Quoting: Salvatos

Quoting: TheSHEEEPNot only does that constantly rip you out of the game world by force, it makes you feel like you're sitting in front of the most cheeky DM possible. Imagine a DM who has nothing but a snarky remark for anything you do. ugh.
The game would have been MUCH better if the humor (at least the 4th wall breaking parts, which is the majority of it) would have been left out of the game.

Would you compare it to Quest for Infamy, if you happen to have played that?

I did play it, but I didn't find that it had so many 4th wall breaking jokes, but it's been a while. Besides, the whole game is much more of a comedy adventure to begin with.
In Aeon Of Sands, there is a stark contrast between normal and humorous writing. When it isn't the "DM" speaking to you as the player, the writing is relatively serious most of the time.

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I tried, but two things made me put the game down relatively fast:

For one, the real-time combat really is the worst of its kind. Some crawlers like that with real-time combat at least manage to be a tiny bit more than just "step up, hit, step back, repeat ad nauseum". This one isn't... how anyone can find this ridiculous, unchallenging routine entertaining is beyond me. How Liam can claim that it "can be challenging" is even more of a mystery to me. My only thought during combat was "make it eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeend!" (enemies take quite a few hits).
This also isn't a case of "turn-based would've been better", as the enemies are so one-dimensional in what they do it really wouldn't have done much.

The other big point is the humor, which of course is a problem to begin with (of all entertainment forms, humor is the most subjective), as it makes your liking of the writing pretty much a 50/50 chance. But in addition to that, the humor in this game is of the 4th wall breaking type.
Not only does that constantly rip you out of the game world by force, it makes you feel like you're sitting in front of the most cheeky DM possible. Imagine a DM who has nothing but a snarky remark for anything you do. ugh.
The game would have been MUCH better if the humor (at least the 4th wall breaking parts, which is the majority of it) would have been left out of the game.

The artwork in this game truly is amazing, though. Shame it is wasted on this kind of gameplay and humor...

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"RPG Games"


Other than that, though: Good, it was long overdue. Hopefully, they'll also finally make a WYSIWYG for reviews...

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Quoting: stretch611

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: devnullBit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.

That would require effort. Which requires motivation.
Something someone who has judged a game after half an hour if not liking it will only muster in extremely rare cases.

Yes, but if things change and you are required to play for one hour to leave a review, it is easy just to leave something running on your computer when you grab some lunch. That takes very little effort and people will do it if it is needed.

You underestimate just how lazy people truly are. As a developer myself who sees a lot of interaction between support and users (and in the gaming business, too): Incredibly lazy. It is a fact one simply has to accept and deal with.
The few people that do leave short-playtime negative reviews are not highly motivated to do so, they are barely above the motivation threshold to do so. Increase the threshold and it is 100% guaranteed to decrease the number of those reviews.
Obviously, a few would do shenanigans like you described, but that will only be a minority among a minority.

Positive and negative reviews are also different to begin with.
A positive review is almost always left after a longer time of playing (for obvious reasons), so the minimum time requirement is a non-issue here.
While a negative review can also be left after a longer time of playing (making it a non-issue), many negative reviews are left after a very short while - and the main reasons for many of these are:
- Players did not inform themselves before their purchase and blame the game for not being something it never tried to be - which is pointless criticism. "I don't like my new blue car because it isn't red"...
- Review bombing because they disagree with the dev on issues not related to the game.
- Bugs or other severe technical issues.
- Design flaws so obvious and numerous that really only such a short time is needed to come to valid conclusions.

Of those four main reasons, only the last two are truly valid in judging a game's quality.
Which does make such a minimal time requirement a bit of a double-edged sword. From what I've seen over the years on Steam reviews, though, the part of the first two reasons is much larger than the last two, so I'd still be in favor of such a requirement.

Alternatively, Valve could do what they do with review bombs themselves, allowing reviews at any playtime, but not making them a part of the (default) score.

Anyway, review bombs come not only from those short playtimes ones, but also from normal players that simply didn't post a review before and now something non-game related cause them to lash out. Nothing other than Valve's measures will stop that. At least I couldn't think of anything right now...

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Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: devnullBit confused by this.. I already don't give any credit to people who have spent very little time actually playing the game. Why can't valve use that?

There's games where you can say you'll never like it in half an hour or less.

It's also easy to fake playing time.

That would require effort. Which requires motivation.
Something someone who has judged a game after half an hour if not liking it will only muster in extremely rare cases.

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Quoting: eldakingUgh, gaming "as a service". Frankly, this is worse than games not supporting Linux. Games might be developed for Linux (servers)... but then we can't buy the games to run in our Linux systems. This is the antithesis of FOSS - we don't even have the freedom to run the software ourselves. It's like the most intrusive always online DRM ever coupled with the least software freedom technology allows.

Nobody really cares as long as you can run the game.

Besides, this depends heavily on how exactly they do it.
A good model would be: If you own the game, you can run it normally or stream it (like, if you don't have a proper rig).
If it was really only available via streaming, then it would be pretty bad, indeed.
But in that case, I wouldn't see it having much success and fare the same as other streaming services so far.

Obviously, some games will always be excempt from this, as no streaming will ever get you the performance of a good rig.

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That game is just crazy.
And great fun, once you figure out what to do/how to do it.

The only downside of the game is that once you do get the hang of it and manage to build yourself a hideout, the game's basically over as nothing can really harm you any more.
But getting there does require a lot of luck and planning.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: orochi_kyoFor being a Linux site this is really full of corporate drones, which are like, "ohh my God, those poor devs".

Developers are humans, too.

Nonono, they are greedy, scummy beings, whose only intention is to suck the money out of unsuspecting, innocent users, who blindly and tragically stumble into their malicious schemes.
The suffering and screams of the innocent is the only thing keeping developers alive, don't you see it?!

How, without the powerful weapon of unrelated spam, can we possibly hope to defeat those evildoers? Oh, woe is us!

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Quoting: orochi_kyoFor being a Linux site this is really full of corporate drones, which are like, "ohh my God, those poor devs".
Review bombing works both ways, it was used on GTA V when Take Two decided to shut down the modding scene of the game by sending a C&D letter to Open GTA developers and also worked (in a positive way) when ASW (maybe most of you arent aware of this) a fighting games developer was doing their first port for PC, which were awful but everyone was happy to see the company developing for PC and everyone was like, "port is awful but ASW is trying".

Oh, great, two "positive" examples in the face of probably dozens or more negative ones... Well, the latter isn't even positive as a shitty port is a shitty port. "Is trying" is irrelevant. Game reviews are not the place for charity.

Quoting: orochi_kyoThis is just another move Valve is doing to please AAA developers, the ones who hates customers to have a voice and since Devs can ban anyone who dares to say anything negative in their hubs, this is another way for sweeping things under the rug. Too bad for Valve, so afraid of AAA devs moving to Epic Fail Store.

Nope, this has nothing to do with AAA, as games across the spectrum have been hit by it.
You also still have a voice without spamming something that is meant be about the quality of the game with irrelevant clutter: Don't buy the game, talk about it on forums, social media, etc.
It's not like suddenly you are silenced, you just cannot (well, you can, but it will be ignored by most) misuse the review system for a game for unrelated critique of the developer/publisher.
With that taken out, a bit more effort might be required - and that is a good thing, because low-effort crap like review-bombing was never useful.

Quoting: orochi_kyoAlso we stopped paid mods thanks to review bombing, but it seems being a pro-corporate anti-consumer guy is the trend these days. Funny thing all of you are consumers...

Don't fool yourself. Paid mods were stopped because of the buzz it generated, of which angry review bombs were a negligible part. Which is the same for all other cases in which review-bombs were just a symptom of a big outrage. And such outrage will continue to happen and generate buzz - just except for the review section for a game, because it has no place there.

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Quoting: monnefSo yes, IMO a game should have worse score and reviews if its price was halved in first week and customers weren't compensated (e.g. returned portion of money or some points for cash shop).

The review score is meant to represent the quality of the game.
Not how nice the publisher is.
Not how nice the developer is.
Not how some random dev tweeted something that offended a few people.
Not for how fitting the price policy is (except if a game is overpriced, of course).

Nothing of that says anything about the game.
And nothing of that should be part of the review score.

Yes, I know it is the only "channel" that some users WRONGLY think to have. Well, though shit, it's still the wrong place.

If at all, introduce a second review score, one that actually is focused on the developer (and/or publisher).

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