Steam Reviews as co-designers in modern RPGs

[samuraigaiden]

Atomboy

I remember reading a post by someone from the Atom Team on the GOG forums where they mentioned the possibility of removing an unwinnable fight from the game intro because some people were leaving negative reviews on Steam saying they rage quit the game after losing that fight.

Did you guys end up removing it or did you keep it?

 

[mondblut]

A buyer should be allowed to write his opinion about the game he purchased.
If you dislike transparency you can stop using steam and go to epic.

All opinions may be written, but few are worth of being read, let alone considered.

 

[Shaki]

Yes, Ford was right, except in context of games, proper RPGs are horses, and casualized garbage is cars. Look at any Disco Elysium fan, and they will 100% agree with your sentiment. "Yeah, Disco is the best game ever, because instead of catering to whiners, they went with their vision and removed bad parts of RPGs, and improved what's great about them! Truly a car, to replace the old beaten horse!".

And they are right, because even boomer central RPG Codex, which pretended to hate every single thing that Disco represents, voted it in as GOTY.

Most of the gaming community, as you said, whined about "quality of life" and shit like that. Smaller part, wanted to go back to the roots. Disco devs recognized what the former truly want, and realized that a big part of the latter are just posers, pretending to be "hardcore gamers", but really not being any different. So instead of just making their product slightly more casual, they went a step further, and simply removed the game from the game, leaving a baloon filled with nothing but air and some "quirky" writing, wrapped in a colorful package - And that's the car that people needed. Casuals love it, Codexians love it.

There will be more games following this trend, just as it happened with things like movies or restaurants. People pretend to have sophisticated tastes, but majority of them just want quick and easily available endorphins release. Instead of producers exploring different niches, some of which they might love or hate, they would rather have the market filled with shitty products catering to the lowest common denominator, so they can pick any of them at any time, and get their "enjoyment" quickly.

Instead of unique restaurants, they'd rather have McDonalds on every corner. Instead of "12 Angry Men", they need 5 new Marvel movies every year. Instead of Arcanum, they need Disco Elysium. Quick fat and sugar, explosions and special effects, beating games without needing to actually play them.

No decisions, no requirements, no effort, just buy whatever and consume, get your endorphines, lemming. That's the car, that's the future.

 

[vonAchdorf]

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.

Darkest Dungeon's corpses were implemented against the Steam consensus. Good or bad design decision?

 

[Atomboy]

Atomboy

I remember reading a post by someone from the Atom Team on the GOG forums where they mentioned the possibility of removing an unwinnable fight from the game intro because some people were leaving negative reviews on Steam saying they rage quit the game after losing that fight.

Did you guys end up removing it or did you keep it?

Kept it, but it was a really tempting idea. We argued for ages, before voting several times and keeping it.

 

[jackofshadows]

level scaling, adding rape

You have the scaling and borderline rape in there though

 

[Atomboy]

level scaling, adding rape

You have the scaling and borderline rape in there though

It's not scaling if a human does it! We have several enemy tiers depending on a level group the player is in, but quest encounters are fixed in place! We were recommended an AI that would add or remove attack numbers or health from enemies depending on player level automatically, that we don't have! And that alleged rape is not even performed by the player!

 

[1451]

I may disagree with people who left positive reviews for Disco because they rated it as an rpg while in reality it's a vn.
But that doesn't mean that their opinions have no worth just because I dislike them.
So in steam every single review has the same merit.
Not wanting transparency is more of a you problem than steam as a platform.
And the devs will succumb to the will of the gamers or risk financial failure.
Nobody is forced to spend their hard mined money on games they dislike, and if they do they should be allowed to write a negative review.
And again, if you don't like freedom it's more of a you problem and not something wrong with freedom.

 

[The Wall]

Bruh....You clearly don't understand what this thread is about

Thread is about validity of indie Devs over-paying attention to negative reviews, even though game has 80%+ overall positive score, who demand game changing itz core identity (like adding GPS and quest markers to exploration focused game or nerfing stealth AI so that player can steal everything with no risk). These demands would be packaged as "quality of life improvements" and "game respecting players' time". These are very sneaky tactics, using potentially valid and neutral sounding terms to guilt trip Devs to betray their game vision

This thread is NOT about existance of steam reviews, but about hostile takeover of Redditors over indie Devs' design decisions independence and irrational (imo) fears of growing number of indie Devs that every negative review is valid and can be turned into positive one without risking previously positive reviews turning red and negative due to changes

 

[The Wall]

Not wanting transparency is more of a you problem than steam as a platform.

At least read the name of thread before posting. Steam reviews are the best feedback and communication system between Devs and players that gaming industry has came up with, so far. System is flawed, can be misinterpreted and has much room for improvements. Also it has gained INCREDIBLE amount of power over games' success or failure. That's what we are also talking about here. Returning to corporate and communist shills that call themselves "game journalists" as sole arbiter of games' quality is something that NOONE suggested here

Niggas, did some of you forgot how to reeead?

 

[The Wall]

And the devs will succumb to the will of the gamers or risk financial failure.

This is a problem. Gamers want conflicting things. Sometimes same player wants two conflicting game designs to co-exist inside same game. Or just want game to betray its design. Let me demonstrate

WATER! (88% positive review)

Too wet and thou it quenched my thirst I'm still hungry (NEGATIVE review)

Now increasing number of indie Devs' response is:
"OMG! we gotta change water on molecular level!"

Devs should ignore these reviews and not stress over achieving impossible: 100% positive rating. Not even water, giver of life, has such Steam reviews score

 

[The Wall]

Do not make mistake that such thing as "will of gamers" even exists. Gamers aren't monolith, they don't agree on many things, sometimes not even with their past or present selves and their future tastes are usually molded by big corporations, getting them slowly used to and addicted to being their digital serfs

Simpsons probably explained it the best, and I should have opened discussion with following video:

 

[Atomboy]

And the devs will succumb to the will of the gamers or risk financial failure.

This is a problem. Gamers want conflicting things. Sometimes same player wants two conflicting game designs to co-exist inside same game. Or just want game to betray its design. Let me demonstrate

WATER! (88% positive review)

Too wet and thou it quenched my thirst I'm still hungry (NEGATIVE review)

Now increasing number of indie Devs' response is:
"OMG! we gotta change water on molecular level!"

Devs should ignore these reviews and not stress over achieving impossible: 100% positive rating. Not even water, giver of life, has such Steam reviews score

This water example you provided is way too real, dude. Gives me war flashbacks. Thank God our game is way too messy and hard to understand to be fundamentally changed on a whim, because some of such reviews really pushed us to consider doing so in moments of weakness.

 

[Gastrick]

Vogel was saying that he doesn't read steam reviews at all and designs games based on what he thinks will be good.(edit: still uses beta testers) This is a good approach to have.

 

[The Wall]

Atomboy Thank you for two artisticly, literary and mechanically good if not great RPGs. Trudograd is beautiful, artstyle is awesome, this level of graphics is both to the eyes of gamers and from financial costs - perfect sweet spot. No need to dramatically (maybe just slightly, Westerners love to feel "evolution of graphics" between titles) increase graphical fidelity of your next game. Just find as great style for your next setting as for Soviet post-apo dead serious memeland. Isometric New Vegas. Also kiss UI designer on forehead, for keeping thematic yet fuctional school of UI design in life. Many are tired of UI trend in RPGs started by Skyrim and iPhone 8

I'm playing BOMBAGUN! on my new tablet (gift from my croation mistress) and having blast in multiplayer. You should add some paid cosmetics and more cards/decks in future. Imagine having Heartstone/Gwent like cash cow to finance all your RPG dreams! Even if you fail (which is likely but not guaranteed), at least many people will have fun and you'll promote game

P.S. I have plans to make separate thread about "Financia$ and gameplay value of truly different difficulty settings". I believe somewhere there can be found answer to question: "How can I make hardcore Russian Arcanum and drive new Tesla S"*

*Only one Tesla S per Dev tho, even with this solution you won't make GTA Online lvl of cash

 

[The Wall]

Vogel was saying that he doesn't read steam reviews at all and designs games based on what he thinks will be good.(edit: still uses beta testers) This is a good approach to have.

It's principled at least. Fuck living life without principles, were you ever alive if you lived only to please others? I always hear what others' tell me, I even love all criticism. Makes me see what can only be seen with outsider's eyes. I'm not afraid of change, but not every change is good

Too little or too much change can kill man's or RPG Studio's soul

 

[The Wall]

I just love financial, marketing and overall business side of indie rpgs and gaming. I'll make serie of threads where we can help Friends of Codex to make good RPGs AND $$$! I truly believe that everything is there in current market for that to be relatively easy to happen. Everything starts with importance of studio Ownership and YouTube marketing... but more about that in different thread

 

[ItsChon]

Reviews themselves are dangerous, much less Steam reviews where the average user is retarded, and that's the problem. It's entirely possible for someone that has prestigious taste to review a game, like it, but take issue with one or two specific elements in the game. A developer might be inclined to list to this reviewer, as they've established themselves as someone with good taste and knowledge about the genre and so on. But then another reviewer comes along, who is also prestigious and respected, and they also like the game but once again take issue with one or two specific elements in the game, and these elements are different than the ones described by the first reviewer.

So now what does the Dev do? How does he differentiate between which critique is correct and which isn't? Perhaps both are correct? Multiply this by five, and its entirely possible that the Dev will have to change three or four or five different things about their game, changing into something completely different which is objectively worse than the initial product they first had. This is a simplified way to look at reviews, and this analogy only get more complicated once you introduce doubt on a person's credibility as a reviewer, or introduce people that you know aren't very prestigious reviewer. This dilemma is what game developers struggle with, and they're losing the fight, as the vast majority of them end up changing their game for the worse, or god forbid, starting off from scratch to design a game based on such reviews.

Oh and The Wall Stop triple posting so much you absolute fucking cretin. I get a double post or two but take a breath before you press the post button and writing everything down you want to say at once. Or go back and edit something new in. You're shitting up the thread by constantly posting one or two lines.

 

[Roguey]

Vogel was saying that he doesn't read steam reviews at all and designs games based on what he thinks will be good.(edit: still uses beta testers) This is a good approach to have.

Vogel's also the guy who makes his games easy and then makes them easier because he hates getting emails from frustrated players and doesn't care if someone just quietly drops it out of boredom http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-your-game-easy-then-make-it-easier.html

 

[Gastrick]

Vogel's also the guy who makes his games easy and then makes them easier because he hates getting emails from frustrated players and doesn't care if someone just quietly drops it out of boredom http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-your-game-easy-then-make-it-easier.html

No mention of emails in the post. Also he says that he sets his hardest difficulty to be very hard.

 

[The Wall]

ItsChon Exactly, my dear zoomy zoom-zoom! What you said is but one example of Devs' nightmares with interpretation of steam reviews and increasing no. of indie Devs are starting to take too seriously the small but vocal minority of steam reviewers who are more and more shaping game design with their Reddit sensibilities. Just look at.every.single.new saving system that Devs tried to come up with in past 5 years. All of them, from Kingdom Come to Stoneshard were killed on arrival

P.S. Reason for my multi posting is double:
1. I make different points and talk about different stuff in each post. If I am to combine them all together, points would lose their sharpness and they'd all mash together into one Giant point, which means:
2. Ain't nobody got time to climb that wall of txt. Many would just rate it TLDR. This way, you can pick & choose with what of my points you agree or disagree, and see from first few sentences whether reading rest of it is even worthy

I'm not the only one who does this on Codex, though certainly I could do it with more retorical style. Something I'm working on

 

[Shaki]

Vogel pretends to not read reviews, but somehow every time he makes a new game, it's more casual than the previous one, and all the systems are getting dumbed down. I'm suuuuure this casualization is really something that he always wanted to do, and genuinely thinks it's improving the games, and he's definitely not just catering to normies giving him bad scores...

 

[The Wall]

Vogel was saying that he doesn't read steam reviews at all and designs games based on what he thinks will be good.(edit: still uses beta testers) This is a good approach to have.

Vogel's also the guy who makes his games easy and then makes them easier because he hates getting emails from frustrated players and doesn't care if someone just quietly drops it out of boredom http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-your-game-easy-then-make-it-easier.html

Vogel is grandpa and his players are bored of life middle-aged 50somethings. They all have other things to do and they "respect games that respect their time". I have heard their arguments gazzilion times. My response to them is: "either improve your time management, or quit this hobby and go and DO! all those other things". My response to Devs is: "don't worry about them not buying your game, just throw them a bone in shape of Difficulty Mode for Perpetually Bussy Boomers Who MUST Shit But With No Time to Shit"

Different difficulty modes are gift from King Solomon! Devs have to start using them much more and make them truly different

 

[Gastrick]

Shaki

The biggest group giving Vogel bad reviews are Codexer-types. This is the most popular review for the second remake of Avernum. https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198042387068/recommended/208400/
Saying that the original exile was better.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Devs should be more interested in feedback from people who like their game. Positive reviews are an underrated source of insight.