【Steam】Isle of Jura｜Free until Mar 09 17:00 UTC

Again, we're talking a lot of very similar bug reports, about an issue that might continue to get overlooked if people weren't reporting it.
Generally, if a developer has a good reporting system built into the game or a dedicated bug section in Steam community, I have noticed people preferring to use that, but reviews sometimes are the only real option and, always, the option that's most simple, straightforward, and informative to other customers.

I rarely factor in game time considering how extremely unreliable it is. For example, if you run multiple games at once, Steam will either 1. calculate time correctly, 2. multiply time by number of games open (eg, if you have 4 games open, all four games will calculate runtime by *4 each) or 3. not calculate time at all. Add in players who mostly play offline, other steam calculation issues where it just doesn't factor time right/at all during play, games that load from launchers sometimes not linking playtime correctly within the game itself, the fact that Steam often doesn't count the first 10 minutes or so of a game (I've had to repeatedly load several games multiple times each to reach the 5 minute mark to leave a review [from playing offline or on another platform] for them, and had plenty of others that simply showed about 10 minutes less than actually played after my first playthrough) etc..

Playtime's absolutely an important metric to consider and you're right to point it out, but it's also important not to overvalue it or jump to overly firm conclusions on what it may suggest.

Side-note, when I see reviews that have low playtime and are informative, I assume less maliciousness- malicious people tend to not be respond in detailed manners, but either in "lol bro y so woke" or "just kys" type manners- and more "the game is legit that frustrating or boring to play". :P

Conversely, reviews that are empty, regardless of playtime, feel a lot more "malicious", especially when they're by posters who ALWAYS review things positively (with some stupid ascii doge, gibberish quote, or similar spam).


And, er. No. Games don't all have one or two persistent crash issues. It's extremely difficult to get a PERSISTENT crashing issue just from the usual jankyness of hardware/software compatibilities and quirks. Generally, issues not based entirely in the code are extremely inconsistent, or are tied to a specific issue with key hardware (eg, Nvidia/AMD graphic card quirks, specific to specific GPU models or firmware updates). After all, it.. just doesn't make sense for computers to be built in a way that'd allow for what you're describing. Unless you're working off of a completely abberant framework- eg, emulating windows through Linux or Mac- there's just no reason for that level of incompability based on hardware, OS, etc elements. Rather, if you're having persistent crashing issues and it's not the fault of the game in question having a fixable issue, then it's time to look into your hardware- update your ram, make sure your motherboard or harddrive isn't dying, run antivirus scans, check that your FPS has a reasonable cap set just in case the game doesn't properly set one itself, etc.

Before moving on to the next point, again, I want to emphasize, what you're describing just isn't a reasonable expectation for software. That said, sure, there's some degree of jank to be expected. And if someone goes "the game did this one minor thing this one time" or "I had one crash to desktop in this specific instance", definitely be critical. Like, multiple reviewers I read/watch have noted Civ VII crashing once on them, and never again, so that's a consistent bug, but seems to be a weird initialization issue with some part of the game, and isn't worth really criticizng or highlighting.

But if there's any kind of consistent jank to a game, or if there's a repeatable bug... uhm, fixing that's.. expected, by both players and developers. It's.. WEIRD to expect anything else, or to expect that to be normal. It'd be like expecting your garbage pickup crew to leave some trash on your porch each pickup. There's clearly a difference between a quirk in your trashcan setup, or an occasional blowaway trash flub on their end, and them deliberately being negligent to issues they're responsible for. That's just something expected in any field, so not sure why you'd make an exception for games, especially since luxury goods are traditionally held to higher standards of expected quality/performance by virtue of luxury status.


In any case, there's a clear trend of "the game is boring and janky and then it crashed at specific points", so that's clearly all informative, constructive, consistent, and non-malicious. You can criticize it in other ways, if you really think it's merited- such as saying a review wants more from the game than is expected of the niche it's trying to fill and price tag, or that a review is impetuous due to low playtime, and that they should give it more playtime (though since all reviews agree it doesn't get better/change, that feels like a strange demand. People understand their tastes after just a few sips of a drink, and the same goes for a few cycles of gameplay in a game; If the gameplay never changes, there's no reason to justify further play as having merit for reviews). But malicious? Again, that's.. an absolutely baffling place to leap to.

Rather, it seems more likely you and Fluffster don't understand the meaning of the word, or are intentionally trolling with it. That's not to say I'm insisting either is true, just that I'm very much confounded by the continued use of the word relative to the context. To be clear, maliciousness is the act of intentional harm, done out of finding delight in others being harmed. It's sort of like malevolance (having the desire to harm out of underlying wicked nature) mixed with schadenfruede, with some sprinklings of pettiness and spite thrown in for good measure.

For that to be ascribed to any comments that lack any overt ill intent, and to base that solely off something like playtime or the game being free is.. questionable.


Besides, I'm not seeing what you're describing to begin with- the vast, vast majority of the negative reviews I'm seeing show .5 hours playtime or more (most seem to be .7 or more), and plenty show 1.7 to 2+ (with one even going up to 7.8!). More than that, positive reviews actually seem to show more .1 hour reviews than negative reviews have, with perhaps a comparable rate of .2 or less reviews between them.
Sure, past that point positive reviewers do tend to have more playtime before they post their reviews- if they get past around .2, they tend to go as high as 3+, rather than stopping around .5~2- but it's expected that people who enjoy a game more would play it more. As far as review trend goes, there's no indication that there's any special preference for negative reviewers to fail to meet an arbitrary minimum playtime any more than positive reviewers do. Rather, given how many positive reviews are troll reviews, and how few negative reviews are, it heavily suggests the game's review average is still inflated above what it should be.

And again, review trends don't really relate to a game being free regardless, which was the core argument of this discussion nesting. Not, again, that there seems to be such a trend to begin with. Moreover, while not necessarily important, none of the few .1~.2 hr recent negative reviews had actually been posted when I checked before making my previous reply to Fluffster [very first one dropped at the same time I was writing the post, so I didn't even see it until checking again for this post], so... yeah. None of what you're addressing seems as though it'd be relevant to the initial interchange from any angle.


I can't be arsed to clean this up or TL;DR it, I've already put too much time into what's honestly a fairly stupid topic. :P