New AVWW Reviews and GGTL's Livestream Event

[chemical_art]

No, I don't use it because the site gives an incorrect impression of the quality (or lack thereof) in the game.  And sure, a lot of people use it. Not disputing that here. But really, there isn't much we can do about IGN/Gamespot giving poor reviews. Which was really what I was getting at when Huaojozu posted. So worrying about it is a waste of effort.
King

While I do not work in the gaming industry and thus have zero relevant experience, I refuse to believe that there is literally nothing that could have been done to improve those scores. A lot, of course, may have been done by Arcen and just didn't work. From the top of my head, I would try to get them to re-review the game after a few weeks/months, since just the loot drops in the latest release changed the game significantly. It's not like that didn't happen before.

EDIT: The point is that all these patches could get the score bumped to say 7,5 or higher after a while. A year from now, a casual player will search for games released in the last year, see AVWW (which he already saw after release, but dismissed and thus forgotten), see it's reasonable score and give it a try.

I agree, but on the gamespot review it is explictly said in the comments they will not review it again.

It's part of the risk of hurrying a game out of beta. The ratings come out of 1.0, and additional ratings only come maybe with expansions.

I can understand the rating companies point of view. Every game says it will "be patched to be better". Arcen does an exeptallary job of doing so, but the rating companies would not be able to do everything if they were rating games 3 or 5 times instead of once per game / expansion.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

No, I don't use it because the site gives an incorrect impression of the quality (or lack thereof) in the game.  And sure, a lot of people use it. Not disputing that here. But really, there isn't much we can do about IGN/Gamespot giving poor reviews. Which was really what I was getting at when Huaojozu posted. So worrying about it is a waste of effort.
King

While I do not work in the gaming industry and thus have zero relevant experience, I refuse to believe that there is literally nothing that could have been done to improve those scores. A lot, of course, may have been done by Arcen and just didn't work. From the top of my head, I would try to get them to re-review the game after a few weeks/months, since just the loot drops in the latest release changed the game significantly. It's not like that didn't happen before.

Maybe someone who actually follows IGN/Gamespot more closely can correct me on this, but I don't think they've ever changed their score reviews after the game is launched, its pretty final. Yeah, that sucks, but a lot of devs don't bother with their game after launch so for game sites, there really isn't a lot of reason to revisit a game after launch. Arcen just happens to be the exception to the rule...as sad a statement as that is.

Also @Chemical, I'm not saying "screw marketing" either, , we saw with Tidalis that a lack of marketing hurt the game pretty badly on launch.

And not to beat a dead horse, but the game wasn't rushed out of BETA. Go look up Chris' comments on it heh.

King

[chemical_art]

And not to beat a dead horse, but the game wasn't rushed out of BETA. Go look up Chris' comments on it heh.

King

Maybe from their point of view, but I would disagree and many others would as well. This game is on course to change more after 1.0 then many games change from beta to 1.0

It's a good thing, but you should call a horse a horse. The game's a changin.

[Huaojozu]

I distinctly remember reading a review on either Gamespot/IGN that began with a paragraph on how the game got either a free DLC or a patch (cant remember) after launch addressing the most glaring issues. No idea what game that was though.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

And not to beat a dead horse, but the game wasn't rushed out of BETA. Go look up Chris' comments on it heh.

King

Maybe from their point of view, but I would disagree and many others would as well. This game is on course to change more after 1.0 then many games change from beta to 1.0

It's a good thing, but you should call a horse a horse. The game's a changin.

Which those changes would have happened had it been released 6 months from now anyway, more eyes and opinions/perspectives. At least now Arcen has the ability to fund those six months.

@Huaojozu, patches usually come out pretty quickly after launch and some review sites are kind enough to update the review to address that issue but that rarely affects the score of said game. Again, I could be wrong, I don't follow gamespot/IGN that closely.

King

[chemical_art]

And not to beat a dead horse, but the game wasn't rushed out of BETA. Go look up Chris' comments on it heh.

King

Maybe from their point of view, but I would disagree and many others would as well. This game is on course to change more after 1.0 then many games change from beta to 1.0

It's a good thing, but you should call a horse a horse. The game's a changin.

Which would have happened had it been released 6 months from now anyway, more eyes and opinions/perspectives. At least now Arcen has the ability to fund those six months.

@Huaojozu, patches usually come out pretty quickly after launch and some review sites are kind enough to update the review to address that issue but that rarely affects the score of said game. Again, I could be wrong, I don't follow gamespot/IGN that closely.

King

Yes, except for the reviews. They won't be updated 6 months from now. Maybe you will get another 25% or so in volume, but most reviews come a month after the game is released. The fact that the two biggest review companies which occupy the first two google hits of a review for this game say the game sucks is bad no matter how you put it.

I guess we are at an impasse, and we shouldn't clutter this thread.

I say if the game waited a few months (and wished Arcen didn't set a firm date of release so early in advance), the reviews would be much higher and lead to better overall sales. The amount of work wouldn't be too different, for as you said they would do the work regardless. So instead now the game is "not new" and a wave of potential players have been turned off because the game didn't stick to them.***

You say it doesn't matter and necessary for the company, and don't care so much about reviews as a whole.


***Take for example the shop. This is HUGE for me. It turns the game around from "a grind fest" into what it should be off "explore the world, and the upgrades will follow". It has taken the game from "never buy" to "Holy crap, I'll buy!" ... If it wasn't for the fact I still fell a little burnt from my first experience, so I'm going to wait it over. But if the shop was in when I first played the game, I would have bought it immediately.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

And not to beat a dead horse, but the game wasn't rushed out of BETA. Go look up Chris' comments on it heh.

King

Maybe from their point of view, but I would disagree and many others would as well. This game is on course to change more after 1.0 then many games change from beta to 1.0

It's a good thing, but you should call a horse a horse. The game's a changin.

Which would have happened had it been released 6 months from now anyway, more eyes and opinions/perspectives. At least now Arcen has the ability to fund those six months.

@Huaojozu, patches usually come out pretty quickly after launch and some review sites are kind enough to update the review to address that issue but that rarely affects the score of said game. Again, I could be wrong, I don't follow gamespot/IGN that closely.

King

Yes, except for the reviews. They won't be updated 6 months from now. Maybe you will get another 25% or so in volume, but most reviews come a month after the game is released. The fact that the two biggest review companies which occupy the first two google hits of a review for this game say the game sucks is bad no matter how you put it.

I guess we are at an impasse, and we shouldn't clutter this thread.

I say if the game waited a few months (and wished Arcen didn't set a firm date of release so early in advance), the reviews would be much higher and lead to better overall sales.

You say it doesn't matter and necessary for the company, and don't care so much about reviews as a whole.

Yeah, we are cluttering this thread. But: I didn't say reviews don't matter and that it isn't necessary for the company. If I thought that, I wouldn't have written my own review for the game. Just based off the poor scores that AVWW got from Gamespot and IGN, I don't think 6 months (or whatever amount of time the game would have been delayed) would have changed their minds on it either way. They slammed the visuals and music and other things that wouldn't have changed in that amount of time, of that I'm certain with my experience in the BETA phase of this game. More content, yes, might have improved the game's scores. But we can never really know for certain. And basing decisions about a game based off two reviews is a bad idea, regardless of how "influential" they might be. There have been, however, many other reviews that were more positive about the game. So what if two opinions don't match those, we all have opinions. To get universal agreement on one game is a laughable hope at best, someone will dislike AVWW, that is a guarantee no matter what you do.

At this point, we are arguing on what MIGHT have been. It happened and it is as it is. Hindsight is 20/20.

King

[chemical_art]

And not to beat a dead horse, but the game wasn't rushed out of BETA. Go look up Chris' comments on it heh.

King

Maybe from their point of view, but I would disagree and many others would as well. This game is on course to change more after 1.0 then many games change from beta to 1.0

It's a good thing, but you should call a horse a horse. The game's a changin.

Which would have happened had it been released 6 months from now anyway, more eyes and opinions/perspectives. At least now Arcen has the ability to fund those six months.

@Huaojozu, patches usually come out pretty quickly after launch and some review sites are kind enough to update the review to address that issue but that rarely affects the score of said game. Again, I could be wrong, I don't follow gamespot/IGN that closely.

King

Yes, except for the reviews. They won't be updated 6 months from now. Maybe you will get another 25% or so in volume, but most reviews come a month after the game is released. The fact that the two biggest review companies which occupy the first two google hits of a review for this game say the game sucks is bad no matter how you put it.

I guess we are at an impasse, and we shouldn't clutter this thread.

I say if the game waited a few months (and wished Arcen didn't set a firm date of release so early in advance), the reviews would be much higher and lead to better overall sales.

You say it doesn't matter and necessary for the company, and don't care so much about reviews as a whole.

Yeah, we are cluttering this thread. But: I didn't say reviews don't matter and that it isn't necessary for the company. If I thought that, I wouldn't have written my own review for the game. Just based off the poor scores that AVWW got from Gamespot and IGN, I don't think 6 months (or whatever amount of time the game would have been delayed) would have changed their minds on it either way. They slammed the visuals and music and other things that wouldn't have changed in that amount of time, of that I'm certain with my experience in the BETA phase of this game. More content, yes, might have improved the game's scores. But we can never really know for certain. And basing decisions about a game based off two reviews is a bad idea, regardless of how "influential" they might be. There have been, however, many other reviews that were more positive about the game. So what if two opinions don't match those, we all have opinions. To get universal agreement on one game is a laughable hope at best, someone will dislike AVWW, that is a guarantee no matter what you do.

At this point, we are arguing on what MIGHT have been. It happened and it is as it is. Hindsight is 20/20.

King

Agreed, but the gamepot review did not mention neither visuals nor music. Gamespot lamented the repetitiveness of fighting the same creeps, the lack of feeling of progress, and the lack of things to diverge from it (they praised the missions for doing this). One of these has been directly improved, the improvements (shop), one of these is already sort of improved will be improved greatly in the future (more creeps and elite creeps) and the missions I imagine will become better, although maybe not in 6 months. So what I am saying is that the things gamespot bashed would be directly improved in 6 months, so that would guarantee a better score by at least 33% in my mind.

Actually, I've never heard anyone <except maybe IGN since I didn't read theirs> bash the music.  It either gets ignored or is phrased.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Maybe it would have improved 33%, but we won't know, even 6 months of content might not have been enough. Content is such a subjective thing anymore =\. IGN slammed the music as I went to go quickly scan its review before this little discussion. Which makes me wonder why.  Oh well. *shrug*. Onto other subjects.

King

[Huaojozu]

IGN said that the music while interesting was too repetitive. Which I tend to agree with but I also think it goes well with the tone of the game (which may actually be a bad thing in this case).

[Misery]

IGN and GameSpot didn't like it.

What I find funny is when people complain about the name Environ. Yeah, because planet Earth is such a great name!

Considering what games they DO like, I dont put much stock (or any whatsoever) into their opinions.


As others have said, sure, it's not a GOOD thing......

......but the number of players that go to or use either of those sites has been dropping (seriously, sit in any gaming community long enough and ALL YOU HEAR about those two is things along the lines of "Yeah, IGN sucks, nobody likes them anymore", or crap like that) and really, I have a hard time seeing the "casual" gaming audience getting into THIS one ANYWAY.

Still, I have had a look at their review, and..... well, "FACEDESK" pretty much sums up what I think of it.

Let's look at this line:

"That exploration lies at the heart of A Valley Without Wind, and it's where you'll find the most fun--that is, if mining nodes for hours on end without much knowledge of where the right ones are sounds exciting."

........The game makes it about as easy as concievably possible to find EXACTLY the kinds of nodes you are looking for.   It takes me FIVE MINUTES to find at least a couple of gem nodes in any cave.  LESS than that if I'm looking for stashes in buildings (know the right type of building, and you can find one WHEN YOU ENTER THE BUILDING).

It's not bloody rocket science, and in all honesty, out of ALL of the randomly-generated games out there (be they Minecraft, DF's adventure mode, various large roguelikes, other things), this is the only one where I've NEVER ONCE GOTTEN LOST EVER.  The way the maps work make it easy to get what you need.

Also note, these same people will happily play Minecraft...... a game where you REALLY DO often need to spend hours in caves looking for ores, and there are NO HINTS EVER as to where they are..... but they have to do..... er..... next to none of that in THIS game (comparatively), but WHINE about it?   It sounds to me more like they werent grasping certain concepts correctly (or at all).


As I already said, I dont put much stock in their thoughts.  And it's not just this game, or some "fanboyness" that makes me say that.  I play mostly indie games..... since most console releases bore me..... and I find that, if it's not a BIG console release, Gamespot and IGN are bloody useless for it.   I stopped going to them as soon as I really got into indie gaming.  There are other, better places to go that tend to understand this sort of game a bit better.    And I do think alot of the audience that will enjoy this game isnt the sort that hangs around either of those sites very much.



Quick disclaimer:   Not trying to bash Minecraft up there.   I love the hell outta Minecraft.  Was just a good way to make a point.  Er.   I think.   I havent had my caffiene yet....


EDIT: If I sound a bit snappy here, I apologize.  I indeed have not had caffiene yet and it makes me really irritable.   That is to say, more irritable than my usual state of being.   So take what I say with a grain of..... of...... dammit I need that caffiene.

[junker154]

IGN and Gamespot give very populistic reviews and at times do not go into detail which gives a wrong impression. Although I do not consider them as terrible reviewers, some reviews are really good and most of them hit the spot. They are at times a bit exagerated but a person who watches a review wants to have a certain impression and will probably watch more reviews and build his own impression collected by different reviews. At least that is how I do it.

No one should simply trust a review, games and their respective quality are always a subjective preference. Also IGN and Gamespot improved their reviews recently. The only thing that bugs me that they are all crazy over these overly popular games à la COD, BF or other AAA titles.

[KDR_11k]

The RPS Wot I Think was very negative as well and RPS is a site that usually loves Arcen (to the point where many commenters were accusing them of going easy on the game).

I think IGN or GameSpot would give the game a new review when an expansion comes out, i.e. the name of the thing you buy changes.

As for outlier scores, that can legitimately happen since reviews are essentially personal experiences (attempting to make them anything else just produces garbage*) and sometimes people react strongly different to some games. If that outlier person happens to be the reviewer for a big site, well...

* Reviewers that try to be too objective tend to score games on objective things like production values when those are a rather minor influence on the actual entertainment you'll get from the game. See for example the Earth Defense Force series, terrible production values but awesome fun, a reviewer who tries to be objective will declare them "guilty pleasures" and score them low despite admitting they're fun, Eurogamer gave EDF2017 a 9/10 for sheer fun. Meanwhile other games with high production values and not much fun get higher scores from the "objective" reviewers.

Another infamous example was a review of Paper Mario that scored the review lower because the reviewer thought that most people will be put off by the art style despite him loving the game and he wanted his score to be objective.

[Wanderer]

Another infamous example was a review of Paper Mario that scored the review lower because the reviewer thought that most people will be put off by the art style despite him loving the game and he wanted his score to be objective.

This is important, thanks for bringing it up, KDR.  Noone can be truly objective.  If you don't allow for your bias and include it, you can't get closer to objectivity.

IGN etc scores very heavily on visuals, and have for a long time.  They've lost sight of mechanics that make for a fun or enjoyable game.  This is partially because of the vision of those reviewers, which if you dig deeply into their history you can find.  They want to find immersion, and they always have from everything I've seen and read.  Immersion is easier when you're as close to the uncanny valley as possible without tripping.  Like calls to like, as it were, and additional reviewers were gauged against existing reviewers.

They're not wrong, they're just looking for something different.  Bias is your personal god.  If you don't accept that, well... *shrugs*  Also over the years they've changed their scoring mechanisms, as has been noted.  What was once a 5 is now an 8, and what was a 9 is now a 7.  Why?  Internal mechanisms and external enforcement by the vocal minority.  'eh, it happens.

[Misery]

The RPS Wot I Think was very negative as well and RPS is a site that usually loves Arcen (to the point where many commenters were accusing them of going easy on the game).

I think IGN or GameSpot would give the game a new review when an expansion comes out, i.e. the name of the thing you buy changes.

As for outlier scores, that can legitimately happen since reviews are essentially personal experiences (attempting to make them anything else just produces garbage*) and sometimes people react strongly different to some games. If that outlier person happens to be the reviewer for a big site, well...

* Reviewers that try to be too objective tend to score games on objective things like production values when those are a rather minor influence on the actual entertainment you'll get from the game. See for example the Earth Defense Force series, terrible production values but awesome fun, a reviewer who tries to be objective will declare them "guilty pleasures" and score them low despite admitting they're fun, Eurogamer gave EDF2017 a 9/10 for sheer fun. Meanwhile other games with high production values and not much fun get higher scores from the "objective" reviewers.

Another infamous example was a review of Paper Mario that scored the review lower because the reviewer thought that most people will be put off by the art style despite him loving the game and he wanted his score to be objective.

Those are actually really good points.

It kinda makes me think of the Dynasty Warriors games.

Most western reviewers hate the heck outta this series, but...... it's big in Japan for a reason.   I myself am a fan.  These games are a blast, and there's more to them than most people think, so long as you DONT play it on easy.   Each new game in the series changes the combat system up and does new things, but the reviewers never see it that way.


Not to mention..... I really think some games are harder to "get" than others, in that they just take more time.

I do think this is one of them.  AVWW has a pretty darned high learning curve.   I think you need to get a certain distance into the game before you can get a true feel for how everything works.   When this happens, alot of pro reviewers simply dont have that kind of time to dedicate to one game.

Still, I'm surprised that RPS would be negative towards this one!   That strikes me as unusual, coming from them.


Oh well.

The game seems to be selling pretty well, and screwy pro reviewers or not, it's a damn good game, and getting better all the time.