Game reviews on Steam. [Spelunky GA level 3+ inside][GA ENDED]

Reserved for the first bump. :D

Star rating, neutral option, numbers, letters... Anything will be better than the YES/NO. Too much "aggresive", games can be bad and good at the same time.

Anyway, they should also add a totally different category, "funny". I know you can mark as "funny" a review but still there is the thumbs up/down system. There is a lot of "troll reviews" that are more or less funny and, recently discover, that that kind of stuff can affect negatively the developer/publisher.

So the trolling thing its not really harmless.

TL:DR: Valve needs to remake the whole system. Its a mess and doesn't help the publisher and the customer/player

Stars would be nice, but even with "yes/no" you get an accurate evaluation on a high scale

The fact that we can only choose yes/no prevents me from writing reviews. To make an example: I think that Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is a decent game, but not an excellent one. Since it has over 90% of positive reviews, I feel like giving it a "yes" would give a wrong impression of the game, because imho it's not THAT good. So a "no" would be more correct because it somewhat lowers the average, but it wouldn't reflect my opinion. So messy.

Both neutral and star-rating would be nice.

You are right and I would like to see that happen. However, Steam will not (sadly) make any changes that cannot be monetized/used to cut their losses.

Neutral button is fine IMO. Hope they can add it.

I think neutral option would be useful. The question is, would Valve bother implementing it, even if they weren't infamously lazy about changes? It's not the same, but YouTube used to have star ratings which were eventually replaced by Like/Dislike because almost nobody rated videos 2-4 stars, instead picking 1 or 5 stars. Neutral reviews would probably face the problem of only being used by a minority of users, giving Valve even less incentive to implement that, unfortunately.

All rating systems have their advantages and flaws. Other platforms use the 5 star system and what usually happens on those? Most rate either with 0/1 or 4/5 stars, which basically represents the same as Yes/No.

I think that a neutral option isn't necessary. When you ask for recommendations, you usually are interested in Yes or No. Not in "I don't know". ;)
This way you have to make up your mind. And you can always explain your decision and reasoning in greater detail in the review.

From most of the comment and from the pole I see that most of you would like some change. That leads to another question - How to make it happen? :)
I understand also the people that are opposite to change everything, your arguments are solid.
One thing correction wise like. If the change should happen, then of course the question "Would you recommend this game" should be also changed to for example "Do you like this game" or something. :)

I think that something's missing indeed. I understand that they wanted to keep Steam review system as simple as possible, but I would like to have 5 star rating system. Or maybe just 3 star to keep it simple.

I also used to think that a neutral option would be nice, until I found myself in a situation when I had to write a review and couldn't make my mind. Then I realized that the system as it is forces you to take a stand and give a useful opinion, is basically valve saying you "if you don't have anything clear and concise to say, don't say anything".
Also, I'm not sure but I think I read somewhere that if a review gets tagged as "funny" by many people it isn't considered when calculating the total (don't quote me on that, it may have been speculation, I can't remember where I read that).

If you are neutral about a game, don't write a review. Think about talking with your friends: You either recommend a game, or you warn them to stay away from it. If you are neutral, you likely wouldn't mention it at all. This doesn't make for much of a conversation: "I played this game yesterday... It was meh."

I am fine with the current system.

A recommendation is a positive.

A non-recommendation is both neutral and negative.

My Grim Dawn review is a neutral, I do not recommend the game. My Europa Universalis 4 review is negative, I do not recommend the game.

I have enjoyed both, I don't think either are themselves bad games. But both have flaws that would make me very reluctant to suggest to anyone they go out and buy them.

My Dungeons of Dredmor review is positive, it is an easy recommend.

I have enjoyed it a good deal and what problems I have encountered have been small and easily overlooked.

I don't see a need to distinguish the first two, cause either way I am not telling anyone they should get them. Only the third matters.

The problem with stars is: Humen can't think in percents. What does "I liked it 80%" mean? And what is the difference between 3 and 4, or 2 and 3 stars? Is it the same difference? Isn't the difference between 4 and 5 very close while there is a huge gap between 1 and 2? And how should you take the mean of the stars? Best thing you could show is the density function.

Mathematically speaking, the "I like it or I dont like it" system is very much more clear defined than a star-ranking system.

I agree they could do much better with just those simple ideas. Also thanks for rogue like loving <3 <3 <3

Indeed, having only "Recommended" and "Not Recommended" choices is a bummer, but thinking about it, it's only one of the many flaws of the review system.
Firstly, anyone can make a review for a game they played at least 5 minutes, but that hardly would be enough to understand how a game works.
Secondly, trolls could just buy a game, idle it for 5 minutes, put a negative review up, and then ask for a refund.
Last, but not least, there's also the issue of shady devs bribing users with free keys in exchange for positive reviews, using alt accounts for reviews, or even reviewer bots, to consider.

TL;DR

Steam's review system is flawed, we shouldn't even think about considering it when we have to decide whether to buy a game or not.

Numbered reviews are flawed since people think differently. A 7/10 is an average movie for IMDB. It would make sense if 5/10 would be though. People review stuff with different numbers and in the end it'd still be almost as bad as the Yes/No system.
The best system would be no ratings at all, but since the internet generation is the hyper generation where most people can't read a single sentence let alone multiple paragraphs, it's still the best option.
If they implement the neutral option, then that'd just make almost all reviews neutral, since there's almost no perfect game and most are never going to be just positive or just negative.