Steam Reviews Seriously Bad

There is no smoke without fire..

 

Exactly, and the fire was ignored long enough in these forums.

 

Offsetting the bad reviews doesn't fix the problems people have with the game so that's not going to work, just like when we were asked to give positive reviews. It backfired and we had people that even came to these forums and felt they were duped into buying by us giving positive reviews after they had read about the request. Those negative reviews can be changed by the end product being a good game, marketing, free trials, by people coming back to try the game in a finished state, and our referring others to the game once it's in it's finished state.

 

Somehow some people get the impression that there is an "elite" at work here who pushes the devs into certain directions for the game - mostly by spending lots and lots of money on the game... So I've heard...

 

Meh, who cares. I've only been playing SOTA for 5 months now and I have a thousand hours in it and still love to play it all the time. Thats all that really matters right?

Besides Dragon Age, Civilization and Fallout 4, which I had ~100 hours in each, this is one of the first MMO games in a decade that I have gotten back into after many many failures since.

Just look at politics today, if I cared about what the extremely crazy 50% of this country believes, I would go crazy. No different with games.

 

If that would be true the game would look very different.

 

Well I did actively play it, and looking at resumes, about a year and half more than you.. don't be so quick to judge my friend..

 

Who cares?
The devs for sure, because if they don't sell their game ( and earn money) , you will end up playing alone.

 

These guys have 9 million in basic donations to build this game. 2nd largest sum in history. I think we will all be doing just fine.

 

Consider despite having negative reviews on Steam existing for quite sometimes, there are still people who bought the game then complained on the reviews, so I think they're still doing relative ok considering they have not put any serious effort into marketing.

These negative reviews are the good indicators that they can use to see what are the things that people hate and hopefully it will get gradually better as the development move forward.

Another game on Steam called Folk Tale used to have super negative reviews for years, which mostly they were the same ole "game is not completed, full of bugs" type of review. Nowadays they are getting much better review now since their works have come a very long way and still have a lot to go.

Don't worry too much about these reviews. If things are bad, then they are bad and should be addressed/resolved. If the claims are just plain false, then we can try our best to clarify the misunderstanding.

 

And the backer count just keeps rising.................

Most of the folks I know don't use Steam .......*shrugs*

 

I agree, and I really dont think most people are dumb. I've read a lot of reviews on Steam and instantly recognize the absolute fallacy of the vast majority of them. they usually fall under 2 categories.

1) "The game is buggy and feels unfinished" xxxx user with 20 hours played
* But of course, its pre-alpha
2) "The game is doing this or that in dev and I dont like it, rage quit" xxxx user with 200 hours
* But of course, its pre-alpha

Steam should change how they report reviews for games. They should allow reviews for alpha/beta but reviews should reset on a go live date where honest reviews of a finished product can be shown to new people.

 

Also while looking at the Steam page for SOTA it has a release date of November 2014, yet the game is NOT officially released. One wonders if that tidbit of misinformation has/had any effect?

 

Wipe out the pre-live review might be a marketing tool that malicious game devs can exploit. However, putting the pre-live review on a different category for people to browse back would be a good reference for comparison.

At the minimum Steam does now emphasize more on the recent feed backs, so I think this is in the good direction, such that the old reviews wouldn't stuck on the main page forever by default filter.

 

There are a bunch of people who do like the game, but have not written positive reviews. Offsetting them to get a more reasonable perspective of how many people like or don't like the game is fair.

And a lot of the negative reviews I read weren't fair. They were saying this is a bad game because they were lied to and promised a clone of launch UO with full loot, etc.

 

Just a small note that the game won't be in any much better state by R32 and that the devs are aiming to pull the game out of early access at some later point (end of year?)...
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/final-wipe-and-lot-selection.44430/
So I'd advice to hold off such efforts until the devs pull it out of early access and actively start marketing the game.
But maybe that is just me.

 

You mean it doesn't feel that way already?

 

The release date is for when it launched into Early Access, the release dates for all Early Access games are the same in this respect AFAIK.

It's not a category, but all early access reviews get an obvious indicator when a game launches, like this:

(Note: not a SotA review)

 

My first thought on this thread was like "uuh, not something like this again". After that, i had another impulsive thought, that was telling me that i want to add my thoughts on this. And it takes me a few more lines of words than most maybe even wanna read.

Before a month i came across the game, and as some rpg and mostly mmo lover i had to see what this game is all about. Ive been liking a lot abt Shroud and so im playing it almost daily, having a lot of fun, even if its still missing stuff. See, i even got it via steam and seen the comments before i got it.

I think, the mmo genre got more and more like fastfood aka kill 3 wolves and come back. Game companies put a lot of effort into making stuff as easy and convenient as possible. Part of that is how society works today. Everything has to be easy and convenient. Most ppl are educated by media and society in a way, where they dont want to invest time in finding stuff out, finding own ways, trying out new things. Even if its abt their own personality. Its easier to copy another one beeing hopefully successful, instead of developing ideas yourself. This one even or even harder affects peoples hobbies and maybe reduced free time, where stuff shall be easy and brainless. Mobas came up instead of proper rpgs, even reducing the core aspects further down from as easy it has already been with the delivery of 3 wolf-pelts. So it got reduced even further down, cause it involved too much for some. More convenience, more easyness, eventually leading to a society where we dont even need reading or writing anymore some day.

Shroud is going a different way. Trying to deliver what once made the genre great and adding to it. We dont see it in its final form now and everyone knows it. People simply know the product is not done but act as if it is, or more, projecting their wishes of wanting a final product now over something clearly stated as in the works. But theyre impatient, want to see finalized things now (they waited sooo long already). At that point ppl seem to loose patience. The devs keep posting in a regular way about goals, about polish about things (anyone even notices it anymore, beeing this busy with what they want the game to be now?).

The thing i heavily notice from my relative new perspective beeing in here a month is, that ppl are very busy discussing how they want it, beyond the scope what imo putting creative ideas and comments into a project is. Everyone has diff things someone else doesnt want etc, its a loophole in discussions often, missing a look from an outside perspective. For me, it heavily looks like many people forgot abt the fact that there are guys devoting their daily time into delivering a game with their vision upon it. Why not simply wait and see what those guys that have a vision about their game everyone wants to be finished now ,will be having out when THEIR vision abt the game THEY make for us (and not vice versa) will look like? (and of course give feedback and critics to them without losing scope somehow)

Now on topic finally. The game is undone. Ppl dont wanna accept that as a fact and put out bad reviews en masse the second the first crash happened or a quest looks still wrong, cause they eventually didnt even read the disclaimer, telling em the product is undone (or ever visited a forum where you can read: quests+story missing a lot of work still).
Theres a growing scene of indie devs doing rpgs and mmos atm. If you look at other ratings, it often doesnt look much different compared, cause other games do suffer a lot on this too, cause the fasty speedy consumy guys dont get it, that theyre testing an alpha, prerelase or beta or whatever its called atm.
Another thing is, some games arent simply for everyone. But since mmos are a mass-market now (compared what its been in uo times where i had to sneak to the cave of my university to secretly get online somewhere...) every new game with the "mmo-brand" will attract said market, cause mmos reached a point where theyre all the same and the (mass)market "hungers" for a new uo, new wow, new whatever, to finally end the downgoing of the genre. Everyone and their mom will run to the slightest thing named "mmo". And if its not what they expected...reviews from the mass. And the mass will become angry and frustrated. Cause the product they eventually wanted to become the new "insert name you want here" didnt become what they wanted it to be.

Edit: I wanted to add something more to think about i just forgot.
Theres a new way how ppl argue and express themselves with others today around the net and in games chats, thats very deep down antisocial, missing well laid out arguments and a proper language at all, because hey, its on the net only. A lot of bad review-comments just show this kind of behavior too. Maybe some are just made for "fun", because "hey its on the net only, why even play it and put up some valid arguments or express opinions in whole sentences.". Meaning, I just think theres a variety of ppl jumping on the flame-bandwagoon cause its "fun" to bash something. Not even caring what the product is all about or anything and eventually not even interested in the genre of rpgs or mmos at all. Ive even been in games where you better turn of global chat and stay with your guild in a nice atmo, cause some disgusting ill-minded ppl apparently have a lot of fun, ruining the fun of others by vulgarity, hate-language and things i bet this guys wouldnt do in rl.
:Edit

And you know what. Ive been testing a few other games beeing in alpha prerelease, whatever lately. Do that too and launching Shroud looks awesome up to the point where youre asking yourself why its not crashing more often.

Sorry for a long post, but i couldnt resist to put my opinion up on this and even my scary homebrewn english didnt hinder me

grtx

 

If you read about the game on Steam why are you seeing it as an MMO? There is mention of the offline mode on Steam, a 40 hpur campaign, single player etc. Yet most people view SotA as an MMO.
And I think that this is part of the problem. In the beginning SotA looked like a single player RPG that could also be played onlime. Richard Garriott said so himself in the first videos about the game. Now SotA has devolved into something different and many are angry and disappointed about this because they cannot see how the original vision can be fulfilled now that so much has changed (for the worse).