I’ve had some good laughs at steam reviews that were not supposed to be funny that had War and Peace size negative reviews with 1000+ hours of play time.
I probably had 1,000+ hours in ESO before I basically quit. I come back every now and then just to see if things have changed for the better. Yeah, you could argue that I just played the game to the point where familiarity bred contempt but that would simply not be true. The combat mechanics changed so drastically for the type of pvp play style that I enjoyed that I simply got tired of waiting for them to return it to the game that I originally loved and enjoyed. That happens with games. The developers vision diverges from yours. It usually happens over iterations of games.
Anyway, I’ve reached the Acceptance stage I think. Although there was supposed to be some big ESO announcement today. So if Wrobel and his team want to make my magicka MELEE night blade competitive again I would hungrily shoot up again. :)
I read steam reviews mostly for laughs, and some of the funniest ones are people who have either played the game hundreds or even a thousand hours (yeah, I’ve seen negative 1000+ hour reviews) or those who played it less than an hour and gave it a negative.
Most steam reviews are comedy only occasionally interrupted by what reads like a real review.
I’ve done exactly this for a couple of games. I understand why it may seem strange to sink so many hours into something to only then give it a negative review but there are situations where it makes sense:
The player/reviewer wants to experience all the game has to offer before writing a review.
The player/reviewer started off enjoying the game, but over time the game soured into an unenjoyable experience.
I completed the original Bioshock and would give it a negative review. The combat was serviceable but not very interesting. I was playing for the story and liked it well enough until the “twist”. That ruined it for me.
Maybe I missed some key detail that redeemed the story, but I ended up thinking the game was a total waste of my time.
I usually only filter on positive reviews. Usually I’m looking to have someone talk me into trying a game that I already think looks neat (that’s why I’m looking up reviews). I don’t need anyone to talk me out of it, I’m already on the verge of not buying it if I’m resorting to reading Steam reviews anyway. If a LOT of reviews are negative, I’ll skim a few to see what the big deal is, but honestly if a LOT of reviews are negative I don’t even get to the stage where I’m reading reviews, I move onto other games that also looked worth checking out.
I have 105 hours in Civ 6 and would give it a negative review. I think it’s understandable for (a) games that are continuations of a series that you liked before and are hoping this one isn’t terrible, and (b) games that throw a lot of content and complex systems at you and it takes some time to find the holes. Maybe the time it takes to find the holes should be positive though?
Steam reviews are whether you would recommend it now, not whether you feel you got your money’s worth.
I can totally see this happening if i’m enjoying the game and the developer does something that would make me not recommend it.
For example, if i’m really enjoying a game that is really buggy and the developer abandons it, gating further support in a remaster version, that would cause me to not recommend it.
If i play an early access game that is still very rough, if the developer abandons it, i am not going to recommend it.
If I play an access game and the developer starts selling an expansion for the early access game they aren’t supporting much, i am not going to recommend it.
If a game doesn’t work with windows 10, but i played it a ton before upgrading, i’m not going to recommend it.
If the developer releases a patch which either breaks the game or makes it not fun anymore, i’m not going to recommend it.
I would normally say that the reviewer was not to be believed, but I know I put ~ 120 hours into Sword of the Stars 2 before I realized how bad the game was and uninstalled it (and for that matter, I was shocked I had 120 hours into that crapfest).
This would depend by what criteria you were reviewing the game. If the benchmark was “holds your attention for hundreds of hours”, then spending said time and giving a negative review makes no sense unless the reviewer is a masochist, being paid or just really slow. Of course there are plenty of other factors that go into a review “package”.
For me, that criteria is solid. If the experience did not balance positive, there is no way I would spend so much time on it.
I imagine a fair few of these are written by teenagers. They have alot of times on their hands, relatively little money, and are prone to overreactions when they get bored or a patch changed something they liked.
I played a game for 80 hours and gave it a negative review, because it got samey and repetitive. There just wasn’t enough new and unique content after a certain point.
I could also see this happening for detailed sims, where you don’t know whether a system is broken until after many hours.
Kind of like SimCity… when you thought there was a problem because the servers were not doing well, and then when they fixed that you realized just how… ugh the simulation actually is, blob kids and all. Don’t worry, I didn’t need 80 hours but I probably burned 10 dealing with their servers.
I’m unsurprised how every single reason people give in this thread gets pretty much ignored, even the fact that they are not reviews at all. And still no one cares about “10/10 would remove kebab again”, because that’s very useful.
It’s an anger issue, that’s directed at the wrong target. The anger usually stems from the person knowing that they are wasting time, aren’t accomplishing something, life sucks, etc. The best examples of this are MMO and the Diablo forums, where people literally have thousands of hours played and go on weekly rants about how horrible the game is.
It’s just a form of denial, and a desire to avoid confronting whatever real problem they are having.
As for my explanation, I think it’s easier than ever for games to suck people in for hours at a time without them realizing they’re not actually having any fun. It’s practically a science by now. Throw in menial tasks, random loot, pointless upgrades, achievements and people will run for those milestones without asking themselves why. So I don’t see the negative review as denial, it’s more like a ray of truth bursting through the clouds.
Grand strategy and 4X games are also guilty of this for similar reasons. Despite all the pretend importance for managing a nation, you’re actually bogged down for hours in menus and there’s often not that much strategy involved when you really think about it. And every single game is almost always criminally long.
It’s a thread asking for why people do it, and when someone spends the time to answer, it’s just ignored because “oh, those silly millennials”. Meanwhile, no one cares that the opposite is also true and that the whole thing should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Despite being useful.
