3/5 DONT BUY EVER SUCKS: Why do we consider these ratings shite

BiscuitTrouser

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Unsilenced said:
TIL: I should have gone to college in Britain.

If you only know 60% of how to do something, I wouldn't say you've learned how to do it. It may mean I have to re-take a few courses, but I'm glad people aren't going into the field only knowing 60% of how to be a doctor or an engineer.
Oh no no, to get 70% here in Britain you should know ALL of the course and lecture material. Knowing literally everything taught to you will scrape you the highest possible grade boundry, all further marks are awarded for above and beyond learning outside of the course.

Im bio-med and trust me, if you know 60% of the lecture material you will get 60% of 70% (somewhere around 40%) since only 70% of the marks will come from knowing what they have taught you. The 30 is to grade you on ability to learn outside of the course. Or at least its meant to, some lecturers are fairly harsh/generous in that regard.

Also believe me, if youre going to be a doctor like I'm trying to be and you get less than 70% you may as well go home, no one will remotely be interested in taking you on because like you said, anything less than 70 means I dont know some basic course material. Its pretty brutal.

If i get 70% it means I know 100% of how to be a doctor and got every course related question correct. If i get 80% it means Im up to date with the newest methods and research.

Last year I got 73% overall and was up there with the highest in the class, highest mark I saw was 78%.
 

Veldel

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The use of review scores for determining games just seems idiotic.

So many games I love have horrible scores but some games that are considered the best are games I have hated.

Also thinking a 6-7 is a bad game just seems plain stupid to me. Game reviewers often like and dislike things so having there tastes be the determination of what's good is flawed.
 

Frankster

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Personally I find the games I like tend to be of the flawed gems variety, so usually in 3/5, 4/5 region, I've yet to come across a "5/5" game that truly lived up to having a flawless score and if anything just seem to get burnt each time I try.
Bioshock Infinite is such a shitty fps for example (imo of course) yet it is one of most well received fps score wise you can find atm, I totally had buyers remorse on that one.

I'm not American so the whole "60%" minimum to pass doesn't enter my though process, heck if anything having been taught in the FRENCH system where its from 0-20 and a 10 is a pass and scores over 15 is considered very good, I've got no problem checking out games that have "just" 5/10 scores if there's an aspect to the game that seems interesting.
 

the_dramatica

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You really need to just be able to decipher the bias that certain communities will have.
Some I need to throw into the garbage, but most I can just read their bias and understand what their level of knowledge is on the industry and stuff.

I'm a firm believer against needing to give money to a company to actually find out if their game is awful, especially if they are repeat offenders.
 

Augustine

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Scars Unseen said:
Augustine said:
Scars Unseen said:
Augustine said:
I would like to posit that there is so much choice out there, that most people don't have to bother with anything below "7". Seems quite natural.
Not to say that assigning numbers to the quality of games is an effective way of measuring their merit...
That's only natural if number scores have merit. Otherwise it's just lazy self-deception.
As much as I dislike number measurement of games, I still do think they have merit. It is a useful shorthand for seeing the value of a title at a glance. I, for example, would not bother reading reviews of every piece of rubbish spawned by Steam Greenlight, but numbers of recommendations Steam provides, do give me some measure of how worthwhile closer look is.
I would point out that those are not the same thing. Steam's system is similar to Rotten Tomtoes in that you can only recommend or not, with no middle ground allowed. That is a much better system to my thinking. Is the game a rough gem? A polished turd? You can detail as much as you like, but it ultimately comes down to a single question: did you like it? Combined with their curation system, I think Steam has one the better "review" systems out there.
It is still a form of assigning numerical value to a game's worth. In the end, you look at some number that supposed to represent what the game is like. It's somewhat different from 1-10 grade, but the general principle remains the same. Individual review is yay/nay, but the overall picture is still a vast gradient of values.
 

Ambitiousmould

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Apr 22, 2012
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BiscuitTrouser said:
Prime_Hunter_H01 said:
70% or a C is the minimum passing score ingrained in to our mind as the minimum of good enough and everything up is better.
What the fuck? Is this the USA that does that?

Im at uni in the UK and our first, that is the best result you can get, is 70%. I consider 70% to be the one to aim for at least with 80% being above and beyond.

Thats so weird because it would mean 70% of the questions have to be easy enough for the average person to answer them, then one tiny fraction are VERY hard to weed out the good people. Thats such a stupid way of doing it, At my uni the average student will get 40-50% and all laddering is done from there on up.
I don't know what Uni/Course you're on, but I study graphic design at Sheffield Hallam (a shite uni, by the way, disorganised and trying too hard to make what should be a nice, technical yet creative course to be fine-arty and pretentious, which is bollocks, but I digress) and I'm fairly certain that a perfect first is 90%. A passing, but not good grade (low third) is about 40%. The average is about a 2.2, 2.1, which I think is around the 70%-80% mark.

Anyway, I wouldn't play any game under a 6/10 because 6/10 is about the bottom end of solid but flawed, whereas 5/10 is painfully dull, and 1-3 promises to be laughably bad. 4/10 is just plain old shit. Given less time/money to put into gaming does mean you ought to pick the better end of games though, so never playing anything less than an 8 is fair enough, but doesn't make it shite.
 

BiscuitTrouser

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ambitiousmould said:
I don't know what Uni/Course you're on, but I study graphic design at Sheffield Hallam (a shite uni, by the way, disorganised and trying too hard to make what should be a nice, technical yet creative course to be fine-arty and pretentious, which is bollocks, but I digress) and I'm fairly certain that a perfect first is 90%. A passing, but not good grade (low third) is about 40%. The average is about a 2.2, 2.1, which I think is around the 70%-80% mark.
I do bio-medical science at Aston uni (in birmingham, the not best but not shittiest uni in the city). Its definitely 70% for us, I scored a first in year 1 from 73%, NHS hospitals wont even consider you for a placement unless you do so im confident they recognised it was a first too. But its pretty harshly defined that 70% is the course material alone and 30% of questions will relate to knowledge from studies and textbooks that the lecturer hasnt mentioned except in passing "Read about X if you want more information". Dunno if other uni's use that system, but its good here since the top %ages have a lot of wiggle room to really fight among the top 10% for who is actually best. Useful when post graduate medicine is so competitive.
 

Ambitiousmould

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Apr 22, 2012
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BiscuitTrouser said:
I do bio-medical science at Aston uni (in birmingham, the not best but not shittiest uni in the city). Its definitely 70% for us, I scored a first in year 1 from 73%, NHS hospitals wont even consider you for a placement unless you do so im confident they recognised it was a first too. But its pretty harshly defined that 70% is the course material alone and 30% of questions will relate to knowledge from studies and textbooks that the lecturer hasnt mentioned except in passing "Read about X if you want more information". Dunno if other uni's use that system, but its good here since the top %ages have a lot of wiggle room to really fight among the top 10% for who is actually best. Useful when post graduate medicine is so competitive.
Well my course is 100% coursework, which is generally easier, so I suppose higher grade boundaries are to balance it out. Plus the graphics industry isn't very competitive at all, especially in my area. Makes sense, really.
 

JohnnyDelRay

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I say screw the review scores, and just figure it out by yourself. Do the research you need to until you're satisfied, nowadays there's so many freaking avenues to get info on a game from articles, let's plays, independent and corporate reviews. Reason I say this is because, in my day, I've seen the same game get from a dismal 2/10 all the way to 10/10 (Deadly Premonition, IGN and Jim Sterling, respectively). So what to make of that? I've even seen a game I had a smashing time with (Kane & Lynch) get scored so low someone (apparently) got fired over it. So do your homework, take reviewers opinions with a grain of salt, decide what YOU like.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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How hard is it just to watch some unedited gameplay videos of a game to get a feel for the game? It's pretty easy to tell if you're going to a like or dislike a game based on the gameplay videos. Some games like RPGs that have battle systems that you kinda have to play and try before knowing if you like them but most games are pretty easy to determine gameplay quality.
 

Sung-Hwan

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I think reviews and ratings are propaganda and that people should learn that these things are OPINIONS and not FACT.
 

Winthrop

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BiscuitTrouser said:
Prime_Hunter_H01 said:
70% or a C is the minimum passing score ingrained in to our mind as the minimum of good enough and everything up is better.
What the fuck? Is this the USA that does that?

Im at uni in the UK and our first, that is the best result you can get, is 70%. I consider 70% to be the one to aim for at least with 80% being above and beyond.

Thats so weird because it would mean 70% of the questions have to be easy enough for the average person to answer them, then one tiny fraction are VERY hard to weed out the good people. Thats such a stupid way of doing it, At my uni the average student will get 40-50% and all laddering is done from there on up.

I guess thats why I consider 7/10 to be definitely quite good. Id consider 6/10 to be meh, 5 to be a neutral time sink and all other things below to be actively unfun.
My University (in the USA) doesn't give credit for a course with a score under 73%. In high school, the cutoff was 70%. Some professors have a view similar to yours and they take the tests out of a lower score (My chem professor had tests with 130 points possible and took scores out of 100, so theoretically it was possible to get 130%, but essentially no one did). Other professors have a lot of easy questions (to the point that the class feels mostly pointless). And some professors don't care how many students they fail (while I understand the idea behind this, it sucks to have your GPA tanked and your future destroyed by an overly strict professor). For a point of reference, the average on my physics final was a 63% while my Anatomy final was an 82%.

Still, its silly that in my system 70% of the scale are degrees of unplayably bad and in yours around 50% is unplayable.

OT: Part of it is score inflation. Because we call a 6/10 terrible and think a 6/10 is a terrible score, a reviewer cannot give a game a 6/10 without people assuming its terrible, and so he has to give it a higher score to reflect that its just average. Given this method over time, we accept higher and higher scores belong to bad or average games and the scale gets pushed higher and higher until everyone thinks a 9.9999/10 is the worst game of the decade.
 

MerlinCross

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One reason I don't go by reviews these days. I go by articles. Basically I browse sites for names of games, go look at them, do some research and then decide to pick it up or not. Found a lot of cool titles just because someone mentions them.

I also wish we could drop the scoring or tweak it. Need some more "And if you liked X, then you might like Y" or the like in the reviews. Or like a breakdown of what they liked, neutral or hated about it. Scores have just always seemed weird.
 

CannibalCorpses

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I think it's a shame that you allow other people to make your decisions for you and basically that advertising rules your opinion.
 

NPC009

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Aug 23, 2010
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I also wish we could drop the scoring or tweak it. Need some more "And if you liked X, then you might like Y" or the like in the reviews. Or like a breakdown of what they liked, neutral or hated about it. Scores have just always seemed weird.
You mean like those plusses and minuses? I like those too, though some gamers do have a knack for pulling 'em out of context. ("Too much water")
 

vledleR

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I got to agree with Yahtzee and Total Biscuit, in that numerical scores are quite meaningless. I do think written reviews need some kind of breakdown, especially these days with some reviews going over 700 words, but most sites do a point form of good/bad, which is good enough imo.

We are getting better though. You look at Gamespot, and their scoring system has evolved nicely. If you look back pre-2007, they adhered to a mathematical formula to their reviews. smh
 

MerlinCross

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NPC009 said:
You mean like those plusses and minuses? I like those too, though some gamers do have a knack for pulling 'em out of context. ("Too much water")
Taken at face value; it's silly and doesn't actually explain the though process behind it. Actually reading the article or sitting down and thinking about it does however expand on too much water(Too many water mons, surfing isn't fun)

Now another thing I wouldn't mind seeing, more than one article/review in a sidebar. I don't know if they still do them but certain game magazines would have a review, and then someone else's thoughts about the game in a smaller side bar. This way you easily got 2 views on the game, even if the second one wasn't as in depth.

I just hate scores as of hmmm, last few years actually. Just give me a title and I'll do my own research or try the demo.
 

crazygameguy4ever

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I always read/watch reviews before buying a game, but i don't worry about the final scores.. i worry about the good things and bad things about the game before deciding if I'll get it or not.. sometimes I've enjoyed buying a playing game that were giving low scores, while other time's I've gotten game that got high scores and been majorly disappointing by the games.. so now I'm more careful and down follow the final scores as much as I use too.. I use it as a guideline to assist me in deciding on getting a game.
 

NPC009

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Aug 23, 2010
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I just hate scores as of hmmm, last few years actually. Just give me a title and I'll do my own research or try the demo.
Scores can be useful when looking for different opinion.

Yesterday I saw Natural Doctrine on sale, but I didn't know much about it. I went to Metacritic to read some reviews.

I read the one with the highest score (8), which told me that the game is great because it's as rewarding as it is punishing. It also explained that the game is poorly written and emotional scenes lack impact. The message seemed to be: this is a game for smart people, if you can't appreciate its intricate systems you are not smart.

The lowest one (4) liked the concept of the battlesystem but not its execution. There were complaints about a lack of tutorials or other proper explanations of the systems. The reviewer went into detail about how skills aren't versatile (sleep spell only works on a select few enemies) and that there seemed to be only one or two valid strategies for every stage, limiting the fun of experimentation.

The middleground (6) seemed to mostly agree with the lowest: the systems work in theory, not in practice. It did however state that gamers looking for a very difficult game may find Natural Doctrine interesting despite its shortcomings.

In the end I decided against buying. I don't mind a difficult game, but I don't think challenge should be accompanied by frustration.