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Metacritic scores not accurate or reliable for mmo's or other games? Evidence says otherwise.
Margulis
Member CommonPosts: 1,614
So I see people bash a lot on Metacritic and how you can't trust any score on there because people post ridiculous scores all the time (10's and 0's), so forth and so on. And I have seen this myself in the individual user reviews. But I've got to tell you, I've yet to see a single AVERAGED USER REVIEW score for any game on that site that I didn't think was pretty much right on the money. Sure the averaged critic review score can be bogus at times, especially when you see games like Dragon Age 2 or Sim City with super high scores, but that's not Metacritic's fault, they are just averaging the stupid professional reviewers scores. So again, where is the incredible innacuracy with the USER REVIEWS if we look at the weighted average? I don't see it. Let's take a look at some examples.
Dragon Age 1
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-origins
Dragon Age 2
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii
Simcity:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/simcity
Star Wars the Old Republic
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/star-wars-the-old-republic
Guild Wars 2http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/guild-wars-2
The Secret World
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-secret-world
Mass Effect
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mass-effect
Mass Effect 3
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/mass-effect-3
Defiance
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/defiance
Final Fantasy XIV
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/final-fantasy-xiv-online
Rift
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/rift
I could post more and more. And the only 2 games out of those that I play are Defiance and The Secret World, and I still would say objectively I think every one of those AVERAGED USER REVIEWS are completely accurate. So why all the metacritic hate? Because a few fanbois and haters like to give 0's and 10's that are ridiculous? Looks like they must balance themselves out to me, because the end result looks pretty dead on from anything I've seen.
Comments
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
While I do like Metacritic and refer to it often I don't take their reviews as gospel and neither should anyone else. Everyone has their own opinion of what makes a game good or bad. The differences between the user and critic scores are proof of that alone. Metacritic is a good resource but the scores it gives are averages and most probably won't align with anyone's personal tastes. Axehilt's post above is a perfect example. Those are his personal opinions which wildly go against the scores. In fact he's probably the only person I've heard that liked DA2 over DA:O but it's his opinion and he's entitled to it.
The only way you are going to know if a game is what you personally consider good is to try it yourself. If you let Metacritic or anyone else for that matter determine your game purchases you may miss out on some games that got lower scores but you personally may like a lot. Don't let a low score anywhere deter you from trying a game you personally think looks interesting.
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Going purely off Dragon Age 1 + 2, sure.. DA1 was better than 2 imo but is 2 really worth 'that' low a score? 4.2?.. no way. I mean, look at how many 1's and 0's there are straight away from DA2. It's just stupid. 1? Like it's the worst game ever made? Madness. It wasn't as good as people wanted it to be, fine.. but a 1...?
That's why metacritic isn't in any way accurate... because once a lot of people see something they don't like they automatically disregard the rest of whats on offer. They immediately become biased and lower their scores for every aspect of the game because they didn't enjoy one part of the experience. ME3 is a perfect example of this.. the game got slammed for the last 10 minutes of gameplay. The rest of the game was pretty much the same thing as ME2. Then there's the issue off basing reviews on their opinion of the company that made it instead of the actual game itself. Then there's people who hate just because others are doing it. Some people rate games low because they 'say' there are bugs and stuff but really they either have a shitty system or don't know how to maintain their system (for PC games).
There are loads more examples of the ways any review you read can be influenced by other factors. It is all pretty much a pointless waste of time unless you know the person personally, even reviews from popular news sites.. yeh they are a little more reliable because they have set rules and guidelines they have to follow when reviewing something but at the end of the day it comes down the opinion of someone you know nothing about.
As a general rule it's safe to say that Metacritic is unreliable when it comes to user ratings. This is because a variety of factors including trolls, haters, fanboys and companies hiring/using their employees to artificially increase the user rating in the first couple of days. It's up to the individual to read the posts that go along with the rating to see if they provide ample reasoning as to why they came to such a rating. I won't go into the claims as to why critic ratings would be unreliable aside from a few lesser known sites just wanting their name to displayed on the highest rated slots.
Let's take a look at the latest example of the above with this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB7r9m9vYNA&list=UUsgv2QHkT2ljEixyulzOnUQ&index=1
Wow, I have actually found someone who seems to have the same opinions regarding ME3, Dragon Age 1(I experienced a similar level of enjoyment in DA:O, but in my case I found the world to be extremely lacking, and after having played NWN2 several times, the combat wasn't that much of a problem for me) + 2 and Sim City.
The only score that counts to me is my own opinion.
So yeah, they're not accurate nor reliable, except maybe in a case or two.
that is the whole point, maybe metacritic´s work as an average user opinion, but never will a survey fit everyone...personally I never use metacritics for anything, so cant comment much on them, but as any other survey they will be accurate for the average user...so for most they would be useful...maybe not for hardcores who roam these forums.
It only took me to search ONE game on metacritic to prove this wrong. The original World of Warcraft has a User Review average of 6.8. Critic score is 93 out of 100. WoW definitely doesn't deserve a 6.8 out of 10. Definitely. The game was super fun and it has so much going on about it. A very simple example of how stupid user reviews can be. I am sure that had I spent more than 1 minute, I would have been able to find tons of games which are being bashed by users unnecessarily. But yeah, mad scrub haters are mad.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I agree that in general metacritic is a pretty accurate measure myself but not until after a few weeks when the fanbois,haters,kneejerkers and rushed reviews have been marginalized by numbers of ordinary people and more indepth critical review.
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Metacritic can give you a good idea of what a game/movie is like. If the critic score or the user score is very low, it's better to find the reason for that low score before you buy.
It's bogus in many cases, but reading SOME reviews is better than reading nothing. Buying TOR because of its high score is a better idea than buying a POS like Aliens: Colonial Marines because Aliens.
In general pretty good. You need to give time to shake out the fans and haters. Then sometimes you get this
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/world-of-warcraft-mists-of-pandaria
WoW 4.4 User score.
SUP
I never bought a game based on metacritics score..
But when I bought my current computer I read the reviews of the retailer..
Well I read the really negative ones.. Just to see if they screwed people over in any way.. And it seemed they didnt.
So I might look at the low scoring user reviews to see if they are just sour grapes written by idiots. If they have legitimate gripes.. Then Im warned not to buy it.
Agree, this was rather good. I loved it.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
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The problem with this discussion is that it eventually boils down to an opinion, one that you invariably had even before you attempted to justify it.
If you believe that Metacritic works, then you will use examples of it working to demonstrate why it works. You will also omit the ones that do not help demonstrate the point (ala the OP).
If you believe that Metacritic does not work, then you will demonstrate the point via the precise same process with differing variables.
My opinion is this:
Metacritic is not consensus, and it does not try to be. It is not attempting to reflect YOUR opinion, but the opinions - as influenced by the precise same factors (eg. money) as the individual's opinion - of the largest subsection of humanity that it can.
Ergo, It is not Metacritic that is wrong, but.... us....
*has an existential crisis and puffs into a cloud of smoke*
Yep and thats where the problem lies. People who are annoyed at a game that didnt live up to expectations give stupidly low scores, or fans give overly high scores to counter that. It doesnt work. Anyone could objectively look at DA2 and see that it doesnt deserve 4.2. Its a better than average game. Does it live up to DA1? No not to me, but that doesnt make it sub par in general.
Meta Scores aren't 'accurate'. They can give a relative measure of how well a game will sell though. Higher meta scores means more sales. Lower meta scores means lower sales. It's not something that's measurable though. A game with a meta score of 32 won't sell a particular number of copies...it'll just sell at the lower end of what it could possibly sell.
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I think you also need to look at meta scores and player scores separately. A game like TSW has a low meta score, but a high player score. It was a commercial flop, but the players who bought it tended to like it. The opposite would be SWToR where it got a high meta score, but a low player score. It was still a commercial flop, but it sold a LOT of copies and made a LOT more money than TSW, even though TSW is arguably a better game according to players.
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Metacritic scores not accurate or reliable for mmo's or other games? Evidence says otherwise.
So you're trying to say the scores are accurate if the game is good or not in relation to your opinion? And since they add up for your opinion, that is considered evidence? That is still considered an opinion haha.
What about subscription numbers? If you look at user opinion on WoW compared to other MMOs, it isnt' the greatest but in other people's opinions it must be. However, it has far more players, even with a lower rating, so just because the User Rating is low - apparently doesn't keep it from bein extremely successful.
Same goes for box sales, look at Diablo 3 for that. User score says it's no good, but is that "accurate or reliable" for sales or just how people think/feel the game is. Most of it is feeling, with some thinking involved
Good or bad is just an opinion, and it may be accurate for some, but not all - even with the average, which I may agree with on most of them
Evidence is an entirely different matter.