Metacritic

[MasterDex]

As irrelevant as I believe Metacritic is, I do believe that negative scores, even in great number, are as relevant as any critic score, even more so. In the user reviews, you've got the honest-to-goodness moderates who'll rate games as objectively as they can and then you've got the extremes who are jut as likely to score a game a 10 as they are a 0. In the end, I think it balances out well enough. If there are overly negative scores been thrown at a game, there's often a source to the negativity and while it may be just blind hate, it can point to a reader something that they may take issue with - such as MW2 getting a bunch of negatives because of the PC version.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Except you get message boards users who bait and tell other people to give it the lowest score possible because they don't agree with the DRM or something. I don't think that balances out all of the 10s which would exist normally.

[Yantelope]

Yeah, I get tired of the 1 scores on sites because they didn't release the extended editions or it has some DRM or they changed something for the original. Spamming the rating as a form of activism is stupid. Make notes of that if you're going to do a review but actually review the product.

[MasterDex]

Yeah, I get tired of the 1 scores on sites because they didn't release the extended editions or it has some DRM or they changed something for the original. Spamming the rating as a form of activism is stupid.

 

I agree but is the spamming of 10 ratings for fanboys who can't view the games in question objectively any worse than the spamming of negative ratings? With both extremes spamming against one another, I think it does balance out. It may not balance out numerically, but it balances out towards a general attitude towards the game.

 

Let's look at MW2 for the PC. The user reviews work out as follows:

Positive: 309

Moderate: 89

Negative: 796

 

User Score: 3.9 - Generally Unfavourable.

 

Now, as a thinking man, the first question I'll ask myself is "Why so many negative reviews?" and upon doing some digging, I'd discover the reason why and personally, I'd come to the conclusion that the score of 3.9 and the generally unfavourable view of the users was somewhat justified. On the other side, the critic score is 86 out of 100 which I couldn't agree with.

 

Now let's look at Mass Effect 2. The user reviews work out as follows:

 

Positive: 237

Moderate: 26

Negative: 26

 

User Score: 8.7 - Generally Favourable.

 

While there were many people that had bad things to say about Mass Effect 2, the drive to vote down the user score on Metacritic wasn't so great as it was in the case of MW2. The end result, the user score, is still much more in line with my own thoughts of the game having played it than the critics score of 94 out fo 100.

 

Finally, let's take a look at Dragon Age II. The user reviews work out as follows:

 

Positive: 403

Moderate: 166

Negative: 910

 

User Score: 4.2 - Generally Unfavourable.

 

I still find myself agreeing more with the user score than I do the critic score of 82 out of 100, and I'm sure many others would as it tells a greater truth, in my opinion, than the critics score.

 

Whatever our opinions on the user scores, surely we can give them credit for one thing - the ability to easily use the full scale rather than just a quarter of it.

[Yantelope]

Now, as a thinking man, the first question I'll ask myself is "Why so many negative reviews?" and upon doing some digging, I'd discover the reason why and personally, I'd come to the conclusion that the score of 3.9 and the generally unfavourable view of the users was somewhat justified.

 

I couldn't disagree more. The lack of dedicated servers or LAN support don't speak to the quality of the game. If you're into those features then surly go and look and see if it has those but ratings spamming it because you're mad they cut a feature you like is silly and unproductive. If you look there are people already spamming the Harry Potter 8 movie box set on Amazon because "this set doesn't include the extended editions nor all the other bouns features". That has nothing to do with the quality of the set and any rational person should look at what is or isn't included before buying it without having to read negative spam reviews.

 

Here's another way of saying it. "The Honda LX sucks because it's not the Honda EX. 1/10"

Edited September 21, 2011 by Yantelope

[MasterDex]

Now, as a thinking man, the first question I'll ask myself is "Why so many negative reviews?" and upon doing some digging, I'd discover the reason why and personally, I'd come to the conclusion that the score of 3.9 and the generally unfavourable view of the users was somewhat justified.

 

I couldn't disagree more. The lack of dedicated servers or LAN support don't speak to the quality of the game. If you're into those features then surly go and look and see if it has those but ratings spamming it because you're mad they cut a feature you like is silly and unproductive. If you look there are people already spamming the Harry Potter 8 movie box set on Amazon because "this set doesn't include the extended editions nor all the other bouns features". That has nothing to do with the quality of the set and any rational person should look at what is or isn't included before buying it without having to read negative spam reviews.

 

Here's another way of saying it. "The Honda LX sucks because it's not the Honda EX. 1/10"

 

Likewise, I couldn't disagree more with your assertion that dedicated servers and LAN support don't speak to the quality of the game. I believe they do. Sure, they may not be an issue for your average console player but the standard on PC is higher* and thus the quality expected is higher. Compared side-by-side, a theoretical version of MW2 with LAN support and dedicated servers would most certainly be considered of better quality than the version of MW2 that was released, by the majority of PC gamers. Once you determine that dedicated servers and LAN support don't speak to the quality of the game, then you also bring into question the validity of rating games on other aspects of a game. If the absence of co-op or a short campaign can be grounds for scoring a game down, why then can't the exclusion of dedicated servers and LAN support (seen as standard for a long time on PC).

 

When scoring games, we don't just look at the quality of the build (i.e. how buggy it is, how well the control scheme works, etc) but also look at all the other aspects of a game and ask some questions such as: How does it compare to competitors? How does it match up to the standard? How does it compare to its predecessor?

 

You mention the Harry Potter 8 movie box and the negative reviews it's getting. Perhaps those negative reviews are somewhat justifiable? Is it not showing that some people are unhappy that it doesn't include certain things that they may expect as standard?

 

I think this discussion feeds into something I may have mentioned on these forums before - the idea that complaining is something bad. If it's fine to give a game a score of 10, why then is it wrong to score a game 0?

 

I can't speak to the validity of the Honda comparison as I don't know the difference between the LX and the EX but perhaps the LX does suck because it's not the EX, I don't know.

 

*Please don't make this out to be elitist. The standard for networked gaming on consoles is P2P, the standard on PC is dedicated servers. Dedicated servers provide a higher standard for networked gaming than P2P does.

Edited September 21, 2011 by MasterDex

[Yantelope]

It's like saying that the Honda sucks because it doesn't have power windows. Well, okay, if you need power windows then buy a car with power windows. Generally though you don't need a review to tell you if it has power windows. You need a review to tell you if it's reliable, if it's comfortable if it is quiet, what kind of gas mileage it gets and so forth.

 

Similarly I don't need a review spammer to tell me the game doesn't have dedicated servers. I do need a reviewer to tell me if the game is enjoyable, playable, buggy, long, short, balanced etc.

[MasterDex]

It's like saying that the Honda sucks because it doesn't have power windows. Well, okay, if you need power windows then buy a car with power windows. Generally though you don't need a review to tell you if it has power windows. You need a review to tell you if it's reliable, if it's comfortable if it is quiet, what kind of gas mileage it gets and so forth.

 

Similarly I don't need a review spammer to tell me the game doesn't have dedicated servers. I do need a reviewer to tell me if the game is enjoyable, playable, buggy, long, short, balanced etc.

 

With the power windows analogy. Is that not the same as reviewing a game based on different aspects? The power windows are just one aspect of the car up for review. If there were two identical models except that one had power windows, would the one with power windows not be considered the better car by most people? I think I'd consider power windows if I was in the market for a car, I'd be weighing it up along with other aspects, yeah, but I'd still like to hear of it.

 

I don't consider that to be on the same level as dedicated servers and LAN support. It may not be the case on consoles but these are important aspects to a PC gamer, more important than the equivalent of power windows (which I imagine being something along the lines of having split-screen, still something I'd give a plus for and would like to know but not something I'm going to cry over).

 

You don't need a spammer to tell you if a game doesn't have dedicated servers and you may need a reviewer to tell you if the game is enjoyable, etc but no-one is telling you to heed the words of the spammer and the score they give or even the score and opinions the professional critics give but they're there. The user score is a cumulative score with comments attached. There's some overly postive comments and scores and there are some nasty comments and undeservedly negative scores too. Taken as a whole however, I believe they tend to reflect, more often than not, the general consensus of gamers.

 

There's one problem, I suppose, with that. It's the general consensus of gamers and that means that certain aspects that wouldn't bother your average ignorant consumer will be brought up and be weighed up in the total tally.

 

All I'm saying is that I believe that as far as the user scores on Metacritic are concerned, the negative comments are as valid, regardless of the reason, as the positive and moderate ones. You just have to look at them for what they are and go to the critics for the general reviewing.

Edited September 21, 2011 by MasterDex

[fuchikoma]

Except you get message boards users who bait and tell other people to give it the lowest score possible because they don't agree with the DRM or something. I don't think that balances out all of the 10s which would exist normally.

 

I think that's handled by the fact that they offer a "metascore" for critical reviews, and a "user score" for user reviews. If there's too large a disparity between the two, it may be worth looking into.

 

 

And my two cents on the discussion between Yantelope and MasterDex - I get the feeling it's a matter of terminology. Yantelope is talking about the quality of the game - how good on average is the content that is there? I think MasterDex is talking more about the VALUE of the game - how much is it worth as a player, compared to other games?

Edited September 22, 2011 by fuchikoma

[MasterDex]

And my two cents on the discussion between Yantelope and MasterDex - I get the feeling it's a matter of terminology. Yantelope is talking about the quality of the game - how good on average is the content that is there? I think MasterDex is talking more about the VALUE of the game - how much is it worth as a player, compared to other games?

 

Mainly, yeah but I think the aspects of a game that Yantelope and I consider to determine overall quality differs a bit as well.

[fuchikoma]

Yeah, I don't disagree with either of you really. Both perspectives are important factors in considering a game. The difference I see though is that I think Yantelope is right that quality of the game can only apply to what is actually in the game - that it's not lower quality for lacking an optional feature. To your point though, the quality of the experience can very much depend on what you have available to you in the game.

 

Sort of like an object can have good workmanship even though it is simple, but something with more features may be more useful to you.

[MasterDex]

I agree that a game may not lack in quality because of an optional feature but I think there's a difference between standard features and optional features. If I was to buy a multiplayer console game, I'd hope it had dedicated servers but I'd be willing to settle with the P2P because that's the standard there. On the PC however, dedicated servers had been a standard for FPS games for a long time, they were better than P2P connections so they were the best thing to use for large multiplayer games. When you go against that standard, I believe you lower the actual quality of the game. It would be like releasing a PSX game unchanged and charging a triple-A price. Games have generally grown in quality as time went on. We got better graphics, better AI, more advanced games, better multiplayer. The quality has become inherently greater thanks to things like new shader models, more memory and dedicated servers so on PC, at least, I think it's justifiable to say that a game may be of lower quality due to the lack of dedicated servers or LAN support, at least on PC.

 

Going back on topic, the back and forth between Yantelope and myself is a good example of why I think that negative scores are as valid as positive and moderate scores. We all have our own opinion and rate games our own way. If the majority of people have the drive to post negative comments, that could say something about the game that a reader may want to consider.

[Yantelope]

The user score is a cumulative score with comments attached. There's some overly postive comments and scores and there are some nasty comments and undeservedly negative scores too. Taken as a whole however, I believe they tend to reflect, more often than not, the general consensus of gamers.

 

I think this is where I disagree. I think the user scores represent the feelings of a vocal minority. There's an old business saying that a happy customer might tell 3 people about your business but an unhappy customer will tell 10. It's like that with review scores. The pissed of people flock to spam a game with 0's and 1's whereas the generally happy people don't bother to go back and give a game a 7 or an 8. It's a revenge motive. People are angry and they intend to take revenge on the publisher for removing LAN support by spamming the reviews. I guess that's their prerogative but it doesn't make reviews helpful or meaningful and it definitely doesn't make a review a "consensus of gamers".

 

One other minor point is that once companies do respond to the negative criticism customers hardly ever reciprocate by removing those negative reviews.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Spore-Mac/product-reviews/B000FKBCX4/ref=sr_1_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Edited September 22, 2011 by Yantelope

[deanb]

So surely if a game has a high amount of negative scores it implies there's something to be pissed off enough about that you'll go track down the metacritic page n rate it down? And that is surely something worth looking into?

If a game has lots of positives n next to now negatives, then it's a good game with nothing majorly bad about it.

[Yantelope]

I just don't see user scores as a place to waive the red flag. Usually that stuff has already been reported on repeatedly by the gaming press and in most publication's reviews. Again, you're still only talking about a form of activism. It doesn't make user review scores representative of the general public's opinion. Most everyone I know loves MW2.

 

You'll notice there are only 693 reviews of MW2 on amazon. That's a pretty small sample size and pretty easy to manipulate with a few angry gamers.

 

As far as negative criticism goes. Black Ops had dedicated servers and still got review spammed a bit by PC elitists.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Call-Duty-Black-Ops-Pc/product-reviews/B003JVF728/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Edited September 22, 2011 by Yantelope

[deanb]

So you're only allowed to be part of the public opinion as long as your opinion is positive?

[Yantelope]

Are you just deliberately baiting me?

[TheMightyEthan]

He's not saying people with negative opinions don't get to contribute, he's just saying that user reviews tend to skew toward unhappy people rather than happy people, making them not terribly useful for future users wanting actual information about the product.

[deanb]

No just your assertion that negative scores are not part of the "general public opinion". When the whole point of the entire spectrum of the User Reviews is it's the general public opinion. You don't get to pick and choose what counts and what doesn't. Who is to say that positive reviews aren't motivated either?

 

edit: Also it seems we're now moving on to Amazon reviews by "PC elitists", because if a shitty port is shitty then you're clearly a PC elitist and not just someone taking issue with a shitty port. And as someone who is buying games from Yante's world those PC Elitist activists warning of a myriad of technical issues are wrongfully skewing the scale and not just alerting people to the fact the game has fucking issues.

 

edit 2: If you're wanting actual information then don't just look at the number but at what the people are saying.

[Yantelope]

Mostly what Ethan said.

[MasterDex]

I just don't see user scores as a place to waive the red flag. Usually that stuff has already been reported on repeatedly by the gaming press and in most publication's reviews. Again, you're still only talking about a form of activism. It doesn't make user review scores representative of the general public's opinion. Most everyone I know loves MW2.

 

You'll notice there are only 693 reviews of MW2 on amazon. That's a pretty small sample size and pretty easy to manipulate with a few angry gamers.

 

As far as negative criticism goes. Black Ops had dedicated servers and still got review spammed a bit by PC elitists.

 

http://www.amazon.co...howViewpoints=1

 

I'm still not seeing what's so wrong with the negative views here and I dislike that you're so quick to use the term PC elitist the minute a PC gamer has a problem with something. The reviews there seem pretty articulate and in line with one another, for the most part. Maybe, just maybe, there was actually a problem with Black Ops on PC at the time those reviews were written. To call those people out as PC elitists because they have something negative to say seems a tad childish to me.

 

In a previous comment you said that the vocal minority will post negative reviews and that:

There's an old business saying that a happy customer might tell 3 people about your business but an unhappy customer will tell 10.

.

 

The vocal minority are so called because they're the minority that are vocal about a product. It doesn't mean they're the only people that have a problem with a game, they're simply the ones that share their opinions, as opposed to the silent majority. There could still be a majority of end-users that feel the same way.

 

That old business saying has to do with consumer satisfaction and capturing a bigger market. It's promoting the idea that you should strive to make your customers happy, it doesn't condemn those unhappy customers. The idea is that rather than look at those unhappy customers and say "We don't care about them because they're not our market", the intelligent businessperson looks at the unhappy customers and asks themselves "How can I make them happy?" because making them happy means more customers - and more than just the unhappy ones as they'll spread the word and convince others to pick up the game.

 

This really does seem to go back to the idea that it's wrong to complain. For example, If a PC gamer complains, they're labelled as a PC elitist, regardless of how valid their complaint is. That's bullshit. As I mentioned in the Diablo III thread, we're consumers first and foremost and we have the right to complain about the products we buy. I really don't get the logic that positive and moderate user reviews and scores are fine but negative ones are not. It doesn't make sense. As I said, if the user reviews tend to point towards unhappiness, perhaps there's a reason for that? I think Metacritic is useful in showing that not every game is voted as generally unfavourable - The PC version of ME2, for example, is generally favourable. The information you can learn from user reviews may be information you know from keeping up with gaming news but what about the people that don't keep up with gaming news yet might take issue with something brought to light by a user review on Metacritic.

 

This idea that we should only focus on the positive aspects of a product, that we should just accept what the developers worked so hard to give us, is asinine, in my opinion. It serves no one but the developers. Do you think we'd be where we are today if we didn't demand more from the games we get? If no-one complained about graphical quality and there was no desire for improved graphics, do you honestly think the industry would have been so quick to foot the bill to get us to the fidelity we have today?

 

I'll finish with a link to this excellent RPS article from a couple of weeks ago: Actually, it's okay to complain

[Yantelope]

I called them PC Elitists because of all the comments themselves. Go read them.

 

"COD is supposed to be a PC game."

 

"The WORST dealbreaker IMO is the maps are Clearly MADE for a console NOT PC!"

 

"As is becoming the trend, PC games are no longer developed with PC players in mind."

 

Again, I never said it's wrong to complain. I said it's wrong to assume that the complainers represent a majority.

 

Trying to make that part clear there. The point of that adage "There's an old business saying that a happy customer might tell 3 people about your business but an unhappy customer will tell 10." is that you want to do everything in your power to prevent unhappy customers because bad word of mouth is very bad. The reason why I brought it up though is simply that people are more likely to complain than to praise. I don't see anyone arguing with me on this point but you're still somehow trying to say that the complainers represent the majority.

 

If a PC gamer complains, they're labelled as a PC elitist, regardless of how valid their complaint is.

To be fair, a lot of those reviews do comment on the buggy mess that the Black Ops PC release was and I'm all for that. I agree about weighing the validity of the complaints and the quotes above represent invalid complaints based of some stupid PC bias people have invented in their heads. If the release doesn't work and it's not being fixed then fine, give it a bad review. Just drop this stupid crap about how COD is supposed to be a PC game and dedicated servers are the only way to go. Some people don't like dedicated servers. I'm one of them.

Edited September 22, 2011 by Yantelope

[MasterDex]

I called them PC Elitists because of all the comments themselves. Go read them.

 

"COD is supposed to be a PC game."

 

"The WORST dealbreaker IMO is the maps are Clearly MADE for a console NOT PC!"

 

"As is becoming the trend, PC games are no longer developed with PC players in mind."

 

I'm not seeing how those could be construed as elitist comments.

• "COD is supposed to be a PC game." - Call of Duty began life on PC, it was PC gamers that supported the first game in droves, I think it's only natural that those same people are annoyed when the focus shift means they get a game of lesser quality. Don't forget that people had worries about FFXIII moving to the 360, that PS3 owners were angry that Valkyria Chronicles 2 was a PSP game, that the 360 version of TF2 didn't get any updates and that the PS3 version of the Orange Box was a bad PC port.
  
• "The WORST dealbreaker IMO is the maps are Clearly MADE for a console NOT PC!" - Again, I don't see the elitism here. The game was clearly made for a console and not the PC, this is evidenced by the problems the PC version released with when compared to the console version. The maps are just another aspect of that, small contained maps and lower player counts makes for a more "focused" game according to the developers but the truth of the matter is that it's easier to handle for consoles. This comment isn't elitist, though it is asking for more.
  
• "As is becoming the trend, PC games are no longer developed with PC players in mind." - That's entirely true, a lot of games these days aren't made with PC gamers in mind but with console gamers in mind. The PC gamers then often get the short end of a stick with a PC version that's less than good. This goes past the inherent advantages that PCs have over consoles as shitty ports are often shitty because they don't even get the basic stuff right. It'd be like releasing a game on consoles that didn't support controllers properly.
  

I'm going to assume that the reason you can't see these as valid complaints against the PC version of the game is because you don't have the experience with PC gaming to be able to do so.

 

 

Again, I never said it's wrong to complain. I said it's wrong to assume that the complainers represent a majority.

 

Trying to make that part clear there. The point of that adage "There's an old business saying that a happy customer might tell 3 people about your business but an unhappy customer will tell 10." is that you want to do everything in your power to prevent unhappy customers because bad word of mouth is very bad. The reason why I brought it up though is simply that people are more likely to complain than to praise. I don't see anyone arguing with me on this point but you're still somehow trying to say that the complainers represent the majority.

 

I never said that the complainers represent the majority, rather I posited that the complainers may represent the majority, just as the people with nothing but good to say may. I agree that people are more likely to complain than praise but that still doesn't make those complaints invalid. If people are more likely to complain than praise then surely a game with lots of complaints has something to complain about. If a game's rating remains generally positive despite more people liking to complain rather than praise then it must genuinely be a good game, no?

 

If a PC gamer complains, they're labelled as a PC elitist, regardless of how valid their complaint is.

To be fair, a lot of those reviews do comment on the buggy mess that the Black Ops PC release was and I'm all for that. I agree about weighing the validity of the complaints and the quotes above represent invalid complaints based of some stupid PC bias people have invented in their heads. If the release doesn't work and it's not being fixed then fine, give it a bad review. Just drop this stupid crap about how COD is supposed to be a PC game and dedicated servers are the only way to go. Some people don't like dedicated servers. I'm one of them.

 

As I said above, I don't believe those complaints are invalid and I believe you misunderstand where they're coming from (which you shouldn't feel bad about as it's very common). They're not coming from a place of bias or "PC is the best" raving fanboys but from a place of frustration. Standards are being lowered and I'm not even talking about graphical fidelity or design complexity. I'll take the simplest, most basic console game out today and be happy with a PC version of it so long as sufficient care is taken with the PC version. By that I mean that I expect to be able to run the game in 16:10, just as a console gamer would expect to be able to run the game in 16:9. I expect the netcode to work, just as a console gamer would, I expect the controls will feel good, just as a console gamer would. That's where these comments come from. Sure, higher resolution textures and PC-specific features would be nice but these comments come more from a desire for a good quality port than a desire for anything more than the console version.

 

Can I ask why you don't like dedicated servers?

Edited September 22, 2011 by MasterDex

[Yantelope]

We had a topic about it here:

http://forum.pressxordie.com/index.php?showtopic=664&hl=matchmaking&fromsearch=1

[TheMightyEthan]

I can't speak for Yant, but I prefer matchmaking over dedicated servers because it's just less of a hassle to get into a game, and I like the game automatically balancing the skills of the players. With matchmaking you don't have to bother trying to find a game that has enough players but isn't full, or having it kick you out of trying to join a server because it's full when the count said it had 3 slots open. It's just more convenient to use matchmaking.

 

Now, I understand the benefits of dedicated servers too, such as the server operators being able to customize the settings and apply mods and such, and I have experienced the joy finding a server that you really enjoy, but overall I prefer matchmaking. Ideally PC games should have both, because both have their own advantages and disadvantages, but if they're only going to have one I'd like it to be matchmaking.