[Feature Request] User generated ratings

[RinkuKulkan]

I've been browsing multiple trophy lists from indie games with a small player count and no forum posts talking about these games. Usually, I ask in said forums for a general opinion about these games.
 

However, I feel there could be an easier way of getting a general consensus on a game's quality by implementing a user-generated rating system. My suggestion would be a traditional X out of 5 stars voting system. Of course, not everyone could vote; only the Platinum earners or at least those with a 50% completion could participate to filter real reviews from fake ones. If anyone wants to further elaborate on their review, they could always go to the forums. In this case, we are only looking at another category on the game's page.

 

I'm thinking even @HusKy from PSNP+ could look into this and add it to the already modified sidebar. However, I believe a database is needed, and only the main servers from the site could host something like this.

 

What are your thoughts on this? Could this be useful? Or could it just get bloated with angry reviews?

[Jeanolt]

This would be so cool. The only concern would be the low reviews, but maybe you would need to earn a specific amount of trophies before posting a review. 

 

In many first-party games, it's usually a gold trophy the one who marks the end, in other games, maybe it should be analyzed a bit more, but it would be great to see this work for the AAA releases

Edited July 5, 2023 by Jeanoltt

[RinkuKulkan]

19 hours ago, Jeanoltt said:

This would be so cool. The only concern would be the low reviews, but maybe you would need to earn a specific amount of trophies before posting a review. 

 

In many first-party games, it's usually a gold trophy the one who marks the end, in other games, maybe it should be analyzed a bit more, but it would be great to see this work for the AAA releases

I'm suggesting a minimum percentage to be able to review a game, around 50-60%. At the time of writing, I've finished Untitled Goose Game, and my percentage is sitting at 55%.

 

To be clear, I'm suggesting the reviews apply only to the base game. DLCs are a whole different story.

Edited July 6, 2023 by RinkuKulkan

[Helyx]

17 minutes ago, RinkuKulkan said:

I'm suggesting the reviews apply only to the base game. DLCs are a whole different story.

 

How about multiple reviews, 0-5 stars per category?

 

Like rate the actual game/gameplay, and have a different rating for all trophies (DLC included).

[ThatMuttGuy]

>feature request

 

????

 

That was a good joke, friend. 

[DesmaBR]

Sounds cool, but on practice it's a different story.

 

People already rate guides 1 star for really petty reasons

[ruexnimbus]

21 hours ago, RinkuKulkan said:

What are your thoughts on this? Could this be useful? Or could it just get bloated with angry reviews?

I've played a myriad of genres and found a lot of reviews across the web are done in poor taste and aren't reliable.

[Jeanolt]

If for every feedback post you'all going to post the same comments about Sly and the state of the site (that are everywhere), please refrain from participating.

 

Last time something good was requested (DLC difficulty) @HusKy added it to PSNP+, so that's actually something.

 

Let's keep it on topic.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Jeanoltt

[DrBloodmoney]

Star ratings are worse than useless without context - and when people don’t feel the need to elaborate or to explain what they liked or disliked about a game, they pretty much always give everything either 1 or 5 stars.

 

It’s kind of a terrible system, because it essentially rewards banality and “acceptable mediocrity”, but punishes genuinely interesting or original games…

 

…because something that is divisive or intellectually challenging, or doing something more left of field which some people will love and some people will hate, will end up with a median rating lower than a game that is “fine” - broadly competent, inoffensive and bland enough to cater to everyone, without wowing anyone.

Something like a Spiderman will end up with 4-stars, because everyone thinks it’s “decent”… 

…but something like The Last of Us: Part II or a Metal Gear Solid or a Death Stranding will end up with 3-stars - not because it’s worse, per se… but because it’s more interesting - so some people love it, and some people loathe it.

 

It’s misrepresenting the reality though: which is that while Spiderman might come out the “best” in that kind of context… 

…it’s almost certainly the least likely game of those 4 to be any single person’s “favourite”.

Everyone likes it, but no one loves it.

 

I don’t really see the value in crowd sourcing anonymous star ratings, because of that. 
If you don’t know what other games a person has liked, or what they specifically liked or disliked about this one…

…then what use is digesting that opinion boiled down to a meaningless number?

Edited July 6, 2023 by DrBloodmoney

[HusKy]

45 minutes ago, Jeanoltt said:

Last time something good was requested (DLC difficulty) @HusKy added it to PSNP+, so that's actually something.

 

This feature would require some sort of central server to collect all the ratings -- not really feasible with a script.

[Slamma]

If you're looking for a general opinion on games, your best bet would probably be Metacritic.

[AJ_-_808]

1 hour ago, Jeanoltt said:

If for every feedback post you'all going to post the same comments please refrain of participating.

You may as well just say "don't post here unless you agree with me"

 

If different people are all telling you it's a bad idea or won't work, then that's the general consensus, whether you like it or not

Edited July 6, 2023 by AJ_-_808

[ObsiEez]

I also agree with what people are saying here that'd it would overall be a bad feature. We already have a similar kind of feature with rating guides 1-5 stars, & just about every guide you'll see will be 5 stars, even if it doesn't deserve it. Why is the guide 5 stars? Why does it deserve 5 stars? Like @DrBloodmoney said, without content star ratings are absolutely meaningless & everyone will just rate 1 star if they didn't like it, & 5 stars if they liked it.

This is all assuming players would even use the feature in the first place since the vast majority of people don't rate guides they use either, & I imagine this feature would suffer that same fate. If you desperately need to see reviews on a game, you can google it pretty easily since more often than note, even the most niche titles have had someone review it somewhere, whether it's on Metacritic, IGN, Steam, random forum posts.

[sepheroithisgod]

You would be better off using Metacritic. It is already built for this very purpose.

 

I'd rather see people able to leave comments on trophies to provide methods that worked for them or community polls for game difficulty and time to complete, as that's more in line with the site.

[BestUsername----]

I don't know about this. If you want reviews of a game go to the games Steam page where you can see how many hours people put into the game. Which I think is better, generally, at dictating a games quality rather than trophy percentages. I have a feeling reviews here are gonna be skewed by how awful the platinum experience was which is totally different from a games actually quality. And if we are going by platinum experiences and ratings (without a guide) then that is what "Trophy Thoughts?" topics usually turn into.

Edited July 6, 2023 by BestUsername----

[Weskerfan75]

I don't think a feature like this would work on this site for the simple fact that this is a website for trophies. Users come here for information or guides for trophies, not to buy games or for game reviews.

 

Let's take a polarizing game like The Last of Us ll. Whether you think it's a masterpiece or "2woke4me", if you're looking it up on this website it's most likely because you own it and want to know how to get a tricky trophy or a list for collectables. Why should I care that the game I'm playing right now and trying to 100% is rated 1.5/5 stars when I'm coming here because I can't find a trading card or because I need tips for the crossbow minigame trophy. 

 

Also, remember how petty gamers are. A review system in a trophy website used mainly by trophy hunters that requires said trophy hunters to have earned the platinum to rate it will inevitably be influenced by the trophy hunting experience. Take a game like Dishonored, an excellent game that deserves a lot of praise. Objectively, this game should have at least 4/5 stars. However, one of its DLCs is one the most unfair and rage-inducing things you'll ever play. If you go to the game's page on this website most of the discussion is players bitching (rightfully so) about how unfair this DLC is. Do you honestly think that those trophy hunters will review the game on this trophy hunting website, taking into account the gameplay, music, graphics, voice acting, story, replayability, etc. or rather rate the game 1/5 based on how much of a pain in the ass the trophies are? Steam has a bunch of negative reviews simply for the difficulty of the acheivements with zero comments on the design or quality of the actual gameplay and that's on a site with far more functions than just tracking trophies. 

 

Even if you argued that using the system like that could be a great summary of the trophy hunting experience, reading the overview of the trophy guide would be not only faster, but also achieve the same result. 

Edited July 6, 2023 by Weskerfan75
typos

[Jeanolt]

It's true it may be mistaken for a review of the platinum, most people value that part of the game more frequently. Maybe a difficulty rating of the platinum itself would work, it's already on other rival sites.

 

@AJ_-_808 I'm talking about the comments of Sly updating the site or not. We already know it, not something we can do much about it. I updated my original comment to better reflect this.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Jeanoltt

[RinkuKulkan]

12 hours ago, Helyx said:

How about multiple reviews, 0-5 stars per category?

Like rate the actual game/gameplay, and have a different rating for all trophies (DLC included).

I wouldn't recommend delving into more than two categories, as most users won't take the time to review each aspect of a game. Therefore, I suggest focusing on only two categories: the base game and DLC.
 

11 hours ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Star ratings are worse than useless without context - and when people don’t feel the need to elaborate or to explain what they liked or disliked about a game, they pretty much always give everything either 1 or 5 stars.

 

It’s kind of a terrible system, because it essentially rewards banality and “acceptable mediocrity”, but punishes genuinely interesting or original games…

 

…because something that is divisive or intellectually challenging, or doing something more left of field which some people will love and some people will hate, will end up with a median rating lower than a game that is “fine” - broadly competent, inoffensive and bland enough to cater to everyone, without wowing anyone.

Something like a Spiderman will end up with 4-stars, because everyone thinks it’s “decent”… 

…but something like The Last of Us: Part II or a Metal Gear Solid or a Death Stranding will end up with 3-stars - not because it’s worse, per se… but because it’s more interesting - so some people love it, and some people loathe it.

 

It’s misrepresenting the reality though: which is that while Spiderman might come out the “best” in that kind of context… 

…it’s almost certainly the least likely game of those 4 to be any single person’s “favourite”.

Everyone likes it, but no one loves it.

 

I don’t really see the value in crowd sourcing anonymous star ratings, because of that. 
If you don’t know what other games a person has liked, or what they specifically liked or disliked about this one…

…then what use is digesting that opinion boiled down to a meaningless number?

 

11 hours ago, Slamma said:

If you're looking for a general opinion on games, your best bet would probably be Metacritic.

 

10 hours ago, sepheroithisgod said:

You would be better off using Metacritic. It is already built for this very purpose.

 

I'd rather see people able to leave comments on trophies to provide methods that worked for them or community polls for game difficulty and time to complete, as that's more in line with the site.

 

10 hours ago, BestUsername---- said:

I don't know about this. If you want reviews of a game go to the games Steam page where you can see how many hours people put into the game. Which I think is better, generally, at dictating a games quality rather than trophy percentages. I have a feeling reviews here are gonna be skewed by how awful the platinum experience was which is totally different from a games actually quality. And if we are going by platinum experiences and ratings (without a guide) then that is what "Trophy Thoughts?" topics usually turn into.

 

10 hours ago, Weskerfan75 said:

I don't think a feature like this would work on this site for the simple fact that this is a website for trophies. Users come here for information or guides for trophies, not to buy games or for game reviews.

 

Let's take a polarizing game like The Last of Us ll. Whether you think it's a masterpiece or "2woke4me", if you're looking it up on this website it's most likely because you own it and want to know how to get a tricky trophy or a list for collectables. Why should I care that the game I'm playing right now and trying to 100% is rated 1.5/5 stars when I'm coming here because I can't find a trading card or because I need tips for the crossbow minigame trophy. 

 

Also, remember how petty gamers are. A review system in a trophy website used mainly by trophy hunters that requires said trophy hunters to have earned the platinum to rate it will inevitably be influenced by the trophy hunting experience. Take a game like Dishonored, an excellent game that deserves a lot of praise. Objectively, this game should have at least 4/5 stars. However, one of its DLCs is one the most unfair and rage-inducing things you'll ever play. If you go to the game's page on this website most of the discussion is players bitching (rightfully so) about how unfair this DLC is. Do you honestly think that those trophy hunters will review the game on this trophy hunting website, taking into account the gameplay, music, graphics, voice acting, story, replayability, etc. or rather rate the game 1/5 based on how much of a pain in the ass the trophies are? Steam has a bunch of negative reviews simply for the difficulty of the acheivements with zero comments on the design or quality of the actual gameplay and that's on a site with far more functions than just tracking trophies. 

 

Even if you argued that using the system like that could be a great summary of the trophy hunting experience, reading the overview of the trophy guide would be not only faster, but also achieve the same result. 

 

13 hours ago, ThatMuttGuy said:

>feature request

 

????

 

That was a good joke, friend. 

 

There's a reason everything that allows user feedback (such as Amazon or the Google Play Store) uses a 'star rating system.' It's because the average user won't take the time to properly express why they are leaving such a review, and I include myself among those people. The nature of these systems eliminates the need for people to explain their train of thought, leaning into a general consensus in a poll-like system, from which anyone consulting this information can get a general idea of people's opinions.

There's a reason 'game reviewer' is an actual job title. Not everyone has the knowledge to convey an understandable message about a game's quality and flaws. Hell, even the actual professionals fail at this. Implementing a system such as a 'star rating system' would mitigate the bias of opinion from every single review and provide a simple value.

 

The reason I'm suggesting a feature like this is that diving into the forums for an opinion gives me zero reference to a general opinion on the game. The same people post the same opinions every time. We need a tool that allows a wider spectrum of players to post their opinions, whether they're petty or not.

 

The latter is just a reflection of a community. If we trophy hunters are a petty community who only complain and hardly give constructive feedback, so be it; that's our reflection. If I wanted a general review, I would go to any gaming outlet that reviewed it and be satisfied with whatever they had to say about it. No, in this case, I want an opinion from people who share a similar goal and interests as mine: trophy hunting. I genuinely want a review on a game's trophy hunting experience.

 

A lot of previous comments only imagined this feature on AAA and popular games that already have a published guide, multiple forum posts, and even a video guide. However, there are still many indie and obscure games that don't even reach 1K players, don't have a guide, nor forum posts. However, for every 100 players that visit the game's page, 1 leaves a review through this system. That would be more than enough to start generating a general opinion. 500 players mean 5 reviews, and so on. This could even create a new section on the main page where games that gathered positive reviews in a short time are featured, exposing them to new potential players and creating a new dynamic.

 

Assuming players only use this site for trophy tracking and guides is a shortsighted view of the usefulness of PSNP. There's a lot of content created on this website on a daily basis that is enough to spend time on it, even before checking the trophies list. I personally use this site as a news/reviews board, even when that's far from its intended use. Even PSNP+ implemented new tools that give the website so much potential. I feel that implementing new and useful features would only benefit the site and its community. However...

 

I created this post well aware that writing "[Feature Request]" in the title had little to no use, as this, and many other feature requests, are about to turn 5 this year and are yet to be implemented. I'm setting a precedent that users on this site provide feedback time and time again, and most of it is lost. Competitors to this site are brewing up, and these types of requests may be implemented at launch if found useful. Improving this website could only benefit the community. But keeping its design from 5 or more years ago as it is could be its undoing.

 

10 hours ago, ObsiEez said:

I also agree with what people are saying here that'd it would overall be a bad feature. We already have a similar kind of feature with rating guides 1-5 stars, & just about every guide you'll see will be 5 stars, even if it doesn't deserve it. Why is the guide 5 stars? Why does it deserve 5 stars? Like @DrBloodmoney said, without content star ratings are absolutely meaningless & everyone will just rate 1 star if they didn't like it, & 5 stars if they liked it.

This is all assuming players would even use the feature in the first place since the vast majority of people don't rate guides they use either, & I imagine this feature would suffer that same fate. If you desperately need to see reviews on a game, you can google it pretty easily since more often than note, even the most niche titles have had someone review it somewhere, whether it's on Metacritic, IGN, Steam, random forum posts.

 

Side note: Trophy guides are not rated based on their quality but on their helpfulness. If a guide helped you, you would rate it 5/5. If it didn't, you wouldn't even rate it. I believe guides shouldn't have a star rating system because you're asking users to rate user-generated content. Guides need a like/dislike system. That's why sites that revolve around user-generated content use like/dislike systems, such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Even PSNP uses this system in its forums; they should implement it for the guides too.

[DrBloodmoney]

5 hours ago, RinkuKulkan said:

There's a reason everything that allows user feedback (such as Amazon or the Google Play Store) uses a 'star rating system.' It's because the average user won't take the time to properly express why they are leaving such a review, and I include myself among those people. The nature of these systems eliminates the need for people to explain their train of thought, leaning into a general consensus in a poll-like system, from which anyone consulting this information can get a general idea of people's opinions.

There's a reason 'game reviewer' is an actual job title. Not everyone has the knowledge to convey an understandable message about a game's quality and flaws. Hell, even the actual professionals fail at this. Implementing a system such as a 'star rating system' would mitigate the bias of opinion from every single review and provide a simple value.

 

Why would that be valuable though?

If someone is so disconnected, or apathetic, or un-self-aware, that they are not even willing to take 5 minutes to consider the nature of their own opinions, or to justify them, then of what value is that opinion to others?

 

Currently, if someone likes a game, they can say so - in a new thread, or by replying or responding to an existing one.

If they dislike it, they can do that too - and that opinion can be of value to people, because they can gauge why that person liked or disliked the game, based on what they said, and consider whether that marries with their own sensibilities.

 

Hell, some of the people on this site who's opinions I am usually most interested in reading I actually agree with pretty seldom...

...but they fact that they articulate what those opinions are, makes even their differing tastes and experience of value to me.

 

 

If this system you propose was in place though, what you'd end up with is this:

 

"This game is currently 4-stars... but I think it should be 3-stars.... so I'll rate it 1-star to drag that median down"

or

"This game is currently 2-stars... but I think it should be 3-stars.... so I'll rate it 5-star to drag that median up"

 

No one would ever have to actually say why they are rating it as they are, or let that opinion be held up for scrutiny by the people seeing it... so a churlish or asinine opinion is lent the same weight as a reasonable and considered one.

 

 

I also think there is something of a mismatch in what you requested in the OP, and what you said in this second post.

 

In the OP, you said:

 

On 05/07/2023 at 9:14 PM, RinkuKulkan said:

I feel there could be an easier way of getting a general consensus on a game's quality by implementing a user-generated rating system.

 

but here, you said:

 

5 hours ago, RinkuKulkan said:

in this case, I want an opinion from people who share a similar goal and interests as mine: trophy hunting. I genuinely want a review on a game's trophy hunting experience.

 

Those are two wildly different things.

The quality of a game has no bearing on the "trophy hunting experience" and vice-versa...

... and like gaming tastes, "trophy hunting experience" tastes vary.

 

Some people love a tight, short game with speed runs / no-death runs etc., but despise collectible hunts. Others have no problem with a collectible hunt, but can't stand a grind, or avoid online like the plague. Just as some people love fighting games but hate open-world, and others love open-world, but hate fighting games.

 

If someone is explaining why they didn't like a "trophy hunting experience", that is useful to other people.

If they say "I hated this platinum, due to the speed-run requirement", that is of value, because someone who also doesn't like speed-runs, can know they will probably agree, and someone who likes them or doesn't mind them, knows to ignore that opinion, as it's coming from a different point of view to their own. 

 

A conglomerated star rating system averages all opinions into one useless mass though - all tastes can vote, without any context...

...so every game just averages to roughly 3-stars.

 

 

 

Also, I concede there is room for opinions on both the games, and the "trophy-hunting experience" of those games...

... but lets face it: the system you are proposing is designed to cater to those with short attention-spans... and the two would definitely get confused.

 

Games like, for example, Curse of the Dead Gods, or RAD, or Hades which are good games, but have a few absurdly "grindy" trophies, would almost certainly be negatively rated in terms of "trophy hunting experience" by the majority of site users, who simply want to play as little of a game as they possibly can, then bounce to the next one...

...but most people simply seeing a single "star-rating", devoid of context, would 100% mistake that for a reflection on the games themselves.

 

Hell, this site already has a problem of people misconstruing one "statistic" for another - you only have to look at the pervasive and consistent misappropriation of "rarity" as "difficulty", or "difficulty" as "length" or "grind", to see that statistics devoid of explanation are misleading.

Edited July 7, 2023 by DrBloodmoney

[sepheroithisgod]

9 hours ago, RinkuKulkan said:

There's a reason everything that allows user feedback (such as Amazon or the Google Play Store) uses a 'star rating system.' It's because the average user won't take the time to properly express why they are leaving such a review, and I include myself among those people.

This pretty much explains why such systems are generally useless. Don't get me wrong, I think there is useful information that can be gleaned from polling, but when it comes to the original goal of your post, it not going to help you determine the quality of the product.

 

Without a deep dive into why someone voted the way they did, that vote is meaningless. For example, I enjoy AngryJoe reviews. If someone just skipped to the end of his 30-minute review and saw he gave a game a 5/10, what does that really tell you as a consumer, versus sitting through the entire time so you can see why the score exists? Perhaps you don't have the same values that he uses to rank games. Perhaps you value story more than gameplay or vice versa. This is far more important when it comes to determining the quality of a game, and not all users share the same values when it comes to games. Some people will call a game amazing if it has a great story, and ignore glaring problems with gameplay or performance.

 

And to touch upon another common thing said within this thread, this is a trophy-hunting website. You are not going to get an idea of the quality of the game, especially if you are locking reviews behind a platinum or 50% completion rating. Instead, you are going to get reviews based on their trophy hunting experience. While this can definitely be useful for some people, it isn't what you were asking for in the OP. I understand the intent is to prevent people who have not played enough of a game to not leave reviews, but it changes what types of viewpoints you get.

[willmill97]

I just want the feature where users can rate the difficulty of a platinum (like *redacted*.org has)

[Hakeens]

8 hours ago, willmill97 said:

I just want the feature where users can rate the difficulty of a platinum (like *redacted*.org has)

Your best chance is either reading or asking people on the games forum and it's generally a better way of gaining knowledge instead of a superficial rating system that could easily be abused