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Steam Reviews as co-designers in modern RPGs

The Wall

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Are Steam Reviews force of Good.TM or are they normie Borg machine that makes most RPG Devs conform to their cries and demands for "quality of life", "gameplay loop" and let's not forget "balance", which are all code words for: mechanically dumbed down games, with little to no challenge and artisticly the same experience? Many Devs are scared as fuck of negative steam reviews (they can kill any game, indie or AAA)

Whether Disco Elysium or Dark Souls, gamers just like women, are turned on by men with vision and principles. More Devs should make games that they themselves would enjoy, at least in Hardcore modes of their games. In past years too many indie Devs have replaced Publisher for steam normies as new Owners of their game's indentity and design

As Henry Ford (owner of first car factory) said : 'Consumers are wrong, ask average consumer what he needs or wants and he'd tell you "a faster horse". His mind is incapable of crossing borders of already familiar and well-known into new and innovative.'

TLDR: Gamers, are terrible co-designers of games. They should be always heard but not always listened to. Devs' balls are in hands of steam normies
 

Fedora Master

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Like journalists, the average Steamtard reviews the game after about 3 hours, making games that appear good at first but fall apart later - Like Wrath of the Righteous - receive unwarranted positive reviews and difficult but rewarding games - Like Underrail - negative ones.

Press reviews are irrelevant. Steam reviews are irrelevant. All that matters is the Kodex Konsensus.
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
As Henry Ford (owner of first car factory) said : 'Consumers are wrong, ask average consumer what he needs or wants and he'd tell you "a faster horse". His mind is incapable of crossing borders of already familiar and well-known into new and innovative.'
A reviewer isn't reviewing what they want, but what they were delivered.

The average score of most games tends to be pretty darn accurate, much moreso than critics. If you disagree, go browse through metacritic and find games with significant gaps between user and critic scores. The user score is almost always a better representative of the game's quality than the critic score.

All that matters is the Kodex Konsensus.
Just what we need, more walking simulators and visual novels pretending to be RPGs.
 

Bigg Boss

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Sep 23, 2012
Messages
7,528
Are Steam Reviews force of Good.TM or are they normie Borg machine that makes most RPG Devs conform to their cries and demands for "quality of life", "gameplay loop" and let's not forget "balance", which are all code words for: mechanically dumbed down games, with little to no challenge and artisticly the same experience? Many Devs are scared as fuck of negative steam reviews (they can kill any game, indie or AAA)

Whether Disco Elysium or Dark Souls, gamers just like women, are turned on by men with vision and principles. More Devs should make games that they themselves would enjoy, at least in Hardcore modes of their games. In past years too many indie Devs have replaced Publisher for steam normies as new Owners of their game's indentity and design

As Henry Ford (owner of first car factory) said : 'Consumers are wrong, ask average consumer what he needs or wants and he'd tell you "a faster horse". His mind is incapable of crossing borders of already familiar and well-known into new and innovative.'

TLDR: Gamers, are terrible co-designers of games. They should be always heard but not always listened to. Devs' balls are in hands of steam normies

Henry Ford was wrong. Of course reviews are good. Negative reviews are the first thing I go to.
 

Fedora Master

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As Henry Ford (owner of first car factory) said : 'Consumers are wrong, ask average consumer what he needs or wants and he'd tell you "a faster horse". His mind is incapable of crossing borders of already familiar and well-known into new and innovative.'
A reviewer isn't reviewing what they want, but what they were delivered.

The average score of most games tends to be pretty darn accurate, much moreso than critics. If you disagree, go browse through metacritic and find games with significant gaps between user and critic scores. The user score is almost always a better representative of the game's quality than the critic score.

All that matters is the Kodex Konsensus.
Just what we need, more walking simulators and visual novels pretending to be RPGs.

Nobody said the Codex is perfect and the struggle against News Posters and Shills is an ongoing one.
 

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
Are Steam Reviews force of Good.TM or are they normie Borg machine that makes most RPG Devs conform to their cries and demands for "quality of life", "gameplay loop" and let's not forget "balance", which are all code words for: mechanically dumbed down games, with little to no challenge and artisticly the same experience? Many Devs are scared as fuck of negative steam reviews (they can kill any game, indie or AAA)

Whether Disco Elysium or Dark Souls, gamers just like women, are turned on by men with vision and principles. More Devs should make games that they themselves would enjoy, at least in Hardcore modes of their games. In past years too many indie Devs have replaced Publisher for steam normies as new Owners of their game's indentity and design

As Henry Ford (owner of first car factory) said : 'Consumers are wrong, ask average consumer what he needs or wants and he'd tell you "a faster horse". His mind is incapable of crossing borders of already familiar and well-known into new and innovative.'

TLDR: Gamers, are terrible co-designers of games. They should be always heard but not always listened to. Devs' balls are in hands of steam normies
True, but here's another truth bomb for you: those normies asking for a faster horse are better game designers than the salaried employees in the industry today.
 

Rafidur

Learned
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411
Codex: you want a senile, lame mule. I rode mules when I was younger and they are much better. Don't install the flea removal patch you fucking casual it ruins the intended experience.
 

karoliner

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Most skilled black nation
Steam reviews are the most useless crap imaginable. Anything JRPG automatically gets positives scores regardless of quality because anime/waifus even it is total shit like Final Fantasy 13. Any rerelease of an old game gets positive rating because of nostalgia.

Oh i played this game back in 1999 when i was an easily impressed 11 years old. I don't remember anything about it but i loved it as a kid so 10/10.

Amount of time played 30 minutes (20 at time of review)


And the rest is a bunch of retards complaining about the game not running in their intel hd integrated graphics, DLC, or not being translated to brazilian.
 

Morpheus Kitami

Liturgist
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May 14, 2020
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2,476
Steam reviews are for games what focus testing is/was for movies. Something that only rarely works out, but mostly just turns projects afterward into something generic.
 

jungl

Augur
Joined
Mar 30, 2016
Messages
1,420
I only take negative reviews seriously. Most of the positive ones are shills. They either a friend of the devolopers or a autist of the genre that swallows anything new in the genre they love.
 

Butter

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I assume Encased was the impetus for this thread. That's a case where a known publisher and extra money meant more casuals became aware of the game and started proffering shitty advice. Had the game remained more obscure it might've turned out better (of course the devs might have also just ignored bad feedback).

I never read positive Steam reviews, and I don't care about the overall percentage. If you're interested enough in the game to click on its store page and start reading reviews, you don't need people telling you that it's good. Most of these people buy into hype anyway, which is why you have things like Witcher 3 at 97% positive and Disco Elysium at 94% positive.
 

d1nolore

Savant
Joined
May 31, 2017
Messages
662
I generally just read negative reviews and see if there are trends. If there is multiple of the specific complaints and it’s a valid one like too many bugs/crashes/unfinished then I avoid. Then if there’s complaints about game being too hard or too complex I know it’s incline.
 

RobotSquirrel

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Developer
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Messages
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Adelaide
normies: we want a faster horse
codex: akshually, you want a car...
developers: here is a gayer horse
todd: here's some armour
developers: hey that's a good idea! except lets chop the horse up into parts and sell it in parts.
normies: Um you only sold us 1/4 of the horse where's the rest
developers: we're working on a new horse now
normies: hype
codex: :decline:
 
Joined
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut
normies: we want a faster horse
codex: akshually, you want a car...
developers: here is a gayer horse
todd: here's some armour
developers: hey that's a good idea! except lets chop the horse up into parts and sell it in parts.
normies: Um you only sold us 1/4 of the horse where's the rest
developers: we're working on a new horse now
normies: hype
codex: :decline:
codex only thinks it's decline because it's not a slav doing it
 

samuraigaiden

Arcane
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Harare
RPG Wokedex
Chaos Reborn is the poster child for why you should never cater to whiners.

The game was all about RNG. It's called Chaos, for heaven's sake. But they managed to get it played on some big YT channels at the time before launching.

TotalBiscuit (rip) played it with Julian Gollop and Ken Levine on his channel!

So the game ended up reaching a way bigger, more mainstream audience than intended. And the devs were flooded with whining about "too much RNG", "it's unfair", etc.

Instead of focusing on improving and expanding the game they made, these devs decided to cater to the whiners and created a completely new game mode with zero RNG. And the game fucking died almost immediately. Because the whiners moved on to the next new thing and didn't even play the shitty no RNG mode.

Ford was right. People don't know what they want. The only relevant number when it comes to reviews is how many there are. The actual scores are irrelevant.
 

The Wall

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Dumbfuck Zionist Agent
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Steam reviews have accumulated significant power and influence over design choices and future path of RPGs that their pros and cons should be studied and warning to Codex friendly Devs should be issued

Recently, in past years, I've noticed Devs changing fundametal design pillars of their games because few or small minority of steam reviews were negative. All of them cried for same things: "quality of life improvements", "clean UI", "easy to learn, hard to master" and " fun gameplay loop" and "BALANCE". On face value, all of these demands sound perfectly reasonable. Problem is, their "quality of life improvements" means GPS quest markers, free and unlimited respec options, legalized save-scuming, auto-combat, everything voice acted including farts, soulless Apple UI etc.

Devs need to read old Slavic folktale by the name: "You can't please the World"

"A Man and his Wife were on their travel with donkey. Man was riding donkey and wife was walking beside him. First guy they came across told them that out of respect for wife, she should be riding donkey, and man walking. Man complied. Next guy told them how man is cuck and woman won't respect him, so they both should ride the donkey, cause they are equals. Man complied. Next next guy when he saw them, told them how that's animal cruelty, and that poor animal has to carry both fat ass of Man AND Woman. Out of respect for animal, they should dismount and walk. Man complied. When next guy suggested donkey riding the Man, Man said "Respectfully, fuck everyone's opinions. It is after all MY BLOODY DONKEY and Wife. And he returned back to the saddle learning invaluable life lesson on his way back home"

Damn! they really made us read some red-pill children stories at age 8 in Serbian elementary school
 
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut
Ford's quote has nothing to do with a review of an existing product. They might not know what they want, but they know when they're being served shit or not.
Sure, they might have reviewed a faster horse well. And if you interpreted their reviewers a certain way, well, they just wanted an even more faster horse now.
Then someone like Ford comes along -- realizes what they actually want -- and gives them an even better product which gets even better reviews.

Reviews aren't the problem, the problem is the people interpreting them.
 

The Wall

Dumbfuck!
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Chaos Reborn is the poster child for why you should never cater to whiners.

The game was all about RNG. It's called Chaos, for heaven's sake. But they managed to get it played on some big YT channels at the time before launching.

TotalBiscuit (rip) played it with Julian Gollop and Ken Levine on his channel!

So the game ended up reaching a way bigger, more mainstream audience than intended. And the devs were flooded with whining about "too much RNG", "it's unfair", etc.

Instead of focusing on improving and expanding the game they made, these devs decided to cater to the whiners and created a completely new game mode with zero RNG. And the game fucking died almost immediately. Because the whiners moved on to the next new thing and didn't even play the shitty no RNG mode.

Ford was right. People don't know what they want. The only relevant number when it comes to reviews is how many there are. The actual scores are irrelevant.
YES! I've noticed that majority of Indies who find too much success, that success fucks up both their game design and their future sales. Why? Because gamers never fell in love with perfectly balanced game with piss-easy difficulty. Some gamers' complaints were valid, some should have been implemented in certain normie difficulty levels, some, I repeat some, it's never all, UI criticisms should be listened to. All other steam negative reviews should be weared as badge of honor

Many steam negative reviews define game as much as positive reviews. I was sold on quite a few great indies thanks to their negative reviews. They hate everything that many, including me, LOVE

Devs should never strive to have 0 negative Steam reviews. It makes as much sense as Australian/New Zeland 0 Covid19 policy. It's idiotic
 

The Wall

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Reviews aren't the problem, the problem is the people interpreting them.
I can agree with this. Indie Devs looking to get rich by selling their design and artistic integrity to what they perceive that Steam masses want, looking to get rich instead of making good RPGs and digital art

Pssst! Both is possible ;)
 

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