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lionelgold

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A member registered Jan 18, 2021

Recent community posts

You're missing my point, probably because I explained it in a fairly over the top emotional way, which is my fault. But how can you tell whether a rating is fake? As a player, you can't even see them, as a dev, you just get given a number. The only way to tell as far as I can see is if the rating is either a word for word copy paste from the same guy given to multiple devs, or if the rating comes from someone whose comment history would imply an interest in something that clashes really hard with what you make. Like if you made something related to LGBT, and you get a 1 star review from a guy whose comment history is 99% him commenting on games involving alt right stuff. Fairly obvious they're not gonna like it, but they can rate it without justification anyway. The whole site is meant to be a platform for indie devs who tend to be on the smaller side, so individual reviews and ratings can matter. I suppose it's probably obvious that this is my non dev account, and my other account is a dev one. No way I'd be up in arms over this if I hadn't seen both sides.

My primary point is that I think people should have to have at least downloaded a game to rate it, and I think that developers should have the option to enforce "review required" when leaving ratings, if they choose. This isn't gonna be a full solution, but it's at least something. This way if someone wants to leave a bad review, they still can, but they have to at least type something. Worst case it turns out to be nonsense (Which could be ignored by the community if reviews were public) and best case it could be good constructive feedback that could help the dev to improve their game (And inform the community about the state of the game if reviews were public.)
Currently you could get a 1 star review and never know why. That's what the point of my example about the fps and puzzle thing was about. It's a fairly ludicrous example, but given how the review system is at the moment can you actually guarantee that it doesn't happen? 

It isn't a huge issue, it doesn't even need to be the small issue that it is. The rating menu thing already prompts you for a review, and if devs just had the ability to make it so you're actually forced to leave a review instead of just a rating without any context then there you go, that solves it. Devs who want to take feedback from players can enable it if they want, and devs who like things the way it is right now can just not, and nothing changes. Plus, if players could see reviews, they could read them if they want, or ignore them if they don't. 

All of that said, I agree with your point about showing distribution of ratings, and making it clear to players that their reviews aren't viewed by anyone other than the dev and the reviewer's followers. On the rare occasion that I get words in my ratings, they're often written for an audience of some sort, so I get the feeling the few people who do actually leave words in their reviews do actually think someone other than the developer might read them. I do still think that the option to enable "Review required" has no downsides, and whilst it may be difficult to enforce the "download required" idea is also not something I can really see a downside to other than the very specific circumstance of perhaps someone downloading and playing something and then losing access to their account and needing to make a new one, then deciding they wanted to rate the game or something. I just think that actually experiencing a product, if even for a moment, should be required before you're allowed to do your part to affect the overall rating of that thing. I'm no web dev, but these sound like incredibly simple features to add. Sure testing would be required, but still. It even works for the people who write reviews because they want others to read them. I just don't think there is anybody that these features wouldn't benefit, other than the web devs who would have to make them work.

Hey, sorry if this has been brought up before, and I'm sure it has, probably several hundred times, but I'm at a loss here.

Why are ratings and reviews the way they are? The ability of anyone with an account to rate any game (That has it enabled) regardless of whether they've actually downloaded it, and without providing any sort of context to their rating seems crazy to me.

It makes sense in the real world where google or yelp or whatever can't tell if you've actually eaten at a restaurant, but this isn't the real world. This site definitely knows whether or not you've actually downloaded a game, so why isn't that a basic requirement for actually rating it? Why isn't at least some sort of reasoning for your rating required? If someone who only likes fps games decides to download a puzzle game for some reason, why does their 1 star rating hold just as much weight as the rating from who hasn't just downloaded the wrong thing? Why does their rating hold the same weight as someone who's never even played it? 

Obviously this can happen in any industry, but in pretty much every other setting you can see individual reviews and ratings. You can see who rated something and why, so if you know you disagree with that person or their criticisim/praise doesn't align with what you're interested in to you then you can just disregard it. You can't do that here. If you're gonna have a system where you can report a review for having nothing to do with the thing they're actually rating, why allow people to rate something without explaining their reasoning?

Rant out of the way, suggestions.

  1.  Similar to how devs can turn ratings on or off, allow them to toggle on or off the requirement to leave an actual review with the rating, with some sort of minimum character count. Obviously this will mean devs who enable this will get less ratings overall, but as long as that's clear the choice would be greatly appreciated.
  2. Allow the dev to make reviews public. All or nothing. If a dev wants to show their reviews, then they show them all, good or bad. At least this would give people some sort of context for why the rating is what it is. 

That's it. These two changes. I'm convinced this would solve basically all complaints about the review system immediately, and I challenge anyone to find a single downside to them. Let the overall rating of a game hold the same weight, but let devs choose to recieve what will probably be fewer ratings overall in exchange for more detailed feeback, if they want. I only hate bad reviews if they're not about the actual game, or if there's no reason given. They could be someone who genuinely just really didn't like the game and has perfectly valid reasons for it. Or it could just be someone who just rated it poorly because they were bored and haven't even played it. I have no way of knowing. These changes would immediately solve the problem. I cannot fathom why something like this hasn't already been done. This can't possibly be the first time this has been suggested, right?