645 réponses à ce sujet

[CuriousArtemis]

I've never heard of Metacritic. This may be something only hardcore gamers are familiar with. There are lots and lots of casual gamers who buy games, too (probably more ... most families I know have at least one gaming system in their home). These folks never go on a forum or rate games ... they just buy the ones they like and loan them to their friends. I bought DA:O and loaned it to my bro in law. He bought Portal 2, and we played it together, then he loaned it to a friend.

[Great_Horn]

Yrkoon wrote...

Not only that, but take a look at this:

http://files.shareho...INAL_LOCKED.pdf

^that's one of EA's Quarterly Earnings reports to Shareholders. Notice how many times EA mentions metacritic in this report. They use metacritic data/scores as proof of product quality.

I know some people here like to think that they're "smarter" than the common rabble by dismissing Metacritic as "useless" or whatever. But they're just displaying their complete ignorance of the industry by doing so.  There isn't a single gaming corporation on planet earth that doesn't  track their games' Metacritic  scores.

Nice find. From an economic vantage point it definitely makes sense that a company would also use already existing indicators (like Metacritic) to rate (the success of) a game.

Hence, what bothers me most is the fact, that I´ve got the impression that it is really really hard to have a civil conversation on this forum. If you dare and say something, let’s say it less positive about DA:2 you’ve been immediately called a hater. Most postings try to convince you, that all you say can’t be true!  It’s very toxic.

Modifié par Great_Horn, 25 février 2012 - 08:07 .

[Zanallen]

Great_Horn wrote...

Nice find. From an economic vantage point it definitely makes sense that a company would also use already existing indicators (like Metacritic) to rate (the success of) a game.

Hence, what bothers me most is the fact, that I´ve got the impression that it is really really hard to have a civil conversation on this forum. If you dare and say something, let’s say it less positive about DA:2 you’ve been immediately called a hater. Most postings try to convince you, that all you say can’t be true!  It’s very toxic.

I'm sure they do look at Metacritic scores. I am just  as sure that they place far more stock in the professional critic reviews than they do in the objectively worthless user reviews.

[Great_Horn]

Zanallen wrote...

Great_Horn wrote...

Nice find. From an economic vantage point it definitely makes sense that a company would also use already existing indicators (like Metacritic) to rate (the success of) a game.

Hence, what bothers me most is the fact, that I´ve got the impression that it is really really hard to have a civil conversation on this forum. If you dare and say something, let’s say it less positive about DA:2 you’ve been immediately called a hater. Most postings try to convince you, that all you say can’t be true!  It’s very toxic.

I'm sure they do look at Metacritic scores. I am just  as sure that they place far more stock in the professional critic reviews than they do in the objectively worthless user reviews.

So you think a professional review from let’s say a game magazine is more reliable than from an independent gamer?


Edit: According to GT:



Dragon Age II: got a score from 9.2 and first DLC (Legacy) after release, which most people on this forum rate higher than the original game got a score from 5.9. How come?

Modifié par Great_Horn, 25 février 2012 - 08:36 .

[Zanallen]

Great_Horn wrote...

So you think a professional review from let’s say a game magazine is more reliable than from an independent gamer?

The only review I trust is my own. That being said, most metacritic user reviews are full of hgyperbole and overreaction. No game should receive a score of 0 unless it is completely unplayable. Just like only absolutely perfect games should receive 10s. And no, the 0s and the 10s don't cancel each other out because for every 10 on a game like DA2, five more people will give it a 0 just because. There are no checks and balances, no accountability. If I really wanted to I could create a thousand different accounts and use them to give a game a thousand 0 reviews. It is worthless.

Professional reviews, despite claims of being bought off, still have some measure of objectivity in the review itself if not in the score. As such, I am more willing to trust a professional, from a source that I have agreed with in the past, than I am some random stranger on the internet who couldn't be objective if his life depended on it.

Of course, we aren't discussing my personal thoughts on the matter. We are discussing EA's. I skimmed through Yrkoon's link (I have no intention of actually reading a boring eighteen page financial report when I have much better things I could be doing). I saw mention of Metacritic twice, both times in reference to the aggregate proefessional review score. That tells me nothing about whether or not anyone at EA cares about the user scores.

[Zanallen]

Great_Horn wrote...

Like I said there are enough gamers who recognize a good RPG when they see one.  And if you step outside the real world you will see, that you are in the minority.

http://www.gameinfor...ig-in-2011.aspx

I’m fine if Hack&Slash Action-RPGs like DA:2 pleases you. It´s always a matter of taste!

I do find it mildly humorous that you refer to DA2 as a hack and slash action-RPG while equating TW2 as a "pure and good RPG". The Witcher 2 is every bit as much, if not more, of a hack and slash action-RPG as Dragon Age 2.

[Zanallen]

BrotherWarth wrote...

In Dragon Age 2 enemies literally explode when stabbed with a dagger. That fits the hack & slash genre much more than the Witcher's combat.
I'm not that big a fan of the Witcher franchise, but saying the Witcher is more of a hack & slash is just wrong.

Exploding enemies has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand, but whatever. Hack and slash generally refers to a game with a heavy emphasis on melee combat. This combat is usually in real time and has one to one controls, where one button press results in one attack and multiple presses lead into a combination of moves. That is the basic design of TW2 and DA2. However, TW2 combat is entirely action based. In order to avoid attacks you must roll away or parry (Or use Quen, I guess). Sure you can set traps and lead enemies into them, but those are also very actiony elements.

It is absolutely ridiculous to fault one game for having hack and slash action combat when both games have a similar reliance on those mechanics.

[Great_Horn]

Zanallen wrote...

Great_Horn wrote...

So you think a professional review from let’s say a game magazine is more reliable than from an independent gamer?

The only review I trust is my own. That being said, most metacritic user reviews are full of hgyperbole and overreaction. No game should receive a score of 0 unless it is completely unplayable. Just like only absolutely perfect games should receive 10s. And no, the 0s and the 10s don't cancel each other out because for every 10 on a game like DA2, five more people will give it a 0 just because. There are no checks and balances, no accountability. If I really wanted to I could create a thousand different accounts and use them to give a game a thousand 0 reviews. It is worthless.

Professional reviews, despite claims of being bought off, still have some measure of objectivity in the review itself if not in the score. As such, I am more willing to trust a professional, from a source that I have agreed with in the past, than I am some random stranger on the internet who couldn't be objective if his life depended on it.

Of course, we aren't discussing my personal thoughts on the matter. We are discussing EA's. I skimmed through Yrkoon's link (I have no intention of actually reading a boring eighteen page financial report when I have much better things I could be doing). I saw mention of Metacritic twice, both times in reference to the aggregate proefessional review score. That tells me nothing about whether or not anyone at EA cares about the user scores.

Actually I do believe that in a large enough sample extreme ratings (0 and 10) cancel each other. So indeed I´m assuming that not only the hyperbole and overreaction gamers go to Metacrtics. BTW:  I thought they come here ;-)

Personally I value a high discrepancy between professional and user scores as an indicator that something is wrong.

Modifié par Great_Horn, 25 février 2012 - 09:04 .

[Zanallen]

BrotherWarth wrote...

That's so dumb. Worthless user reviews? Do you think someone browsing games on Amazon is going to see Dragon Age 2's 3 stars and say "I'm gonna buy this instead of a higher-rated game"? Maybe a single negative review or positive review doesn't mean much overall, but a lot of them can make a huge difference.

Reviews are meaningless. They are simply what someone who played the game felt about their experience. In the case of a user review, it is generally loaded with hyperbole and knee jerk reactions, as evidenced by people reviewing games within hours of them being released. Really? The game came out less than an hour ago and people have played enough of it to feel that they can accurately and objectively discuss its merits? No. It is "so dumb" to even think that.

I would like to think that a prospective buyer would research the game they are interested and make an informed decision. They could watch gameplay videos, play the demo or, in the case of console games, even rent the game and play it themself before making the purchase.

[Great_Horn]

Zanallen wrote...

BrotherWarth wrote...

In Dragon Age 2 enemies literally explode when stabbed with a dagger. That fits the hack & slash genre much more than the Witcher's combat.
I'm not that big a fan of the Witcher franchise, but saying the Witcher is more of a hack & slash is just wrong.

Exploding enemies has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand, but whatever. Hack and slash generally refers to a game with a heavy emphasis on melee combat. This combat is usually in real time and has one to one controls, where one button press results in one attack and multiple presses lead into a combination of moves. That is the basic design of TW2 and DA2. However, TW2 combat is entirely action based. In order to avoid attacks you must roll away or parry (Or use Quen, I guess). Sure you can set traps and lead enemies into them, but those are also very actiony elements.

It is absolutely ridiculous to fault one game for having hack and slash action combat when both games have a similar reliance on those mechanics.

Similar? Really?

I thought I had to kill more raiders in DA:2 than in Fallout 1&2 together! Furthermore I had to play on nightmare couse it was the only setting I had friendly fire with. Are you really aware how long it takes to defeat the final boss in Act 1? Men I had to Hack&Slash for ages. This enemy seemed to have a life bar longer then three chocolate bars together.  


Edit: BTW: As long as I know DA:2 has no option to parry any attack at all. Literally you’ve been hacking and slashing thru the whole game.

Modifié par Great_Horn, 25 février 2012 - 09:47 .

[MerinTB]

Zanallen wrote...

BrotherWarth wrote...
That's so dumb. Worthless user reviews? Do you think someone browsing games on Amazon is going to see Dragon Age 2's 3 stars and say "I'm gonna buy this instead of a higher-rated game"? Maybe a single negative review or positive review doesn't mean much overall, but a lot of them can make a huge difference.

Reviews are meaningless.

To you.  I use reviews all the time.  Not one review, no, but a amalgram of critics and consumers combined to get an overall picture.  You finding them meaningless is simply your opinion of them.  Others disagree - if they didn't, there wouldn't be reviews EVERYWHERE.

As an author, I really do care about my reviews.  I'm the creator, and they mean A LOT to me.

I would like to think that a prospective buyer would research the game they are interested and make an informed decision. They could watch gameplay videos, play the demo or, in the case of console games, even rent the game and play it themself before making the purchase.

That's a fine way to do it.  And some people don't want to waste the time doing all of that - they just want to buy a game that many think is good.  If enough people like it, that might be enough for someone.  If they have a reviewer or three or whatever that they trust, as in that reviewer seems to always steer the consumer in the right direction, then they can come to rely on said reviewer(s).

Reviews aren't the end-all, be-all of decision making for buying a product - no (well for some people maybe) - but they are one method of seeing whether a game is good or not.

You can't out of hand dismiss professional and consumer reviews.  They are important.  Just because you don't like them doesn't make them useless to everyone else.

There's opinionated, and there's opinionated... and then there's believing one's word is law.

[Yrkoon]

Filament wrote...

If it were the case that metacritic userscores actually represented the "common rabble" rather than an unrepresentative, unreliable subset of them, you may have had a point.

Also, how surprising that you would disingenuously try to conflate metascores and userscores by using EA's acknowledgement of the former as proof of the latter's value.

lol what?

That made no sense at all. 

Oh, And I didn't  (disinguously or otherwise) conflate metacritic's user and critic scores at all.    Not that there's anything wrong with doing so even if I had.  There's real value  in acknowledging both, together, when trying to get a sense of how well received  any game  is.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 26 février 2012 - 02:14 .

[Yrkoon]

I, on the other hand, find metacritic stunningly accurate (or should I say, I always find it in complete lockstep with my own personal taste). It has never steered me wrong. There has never been a time when I played a game, thought it was awesome, then gone on metacritic and seen a low or mixed score. Nor have I ever played a game, hated it, then come online to see that its metacritic score was high.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 26 février 2012 - 02:22 .

[Zanallen]

Great_Horn wrote...

Similar? Really?

I thought I had to kill more raiders in DA:2 than in Fallout 1&2 together! Furthermore I had to play on nightmare couse it was the only setting I had friendly fire with. Are you really aware how long it takes to defeat the final boss in Act 1? Men I had to Hack&Slash for ages. This enemy seemed to have a life bar longer then three chocolate bars together.  

Edit: BTW: As long as I know DA:2 has no option to parry any attack at all. Literally you’ve been hacking and slashing thru the whole game.

It isn't the game's fault that you poorly understood the game mechanics. It is pretty clear that you are supposed to be using cross-class combos to defeat your opponents. If you want to sit there and mindlessly press the attack button all day long that is your perogative.

And no, DA2 doesn't have parrying. Parrying is generally found in action games. TW2 has parrying...You see how this works?

[ElitePinecone]

Yrkoon wrote...
snip

Metacritic *critic* scores are fine. Overused, but fine if that's what you're measuring. They give a rough estimate of what the professional critics that review games think of that product. 

But the user scores are statistically useless. Thousands of people take it upon themselves to rate a product with no standardised criteria. Some of them may not have even played the game. The reviews themselves are full of statistical and self-selection biases. The methodology is non-existant. It's a numerical score with no criteria or instructions to reviewers. 

It's by no means a "good rough estimate" of what a playerbase at large think about a product. It's thousands of people with a vested interest in defending or attacking a product/company putting their opinion in the form of a number. The reviewers aren't selected by random sample, but select themselves for a bunch of reasons that screw up the validity of the results. If a bunch of pro- or anti- [product x] websites feel strongly enough to bombard the website with user scores, then that's what it'll reflect. Not an accurate assessment of the wider mood. 

It's fine as a collection of very limited and specific feedback and (often) vitriol. But to even contemplate using the user feedback score as an actual measurement of popular opinion is foolish. Look at the number of 0s and 10s - on what basis are people giving that score? Where's the standardised criteria? 

Bioware already have good user feedback with their telemetry - it's present in a large proportion of the playerbase, doesn't need any user involvement and collects the data automatically without any room for biases. 

I do believe that in a large enough sample extreme ratings (0 and 10) cancel each other

This doesn't make any sense. What if the "large enough sample" was 99% from [site x] who loved DA2, and all gave it 10? You're assuming the proportion of 0s and 10s is roughly equal, when it very clearly isn't. 

A large enough random sample would do this, if the numerical ratings were standardised. But they aren't, and Metacritic user reviews aren't random samples. 

*If* reviewers were actually giving scores that matched up with their opinion, then it might be more reliable and valid. But as it is, defenders of a game/product bombard it with 10s, and detractors with 0s. Statistically useless. 

The only reliable quantifiable method is some version of random sampling (unless, of course, you could ask the entire playerbase their opinion). Since that's not done, and since the user reviews amount to hordes of people self-selecting and giving inaccurate impressions based on a nonsensical number rating with no criteria, again: the user reviews are nonsense if you're looking for an accurate picture.

At the very least it shows only what the people who responed to it think about the game. Useful for that, but not for any wider implications. 

Modifié par ElitePinecone, 26 février 2012 - 05:03 .

[Yrkoon]

ElitePinecone wrote...


At the very least it shows only what the people who responed to it think about the game.

In other words, it shows how well the game was received by players on  the biggest game rating site on Earth. 

Not sure what else one would want to glean from  the Metacritic user scores.  I sure don't use them for anything else.

ElitePinecone wrote...

This doesn't make any sense. What if the "large enough sample" was 99% from [site x] who loved DA2, and all gave it 10?

That never happens on metacritic.    Because metacritic's  user base is... large.  no 'organized' campaign can ever be enough to change a good game's rating to  "bad"  or vice-versa.  Ditto with the 10s and 0s 'wars".  In the end there will ALWAYS be enough genuinely honest votes from genuinely honest players to insure that a AAA title gets  the score it honestly deserves.

And it doesn't matter anyway.  All the transparency you'd ever need is right there.    People who vote have to  publically post their explanations.  Their voting history is also displayed with a click of a button.  Its up to the reader to determine whether  a vote or group of votes  can be trusted.  And that's easily done with  a few seconds of research.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 26 février 2012 - 09:44 .

[Great_Horn]

Zanallen wrote...

Great_Horn wrote...

Similar? Really?

I thought I had to kill more raiders in DA:2 than in Fallout 1&2 together! Furthermore I had to play on nightmare couse it was the only setting I had friendly fire with. Are you really aware how long it takes to defeat the final boss in Act 1? Men I had to Hack&Slash for ages. This enemy seemed to have a life bar longer then three chocolate bars together.  

Edit: BTW: As long as I know DA:2 has no option to parry any attack at all. Literally you’ve been hacking and slashing thru the whole game.

It isn't the game's fault that you poorly understood the game mechanics. It is pretty clear that you are supposed to be using cross-class combos to defeat your opponents. If you want to sit there and mindlessly press the attack button all day long that is your perogative.

And no, DA2 doesn't have parrying. Parrying is generally found in action games. TW2 has parrying...You see how this works?

Sorry, but in your posting you didn’t take anything I said into account. Instead you switched to your attack mode and trolling behavior. You Sire, are not able to have a civil conversation.
 
You’re accusing me that I don’t use cross-class combos or don’t know how to handle the game settings, on nightmare!  Serious?  Actually it is more likely that canceling friendly fire from the rest of the settings indicates that is was used to appeal to people  who doesn’t want to bother with this challenge and want to be at the heart of the battle and hacking and slashing every opponent.

Furthermore it is very hard to anticipate what comes next in your first play thru and choose the right party members. And I couldn’t force myself to finish the game a second time. It is indeed a fault of the game mechanics if you can’t beat the game with only tactic alone.

We both know the truth that on lower settings (casual and normal), you don’t have to use cross-class combos at all. The over the top abilities are used to literally execute your enemies. Hack&Slash!

IMO: The spawning mechanic also serves to satisfy Hack&Slash desires. People are drawn away in this flow, and didn’t realize that they probably extinguished all raiders in Northern Thedas.

Having the ability to block, counter-attack, roll-away, set traps, implement a fatigue system, or fight with bare hands like in DA:O, gives the combat system more variety or at least a more realistic feeling.



Striping all this features is an indicator for me, that you only have to focus on attack and smashing the bottom.
Despite of all that, if you look at any random fight scene in DA:2  it totally looks Hack&Slash to me.



The problem is it’s so over the top, I can’t take it serious.  

Modifié par Great_Horn, 26 février 2012 - 12:02 .

[leeboi2]

For big fans of the game, it's funny how they don't even know which year it was released in...

[Alexander1136]

FOR ADRASTE'S SAKE! I just want a patch to fix import bugs. I think I should be able to play it without import bugs. helooooo in the name of the maker and all that is holy can I get a patch please. I want to play this game and get the dlc but not if I keep getting bugs where Zevran is alive when he should be dead( I didnt even let'm join my party) after my witch hunt import ...so please fix that **** thank you and have a good day.

[standardpack]

Conversations in this post are going off topic. I may not be a dev but I sense one locking this thread soon if you all don't get back on topic.

Modifié par standardpack, 29 février 2012 - 04:14 .