N
Nereida
Guest
Sorry to go slightly off to a tangent. But i thought user score and critic score differences are relevant to this topic.
No, that's fine, because at the same time you're giving an example of a game that was really good (PS:T) as it reflects in its reviews, but sold comparatively poorly when put next to other games of the same genre, for example, Baldur's Gate 2. This is possibly because Baldur's Gate is based on very well known DnD fantasy setting, which has always been very popular and well-beloved by roleplayers in the world, back then and still today. That invoked an extra later of hype and familiarity with its setting and general "feeling", which attracted more players than Torment, a game which used a more obscure, gimmicky setting within the DnD multiverse that most players wouldn't feel familiar or even comfortable with.
This is very likely a similar reason for Pathfinder: Kingmaker attracted slightly more players than say, PoE, even if on average they were less satisfied than those who played PoE. A well-known fantasy setting will always raise the number of players that flock to them significantly, and this is why acquiring them costs a lot of money (ask about getting a Warhammer IP for your product. Good luck with making a profit after that).
But in the end, a better game will equal better scores, a worse game will equal worse scores. That has been true for every game, movie, restaurant, hairdresser, or toaster that has ever existed and been reviewed by users in the world. This is only meaningful when the opinion of all of the people who played the game and reviewed it are taken into account, with as many different backgrounds as possible.
It is clear, and it is never the question, that to each individual a game can feel to be better or worse than the general consensus by several levels of magnitude. Hell, in this site several people don't even consider the Witcher 3 to be a RPG, and definitely not something they'd play, despite the massively positive critique it received. That is fine, personal tastes are all good, because it's what works for each different person. They however do not dictate the average quality of a product. They affect it as much as everyone else, by adding their one opinion to the grand pool.
The problem I see in some sections of this thread is that some individuals develop an emotional connection that tells them that playing or loving products that have a worse score than others equals having bad tastes, or making wrong choices. But nobody is telling them that, they only tell that to themselves, as if their personal opinion required validation to feel good about having a personal opinion to start with.
They also have the idea that some individuals, mainly them and whoever they chose, are better qualified to decide the quality of something when this is simply not only an exercise of extreme vanity but also false. A problem for them to solve at the personal level.
The premise was always that the overall perceived quality of any product in the world, and in this case, videogames, will follow a simple rule: the better the product = the better average score it will receive by the totality of those who consumed it.
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