I have a bigger gripe with positive ranking higher than mostly positive…
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Because that adjective, especially with the word "most" in it makes it look like as if it is more than just positive.
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Huh it doesn't to me. To me it seems the opposite. Mostly basically means 'not completely' doesn't it?
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Yes, it does. Still, I'd prefer if the normal "positive" would use another word. Like, "Excellent" or something.
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But then what about "very positive"? or "overwhelmingly positive" xD
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Hm. Good point. Then "mostly positive" to "slightly positive"?
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What if it went:
Mostly slightly positive
Slightly positive
Slightly Mostly positive
Mostly positive
Positive
And so on? C:
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Mostly positive to me comes under plain vanilla positive. Like in, a lot of negative, but mostly positive. Close to 50/50 but slightly above mixed so maybe 40/60. Positive would be like 30/70. Overwhelmingly would be anything above 95% positive. Factorio should be rated almost perfect :P
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Yeah, I personally think it would be better to just show the numbers. Having text ratings can be a little vague at times.
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Based on 30 years of publishers and devs demanding reviewers give their bang average games 7/10. Ironic, isn't it.
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Not really. It depends on how you view the scale. If everything under 5 is considered bad, and 5 is neither good nor bad, then it stands to reason that the "average" game gets a score over 5, because the average game that gets big enough to actually warrant a review tend to be at least alright, which would be over 5, and probably somewhere in the region of 7.
Making the "average" game a 5 would make reviews a lot harder to read for people who are not already well versed in the world of gaming, as they don't have as much to compare to (so they don't really know what constitutes "average"), but they will have at least a basic understanding of what constitutes "bad".
The best way to get out of this would be to move away from a numerical scale altogether. A local magazine would rate movies with signs. A - meant that it was bad, a + meant that it was on the good side of "not good, but not bad", ++ would be better than + and so on. It means that you can use the whole scale easier and it won't look as "inflated", without having to expect people to actually know anything about the subject beforehand either.
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So for Steam is the same get on an exam a 6.9 qualification and a 4.1 qualification?
No. You are confusing two things here. 6.9 and 4.1 should be the achieved points in your example and "mixed" should be the qualification.
And yes it works the same in school where an A doesn't always have the same number of points as anotherones A.
But yes I think they should show the percentage by default instead (even though it already does when you hover).
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No , it´s not the same as in school, in school if you fail the exam you fail the exam and you wont find a teacher who fail you with a 6.9
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"Mixed" is not failed.
In school you usually fail under 4.0 (atleast where I am from).
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Not in my case, under 5.0 is failed.
Anyway is not fair call MIXED a game with 600 positive and 400 negative, and call MIXED other game with 500 positve and 600 negative. It´s not about fail or not it´s just not fair.
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It depends on the point of view. Like I said just because you got an A with 92/100 doesn't mean that there can't be an A with 89/100.
And it is fair to call them mixed since they are mixed.
Where would you draw the line? 49.9% = negativ and 50.1% = positive and exactly 50% is neutral?
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Yes cause if a game is rate with 501 positve and 500 negative and other game is 500 positive and 501 negative it´s fair say one is mostly positive and the other one is mostly negative cause it´s true!, you can split the negative games : MOSTLY NEGATIVE, NEGATIVE AND VERY NEGATIVE AND HORRIBLE for example and then positive : EXCELLENT, VERY POSITIVE, POSITIVE, AND MOSTLY POSITIVE.
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No need for caps.
Mixed is also a true statement since it is not clearly positive or negative.
I wouldn't call it exactly fair either if it was like you described.
Do you think this is fair? :
Game A: 1000 positive 999 negative reviews -> mostly positive
Game B: 999 positve 1000 negative reviews -> mostly negative
That would also mean that a game can switch realy fast and often between mostly positive and mostly negative where as in the system as it is right now there is a range where games can "float".
I would be turned down more if a game is called mostly negative than mixed. If I see mixed instead of positive and I think the game looks alright I either buy it or look at some actual gameplay first.
If it says mostly negative its more likely that I don't give it a second thought.
This would be realy bad for new/small developers which you want to prevent.
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Thats why i wrote that example, cause mixed is a good option for close games with similar reviews, for me it should be 45% to 55%, 10% difference is reasonable.
After my previous example you can understand how i feel with MIXED, i feel like you felt after my example, it´s totally unfair for me.
I used caps for the categories of the rates, i thought it was obvious.
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Well its personal preference and feeling I guess since you can't realy put facts to it.
So even if you write Valve about it they probably won't do anything just because someone doesn't like the rating system they are using.
They maybe start considering change if 70% (See what I did there? :D) of the userbase disagrees with it
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NO NEED TO SHOUT BECAUSE SOMEONE HAS A DIFFERENT OPINION!
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I don't know your meter but here in a scale from 0 to 10 everything below 6 counted as failed in High School.
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O.o That is brutally harsh. In school I think to fail you needed 30 % or lower. For university I'm not sure anymore but you still would succeed if you had atleast 50 % of the necessary points. 40 % may have been enough as well.
Why make a scale from 0 to 10 if you just cut everything below 6 anyway? Okay your scale was probably not from 0 to 10 but still .... I think it is harsh.
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I don't know how it is on other countries but here, in Italy, you get a mark from 0 to 10 and at the end of the school year the average on a subject is the final vote. Still believe me if you have to correct a 2 as mark hitting 10 is pretty hard if it's lower than 2 you'll have to score 2 or more good marks XD
On my University is kinda the same, marks range from 0 to 33 where 0 is (go home you're drunk), 18 is the minimum to pass, everything below counts as a fail, if the exam is not divided in like 2 written and 1 oral parts some teachers decided that you had to have the 2 written marks combined and than divided by 2 at least equal to 18 to be able to be able to take the oral exam.
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Well first off the system is extremely broken because all reviews count including troll upvotes and downvotes. Most people write 1 sentence or even 1 word and put a 'review' and it will count. So in general you shouldn't even trust the numbers in the first place. Just read the serious reviews instead.
WIth that said, it seems reasonable that 40-70% positive counts as Mixed. It's fairly spread out around 50% allowing margins of error. How else would you cap it? You could argue that 30-70% or 40-60% might be more fair, but then again there's a clear tendency that people really like to upvote things rather than downvote. Especially in this binary 'either you like it or you don't' system most people favour the upvote unless they completely hate the game (after all this same logic is what get mediocre games greenlighted in the first place). The shocker? Most Mixed games are actually pretty bad (at least in my experience). So even if you get 70% upvotes it might be pretty accurate after all. If your game is actually good, it will usually reach the Positive variants, with the real masterpieces usually reaching Overwhelmingly Positive. So overall the system seems to be balanced with the current numbers.
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Yes, the review system is broken and if they don´t check the reviews before can be accepted my point with the percentages is secondary of course but i´m not agree with you because it´s not about a game is good or not, it´s about you have games with the double of positive reviews than negative and it is considered MIXED when a game with more negative than positive is considered MIXED too.
Anyway i played bad games with +80% positive reviews and i can not say every game -80% positive reviews is bad cause i found some bads. Your case is the same, you can not say a game with 70% is bad cause is not true(althought for you this game is bad, which is totally reasonable), if the reviews are 200 positive and 100 negative the fair thing is a positive game not a mixed game.
Of course the reviews are mixed but then a game with 60 positive and 2 negative is mixed too?. It makes no sense.
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Well I get your point, but 70% seems like a reasonable cap to me considering what I said about people being more keen to upvote than downvote. I agree that this causes some issues in a scenario as you propose with 200 positive against 100 negative. Maybe lowering the cap to 60-65% would be reasonable as well.
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For me should be 45-55% MIXED, giving the chance to improve the game to the developers so they can get out of this bad situation with their game and leaving the under 45% percentage for the bad games.
Anyway i´m not agree with you about people prefer upvote, i think people prefer follow the winning position so if the game is considered as bad people usually will say it´s bad and if the game is considered as good people will say it´s good, that´s other of my points cause with the high MIXED ratio people consider the game is not too good for definition so probably the game will decrease its rate.
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Troll Upvotes.
yup, i've seen too many false recommended rating for an extremely broken games
this. just. wrong.
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How else would you call it. There are either 30 % or even 40 % of the users with different opinions. So mixed is actually pretty acurate. It seems to span from 55 % + 15 % to 55 % - 15 % which seems reasonable. Also you can't compare the system with grades you get in school. The Steam ratings are a poll with a 1 0 option while in school you get grades depending on your performance to a set 100 %.
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So for you a game with 30% positive and 70% negative is comparable to a game with 70% positive and 30 % negative?
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They both fit the term mixed. Let us for a moment go away from the positive and the negative and just call one side A and the other B. One time you have a ratio of 7 A - 3 B and one time of 3 A - 7 B. In both cases the ratio is 7 to 3 hence it is called mixed. So yea, both games have a mixed rating. While the one is more positive and the other is more negative may be imprecise but the term mixed is definetely justified.
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The term is justified but not in this case cause they are selling products, and the products have reviews.
Imagine you want to buy something in amazon and they sell you as a product with MIXED opinions.
Will you buy it? I bet you buy the product with good opinions.
So it´s not about the term is just imprecise is totally unfair cause one product with 70% of positve reviews is obviously better considered than a product with 30% of positive.
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From a buisness side it is equally justify. Because this Mixed Reviews should be translated to take a closer look. And this is what I would be doing. That is also the reason why there is the possibility to review the article (same in amazon): To form your own opinion. Even when looking at an overwhelming positive game I ALWAYS read the negative reviews to check if there is something I would have a problem with. That the range for the Mixed Reviews is this broad is due to the trustworthiness of the community.
Also I will take a closer look at games with lower ratings. Best example would be Blade of Destiny. A game I bought despite the low ratings (and they have been in the 40 % or even 30 % range) and enjoyed immensely.
If people favor one video game over the other for something subjective like their ratings they are doing something wrong. Like I said in the beginning: All Mixed Reviews should be watch more closely. Ah this reminds me for this comic about Star ratings and why you should always read the reviews:
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My biggest concern is about dev giving free games (or paying directly people like on fiverr) for postive reviews. Recently I see lot of reviews mentioning "key given for free by dev for testing purpose", how many people don't mention it ?
Maybe the rating system is not perfect but sometimes this is all you got to decide to buy or not.
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Well, if a dev gives keys for positive reviews and Steam finds out they're kicked out of the store.
Supposedly happened to that Pirate game by a german dev, can't remember the name. It was buggy as hell.
Edit: Raven's Cry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven's_Cry#Re-release
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-negative reviews sell games, I usually don't even bother with positive ones because I figure most are trolls
-missing negative reviews (ie 0 of 15 "useful") = auto not interested since I figure the dev is hiding a problem
-user complains about timers in the game; game becomes insta-buy for speed runners, while plodding explorers (like me)consider it junk
-some users hate spawning enemies and like to clear areas, others hate running out of enemies
-some like arcade like scores, some hate them
-everyone hates bugs and incomplete content
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steam reviews, almost as useless as ign
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Personally, I tend to ignore the label ("positive", "mixed", etc), and instead check percentages and number of total positive and negative reviews.
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Personnally, a mixed rating is not a bad thing, in particular if it's a very niche game.
It just means I have to read a few reviews to understand what people disliked about the game, and also what they liked about it. This way I can make my own opinion.
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I'm curious about how much influence the ratings have on actual sales conversions. My intuition says that games with "overwhelmingly positive" get rather big boosts to actual sales, but it's hard to say if it's confirmation bias / other factors.
Personally, I have enough modern gaming experience these days and a fair bearing on my gaming preferences that I don't really pay much attention to ratings, as I've played some "overwhelmingly positive" games that I hated and also a lot of "mostly negative" and "mixed" games that I really enjoyed. However, I think I'm also not the average consumer or target demographic because my opinions often seem to be contrarian to the popular majority.
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I always felt that mixed should be below 60% (i.e 50%+), mostly positive below 75%, and very positive 75% and abv. But steam has their ways i guess
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Steam community is cancer .
And taking reviews seriously sounds like a bad idea .
Ppl go and h8 on games for no particular reasons every so often .
Or just go on a hype train and post positive reviews , have never touched the game .
Or worse case , got free keys from dev and post reviews in return .
So yeah ... better check IGN reviews ... atleast you know they are getting paid for writing that crap .
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Hello. Im gonna to explain why i open this discussion.
I realise there is a big problem with the steam rates and i want to share what i found with all of you and try to discuss is this is normal by valve.
First i will give you information about some games and their rates.
Secrets of Rætikon - 220 positive 94 negative. 70.06 % positive rate. MOSTLY POSITIVE
Magicka 2 -1673 positive 729 negative. 69.6% positive rate. MIXED
Make it Indie! - 337 positive 474 negative. 41.55% positive rate. MIXED
Inescapable - 45 positive 68 negative. 39.8% positive rate. MOSTLY NEGATIVE.
So for Steam is the same get on an exam a 6.9 qualification and a 4.1 qualification?
This really sucks.
And for new developers with new games with 69% rate have to be very bad be considered as MIXED when people find your game.
Anyone knows how to send a steam a message to tell them this shit.
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