Steam reviews needs some love :)

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Xee, Aug 13, 2018.

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  1. Vladamir Begemot

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    There is most certainly a vendetta from a dozen of the early backers. They have often said their goal is to prevent any new player from being "swindled". They do potential new players a great injustice by posting irrelevant information, the state of the game from 2016 as though it is today, and just toxicing up the waters to the point people think that the game is full of a toxic community. I have literally seen "Shroud has the most toxic community in gaming" posted many times from these guys. I don't think hat matches any of our experience unless we're dealing with RAW.

    By posting information that is years out of date, or totally false, and with no one but me there saying that is incorrect, then people believe them. Ironically, most of their early complaints are now fixed, but these guys melted down on people, raged on people and the developers, and got banned. So they don't even have an idea of what the game is like now.

    Here's a quote from the recent MMORPG article's comments, I believe this is a fellow who ran a website explicitly for destroying Shroud, long before I or most of us were here. He appears to think he still has a lot of attacking to do before he's satisfied, which would be the very definition of a vendetta:

    Broke into two parts because the second part is very important:

    If you follow me on Reddit, you will find the same small group of people also follow me, and immediately jump in whenever I post news about Shroud. They also stretch the truth or outright lie, whatever it takes to "protect people from being swindled". Vendetta.

    Take a look at when I posted about the upcoming player dungeons. The top comment on that is one of the crew saying that combat is 1/10, animations 1/10, the game is nothing but RMT, etc. It's the top comment because they posted it in RAW and got in their with their alts and upvoted it. Vendetta.

    The big difference between the dozen guys on RAW and the thousands of us that play is that RAW shows up. And because of that their vendetta gets a lot more play than it would if more than 3 of us would show up.

    So, does anyone want to display some Courage and start showing up? It would be appreciated. If reddit is too scary to comment on at least upvote downvote if the information is true or a bunch of lies/outdated. MMORPG and MassivelyOP have Shroud news as well, dominated by the same ten guys. Show up and say "I play the game and I like X about it." And keep it positive, don't let them drag you down to their level.

    And regarding Steam, yes I need to update too. It only takes a few releases for the information to be out of date.
     
  2. craftymethod

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    Hell bent indeed.

    And stand in their way in this destructive quest of theirs or dispute their creative facts, and you will get lynched too.

    But to the call of updating a steam review, seems fair enough.
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2018
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  3. Vladamir Begemot

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    This is important too. Negative reviews aren't a bad thing as long as they are honest, they reflect work that still needs to be done.

    The same with positive reviews, as long as they are honest it's great.

    In my reviews as well as elsewhere, I recommend the game, but I also point out that there are certain gamers that probably will not like the game based on it's current state. If you must ahve 60fps, don't play yet. It'll make you angry. If you're looking for a story on par with The Witcher, go play the Witcher. We're not ready for you yet. Maybe with the quest redo, yeah. But not yet.

    Keep it honest.
     
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  4. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

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    Exactly, I just registered there after seeing the hate just to give my view. There is a lot of misinformation, as well hate coming from 6 people there. nothing good can be posted or it gets roasted.
    Sad that people just can't get past things that disappointed them, and want to drag down a community just because their vision of what they read and heard was different then what they wanted.
     
  5. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

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    So to bring this back on track, I still think it would be nice that people help tell their stories in these forums and do reviews when you like to perhaps paint a real picture of the current state. Cheers.
     
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  6. Vladamir Begemot

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    Ok back on track I'll stop with the non-Steam comments :)
     
  7. jammaplaya

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    Too bad it died. It's mostly because the game itself is dead, but partly because it's the exact same as Raw anyways so why bother posting there. Don't get me wrong, I like the game, but these numbers are too low even for summer. Game needs a complete overhaul and some actual advertising, but it's probably too late for that angle (hyped advertising) to work anymore. I myself am simply waiting for "freeshard" versions of Shroud to come out because we won't be seeing any kind of wipe or remodel, which is what is needed.

    The time for steam reviews has passed, now is the time for Seige Perilous.
     
  8. Mischievous Dragon

    Mischievous Dragon Riparian Reaper

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  9. mechtech

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    Hello, I do believe you are referencing my post. This is an absurd and unwarranted accusation.

    I have no vendetta against this game, and am honestly reporting my thoughts on the game as I experienced it as a launch day player. The comments on combat and animations are sincere, and so are my comments about the economy being centered around real world dollars instead of a vibrant player driven economy. I do believe that the presentation/sound/animations of the game is very poor, and as I said, the strong RMT focus combined with the former elicited a strong negative reaction.

    The personal attacks are unwarranted. I certainly don't "follow you around", or even know who you are! I also don't have "Reddit alts" boosting this post. This was upvoted by the subreddit community and I have not touched this thread since writing this reply and closing the tab.

    I followed the newsletters and development and forums of the project casually from inception and never got involved in the real money trade. I simply downloaded the game when it released, played it, and formed a critical opinion at this point.

    I'm actually quite uncomfortable being accused of such things and think it's unacceptable for you to make baseless accusations against fellow players for expressing their own opinions. Nothing about this is acceptable behavior! I have indeed played the game post release, and here is my original backer email from 2013: https://imgur.com/a/HuFTSEc
     
  10. moxiepilot

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    ...You never get a second chance to make a first impression...

    It's great that as the game evolves the reviews can be updated, but really, shouldn't the goal of selling the game be the initial impression of "wow!" instead of "it's okay, and 6 months later, it's better?"
     
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  11. Vladamir Begemot

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    Ok I'm sorry. I blended you in with some others who quite frequently do it. I didn't look at the username for long because they tend to show up as alts at an incredible rate, and I get a lot of personal attacks. Like, a lot.

    I'm sorry for getting you mixed up, and sorry I offended you. I hope you can forgive me, it may turn out we become great friends some day.

    Since you're here, would you mind telling me if you really believe it's a 1/10 on combat? Like, the worst combat that is possible, it's that bad?
     
  12. jammaplaya

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    Like I said, no amount of positivity on steam reviews is going to make any difference. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that our new player retention is 0% anyways.

    This is because the game is being designed from finish to start. We have a ton of extra content but none of the basic content. No mounts, no naval combat, but we have brewing and emotes! You don't even start with the coconuts and I doubt that 50% of new players even understand the reference.

    What Port needs to do is dish out the basic content required to populate a game. The trolls can troll and Vlad can feed them all day long, people can go write positive steam reviews but everyone involved in any of it is just wasting their time if Port doesn't get that basic content in and find a way to reboot the title.

    I like the game, love the atmosphere and it suits me that I can be on level 1 in a high tier zone where I get my butt wiped frequently; I like a challenge. But we have some serious flaws here that go above and beyond reviews or comments on reviews. I figured we'd have been on episode 3 by now at least, but every month it's a full page of content that shouldn't be being worked on at all given that we don't even have mounts yet.
     
  13. Crowell

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    Most games which get positive reviews on Steam (and there is a few) don't get those reviews after some players ask for those to the whole community. People just post positive things spontaneously there, or we are talking about some sort of social engineering campaign. Nobody should claim that a game is unfairly scored, because it means that thousands or tens of thousands of people who BOUGHT this game and felt like it was not good enough are simply ignored.
     
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  14. jammaplaya

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    Well to be perfectly honest there are some trolls out there who spend quite a bit of time gaming the comment sections on any reviews related to the game that they can find with unrealistic opinions and misinformation, and even gaming the review boards by using alt accounts to write more than one negative review. They even consider the OP to be "starting a war with them" ...

    What does that tell you?

    The mind boggles.
     
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  15. Crowell

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    That does tell nothing to me. You always have detractors with any game : sometimes it's justified, sometimes it's not. But it's certainly not up to you (nor me) to deal with such a debate as long as your opinion certainly does not matter more than those of any other player, detractors included.

    In other words, those guys should be able to voice their opinion as much as you do. Trying to silence concerns about a game simply because those doesn't appear valid to you means that you think your opinion is more important. And it's certainly not. You are only entitled to express your disagreement as much as they do. Even if the detractors seem to be very toxic in your opinion (and they probably are for a reason).

    Now, if you think that the detractors have a big influence on the reviews, the reason is probably that the game itself and the way it was managed give people many reasons to listen to the detractors. In other words, it's up to the devs to fix it before it's too late.

    But we are out of the topic now. Back to steam reviews please.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2018
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  16. craftymethod

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    @Preachyr, do you remember that bet old friend? Can't be too far from a year now ;)
     
  17. jammaplaya

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    I agree with most of what you've said but here is where we run in to some issues. Some of these people's opinions have been completely invalidated because they've already stated that their intention is to kill the game for one reason or another. And yes, they do spam about it often. It's unrealistic to believe that some of that groups opinions are realistic, because nobody without an agenda would spend ten hours a day straw-grasping just to be negative years after they've stopped playing.

    One example that comes to mind is a dispute between two players where one player sent the other a picture of their avatar with pubic hair drawn into the avatar's teeth. Because we're all hiding behind a computer monitor, it's no big deal to years later be still complaining that the person who sent the picture wasn't immediately banned lol. It's the internet, people go as low as they can without consequence, so they don't mind looking bad like that, as long as they get the other person banned. In this case, I'd say it would be unrealistic to believe that the person is truly still upset about it as they say they are, but more likely that they just want to get the other person banned still no matter what. This is what I mean when I'm talking about unrealistic opinions that we see spammed constantly.

    I think it's only natural for someone like the OP to want to suggest that those of us who like the game go to write honest reviews to counter some of the dishonest or outdated ones given the circumstances. But yes, we are in total agreement that it wont make any difference if the devs don't focus solely on the top priorities and abandon any notion of completing anything else before that. I would even suggest that they get player retention up by focusing on basic content that isn't in, even at the expense of performance. Now would be the time.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2018
  18. DeadnGone

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    This isnt a full release game like most other mmo type games though, like for example, World of Warcraft where the vast majority of the game world, to that point, was ready to tackle when they released it. Totally different way its built... an independent company making/building most everything as they go and installing it in releases and putting it out there each month for everyone. Its a totally different game than what I played in June of 2014 to persistence and from persistence to now.
     
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  19. jammaplaya

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    It is a different game than it was even a year ago, that's why some older reviews are now outdated, but still the wow factor is important and that first impression is a big thing. We have a ton of content that's designed to keep people happy that are already hooked, but very little hooks. Launching without mounts or the prospect of mounts right around the corner was a mistake, as was launching in the spring, and any money spent on advertising right now is a waste of resources. "Episode 2" in itself isn't going to be enough of a reboot to get the population back on track in my opinion. It's just more monthly updates...

    Even for someone who is paying attention to the game as much as I am, I still see monthly releases etc and it still feels like nothing has changed in that sense, so I can see why some might disagree about how much has really changed. Maybe there's something to be said here for imagery.
     
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  20. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

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    Ok gals / guys. The point of the post was simply to get more updated reviews and information out to these forums to negate misinformation that is stale. We'r swim to be moving this thread into the wrong direction. We all have different views but there seems to be a lot of reviews that agree not honest and truthful and age more based on emotional responses.

    A lot of reviews don't go into details as to why someone would rate things one way or another. If I reached this 1/10 in anything I'd probably have a detailed explanation. Mind you myself would rate a game like mine craft graphics low but the game high as it's got great concepts but looks dated. But the are some that think the graphics are 10. Using more details helps explain a person's view. Saying graphics are terrible game looks like poop. Does little
    To give the review any cred and looks more like a rant. I find detailed reviews on both sides more constructive and also helps others including dev's kabir why. Hope that perhaps will help push people to reflect more on how they convey their perception.
     
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