🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 11 Nov 2015 09:12:43 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallsh...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 20:27:59 +0300, "Andrew Rybenkov"
><aryb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Awesome score!
>
>Honestly, that would seem an appropriate score: it's a
>middle-of-the-road game. All reviews indicate that it is not
>particularly innovative and its production values are "okay" (not bad,
>but not jaw-droppingly gorgeous either). Its gameplay has all the
>perks and all the flaws of earlier iterations of the series. It's
>/average/.
>
>Unfortunately, years of score-inflation means that people perceive
>anything less than a 7 out of 10 as a failure; 8 is considered
>"average" and a 5 would mean a game not even worth getting a second
>glance. But, in a perfect world (with spherical cows) I think 5.1
>would be a fair score.

The issue is that when US $59.99 is considered the upper range of a
AAA game (not counting DLC / season pass gimmicks, etc)., the customer
has a reasonable expectation that a game at this price point is going
to be in the upper range of it's class, as an overall offering.  

Charge a best-in-class price, and the expectation is a best-in-class
game.

If they had set a $40 price point on this game that user score on
metacritic would be higher, just as the Steam ratings would be more
enthusiastic.

Currently the Steam rating is "Mostly Positive".  While that might not
sound bad, it's a few notches down from enthusiasm, which would be
"Positive", ""Very Positive" or "Overwhelmingly Positive".  It's a
little better than "Mixed", but it's not what we want to see on a AAA
game that's going for full price.

Metacritic is set up to consider a games' user score somewhat like a
school grading system, where 7 and up is considered good enough to
buy, and below that it might be passable and still worthy of
consideration.  Individual users might interepret a score or 5 or 6
however they want to, but because all things are relative, and because
there are plenty of games with user metascores in the "green" ranges,
a score in the yellow range should be indicative of exactly what the
color represents -- caution.  Caution about whether the potential
buyer has really read about the game in depth and understands what it
is and is not.  In other words yellow means "warning, you might be
unhappy with your purchase".  All Bethesda would need to do to
alleviate a problematic (to sales) metascore like this is to simply
adjust the price point.  

The perceived value by the end user would adjust itself accordingly
and problem solved.

>Mind you, it's really too early to pay any attention to meta-critic
>user scores; both the fanboys and haters are out in full force and
>there's going to be some wide swings and deviations. Most of these
>people probably haven't even played the game, and none of them have
>played it very long (seeing as the game has been out less than 24
>hours) so they are judging the book, as it were, by its cover. I have
>no doubt this score will trend upwards over the next few months.

Let's come back and check on this later.  Most of the time metacritic
user scores tend to start out optimistic and head downward.  In the
case of a Bethesda game it usually has show stopping bugs out the
door, which tend to get slowly fixed over time.  But, I'm not sure
gamers who buy it a year after release even care enough to review it
on MC, so those improvements might never be reflected in user score.

Right now the user score is 5.5, which is a fairly shitty score and in
my opinion the game is a little better than that (maybe a 7), but I
think a yellow score says more about the overall disappointment at the
$60 price point than it says its a bad game, and in that case I agree.
The entire game has a "been there done that" feel, even if it's not
the worst sin ever committed by a game franchise.  Gamers who were
expecting a next gen game at a next gen price do have a right to be
disappointed.

For now I'm still having fun with it, but I can see it potentially
becoming repetative over time just as their other games in the
franchise did.  IMO they should have either done better or charged
less for it.