What is a game that you love and highly rated, but when you went to check its rating you were suprised it was rated low?

[MarshmallowCasserole]

You might as well not have a review system at all with this attitude. Mind, ChatGPT just made writing BS a lot easier, so if writing reviews was a (minor) struggle before, it's not now.

From practice, the overwhelming majority of likes comes from regular uses as well. It's trivial to detect a cohort of dummy accounts liking reviews posted from dummy accounts. Until actually farming and selling F95 accounts becomes a real practice like it is on big social networks, we're safe.

 

[Meaning Less]

Mind, ChatGPT just made writing BS a lot easier, so if writing reviews was a (minor) struggle before, it's not now.

Well but that's why review rules exist, if it is BS and reads like it, then it can be reported.

If anything the only way to solve the current review system is if more people were reporting all reviews violating rules, unfortunetely there aren't enough people doing so .

All the "game looks promising" and "I don't like sandbox" reviews should be reported, but people rarely care enough to even report them.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I don't see what would make them suddenly untrustworthy simply because they would be selected as F95 reviewers.
If they can analyze the game well and write objectively, more power to them i say.

He said it, for absolutely no other reason that him disagreeing with them ; "currently, critic reviews for other media is largely not trustworthy. By allowing anyone to review, sure there's a lot of shit to sift through, but there's also going to be the honest ones."

It's the advantage an opened reviewing system offer, the more people are able to write a review, the higher are the chance that you'll find reviews that talk about what you personally care about. And what a big part of the community care about is how hard their dick will be.
Therefore he will discard any "official" reviewer, because they'll talk about the use of SSS, the way the well handled lighting clearly improve the CGs, the writing that stay subtle but in the same time achieve to touch you, the story that starts like a Dating My Daughter clone but know how to drift from this premise to offer you an unique experience, and a lot of other things that he will consider as pure bullshit because he just want to beat his meat.

Those "official" reviewers would dare to give 4 stars to a game that don't even make him hard, can you imagine an instant how outrageous such reviews can be ?

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

All the "game looks promising" and "I don't like sandbox" reviews should be reported, but people rarely care enough to even report them.

Should they? The review rules are pretty vague, there isn't any particular rule that these low quality reviews violate. (Okay, the hypothetical example "I don't like sandbox" is potentially violating a rule, but only potentially and it's mostly a hypothetical because it's very rare for reviewers to openly state that they base their score solely because they like a genre)

I am not reporting these reviews exactly because I feel I would be considered abusing the report system instead. Even though I'm itching to do so. It would be great if a mod could weigh in.

There are only two clear actionable rules (don't review your own game, and 200 characters, do not circumvent) and lo and behold, these two are adhered to (but they set an incredibly low bar). As for other ones, I'm not gonna tell mods how to mod, but... yeah, maaaaaybe making rules less vague is something worth considering.

He said it, for absolutely no other reason that him disagreeing with them

He's referring to huge discrepancies between critic and audience scores on RT and similar.

 

[anne O'nymous]

He's referring to huge discrepancies between critic and audience scores on RT and similar.

Thanks to confirm what I said... It's "for absolutely no other reason that him disagreeing with them", and he disagree with them because he don't understand what they are saying and why it's important.

A critic isn't someone who's telling you that "you'll love this [movie/book/game]", it's someone who's telling you, "this [movie/book/game] have this and that", then let you decide by yourself if this mean that you can possibly enjoy it. But apparently nowadays peoples want everything served to them, and of course they are confused when something need them to use their brain and take a decision by themselves.

 

[Meaning Less]

Should they? The review rules are pretty vague, there isn't any particular rule that these low quality reviews violate. I am not reporting these reviews exactly because I feel I would be considered abusing the report system instead. Even though I'm itching to do so. It would be great if a mod could weigh in.

Sure it depends if there is anything else valid on the review or not, read the rules to know if the review is valid or not:

"game looks promising" isn't valid because it violates rule 3, praising the dev or predicting the future is not a valid game review unless also accompanied by an actual review.

And the "I don't like sandbox" violates rule 5, reviews are supposed to be about the game as a whole and not about someone's feelings towards sandbox, I mean if anything someone that hates sandbox probably shouldn't be reviewing games that have that tag in the first place.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

A critic isn't someone who's telling you that "you'll love this [movie/book/game]", it's someone who's telling you, "this [movie/book/game] have this and that", then let you decide by yourself if this mean that you can possibly enjoy it.

I disagree. The numerical score inherently can't tell you what a piece of media has or has not. Notice that this thread is about numerical scores first and foremost.

"10 out of 10". Go on, tell me what does that mean?

The in-depth review, yes, ideally should talk about the contents of the piece, but the rating isn't that. It's broadly a measure of how good you think a product is. Furthermore, the whole point of reviews, ratings, discussions is to help people find enjoyable media, you stated that yourself. Reviews don't exist for the sake of having reviews. Reviews and critics exist to serve the audience. Their sole purpose is to help end user pick or forgo a piece of media; if a critic is good enough to predict "you'll love this [movie/book/game]" then they are a good critic. They fulfill their purpose. Obviously for a non-personalized review that won't work very well, hence the approach you described. But it's a generalist fallback. A kludge.

And if a critic rates the piece wildly different from the general audience, then it casts doubts that his reasoning is in line with the way the audience thinks. You can't rate some trash 10/10 and be correct about the inner workings of the piece.

"game looks promising" if not also accompanied by an actual game review isn't valid because it violates rule 3

No? Rule 3: The review should only be about the game, not the developer (pricing, update times, etc). "Game looks promising" says nothing about the dev, it talks about the game. You could argue that it violates rule 1, but it's "Try to be objective", not "Be objective". They tried, they failed, rule not broken. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To be clear, I agree that the rules should prohibit this type of reviews, but I don't see how the current wording does that unambiguously. But I do not think it's fair to blame people for not reporting posts when they don't clearly violate the letter of the law.

 

[Meaning Less]

No? Rule 3: The review should only be about the game, not the developer (pricing, update times, etc).

It falls under the etc in that list of reasons that are not the game.

If you are reviewing a game based solely on something it could become in the future then you are reviewing nothing, unless that content is already in the game.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Notice that this thread is about numerical scores first and foremost.

Notice that VoidTraveler is talking about "people who can review properly", not about people who can rate properly. And that user4862 talk about "critic reviews for other media", not about critic rating.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

Notice that VoidTraveler is talking about "people who can review properly", not about people who can rate properly. And that user4862 talk about "critic reviews for other media", not about critic rating.

You can't review on f95 without giving a rather crude numerical rating. On second point, you conceded that it's also at least in part about rating.

It falls under the etc in that list of reasons that are not the game.

If you are reviewing a game based solely on something it could become in the future then you are reviewing nothing, unless that content is already in the game.

Yes... BUT.

You have to consider that strictly speaking, almost every ver0.1 game is going to be rated low. By design, it has not much going on. A typical first version has a low amount of scenes. If has characters not fleshed out. It has all its arcs incomplete. It has basically nothing to justify a good score.

Reviewing an incomplete game is inevitably going to rely on assumptions of what a complete game would look like given that content quality remains consistent with what is present in the demo. It's inevitably a different process than reviewing a complete or nearly complete game. As with all assumptions, there' a lot of room for mistakes, even if the thought process is valid.

If we actually begin to enforcing the rule strictly, you inevitably have to rate all new games very low. Because an incomplete game is objectively worse than a complete one. But that would defeat the entire point of rating, that is to help people to find new games to enjoy.

I'm not reporting something when adhering to the rule will ruin the whole review system for everyone. JURY NULLIFICATION LOL. And I'm not taking blame for that either.

There has to be a better rule is all I'm saying.

 

[Meaning Less]

If we actually begin to enforcing the rule strictly, you inevitably have to rate all new games very low. Because an incomplete game is objectively worse than a complete one. But that would defeat the entire point of rating, that is to help people to find new games to enjoy.

I have no idea why you believe this to be an objective truth, I've played tons of shitty complete games as well as some decent abandoned ones. There is no objective truth there.

Also if there isn't enough content in v0.1 to give a proper review then just wait until it has more content before reviewing.

Other than that there isn't much else to say here other than what I already stated, the only solution is for people to learn the review rules and follow them, otherwise they will keep droping nonsense reviews in every game.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

I have no idea why you believe this to be an objective truth, I've played tons of shitty complete games as well as some decent abandoned ones.

Which would've become even better were they (properly) completed is what I mean.

If the game quality is consistent, the closer to completion the game is, the better it becomes. From merely "decent" to good.

That's the objective truth.

And yeah, some games were terrible from start of development to end, no questions there.

Also if there isn't enough content in v0.1 to give a proper review then just wait until it has more content before reviewing.

Okay, so all 0.1 are not rated. How's it helping to find new good games? You're always extrapolating when rating an early version. That's fine, but that is rating in potential at its core.

Other than that there isn't much else to say here other than what I already stated, the only solution is for people to learn the review rules and follow them, otherwise they will keep droping nonsense reviews in every game.

That's more like the goal, rather than solution. The solution to all world's problems is for people to become enlightened. The real trick is how to guide them to that state.

 

[Meaning Less]

If the game quality is consistent, the closer to completion the game is, the better it becomes. From merely "decent" to good.

That's the objective truth.

Again I don't see how this is close to any truth, if anything ratings of lower versions tend to be higher exactly because often times the best is at the start where the story was well though, so if anything quality tends to go down with time because devs run out of ideas or similar.

But again, as long as the content you are rating is already included in the game I see no issue, people can rate a demo as a demo, it seems like you believe people can only rate a demo in comparison with the full game but that's just irrelevant especially considering many games are never going to be completed.
The rating should obviously be for the current version, not for the future or the past, that's also why there is even a rule requesting people to add the version they are rating.
If the game gets better or worse later is irrelevant, people should rate what they have so far, nothing else.

 

[Yngling]

Is there even an objective truth to reviewing?

For example, I happen to like Tolstoy's "War and Peace". I think it's an amazingly complex and deep story. I would rate it 5 stars. Since it is widely regarded as one of the great literary works of humanity, critics seem to agree with me.

But I can also see why people would rate it 1 star. For example:

- All these Russian names and nicknames are way too confusing
- So many pages??? Are you kidding me???
- There are too many different storylines
- Who is the MC anyway?
- I don't really like stories about warfare and/or romance
- I don't like historical novels
- Russians are bad
- etc.

So if I say "you should read it", it does not mean that you'll like it.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

When reviewing you must stay as neutral as possible regardless of whether you like what you review, or hate it.
You describe it, maybe leave a personal comment or recommendation somewhere, but let people decide for themselves whether what you described is something they want to dive into.

Or at least, this is how i am doing my reviews.

 

[anne O'nymous]

You can't review on f95 without giving a rather crude numerical rating.

Personally I read the review and don't care a single second about the number of stars gave, because it mean absolutely nothing. I want to know what they game have, or what its missing. It's what make be decide, not an arbitrary number.

On second point, you conceded that it's also at least in part about rating.

Hmm, sorry, but in the post you point, I wrote exactly the opposite. I, relatively explicitly, said that the rating (you'll love this) is useless, and that what matters is what is said (it have this and that), since it's what help you decide by yourself.

 

[Jaike]

Ladykiller in a Bind had a rating of like 3... before I rated it highly. One of the reviewers' main complaints was that you could only play as a lesbian protagonist and that the art looks "pc". Another one tripped over a modest plot weakness in the ending. Unfortunate that it got the attention of two weirdos making mountains out of mole hills.

It's a VN with small gaming elements that aged really well and still feel innovative to today's new VNs. If you can live with the horror of a lesbian protagonist and like wordy wholesome VNs, I can recommend it.

 

[VMiller]

For example, I happen to like Tolstoy's "War and Peace". I think it's an amazingly complex and deep story. I would rate it 5 stars. Since it is widely regarded as one of the great literary works of humanity, critics seem to agree with me.

I read everything in the school curriculum when I was in school. Even Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment I managed to get through.
But I couldn't read War and Peace. It may be good to read this work in other languages, but Tolstoy and Dostoevsky's Russian is terrible.

 

[User4862]

He said it, for absolutely no other reason that him disagreeing with them ; "currently, critic reviews for other media is largely not trustworthy. By allowing anyone to review, sure there's a lot of shit to sift through, but there's also going to be the honest ones."

It's the advantage an opened reviewing system offer, the more people are able to write a review, the higher are the chance that you'll find reviews that talk about what you personally care about. And what a big part of the community care about is how hard their dick will be.
Therefore he will discard any "official" reviewer, because they'll talk about the use of SSS, the way the well handled lighting clearly improve the CGs, the writing that stay subtle but in the same time achieve to touch you, the story that starts like a Dating My Daughter clone but know how to drift from this premise to offer you an unique experience, and a lot of other things that he will consider as pure bullshit because he just want to beat his meat.

Those "official" reviewers would dare to give 4 stars to a game that don't even make him hard, can you imagine an instant how outrageous such reviews can be ?

You're trying awfully hard to discredit me while ignoring the rest of what I said. All that time and effort could've gone in to refuting what I said but instead you chose to use it making shit up.

What I want in a review is honesty about the good and bad, because that's what's informative. Former reviewers have said that while working for major publications, they weren't allowed to score blockbusters or triple a games less than 7/10, because reasons. Looking through Google Play Store, broken apps have majority 5 star reviews. There's also this:

You must be registered to see the links

So many reviews are dishonest or outright lies, much like your intentional misrepresentation of me. Limiting who can and who cannot leave a review is simply a terrible idea. Let people find their own trusted reviewers to base their decisions on.

 

[anne O'nymous]

You're trying awfully hard [...]

Don't flatter yourself, I put no efforts in that.

Looking through Google Play Store, broken apps have majority 5 star reviews. There's also this:

You must be registered to see the links

Can you be consistent for an instant ?
You can't use proof that reviews opened to anyone lead to pure bullshit, as demonstration that official reviewers, selected for their ability to be as impartial as possible, what VoidTraveler talk about, are a bad thing. It's purely ridiculous.

So many reviews are dishonest or outright lies, much like your intentional misrepresentation of me. Limiting who can and who cannot leave a review is simply a terrible idea. Let people find their own trusted reviewers to base their decisions on.

You see, when I said that I put no efforts, it's because everything is coming from you. You're saying it yourself, you don't want reviewers selected for their honesty, what you want is reviewers that will have the same interest than you, whatever how wrong they can be.

Thanks for your cooperation.