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Interesting Steam review
Aragon100
Member RarePosts: 2,686
http://store.steampowered.com/app/326160/#app_reviews_hash
RedCombLP wrote this review that tell alot of truth about this game, developers and it's community.
[quote]
Cannot in good conscience recommend this game at this time.
There are many promising aspects, and I believe the devs genuinely want to make a good game, but I really dislike the "pay for an advantage" type stuff, the constant need to put a positive spin on everything, and how many things have fallen through the cracks (e.g., asset packs, meaningful Q/A and dialogue with devs, companions being dropped and promise for custom-designed NPCs being neutered, etc.).
On SotA's forums, devs will encourage "loyal backers" to post positive reviews here to keep the game "mostly positive" (because the funding raised from more steam sales can ensure that we get the awesome game we want). Supporters will answer newbie questions with claims that Portalarium has never failed to fulfill any of its promises (when this is simply not true), and people posting reviews here are likely telling you whatever you need to hear to get you to buy the game (with the hope that the extra $ will help make their game that much better). There is a lot of spin going on, sorry to say.
example:
"The good news is we continue to gain new customers from Steam. The not so good news is that some of them are giving us bad reviews. Just recently we dropped from Very Positive to Mostly Positive. Long term this will decrease the number of people who purchase our product on Steam and therefore will mean we will have less money to build this world we all want.
While many of those negative reviews are fair I feel like the ratio of positive to negative does not accurately reflect the overall sentiment from you, our loyal backers, especially when we take into consideration our current pre-alpha state. If you have not yet done so I would ask you to consider taking a few minutes and post a positive review over on Steam."
~Darkstarr
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/steam-review-request.21397/
Buy the game if you trust devs and a community who will tell you what you want to hear so they can get more money to make the game the great game it's promised to be. However, that begs the question, if it's not that great game it's going to be yet, and still requires a lot of work, why are there all of these positive reviews that say it is amazing!? Hmmm.... There couldn't be some astroturfing going on here, could there?
Guess this "negative" review really cements the fact that I'm not what they would consider a "loyal" backer. Oh well, Portalarium. Another one bites the dust.
[/quote]
Comments
I sometimes worry Lord British and Brad McQauid are stuck in time and don't understand things are not the same as they were years ago. I'm waiting to see a final game before I give either any money.
more or less the same, i played tested it a while but the horible GUI made me move on to other games for the time being, ofc that also means that i wont be spending anyting in their oversized pre-release cashshop but eh.. those steam sales will pcik that up
Developer asked players to post positive reviews on steam to manipulate the score from " mostly positive " to " very positive ". If you don't see the problem with that, then I think your moral compass is off.
Yeah, at first I was like WTF! They are trying to game the reviews, but after a few rage threads, they clarified (or put additional spin, whatever), that you can also leave your negative comments in the reviews if you so desire.
But overall, I do not see a problem with them encouraging players that are happy but haven't yet written any reviews to go on Steam and do so. Every single business in the world does this. Does it matter if I think the game isn't great but others do? Why should I care how other players feel about their own experiences and want to write about it? Oh well, they should have initially made a more clear statement on how to handle negative aspects in reviews, but that is Portalarium. They don't exactly have a good track record with PR / communication. Actually, they suck real bad at it.
As far as the shape of the game and its UI...yeah, they have a long ways to go and they know it. But that's understandable given they aren't even yet feature complete, let alone content complete. Just like how they completely overestimated themselves by setting an original October 2014 release date, anyone that really believes they'll be finished by their current estimate of "end of 2014" is just drinking the kool aid. While it's great to see them make forward progress every month (that's one of the best aspects of Early Access) they continually have to cut things each month and proves time and time again that these guys overestimate way too much. In almost 2 years and 15 monthly releases they still overestimate by a wide margin.
This thing isn't shipping until 2016, maybe even 2017. So any judgement of their UI or graphics or polish now as a final game or near final one is just silly. Come back in a year or two and then see how they're doing.
Paying for development of a video game or anything is FLAT OUT WRONG, AND UNDER HANDED !!!!
Mr. Millionaire is slowly turning into a jerk !
$100 for a house in a video game is absurd.
By the way I'm financially strapped can you people give me about $ 10,000,000 for a Walmart franchise ?....I promise it will be a nice Walmart !
And now and then when I pull up to my Walmart in my Limo and see one of you, I'll give you the wink to let you know I appreciate the help you had given me to be successful ")
Garriott was always a sorta scatter-brained idea guy, and a pretty terrible project manager. And surrounded by a core group of hanger-ons and sycophants. (some of which are attached to SotA too). But Tabula Rasa was NCSoft's failure. They pulled the game from Garriott and put their own guys in charge. Of course, that was partly because of long delays, feature creep, dilute focus, etc. I've sometimes wondered if NCSoft killed TR due to insurance, or perhaps even royalty issues. No telling with them. Now EA, in their infinite wisdom, killed Ultima Online 2, worried that it might draw away subs from original UO. Not seeing the future behemoth of WoW coming up in the rear view mirror.
SotA is a MMO being attempted on a shoe string budget. There will be issues because of this. If gamers don't support this sort of thing, then there will not be many of this type to choose from. Though tales of bad UI are enough to make me shiver. The user interface is there in every moment of your game playing, and a bad version is a constant irritant. Hope they work that out.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
1. Right from the start of the kickstarter anyone that was actually paying attention knew that the game was going to have a VAST in game store, one that PLAYERS could even have things sold on...this was no secret and could even be seen in their donation tiers.
2. Positive spin on everything is a negative found EVERYWHERE even on gaming sites...like this one.
3. if you think this game is lacking in meaningful Q/A then you have not been taking part at all. So far I have yet to see any company come remotely close to working with the community as this game outside of Landmark.
4. Companions and several other things will be later...they cannot include everything at release and never pretended that they could, in fact the entire kickstarter and fund raising tiers on their site even STATE so by showing what they will be able to include with each tier of money raised.
This game has more than a few legit things to complain about and you didn't remotely come close to touching on anything legit.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
It was the stated intent by devs to manipulate the "meta" review statistic of player satisfaction to better than mostly positive. Asking players to post honest feedback and reviews is fine. Asking players to post positive reviews is no more appropriate than a troll asking people to post negative reviews. Both are an attempt to misrepresent player satisfaction and potentially deceive prospective buyers. It is dishonest.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
Aye, spot on.
A developer trying to mobilize their fanbase to go post reviews on popular sites is borderline trouble, but they are not really out to harm anyone. Such as a negative slander campaign against another game would be. I see that as a completely different situation. I'm not a big fan of how Brad and company are trying to bump the games rating, but they are probably in a desperate situation and depend on the ratings for continued funding.
However, once a developer asks players for money in exchange for their product, it has released and they need to be fully prepared for the opinions players form and share. Calling something early access or beta doesn't change anything and certainly doesn't strip anyone from criticizing a game they paid real money for.
Still I am really hoping this game hits their design goals, but I have doubts about Brass ability to run a company. His gaming ideas are pretty good. Even if they only offer something different than the blob of other MMOs.
If the reviewers are posting honest feed back that is positive and only posting one review then there is nothing "dishonest" about it. He didn't ask anyone to lie about anything.
At least I've still got Ultima VII.
I believe that you are thinking of Pantheon which is Brad's game. Shroud of the Avatar is being made by Richard Garriott.
As for the statement about asking for money equals release, this would mean that publishers who offer pre-purchase games are releasing a game without even offering any product at time of payment. These small niche games are being made in a different way than the traditional big publisher games. Many people seem to be having issues in understanding this. They are being funded in a way where thousands of people are assuming a very small monetary risk instead of a few large investors assuming a very large risk. The rewards of taking the risk are obviously different, ie money vs a game you want to play, but they allow games to be made that the big companies and investors would never support because they can get a bigger return on investment in other areas. I understand if people don't want to support this method but I don't understand the hate when others are willing to support this method. It is allowing for a more diverse type of MMO being available.
What made you believe they are honest feedback?
Especially after a developer of the game requested them, LOL.
Thanks for correcting me on Brad/Richard. I always confuse these two games.
However, I don't agree with the rest of your assessment. A player can get a refund on a pre-purchased game. A pre-release game, the money is spent, because the product has been purchased.
SOE was one of the largest entities in MMOs and they are selling pre-release alpha grade garbage. As with all trends in gaming, it starts out small and grows. Don't pretend that selling unfinished games is limited to kickstarting small Indy companies. As long as players lower their standards and embrace this, more will do it.
Consider how many poor releases happened in years past: vanguard, warhammer, champions, etc. All were widely criticized for being incomplete and buggy.
The only thing that has changed is developers now call these pre-release and early access..... and somehow players went from expecting quality games in exchange for their money to a state where they actually defend developers for selling the same buggy and unfinished games.
It is amazing how many people are unhappy with the state of MMOs, but at the same time continue to lower their standards and reward developers for withholding content and under delivering. That is what I have issues with.
Don't assume that I don't understand or even support the new kickstarting for certain projects. Everything has its place, but it can and is being abused and it is not a blanket of protection against criticism.
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
That is not what I read at all. What I read was a developer saying that he thought the actual feelings of his customers (from feedback he got) was more in line with very positive. He felt the "mostly positive" was skewed by a larger proportion of negative to positive reviews. I think he probably should not have suggested people leave POSITIVE reviews though. Even if it's inferred that he hoped most would be positive... he probably shouldn't have come right out and suggested that.
Also, if you actually read all of his posts in the thread and not just the snippet soundbite you will see that he does clearly say that people have some legitimate concerns and they SHOULD post those as well.
I have no idea if he is correct or not, but asking the customer base to go post their feelings on Steam seems OK. Personally I haven't checked the updates out in about 5-6 months. I figure I will just give it some time.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
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What makes you believe they aren't honest feedback.................................lol?