Is it fair to slam a game like that mere hours after release?
well apparently based on reviews so far, people are not even able to go beyond loading screen and super slow fps issues. I hope developers soon fix out issues.
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Its getting bashed because it seems to have a lot of performance issues and thats the way people act on steam to get noticed and pressure the developers to do something about it.
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Except, no. Probably more around half. Arkham Knight is now mixed which is a good bit better than extremely negative it was before. Skyrim is back to being Very Positive after, again, going extremely negative. So, yeah, most games do recover if the developers address the concern and that's also why there's now a recent rating, as well.
I don't think it's fair to review bomb a game, but giving a game a bad review because it's unplayable is hardly review bombing. It's an honest review.
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Paid mods fiasco, black faxes, review bombing. What a day.
Btw, not extremely negative, but its score sunk quite a bit.
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Oh, I remember the backlash. I was expressing doubt about the claim that Skyrim went anywhere near extremely negative.
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It did, plenty of websites talked about it. It got hit hard very fast. It didn't stay there very long, of course, because the defenders came as well, but after that it was at very to mostly negative until the change.
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So you're saying that on its Steam store page the overall rating for user reviews was "Overwhelmingly Negative" for a short period ("Very Negative" or "Overwhelmingly Negative" being the closest to the "extremely negative" you described)?
I don't believe you.
There was a backlash. It was harsh. It caused a lot of people to write negative reviews. It caused a lot of people to change their positive review to negative. Nonetheless.
You need < 20% of reviews to be positive in order to reach Very Negative/Overwhelmingly Negative (the difference between the two is how many reviews you have). I don't think Skyrim reached that. You seem to. Source?
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He doesn't have any since that wasn't what happened. It barely got to mostly positive (if even there, since I might be misremembering). He is blowing it way out of proportion.
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Mhm. It was at Overwhelmingly Positive and it went to Very Positive, maybe Mostly Positive. I think Very Positive, though.
Overwhelmingly Negative is so far from that.
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It dropped to Very Positive only iirc from Overwhelmingly Positive by like 20% ?
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Not sure of the exact percentage drop at peak review bombing. A full 20% from 98% would take it into Mostly Positive territory. Lower limit of Very Positive is 80%.
Waiting on masshuum to source their claim that it dropped 60-80% to be able to have ___ Negative as a rating.
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Depends on the "it". Does it matter if it was just Very Positive or Mostly Positive? Not so much. Does it matter whether or not review bombing because of the paid mods dissatisfaction actually brought Skyrim to "extremely negative"? Yes, because it's the difference between an outcry having a significant, notable effect, and review bombing utterly destroying the ratings for an AAA game.
Does your participation in this subthread matter if your only contribution is "who cares?"
Some might take the position that it does not. But I do like B.J. Novak, so I'll cut you a bit of slack.
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The problem is that the bug that made it unplayable was fixed within two hours of release, but most of those negative reviews that resulted from that problem will stick around forever.
Reviews are supposed to be about the quality of the game, but instead they're about a bug that only existed for two hours and is now gone.
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and it's also fair. At the time of writing review the review was valid. Let's say you're a food critic. You go to restaurant and get rotten food. You bash restaurant in your review. Then year later they fix their food and start serving nice things - good for them. But the fact is when you went there the food was rotten. If you ever go by this restaurant again and decide to eat there again - you may update your review or write a new one. But it's your choice. If you don't - they stay with negative review they fully deserved, because at the time when review was written, what it said was valid.
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Remember when some little two-bit developer wanted to file a DMCA claim against a YT review because they claimed they fixed some issues the video mentioned? That was fun.
(I wish I could remember the name of the channel or the game… Google ended up with DMCA pages only for search. :/)
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I think I remember it. Wasn't the game about Moster Trucks or sth like that? :> It should help narrow your search ;)
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your google-fu is dissapointing young padawan... 1 minute of search:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9VjNSPdlIw
xD
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All I got was monster truck madness videos and Steam promo videos. =(
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lol thx for that. i'm even considering actually watching some of those YT channels because of that (not really, but that was fun indeed)
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excellent analogy and i strongly agree on this title. if this were "early access" title, then no this kind of slaming of reviews would be uncalled for because those are expected to have issues, but this is supposed to be a fully "extra polish" ready to play game.. delayed for "extra polish" lolololol.. i think they mixed up polish remover and polish bottles..
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What if the food you got was excellent, but came 3 hours late?
Or halfway through the meal, the restaurant caught on fire?
As a food critic, do you still give a negative review?
I'm in two minds about this fairly recent occurrence; reviews being negative for many reasons other than the quality of the actual product. Release delays, performance issues, access to advanced rendering options, whether the developer supports your favourite sports team. Maybe the problem is, every customer is a critic these days and everyone is given an equal voice. And people in general, as opposed to professional critics/journalists, are fickle and emotion-driven.
Now I'm not saying either that you should give a game 5/5 stars because you liked the concept of the game, even though you couldn't load it up because shit was broken or server problems or whatever. What a review is means different things to different people. Maybe such reviews should be qualified, or withheld until the game proper can be experienced. I think it's evidence that boiling down the game experience to a single number does not work, something that Kotaku has always known and others are realising (admittedly, there's ulterior motives for those sites to abandon review scores; if you have to read the whole review rather than just glancing for the result, they get more eyeball time and thus impacts ad revenue). Ultimately there is no easy answer, if an answer were possible at all given the subjective nature of them.
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then I would criticize the service if food wqas late. Woukld give positive review on food and negative on service. Or if I decided I didn't want to wait more than 3 hours I would give negative review of service noting I don't write about food because it never came to me. Note that vast majority of people don't write fake reviews like claiming game content is shite. They write only the truth - game is not working and informing that thus they cannot write about actyual content because it's not accessible. Same way as you'd write "I cannot review their food, because I waited 3 hours and it never came, so I gacve up. So I'm criticizing their horrible service."
The restaurant fire argument is missed one thou. Fire starts not because of restaurant - someone else may start a fire. Game is not working because of devs. It's noone elses fault but theirs.
Also I think putting reviews on hold like you proposed is a horrible idea. Look at it not from the point of developer/publisher like you are currently doing, but fromn the perspective of a customer thinking whether to buy a product. Information that product is currently not working for a lot of people, that it has multiple issues etc is a very valid information. One I'd like to have when deciding to buy something, because if I knew it I would not buy and wait to see whether they manage to fix the issues. Without such information I'd buy product, see it's not working and would become another member of angry mob posting yet another negative review. In some way the negative review flood may be not the worst thing for them - they disspointed a lot of people who preordered the game, yes, but at least they are not getting a lot of new customers to dissapoint now and when (hopefully when, not if) they fix their game these people may still buy it, enjoy it, review it. If they did so now, they would simply try it, see it's not working, give negartive review and then refund. Devs would not gain anything as all people who can refund not working game would do so while leaving negative review. They gain no money yet get another negative review.
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I'd like to respond to your points, but my graphics were glitching up and I couldn't read your post. Maybe the site is shit, or maybe my graphics card is broken, I'm just an idiot user who has no way of knowing so I'll just assume the problem is your fault. Also, the ability to participate in this discussion was locked behind this "account login" DRM, which really ruined the experience for me because I'm morally against DRM. Not only that, but can you believe I had to purchase both the "electricity bill" and "internet service provider" DLC to get any useful functionality out of the forum? The nerve of that comment author!
I therefore have no choice but to give your comment "Overwhelmingly Negative". Maybe your post was great, maybe it wasn't, but since I'm forced to judge it only on the whole package as it was presented to me, I now have to get my hundreds of internet friends on 4chan and reddit to agree with my negative review.
But before I go, I will just address one thing:
The restaurant fire argument is missed one thou. Fire starts not because of restaurant - someone else may start a fire. Game is not working because of devs. It's noone elses fault but theirs.
No. You have no idea how video games work. Do you really think the guy who programs the physics engine also runs the multiplayer servers? More often than not it's not even the same company. Especially on console. Even with tiny indie games it's unlikely. A factor that you claim could lead to a negative review could be the fault of one of dozens of entities other than the developer, even the user themselves.
This is exactly why I'm saying end users are the worst people to give reviews, they are not qualified. I don't believe suppressing freedom of speech is the right answer either, I strongly believe in a person's right to review a game based on their own hardware issues, the colour of the game box or the weather outside when they went to the store to buy it, if they so choose. What I'm saying is, take user reviews with a grain of salt, they can't be trusted because people are idiots or just ignorant. Sure, if a game is broken because of non-developer reasons, people deserve to know about it. Is a review the right means to do so? When the majority of user reviewers graduate from journalist school, I'll agree.
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ok, so you're an idiot. Thanks for clarifying it, at least I will know that discussing with you is pointless :D:
You see no difference between situation where your graphic card is broken and it's an objective reason for something not working, and this something being broken, in a subjective way, aka not bvecause of your broken graphic card, because the same thing is happening for thousands of unrelated users.
Then you bring even less related arguments - I was speaking about objective gamebreaking problems, never spit a word about DRMs and such - you just bring it as an argument. Then you go even deeper. You are an idiot :D:
Oh and also unlike you I have quite a big idea how development work. I graduated in IT, my fiancee is professional QA specialist. Thus I know that in every, no matter how small, branch of development QA is a standard. In video games development especially, and that this game lacked this QA. But don't bother answering. I give a serious argument, you will probably counter it with something about killing puppies or some other unrelated shite :D:
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Thanks for the ad hominem! Well done on proving that you would rather call me an idiot than actually address valid points.
Then you bring even less related arguments - I was speaking about objective gamebreaking problems
Were you? Really? If 100% of users find the game is broken, maybe you can call that objectively broken. What if 80% of users have problems, but 20% don't? What if it's only 20%? 0.05%? At what point do you think it becomes subjective? How much of a percent of total users do you think it takes for review bombing to occur?
never spit a word about DRMs and such - you just bring it as an argument
I didn't say you did. I totally agree that those things have absolutely nothing to do with a game being bad. And yet, people use these unrelated things as criteria to "review" games all the time, and here you are, approving of it.
I graduated in IT, my fiancee is professional QA specialist
I don't really care what you or your fiancee's education is, that's appeal to authority and doesn't prove your point. Ask your professional QA fiancee, if she encounters a problem in the game, does she just stop, throw her hands up and say "this shit is broken, I want a refund"? Or does she actually, you know, do her fucking job and reproduce the problem, find the cause, and do her best to remove factors like hardware or driver issues from the equation, and make sure it's an actual bug in the game code/scripts/engine?
Because I assure you, the people who leave negative Steam review, the people you want to give the biggest soapbox to, these idiots that you approve of, are not doing that.
'But users only care about the end package', you say. That's fair. People shouldn't have to be QA experts to have an opinion about a game. But when their opinion is a) misleading, b) misplaced as to the target of their outrage, and c) influences the purchasing decisions of others who quite possibly won't have that same problem because it was an issue specific to the first person (or even a small subset of users); that's what I have an issue with, because these people have no accountability.
Like I said, I'm not against people having an opinion on a product, for any random reason they so choose, or even having the ability to voice their opinion. As consumers, we have the right to be warned about potential issues. What I'm against, perhaps, if I were to boil it down to something just to satisfy your apparently thirst for outrage, is the idea that all these opinions should be condensed to one number whose intent is specifically meant to refer to the quality of the game content proper, and to be taken as gospel, amongst actual, legitimate reviews as to the quality of the actual product; rather than the hardware that it runs on or the box it came in. Where Jim the professional game reviewer, who dislikes the game for boring gameplay or a lack of ships, holds as much weight as Steve, the gamer-bro who dislikes the game because it isn't Call of Duty and won't run with 200 FPS on his 512KB RAM IBM-Compatible 286.
You, on the other hand, seem happy to follow these idiot sheep off a cliff, and denounce as "an idiot" anyone who won't follow you down.
And it's your right to have that view, and I will defend it. But don't expect me to let you in my (hypothetical) restaurant to "critique" my food.
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If 100% of users find the game is broken, maybe you can call that objectively brokenMaybe? o.O Man, you're a sheep, tghat will defend company which doesn't give two shits about you, mindless fanboy it seems, if the devs would come to your face and spit into it you'd still be defending them saying that no, it's just raining. You say that unless game doesn't work for 100% of people you cannot call it on not working? And even then only "maybe"? God I'm speechless.
And yet, people use these unrelated things as criteria to "review" games all the timeAnd you're not talking about the subject again. Noone (or nearly noone) is giving this game, this particular case, bad reviews because they don't like DRM, because they don't like dev, because something other unrelatred. People give it bad reviews because it's not working or barely working. And these are a valid reasons. (well valid for most of people, clearly not you, but yeah, we already know that in your eyes if only 0.0001% of people would be able to ryun the game you'd be fine with it as long as you're a fanboy of it).
I don't really care what you or your fiancee's education is, that's appeal to authority and doesn't prove your point.Ofc you don't care. Because it's a valid point proving that unlike what you said I know what I'm talking about, and it would mean counter to your argument. So instead you will not care about any argument which stands contrary to what you say. You accuse me of having no idea what I'm talking qabout, so I explain to you why I do have pretty big idea about it. So suddenly you don't care about it. You only care if argument works in your favor. The moment it stops you "don't care".
Or does she actually, you know, do her fucking job and reproduce the problem, find the cause, and do her best to remove factors like hardware or driver issues from the equation, and make sure it's an actual bug in the game code/scripts/engine?Bug doesn not have to be purely code-dependent thus happening all-platforms-wide to be counted as a bug and to be repaired. Determining whether the bug is internal or external is a big part of tresting, and if you find that bug is caused by some hardware setup you don't just call it ok, you change the code in a way that it will work on various hardware. It's called compability testing. It's a standard thing in almost every medium-sized or bigger project.
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Man, you're a sheep, tghat will defend company which doesn't give two shits about you, mindless fanboy it seems
Well, for starters, I don't even own the game. There goes that theory. Secondly, where have I defended Hello Games? I couldn't care less about the developers. No Man's Sky may or may not be shit. I don't know. But that's the problem, I can't trust the user reviews because they're full of shit. You'd rather hold them up on a pedestal and shit all over a company you don't even know, for reasons unknown. You are the type of person who shouldn't be reviewing games, you're not at all interested in the quality of the game you just want to stick it to The Man. And anyone who disagrees with you is a "fanboy". Really? Is that what it's come to? Insults that would destroy the dignity of a 10 year old who uttered them, let alone a grown adult? Ok, let's play it your way. What's the difference between you, and a mallard with a cold? One's a sick duck... I can't remember how it ends, but your mother's a whore.
And you're not talking about the subject again. Noone (or nearly noone) is giving this game, this particular case, bad reviews because they don't like DRM, because they don't like dev, because something other unrelatred.
Here's a guy complaining about paid DLC
Here's three "reviews" complaining only about the current price. Apparently, the quality of a game improves the cheaper it gets. Under this model, free games must be infinitely enjoyable! One wonders why they aren't off playing those instead...
Here's a great, professional review that literally just says "it was fun, some things I liked, some things I didn't"
Here's a guy who had no technical problems, until one day he did. No mention of exactly how a perfectly working game could suddenly stop working, or attempts at resolving the issue, which, be honest now, could have been anything, including the user himself. Simply a demand that the developer fix it.
This guy gave a negative review because of a drop in user base. I would feign surprise and joke that this must be the first time a single-player* game has been negatively reviewed because other people stopped playing it; but somehow I doubt such absurdity hasn't already occurred multiple times before.
This one lists some hardware problems and compares the graphics quality and hardware requirements to the PS2 console(?).
Captain obvious here imparts this piece of wisdom: "This game is definetely not for everyone".
I can't even work out what this guy's complaint is. Apparently, using PS4 libraries (?) is a Very Bad Thing, as is having a lambda icon and something about shader compilation?
*Yes, I'm aware of the single-player vs multi-player controversy, I'm not defending it like the fanboy you claim me to be, which is why I didn't point out reviews focussing on that issue. I believe they're valid complaints.
Not to mention all the reviews that complained about the game not living up to the "hype". I left those out because the root cause of that might simply be a boring game, even though that's not what was said. At best, it's the fault of whoever did the marketing; often, it's the users themselves to blame.
Ofc you don't care. Because it's a valid point proving that unlike what you said I know what I'm talking about,
No, I don't care because it's a logical fallacy called "argument from authority". Even if you were the I.T. Jesus, it wouldn't make you any more correct. But, sure, if you want to go that route, fine. Unlike you, not only did I graduate in comp sci but I actually work as a commercial developer, having worn multiple hats such as testing (automated and manual), support (first to third level), devops, network admin, network engineering, DBA, release management, UX, architecture (hardware and software), and of course back end and front end dev. Therefore, I'm more qualified than both you and your fiancee combined and by your logic I must be correct. Ha ha, I win. And you still don't know what you're talking about.
It's a standard thing in almost every medium-sized or bigger project.
Hello Games has 15 employees. What, to you, is a "medium-sized or bigger project"? And how many of the billions of combinations of hardware (+revisions), firmware, drivers, operating systems (and minor versions therein) do you think they tested? Do you think they tested the GeForce 10 series cards which are quite popular today on mid- to high-end systems (the kind of systems playing NMS), but only launched 3 months ago? (For reference, the game went gold early July.) But, I'm not here to defend the developers on things that are actually their fault, despite what you think. If there proves to be a clearly identifiable issue caused by game coding or insufficient testing, then of course the developer has to take responsibility. If the game is just bad, then of course bad reviews are justified. I'm not convinced random internet keyboard warriors are QA or critical experts to be trusted with game reviewing. You have a problem with me pointing that out.
I believe video games combine the best of both art and interactive entertainment, and should be judged on such merits accordingly. But apparently, the only people allowed to voice their opinion in your universe are idiots with a grudge against Teh Evil Faceless Game Developers; the same people who would probably give the Mona Lisa a 'thumbs down' because they don't like the frame around it, or that the artist makes them put in the effort to go to Paris to see it.
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You'd rather hold them up on a pedestal and shit all over a company you don't even know, for reasons unknown.No, the reasons very well known. Releasing a game in unplayable state without the basic compability testing.
You are the type of person who shouldn't be reviewing games, you're not at all interested in the quality of the game you just want to stick it to The ManYes, because game not running on a system well above minimum requirements, not even launching is not in any way related to "quality" of the product.
Won't even comment on further arguments - calling my mother a whore is the new low I've seen on SG.
Also - you gotta suck at this IT - not even being aware what compability tests are after so much experience? Dayum... xD
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Back to the ad hominems, of course. The last resort of one who's thoroughly lost an argument. Also not surprising you fail to see the irony in the joke I copy-pasted from an SNL skit after you attacked me as a "mindless fanboy" for not defending the developer of a game I haven't played. Short memory, perhaps?
Not sure where the crack about compatibility testing comes from, or what gave you the impression I wasn't aware of it? In fact I specifically mentioned exactly what it entailed after you brought it up. Unless, you're under the impression that, because you brought it first (after I informed you about what your fiancee's job actually entails, which you clearly had no idea about) that I somehow couldn't know about it? You know that's not how knowledge works, right? Like, just because you introduce a term or concept to a conversation first, doesn't give you a monopoly on having that knowledge?
No? Alrighty, since you obviously have no counterpoints left, I believe we're done here.
:)
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You got some nerve to talk about "ad hominem" arguments (it's ad hominem, not ad hominems for your information), after sayiong your mother's a whore no matter if it's used as some reference (which you didn't indicate anyway -> Poe's Law).
What gave me an impression you don't know jack shit about what you're talking about? Maybe the fact you say about "billions of combinations of hardware (+revisions), firmware, drivers, operating systems (and minor versions therein) do you think they tested" while at the same time claiming to be so experienced in development, yet you do not realize that there are hundreds upon hundreds of outsource companies around the world providing compability tests and that any serious project which cannot afford compability tests of their own (which is quite common in video games industry - only biggest players do compability tests themselves) do these tests this way. The cost of compability test compared to cost of the mere marketing for game like NMS is less than 5%. But this you should know as well if the experience you gave was true... Considering that at one hand you say how experienced you are and at the other hand say how impossible it is to test billions of combinations (again - if you had any experience with it you'd know it's counted in thousands and is mostly done without even any hardware replacement) tells to me that you have no freaking idea what you are talking about - probably just googling some stuff to prove your point without even understanding what it means (like you claimed that you occupied almost every freaking position possible in development, positions not even close to each other considering what experience and knowledge you should have for them). So like I said before - I will stop arguying with you, because there is no point. You lie, you have no idea what you're talking about, there is simply no point :>
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it's ad hominem, not ad hominems for your information
Plural. That means more than one. Yes, technically it's "ad hominem arguments" or "argumenta ad hominem". So not only will you attack the person rather than the argument, you'll happily resort to Grammar Nazi too? Are you really that desperate for an argument?
after sayiong your mother's a whore
Do you have no understanding of chronology? Or does the flow of time run differently in your universe?
You (1 day ago): "so you're an idiot"
You (1 day ago): "You are an idiot :D:"
You (7 hours ago): "you're a sheep...mindless fanboy"
Me (2 hours ago): "Is that what it's come to?...Ok, let's play it your way...your mother's a whore"
You: (1 hour ago): "ZOMG outrage! You used bad words! Your argument is therefore invalid!!!"
Come on, now it's obvious you're just trolling. You haven't put forward an actual argument or counter-point in several posts now, you use ad hominem arguments to call me all sorts of things and then go ape-shit when I quote a bad, sarcastic joke from a well-known TV show skit (while quoting obscure Internet memes and fallacious "Internet laws for the criminally stupid" and pretending like they win the argument for you; like "Poe's law", that even if you had applied correctly would still be meaningless, and, OH MY GOD, I used the term Grammar Nazi above, "Godwin's law" guess you win :( )
What gave me an impression you don't know jack shit about what you're talking about?
that there are hundreds upon hundreds of outsource companies around the world providing compability tests and that any serious project which cannot afford compability tests of their own
No, you just asserted that I didn't know about outsourced "compability"[sic] testing, without actually providing any evidence. (Which is funny, because just a moment ago you were asserting that I didn't know what compatibility testing even was, mere moments after I'd already explained what it involved.) In fact, way back when, in one of those many posts of mine you didn't actually read, I specifically talked about multiple companies having their hands in the development process pie:
More often than not it's not even the same company. Especially on console. Even with tiny indie games it's unlikely. A factor that you claim could lead to a negative review could be the fault of one of dozens of entities other than the developer, even the user themselves
I think you'll find that you just proved my whole point, which is that there are other entities that could be responsible for a broken product, and that blaming the developer for all of them is irresponsible, which is (one of many reasons) why ignorant people such as yourself are unqualified to review video games.
Considering that at one hand you say how experienced you are and at the other hand say how impossible it is to test billions of combinations
LOL who's making up stories now, then? :D
Where did I say testing billions of combinations was impossible? I asked how many of those billions of combinations you think the developer tested (either themselves, or via proxy ie. outsourcing - that part was implicit, and your insistence on taking it literally pretend I'm suggested the 15 guys at Hello Games were testing it themselves is purely disingenuous trolling). "Billions" was also used figuratively here. I wasn't literally saying the number of combinations was greater than or equal to one billion but less than ten billion. Actually, the number is astronomically higher than that. Again, you're being deliberately obtuse just to troll.
And I never said it was impossible. I will say now, that it's simply not practical. But, sure, if you had enough resources and given enough time, you could do it.
On another point, you seem to think that being a developer with a tonne of experience means one should know (and be responsible for) absolutely everything about absolutely every stage of the product lifecycle. Sorry, but this is another one of those myths that you keep perpetuating by continuously claiming that every member of a 15-man development team is personally responsible for every single aspect of the product. It's yet more proof that your lack of real-world experience (and any signs of intelligence) is really detrimental to your cause here.
if you had any experience with it you'd know it's counted in thousands
You idiot! You absolute moron! I really do hope you're just trolling, because surely nobody could be this stupid. The testing might be done in the thousands because it's impractical to test every combination. That doesn't mean the other combinations magically cease to exist. How many different types of graphics card, CPU, motherboard and RAM exist? I'll go easy on you, and just limit the variability to those components. How many different manufacturers of each do you think there are? Different models? Different steppings/revisions? Different manufacturing batches? Different amounts?
No, forget that, I'll make it even easier. Let's just focus on RAM. Let's suppose there are 10 RAM manufacturers. There's not, it's actually lot's more, but let's pretend. DDR3 or DDR4? That's 2 choices. Plus, let's say there's 3 possible speeds for each type (1066, 1333, 1600 for DDR3, or 2133, 2666, 3200 for DDR4). How big is it? Let's limit ourselves to 4 choices, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB. So, 10 companies x 2 interfaces x 3 speeds x 4 sizes = 240 combinations. For one RAM stick. Suppose your motherboard only has 4 RAM slots. 240^4 = 3,317,760,000. Or, 3.32 billion combinations (3.36b if you allow the other 3 RAM slots to possibly be empty). Just for RAM. With artificial limitations. That's not even considering different models/revisions of RAM within those classifications. Now combine that with hundreds of different CPU specs/steppings from the 2 major players; hundreds, maybe thousands of graphics cards from different companies, different revisions. Don't forget Founder's and OC versions, then square it because they might be using SLI or Crossfire.
Then, we can think about software. Add different firmware versions, different drivers, different operating systems and versions, other software like FRAPS or TeamSpeak or Xfire or antiviruses that may be running... Do you get the idea now? Like I said, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. This is basic math, and you got it wrong by orders of magnitude. WHOO WHOO! Here comes the Clue Train! Last stop, you.
And all this, this trolling and shit-kicking, because you didn't like someone's opinion that legitimate reviews about artistic or entertainment merit shouldn't be lumped in with other bullshit about the presentation or hardware compatibility - which, while valid points and definitely necessary for consumers to know, doesn't gel with the idea of what a game review should actually be. Hope you're proud of yourself.
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if a game is broken because of non-developer reasons
what? just, what? how would this work? its nvidia's fault for not making gpu's 10years ahead of its time? or amd's fault that the developer did not bother testing it out on their cpu's?
the only way i can think that this would slightly work would be "its sony's fault for pushing them to release before ready" however even that does not work imo since the developer could of simply told them it was not ready.
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On the other hand, you seem to want to blame the game developer if Sony's multipler servers are down, or if the user's RAM is faulty. Or if nVidia's firmware or drivers have a bug in them. Does that seem fair?
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Sony's servers have been down this entire time? Or the 5-7k people in the reviews you speak of are all running their systems on bad ram or drivers? (not to mention the thousands biting their tongue waiting for a patch)
Maybe, just maybe.... It could of been poorly developed and went untested.
Edit: I cannot really say its poorly developed i suppose, its just that it didnt get tested properly to fix the flaws it had on launch
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I'm not attributing the specific issues in this specific case with specific non-software causes. Nor am I saying a lack of testing is not a developer's fault (or indirectly their fault for hiring a bad 3rd-party QA firm). You're reading too much into this. What I'm saying is, game reviews have the specific intent of reviewing the game experience, and I feel there's something wrong with using them as a catch all to denounce meta-issues like hardware compatibility issues or network/server/capacity issues, regardless of which entity is at fault.
My other point was that I feel there's something wrong with the current culture of using review systems to:
-pressure developers to prioritise issues in a certain way (which might work well until one day you find they fixed a small UI glitch instead of an account security bug, because they were pressured into it by Steam reviews)
-misplace anger toward developers for issues caused by other entities
-coerce developers to include/exclude certain features/genders/races
-blackmail developers into giving free game keys for review or streaming "exposure" (for example)
-All the other shit that game reviews are used for these days that aren't actually to do with reviewing the game software
You're free to disagree on those points, I'm not saying what I think is necessarily the right answer; hell I didn't even have an "answer" until zelghadis above pushed me for something to be outraged about. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer. But I do think, maybe there's some value in leaving game reviews to the professionals, who you would expect have some understanding as to what a review actually is. Who would have thought that such a belief would be so controversial as to turn into such a vile hatred shit-show?
I do like how you changed your comment from "poorly developed" to "didnt get tested properly". That really demonstrates my problem - if your comment were a user review, the vast majority of people wouldn't have bothered to correct that, and left it as "game is broken, developer is shit" or some similar tripe. Even fewer would have gone and changed their review when conditions changed - it's the permanent stigma attached to a game that exacerbates the impact.
I don't have evidence to back this up but from what I can tell, most times a game changes from one Steam review category to another (eg. "Very Positive" to "Overwhelmingly Negative") it's because of new reviews, not existing ones being changed. Regardless, that the consensus of a game can be so fickle as to change as such when the game itself has not fundamentally changed, is disconcerting.
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I see your point on the non-developer reasons, but it was just too many people having the same issues even running it on newer hardware for that to really be the case.
I agree there is a ton of crap reviews, some similar to those you listed. I don't completely agree about leaving it up to the professionals only, however I do wish they had their own unique place to review (Positive, Negative, Recent, Professional) and we could easily decide if a game is for us from a professionals view.
I have no idea on the review system either, I would guess deleting a review and recreating it the opposite direction would probably change it, but unsure if just a edit would or not.
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Which is why the "Recent reviews" category is always something to look at fist.
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Honestly the game should have released under Early Access or something, I feel like Sony and the cult-fans just pushed their agendas too hard and the devs just got dragged along for the ride.
Regardless, NO PERSON DESERVES HATE COMMENTS FOR BEING TRANS AND THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GAME SHAME ON YOU SHAME SHAME SHAME
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Laura K Buzz? She got some shit on Twitter today over NMS iirc.
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If you sell it, it better damn well be in a ready state. You knowingly cut corners or put out a buggy product, you effectively accept the consequences.
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Exactly. And the price point matters here, too: they effectively decided to play in the big leagues with the AAA pricetag, and didn't deliver a AAA product.
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It was showing mosty positive with a 85% rating minutes ago.
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i think they must patch it. ps4 version works well.
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I hope the negative reviews dont deter them from fixing the issues. They should of added it as early access for pc version :) With early access expectations people would be a bit more patient. Hope they turn this around :)
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still would get bashed. If you release something as Early Access - you expect it to not be finished, not be perfect, maybe not even be good yet, but you expect it to be working at least. For hundreds of people (me included) NMS won't even launch.
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guess thats why people are angry X/ well hopefully that will make them get there butt in gear.
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(Twitch streamers are raging or having problems with it too, it seems. A channel i watched just gave up and abandoned streaming it.)
That small team also promised a lot of things and wanted to play among the AAA field. Yes, you can sympathise the little guy, but if one wants to be among the big boys, they have to take exactly the same punishment. If this would be some indie with a good promise, these same technical issues would generate a fraction of interest and backlash.
So, no, sorry, i cannot feel sorry for them. They wanted to jump high and fell flat badly. The best you can do is stand up and learn from it.
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Admiral Bahroo's. I'm a very old mod and still current sub of his. (Just usually lurking deep in the chat room as it grew way too big for me to enter it.)
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rooCry
The problem is, was it the dev's fault for aiming that high or was it Sony etc. I would say this game will still be incredible once it gets patched and gets mod support. The possibilities are almost endless and what they've accomplished is pretty spectacular.
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Even if it was Sony, it is the developer's responsibility to either supply a working product or tell the publisher that the game is not ready. Currently they are wasting Sony's money, and only indirectly their own payments. They asked for three days to get the PC port ready and they didn't manage to make it nonetheless. So no, the best you can tell is that they share the blame with their publisher, but they still take blame for this, and the larger part of it.
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Sony did the QA iirc and they weren't bothered or competent enough to report the bugs, but they still rolled out a new patch/update to fix the common launch errors 1 hour after launch. Most people just forgot to update their reviews.
I was talking more in terms of had this been a small indie team releasing an Early access game with no hype train or Sony involvement, the reaction would not have been this severe. Moot point now I guess ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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I was talking more in terms of had this been a small indie team releasing an Early access game with no hype train or Sony involvement, the reaction would not have been this severe.
Oh yes, but look at the thread: most of us are agreeing on it, but usually phrase it that if this dev team decided to create a game that they are selling as a 60-dollar AAA, then they should have delivered the minimum of a 60-dollar AAA title. If this would be an actually independent game or a low-grade publisher releasing it in Early Access as a public beta with a 20-40-dollar price tag, most people would praise it for having great potential despite its horrendous technical issues. But that is not the playing field they chose to step on.
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no - the patch didn't fix the issues for most people, that's why there are no reviews updates. Patch gt out like over 2 hours ago. Look at discussions and you will still see hundreds of new posts being posted all the time about people not being able to launch the game, even post-patch ;)
Also if it was small indie team without Sony backing them releasing small indie game - reaction would be the same. If 70% people couldn't launch the game, 70 people would give it negative reviews. Only difference would be they'd get tens of negative reviews instead of thousands, but at the same time they'd only sell tens of copies instead of god know how many thousands ;)
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https://twitter.com/NoMansSky/status/764165793940516864 99% of players are online and only 1% are still facing an issue.
https://steamdb.info/app/275850/graphs/ 200k players
If you're still facing an issue http://www.no-mans-sky.com/2016/08/pc-support/
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thats kinda a facepalm imo.. they claim ~5,000+ negative reviewing pc gamers didnt have either graphic drivers updated or vb runtime files?? what kind of pc gamer has not gamed until this game?? did they ever consider that 97% of those 99% were just launching the game over and over so that they too could write a negative review? (+200 negative reviews popped up while typing this comment up alone)
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Steam's review system is a facepalm, people with 0.1 hours who bought the game just to send a negative review and then refund it. Sadly this has become a Meme now, "No Man's Buy" or whatever and edgy memelords will do whatever they can just to carry the meme forward. Any actual bug or issue with the game is now lost in the void of dank may-mays.
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or morte probably people who cannot launch the goddamn game thus cannot record more time to write a review. Sounds much more likely than a big organized fucking conspiracy theory of thousands of people spending tens of thousands of dollars to make false reviews and then refund just to screw with Shanti.
Also very mature - silent-BLing me just because you disagree with someone's opinion. Pathetic, just pathetic.
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I don't Blacklist for disagreements, those are always healthy. It's usually for extreme racist/hate speech. Feel free to blacklist me based on your guidelines. Or just do it out of spite. I don't mean you specifically are being facetious and meme-ing, that was a general comment on what I'm seeing on social media/steam community. The joke has become to trash the game then refund it because it's free Trolling.
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idk what you BKLed me for but it surely cannot be hate speech / racist comment as you incline - because all the time in these topics I am the one commenting against all the racists/homophobes/bigots/etc. But nvm. Back to the topic - I still think your argumentation is beyond stupid. And it's not about me - there's been caountless problems with game shown live on twitch, multiple streamers dropping covering it live because they were unable to run it properly. So you have proofs of people not being capable to run the game, proofs of people live streaming it, you have thousands of people compaining and asking for help in their Steam forums, you have all the people mentioning the very same problems in their reviews - and despite all these evidence you still don't believe it's tryue, but instead it's all a conspiracy in sake of memeing? -.-
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while all of that may be true, that does not change what the developers are claiming happened.
per your posts, the devs claimed people were not running updated graphics drivers or vb runtime files.. i find it extremely unlikely that the majority of gamers complaining (regardless of where they complain) had not played a game on their system that did not already install the insanely common and old vb runtime 2010, or had just totally ignored the yellow exclamation-point on their driver software warning them that there was an updated version of their graphics drivers, or even worse that they game without graphics drivers at all....... though if i were a dev, that'd be the smart thing to pawn it off on.
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I don't know the technical aspects, but every game you install comes with a VB installer and they left it out at launch, after they patched it and some other stuff the game has worked for some people who had a problem before.
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again i do agree, for some. but they claimed "99% appear to be up and running on our servers.". -that comment and the driver/vbruntime combined equals facepalm. thats while totally overlooking the reviewers comments.
there are also other things that can be done to possibly fix the issue on the user-side. i read a few comments stating something about a cfg file alteration to just change it from windowed fullscreen mode to regular fullscreen mode. these are all technical aspects that should of been tested and dealt with well before launch of a non-EA game. maybe its launcher-less and should have a launcher to easy tweak these settings, or maybe it has one and doesnt have the feature. idk i have very little interest in this one other then its current failure so do not own it nor did i. but all of this should of been dealt with well before a full release launch.
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I'm sure there are a LOT of legitimate bug reviews but how do you filter it from this? :-
Top steam reviews
"No Man's PC can handle it."
"Mimimun- A computer made by jesus christ himself but it'll still struggle to hit 20 fps"
"Crashes on open every time. gg"
"10 FPS on a GTX 980? No Man's Lag DO NOT BUY... Yet. (They'll fix it eventually.)"
How do you get actual feedback amongst the rambling horde of memers?
I agree with you on waiting on this for either the first patch with Base building etc or mod support, I just think they don't deserve the insane amount of vile spewing hatred being hurled at them right now. Sony did the QA and apparently now they need a full new QA team.
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telltales batman had a review similar to that second comment that hit a pcgamer magazine review and due to that i think the nonsense post along those lines have doubled. i completely agree there are a ton of invalid nonsense reviews that do not help potential buyers or the developer team. however the last two of those you listed are kinda valid (though could use more details). imo the overall negative hit they got was justified (not the nonsense people said, but the rating score received), but likely most will get corrected after the first real patch (after the vbruntime patch). at least i certainly hope so for their communities gamers =)
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2 first may be pointless memes, 2 later reviews are valid. It is not a meme but an actual criticism of a problem if the game cannot be played because of launch crash or if it cannot run in a playable state on a hardware much above minimum requirements.
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I was watching TB's stream. NMS has to be really badly optimized when it goes down to 10 FPS on his PC.
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if an "Indie Team" wants 60€ for their game, you can't pull the "small indie team" card.
They knew it would tank, gave no review copies and hoped to generate sales before shit hit the fan, no sympathy for them.
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I'm not at all surprised lol
The hype built by Sonny was insane, clearly way beyond what was sensible.
For example, for me the multiplayer capability would have been a significant thing, but there seems to be none.
In my personal opinion, while I like that kind of game and it does look to me as it could be a relatively good one of the kind, it's way too console-ish for me to even consider playing it.
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I can't understand why ppl must wait for some fixes
My friend made refund and got new Deus EX+Season Pass. for the same price
As for me i watched some in-game video's today. Maybe i will buy this with 80-90% discount
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its not a cheap game , almost 50$
the game must be done 100% with no problems
that what people want
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I get 10% off from being a Humble Monthly sub and then I have a ton of coupons for an additional 10% off from something.
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It was the pre-order price, plus Monthly sub. GOG also had it on for like €53 or something before it went live.
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if you create a fake hype, this will be all you get. the hatred of men
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It's absolutely fair, especially for a $60 game. It's also worth pointing out that the review stats on Steam store pages now have two numbers, overall rating and recent ratings, the latter of which has the opportunity to be positive if the game gets fixed.
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The classic "I can run it just fine, so others problems don't count and it's their own fault" argument. There are a lot of people that disagree with you. You're lucky. Others aren't. The game should run fine for everyone, not just for a few people.
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So you are telling me that a guy playing with a GTX 1080 and an i75960 having multiple stuttering issues is normal?
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I don't usually say bad things about a game for performance issues on launch, but refunded my copy because from streams and gameplay videos the game looks nothing like what I've imagined. Sadly, because I was very hyped for it.
I definitely still want to play it, but not for this price atm.
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Yes, it is fair. If you release it, it should be stable.
If you need testers to iron out performance and stability issues, release an Early Access version or a free weekend build.
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A lot of the performance issues that people are experiencing seem to be caused by old drivers that need updated.
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Unlikely. Even professional reviewers with powerful systems are having problems and they would undoubtedly know to have the latest drivers installed before reviewing the game.
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It's fair to slam it so long as you fix the review if it's ever fixed. I mean, if you can't play the game properly what's they're to review besides poor performance than prevents you from playing it?
It's not Early Access so yeah, it's fair. Especially when you delay the game.
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I'd go even further. It's your choice whether you update your review later on or not (or if you decide to revisit the game ever again in the first place). The thing is - the moment you wrote your review it was a valid one. Let's say you're a food critic. You go to restaurant and get rotten food. You bash restaurant in your review. Then year later they fix their food and start serving nice things - good for them. But the fact is when you went there the food was rotten. If you ever go by this restaurant again and decide to eat there again - you may update your review or write a new one. But it's your choice. If you don't - they stay with negative review they fully deserved, because at the time when review was written, what it said was valid.
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I gave it a negative review myself. And I see it fair. I cannot even launch the damn game. It crashes every time right after title screen. So yeah - in moment of writing a review the game is basically 60$ screensaver, nothing more. And for it it gets negative review. And I'm not the only one - there are hundreds of comments on forums of people who don't have performance issues but cannot even launch the game. If devs didn't want negative reviews they could have idk - test the game and release it in at least launchable state? And what they do? They anmnounce that they hired QA company. TODAY. They gonna start doing QA on their game AFTER it launched... :D:
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Welcome to the purest culmination of Bethesda style game development. Only they went too far and released something that won't even start up, instead of just doing a buggy mess that the community will fix for them eventually.
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I played quite a few Bethesda games at launch or soon after launch (Oblivion, Fallout , Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, Dishonored) and I gotta say that level of launch incompetence done by Bethesda and level of incompetence done here are not even comparable. It takes something to make Bethesda launches look like perfect ones by comparison... ;p
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Bethesda style game development
Dishonored is developed by Arkane, and New Vegas by Obsidian. You can't actually include those in your evaluation, so long as the topic is development rather than publishing.
But yeah, the game seems pretty solid to the Bethesda framework: Terrible launch, poor quality control, lack of depth of features, gameplay, or content, and an emphasis on grinding gameplay.
Typically we'd rely on modding to fix that, but I haven't heard anything firm about its inclusion [or the method of such] for NMS- so it's already losing out on the one thing that makes Bethesda games redeemable. Add in how all-around inept the team is portraying themselves as, and..
Well, it's just yet another large sandbox game that I'm no longer interested in. :X
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It's very sad tho, that fans jump to Bethesda games even when they know they're gonna be broken af, just because the community salvages it afterwards.
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In fairness, the community does a fantastic job. :P
Name another customizable sandbox game with the quality and breadth of mods that Skyrim/Fallout/FalloutNV/Fallout 4 have- or even that functionally cater to a RPG framework at all.
In terms of a 'build your own adventure' game, the newer Bethesda games are pretty great.
...I couldn't find anything redeemable about their earlier games, however, given the lack of modding support and even more sloppily managed gameplay. :X
Well, I don't respect Bethesda [though games they publish but don't develop, like NV and Dishonored, are far more appealing =O] as a developer or a publisher, but I can't say I don't eventually try and get a hold of their newer games- the modding is just too engaging.
Though, that's much the same reason I favor Civilization games- expansions and modding tends to carry them, as well. Other than how Civ games manage zones of control, I find them pretty shallow compared to other notable 4X games. The modding [eg, Fall from Heaven 2 for Civ4] is what really makes them comparable to the top 4x games.
Of course, Civ games are a lot more inherently playable than Bethesda games, so I can't say it's an even comparison :P
Well, some people have commented on SG that they prefer the Bethesda games unmodded, or the earlier games [plenty of individuals that proclaim Morrowind as the best of the series (for some reason?)], so there's definitely a variety of preferences out there.
Still, if it wasn't for community contributions, I personally would never have given Bethesda's in-house games a second look, after playing through their earlier games. :X
But yeah, I view their newer games more like an RPGMaker framework-
It's not what they provide that matters, but what others do with it. :)
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It's totally fair. If you pay that kind of money for a game, you should be able to play it well. No matter how big the team was, if they can't handle it, they shouldn't have done it in the first place. They wanted to make a 60 bucks game, they hyped it a lot and it failed. People payed a lot of money for something that barely works (if at all), of course they get angry...
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Yep, this. Unfortunately it's becoming a standard to release broken games and then fix it later. All those big-sized day-one patches, oh god...
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I don't really mind day one patches, since it usually fixes some issues people have right away. But I do have a problem with it that there are so many games that release in a bad state.
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Right, comparing to games release in bad state, those day-one patches are not so bad actually :D
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Edit: Holy crap, over 16,000 negative reviews now.
store link
The game got 2,000+ negative reviews mostly dealing with crashes and performance problems.
I don't remember seeing so much hate since Batman and Just Cause 3.
But for some reason for no man's sky I feel bad because its a small team and seems like they've been through alot of legal hell and general other development roadbumps before release.
It makes me a little sad seeing so much hate for performance issues, those can (hopefully) be fixed rather quickly.
Like, come on angry mob, give the little space guy a chance D:
Do you think its fair slamming a game into the ground not even an hour after release for performance issues rather than game content?
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