FOUR STARS...FOR WHAT ??

pianotm
Games should come with a comments page with it's own star ranking system.

Actually... this is good compromise that I'm willing to accept. Just do double system, like on metacritic: Review rating and player rating. I think this will satisfy both sides.

Why? A page like that would just make people look at a game and say 'oh looks pretty 5 star'. What other reason is there for it to exist?

If such a page or system existed I'd highly recommend it not be shown in the games list or near the review stars. Maybe in the information area with subscribers and the like. It's not important information how many people think the game page looks okay.

If they want a say in what the game score is they can play the game and leave a fucking review. It isn't broken so it doesn't need fixing.

author=Rave
Except... it is broken. My game, The Missile, has only one review and only because Deckiller felt sorry for me ;). If it wasn't broken, I'd have 2 or more reviews by now.

If it wasn't broken game-to-review ratio would be higher than 1. Way higher.

Some people are just too lazy (or forgetful) to write a review that at least meets the minimum requirements set forth by whoever goes through them

You still got a review and a good one at that, which accurately reflects your game. You want more? There are threads where people offer to review. Put it forward as a possible game for more at the next review event. Ask people, don't just expect your game to stand out among the literal thousands of games on the site! Put it out there and maybe you'll get more reviews! Join the secret santa and ask for one. Offer a review swap - you write one in exchange for someone writing one for you.

If you're upset about no reviews get out there and find people to write them for you instead of sitting around moping because you don't have a billion.

The games with more reviews? They have something, they're known to the community and recommended by others. Get out there and do shit to get shit, don't just expect it for nothing. God!

WHY? What does user rating determine that review rating doesn't, bar that a page looks pretty? Does it determine the worth of the actual game? NO. Then what's the use?

It'd be just a useless number that exists for no reason bar to say that x people like the pretties. Might as well just allow rating screenshots instead, it'd be the same thing.

Do you really not understand what I'm saying here? The people likely to click the button are those who looked at the game page and thought it looked okay. It skews the rating in such a way that it becomes a useless number, not the 'factual, more accurate' number that you are saying you want. If you really wanted a more accurate rating you'd be after people to prove their gaming experience and give reason for their scores so that people could see why said scores were given, could determine whether that person's experience was equal to their own and leave their own examples and thoughts instead to give a fairer score. IN OTHER WORDS, A REVIEW!

I think they're looking for a system like imdb, where many users can pitch in on ratings to provide an overall rating that best represents the public's opinion on a game. Also, if you have many ratings, you can sort it a micro level, for example showing the difference between a 3.82 rated game and a 3.72 game. One button and you'll have all the games ranked from best to worst. A comprehensive fan-based voting system that can determine the best of the best. The big question is whether greatness in RMN games can actually be determined on a mass scale, or if it should only be specific to individual opinion.

Things like vote stuffing can be combatted by only counting the votes of frequent users, but it may still be unreliable. I still think it could be implemented as a little feature, a little number in the description like Liberty said. Those who are interested can filter their results by it, but it's by no means a major thing. It doesn't mean anything in the end, except people's general view of what's great and what's quality. Separating the user scores from the critical scores is done on many other sites such as IMDb and Metacritic, or Rotten Tomatoes for film, games, music, TV and other media.

I think it could work here, but if the mods clearly don't want it, we shouldn't try to bully them into submission. I think it'd be a helpful device, but all in all it's implementation difficulty + personal choice + mod desire to keep the site a certain way, which should be completely fine.

If this was a third party website about indie RPGs, that would be one thing. But since this is a site for creators as well as players, being able to just rate games willy-nilly would just make ratings a popularity contest. (Not to mention the revenge-rating mentioned earlier).

Reviews make you have to at least justify your rating, and in a community where we're all trying to learn, reviews are a million times more helpful than just someone sticking a 1 out of 5 rating on a game and not providing any reasons.

You don't rate the page, you rate the game, just without a review.

You might think it doesn't work but reality tells me something different. I do like all movies and series on IMDB that have a rating of 9.2 or higher. I do like most games that get a high score on metacritic. Heck I even like most Amazon games with 4.8 or more stars and dislike pretty much all games that don't even manage to reach 3 stars average there. And yeah all of them have hate votes and fan votes, but the result in the end always fits to my taste, so it's quite meaningful for me what the majority has to say.

On RMN on the other hand, I could name you pretty many games with 5 stars or 4.5 stars that I don't like at all while I could find some 2-3 stars games that I do actually like. And that's usually because they all have just one review. It doesn't tell much about the game's quality. A single review no matter how huge and well written will never highlight all the good things and all the bad things because some simply depend on taste of the player.

The more ratings, the bigger the variety of different tastes.

With all due respect, Rave, your one-liners and ultimatums don't really help the situation. We need real arguments here. No worst case-scenarios or over-simplifications of the opposite side (Two wrongs don't make a right). We need people to realize the merits of a more inclusive community, not to come across as the very lunatics we need to keep at bay. xD
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I didn't want to post again, but since I'm here, I may as well weight in on a couple of things. Bear with me, I'll edit this post later on.

Edit: First of all I want to thank Piano, for engaging the discussion more at our level. I agree that there are better ways to be inclusive than others. I don't think anyone is here to argue that (As you can see, we're more than willing to compromise). But we need people to participate. Otherwise we won't be able to figure out the way that most benefit us all... I think your idea is perfect to test the waters. This way if the system doesn't work it can be removed at no great expense to the site.

Amerk misspoke when he was talking about the number of reviews. It's only natural that the number of reviews will increase with the number games and the number of users joining the site. But he was dead-on about the gap between the number of games and ratings, and the presence of biased ratings affecting games for years to come. But these numbers are likely to increase too, and we'll need to address that at some point or another. It's better if we start thinking about it now.

Everyone can benefit from this. Even people who regularly writes reviews can benefit from this. Because as it has been pointed out, not even them can review every game they play and there's a huge gap to close... Or is the judgement of frequent reviewers not to be trusted? Is the judgement of regular users not to be trusted? Is the judgement of the average rmn'er not to be trusted? Really? Because, the people we need to be wary of are usually a minority, and with the proper enforcement we can further reduce their impact.

The thing about those "big businesses" I was talking before is that they don't benefit from quality control, they benefit from more content, more clicks, more sales. That's why abuse in those sites is more noticeable. But we, in the other hand, we care. We care a great deal. And this too is why there's resistance to try out new things. It's "the evil we know." ...But if we try we can make this work!

What is that thing that all the cool kids are doing these days? "Hashtag"givechangeachance? xD Yeah.

Jesus, I thought this thread would be over by now.

author=Rave
Admins' unwillingness to compromise will just lead to downfall of this site as people start leaving it.

That is a huge over-exaggeration and if you've actually read the previous posts, you would know that Kentona has already fully explained that not only were yours and Rya's idea standard at one point, but how they are inherently flawed and that the current review system that's put in place right now was meant to ADDRESS these flaws.

I can't even find anything wrong with the current review system, other than maybe some lax approval standards for some. If you want some stars on your game, then why don't you go ask someone on this board to play your game? People here hold review drives, LPs and the likes about as much as any other RM community. Is it really that painful to do?