User rating 7.6? MMORPG rating 7.3? Yea OK

Index420 · May 2006

I seriously dont see how those numbers are put together, I played in beta, hell I even played for a little while after it, just enough time to pay into my second month....and When I got tired of switching charactors to make a full group on the 'most' populated server because of the lack of people LFG...and the whole entire time turbine is trying to split up the population over 16 servers or however many there were! Just makes ya think, do they want this game to die? Ok you might get over the fact that youll be in small groups or soloing in a game designed for grouping, but then the super realistic DND feel comes out when you run stormcleave on elite for the 60th time...why run the same quest so many times you might ask? Cause at that lvl you have a choice of maybe 4-5 different quests, and of those usually 1 or 2 are barely worth the effort..I had more fun setting up my macro programs in Ultima Online...

I call bogus on that 7.6 rating....Realistically as someone who loved this game at first, and has now come to hate it for the steaming pile of bytes that it is, i would give it no more then a 3.0 and add about 2.5 to that because I am also biased in the fact that they sullied the DnD name with this crap...

So in all fairness a game that is meant to capture the 'feel' of DnD pen and paper, but instead is the most restrictive and non-explorative game I have ever played...oh wait...there is one that is less, that was Diablo...but no wait diablo had random dungeons *HINT HINT*

Turbine i spit in your face, and hope you loose millions for this insult to all DnD fans..

and now I feel better, Thank you for your time if you bothered reading my grammerical abortion of a rant..
Have a nice (DDO-less) day,

Jd1680a · May 2006

the 7.6 user rating is an average. some 100 or so people have submitted their own rating to DDO and as a result you get 7.6. mmorpg.com rating is what the editor have rated DDO. just like anyone else, the editor have an opinion to DDO and as you could see the editor 7.3 is his or her opinion.

thursday · May 2006

Well, when my guild is on, i.e. normal playing times, I would probably give this game a 7.6 rating or even higher.

However, and this a huge effing however, when they are not on and I am playing a more experimental character I can only get a pick up group about 50% of the time and 50% of those are rushers made up of either idiots or people who are too experienced to drink in the surroundings. So when I am in friendless mode this game deserves 2.5.

All in all I am very happy that I paid a few months subscription but I have been lucky starting it with real life friends. For those starting on their own this is a nightmare of a game and I wouldn't give them more than a fortnight before they quit.

The whole thing stinks of exploitation of mature gamers who used to play PnP D&D and have alot more cash than teenagers or students (there is not a single person under 30 in my guild). Few mature PnPers are going to care about a couple of months wasted subscription whereas those on a budget, that means that subscriptions are a real financial decision, are going to give this a miss. All in all I can't see this game lasting a whole year, although I really wish that it could.

Kien · May 2006

Ratings on game sites are always inflated. Maybe it's because the game has one or two nice features (like great sound) that give the overall score a little bump. Or, maybe no one has the ---- to tell it like it is.

If I see a rating in the range of 7, I know from experience to pass. In that light, I think a 7.3 rating from MMORPG is accurate.

Anofalye · May 2006

Well, if you would judge DDO as a RPG, I would agree, it would have issues to at least reach 5.0.

However, what you must understand, is peoples are judging the game not merely as a RPG, but as a MMO, any type.

DDO is a nice ACTION MMO, it deserve prolly a 8.0 or so, in this field, however by advertising as a RPG and having the D&D name, I pretty much agree with the staff rating of this site, even if not exactly for the same reasons.

See, if you judge DDO merely as a RPG, it will be miserable. But it is indeed a nice ACTION game. Not for me, but it is nice nonetheless. Some of my casuals friends are enjoying it! However, those casuals friends had someone to advice them, to tell them WHAT this game was, they would most likely have consider it without proper information, as a RPG, which it is not. See, thinking DDO is a rpg is the downfall of this game, it is many things, but it is not a rpg.

thursday · May 2006

Anofalye, I agree that it is not a classic MMORPG and to a certain extent that is why I like the game so much, it is just like playing a co-operative rpg, fps and strategy game rolled in one without the boring crafting or long travelling times that most MMORPGs suffer from.

That does not get round the real problem of finding a group. I used to play Rise of Nations online alot (pretty badly I admit) and never had to wait more that 5 minutes for a game. Why should I wait 30 minutes to play a 10 minute instance?

Longswd · May 2006

You also have to bear in mind the shill factor. Many postive reviews and hyper-postive posts, that most would label as fanboi spew, are in fact paid-for guerrilla marketing. It's not difficult to pick out the accounts associated with that kind of behavior. Simply put, the system is open to abuse by the shills. Just how much that skews the validity of the rating system is open to debate but skew it, it does.

AgtSmith · June 2006

I agree that thier review numbers do not add up with what thier own reviewer said - I made a thread abotu this discrepency in the 'site suggestion' forum.

Check it out: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/80466 .

Tigercha · June 2006

Another problem with Rating a MMO is how long do you need to rate it, 30 days, 100 days, in all hounesty I would say at least 100 Days, do most people review the game before or after they have played it for 30 Days, probably most of them review it on there initial impressions, which are flawed in most MMO's.

an example would be CoH, if you reviewed that within 30 days then it would be good, if you reviewed it 30 days later, then you would half the score and after 100 days you would have to have a disorder to continue playing it :-)

Elnator · June 2006

Erm... normally I'd agree but in the case of DDO you can get through almost 1/3 of the content in 7 days of relatively casual play. If you are a very avid player you can burn through over half of it in the first 7 days you own the game.

I generally don't need THAT much time to tell if I like a game or if I dislike it. Frankly if it takes me more than a week to figure out if a game is "fun" or not it gets categorized as "not fun". This is especially true of a game that's going to cost me not just a box price but also a monthly fee. DDO costs $230 to play in the first year. $180 every year afterwards. And that's only if they don't charge for expansions.

So when I review a game it's with the price in mind. Sure $15 a month doesn't sound like much. But if I don't spend that $15 a month on a game I sure as heck can use $180 a year somewhere else very nicely. So for a game to be worth a monthly fee it needs to be VERY good indeed. DDO is VERY good at what LITTLE it does. Problem is there are other games that offer more, for less.

As I've said: DDO isn't a bad game... and all my numbers for it would go up if it either offered more features for the price or if it lowered (drastically), or removed, the price.

As it stands now? My overall rating for it worked out to 5.9. Mind you: I don't buy into the % system. I use a rating system of 1 to 10 where 1 = bad and 10 = awesome. A 5 is about average.

seabass2003 · June 2006

Hmm. This is wierd. I rated DDO 9.3.

AgtSmith · June 2006

Nobody is questioning what rating someone gives a game - just how you can review the game poorly saying things like what I quoted in that link ( http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/787705/thread/80466#787705 ) and then assign a number like 7-soemthing to the score.

Shurijo · June 2006

At most game review sites, you won't find many games under 7. Where 7 is considered average. I think the game must not be installable or completely hose your computer to get less than a 7 nowadays.

Didn't you hear.... 7 is the new 5

AgtSmith · June 2006

Well, that is kinda my point - if MMORPG.com is like 'most' game sites/mags then it is just a big marketting tool for developers and not worth much to me. Not trying to flame up MMORPg.com but why in the world would I want to visit a site that is nothing but a big ad?

Ian_Hawkmoon · June 2006

Originally posted by Tigercha

Another problem with Rating a MMO is how long do you need to rate it, 30 days, 100 days, in all hounesty I would say at least 100 Days, do most people review the game before or after they have played it for 30 Days, probably most of them review it on there initial impressions, which are flawed in most MMO's.
an example would be CoH, if you reviewed that within 30 days then it would be good, if you reviewed it 30 days later, then you would half the score and after 100 days you would have to have a disorder to continue playing it :-)

You really expect these game sites to play a game for 100 days before rating it? Now if you are talking about waiting at least 100 days before you start to assess the game and to rate it... That is completely different, but to play it for 100 days... Not a chance...

Elnator · June 2006

Originally posted by Ian_Hawkmoon

Originally posted by Tigercha

Another problem with Rating a MMO is how long do you need to rate it, 30 days, 100 days, in all hounesty I would say at least 100 Days, do most people review the game before or after they have played it for 30 Days, probably most of them review it on there initial impressions, which are flawed in most MMO's.
an example would be CoH, if you reviewed that within 30 days then it would be good, if you reviewed it 30 days later, then you would half the score and after 100 days you would have to have a disorder to continue playing it :-)

You really expect these game sites to play a game for 100 days before rating it? Now if you are talking about waiting at least 100 days before you start to assess the game and to rate it... That is completely different, but to play it for 100 days... Not a chance...

IMO games should be able to impress within the first 1 or 2 hours of logging in. That is the most CRUCIAL time for a game. It's what killed eve early on. Now that they've revamped the new player tutorial it keeps a LOT more 'newbies' than it did back when the tutorial SUCKED (and it really really did suck).

If in your first couple hours playing a game you don't like it odds are the average gamer is gonna take it back to the shop. WoW is so successful because in it's first couple hours it's a very fun experience. There are lots of little quests that give decent rewards that keep the player involved while learning the game. IRTH, on the other hand, had a HORRIBLE tutorial. So did Horizons... so did EVE (originally) so did SWG (originally) and so did a bunch of other titles. Hell... EQ1 didn't even HAVE a tutorial (god that was fun, drowning in surefall during beta before I figured out how to swim LOL!!!) UO didn't have a tutorial... all those older titles (and newer) that had bad, or no, tuturial would not appeal to the 'masses'. Because the first few hours of the game are more like 'work' than like a 'game'.

So, absolutely you should CERTAINLY be able to know if you like or dislike a game within the first few DAYS of playing, not months. If it takes months to decide then the game is a failure, period.

However:
Games should be reviewed by review sites:
1) Shortly before release (hype)
2) Shortly after release (actual)
3) 6 Months after release (stability)
4) 1 Year after release (growth/evolution)

Any game that survives more than 3 years should get a new review every year or so to see what has changed.

Wish I had a magazine company

I'd do just that.

But to expect ANYONE to play a game for 100 days before forming an opinion is just absolutely ludicrous. And expecting people to tolerate crappy releases is ridiculous as well. If a release is horrid or incomplete then the company deserves to get it's nose shoved into it.

Elnator · June 2006

Originally posted by seabass2003
Hmm. This is wierd. I rated DDO 9.3.

Based on what???? Roleplay and Value should have pulled it down to at most a 7 or 8, even if you gave it 9/10 in all other areas. And I don't see how even the most avid fan could give it more than a 7 in value because it's clear that it doesn't offer as many features for the same money as any other MMO on the market.

Chessack · June 2006

You have to realize that ratings are a bit strange. On a scale of 1-10, people seem to rate "mehhh... it's OK but not great" as a 7, on the theory that "70% = C" in school. Good games get in the 8-9 range, and outstanding ones get 9-10. Meanwhile, absolutely abysmal ones get around 5, which would be 50% or an "F" in school grade terms. Yes, they should NOT think in those terms, but they just do.

I had this argument on the NWN Vault a couple of years ago. The ratings were inflated there too. People gave 9.9 or 10 to really good stuff, 9.0 to decent stuff, and 8.0 to questionable stuff. What it does is squish the numbers into a tighter range.

However if you grab the #s here and look, there are about 100 MMOs listed. The top 20 or so are around 8.0 or higher. Then there is a batch between 7.6 and 8.0 that are the next 20 or so... Then there is a group around 7.0-7.5 or so, and then another group below 7. Taken together, this basically means in MMORPG.com rating terms:

8 or higher = A
7.6-8.0 = B
7.0-7.5 = C
< 7.0 = F

More or less, that's how you can picture it. This would put DDO in the "C+" or "B-" category... it's right on the border.

I would say as ratings go, and my experiences with games in a few of the regions, that the way people rate things on MMORPG.com, I would not consider going near anything with below a 7.6 rating, and probably not below 8.0. If you look at how it's rated, then DDO at 7.6 is not getting high praise the way people rate things.

Also, remember that a game can suck but the way the ratings work have a high score. For example, I despise the SWG NGE system and would rank it very low in many areas, but it still has good graphics, music, etc, and I would have to rate those high (if I were being honest). That's going to inflate the score. A game with great visuals and sound is going to have a minimum of 2 points right there (10s in both would give it that), and then if it has one other good element and a couple of "mediocre" ones, even if the gameplay is a 1, you're talking a minimum of around 4-5 points.

If you look at it as "on a scale of 5 to 10 DDO is 7.5" it looks much worse than if you think on a scale of 1-10. It's just almost impossible for a game to be so universally bad in all categories that even someone really voting it down (if being honest) could give it a 1... Most games will get a high score in *something*. Even DnL, currently the lowest-rated MMO on the site (3.8 at the time I write this) is nearly at 4... and that's the worst you can get.

C

AgtSmith · June 2006

Originally posted by Chessack

8 or higher = A
7.6-8.0 = B
7.0-7.5 = C
< 7.0 = F

More or less, that's how you can picture it. This would put DDO in the "C+" or "B-" category... it's right on the border.

The problem with that is that there is no proper scale to it - in letter grades A is excellent, B is good, C is acceptable/average, D is poor, F is failing.

You cannot assign numbers ona rolling scare where a 1 point increase from 6.3 to 7.3 is the differance between failing and better than average but that same 1 point from 7.3 to 8.3 wwould be from better than avg to good.

I mean consider what was written in that DDO review (nearly as bad as you could give in many ways) and consider that the highest rated game on the site barely gets one point more - that means they are rating not on 1 - 10 scale but a 6 to 8 scale.

By the reviewers own words at least 2 or 3 of the scores on DDO should have been 5 indicating clear failure, giving something an 8 or 9 for being good and a 7 for nto being good is the smae kind of useless advertising/marketting crap game mags do and if that is what MMORPG.com is about then it is completely useless to me.

Chessack · June 2006

I agree. On a 1-10 scale I think people should use the full range.

But they don't... For some reason the "professional" or site-employed reviewers seem to like to stay in a very narrow range (6-8ish, as you say), rarely ever handing out 1s, 2s, or 10s. This makes reviews much less useful than if people used the full range.

C

AgtSmith · June 2006

I agree - and that was the poitn of the post I started here:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/790441/thread/80466#790441

Once you realize the scale is being tweaked you have to ask why. In considering this why I have come to the conclusion that like other game sites and game mags MMORPG.com simply exists as a promotional platform for developers and as such it has no value to me. Sorry to be harsh but reviewing thier 'reviews' shows a clear pattern of not wanting to tick of developers and giving obviously false scores even if the text of reviews is mroe appropriately honest. I couldn't find a single game from a large developer (the kind that advertise and are needed for info and promos) that had a score under 7. Star Wars Galaxies is the lowest of note and even it got a 7 which is even more ridiculous.

Simply put - MMORPG.com has ZERO credibility and is therefore useless as anything other than an ad platform.

Dento · June 2006

WOW!

AgtSmith

Very well written.

It was good to see the responses from Dana and Jon.

Hopefully we will see a better rating system soon because when you make a statement like "This is where Turbine has really sold its players short " and rate it a 6 there is something wrong .

If they are selling the players short shouldn't that rate a 1 or a 2 at best?

I would like to see that rating not a cumulative number of all attributes of the game but a overall rating of how fun the game is to play and would the reviewer pay a monthly fee to play the game.

When I see a score of 7.3 I think hey this game is pretty good let me give a try and I would waste $50 on a POS like DDO and after a couple of days I would realize that I was not given a true score which would total discredit the publisher of the article and I would have to find another source for my information.

Or just come back here to post how totally bogus that review was

Elnator · June 2006

I wouldn't say the ratings are completely invalidated but they should have a disclaimer stating that they never use 1-5 or 8.5 to 10 so that people understand that the rating system is really a 5-8.3 scale when looking at the overall scores.

Once you know that the scores actually start to make sense with anything below about 7 being not even worth looking at, anything from 7 to 7.5 being sub-par, anything between 7.5 and 8 being 'borderline' and anything 8 or above probably being a decent/good game.

Not saying it's right but once you understand the limitations of the rating system you can work with it and still get somewhat valid data.

seabass2003 · June 2006

Originally posted by Elnator

Originally posted by seabass2003
Hmm. This is wierd. I rated DDO 9.3.

Based on what???? Roleplay and Value should have pulled it down to at most a 7 or 8, even if you gave it 9/10 in all other areas. And I don't see how even the most avid fan could give it more than a 7 in value because it's clear that it doesn't offer as many features for the same money as any other MMO on the market.

Ok. So I rated it a 9.3. You think it should be somewhere around a 5. The only point I want to make here is that "ratings" are all based on opinions and as long as they are based in opinion and personal tastes no rating will ever be right for everyone. There are too many variables that cause ratings to be this way.

You say roleplay and value should pull it down to 7 but if I am playing the game with 5 RL friends who used to play the pnp and we are loving it and having a blast, my rating would be different for both roleplay and value.

People complain about customer service, but what if everytime I had a problem it was actually taken care of? That would change the rating for that.

Most people like the graphics but what if I said my human runs like a knock kneed little girl and I hated it. This would change the rating once again.

My only point is the fact that all ratings are based in opinion and CAN'T be based on fact because we all differ in opinion. So why complain about a game's rating? Its the same as complaining that someone likes Cheez-its because you don't like them.

AgtSmith · June 2006

Originally posted by seabass2003

Ok. So I rated it a 9.3. You think it should be somewhere around a 5. The only point I want to make here is that "ratings" are all based on opinions and as long as they are based in opinion and personal tastes no rating will ever be right for everyone. There are too many variables that cause ratings to be this way.

The point I was making in the thread I linked above, and here, is that the score assigned wasn't inline with the scorers comments. See the other post for more detailed comment but saying the game's sound is no better and no worse than other games and then giving it an 8 does not jive. Nor does saying it is 'unfair' to charge a monthly fee for the game and then give it a 6 for value.

Certainly differant folks will rate things differant but the issue is the score of a review not matching, in any descernable way, with the comments of the scorer/reviewer.

Elnator · June 2006

Originally posted by AgtSmith

Originally posted by seabass2003

Ok. So I rated it a 9.3. You think it should be somewhere around a 5. The only point I want to make here is that "ratings" are all based on opinions and as long as they are based in opinion and personal tastes no rating will ever be right for everyone. There are too many variables that cause ratings to be this way.

The point I was making in the thread I linked above, and here, is that the score assigned wasn't inline with the scorers comments. See the other post for more detailed comment but saying the game's sound is no better and no worse than other games and then giving it an 8 does not jive. Nor does saying it is 'unfair' to charge a monthly fee for the game and then give it a 6 for value.

Certainly differant folks will rate things differant but the issue is the score of a review not matching, in any descernable way, with the comments of the scorer/reviewer.

Exactly

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User rating 7.6? MMORPG rating 7.3? Yea OK

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User rating 7.6? MMORPG rating 7.3? Yea OK

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