Reading Player Reviews

If that is the reason its sad, I said so in another thread: People need to learn to look at new games with fresh eyes, forget past games you played and try out the game as a new experience. When you then learned how the game works should you try to compare it with other games.

Most gamers have a hard time with this game due to its unique mechanics, it takes time to learn to defend yourself against the wild beasts that swarm everywhere.

Edit: That was a relatively broad term of gamers used here

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I am honestly going to wait before posting a review.  I'm taking a bit of a critical look, I want the bugs fixed so I'm reporting them as I find them ... I think this may tend to skew my score downward a bit.  At this point, I'd probably give it a 70 or 75, which I think is a good and respectable score, but a lot of "its gotta be 100, it must must must!" fans don't see it that way.  I ground through the campaign, pausing a lot for screenshots and bug reporting, am now doing the same in sandbox.  I think it'd be best to wait, at least, until the next patch anyhoo.  Several of the current bugs are enough to impact the rating I'd give by at least 10 points.

The Campaign needs a lot of smoothing ... besides the bugs, it feels a bit confusing at parts when there's no current quest, I'm not sure what to do ... I tend to try to explore, find a lot of little villages and other features that do absolutely nothing because they had not been made active yet.  I think there's room for general smoothing there that I am not sure exactly fit in bug reports.

In my experience, there are two types of reviewers (broadly speaking).

The first type is like Chibiabos (and myself to be honest) where we'll give a review based on what we think.

The second type is the type who thinks the *total* averaged score should reflect their personal view and will thus give it a 10 or a 1 to try to affect the total review.  It's those reviewers who ultimately make the player reviews worthless.  If I have a game that is say an 4 out of 5 game, it takes a ton of 5's to counter a single 1 star review.

I have most of the same "Issues", so nice to see someone else posting these thoughts here

(Dunno why, but my gaming-mood is largely affected by bugs... lately >_>)

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

My slightly misguided rage is at those people who play the game for 50 turns and say that it is awful because they aren't getting exactly what they wanted. I always try to do at least a play through before deciding if the game is crap or not. The only time that I don't do that is if the game is so terrible that I can't make it through the entire game. I want to know that I am not missing anything from the mechanics or that I am missing the least about possible. I guess I just want to show some respect and give people's hard work a fair shot. I don't play many games anymore, and the games I do play I always go through and read both professional and player critical reviews. I read the best and the worst of them and try to get a balanced approach. I guess that is just the pitfall of criticism - it is a subjective game. 

You're still in early game if you're at 50 turns.   

There's a whole lot more game left.

Those that take the time to write a review are what I tend to look for and their scores matter most. If you go back and look at reviews of say SPORE and more recently DIABLO III you can see the customer base was very angry about something. Does this mean the overall game is bad? Well in the case of Diablo III it did because Diablo III from my own playing was just a candy wrapper of Diablo II's goodie. The story felt very much the same, the areas of play were very much the same and I could have told you the story from just the opening scenes of the game and I even said on the forums before even playing I would bet the ending of this one would be in what is socalled Heaven. The story itself was shorter. Diablo III is all about that real money auction house and just getting ignorant people to pour money into them for ingame items that are really worthless except for those who live for epeen status.

I tend to overlook though socalled professional reviewers because it's been PROVEN that they take kickbacks and money to give higher quality reviews than a game should have gotten. Just read about the iGN reviewer who spoke out about it in the last few weeks or so and I've always believed this. When games like Total War and Paradox's trash come out and get 90's and have horrible bugs and flaws and crashes and get in the 90's you know someone is lying and getting paid.

Plenty of players will click a review score but only those really interested one way or the other will take the time to write a review. One liners mean nothing. Those that take their time and put forth a lot of effort to INFORM the consumer mean a lot.

Willie, I agree completely, not only in gaming, but you tend to see the same type of thing on sites like Amazon as well. When I am checking things out, I typically go through and read some of the lengthier 1-star, 3-star, and 5-star reviews, just to see some actual opinions and not someone pissed off about something stupid. Most of the time you can see the different reviewer types Brad was talking about up in comment #3. Just ignore those reviews completely. It sucks for the overall score on things, but at least you can try to make a bit more of a learned decision.

There are only 6 reviews and 19 ratings there from users as I type. I wouldnt look too deep until there is about 70 to 100 ratings/reviews. Trolls are always the first to jump on something new.

Not to mention the game has only ben out for maybe 48 to 72 hours in total. I have completed 1 quick game (win) and lost 7 longer (harder) ones (1 ongoing with 3 loses and 3 restarts). And I have only tried 3 races (one of them my own creation)..... unless they are professional reviewers (ie reviewing is a job) or jobless then they couldnt have played that much.

Its a really good game.  Even started doing a lets play on it to upload to my website.  I played the beta and was not too impressed but it seems a lot better now that its released.

Just getting a little bit use to some of the changes and stuff.  But really after about 1/2 hour of trying to figure things out Im on my way I think to Clubbing some dudes in the head with my town punks...

Taking the average review is such a poor system in general. First off it is a volunteer statistical poll and these are inherently biased as the only people that are going to post a review or reply are those that have a strong opinion to begin with or have some incentive to do so. Once you get through the zealotus crowd of reviewers (a.k.a. the angry or pationate viewers of the item) the poll is skewed away from the objective reviewers. Sifting through a review to get to these are tedious to say the least.

If this review system was any good, there wouldn't be a need to have actual game reviewers. This leads to another problem about taste. Get somebody who likes 4x games will give 4x games will give more critical reviews when it comes to 4x games. But if they are indifferent to 4x games these games get less criticism and at times get an unfair review in the end.

Then there is the problem of expectation. If the expectation of the game must meet certain criteria to whatever is on the reviewers mind about the game, then the game will succeed or fail on that opinion alone and be graded with that in mind. A rather poor system indeed. The problem is the vision of FE from what the developer was intending to the game must be an integral part in the final product. The review must also reflect whether or not the developer succeeded in what they were intending with the game. For example, if the developer was designing a game to force the characters to disco dance after each successful tatical battle for 3 turns and the game does this, then this is a successful game from the goals of the developer. But from the player stand point this may be a undesired feature. Does it mean that the review of the game should be lower or higher? A non-game example of this would be to take Picasso and his abstract art. Picasso did exactly what he intended, but people didn't like it. It should be able to be reviewed and judged based on two different review numbers. Picasso doing what he intended (thumbs-up), peoples desire to own such art (thumbs-down).

There are mechanical choices that were made in FE to which I don't agree, but from the developers point of view they succeeded in the mechanic itself (snaking to trees/rivers... is their a way to mod this back in by the way?). Should I downgrade the game because of this, or should I give them the thumbs up here. My personal assessment of FE from playing the game for roughly 6+ months in the beta. I say this game is a huge plus. Bugs are negatives yes, but not the sole reason to lower a score. There may be 100 or so open bugs for this game (I don't know), but looking at the amount and quantity of game this should not have a large effect the score.

I would say based on what the goals of the developers here the game itself should get a good score between 90-95. Based on my experience from the game and what I felt the developers goals were and my expectations from this game, I'd give it a 90. I would be hard pressed to try and lower my score from this point because it is a great game and fits very close to what the developers were intending with the game.

I have to say thank you to Stardock for producing and creating this great game that I have had a lot of fun playing and enjoy each aspect. I would like to see what they could do if they were not limited to a 32-bit os. I'd like to pay / play a 64-bit version of the game with extra content. We'll see whether this will be a possibility in the future.

Personally I think aggregate scores are silly and anyone who bases a purchase on them has either too much money or not enough cognative function. Of course user reviews are even worse.

The main thing wrong with your post is just like all reviews it's BIASED upon YOUR beliefs and YOUR opinion and YOUR ideals and YOUR goals for the game or games which is not necessarily the same for everyone who reads it. I of course believe you have the right to YOUR OPINION but that doesn't make it the cats meow on what Johnny Cash used to sing "What is Truth?"

Basically a review should be what it really is "someones opinion" and it's up to the reader(s) to decide what they choose to believe and not to believe and form their decisions on that. The problem we have with reviewers and reviewing is that if it doesn't meet up to OUR OWN OPINIONS etc. etc. we choose to want to demand retraction or call those people names or actually fall to their level and degrade them. Nobody really knows anybody here on this world wide open reviewing internet so we can't really say who knows what or how long someone has to play a game etc. etc. If I were to give this game a 70 nobody really has right over that opinion of 70....afterall it is just an opinion. But, I sometimes think many people don't know the difference between opinion and fact(s). Nobody also knows another persons FUN level. What's fun to one person might not be fun to another. For example dunking someone over n over in the swimming pool is FUN to ME but for some strange reason it's not fun for the person I'm dunking. lol Yeah I know bad example but I couldn't resist.

like beer, there are different ways to serve gaming experience

i dont think its that much about genres but different attitudes... one like to sit down and play hours learning and wandering, and one collect crapload of games trying to find something easy to start&quit

sorry about grammar, got poor english

To be frank, I only trust players' reviews.

True, some are excessive, but when the number of voters is high enough excesses average out (also, even exaggerated votes tell something). I find that players' score on Metacritic usually reflect the overall perceived value of the game. I avoided DA II thanx to those (82 Critics' score, 42 users' score... need I say more?)

I do agree with some of the criticism, having been vocal about the same things myself (ex: magic being somewhat bland and too random). Still, it's too early for FE of course, there are just a few reviews. It's not going to stay this way.

The greatest of games get better and better the more you sink into them and learn to know the game world and it's mechanics. Fallen Enchantress is this kind of quality game. This is true for other grand strategy games too, as Civilization, GalCiv, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron etc etc etc. It's not for people that can't concentrate on something for more then one second.

The problem is that angry people post and happy people play the game.

True. I havent posted there... yet. Guess I'll make an account if when I come home. I'd give it 9 or 10.

statistic says otherwise

in the end its like having to vote good or bad

the vote result may not be accurate to the real "value" of what we voting but still it reflects the avarege opinion of ppl

also the concept of "real value" of a game is mystic, there is no real value, its just a poll, there is no way of objectively *measure* a game

yes i agree

only player opinion matters, i just read that in every site

im not saying its not biased, many comments are just plain stupid but you just need to be able to "read" the results

in the end there will be a certain % of idiots, fanboys,hateboys etc etc

just weight things a bit and you find the data youre interested in

Well, I agree what players think is important, but players are very different in their tastes, and some are even trolls. Especially for this kind of game there are a thousand opinions on how the game should be like. Just take alook at all the negative comments every time a new Civ-game is made. 

Better see what players write abot a game on why they like or dislike a game, then make up your mind based on that. A simple number at Metacritics says very little.

yes like i wrote above you have to be able to properly read statistics, in metacritic you can read many numbers and ppl comments too

for example take a game and see it has many 0 or many 10, then read a few of those and you can easily understand if they are just a bit exaggerating but the game is really that bad(good) or if thjey are just fan/hateboys with no clue what the game is but just throwing a random vote

I have come to figure out that GameFAQ has never failed me on their player reviews. The long reviews are 99% of the time well thought out and I always go there to check about a game before buying it. 

The best type of reviews for these games are the Let's Play reviews... They may not be reviews, but I get the most informatin about the game this way... what it looks like, what to expect when playing, and ultimately the possibility of fun. It's hard to be misled by a Let's Play because its all there in front of you and whether person likes it or not never really enters the picture for me (A lot of time I watch them on MUTE and for good reason).