The context and long-term relevance of scores as a means to refence quality

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
This is why productive conversations about anything even mildly controversial is impossible in most online communities. Deliberately missing the point. Tossing out comments that take into account none of the thousands of words that have been written already in the thread. Ignoring context. Being provocative and argumentative just for the sake of it.

I don't have the patience for it anymore. Y'all have fun.

I'm honestly not sure what triggered you that much.

I asked if Pladio was allowed to have an opinion because you blatantly tried to dismiss him from taking part in the discussion for some reason. I'm having a hard time seeing where he did something that was offensive enough to warrant that. Can you give specific examples of the things you mention rather than just making blanket statements?

Well, not sure about scores but I do think that number of players currently playing says a great deal about a game and its longevity. For instance, Pathfinder WotR currently has 18,890 people playing a single-player rpg. That's good. Skyrim, a 10 year old game has 20,480 for SSE +3,998 Original players Fallout 4 has 15,884 and Witcher 3 has 10,000+ and it is pretty big on Gog too. The EA of BG3 has 2400 people, Solasta has a measley 430, and DOS 2 has 9,226.

Take that for what it's worth, but the data is recorded hourly by Steam iirc.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Well, not sure about scores but I do think that number of players currently playing says a great deal about a game and its longevity. For instance, Pathfinder WotR currently has 18,890 people playing a single-player rpg. That's good. Skyrim, a 10 year old game has 20,480 for SSE +3,998 Original players Fallout 4 has 15,884 and Witcher 3 has 10,000+ and it is pretty big on Gog too. The EA of BG3 has 2400 people, Solasta has a measley 430, and DOS 2 has 9,226.

Take that for what it's worth, but the data is recorded hourly by Steam iirc.

I'm surprised Skyrim is still selling that well and has a large amount of players.

It's no wonder Bethesda keeps releasing new editions. Rumor's predict Fallout 4 will also get a new edition. Only because Beth stopped the creation engine content.

Originally Posted by OverIt
I would say that the majority is right for the majority. If you have niche tastes then obviously you cant agree with a games quality based on what the majority says about a game.

Like I LOVE Elex, i beat it 3 or 4 times. I even tried to get a friend to play it by getting him a copy. But it is considered by the majority as a mediocre game.

As for review bombing vs 10/10s, they seem to even out in the grand scale of things. I dont give ratings on many games but the ones i do i give them 10/10 or 0/10. Because to me a 10/10 is "I enjoyed a game immensely" vs "i didnt enjoy the game at all". To me that is all i care about and that is who i rate game. After all isnt that the function of games? To give enjoyment?

I think many people score like that so i dont think that you should discard the score because it is a 0/10 or a 10/10. And imo the best way to use user scores is to look at some 10/10 reviews/comments and a few 0/10 reviews/comments.

For a brief moment, I almost thought I smelled a sock puppet. Now that would be embarrassing indeed.

As for the topic of how people review games, I can't think of anything more dishonest than someone rating every game they like a 10/10 and every game they dislike a 0/10.

Even if it's not your intent to be dishonest, it still is. Automatically giving a game a 0/10 because you didn't enjoy it is blatantly disingenuous and lazy. At least take a moment to say what you didn't like about it and try to assign what you "think" is a realistic score.

Originally Posted by lackblogger
You are now completely contradicting what Nereida spent the first half of the thread arguing for.

Apparently numbers don't matter.

By your logic, more people enjoy PK than enjoyed PoE, ergo the majority prefer PK. Just because PK has a greater ratio of negative reviews doesn't contradict that the majority of people prefer playing and enjoying it.

You can't have it both ways. Either number of players is a relevant stat or it's not. By the criteria you just promoted. By your logic, the negative reviews on PK are just a niche of players with individual opinions, the majority, a greater majority than PoE, prefer PK.

I think I didnt explain myself properly. That isnt what i am saying at all. As I have said sales/popularity of a game doesnt always infer "quality"(I dont like this term to reflect whether a person will like a game or not so i will replace it with "enjoyability"). But in general for the majority user scores reflect what the majority likes and enjoys.

Most of us here like or used to like single player rpgs. That is a pretty niche genre these days in terms of sales and popularity. I dont think that reviews can reflect what our niche tastes. I mean how can a person who loves CoD be able to review a single player RPG adequately? It will show how much a person who likes CoD likes the single player rpg. *not disparaging CoD players they like what they like* .

As for PK vs PoE, the first PoE came at a time that there wasnt anything else that was new like it. That is why the more recent reviews score lower. The difference between PoE and PK is negligible so it is personal preference here.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/pathfinder-kingmaker
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/p…ty-ii-deadfire
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/pillars-of-eternity

Originally Posted by JDR13
For a brief moment, I almost thought I smelled a sock puppet. Now that would be embarrassing indeed.

As for the topic of how people review games, I can't think of anything more dishonest than someone rating every game they like a 10/10 and every game they dislike a 0/10.

Even if it's not your intent to be dishonest, it still is. Automatically giving a game a 0/10 because you didn't enjoy it is blatantly disingenuous and lazy. At least take a moment to say what you didn't like about it and try to assign what you "think" is a realistic score.

But that isnt what people or even i do. I only review the games i like the most and hate the most. Most people cant be bothered reviewing games and when they do they feel they have a good reason in doing so.

As i said I love Elex, I beat the game 3 or 4 times. But I still didnt give the game a review at all. Mainly because I know it is a niche game, if there was ever a game catered to me this was it. I only have ever reviewed 1 or 2 games.

My main reason why i dont like objective reviews is because I find objectivity irrelevant. At the end of the day it is whether you enjoyed the game or or completely frustrated by the game that matters. Should you really give a game you enjoyed less a higher score because it is objectively better? I say no to this. If you disagree, we will have to agree to disagree here.

Originally Posted by OverIt
But that isnt what people or even i do. I only review the games i like the most and hate the most. Most people cant be bothered reviewing games and when they do they feel they have a good reason in doing so.

Er…that is what most people do when they review a game. If it wasn't, then all we would have is a bunch of 10's and 0's.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Er…that is what most people do when they review a game. If it wasn't, then all we would have is a bunch of 10's and 0's.

Have you had a good look at metacritic? Its a 50/50 divide usually between 10's + 0's and the 1-9's.

In the case of PK in the user reviews, 57 10s, 17 0s, So 74 out of 170+ reviews. And that is those that review the game properly. Most people just give the score and leave.

Originally Posted by OverIt
Have you had a good look at metacritic? Its a 50/50 divide usually between 10's + 0's and the 1-9's.

In the case of PK in the user reviews, 57 10s, 17 0s, So 74 out of 170+ reviews. And that is those that review the game properly. Most people just give the score and leave.

I can't say I've ever counted how many 10's and 0's there are compared to all the other numbers. I'm not going to start sifting through games to do that, so I'll take your word for it.

If what you say is true though, I find it pretty sad, and it only further erodes how reliable I think Metacritic is.

Originally Posted by OverIt
…
But that isnt what people or even i do. I only review the games i like the most and hate the most. Most people cant be bothered reviewing games and when they do they feel they have a good reason in doing so.
…

This. The question is to what degree does user reviews/scores on places like metacritic reflect how the opingion of the general set of buyers. And then the question of statistical independece is important. That is, does how much you like a game influence how likely it is that you post a review? It would really surprise me if it didn't. Its's likely that if you strongly like or dislike a game you're more proneto post a review/score. Therefore reviewers are less representative to the generlal set of buyers than one would wish for or think.

So while we can be quite certain about what reviewers think (possibly by excluding outliers like 10 or 1 scores), we know less of what those who bougt the game think.

I use the term buyers here in stead of players. There is reason to believe that those who continue playing a game mostly like it (consider the number of players who still play Skyrim). Those who didn't like the game is more likely to stop playing it.

pibbuR who to some degree knows what he likes.

This is a different discussion now.

Yes, I also think that what I like has more value than what anyone else likes. The total amount of players in the world that has any influence or validity on what I consider what is a good game is 1: me.

Yes, I also have reasons to like what I like and consider that what I like is more enjoyable than what others find enjoyable. The reason is, I like it, and don't care what the hell others think about it.

The whole point was demographics, and objective satisfaction rate, which is directly linked to quality and enjoyment - you are only satisfied by things which you enjoyed, you enjoy things which stand out because of the quality of the service.

It never had anything to do with how many people play the game, this was repeated time and time again and it still baffles me that some of the people I've been discussing with from the beginning of the thread haven't managed to get a grasp on the principle - what is being looked at is the % of satisfaction from the players that do play the game, exactly from all of them, not any trimmed section. If 600 players reviewed a game, then we look at all 600. If 3 million players reviewed the game, then we look at all 3 million of them. What we are not doing because it has no statistical value is taking a game with 3 million reviews, and selecting out of them only the 600 reviews that favour our interests. We take, in all cases, 100% of the data available, because the more data, the more accurate it will be when averaging out. Number of reviews doesn't matter, only matters that we take the 100% of them so the data is as accurate and as objective as possible.

Then we will have a lot of valuable data, but we will also have things like:
- People that are clueless and downvote the game for problems they imagine and don't exist. (ie, found an unbeatable enemy - turns out it's an optional encounter you can avoid and return to later)
- People who lack any criteria and only vote 10 or 0 because either the game is made by the studio they're honeymooning with, or the studio they have some biased issue with. (ie, BioWare fanboy/hater doesn't care about the game, just boosting/boycotting the company)
- People who can't separate reality from fiction, and upvote/downvote games for political/religious/social reasons that had nothing to do with the game's quality (ie, the game had a lesbian character in it).

All games suffer this, but regardless of what you'd like to believe, your favourite game isn't more subject to it than any other. Of course, the larger the data pool, the more accurate the results, but statistically this variance tends to neutralise between different games with the same target audience (ie, CRPGS), since the target audience will be mostly the same, and they judge the games under the same lenses. Also none of the games I presented in the premise of my argument (DAO, PoE, DOS, PF) have any sort of DRM, so they all bypass the DRM filter that might apply any further variances for more stable and reliable results.

When all is said and done and the dust settles and all data is collected and averaged out, some games come clearly on top of others. Not by 2-3% margins that could be explained by variance, but by 10-20% margins that clearly prove a vastly superior rate of user satisfaction.


Now I understand some people don't believe in user reviews, or critic reviews, or anyone that is not themselves and their group of friends. That's fine. I'm not talking about that. I don't care about what you trust or you believe. I'm presenting irrefutable data, I didn't make anything up, I'm not manipulating anything or using fairy spells or Jedi magic to explain why in my own world those numbers don't mean a thing.

The numbers, the reality of things is there, for all to see, and that is how it will pass down in history. And after that, you are free to believe what you want.


Anyway, I'm happy to let the conversation keep going wildly offtopic at this point, as everyone has spoken their minds.

If it makes anyone feel better, I also don't give a crap about what fanboys or haters say about any game. But documented history does, science and statistics do. So you'll have to deal with it - unless you plan to be alive in 500 years to explain to people who look back at the best games in human history to tell them "Actually… I think Kingmaker was better than PoE". Because all they will see is that PoE was better than KM, and the reason for that is simple: PoE was better than KM.

If we're bringing games like Skyrim into the conversation then that opens a new can of worms regarding scores.

Skyrim + mods = different to vanilla Skyrim out-the-box

In that games like Skyrim are more known for and also gain a lot of their longevity of player base from the fact that they foster such a lively and permanent modding scene.

So similar to Neverwinter Nights. There's a massive gulf between appraising the original NWN main campaign game and appraising the vast and limitless and constantly enduring playerbase of NWN as a supreme modding tool.

Both games are similar to Civilisation 4 in regards to appraisal and long term popularity and long term appraisal. IGN, for example, chose to include Civ4 as what it thinks is the best Civ game of all time to include in it's best games of all time contest.

However, one of the most common opinions about Civ4 is that it's actually a bit shit - if you just play the vanilla game without mods - however, add mods and it's apparently one of the best of all time. And you hear the same thing about Skyrim, and indeed NWN.

For such games the reviews don't even need to relate to the actual game presented to the customer, they are merely there because there's nowhere else to put them. There's no tool to separate all reviews that include heavily modded scenarios. There's no means to get an idea about the feedback for just the base game.

And since mods are rarely made by the actual developers, well, there's another issue with praising Bioware/Bethesda/Firaxis for content that has nothing to do with them, well, not much to do with them, well, shouldn't be entirely their credit, etc.

However, I, for one, would indeed include NWN in any vote for best game of all time, even though, if I was to score the original campaign, I'd give the game only a 7/10. NWN is just shorthand for the NWN extended universe. It's the same with Skyrim, Civ4 and many other great games of longevity.

Which ties back into - - - - Context!

Originally Posted by lackblogger
Skyrim + mods = different to vanilla Skyrim out-the-box

In that games like Skyrim are more known for and also gain a lot of their longevity of player base from the fact that they foster such a lively and permanent modding scene.

So similar to Neverwinter Nights. There's a massive gulf between appraising the original NWN main campaign game and appraising the vast and limitless and constantly enduring playerbase of NWN as a supreme modding tool.

That's actually a pretty good point that I hadn't thought about. The popularity of some games definitely gets boosted from a strong mod scene that could be reflected in their scores.

I agree that it's off topic. I was only replying to what Overlt wrote, giving the probabilistic/statistical background for what he wrote. Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

I did not intend to bring Skyrim into the discussion. I only mentioned the game as a fairly extreme example of the number people playing a game for a long time (with or without mods), compared to the number of buyers. No comparison with the games that are discussed here. Maybe I shouldn't have done that either.

I won't post more about this specific aspect.

PibbuR who is sorry.

Actually, it wasn't really off-topic, and there's no reason for you to be apologizing.

Originally Posted by pibbuR
I agree that it's off topic. I was only replying to what Overlt wrote, giving the probabilistic/statistical background for what he wrote. Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

I did not intend to bring Skyrim into the discussion. I only mentioned the game as a fairly extreme example of the number people playing a game for a long time (with or without mods), compared to the number of buyers. No comparison with the games that are discussed here. Maybe I shouldn't have done that either.

I won't post more about this specific aspect.

PibbuR who is sorry.

Well you cant make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. i.e. You cant have a good discussion without going into tangents imo.