Revenge of the Metacritics: Diablo III Getting Review-Bombed

[DarkSoldier84]

We ARE entitled. If you pay $60 or more for a video game, then you ARE entitled to play it at your leisure. If the game has to have a constant connection to a remote server, then you ARE entitled to a remote server that has a constant connection to your computer.

Always-connected DRM is objectively, morally WRONG. All it does is allow the publisher to screw with its paying customers. There is nothing stopping Blizzard from pulling the plug on its servers and letting them gather dust. No amount of consumer outrage matters; they got your $60 or more, they got their millions from both retail and direct-download sales, so they can say, in a nice bold Exocet font, "Go fuck yourselves" and shut down their servers whenever they like.

It doesn't stop piracy; rather, it ENCOURAGES piracy. Why should I buy your crippled game that I can't play if your server isn't playing nice when I can download a cracked application that bypasses the server-check and play at my leisure? Is it supposed to stop item-hackers and -dupers from exploiting the auction house? It was YOUR idea to include an auction house; don't inconvenience ME to protect YOUR game economy.

Did.. did I sound like Jim Sterling there? Really? Well, thank God for me, then.

 

[Grunt_Man11]

I think it's sad that the zeroes will probably be deleted even though people have a right to be angry about not being able to play a single-player game offline. They warned about this before release! I don't care, people should be able to use whatever they purchased.

This does not justify a zero score. Especially since it is NOT news. Especially since D3 is obviously NOT an offline game.

It does if the game is defective.

If a person installs on their PC, or puts a game into a console, and they are unable to play it and their PC/console is in working order; then the game is defective!

This isn't a bunch of whiners zero bombing a game because of hats. This is people letting everyone know that releasing a game that is defective and unplayable is not acceptable.

"Blizzard said they were going to do this since they announced it."

So, Blizzard flat out said that they were going to make a defective game? And people just went along with it!?

I'm thinking about taking bets on when the second Video Game Crash is going to occur.

 

[Aeshi]

It was defective for a few days, most MMOs have that at launch too (and at semi-regular intervals afterward to boot) and nobody ever seems to review-bomb them because of it.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Metacritic is a place where you can go to get a review unfettered by the fear of pissing off a publisher.

Personally I hate "scoring" reviews, because the scale is completely arbitrary. If you must rely on a number then there should only be a 1 and a 10 because anything in between is obvious bullshit.

There is obviously a cutoff of what you're willing to play and what you aren't. And if you feel a game is worthy of being played, does it matter if it was only an 8.5/10 or a 9/10. No it was just worth playing.

And conversely if a game isn't fun are you going to differentiate between a 4/10 and a 5.5/10 or a 2/10 it all reeks of bullshit to me.

It should be the job of the reviewer to express a clear enough opinion of what (s)he likes, and it's the job of the reader to be able to interpret that opinion and apply it to their own sense of taste.

There's no such thing as an objective review, there is no way to "review a game on it's own merits" because every merit you can review a game on has subjective weight to anyone who might play a game. There is no "baseline" for taste.

So all this tells you is that general consensus of a games quality is low.
Read reviews.
Find a critic who's sense of taste is close to yours.
give their opinions more validity to influence your purchasing decisions.

it's not that complicated.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Fair enough but the only 2 points I'm trying to make are

"if you do play Diablo 3, you have no choice but to play the game on their servers"

I'm just focusing on that that first "if", buying the game means that you accepted what it was and like it or not, its an always online game. If you don't accept that don't buy it.

I'm a big, overt supporter of fair business and "voting with your wallet".

And I already do that already with companies I cannot trust, or feasibly cannot do business with. My internet connection regularly drops Bnet 2.0 with Starcraft 2; why the hell would I bother trying to play an entire game that requires a constant connection to it?

Second thing is that just because it can be a bad move doesn't mean game entities aren't gonna keep trying to implement similar methods of DRM, piracy is a problem in the PC games market. These are steps against pirates, hackers and the like. At least they aren't charging a monthly sub and calling it a MORPG, then it would be greedy.

Oh they will make their attempts for sure, and eventually, something will bomb on them, and it will spook their backers/investors. They will realize that maybe, JUST MAYBE the cost of absolute control isn't worth the added risk.

It's not like piracy has killed these companies outright; if piracy was actually costing them money they would have all gone out of business years ago, DRM or not. But the polar opposite has happened; the gaming industry has flourished and grown into a media force that rivals freaking HOLLYWOOD.

All the while, the "solution" is becoming more costly than the problem....and they expect their legitimate customers to foot the entire bill for it; both in terms of money, and rights.

IMO giving a game full time online servers with multiple beneficial features and asking no extra fee in return other than the option to maybe use the RMAH doesn't sound like a greedy practice to me, it sounds like an evolution of online and single player gaming combined.

IMO, it acts like a "gateway drug"; it's something to try to ease people into accepting this bullshit DRM as business standard. I remember when Oblivion launched and people discovered the Horse Armor DLC was on the disc. It raised such a huge stink that Bethesda vowed to be more forthcoming about their DLC offerings.

Today, on-disc DLC is just part-and-parcel of the business. Sure, SOME people make a fuss, but it was nowhere near the same level of rejection as it was then. (Today, we even have apologists who will blindly throw the word "entitled" at anyone for just criticizing DLC; not just for demanding or laying claim to it.)

You may see this as "evolution", but I see the subtraction of practicality and the introduction of a needless, major point of failure as back-peddling (especially for consumers).

 

[SovietSecrets]

Spoiler

The game works now!

 

[chadachada123]

Metacritic is a place where you can go to get a review unfettered by the fear of pissing off a publisher.

Personally I hate "scoring" reviews, because the scale is completely arbitrary. If you must rely on a number then there should only be a 1 and a 10 because anything in between is obvious bullshit.

There is obviously a cutoff of what you're willing to play and what you aren't. And if you feel a game is worthy of being played, does it matter if it was only an 8.5/10 or a 9/10. No it was just worth playing.

And conversely if a game isn't fun are you going to differentiate between a 4/10 and a 5.5/10 or a 2/10 it all reeks of bullshit to me.

It should be the job of the reviewer to express a clear enough opinion of what (s)he likes, and it's the job of the reader to be able to interpret that opinion and apply it to their own sense of taste.

There's no such thing as an objective review, there is no way to "review a game on it's own merits" because every merit you can review a game on has subjective weight to anyone who might play a game. There is no "baseline" for taste.

So all this tells you is that general consensus of a games quality is low.
Read reviews.
Find a critic who's sense of taste is close to yours.
give their opinions more validity to influence your purchasing decisions.

it's not that complicated.

I think you're on the right track with your idea, except that there is definitely a middle ground between awesome and unworthy of being played. A rating that would signify "yeah, it's alright, but not worth the money or not particularly awesome."

I agree otherwise though. IGN and Metacritic are useless for figuring out if a game is good or worth the money.

 

[Dendio]

I think its because the diablo 3 style of gameplay is non standard. BLizz gave away over a million free diablo 3 games to its annual pass subscribers. Many of these pass people may not be into the dungeon crawler type of game. Ive heard many call it wow lite. These people would not have bought diablo 3, but got it from the pass deal and may now be part of the review bombing spree

 

[Mikeyfell]

Metacritic is a place where you can go to get a review unfettered by the fear of pissing off a publisher.

Personally I hate "scoring" reviews, because the scale is completely arbitrary. If you must rely on a number then there should only be a 1 and a 10 because anything in between is obvious bullshit.

There is obviously a cutoff of what you're willing to play and what you aren't. And if you feel a game is worthy of being played, does it matter if it was only an 8.5/10 or a 9/10. No it was just worth playing.

And conversely if a game isn't fun are you going to differentiate between a 4/10 and a 5.5/10 or a 2/10 it all reeks of bullshit to me.

It should be the job of the reviewer to express a clear enough opinion of what (s)he likes, and it's the job of the reader to be able to interpret that opinion and apply it to their own sense of taste.

There's no such thing as an objective review, there is no way to "review a game on it's own merits" because every merit you can review a game on has subjective weight to anyone who might play a game. There is no "baseline" for taste.

So all this tells you is that general consensus of a games quality is low.
Read reviews.
Find a critic who's sense of taste is close to yours.
give their opinions more validity to influence your purchasing decisions.

it's not that complicated.

I think you're on the right track with your idea, except that there is definitely a middle ground between awesome and unworthy of being played. A rating that would signify "yeah, it's alright, but not worth the money or not particularly awesome."

I agree otherwise though. IGN and Metacritic are useless for figuring out if a game is good or worth the money.

There isn't that much of a middle ground between "worth playing" and "not worth playing" I guess a "Not for everyone" but that's always implied.

With a "Play it" and a "Don't play it" as the only two options, there would be a paradigm shift in how reviews work. To the point where it would make sites with multiple reviewers somewhat obsolete.

I just get sick of so called objective reviews that boils down to a bunch of stuff you can find out by watching the trailer reading the back of the box. For example: after reading the Escapist review of Diablo 3 still have no idea whether or not I want to play it.

Basically what I'm saying is that everyone should review games the way Yahtzee does.

 

[Hunter65416]

Mostly it comes down to the fact that if your game doesnt work for some stupid reason your more likely to log onto the net and vent your angst in comparison with the people who the games working fine for and would give the game a nice review if they were asked but hey they're busy enjoying diablo.

 

[lapan]

Spoiler

The game works now!

It's having hacking issues, had a downtime for several hours on sunday afternoon on the EU servers and still has latency issues. I'd hardly call that working perfectly or even acceptable.

 

[SovietSecrets]

Spoiler

The game works now!

It's having hacking issues, had a downtime for several hours on sunday afternoon on the EU servers and still has latency issues. I'd hardly call that working perfectly or even acceptable.

Hacking issues I have noticed and have yet to encounter anything and every game has them. No game is free from hacks while I agree it blows. I play on NA so I have no idea about downtime, but I have had no issues since the first night of launch.

 

[lapan]

Spoiler

The game works now!

It's having hacking issues, had a downtime for several hours on sunday afternoon on the EU servers and still has latency issues. I'd hardly call that working perfectly or even acceptable.

Hacking issues I have noticed and have yet to encounter anything and every game has them. No game is free from hacks while I agree it blows. I play on NA so I have no idea about downtime, but I have had no issues since the first night of launch.

The you are very lucky. An american friend of mine actually has a worse latency on the US servers than on EU.

 

[CAPTCHA]

I'm saying the RMAH ruins the fun of collecting loot and you're saying collecting loot is not fun anyway.

So... The presence of a single button labeled "Auction House" in the main menu's interface is enough to totally destroy your experience?

If that's how you feel, then alright, but forgive me for saying that you're reacting a little harshly. I don't agree with the auction system, real money or otherwise - but that doesn't stop me from having fun.

See, the sixty bucks got you two separate entities: the game itself, and the auction house. It's up to you to decide if you'd rather ignore one of these entities or not. Just going "Oh, phooey, other people are going to buy their way to success and that ruins it for me!" equals forgetting the fact that this is YOUR copy of the game.

Hate the RMAH? Don't use it. Hate the auction house? Don't use it. Blizzard isn't about to put a little icon on top of other players alerting you to the presence of auction users in your public game, and the idea of kicking people who chickened out and bought their way to success is pretty excessive. This would be as cheap as back when Team Fortress 2 went free-to-play and idiots started using special kick commands to keep F2P players away from certain servers. Shit, some particularly inconsiderate morons even slapped a hovering title on top of F2P-ers.

You'll never be able to tell the "Pay to Win" types apart from the "Play" types. It's seriously best to just accept it and have fun with what you have.

You are assuming that these the AH and the game are seperate entities, but they are not. Ignoring the AH would be like ignoring health packs, or the skills system. Sure you could ignore them if you wanted, but you would not be playing the game as intended. It all comes from the way that loot is generated. The randomness of items is too great for a player to ever really get what they want, so the focus has changed from "what can this item do for me" to "what can this item do for another". That's where a huge chunk of the multiplayer value comes from. Grinding for items has become grinding for gold and aiding one another via the AH. That's the intention and it's why Blizzard are taking a cut from the RMAH. You are essentially paying as you play in a single player game. I find that more dispicable than the always online personally.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

I'm saying the RMAH ruins the fun of collecting loot and you're saying collecting loot is not fun anyway.

So... The presence of a single button labeled "Auction House" in the main menu's interface is enough to totally destroy your experience?

If that's how you feel, then alright, but forgive me for saying that you're reacting a little harshly. I don't agree with the auction system, real money or otherwise - but that doesn't stop me from having fun.

See, the sixty bucks got you two separate entities: the game itself, and the auction house. It's up to you to decide if you'd rather ignore one of these entities or not. Just going "Oh, phooey, other people are going to buy their way to success and that ruins it for me!" equals forgetting the fact that this is YOUR copy of the game.

Hate the RMAH? Don't use it. Hate the auction house? Don't use it. Blizzard isn't about to put a little icon on top of other players alerting you to the presence of auction users in your public game, and the idea of kicking people who chickened out and bought their way to success is pretty excessive. This would be as cheap as back when Team Fortress 2 went free-to-play and idiots started using special kick commands to keep F2P players away from certain servers. Shit, some particularly inconsiderate morons even slapped a hovering title on top of F2P-ers.

You'll never be able to tell the "Pay to Win" types apart from the "Play" types. It's seriously best to just accept it and have fun with what you have.

You are assuming that these the AH and the game are seperate entities, but they are not. Ignoring the AH would be like ignoring health packs, or the skills system. Sure you could ignore them if you wanted, but you would not be playing the game as intended. It all comes from the way that loot is generated. The randomness of items is too great for a player to ever really get what they want, so the focus has changed from "what can this item do for me" to "what can this item do for another". That's where a huge chunk of the multiplayer value comes from. Grinding for items has become grinding for gold and aiding one another via the AH. That's the intention and it's why Blizzard are taking a cut from the RMAH. You are essentially paying as you play in a single player game. I find that more dispicable than the always online personally.

Good points. It's not always easy to articulate why I hate the idea of the RMAH because I don't own the game, and it doesn't even exist yet. I know what will happen, but it's difficult to be specific, and anyone who does not agree will just dismiss it no matter how obvious it is. It really doesn't matter what the reality is, "don't use it" is a very convenient deflection, even if it doesn't make a lick of sense.

Because I already had both eyes on Blizzard's bullshit anyway, I found the exorbitant, outrageous price of this game more amusing. I just knew the DRM fuckery in Starcraft II did not bode well and surprise surprise, all the apologists were wrong. Oh well. This is what I said when I heard how much they were charging for this game:
I posted this in another thread, may as well post it here.

I also think they delayed the implementation of the RMAH to head off any possible backlash at game launch. It was pretty ingenious and pretty slimy of them. This game apparently isn't so complex that they can't fucking finish it before they release it.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Snip

So, you're basically saying that all these years, I've been playing Diablo II wrong and should have bought some items on the black market; as that *obviously* is how you find items useful to your planned build.

Actually, no. I didn't. The game doesn't revolve around the auction house as you claim it does. I've had pubbers gift me a few useful items before and I've always thanked them, but I'm not so consumed by the idea of character or build efficiency that I simply MUST have such-and-such item, which would warrant my use of the auction house.

Like I've said before, the game's been considerably dumbed down. Some of the changes are useful, others are a tad annoying. One of the annoying changes involves the fact that each class has its dominant stat, but that these stats are pulled away from player control. In practice, this means that the only way I can improve my damage-dealing stat (Intelligence) as a Witch Doctor outside of leveling up, is to find Intelligence-improving items and weapons. That, along with DPS and armor rating, are your chief concerns as a D3 player.

Trust me, I've been able to do just that and to improve these items significantly without ever setting foot in the auction house. I haven't spent a single gold piece on an auction and I don't plan to, and nor do I plan to buy items with actual money.

Hell, I found a war hammer all by my lonesome that makes my DPS go from a measly two-digit range to a hundred and fifty-six!

So no, you definitely don't need the auction to "win" the game. You can kick Diablo's red ass without spending a single gold piece outside of the in-game vendors, and certainly without paying more than the sixty bucks the game cost you.

 

[boyvirgo666]

Gameplay wise i think the game really does deserve bad reviews. Its essentially just a reskinning and slight polishing of diablo 2. Why it took them this long to make it is a damn mystery. Frankly im insulted that blizzard thought that they would get away with this little work in story and gameplay design. Im not saying make the game completely different but at least make it better than a damn expansion pack.

 

[Robert Ewing]

I suppose it's a good way to persuade a company to change it's business tactics. It's basically protesting, which is fine by me.

 

[Zydrate]

Sigh.

The whole DRM/Online issue, I feel, should be separate from the game quality itself. People are reviewing with their anger, not their heads. They trying to "get back" at Blizzard in an incorrect way. The game itself, for all the rest of us know, is great! (Jim Sterling seems to think so).
Everything else is an external issue that they're probably going to fix.

 

[OManoghue]

I'm gonna support this one, the Mass Effect 3 thing was bullshit but Blizzard actually broke their game in a manner of speaking. ME3 while not perfect, worked.