Gaming Value Propositions: What makes for a good game? *spawn*

[iroboto]

Review scores for some stuff just doesn't work. Like Marmite - it'd get a 5/10 from an average with people rating it 0 or 10. If you read something like the EG review and don't worry about the score, it's quite apparent it's something you need to try. Likewise if you read player comments, it's obvious you can either love it or become disinterested very quickly and the only way to know is to give it a go.

I guess for a $60 price, it's that gamble people aren't happy about. Perhaps that's the issue? No different to many other games (plenty of highly rated games go unloved by a proportion of gamers) but for some reason this one's generating a lot more noise. Maybe because it's one of MS's few recent big-ticket titles and people have weird expectations?

eh, I think a lot of the xbox guys here don't want to play the victim card. But people hate MS. But who they were before Satya Nadella and who they are now are two different companies.

It will take time for people to recognize that, a lot of people don't think CEO's matters or that company cultures can't change. The #1 argument against microsoft has commonly been about something they did before 2015. I suspect the attitudes towards MS will be like this for a long time. Take Windows 10 for instance, or the hate towards DX12. People just wished it would just die and that vulkan can come along and save the gaming world because they wished DX12 was on Windows 7 and not Windows 10 because they hate it. And like it they hated migrating from every windows before it.

This picture tends to sum it up for me;

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I guess for a $60 price, it's that gamble people aren't happy about. Perhaps that's the issue? No different to many other games (plenty of highly rated games go unloved by a proportion of gamers) but for some reason this one's generating a lot more noise. Maybe because it's one of MS's few recent big-ticket titles and people have weird expectations?

Sure, but if a person is curious about the game but concerned about whether it's for them (very legitimate concern for this game due to its sandbox nature), then there is a far better way to check it out than plonking down 60 USD. Just rent it for a month.

Regards,
SB

 

[DrJay24]

Review scores for some stuff just doesn't work. Like Marmite - it'd get a 5/10 from an average with people rating it 0 or 10. If you read something like the EG review and don't worry about the score, it's quite apparent it's something you need to try. Likewise if you read player comments, it's obvious you can either love it or become disinterested very quickly and the only way to know is to give it a go.

I guess for a $60 price, it's that gamble people aren't happy about. Perhaps that's the issue? No different to many other games (plenty of highly rated games go unloved by a proportion of gamers) but for some reason this one's generating a lot more noise. Maybe because it's one of MS's few recent big-ticket titles and people have weird expectations?

So we either have a

1) A conspiracy that everyone hates MS.
2) Review scores don't work for this game.
3) The game is shallow and repetitive and thus deserves low scores.

Everyone just pick one (or two).

 

[AlNom]

y so sea-rious

 

[iroboto]

So we either have a

1) A conspiracy that everyone hates MS.
2) Review scores don't work for this game.
3) The game is shallow and repetitive and thus deserves low scores.

Everyone just pick one (or two).

It's the review scores work, it could very well be 66%.
it's just not comparable to other games. You can't say a 90% bloodborne and a 66% sea of thieves is comparable at all. They offer entirely different experiences.

Where you compare say Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed Origins, and Horizon Zero Dawn, their relative scores make a lot to compare. They are all games that compete in somewhat the same model entirely. People know what to expect, and they use like games to calibrate against each other.

No one here is saying 66% isn't what SoT deserves, certainly leaves a lot of room for improvement for competition. It doesn't dictate that everyone thinks the game is a colossal failure. It's a new experience that is different that only SoT offers.

 

[Malo]

3) The game is shallow and repetitive and thus deserves low scores.

Maybe it's the people that are shallow and repetitive!

 

[MrFox]

Maybe it's the people that are shallow and repetitive!

People are shallow and pedantic.

 

[iroboto]

Maybe it's the people that are shallow and repetitive!

i find #3 least likely.
Everyone would be in love with much harder and deeper games than the ones everyone goes crazy over.

Narrative is the big pull for this generation. If I could define a heat map of this gen, it would be narrative, followed by battle royale.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

1) A conspiracy that everyone hates MS.
2) Review scores don't work for this game.
3) The game is shallow and repetitive and thus deserves low scores.

If #3 were true, there's many people either lying that they're enjoying the game, or are stupidly easily pleased even by shallow, repetitive games.
How plausible is that? For the people who have posted they are having fun in this thread, are they liars or ignoramuses?

#2 is true for plenty of games too, like FFXIII. Statisticians don't just look at the mean average but also the range. Games with a large variation between high and low scores are divisive. Games with universally lower scores are 'bad' (though some may find enjoyment).

User reviews on metacritic - isn't this the very definition of 'divisive' and illustrative that mean average scores aren't working here?

 

[zed]

Review scores for some stuff just doesn't work.

Theres been articles about it on gamasutra over the years, review scores have very little correlation to sales WRT games

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'm waiting for this to drop in price but I can see this is the type of title that would struggle with 'professional' reviewers who are generally reviewing to a tight deadline with the aim to cover the whole game and SoT looks to be that kind of title where what you do is far less important than the time/fun you have doing it.

If a few core activities hit the spot, surely that's all that's important.

 

[iroboto]

I'm waiting for this to drop in price but I can see this is the type of title that would struggle with 'professional' reviewers who are generally reviewing to a tight deadline with the aim to cover the whole game and SoT looks to be that kind of title where what you do is far less important than the time/fun you have doing it.

If a few core activities hit the spot, surely that's all that's important.

I think it would be false to say this game is anywhere close to perfect.
Far from. It definitely shipped with some glaring omissions. That being said the criticism around content is valid, and by content I just mean like, obvious ones like fighting NPC boats would have been high on my list of things to put into the launch title. We have these galleons but we're only really using them to fight other players. It seems a little too bare, and people would be much happier with having to also fight NPC crews.

The argument against progression I think is the industry adjusting to norms. Everyone keeps complaining about needing it, but lets look at the last set of games here that had it
Destiny 2, Division, etc. and also Destiny 1 since D2 got released, For Honor... list goes on.

They all tapered off for but each of them had an enormous amount of content and progression. Is vertical progression the answer to guaranteed success? Clearly not, since PUBG and Fortnite took their money and have no vertical progression at all. In fact their progression is exactly the same, vanity/cosmetic.