Steam Reviews and expectations

Feb 4, 2009
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Steam reviews are particularly odd regarding this. Someone buys a game, plays the hell out of it then complains.
See text below, review is for a game that is frequently on sale for $10 and full price is either $20 or $25.
1,800 plus hours into the game and this is what they say? Appearently it was playable for 1,893 hours.

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Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
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That one is pretty confused. I do have to say, I played the heck out of Overwatch (~level 1400), and would have had good things to say, but when Blizzard's automated player reporting system let toxic players get my account permanently banned and they have basically no appeal, I've largely turned against them and would say bad things about the game for that issue.
 
Feb 4, 2009
34,501
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That one is pretty confused. I do have to say, I played the heck out of Overwatch (~level 1400), and would have had good things to say, but when Blizzard's automated player reporting system let toxic players get my account permanently banned and they have basically no appeal, I've largely turned against them and would say bad things about the game for that issue.

Totally understand that, you had a reason to give a poor review due to a change.
I did something similar with heroes & generals. The game was a nice battlefield 2 type shooter, after a few years of play the developers decided to make the maps much smaller to have more fire fights. That change sounds great but it completely changed to focus of the game. Why spawn a Jeep (which cost silver) to drive to a place that is 6 seconds away when you can run there in 10 seconds. Why spawn a tank if there are no tanks to shoot at?

I completely understand when a game changes, I don’t get the blanket this game sucks review when someone has hundreds to thousands of hours playtime.
I see this all the time in steam reviews. Are there people out there who expect to play a game forever and that game never get stale or boring?
 

Stg-Flame

Diamond Member
Mar 10, 2007
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Eh, not that confusing though. Take 7 Days to Die for example. That game has been in alpha longer than most game's entire life cycle and yet the devs keep promising a full release "right around the corner". I only have around 250 hours in the game, but if I ever got around to leaving a review, it wouldn't be a positive one. I have friends with over 4,000 hours in that game and they still left a bad review simply because the developers are just stringing everyone along with no plans of ever finishing the game. Same goes for Starbound. I sunk probably 700 hours into the game - almost all of that time spent in alpha and beta helping the developers test it (since I helped kickstart it, I wanted it to succeed). It's been fully released for a few years and I recently went back and left a very negative review on it because of how the developers backpedaled with their promises. The game is the exact same as it was in one of the alpha builds (not beta) with just a handful of minor cosmetic stuff added.

Regardless, that comment is guaranteed to be someone who just got pissed off and wrote that as retaliation and I'd be willing to bet my savings that it's an early-access game they're reviewing. There's plenty of reviews out there that are written out of spite so you just have to take each one of them with a grain of salt.
 
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Igo69

Senior member
Apr 26, 2015
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I would complain too at something that I payed my money for it when it always brakes BUT I wouldn't buy a broken or unfinished product in the first place.
:rolleyes:
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
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I see this all the time in steam reviews. Are there people out there who expect to play a game forever and that game never get stale or boring?

Good points, but some games do that surprisingly well - Chess, Poker, in computer games, I'd say Rogue is an example.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
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Sgt Flame, not much of a bet when the post says "Early Access Review" at the top.
 

GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
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Important to remember that some people basically never turn their computer off, and will leave games running all the time, even when they're not home.

While 1800 hours is... a lot... of time to play a game to find out you don't like it, I would bet a *lot* of those hours were spent sitting idle on the game's menu screen while the reviewer was off doing something else.
 
Feb 4, 2009
34,501
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Important to remember that some people basically never turn their computer off, and will leave games running all the time, even when they're not home.

While 1800 hours is... a lot... of time to play a game to find out you don't like it, I would bet a *lot* of those hours were spent sitting idle on the game's menu screen while the reviewer was off doing something else.

Nope it was an mmo
However I agree with the above in some cases
 

Juiblex

Banned
Sep 26, 2016
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One thing to remember is that sometimes devs release patches and change the game. Team fortress 2 is a good example. I loved that game when it came out but when it went free to play they changed it and to be honest. I think it sucks now. I might have 500 hours but I'd give it a negative review.
 
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Feb 4, 2009
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Here is another.

Appears the guy played nearly 1,400 hours then decided game wasn’t fun and nothing to do.
He then played another 1,300 hours for a total playtime of 2600

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GodisanAtheist

Diamond Member
Nov 16, 2006
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It could always be badly delivered sarcasm, like the reviewer is trying to get a laugh out of folks (due to the inconsistency, irony in playing the game for thousands of hours but leaving a bad review) but it just doesn't translate to text.

Never mis-attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance and all that.

**OR**

The reviewer is one of the cheaters he's complaining about and either got patched out or got a VAC ban/suspension for his cheating ways.
 

Craig234

Lifer
May 1, 2006
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It could always be badly delivered sarcasm, like the reviewer is trying to get a laugh out of folks (due to the inconsistency, irony in playing the game for thousands of hours but leaving a bad review) but it just doesn't translate to text.

I considered that possibility also, it didn't really sound like it though. And no one's even replied to point out the issue. I think I might have missed it if the 0.0 recent hours is what I saw.