a vocal minority of negative people and a silent majority of positive people, this in turn makes the quantitative data skewed and inaccurate.

I don't think most people care if you make your game better or even make your next game better. They will just play something else if they don't like it. You can't make them care about you. Will people yell at you for including futa in Futaland Fuckery? Probably. Will people tell you your game needs incest or NTR or whatever the fuck they prefer? You betcha. In my experience, people are generally terrible for any number of reasons. You have to try your best to not let shitty people get to you.
True, assholes exist and will always exist. Does that mean we should never call them out for that, or tolerate it or even encourage it? Not in my opinion. These idiots will then also have to accept that they in no way are helping devs grow, and instead jumping from newbie dev to newbie dev who are all likely to repeat the same mistakes again and again because there is little general feedback consensus.

If you make a game and everyone tells you that your renders are shit, but don't say why, then guess what you can do? Go to the forums, post some of your renders and ask people what you can do to make them better. I've been on here long enough to know that someone will tell you. Be proactive. If you seek out the feedback, you can probably find it.
That stuff clutters up forums to prevent something that users of said forums should provide in the original thread in the first place. It's inconvenient to have multiple threads for the same game, especially if the threads serve pretty much the same purpose.
 

GuyFreely

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May 2, 2018
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I'm gonna be that annoying douchebag who responds to a post bit by bit.



I can see your point, but unfortunately we are humans and humans are stupid creatures. We have a thing called negativity bias, where we perceive negative impressions as more important and they stand out more in our mind than the positive impressions. Ever wondered why comments on YouTube/Reddit/Tumblr/the entirety of 4chan is always such a shit show? It's due to mostly negativity bias. It's also due to anonymity. Imagine all of these "this is shit" commenters were all playing the game while the developer is in the same room, and they had to tell them face to face that the game is shit? If that was the case how many do you think would actually go through with it? Probably not many. The lack of personal responsibility on the internet makes it easier to be nonconstructive and rude.

It's true that the quantitative research of those kind of comments can be valuable for a general picture, but for any sort of valuable insight in WHAT to actually do, the dev will need good thought out qualitative research. The thing that tips things into the negative scale is that due to our negative bias there is more of a justification in the commenter when it comes to negative stuff. Especially if the negativeness is contrarian. That means that there is a vocal minority of negative people and a silent majority of positive people, this in turn makes the quantitative data skewed and inaccurate.



True, assholes exist and will always exist. Does that mean we should never call them out for that, or tolerate it or even encourage it? Not in my opinion. These idiots will then also have to accept that they in no way are helping devs grow, and instead jumping from newbie dev to newbie dev who are all likely to repeat the same mistakes again and again because there is little general feedback consensus.



That stuff clutters up forums to prevent something that users of said forums should provide in the original thread in the first place. It's inconvenient to have multiple threads for the same game, especially if the threads serve pretty much the same purpose.
Yes, people are more likely to post a negative comment or review than a good one. This has been shown. Even so, many games around here have 4+ stars (with a decent number of reviews), so something must be working right. If any game can get 4+ stars, then your game can too, logically speaking. If your game has 2 stars after 30 reviews, maybe it's your game.

Can we fix assholes? I don't really think so. I think you fight battles you can win. You think someone who left a 1 star "this is shit" review is sitting here on this thread re-evaluating his life? I don't. You think if you individually message that person and say "Hey buddy, noticed you left a 1 star review, what didn't you like specifically?" you'll get a good reply? MAAAAYBE, but I wouldn't put the odds very high. I'm not sure what could really be done to reform these people or even reform the method of how people leave feedback that will have a satisfactory result. If someone wants to debate a solution, I'm all for it.

I don't know how it clutters up the forums unless it's in the wrong section. I think most people would post this in Programming and Development or post art in the Daz Art thread. If there isn't a satisfactory place for it, then make a place for it (the admins). It's a virtual space that is subdivided into sections, it's not like talking in a crowded room.
 

baneini

Engaged Member
Jun 28, 2017
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What is a useful critique? Often the issue is a matter of dev needing to spend a few years learning a talent so they could make a playable game, there is no constructive way to say that.
When you have an overall good game with some tiny flaws you can possibly fix them just with highlighting the issue, however some games are just trash and impossible to fix as the issues are too fundamental. You need to the fix the devs skill set first. In the latter situation prepare to see a lot of "wow this is shit" as it's true.

People know something is bad and good without being able to communicate how to make something good. They just know something's off. Enter "x is shit". It's pretty bad if the dev ignores as invalid critique, it's valid even if expressed poorly. Customer is always right, as in, people know what they want and sometimes they really really don't want your game. You cannot expect the average game to tell you how to get good, theres other devs and experts that might.

Even with free games they need to be worth the players time and if they're not people are going to inform others of it, with the linguistic talent of a eastern european who learned english from gaming.
In the end it's a forum about players talking to other players rather than a developer platform where they can block people they view as undesirable.
 

Ataios

Active Member
Sep 11, 2017
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The Internet happened!

Seriously: Social media algorithsms tend to focus on extreme views. Therefore they don't work in favor of constructive criticism and nuanced positions. While this is still a forum and not a social media page, the lack of constructive criticism reflects a general cultural tendency.
 

redknight00

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Constructive criticism implies a desire for a game to be better, for the average porn game player, it's easier and more satisfying to get some enjoyment by trashing the game and moving on to the next rather than providing a good feedback. Or just flame it and still come back every month to flame it again.
 

Deleted member 167032

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Spot on...

Constructive = to build or build up... anything else that flames is just venting.

Constructive criticism implies a desire for a game to be better, for the average porn game player, it's easier and more satisfying to get some enjoyment by trashing the game and moving on to the next rather than providing a good feedback. Or just flame it and still come back every month to flame it again.
 

NandabaCanti

Active Member
Jan 4, 2018
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I kinda wonder if maybe part of this is that a lot of the folks best suited to offer constructive criticism are also the same folks too busy working on their own projects to have the time to try most of the games that come out.

Just from my own experience: I make it a point to check the games forum a few times a day to see what shows up, but I'm lucky if I get around to trying out more than 1 or 2 games a month. I've just got way too much on my plate already and something really has to impress me on first contact to even consider doing anything more than skimming through the summary and taking a quick look at the screenshots. There're only about 3 or 4 games I actively track the updates of and even those I tend to skip a few releases between replays.

I imagine that isn't far off from a lot of other developers' situations as well, and game devs are the most likely to be able to articulate clear and concise ideas on ways a game can be improved based on their own experiences. Folks who just play the games can still have a lot of useful input, but the bulk of it will tend to be geared towards gut reactions based on personal preferences.
 
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Gomly1980

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Jul 4, 2017
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You'd think they would aim it at people less likely to question it like kids or morons.

I know we're perverts of varying degrees but we still don't click every link thrown at us with the promise of tits.

Throw in a beer and then i'll consider it.
 
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Xalenda

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Mar 8, 2018
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I know that some will disagree with me, but try to look at all criticisms as constructive in some fashion, because people will pick their battles if it means something.

For instance, one of my personal annoyances with a bunch of the games found / shared here is the horrible or spotty English translation for what looks like an otherwise great game.

“I am the cumming” gets hard to read after a while, but it would take far too long to make that complaint on a lot of the games, and I know not everybody uses or speaks English as a first language, or even with a post-high school literacy. So I don’t write those criticisms, because they’re not worth it to me.

On the flip side, being told that this game will have a fetish I look for, and it’s not integrated into the story as was described in the summary, or even in the game at all, makes me question whether the person was being truthful or if they just added the tag to draw in a larger crowd. These games, of which there aren’t very many, I will criticize; the inclusion of a fetish is more important to me.

Getting tons of “this sucks” can be disheartening (especially if it’s the same baseless comment repeated), but it can be a good teacher for what’s wrong as it meant something to somebody. Even if their vocabulary is as stunted as their post size.
 
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Deleted member 603338

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Replying generically to a couple posts on here. I read that some people feel that the DEVs only listen to their top money givers and for some, I am sure this is true but I know that is not a blanket truth. I have seen that some DEVs respond to every constructive post on their game thread. They do not always give an answer the person wants but they give an answer. If you change your game because there is an overwhelming response from the people playing it that something is not right, I can see that. If you change your game because one of the people giving you money every month does not like something in your vision, then I personally feel you are doing this for the wrong reason. For me, If I read the description and genre and I am interested, I download it and give it a try and if I am not, I move on. For my answer to one of the other comments made, yes, some of these DEVs just do not have the skills needed to make a game worth playing, that is undeniable but there is nice ways to say that you need more time and practice and not just call them shit and tell them to die and some of the other crap I have read