Originally Posted by Myrthos
What I mean is how do you value several games that have a 70% positive score. Are they all equal? What if one has 30% negative and the other 40%. Are they still equal? If not, in what way are neutral votes counted?
And if they are not equal how is the list ranked with a game that has 70% positive with 40% negative vs a game that has 69% positive with 10% negative?

Well, the reader has to decide that for themselves. Let's take 3 examples.

Game 1 70% positive, 10% neutral, 20% negative
Game 2 60% positive, 35% neutral 5% negative
Game 3 68% positive, 20% neutral 12% negative

Game 1 has the highest positive score, but also the highest negative score. If I look at the reviews, I see 20% of the people hate it, because they think its too frustrating. I can judge for the texts that its an action rpg. I tend to get frustrated because of my general suckiness at that kind of combat, and skip it.

Game 2 has the lowest negative review. I read through the reviews and see that most readers think its a well crafted game, but few people would say its a classic.

Game 3 is a game that most people like. Some people are big fans. Others don't like for a variety of reasons, including the type of combat, or because the multiplayer part sucks.

Are they all equal? Of course not, because each game has its own audience. On the other hand a compilation of scores can give a pretty decent impression of a game. Its also can lead to interesting discussion like in sports. For example who was the better basketball player? Wilt Chamberlain, who so dominated the NBA, that they had to implement the 3 second rule just to limit him, or Michael Jordan, who won a massive number of championships? Who was the best all time American football quarterback Joe Montana or Tom Brady? Who was the best soccer player? People can compare numbers in this case, but since there are many variables one can always make an argument who was better one way or the other,

Originally Posted by Ripper
That's what worries me, if you see what I mean. I don't care how they vote, or what the final score is, it's that we'll attract more people that are more motivated by influencing a score, than people that are interested in participating in a genuine discussion, which I think is one of the strengths of the forum.

I understand that, but a minimum like 50 posts or perhaps 100, requires quite a bit of stamina just to be able to downvote some games.
And if that person would just be spamming in order to get there, it would be noticed I would think. Besides that votes from banned people would be removed.

Pro is a 1, Con is a -1, and Meh is a 0. You can do lots of fun math with that! Though there's some scores people do and miss-label.

The biggest one of those: the game with the highest average is the best game. Nope! The people rating the game are the people who bought the game and took the time to at least start playing it. (If you want to know whether a game is good, you'll need to get a group of RPG gamers and make all of them play each of the games.) This score will tell you whether people getting the game like it, though. If that number is high and you think the game looks good, you'll probably enjoy it. If it has a low score, though, you better do some digging to see what the game is really like.

You can also pick out the divisive games from the just-plain-meh games. A game that gets 5 pro's, 5 con's, and 20 meh's is probably just an average game. A game that gets 20 pro's, 5 meh's, and 20 con's is a "love it or hate it" game.

Why is 0 meh? Shouldn't 0 be okay and meh -1?

There could be a way to challenge an extreme positive or negative review, maybe from long time or high post count users. There could be a format in place to prevent extreme overreactions.

Personally I think publishers should be held accountable for releasing crap, often time developers are at the mercy of publishers. So there could be a separate category in each review to hold a publisher accountable. It's about damn time publishers start taking the heat, instead of the developers. These big publishers just buy up developers for their IPs then try to force out crap quality games. If they don't succeed they blame the developer and close them down.

Originally Posted by Acleacius
It's about damn time publishers start taking the heat, instead of the developers.

They do. Besides I think the responsibility is 50% to 50% or something like this. Publisher cannot wait for year until the game has been polished and all intended features have been implemented. It costs money for publisher. Developer should be professional enough not to create buggy product.

As long as there isn't Metacritic "This game crashed on my computer so I gave it a 0" lol. I know I rarely post anything, but I feel this community is more of a mature gaming group, so I would be interested in seeing how a rating system would work in this environment.

I think it's a great idea. Been a silent observer on this site for years, but the idea of user reviews on my go to RPG site has prompted me to join. I like the idea of getting a quick consensus of what other RPG lovers think, especially for games I may otherwise miss.

Welcome, Caiden! Nice to see you finally after all these years.
I hope we'll see a quick contribution on these forums by your hand too.

I'm alright with it, though I would keep the post count relatively high. Fifty strikes me as far too low. And a written explanation more than a paragraph or two I would also consider mandatory. Maybe a little form that gets gets posted with the written text, where the author fills out his estimated game time, what platform he played it on and maybe even basic system specs for PC reviews.

Maybe even a little check box identifying review bombs for being easily offended by perceived political agendas.

User game ratings can't hurt, IMO, though I'm more likely to go to Steam or Mobygames for them.