Players - please spend a few minutes rating Steam reviews

Ah yes, I was thinking about that too, but that is usually taboo so I skipped over

I agree that currently THE ONE TRUE GOD OF LIGHT $$$, is what drives most our passions.

They asked us to literally burn "the old gods" and embrace the Lord.

That part made me sad... but not as much as splitting the community in trammel and Felucca before the game devs even knew what would be possible and what was too hard for their small team.

But such decisions makes sense in the context of starting a new studio... it needs funding more than anything.

It reminds me when I was young, I went to "rainbows" and such events which would not even allow you to trade goods for money during the even, everything was supposed to be trades, old school. But everytime someone said to the group : Whats the most important ressource I can bring for trading, 110% of the time, you'd get not one but 10 replies which simple stated "$$$, 666"

Why was more than one answer necessary ? Who knows... because PRAISE THE LORD huh.

Well the organisation needed money so they could buy food to feed the people for free (metaphor is quite fitting here)... and dealing with people who brought food that wasn't so good is too much problems for them.

Meh... I never went again to those events, this all makes me nauseous, especially that when people arrived with food and nothing else because they had been told not to bring money, their food was trashed because nobody could certify that it was clean and free from disease that would contaminate the whole event.

How sad is that... well you can see the parallels here I'm sure

 

I agree with most of your criticisms above, which is why I won't review this until release to see if most of these are addressed.

 

I think im not fully understanding your point.
Your claiming steam catters to asset flips, and encourages conmen and scammers?

Im very confused having used it for years and have no idea in what your describing? How is it any different then projects on kickstarter? You realize how fantastic steam is for refunds right?
If your complaint is that theres garbage games on it that are just begging for money... then i agree. But unfortunatly they have to be very loose with *games still in devlopment* and thats where player reviews come in.
That and their return policy ( which when used for Sota for my buddies ) allowed 3 hours give or take of play, then money back. So im not quite sure... where scams come in? Yes it allows a lot of early access games. Yes lots of these games are poorly developed, but thats ... pretty much any platform that caters to any crowd funded or early access games?

Id even argue that steam offers more of a safety net then a lot of other platforms, with their refund policy.
Not to mention steam... is free in the first place. So, in a lot of ways it protects the consumer more then other options, imo, and does this for free.

 

Steam does nothing to to COMBAT asset flippers. There numerous developers whose behavior has been awful, but nothing happens. We're talking about people who put up the engine-demos, then censor their steam pages for criticism (for ostensibly "released" games). Threaten to sue anyone who reviews them poorly. The ONLY developer (note the lack of plural here) who they did do something about was literally filing lawsuits (threats to file aren't enough, those are a dime a dozen). It's often not the first attempt at flipping the same included-with-the-engine demo, normally these guys have posted multiple with different flipped assets.

I'm not sure what you're confused about. Steam does no vetting whatsoever of developers or their products. It's to the point where I won't even bother looking, unless I've seen something somewhere else. Here's a list to get you started, while not all of these are bad games (some of them are on the list for just bad behavior of their devs, like GTA for the sudden reversal of their policy to modders) it's a good start: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/27507830-Sentinels-of-the-Store/?appid=655050

The difference is Kickstarter is not a storefront. It doesn't claim to be a storefront. Steam is a storefront, and does claim to be one. When I go into Walmart, I expect that they have, at minimum vetted that what is on their shelves is actually legal. Many of the titles on that list contain clear copyright violations.

Like I said, Steam is a lucrative market, but it's a largely unregulated one. As far as Steam's refund policy, that has only been in place for two years, and what specifically added to help mitigate the bad press they were getting from these types of "developers."

I do need to correct myself one thing, there was also a developer who was removed after changing his name to.... something very unflattering about Gabe Newell (which I don't think is appropriate for this forum).

 

"The Matrix has you...."


"Follow the white rabbit....." "Knock knock Neo...."

 

I like the comment about posting a review then keep rolling. I use Steam all the time but almost never read the reviews or follow up comments. Too many other more important things to do, like play the game. For game reviews, I find that a quick use of Google gets to other better sources of reviews that I consider buying.

 

I really don't understand why so many here refuse to acknowledge just how powerful Steam is in the PC gamer community. They will throw thousands and thousands at this game but give no other support for it.

I have news for those people. Funding is a necessary thing, but so is the public perception of the game. Not only is this game financially backed by the players but it's also socially supported by it's players because WE are the marketing team right now.

People's view of the game is not going to change unless people here get involved on the Steam forums and discredit the many and I mean MANY misconceptions and outright lies people are writing. The game isn't going to launch and all of a sudden all the forum posts, un-checked or responded to reviews etc go away. Nope, we're going to launch and it's all going to still be there.

Sure there are a lot of legit reviews but a lot of them are not. A lot of people complain about how confusing the game is and I'll bet many had no idea Discord existed for help. There are a lot of reasons why this community needs to represent on Steam. I really wish people would listen.

I engaged in conversation with just ONE person that was on the fence to try the game. Here's the link to the actual conversation: http://steamcommunity.com/app/326160/discussions/0/1471967615851293528/ And yes, these forums are public. Someone came in and tried to convince them they would have to spend thousands to craft (in a different post) and for a house to be successful. I told them otherwise and about how they can even get free housing (from folks like Rosemourne and guilds, etc) and they decided to try the game. All it took was for me and another person to help them understand more about the realities and not the hearsay about the game to get them interested and trying it. It wasn't that hard at all.

Those of us that are trying cannot do this alone. I am new and can't answer 80% of the questions people ask. We need your help. Write your review of how you like the game presently. If it has to be negative, so be it. But I'm betting that if you're reading this far, you're pretty involved or at least very interested in SotA. You can change it or delete it later. Engage with people who disagree with you. Enough with the excuses. Do what you can - every little bit helps.

And Portalarium, for the love of all that is good please remove the description "WARNING: THIS GAME IS IN EARLY ACCESS. PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE IT UNLESS YOU WANT TO ACTIVELY SUPPORT DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAME AND ARE PREPARED TO HANDLE SERIOUS ISSUES AND INCOMPLETE CONTENT. PLEASE READ THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS PRIOR " and write what the game really is. Why do you keep this up?! You're stabbing yourself in the eye doing this.

Yes, while all other games, as @MrBlight has pointed out, give enticing descriptions of their games, SotA, has the above. Would you try a game that described itself like this? Sure, put that on the page somewhere, but not in the area people see when looking at the games in a list against other games. Seriously, what's up with that?

Thanks.

 

The game really is in Early Access While I agree with you that we should get more involved on Steam I also agreed when they added that to the description.

 

Many games are... but they don't use it as their game *description*

 

Did you agree to it being at the top of the page as well as the only thing people see when they look at a list of games in Steam? http://store.steampowered.com/app/326160/Shroud_of_the_Avatar_Forsaken_Virtues/

I mean, yeah, like I said in my OP it needs to be in the description. But this is the headline for the game.

I think, tonight, I might write a thread on how to be involved in the Steam community. Maybe something that runs the gamut from "light involvement" such as simply liking and disliking reviews to "steam pro" where one can not only review the game (such as my profile) but highlight it on their Steam profile wall, etc. Is this something you think might help? Any suggestions?

 

Yes. Did you see what the reviews on Steam were like before that was added at the top of the description? This was a response to the 'reviewed as a finished game despite being in EA' issue, the text was taken directly from another EA game that had a similar problem. The text doesn't seem to be hurting that game's popularity too much as they manage more four and a half thousand concurrent players (though I don't think you can play that game outside of Steam like you can with Shroud).

Remember that you don't get to add showcases to your Steam profile until you hit a certain 'steam level', so some guidance on what that is and how you increase it may be appropriate.

 

This and the design and the TOS and too many other things.

 

I just watched the new video they posted on the site (the first one here). Is it me or is the music under too loud? I'm finding it super hard to hear the narration.

I think the video is great, albeit a bit dark, and we need more... MUCH more of this! Please don't take it down but if the music could be lowered that would be cool.

 

Yep, it's nice but music is too loud! Can't hear the narration. @Berek can you reexport this or is the music in the narration track?

 

EA = Early Access

 

AHAHAHAHA!!! Derp. Thanks Winter and for not owning me for such a silly mistake. You're good peeps.

 

Hmm, good question. Will have our team take a look.

Do you recall if it was always like that, or is this something new? We haven't updated those videos in quite a while.

 

I don't recall. Maybe just wait until the contest is over and use those instead.

 

I did actually go in an review the game and rate reviews. I was immediately attacked by trolls who I noticed replied to every review with the same disinformation---e.g., you have to spend thousands of dollars to play the game, seedinvest was because port is greedy... blah blah. I also was personally attacked as two trolls said I was 'crazy' given my playtime and enjoyment of the game. How do I know they were trolls? They responded with essentially the same disinformation to the over 50 reviews I looked at. So there is no wide range of public option on steam.. the information seems to be almost entirely controlled by a small group of trolls that are working full time. Paid trolls? I doubt honeybadger steam cares.

 

I deleted one of the comments that said I was a "sad" and "crazy" person.

The bit at the end of my comment was just a joke. What I was saying has NOTHING to do with steam. These review systems are pretty much the same on any site.

No, there are clearly FULL TIME trolls attack this game in the steam reviews and elsewhere.

I have a busy life and am not playing at much these days but took the time to post a review on steam, look over the responses to reviews, and post about my impressions here. Thanks so much for the personal attacks.