This thread was not meant to whine, it was to ask about a frame of mind that is outside my experience. And I’ve gotten a lot of great answers. I’m not ignoring anything.
I think the person that writes the 223+ hour negative review is like the crazy obsessed Ex. There is something there that they loved so much and suddenly for some reason, right or wrong, they feel they were betrayed, dumped or ignored. I think it reflects on the (in)stability of the individual more than the quality of the game.
How many hours of unique content did you expect?
It’s a strategy game, so enough content to fill a whole campaign, maybe?
What is this strategy game where a campaign lasts 80 hours?
Not that I am pretending it to be objective truth, but my rule of thumb is if the hours of fun / $ paid ratio is over 1 to give the developers a pat on the back for a job well done.
Would you spend 500 hours in a relationship with someone, only to decide it wasn’t for you?
Ahem. A negative review doesn’t mean every moment is torture. It means the good is outweighed by the bad. It might take time to develop this understanding.
Apocalypse Now (Redux) has a 202 minute running time. Would you like it if the last 45 minutes were removed?
That depends, did I like the first 157 minutes of the movie?
A person’s tastes change overtime. Maybe someone spent 100+ hours on an MMO a decade ago but no longer appreciates that kind of gameplay? I’ve spent 100+ hours on EUIV according to Steam and no longer consider myself a fan of the game. Maybe people feel compelled to ‘finish what they started?’ I hate Jade Empire, but I still took however many hours to finish the story. I don’t write Steam reviews, but if I did, I would give EUIV and Jade Empire a thumbs-down despite having invested several hours in them. As mentioned upthread, sometimes it can take time to figure out you don’t like something.
Because a unfortunate ending doesn’t ruin anything. That can’t possibly be your claim.
Wait, what are we talking about? I thought Yakattack was just starting to ask me random questions, as it had nothing to do with my previous post.
@Yakattack I wasn’t trying to be offensive, I genuinely want to do know what strategy game has a campaign longer than 80 hours. I have played a few that had extremely long campaigns where every mission seemed to be minor variations of the exact same thing, allowing the developer to ‘create’ hundreds of them. I just can’t see myself playing these for 80 hours though.
I’m talking about games like (original) Mount & Blade and Battle Brothers, where you’ve pretty much seen everything after so many hours, and things start to get repetitive. I gave up on Battle Brothers after 80 hours (including a few first failed attempts) because it was getting tedious and boring.
Not you, you’re clearly engaging with people. I know it’s a pet peeve that I have too much anger about, but so do people who crusade against one of the many reasons Steam reviews aren’t what they want it to be.
Well he’s talking about the end of a movie. I’m equating that to the end of a game. Just like a bad ending in a movie, a band ending in a game can leave a lasting impression… it can even be the last impression.
But the real issue here is there are those discussing why they leave negative reviews on games they’ve played a while and those who are just guessing and judging that action. The former has more weight than the latter.
The few times I give a review on a game in a public space like Steam, I give a review based on how I feel about the game at the time I give the review… so if it’s negative right then, it doesn’t matter it was positive 4 months ago.
Isn’t that natural, though? I can’t imagine a game that didn’t start to feel stale after that much time. It’s certainly a good reason to put the game down, but I wouldn’t necessarily fault the developer for it. If you enjoyed your time with the game until it reached that point that’s worth something.
I haven’t played Battle Brothers, but if the critical path through the game takes 80 hours then that sounds like a serious pacing issue and they fucked up. If that time includes a lot of optional side content that the players can burn themselves out on then it’s less clear what the developer is supposed to do about that.
Full disclosure, I am a developer with games on Steam and I do find reviews like this a little frustrating.
The ending of Mass Effect 3 ruined my mental health permanently. But I’m confused and don’t even know what we’re arguing about in this thread.
I can understand how someone could play a lot of Civ 6 and be disappointed. Since 1, 2, & 4 provided hundreds or thousands of hours of entertainment, you expect that from a game in that series. But how do you get Battle Brothers and not be delighted that it’s at least good for a while?
If I played a game for 223 hours and didn’t enjoy any of it, I know I would give myself a negative review.
The only time I could have done that would have been after spending 6 months maniacally obsessed with Diablo 2. More as a warning, than a real dismissing message.
From what you let out Mark, it seems the guy isn’t backlashing at some change, but instead is either torn by the binary nature of Steam’s scale, as @robc04 pointed, or is trying to analyze his own gaming experience with detachment.That one is tricky.
When I am being honest with myself, shit I enjoy is still my shit that I enjoy, so while I wouldn’t necessarily praise it, I would certainly not go out saying it is not for the next guy either.
But I think such negative review is the minority: most of the negative hundreds-hours review on Steam read like bitterness, and sometimes obsession, from somebody who grew greatly attached to a game and doesn’t like a change in some of its gameplay or in an attitude. At least it’s pretty un-incidental if that kind of ill-bred litterature is aimed at something as benign as a pastime.
Absolutely.
I played Fallout 4 for 158 hours and gave it negative review.
I played it for this long because despite all its issues, I did enjoy it for the atmosphere and Fallout vibe.
But finishing the story, it left such a totally sour aftertaste, with its shitty cutscene, I could not recommend it. Despite my enjoyment, it kind of felt like I wasted my time. There was no satisfaction in finishing it, no catharsis, nothing.
A scale rating out of 10 maybe?
Or do away with thumbs up and down, and introduce a default format for review, asking the following:
- What did you like?
- What did you not like?
- You experience (in 100 words or less?):
Don’t post a review.
If you can’t either recommend someone buy a game, or not buy a game, then putting up a Steam review serves no purpose that I can see. :)