Stellaris grand strategy space game by Paradox discussy thingy thready thingy

[Dan_Theman]

I don’t have a problem with Tom’s star-rating system. Movie reviewers do much the same. Personally, I thought his review read like a 3-star review. (And yeah, earlier in this thread he did say “I like Stellaris!”, so he musta liked something about it. :)

But I do think Metacritic shouldn’t just translate star scores into 1=20%, 3=60%, etc. If I were Metacritic, I’d consider two or more aggregate scores. 81/1.5*. Maybe that’d be too complicated.

Didn’t they once at least talk about weighting the scores from reviewers based upon their average? Working in standard deviations into that wouldn’t be a bad idea, either (so if a game gets a 7 from a 7-9 scaled reviewer, it hammers the overall score accordingly).

[Pod]

Will Tom ever play stellaris again, e.g. in A few patches time?

[JeffL]

Back when I was writing for CGW, CGM, etc. I hated trying to write an informative, entertaining, accurate review of a game, spending hours picking each word and what to include and exclude in a limited word count, and then being forced to reduce it down to a number. Other than to enable review aggregation site and let publishers brag about the “score” who cares? I had numerous people argue with me over the years over my number, but almost never about the actual review text.

I am a fan of Tom’s reviews because they accomplish exactly what I want in a review: give me the information about the game that allows me to decide if I would like it or not. I don’t care in the least about if it’s a 5 or a 1. I never like canned, non-varying missions in a serious flight sim and I would give a sim a lower score because of that, but I’d be sure to tell the reader why, such that if they liked canned sims they could decide they would like it more than I did. I think Tom did a good job of his opinions and the basis for his opinions in a way that I can decide whether I’d enjoy the game.

Short version, read the review, ignore the digit after it.

[zx81-Amd64]

Not going to happen. Okay, I shouldn’t speak so authoritatively since I have no connection with the project, but Steamworks is pretty heavily integrated at this point. They’re integrated with the Workshop, the netcode is all Steamworks, etc. It seems to me it would take some drastic event, like a Steam comet, to retrofit all of that.

Yeah, Paradox went full Steam. Steam gives them not only a sound matchmaking platform, but the perfect way to sell lots of DLC. They’re not turning their backs on that.

I remember when they said “DRM-free is great, we love it, it’s the right thing to do”, but that Paradox is long gone, and I don’t see it coming back ever.

Ah well, that saves my backlog a bit :)

Having watched Tom’s Let’s Play of Stellaris, and read his review part of the reason might be (reading between the lines here) that at this point Stellaris has lots of gaps to be filled by DLC and maybe he has a problem with that kind of model of game design and dev? And i wouldn’t fault anyone for not liking that kind of model because it in general makes you ask the question, ‘Is this really worth getting now? Or shall i wait for all the DLC bundle and not WASTE my time on an unfinished non-fully-featured game?’

[jsnell]

He literally gave it double the score.

That makes as much as saying that red is double the color of blue or Tuesday is half the day of Thursday. Or (if you object to the previous examples not involving numbers), do you also think that 1 degree Celsius is infinitely hotter than 0 degrees Celsius, while 2 degrees is just twice as hot as 1 degree?

The star ratings are on an ordinal scale, the only possible operations on them are greater than / less than / equality comparisons. No adding, subtracting, multiplication or division.

[scharmers]

But you could also see it the other way around : personalities build up as the game goes on, and they are not “pre made”. In my game there are aliens that i came to love and others that i hate, it’s just that the story builds up as i’m playing. For me this is better than knowing who i will love and hate EVERY game (as in Civ personalities for example).

Welcome to Qt3!

[Greybriar]

Yeah, Paradox went full Steam. Steam gives them not only a sound matchmaking platform, but the perfect way to sell lots of DLC. They’re not turning their backs on that.

I remember when they said “DRM-free is great, we love it, it’s the right thing to do”, but that Paradox is long gone, and I don’t see it coming back ever.

You even have to link your Paradox account to Steam (or is it the other way around?) in order to get your forum icon for a Paradox title you purchased.

[ravenight]

That makes as much as saying that red is double the color of blue or Tuesday is half the day of Thursday. Or (if you object to the previous examples not involving numbers), do you also think that 1 degree Celsius is infinitely hotter than 0 degrees Celsius, while 2 degrees is just twice as hot as 1 degree?

The star ratings are on an ordinal scale, the only possible operations on them are greater than / less than / equality comparisons. No adding, subtracting, multiplication or division.

So his rating system is the 7-9 scale, just shifted down by 5 points to stand out from the crowd? Again, rather than nitpick my comment about magnitude, which was intentionally overblown, the point is that his scale is silly and inconsistent if Stellaris is a 1. If he’s going to use numbers people are going to treat them like numbers. If he gives a game the worst possible rating, that’s saying a lot about the game. In fact, it is deliberately saying “This is as bad a game as it could be, there would never be a reason for me to rate a game lower.” If he wants the scale to be an arbitrary assignment of different feelings, he should just use emojis instead of numbers. Maybe rollseyes is better than blowssteamfromears or maybe not, who knows?

[Juan_Raigada]

If he gives a game the worst possible rating, that’s saying a lot about the game. In fact, it is deliberately saying “This is as bad a game as it could be, there would never be a reason for me to rate a game lower.”

No, this means he didn’t enjoy the game at all. His review scores are clearly personal opinions (going by the table he handily provides), not statements abstract quality of the game.

If you don’t enjoy anything at all there’s no reason to not assign the lower score on this system, even if there are worse games out there (because you wouldn’t enjoy them less).

[charmtrap]

So his rating system is the 7-9 scale, just shifted down by 5 points to stand out from the crowd? Again, rather than nitpick my comment about magnitude, which was intentionally overblown, the point is that his scale is silly and inconsistent if Stellaris is a 1. If he’s going to use numbers people are going to treat them like numbers. If he gives a game the worst possible rating, that’s saying a lot about the game. In fact, it is deliberately saying “This is as bad a game as it could be, there would never be a reason for me to rate a game lower.” If he wants the scale to be an arbitrary assignment of different feelings, he should just use emojis instead of numbers. Maybe rollseyes is better than blowssteamfromears or maybe not, who knows?

I think you’re substituting your own opinion about what Tom’s star rating means for Tom’s clearly stated star rating system. Nowhere does it say that a rating of one star means “this is as bad a game as it could be”. If you’re gonna be all eyerolly about it, at least be eyerolly about the right thing.

[Telefrog]

Tom’s 1 star means he hated the game. That’s it. He hated it.

The star amounts don’t mean one game is “better” than another. They mean he liked one, or really liked one, or he loved one, or he disliked one, or hated one.

[Oghier]

The major downside to Tom’s rating system is this: We end up spending pages of posts talking about the number score, which is the least informative part of the review.

[JeffL]

No, this means he didn’t enjoy the game at all. His review scores are clearly personal opinions (going by the table he handily provides), not statements abstract quality of the game.

If you don’t enjoy anything at all there’s no reason to not assign the lower score on this system, even if there are worse games out there (because you wouldn’t enjoy them less).

What in the text of the review is confusing in terms of his opinion of the game and why he holds that opinion??? Why in the hell are people arguing over a number? He clearly explains his thoughts on each aspect of the game in the review.

[Juan_Raigada]

What in the text of the review is confusing in terms of his opinion of the game and why he holds that opinion??? Why in the hell are people arguing over a number? He clearly explains his thoughts on each aspect of the game in the review.

Beats me, but it’s a good way to pass the time till the first real expansion lands :P.

[kerzain]

A better way to pass the time would be to play a solid space-based strategy game.

So I’ve shelved this one until Paradox finishes it and will be playing Star Ruler 2 in the interim.

[Juan_Raigada]

Yeahm, I know the feeling. After finishing my Stellaris game I installed Star Ruler 2, Distant worlds, and SOTS. I have played all three, but not the newest version of any of them. So many choices, but with TW: WH coming so soon I might not have time to play much…

[KevinC]

So I’ve shelved this one until Paradox finishes it and will be playing Star Ruler 2 in the interim.

That’s an excellent game. I really enjoy Stellaris, but I’m glad that both games are able to co-exist happily on my game rotation, or whatever you want to call it. I was worried that they’d be too similar in terms of what itch they scratch and would result in me just playing one over the other, but I’m finding myself still wanting to play both.

It’s a good time to be a strategy gamer, IMO.

[ravenight]

What in the text of the review is confusing in terms of his opinion of the game and why he holds that opinion??? Why in the hell are people arguing over a number? He clearly explains his thoughts on each aspect of the game in the review.

Because the number is part of the review. “Here’s a bunch of thoughts about specific stuff that didn’t work well and a couple cool things that did. On the whole, I hated this game” is materially different than “Here’s a bunch of thoughts about specific stuff that didn’t work well and a couple cool things that did. On the whole, I though this game was mediocre.” I argued about other aspects of the review, too, though - the number is just the thing people like to get excited about because as long as he clearly explained the number system to everyone on some side page of the site, whatever number he throws on it is the right one.

[easytarget]

There’s so much availability of live footage of the actual game these days I don’t put much stock in good or bad reviews when I can go look the horse in the mouth for myself.

[CraigM]

It’s a good time to be a strategy gamer, IMO.

I’d argue it’s the best time ever to be a strategy gamer.