PA Metacritic reviews

I get that we already have a huge Steam review discussion going. However, we also all agree that the actual value of Steam reviews is ... lacking, to use a diplomatic phrasing.

Now I'm not saying that Metacritic reviews are of intrinsic higher quality, but they're definitely much more visible. Metacritic scores will usually be the first thing upon a quick Google search and they're linked to Steam score pages by default (even with user scores for those with enhanced Steam installed). Like it or not, Metacritic is one of the top review aggregators. Many users have long since stopped caring about the review scores of professional reviews and instead use the user score as a metric to judge games.

And this is what PA is currently looking like - 6.8 and dropping; the users scores were above 8.0 at one point.



http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/planetary-annihilation?recent-sort=userscore

To give you an idea of where this score puts PA: Divinity Original Sin has a user score of 9.0, Dark Souls 2 has a 7.0 and Watch Dogs sits at 4.6 (which is, in my opinion, a fair score for each title).

Chances are this is going to drop further. I hope that at least the "professional reviews" will look a bit brighter, for what it's worth, but I'm afraid the user scores will not improve for the time being. We might easily dismiss the occasional complaint from users here on the forums or on Reddit because "the devs are working on it" or "offline play was promised" or "the servers are coming, have faith" ... but right now, people are judging the game as-is, and their scores are here to stay.

Those user ratings look totally stupid.
The big majority of ratings is either:
10! everything's awesome!
or
0! Uber are scammers, liers and they will destroy the world!

Realistically speaking neither of those is true.

.... yeah and this kind of page is actually used anywhere as a metric for ratings?

Yeah, luckily nobody really trusts metacritic anymore.

I saw brians and thetrophysystems reviews, good job guys.

Oh no, user-based reviews on Metacritic are being written by stupid and bias people, what an abnormality. /s

The value of crowd-based reviews is quite low. Reviewing games, despite some of it's flaws, is a profession with professionals in it for a reason. Let's just leave the User Reviews in the dust.

I kinda disagree with that. I am perfectly able to write a reasonable review that states pros and cons of PA and come to reasonable score in the end that won't be 10 or 0.
However I can't see any reason to spent any time to write a review on a page where 90% of the other reviews are trolls who probably never played the game and just give a 0 because they are too bored with their life or fans who try to compensate for the trolls by giving a 10.

Their criticism could be rendered even less valid if the devs weren't piping all user feedback to /dev/null.

6/10, Not bad, but should know better.

I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. Generally speaking, the only people I hear lauding Metacritic as a useful source of information are the same people who love to leave cutting reviews on any product or service that isn't 100% to their satisfaction in every way. And honestly, long may they fester in their mutual loathing of the imperfect.

Well, yes and no: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2fv3mg/of_corruption_in_the_australian_games_industry/

Metacritic a waste of time and energy.

Generally, I see people favoring the metacritic/user score as fair, except when it's harshly criticizing a game they personally like.

Ultimately, the proportion of people giving a game 10s and 0s will average out. A 6.8 would mean 68% of people like the game and 32% don't. It's only in the case of exceedingly bad publicity that people who otherwise like a game will rate it negatively out of spite.

We all know it's dropping because of the angry Steam forum-goers, but I don't see how it can be effectively combated unless Uber convince them that their precious missing features are coming.

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/to-those-of-you-wanting-quotes.63989/

Boop!

And the only way they are going to be able to do that is by writing up an official announcement on the issues. Putting the announcement on steam's announcement feature, PA's blog, and a kickstarter update also a press release. Period. They need more communication less silence.

E.g. PR

Edit: Should make this explicit it has to come from Uber Entertainment itself and ASAP.

They mentioned it in the weekly update.

It doesn't even have to be a big statement. Literally one sentence: "Hey bros, we are totally working on offline mode, for sure it's coming "soon". My abs are TIGHT". Not that I had a particular member of the team in mind.

which one, please?

https://forums.uberent.com/threads/uber-weekly-update-august-13-2014.62882/#post-977269

I would have quoted it, but it's locked.

Metacritic is quite a craphole in terms of validness, they may be even worse than steam reviews at this point.