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The discrepancy between professional and user reviews for this game
simplyawful
Member Posts: 84
Go to metacritic and notice how the professional reviews differ wildly from the user reviews.
A lot of the complaints mirror the complaints found on the forums and I'm not talking about the DRM necessarily:
Replayability (This is the salient point in most reviews/criticism I see)
In D2, there were a lot of viable builds in comparison. In this game you have one, two.. for the witchdoctor, sadly, only one and it's weak in comparison.
There is also no meaningful progression beyond gear, since level is capped at 60 and reached readily.
Lack of variety in maps and meaningful loot
No more randomly generated maps makes it somewhat more dull. Most loot drops are meaningless. Gone are the days when legendary items didn't suck, or uniques for that matter, at least before runes.
Most loot that drops is completely worthless, because of the random stats. You can run inferno multiple times and get nothing but vendor trash. It's very disheartening.
Lack of new, interesting mechanics to gameplay
D2 was a leap from D1 and it happened within 5 years. The amount of customization, gameplay mechanics and item mechanics added for the time was HUGE.
After playing, D2 and everything else under the sun to hell for <= a decade, it sort of wears on you and you expect Blizzard, the masters of polish, to bring out some innovative idea out that some poor indie company busted their ass to come up with.
Simply not the case. When people say that it's D2 re-skinned, they are half right; the core mechanics are essentially the same, albeit with a few more buttons to press during battle.
So, my question for dicussion is: How did this game get such good reviews from the major reviewers? Is this game another SWToR, or are the dipleased just the vocal minority?
Comments
It got good reviews from critics and bad from users because users have no perspective. Users will judge a sequel based solely on their experience with the previous, often deified, game in the series, and if they don't like what they see...they often just give it a 0. (Good) critics on the other hand, will attempt to judge a game by its own merits as compared to the genre or even entire industry at large.
D3 has a lot of problems, and many of these seriously bother me. Still though, I think it is a very good game. If I were to rate it, I would give it an 8, and I think that's fair. An 8 to me means "good enough to play for some time but nothing spectacular."
Users who give this game a 0 are being silly. There is no way this game deserves a 0. The lowest score I could see someone rationally giving it is a 7...anything under that is simply ridiculous.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Really, why?
It's rather arrogant to assume that users have "no perspective", since they are exactly in the same boat you are and are forking over their hard-earned cash, rather than being paid to write about it.
So, if anything, the average random user review has more relevance, because it also takes into account the economic perspective i.e. the cost.
Why exactly is this game worth anything beyond a 5? How is it not average in every department by todays standards? There is relatively little content, especially when compared to other RPGS like Skyrim, Witcher 2 et al.
There is relatively little customization compared to other games, even the aforementioned. I just don't see how this game is anything beyond average in any department.
The displeased are always the most vocal.
I don't play with people in Diablo 3 and hear them talk about how much the game sucks.
...because critics who fellate Activision-Blizzard tend to do better at the end of the fiscal year.
Just a note... A 8 in my eyes says 'DAAAAMMN good but could be just a little better' and not 'oh its ok'
A 'oh its ok' score is a 5-6. a 3-4 is 'might enjoy it your first time though'
A 10 = 'never, ever seen any better(At this genre)
Taking that into consideration, i agree, its not worth a 0, but its definatly not a 8.
Users generally rate a game on one or two issues that they make the "entire" game. Similar to politics and how you should never elect someone based on one issue. Also users take things more personally than a professional reviewer. Look at Mass Effect 3. The majority of the game was fun, the ending was lackluster. The users ignore the entire game, focus on the ending, and give the game a 0.
User reviews are to be taken lightly...professional reviews should be read, listened to, but ultimately make your own decision.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Metacritic user reviews are emotion-filled nerd-rage.
I was one of those guys who threw a fit when D2 dropped. Too much changed "for the worse" IMO. I got over it and eventually really enjoyed D2. I see myself and many others making similar complaints between D2 and D3. Time will tell wether or not the userbase will adapt and accept.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
If you look at the reviews, delete the 1's and the 10's you'll find a closer approximation.
People are butthurt. They get onto Metacritic and rant their little troll heads off. They cry about things not even implemented.
How do you KNOW what the replayability or the talent specs are? Blizz just quoted that the MOST USED spec was something like .9% of the overall population. That kinda blows that entire arguement out of the water. And that wasn't even including the choice of the 3 talents at the bottom.
You know when we'd KNOW reviews were relevant? When people are held accountable for what they say. No accountability in user reviews. The professional reviews are accountable to their organizations, their readers, etc.
That being said, I'm playing the game. It isn't the end-all-be-all of games but it does consume a fair amount of time. Will I replay it over and over? Probably not. One time through, maybe see how far in difficulty I can get. And then it'll get set aside for a while. Will I replay? Likely a few years from now. Maybe when I get on a tangent and play D1, D2, D3 in order.
Mechanics are mechanics. It's like comparing Wolfenstein to BF3... you still point, you still shoot. THE MECHANICS ARE THE SAME!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! It truly silly.
Why should professional reviews be taken more seriously when they are more subject to bias and influence from the developers themselves?
There are quite a few well-written user reviews that are between 4-8. You just have to look for them. They are ignored entirely however, in favor of "professional" reviews that have proven themselves to be inaccurate as they are dependent on being in good favor with the players in the industry.
SWToR, game of the year. DA2, game of the.. well.. perhaps not, but the reviews from the "professionals" were still ridiculously high.
When you even admit that D3s replay factor is low, how can you justify calling it a good game when other games in the same genre are still subject to being replayable?
It's like every game has to fulfill certain standards, except for D3.
What about the well-written ones that have given it 5-6?
I have heard a few forum users say that review companies are "bribed" by the developers and publishers. Have you any proof, or anything that backs up your claim other than your "feelings"? People tend to make a conspiracy out of everything. I have read more unbiased, fair reviews from IGN, Eurogamer, Gamespot, PC gamer, heck even Zero Punctuation, than most of the "user reviews" I have ever read.
Yes. SWToR is a trash game not worthy of a subscription fee and it managed to score well on almost every major reviewer. SWToR isn't alone. The list goes on.. anybody who has ever played the games knows better.
There are no feelings involved in how bad SWToR is, there are actual numbers and employment cuts to substantiate my claim.
AoC rings a bell as well.
In my experience, reviewers write their reviews for what they perceive to be their intended audience's interests. The more hype that exists around a given product, or the more popular a particular franchise, the more likely the final score is going to be good. Negatives may be mentioned in the review, but will be brushed aside and / or forgiven for some simple reason. The same negatives will be the reasons that other games are knocked down to lower scores.
If negative articles are posted about a game - for example, Diablo 3's server issues and account hacks - then it will be written in a tone that is not critical. You'll see things like "Will the bad luck continue?", rather than saying that the company or game design is the cause of the problem, or that the company failed to do their jobs. Less popular titles will probably get ripped into, or the company will be accused of a terrible design choice.
Playing to their readers' expectations and to the hype keeps the visitor count high and therefore allows them to charge more money for the advertisements on their website.
User reviews on sites like metacritic have no such financial interests. The metacritic site gets money by the same method (higher visitor counts equal more money), but they do not need to play to the interests or expectations of their audience since it's user generated content. There is, of course, review bombing, but those are usually easy to spot.
Basically it all comes back to money. If in doubt, go back to past reviews for popular games and re-read them. They may claim that "hind sight is 20 / 20", but compare the "professional" review with user reviews and you'll see the same phenomenon of a the site giving the popular titles high scores while the actual players give an over all more realistic opinion.
edit: There's also the fact that giving a game a bad score will get you black listed by the development studios, which makes the jobs of the reviewers much more difficult.
What about the well-written ones that have given it 5-6?
I think it is low, but I can understand if someone think its 5-6. Imo its 8,5This is more true than I would like it to be.
Here is the real skinny on D3.
It's a very average game that is wrapped in a shiny aura of PR and a presence from Blizzard that they didn't do anything wrong. Blue posts on the D3 forums blatantly ignore the glaring flaws with the game by downplaying them. They have had 10 years to DESIGN the game. Game design can be done almost entirely on paper and, really, isn't very expensive. You hand draw lay-outs, right down class and skill ideas and you can even do math without ever having to load up something that has a bunch of skins and coded mechanics in it. You simply sit back and think of what you want to do, then think of a few back-ups in case it isn't pheasible to do that.
This doesn't cost that much because all you really need is maybe a lead artist and two lead designers to get started. I'm sure there are studio people that would disagree with me, but when you're in Blizzard's position and you aren't under time constraint you can take this approach. 10 years is a LOOOOONG time and you could do most of your theory work and a lot of design work before a programmer in three years. Spend the next seven actually putting everything together.
The game is in a poor state of polish for the amount of time Blizz has had to think about it. Some people have said, 'Well, the original Diablo devs aren't at Blizz anymore." Well, my response? So what? It's Blizzard. You're telling me they couldn't get other developers that know what they're doing?
There are a number of game points that don't seem to have any real point to them. I have no idea what the point of end-game is. Inferno is tough, but it's doable. The only real problem with Inferno is that gear drops that is completely useless. I have seen level 51 gear drop in Inferno and, to me, that shouldn't happen. There isn't a minimum value range assigned to gear in different difficulties, so it's really hard to see any kind of progression until you're already in act 4.
I am not entirely sure what Blizzard wants to do with the game and it's apparant to me that they don't either. I don't see how they're going to do any form of PvP that isn't utterly broken with the way classes are designed currently. With drops being as random as they are it's either really difficult to get good gear, or incredibly easy and there really is almost no in-between. Similarly - Blizzard seems intent on making Inferno even more difficult, but they don't seem intent on fixing drops. So PvP is going to be VERY gear oriented, but they don't want people to actually be able to farm for gear?
There are some theories out there that they are doing this because of the RMAH and the more I see Blizzard respond to player concerns the more I subscribe to this theory. Blizzard doesn't seem interested in giving the game any real direction. Instead, they would rather try to make people spend more money through the game. That might be OK if this weren't a game that already came with a full retail price tag. I already paid my money and I expect to have a complete game available to me.
At this point? The game just doesn't feel complete. There are a huge number of skills (through skill runes) that don't serve any real purpose. Skills like Grenades for Demon Hunters don't appear to have been thought out at all. Blizzard also made Inferno 'difficult' by designing cheap one-shot mechanics that, often, you can't avoid. This design choice forces players to choose the most optimal build and there aren't many of those because of the number of useless skills. After reading the most recent Blizzard dev post it is apparant that Blizzard has no interest in buffing or completely changing the skills that are vastly underperforming, but isntead they are only intent on weakening skills that are "over-performing".
The problem here is that "over-performing" for MANY classes is actually what is working as intended. Some dev at some point noticed how utterly cheap Inferno was and gave each class a way to cheese their way around that. Unfortunately, this is bad design trying to fix bad design. Being one-shot in a manner that you have no opportunity to avoid isn't 'difficult' - it's just bad design. Being one-shot is fine, but you have to give players a ready opportunity to AVOID being hit in some manner.
I like to think of Metal Slug when talking about such mechanics. See what I'm doing here? I'm not comparing two unrelated games. I'm using an EXAMPLE to strengthen my argument. This is good practice. Anyway...
So, in Metal Slug you only ever ger one-shot by EVERYTHING. The difference? You have the opportunity to avoid MOST of the stuff that will kill you. As in you can avoid death 95% of the time if you are quick enough and paying attention. The game is PUNISHING and DIFFICULT, but it isn't outright cheap. Most enemies telegraph that they're about to do something and it's up to you to position yourself accordingly. If you don't, then you die, simply as that.
Diablo 3 has no such opportunities for most cases. Bosses are the only mobs that will regularly and reliably indicate that they are about to do something. Champ mobs are and always will be (by Blizzard's own admission) the most difficult things to face. But this isn't because of ingenious mechanics. It's because of cheap mechanics that you HAVE to cheese your way through. You have champ mobs that have affixes such as Vortex, Desecrate, Jailer and Frozen all at the same time. Vortex just happens and there isn't anything you can do about it. The mobs will just randomly pull you in if you are too far away. Desecrate and Frozen ARE well-designed because you are given a chance to avoid them. Jailer, like Vortex, is something that just happens and you can't avoid it.
Players /are/ given abilities that can break CCs, but these abilities have either limited numbers of uses or incredibly long cool-downs. Basically, most Champ mob encounters in Inferno come down to an equation of whether or not you have enough gear to just steamroll the mob down. You either do or you don't and that's that. And some Champ mobs you might just have to skip because of the combination of natural skills that the mob it has coupled witht he Champ affixes that make them impossible to kill.
What all of the above basically means is that players are FORCED into specific, powerful builds to try to combat the cheesy champ mob combinations. Further, once you hit 60 you start getting a buff that increases your chance to get gold and loot. Sounds great, right? WRONG. The way the buff works is it stacks 5 times with each stack giving you a 15% bump to magic find and gold drops. However, if you change your skills you LOSE the buff. That means if you want to have the BEST chance to get drops you HAVE to have ONE build that can do EVERYTHING. This is a prime example of the confused nature of the design of D3.
On the one hand Blizz claims to want to promote diverse builds, but their actions are directly counter to this goal. Cheap mob mechanics coupled with a bonus that vanishes if you try to adapt to your situation drives players to use one or two optimal builds and nothing else.
Ultimately:
Gameplay 8/10 - It's fun to play, but it has almost zero replay value.
Art - 10/10 I can't fault the Blizz artists for anything here. The backgrounds and CG work are more than enough to get a perfect score
Overall:
5/10 The many confused and overall poor design choices really hinder the game. It could have been so much better if it had been put in the hands of people who knew what they were doing. Blizz CAN fix this because it is an online game, but at this point they don't seem interested in fixing anything. The biggest thing Blizz has on their plate is PvP, but I have no idea how they plan on making that work.
Well said. IMO, many critical people are looking for the game to be a perfect game. I would call it good enough which is good enough. It isn't settling to play games that are good enough. Having too rigid of standards is not allowing for good enough fun.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Incentive. Financial and otherwise.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Metacritic is not a good source of information, particularly not from the users. I'll agree D3 is a mediocre game, but it deserves a 0 about as much as it deserves as 10. I can't think of any game that deserves a 0. And I've played Daikatana.
Professional reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. Every single "AAA" game that comes out gets high marks from them, because it's all about advertising. You want real reviews, you go to smaller game sites and blogs, the ones that aren't getting paid to give amazing scores. Much as I love some of the staff on this site, that goes for them, too. The scores given to SWTOR, DCUO, Diablo, etc. (and I think they did Amalur, too, I forget), pretty much guarantee I take none of their opinions seriously. You go to professional sites for news, not reviews.
But by the same token, players are prone to avid extremes that can rival those from paid sources. Remember ME3? The massive dive bomb it took on Metacritic all because of an ending? Yep. Those 3-6's you see, at the lower end of the spectrum, are generally the only negative reviews that should be at all considered. Likewise, the 7-9's for the positive reviews. No game is a perfect 10, but unless it's completely unplayable, anything less than a '3' is from someone being flat out unreasonable.
Personally, after playing someone else's game, I'd give D3 a 6.5 considering the entire package. It would be somewhere between a 7 and an 8 if it had more replayability, but the gear grind and tedious repeating of content that is otherwise very short make me feel it's $60 better spent on a new PS3 rpg. *kisses his copy of Dragon's Dogma*
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Honestly, I don't think it's arrogant at all to think that a user who gives D3 a very low score has no perspective. And I really think your post here demonstrates this lack of perspective I am talking about.
Look at the games you use to compare D3 to. Skyrim and the Witcher 2. Both excellent games at the pinnacle of their respective sub-genres. You're comparing D3 (a decent game) to games that are generally considered to be amazing. You're also comparing it to games that are completely different in sub-genre.
Witcher is a fairly non-linear story-based RPG, like Dragon Age or BG2. Skyrim is a sandbox RPG like the other ES games and Two Worlds 2. D3 on the other hand, is a hack-and-slash in the vein of Gauntlet, XMen Legends, Torchlight, and Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance.
And when you compare D3 to the other games in its sub-genre...I honestly think it's decent. It's not spectacular, but decent.
And as to you "5 is average" point...I don't think that the rest of the world sees things that way. The vast majority of reviewers seem to rate games on the "American school system" scale. Where an "8" is above average, a "7" is average, and anything 6 or below is terrible. You may not like this, but well...that seems to be the standard that has been decided upon. Trying to adopt a different scale does nothing but confuse things when you take aggregate review sites like Metacritic into account.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
ET for Atari
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Oh lordeh, you went way back to the Atari days. Alright, I can't think of anything that deserves a 0 post-8 bit :P
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Long ago (in relative terms) I decided that if I wanted to watch a film, I'd avoid the ones that got a glowing review from the 'professional critics'. They almost always turned out to be trash. I'm obviously way out of sync with the people who get paid to watch/review the things.
I wasn't too surprised to find that the same thing applies to reviewers of games. The things that they find important I frequently regard as fluff and vice versa. I listen to other gamers who tend to say as they find rather than having to tone down reviews to keep the unknown faceless ones with the money happy.
By now 7+ million people have bought the game. If even 100,000 hated it (I'm sure the number is higher than this but it goes to show you how small of a percentage of people is necessary) and 10% of that number raged by giving diablo a zero on metacritic it kills the user score.
As others have said, angry people give bad scores and happy people are in game.
The truth is the vast majority of gamers love it.
Remember Old School Ultima Online