AMERK'S PROFILE

author=Liberty
...Which part of 'currently reviews are 300 characters' did you not understand? Do you know how long 300 characters is? It's about three sentences. If you can't be fucked to write three sentences about a game you just played why the hell are you even bothering to say anything?! That's just crazy, really.


See the above? 305 characters. Currently (and I'm working on getting that upped atm) that is how long a review legit has to be to make it onto the site. Seriously, all we ask is that you make an effort to write well and at least 300 characters worth of content. If you can't do that why bother?

My mistake. I kept reading that as 300 words, not characters. Chalk it up to selective reading skills. I'm sure a lot of others here probably made that same mistake. Regardless, though, the word count (er character count) isn't a problem with me, but seems to be with a lot of others. Hopefully now that it's been hammered in (character count not word) people will realize how shitty of a writer you'd have to be not to come up with 3 sentences.

I guess now the question becomes, will people be arsed with doing more reviews now that they realize how low the character count is? If so, problem solved. If not, then I don't think any amount of changes (even a template of sorts) would change the behavior.

author=Liberty
Why not just use comments instead then? I mean, all that's different in your version is being able to rate a game - everything else (no MS, shorter reviews) is already included in comment sections.

It was more for a way to even out scores and encourage more feedback. Plus, the developer could easily view feedback via reviews (even if they were small) which is probably more efficient than digging through pages of comments.

But if the mods aren't on board with it, it'll probably never happen.

author=RyaReisender
1. Number of reviews should also have an effect on the total score. Like for example pretending each game has a 0/5 review set by default. So if it just has one 5 star review it's still just 2.5. If it has two 5 star review it's 3.3 and so on.

I don't really like this idea. You're still going to wind up with the same problem, that many of the old games have lots of reviews given in a time when reviews were prominent, and most of the new games only getting one review, if they're lucky.

Even grandfathering in so that it only applies to new games going forward, if one game scores an average of 3 across the board for 5 reviews, another game only gets two reviews (each scored at 4), the first game is going to have an average score of 3 and come off looking better designed and polished than the second one (with an average of 2.7) only because the second one couldn't get the same amount of reviews.

Punishing a game because people are too lazy to right a review doesn't seem to be the answer.

author=RyaReisender
2. Make RMN differentiate between 0.1 score steps. Right now all 4/5 games are considered equally good, it doesn't make any difference whether it's 3.8 or 4.2, but for players that difference is huge (as 3.8 average often means it's already a rather average game while 4.2 is a really good score).

I like this idea. Being able to decide on a point system helps. I recently did a review or a game that scored at 2.83 (based off my own metrics). It had a really good story, but everything else was subpar. So I either had to decide to lower it to 2.5 which I felt was too low, or 3 which I felt was too high. I wound up going with 3 because it felt wrong lowering a score more than what it should be.

author=RyaReisender
3. Review should be required for score, but it should not be necessary to write an essay. Really even if a reviewer is writing a lot it does not say ANYTHING about how well thought out the score is. A person can talk 3 pages long how much he hated one aspect of the game and give it just 1 star without actually considered all the other parts of the game at all.

I think as long as the review shows that the score really reflects the reviewer's opinion, it should be allowed.

Reviews require to be approved, so this falls on whoever is modding and approving to ensure the review reflects the game over all, and that the score is justified and not biased.

We all change with experience; none of my current reviews reflects the reviews I first did, and my style of writing has changed. However, regardless of how good or bad we may have been, what we do write should reflect the score, and if not should be denied.

author=RyaReisender
The shortest possible review I could imagine still being allowed was something just rating all the categories of an RPG with one or two sentences as explanation like this (imaginary review):

Graphics 3.5/5 - Uses default RTP, but mapping is nice so I'll put it above average.
Music 1/5 - Game didn't have any music or sound effects and I felt it could really need some.
Gameplay 2/5 - Gameplay outside of combat is nice, but battles are really boring and the balance is horrible.
Story 4.5/5 - Really interesting story, it was probably the only thing that really kept me going.

Total 3/5 - Game is mostly ruined by lack of sound and really tedious and unbalanced battles, but the story is really good and the mapping is nice. Together it adds up to average.

This is kind of why people have been asking for a template idea for smaller reviews. Bigger reviews can continue to receive the total MS points they do now, but smaller ones can be approved for less points (maybe 5 or 10). I see this as a win-win across the board:

1. The developer has a better chance of getting more reviews, even if some of them are less detailed.
2. The people who otherwise don't like to provide long reviews now can review and still get some points for it.
3. Games that otherwise wouldn't deserve a full 300-word review can now start generating feedback.
4. Even getting small reviews would help make the score more appropriate across the board.
5. No real extra duties for the mods, since they already have to approve reviews. They'd just need to decide if a review fits within the template or should be considered a full fledged review for MS distribution purposes.

Great game and great review. I agree with all that was said here. For the item pop-up, I never did understand why that was. I only care about the immediate item I'm finding or losing.

In any case, it's still a decent and fun game in spite of the flaws mentioned.

Wow! Great idea. Even for people who don't care about Pokemon styled games can probably use this for other fun rpg's.