The simple solution to the Metacritic problem

[Epic Fail 1977]

NOTE: THIS IS A SUGGESTION FOR USER SCORES ONLY, not critic scores

Hard to imagine this hasn't been said before, somewhere, but anyway...

Instead of allowing users to assign a score, only allow them to assign a rank (relative to games they've previously ranked) and derive the score from that. So if I have ranked 9 games on metacritic then the highest would be scored let's say 9, the next 8, and so on down to the lowest, which would get 1. When I decide to rank a 10th game, I can't assign a score to it, I can only say where it ranked relative to the other 9. Metacritic could then adjust the scores for all 10 of my games accordingly. It's not a perfect solution, but in many ways it'd be an improvement on what they have now. Discuss.

Edited to add:
Apparently this requires further explanation.
You don't have to choose 10 games. You can have 1, or a million. You just say what order they're in. So if you have 10 games ranked, and you buy an 11th and want to rank it, then you have to say whether the new game is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, or 11th on your list of games.

IMHO, Systems have two functions: To make things easier for some people, and to give others something to break. It would be very easy given your system for me to "tag" games like "Barbie Horse Adventures", "Spongebob goes to the Beach", "Desert Bus", etc and then when a title came out that I wanted to see destroyed I could "tag" it and put it at the bottom of the list. I'd hazard the guess that AAA games will always be a minority in terms of the number released compared to the market as a whole so there will always be plenty of ammunition for people to shoot them down. It's the John Gabriel Greater Internet Fuckwad theory all over.

Normal Person + Audience + Anonymity = Total Fuckwad

You can't test to see if someone's normal because that would be discriminatory.
You can't remove the audience because that's who you're trying to inform.
You can't remove the anonymity... actually you can but you should first ask Blizzard how the entire ReadID thing worked out.

People are dicks basically. If someone wants to find a source of reviews that they will find reliable, they need to find a site who's -overall- format matches their own approach and expectations, not a bunch of random Romans with one thumb pointed down and the other up-

Yes, as has been discussed already, my suggestion would not prevent "bombing" of scores. However, it would considerably increase the amount of time that has to be put into bombing without adding to the time required for legitimate reviews. It logically follows that review bombings would decrease, though just how much they would decrease is anyone's guess.

 

[The3rdEye]

Yes, as has been discussed already, my suggestion would not prevent "bombing" of scores. However, it would considerably increase the amount of time that has to be put into bombing without adding to the time required for legitimate reviews. It logically follows that review bombings would decrease, though just how much they would decrease is anyone's guess.

Wouldn't this aggravate things even more though? Instead of someone giving a 1 out of 10, it's sitting at the bottom of a list of 100+ titles.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Yes, as has been discussed already, my suggestion would not prevent "bombing" of scores. However, it would considerably increase the amount of time that has to be put into bombing without adding to the time required for legitimate reviews. It logically follows that review bombings would decrease, though just how much they would decrease is anyone's guess.

Wouldn't this aggravate things even more though? Instead of someone giving a 1 out of 10, it's sitting at the bottom of a list of 100+ titles.

Well, 1/100 is still not zero, but that's just me being pedantic.

If a person has 100 legit reviews then yes they can review bomb a couple of games on their account, but what they can't do is make a new account and review bomb a single game on it, or review bomb a lot of games on a single account.

 

[The3rdEye]

Yes, as has been discussed already, my suggestion would not prevent "bombing" of scores. However, it would considerably increase the amount of time that has to be put into bombing without adding to the time required for legitimate reviews. It logically follows that review bombings would decrease, though just how much they would decrease is anyone's guess.

Wouldn't this aggravate things even more though? Instead of someone giving a 1 out of 10, it's sitting at the bottom of a list of 100+ titles.

Well, 1/100 is still not zero, but that's just me being pedantic.

If a person has 100 legit reviews then yes they can review bomb a couple of games on their account, but what they can't do is make a new account and review bomb a single game on it, or review bomb a lot of games on a single account.

True. I'm not saying your idea won't work, and I do see it acting as a bit of a preventative measure, I was just curious as to whether we had both come to the same conclusions as to the potential limitations.

 

[Vanguard_Ex]

Alright, I said I wasn't going to but I'm going to respond one more time. I 100% agree that IF people were attacking the OP or acting like a d-bag to him would not be acceptable. I went with my "Pity Party" shot because it looks like you were complaining about people attacking his idea. Looking over the thread, I do not see the personal attacks (there are a lot of pages however so maybe there is some and I'm not seeing it). If that is what you were complaining about, then I do apologize, it just sounded like you were complaining about his idea being ripped apart.

EDIT: Wow, am I misinterpreting in this thread. First his idea (though I still think it's a bad idea once someone cleared it up for me) and you now.

I should have clarified that in my very first post and avoided the nonsense really. Waking up and looking at it again just causes a massive facepalm.
Apologies on my part as well dude.

 

[veloper]

Uh . . . no.
So if I play a completely shit game, and only that game, then that's my #1 ranked game?

In that case you shouldn't be handing out scores at all.
If all you play is one shitty game, you're not the person to recommend games to anyone.

Yes but you see the problem is that people then need to "user reviews" a full time job because how many reviews does a person need to rank before their opinion becomes "relevant" in your eyes? And further how many genres does a person need to be familiar with, or how much experience in any one genre, before their reviews are acceptable?

Basically all this guy (and you) are proposing is that user reviews be judged as professional reviews even though they're not being paid for it. And I'm sorry but a person should not need to review 50+ games for their opinion to be relevant.

I don't think this should be much of a problem. People are generally free with their opinions without getting paid for it. Top list threads are common enough here at the Escapist and pretty much on any game forum.
Any enthousiast can make atleast a top 5 in his favourite game genre. 5, 10 or 20 may be arbitrary, but if you haven't played atleast several, there's no way you can know what makes a good FPS or a good adventure, because good is relative.
In short, I put more trust in the game recommendations from a gamer who has played alot of games, opposed to someone who plays very little.

 

[seraphy]

Metacritic problem?

There is no such thing. Good games like Deus ex or saints row 3 have their average user score around 8 or better.

If games have much lower score than reviewer one there usually is a reason.

For example Dragon age 2 has reviewer score 82, user score 42. Frankly I think user score is more honest and closer to truth.

 

[veloper]

Uh . . . no.
So if I play a completely shit game, and only that game, then that's my #1 ranked game?

In that case you shouldn't be handing out scores at all.
If all you play is one shitty game, you're not the person to recommend games to anyone.

Yes but you see the problem is that people then need to "user reviews" a full time job because how many reviews does a person need to rank before their opinion becomes "relevant" in your eyes? And further how many genres does a person need to be familiar with, or how much experience in any one genre, before their reviews are acceptable?

Basically all this guy (and you) are proposing is that user reviews be judged as professional reviews even though they're not being paid for it. And I'm sorry but a person should not need to review 50+ games for their opinion to be relevant.

I don't think this should be much of a problem. People are generally free with their opinions without getting paid for it. Top list threads are common enough here at the Escapist and pretty much on any game forum.
Any enthousiast can make atleast a top 5 in his favourite game genre. 5, 10 or 20 may be arbitrary, but if you haven't played atleast several, there's no way you can know what makes a good FPS or a good adventure, because good is relative.
In short, I put more trust in the game recommendations from a gamer who has played alot of games, opposed to someone who plays very little.

Yes but you see the problem is that how many games a person reviews and/or rates is not indicative of how many games they play.

Raising the bar won't repel every troll and liar out there, but considering how metacritic currently promotes even for legit users to exagerate scores, I still reckon the restrictions are a good thing.
Take your typical Bioware fan for example. We got plenty of those here, so it should be easier to relate.
DA2 a 10 out of 10? They'll do it to support their favourite developer. If instead handing out the highest score also meant downgrading every other Bioware game on their own list (Mass Effect, BG2, etc.), most of them would not. I reckon the avaerage Bioware fanboy may be a fairly good judge on the relative quality between Bioware games, but that useful info is lost in the current scoring system.
The best part is that for haters and anti-fanboys the same moderation applies, but in reverse.

 

[Delsana]

An IQ test. That's what should be the requirement to even post on the site.