Poor user review score on MetaCritic... : V - Skyrim

Poor user review score on MetaCritic... · » Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:35 pm

User reviews aren't worth the bandwidth they use. People will rate a game 0 even if they think it deserves a 7, only because they believe the score it's got right now is too high and they want to influence it as much as possible. Hopefully I don't have to tell you why this is a flawed strategy.

This is especially true since the review tradition is more like the traditional school grades (7 is mediocre) than a logical scale where 5 is mediocre. This means a score of 0 by a troll affects the perception of a game more than a rating of 10 by a really devoted fan does.

Anyway this is only for the PS3 version, the other 2 have good user scores (not that user scores matter, as I already mentioned).

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 6:40 pm

Why do people still bother with ratings in a gaming industry, where anything below 90% is considered terrible?

Amen, ratings are a complete and utter joke now.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:54 am

Amen, ratings are a complete and utter joke now.

Hopefully, you'll see that I was trying to get to the same conclusion. Skyrim is not perfect but I cannot rate it badly for the bugs alone. It is as good as the support it gets.
Just like past games, every Bethesda game, to be precise, is as good as the support it gets. Hopefully, this time we can have some official support instead of relying solely on modders for that.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 6:00 pm

Skyrim is one of the best games I have ever payed. Top 5 for sure. It deserves a 3 out of 10. lol

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:17 pm

Famitsu:

40 points out of 40, perfect score by a panel of japanese professionals who have the insight to not knock off points for bugs they know are getting fixed.

BTW the only western game to ever achieve this in basically japan's version of Gameinformer. And only the 17th game to achieve this in their twenty+ year history.

so... yeah.

Same Famitsu that gave FFXIII-2 full score. :brokencomputer:

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:20 pm

Skyrim is one of the best games I have ever payed. Top 5 for sure. It deserves a 3 out of 10. lol

I read some PS3 players really mean to give it a 3 out of 10 and they don't do it for fame trolling or some "conspiracy" against TES. The only gripe as PC user is seeing people thinking modders should fix bugs.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:11 pm

Hard work adds up to nothing if the game isn't functional. They released it far too soon. The game is good, but everything about it feels unfinished. Questlines end abruptly and seemingly at points where there should be more. Not to mention how short all the questlines are as well. Bugs make the game unplayable unless you get lucky. I play on PC, but even I can see that they once again made the PS3 the bastard child -- it functions the worst of the three platforms, bloating inevitably made (or makes, I haven't heard whether or not it's been fixed) the game unplayable, and xbox has exclusivity on all the DLC. So as many problems as I've had, I feel even more sorry for the completely neglected PS3 players.

They released a patch to fix their broken game, and only succeeded in breaking it even more. They released another patch which didn't fix several major issues, and throughout all of it, they've been silent (aside from when it comes time to accept their many undeserved awards.)

They didn't deserve the 'studio of the year' award for precisely that reason. And their game doesn't deserve game of the year. Adding up all of the problems, 5.5 is about right. What could be an incredible game amounts to an average game. Below average if you're one of the people on the more problem-addled end of the spectrum.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 4:18 pm

The more popular a game, the more trolls are attracted to it. It's as close to being a reality tv star these people will ever get.

10/10.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 7:16 am

Hey, MW3 has a 2.9/10!!!

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 9:15 am

No game I have played to date deserves a perfect score. There is a reason its called a perfect score, if just any game ppl liked got a perfect score said score would lose its meaning.

Noone and nothing is ever perfect.

One should always strive for perfection even if one knows they will never attain such perfection.

It's called a perfect score because it's the highest score a game can get, not because it's for perfect games. There's no point in having a score that can't be obtained; why would we want to rate something on a scale of 1 to 9.9?

Edit:

Bugs make the game unplayable unless you get lucky.

I think this sentence sums up what I don't like about this train of thought; it's all based on something incorrect. Bugs make the game unplayable if you're particularly unlucky; the vast majority of players haven't had serious problems.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 12:53 pm

Seriously? Skyrim deserves WAY less than a 5.5!

A 3/10 AT BEST!

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 6:22 pm

Well I'm one of the reviewers on Metacritic and I gave the game a 4/10 for the PS3.

Awesome game but one that is currently flawed and you are unable to explore all aspects of the game. Either lag will destroy you or you'll end up corrupting your save game file.

Potential to be a 9/10 (combat is much improved for me over previous games, but still feels very clunky, get that right and it would be a 10) but in it's current state its a 4/10 for me.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 11:30 am

User reviews are always unreliable on Metacritic. Generally, people who dislike the game go there to give bad reviews more than people who like the game would be inclined to go and give it good reviews.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:22 pm

Retards. That's all there's to it. Have they even played the game? THE GAME ISN'T BROKEN. It maybe doesn't work fully for every PS3 gamer but it will be patched.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 8:22 pm

Honestly, I read some of your posts, saying the same thing over and over. In case you didn't notice, I can associate your avatar to those words already. (edit: is there a real "hate campaign"? I find it useful to debate, not blindly state the same thing over and over, that was what I meant)

I wish people would instead not forget that the game is as good as its official support. Otherwise, it is just a bad game (or toy, as Mr. Todd Howard would put it) because it is unfinished. You play a bit and it breaks and takes away all the fun (even if you try very hard to imagine it did not broke, go make something else, you will think about the stories that "could have been"). It just broke and it ruined it all. Face it. The one year long announcement of the game might have had you speaking to everyone you knew about it. The game will probably get long term support in terms of patches. (edit: That is the awesome part!)

However, releasing the Creation Kit sooner instead of later is not excuse to save Bethesda the hassle. It is not an excuse to put the game on a pedestal. It is not an excuse to overlook the time the creators spent with it. (Have you ever wondered that the creators of the game might have been forced to rush it?) It is not an excuse to "hand over" design decisions and project to the hands of an unknown bunch of avatars. Do you know the modders? They can be good. I'm sorry, I paid Bethesda for my game.

Sorry! Folks who think the modder will be there for you, you are plain wrong! Official support is the only way to fix the game in its entirety!

Furthermore, the CK will only do as much as Bethesda will let you.
Not that it means disadvantage to Bethesda. Again, I paid Bethesda, not some modder I cannot call for my - and millions of other peoples - technical support!

Grow up, man up! (edit: The game is as good as the official support it gets from now on.)

Not sure who you think is blind but I don't change my opinion from post to post and if you think I shouldn't post what I think, it might be a less stressful way for you to go to put me on your Ignore list. I won't mind. I also don't depend on modders for my gaming experience but I think there are some terrifically talented modders out there who provide wonderful extra content to add on to the games I love which were originally created by the teams at Bethesda or released by them. The games are huge and they have problems on release. This was not unexpected. If someone can't deal with that, they shouldn't purchase on release day. I've had problems but I don't get nasty talking about them like some do. A counterbalance to the nastiness is my preference. This is my reality and I'll say it as often as I can on threads repeating the same things that drew my responses. Have a beautiful day talking about the game, not other members here.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 10:46 am

Actually amazon reviews I find more interesting.

Xbox360 is 4.5 out of 5 overall. 5 stars-335 4 stars-34 3 stars-5 2 stars-15 1 star-15

PS3 is 3 out of 5 overall. 5 stars-138 4 stars-21 3 stars-12 2 stars-20 1 star-133

Sure Amazon has some lame reviews. However quite a few are actually fairly well done and detailed. The Xbox version only has a handful of negative reviews. The PS3 is about a 50/50 split. Also when you click on the most helpful reviews it is mainly 2 and 1 star reviews that come up.

I am sure many are playing the ps3 version with few issues and loving it, However, it does seem that more people have problems on the ps3.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 8:06 pm

It's doing a respectable 8.5 from both PC and XBox players.

The game has serious issues on the PS3 and until they're resolved entirely it deserves a mediocre score there.

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 12:39 pm

Just check Modern Warfare 3.. it has 2.1, while billion of people are playing for trillions of hours. User score means very little

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 1:05 pm

-1 Vanilla NPC interaction
-1 Short and bland major quest lines
-1 User interface
-.5 Making dragons tedious

10 - 3.5 = 6.5

imho, thats the best it could have gotten without problems:

-1 quest bugs tntc (too numerous to count)
-.5 broken containers (bookshelves, mannequins)
-1 pixelated shadows and other psychedelic graphical effects near fires

from what I understand, those affect all platforms.

4/10

-10000000000000000000000000000000 Selling me a game you knew was broken on my PS3 already

» Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:45 pm

XboX and PC scores are normal.

PS3 score is that low because a lot of people (I think originating from this forum, but I'm not sure) ganged up and downranked it due to the PS3 issue. I wouldn't call it trolling since the game is just unplayable for a lot of PS3 users, giving them full right to give the game a really low score. However, I do get the feeling a lot of people used spam accounts just to downgrade Skyrim. But maybe bad publicity like this will teach Bethesda not to set release dates too far ahead in stone again, and to leave some comfort room for better polished ports for PC and PS3 (or whatever future consoles).