FOUR STARS...FOR WHAT ??

I kind of like it the way it is, personally. I feel like if someone takes the time to write a review, they've really put thought into their rating.
If the star system were open to anyone, it would be used frivolously, as it is many other places. People could (and would) give 1 star ratings based solely on the screenshots, or because they couldn't beat the first boss, etc etc. Likewise, it would be even easier for developers to bolster their scores by asking friends to give their game a high rating.

Just my opinion. But yeah. I don't see it working out well.

Btw you don't need to know how to make a game to write a review.

On deviantart it's solved like this:
The person who leaves a review can give stars, AND then, people who read the review can "thumb up" or "thumb down" the review ! XD ( or it was something like " x of x people agreed with that review" )

That's interesting, too : p

author=Linkis
Well, another well thought out Forum post by Linkis :(
You're both right, but on the other hand and no, I would not belittle a game by giving it one star when several others have given it four, but should a game SHOW 4 stars when only one person wrote a review?
oh crap, how do you delete a forum topic :(

... The rating is based on total reviews. If people want to see a better balanced rating for a game, more reviews are needed. However, people don't seem to care enough to write reviews anymore, which is why you see a lot of games with 1 review.

It also works the opposite as well:

If 1 person reviews a game and gives it 1 star, that's the total rating until more reviews are written and it can even out.

A sort of "Like" / "Star" rating without reviews, and a revised/rated Q&A for people who don't want to write a review has been suggested before and shot down, primarily because it gives incentive for people to spam the rate option without taking the time to compose a review.

I've written several reviews in my life. And the one thing I've found out is that the score I intend to give a game when I first start composing the review is never the same when I'm through. That's because while I'm writing the review, I have time to cool down from either the hype or frustration, and I can think a bit more clearly. I discover things I may have forgotten that changes my attitude about the game. And then I realize that the high score I was about to give isn't as justified as I thought (even if I still really enjoyed the game).

Had I simply gone in to click a button, my score would have been way off.

As far as removing rates from reviews, that was also discussed, in order to let reviews stand on their own merits. I can agree with this idea, since a review allows me to pick and choose the game's faults without a score already persuading me before I've even read the review.

However, too many people prefer the rating, and would have been upset without it, that the idea was shot down.

no im telling you thats the worst/laziest excuse ever, if you can't write a review than you probably don't care enough in the first place. you wrote a forum post, i am pretty sure you can write a review. if you dont want to put effort in your opinion than im afraid you shall have no impact on the game's rating.

wait what's this? whats that in the distance? do you see it?

http://rpgmaker.net/articles/594/
http://rpgmaker.net/articles/585/
http://rpgmaker.net/articles/246/
http://rpgmaker.net/articles/783/

Reviews take ages to write though, especially if you want to write well. I would review a lot of games, but generally I feel like I don't have much to say that other reviewers haven't already pointed out, so I don't state my opinion. But given that a lot of people may share a certain opinion that the game is 4.5*, so they don't review the thing, and then one other person posts a 1* review that almost nobody agrees with is completely trash, that will be rounded to about 3*. The game, however, might deserve a 4.5*.

I think a combination of review scores and rating scores would prove useful, but the only way to make this viable would be to prevent zero-bombers from rating down every other game but their own. I don't think many people have remedy to this problem, except for perhaps giving more regular contributors to this site greater vote power. But even then, perhaps it's one too many hassles for the site to control. We have enough problems keeping makerscore adding up as it is ;P (no offense)

User ratings at Metacritic are generally reliable most of the time. They're a good indicator of how well the community accepts your game. If the score is high, you know you're connecting well with your audience. If it's low, then you're not doing good enough, you're not establishing rapport. It's an indicator, nothing else. Sure, people can misconstrue it as a flag of their creative identity, but I see it as nothing more than displayable information. If people choose to interpret a certain way, then they can if they please.

I think the only problem with this is that sorting games by rating is pretty useless. A lot of games here have a five star rating, but does it mean anything when most of them have just one review? Then there are games like Master of the Wind that have lots of reviews and have a lesser rating because of that. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the rating doesn't really say anything about the game's quality unless it has a sufficient amount of ratings.

Maybe give the developer an option to enable user ratings like Metacritic? It won't bring much quality writing to the site, but at least it would provide more data to compare. Furthermore, maybe the site could allow users to submit less detailed reviews, but distinguish the quality ones somehow? Maybe a math person could work out an algorithm to create a final rating based on the user ratings and the reviews.

Yeah, I think the solution is providing a platform to give smaller reviews. So that you don't have to be a good writer for your opinion to count.

idk even if the ratings were separate it'd be still pointless. Reviews you actually have to prove that you played the game and back up your opinion. Can you really add a "like" system to video games? It makes way more sense on tumblr/youtube or screenshots where consumption is a nano second of visual impression. doesn't posting a comment literally bump the game's buzz score anyway?

i hear metacritic 1 sentence user reviews are great because its not like a buttmad controversy meter. not at all