Steam and negative reviews V2

"Feels like." But that doesn't dismiss the fact that it's been a long time, especially for an early access product. We're seen devs take the money and run. This is not the case, but it could change the mindset of quite a few people if they don't keep track of the blog.

And as I said, I LOVE this game. I just don't want to see it crash and burn. Where's the motivation to improve a game if the user base is minimal?

 

A lot of the Steam forum users are people that have been banned from our forums for one reason or another and decided to go to Steam to push people away from getting the game, and sadly it's working.

 

People need to let go of the Idea that Chuckle is a scam.

Tiy has already stated in the Steam Forums that he and the Team havent abandoned the game,and that are working on it.

Even if they arrogantly and rather stupidly ignore the official site where info and updates are posted almost daily,then now they dot have an excuse.

And if they coudnt simply search for truth within the lies of the Steam forums,well,too bad

Edit:
@SeaMichelle

Is it realy Michele?

I mean,all those Trolls and Flamers will come back,I assure you.

No matter how much they bitch and moan,they wil come back and fall silent when the new update comes.Its existance in of itself counters all of their lies,that Stabound is abandoned and such,and everyone that bough the game will also come back.

Why woudnt they?They paid for it,they will ahve a reason to come back,and who knows?Maybe now some actualy good recomendatiosn will come out from the Dislike Pits,eh?

They havent made a Dent,as much as they would like to think they did,realy.They arent afecting enough people and even those influenced will go agaia nd play,so what the hey?

 

It really is a shame, and it is the mentality of people towards early access. And of course those of us know they are hard at work, I check the blog every day... but anyone's a liar if they aren't thinking it's been a while for an update. Maybe I should do the nightly build. My progress is precious to me, however. Ah well, maybe I really should look at some mods because I've been wanted to dig deep into this game again.

And you're right, people need to let it go. In tons of Steam reviews now, they think this. Simply not the case.

 

I problem I see here is that the majority of the people here, on the Chucklefish Forums, are rather biased towards the game. So forth, how can there be a real, proper discussion when people on both sides are saying each other are wrong, when no one is looking at the big picture?

Lets face the facts, the majority of consumers are NOT always on the forums, if ever. There are far to many people giving negative reviews for this is to be a particular group just trying to hate the game for lack of reason (honestly most of the reviews are pretty fleshed out). The average guy is not content with his or her purchase, and if you are on this forum, there is a chance you are not the average joe.

One of the big reasons I see people give this game a negative review, is a lack of updates. And before you say an update will come soon, it doesn't matter. People want updates. Good updates to. Whether they come sooner or later doesn't matter, because in the minds of a number of people here is that they WILL COME, whenever that might be, and that is satisfying enough for the people, here, but not so much for the average guy. The average guy wants to see the updates, and they don't care what happens behind the scenes so much, as long as they get a nice flow of updates that they can see (typically people want to see content wise updates). I've seen a few "updates" on the technical side to enhance potential, future updates. And that is part of the problem, a seed may have the potential to grow and become beautiful, but that potential is not fully recognize until it comes into full bloom, and rightfully so.

I would imagine the average guy's opinion of the game would change the sooner more visual updates are put into play. When you buy a toaster, you usually don't care what is inside of the toaster or how it works, but what it does.

 

I read all the posts and it sure is an interesting discussion.

Before I share my thoughts, remember these are just my observations!

I believe that the issues with steam and upset players are the following:

1. there is a misconception on what early beta is, especially because I believe alot of casual gamers and younger gamers are drawn to sandbox games.

2. people think that just because terraria finished in 6 months starbound should too. This is false because starbound is a much more complex game to program. having planets be procedurally generated by coordinates, must have a very difficult and complex logic. it is kind of like building a model car compared to a real car of course the model car will be quicker to finish(this is a stupid example be the only one i could think of of the top of my head), also I love Terraria so I am not bashing it, I am just saying that a finished starbound is much more work than a finished Terraria.

3. as stated before mostly people upset with the game will post complains, happy player just play!

4. Most of the negative comments on steam were not about the actual game play, it was about the forum moderators, not having an update, or they thought it was a terraria clone in space, and were disappointing. But very few actually complained about the game play who knew what they were getting into.

5. unrealistic expectations.

After reviewing all my point, it has come to my conclusion that it is a communication issue more than a game issue. CF needs to explain more on their steam page what the game actually is, Explain upcoming features, and explain more where the direction of the game is going.

Also I think that those who like the game need to post positive yet accurate reviews on steam I think I will too.

One last point
Now I said all that, and people might think I am a blind fanboy defending the game. This is not true, I have thing I dislike about the game but I get frustrated when people ignorantly post hateful posts. One funny example, Once I was reading a review on an electric skillet on Amazon.com and they gave the product a 1 star because the submerged it in water and stopped working "ELECTRIC" + "WATER" = Not Good Results. So the point is you can't always trust reviews because people don't always know what they are talking about, hence I would say the majority of steam members writing reviews dont know what they are talking about.

There are a few well written negative reviews, but most are hateful reviews that have no point to it.

Hopefully I did not offend anyone , but this is what I have observed

EDIT: I do not mean that all steam member do not know what they are talking about (i'm a steam member too!), I mean that poorly written hateful poster don't know what they are talking about. (Just thought I would clarify that)

 

It's easy to dismiss the "Starbound is Abandoned" claims, but a lot of people pretend that the game doesn't have any problems at all, which is just blatantly untrue. Defending the developer against claims of being scammers is one thing, but disregarding every bad review on Steam as trolls that were banned is blinding yourself to the larger issues. Specifically, it's that Starbound has earned the scorn some people are throwing at it. Are all of the claims that get made about Chucklefish fair? Of course not. But people aren't upset for no reason. It's a detriment to other early access games and other developers, and people absolutely should be critical of it and Chuckelfish for the things they've said and the things they've taken back since their original claims.

The easiest way to turn public opinion around...? If I knew that, I could be a very wealthy person. But lumping every critic in as a mindless troll or a conspiracy theorist is not going to help. The game has serious problems. Chucklefish have made huge mistakes. The best thing to do now would just be to improve it, get it out, and try to at least leave people with a great game at the end of it all.

 

The problem with giving a fair review to a half completed game is that it's impossible. The game isn't done so all reviews, good and bad, at this point are invalid.

 

Which is the reason why every single one of those Steam Reviews have a nice, shiny blue banner above them stating "Early Access Review".

 

This is the only review that will always be relevant no matter what stage of production the game is in: http://steamcommunity.com/id/ramenchimera/recommended/211820/

 

I too used Steam boards for a while, and while the complaints about their behavior do not apply to everyone involved, I will say the Steam forums most certainly deserve their reputation.
Reasoned arguments and reviews are an extreme minority, and as typical of the internet, word of hate sparks easily and spreads like wildfire.

It's not just the Steam-Starbound boards that are subject to that either. I can point to dozens upon dozens of forums I've perused looking for information only to casually stumble upon gobs of ignorant hate and those dogpiling the few preaching reason. Only in a few instances did the attitude seem merited (obvious low quality con-games).

The sad fact of the matter is that Steam's community system is just plain toxic overall.
That said, I commend the few who try to engage with reason over mindless rage, especially when they are expressing displeasure with something.
I don't expect the community to get along all lovey-dovey, but it'd be nice to be able to ask a simple question or make a simple observation without a bunch of ignorant dickheads jumping down my throat.

 

Amen...

 

I don't use reviews in general. I get opinions on games from my friends and the people I know, because they're the people whose opinions I trust. Since the game isn't finished yet, the reviews obviously aren't going to hold up for the finished product. I'm not sure if Steam Reviews are labeled or not to reflect that the game in question wasn't out when the review was posted; it seems like they definitely should. If that's the case, then posting a review of an unfinished game seems perfectly reasonable; it's a snapshot of that person's opinion at that point in the development process, for better or worse. It's also useful for people considering getting in and purchasing the game now, because it shows them what people think of where the game currently is; and with no ETA on when the next update might be, it tells them how the game will remain for the foreseeable future.
A review that went up today might mention problems with the game lagging extremely badly when near certain cities or Apex labs or something along those lines; they could bring up the prevalence of murderous death birds and the not-very-good combat system. Those are going to change with the next update... but a review that comes out now can't consider those things. There's no guarantee they won't change before the next update is released, even! There's no telling the new tile rendering system that's supposed to fix the lag won't actually cause cancer, or that the new combat system will be the way it was claimed in the news posts. People can only make their judgments based on what is in the game now; and it's not all that great. Hopefully in time it will be.

 

As already said, you segregated yourself. I am a member of Steam too just like the majority of people on here but we don't view it as an us vs them situation, we see steam for what it is and it's not a combined and unified community.

Steam is a great place to play games with friends and like minded gamers, but it's got the same negative element one can find anywhere. (And no offence or reference to you or others but many fail to realise how to review a game and drag personal feelings and redundant past issues in to the mix because they can't materialise their feelings and frustrations and instead push everything to the extreme to garner the anger they themselves feel)

 

People are absurd with their reviews on non-early access games as well. "Monument Valley" reviews that are 1 star because "the game was great but too short". People want hundreds of hours of gameplay for a few dollars and it's absurd. People paid top dollar for Portal 2 when the game had like 12 hours of gameplay and it got sparkling reviews, but $2 for a game with 10 hours of gameplay isn't acceptable? I've seen people on this forum demanding refunds after playing for 30+ hours; They're essentially saying that this game isn't worth 50 cents an hour. Going to see a movie costs like $15 per head for 2 hours of story and some junk food.

(The truncated post is to save space and to others it might viewed out of context, I suggest reading the original post before reading the below comment)
That's not really true. There is clear evidence every day that it won't be like that forever. It's not our job, nor the Devs, to make sure that people read the news for the game. Personal responsibility is a thing, and if they can't be bothered to make a review based on the facts, they have no business reviewing anything.

 

I think we'll just have to disagree on that. The news posts are all well and good... but you're forgetting that the Starbound devs have, to put it lightly, a track record of failing to deliver. I'm really excited for a lot of things that they've mentioned in the news posts... but just because I've seen animated gifs doesn't actually tell me that's going to make it into the game. They've got it set up, but bumps in the road are always possible; a review that went up today might only be relevant for a week, or it might remain true to the latest stable release of the game well into next year. A disaster could happen and the game never even gets finished, and the review would be true forevermore.
I'm not saying any of that is going to happen, but they've put no timetable forward for the next update. People have nothing to go on except a vague suggestion that next year the game should be finished. For all I know, they could decide not to release that update until they've gotten the game to a release-ready state! They can show progress in the news posts and release broken nightly builds, but as for the game itself, there's no telling when things are actually going to change.

 

I'm letting this slide because you quoted for context -- but please -- if you're going to post, provide some substance of your own. Even if it's just a whole sentence saying why you agree with what you quoted.

 

Well I disagree, and frankly with your tone, I don't think arguing with you will be worth it.

 

You're choosing to read my tone as angry. I'm calm but passionate in my arguments and points. If you feel my points aren't worth debating that's fine, but please don't try to dissuade others by pointing out a tone that doesn't exist.

 

Well, i posted in old thread before realizing OP wrote it in December, but some of my point are still valid.
1. I read quite a few reviews just yesterday. Ofc, i didn't just start reading like everything, i selected half a year, most useful, so empty angry rants should not appear in the list unless a lot of ppl agree with them. And yeah 95% of them were negative.
2. About "ppl won't post positive review because they are playing". Check, all time - most useful. See for yourself.
3. About review contents:
- slow updating
- broken deadlines
- bland gameplay (connected with no updates)
- thick and fast
- censoring on forum
Well, all of those points are legit. And, btw, a lot of ppl add that they write about SB current state.

And are they only one to blame for that?