Topic: GameFAQs deleting "negative" PSP Reader Reviews

[ruby_onix]

If they think the lack of online in a GameCube port is significantly harmful to the game, they should say so in the review, then take a point off (or however they want to do it). But also add that if a lack of online doesn't bother you, you should put the point back in for yourself. It shouldn't just be an "automatic" thing that people are just supposed to know about.

BTW, I suggest that every disc-based videogame needs to get two points taken off of it automatically because of sucky loading times. Unless the game is an exception to that rule, in which case you should have to say so specifically.

[Deguello]

Quote
Originally posted by: Olleuged
hey  i heard it wsa activiison who had a porblem wtih your shrek 2 reivew an tired to blluly you

i also wonder y three is 2 reviews for it awn PGC

Unfortunately I cannot comment on internet rumors, regardless of their veracity or accuracy.

[RABicle]

Quote
And now Gamespot and the like are scoring down a GC port of a PS2/Xbox game just because it doesn't have the online features. That is irresponsible as far as I am concerned, because it is giving a false impression of the game, online features can't give the PS2/Xbox that extra 1.5 to 2 points, it's bias for the most part, but don't complain or you will be called a whinning fanboy.

Soemthing I'ld like to say. Every version of Ghost Recon 2 IS a different game. The missions and setting on the XBox are different to the missions and setting of the Gamecube, PS2 and (forthcoming) PC releases. Many reveiws have stated that the PS2 game is inferor to th Xbox version because the Xbox has more variety in it's missions. And the Gamcube versioin was slammed because, we're used to such a higher quality of game on our system. And our selection of missions was more like the PS2 version anyway.
Also we didn't get any system link Co-op.

[Infernal Monkey]

Quote
Originally posted by: Olleuged
hey  i heard it wsa activiison who had a porblem wtih your shrek 2 reivew an tired to blluly you

i also wonder y three is 2 reviews for it awn PGC

Doubt it, Activision's a big professional company with great innovative games like Tony Hawk is Underground Again (Remixing). They wouldn't be where they are today if they got mad and childish everytime someone expressed their opinion. I believe you're wrong sir! This Deguello person is just plain wrong for not enjoying a great innovative game like Shrek Two (2).

[Pale]

Since I have already, as I expected, received the "But Final Fantasy XI is teh sUck" response, I'm going to sum up my argument and move on.

Though games like FF XI may have some flaws as far as how you pay for them, the monthly fee isn't one of them.  If you understand what goes into making a game like that good, the monthly fee makes a whole lot of sense.

My entire argument is based off of the notion that games with monthly fees are worth it if you enjoy them.  Just as worth it as a game that you paid 50 bucks for and never had to worry about a monthly fee.

[KDR_11k]

The issue with MMOs is that the devs are committed to making the game addictive as opposed to fun (yes, such a thing exists). Ralph Koster (Evil Empire, SOE) has talked about that in great lengths. There are people who complain lengthily about the game they are playing and the awful imbalances and stuff but they never quit the game. World of Warcraft, despite its many flaws, is apparently the first of these to actually prioritize fun. People still complain but I guess it won't be until we see Miyamoto work on the issue before we know how an MMO can be a good game (IMO all MMOs range from awful to average).

Personally I feel forced to play something when I pay for access, if I play other games for a week I've wasted one week of subscription fees. That adds stress and therefore unhappyness to the game.


If I was a reviewer I'd introduce a whole load of new penalties, some of which wouldn't please the big guys. Stuff like "Too damn dark" would hit not only Doom 3 but also ED, BG&E and many others. "Redundant game" and "Cumulative error" (issue was present in N previous games of the series) mostly destroying EA Sports games. "Insufficient error feedback" for pretty much any stealth or racing game. "No bots" for pretty much any multiplayer capable game. "Stupid controls" for most fighting game series. Extra penalties for making the player jump through hoops (online activation? Go fornicate yourself!), especially if the game doesn't run on my system (50% penalty for deliberate incompatibility. Daemon tools works, if your software doesn't that's YOUR problem). Though I guess I'd have to give many major games around 0% after I'm through with them.

To be fair, Gamespy gave the PC version of Chaos Legion 0% because the retail version was faulty to the point where the copy protection failed to work in 100% of all cases.

[nitsu niflheim]

Online games that are exclusively online, meaning they have no offline play modes are a waste, because as Deg mentions, once the serves are cut off, the games can not be played anymore, ever, never ever again.  That is a waste of money.  Final Fantasy XI could have had an offline mode, Phantasy Star Online did, so why not FFXI?  Because Square-Enix is greedy and wanted people to pay a monthly fee just to play the game, and not some people play online and pay monthly and some play offline and pay only the one time fee of buying the game.

[Pale]

Why not FFXI? because it is a completely different game...  I dunno

How many games from 5 years ago do you play or ever think you'll play again?

Your right, if they do cancel it, technically I can't play again... But I'm also not paying for it anymore, and like my original system says, I will have gotten my money's worth.

Having the ability to continue playing a game rarely means you actually will, and that's my point.  If you like RPGs a lot, you are an idiot for not at least trying an MMO.  If its not your cup of tea, then I have no complaints with you.

As far as this concept of building in addictivness goes, isn't that what all games do?  I mean come on...trying to differentiate between fun and addictivness when no chemicals are involved is kind of silly.  

[skyfire]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
In this last generation I've learned one very important thing: don't trust anybody.  With Paper Mario 2 getting a 6 from Game Informer, blatant bribing regarding Driv3r reviews, stories of companies threatening to pull free review copies if given a poor review, etc the amount of sites worth trusting is shrinking.  It's going to be like the pre-internet days where you took a risk with every game you bought.

Fortunately I can still trust PGC's reviews.

I could never understand how people base their choices on any review.

Is it really that hard to judge a game based on pictures? Doesn't anyone know what they like? Long before the internet came along i would buy a game mag, look at the pics read what the game is about (not what the reviewer thought of the games) and based on that alone I could make a decision to buy or rent. Thats how it was done back then and it WORKED 99% of the time and still does today (i've never bought a game I didn't like).

It really isn't that hard everyone. I like watching a movie of a game as much as the next guy now-a-days but like i said, it's not hard to make a decision with just some pics and synopsis of what the game is about (or in some cases you should already know what to expect like sports games).

(note Ian I'am talking in general and not just aimed at you, I was just using your post as a reference point to start mine, thanks)    

[ib2kool4u912]

Quote
Originally posted by: Olleuged
hey  i heard it wsa activiison who had a porblem wtih your shrek 2 reivew an tired to blluly you

i also wonder y three is 2 reviews for it awn PGC

Ahh, backwards you sly fox.   Would you elaborate on what exactly you heard Activision did?
 

[KDR_11k]

Quote
Originally posted by: PaleZer0
As far as this concept of building in addictivness goes, isn't that what all games do?  I mean come on...trying to differentiate between fun and addictivness when no chemicals are involved is kind of silly.

Besides the fact that there ARE chemicals involved but they are produced inside your body in response to certain actions, MMOs aren't engineered for fun. If that was the case they wouldn't require hours of grinding between levels, they'd have more skill-based combat systems, all in all they'd have less grind and faster advancing. They WOULD bleed players like mad because it's too easy to see all the content and the average player isn't interested in PvP/Faction vs. Faction dynamics and stuff like that, they just want "phat loot" and max level. MMOs don't have more content than offline games, they just require hours of pointless levelling in between.

Also, Koster was VERY specific about that: They try to pace out rewards in such a fashion that it takes the longest possible time to attain them without the player ever feeling he cannot reach the next reward. This is a science all of its own. Sure, they don't try to remove the fun but they focus on addiction. This is also why WoW is the most popular MMO, it's actually FUN. Eq2, FFXI, etc are losing players to WoW like mad because of that. But WoW is also losing players, because they have reached the maximum level already and stop playing. So you can either have a fun game or a long-living game. Guess which one the suits prefer.

In your average SP Hack&Slay RPG you run into a dungeon, battle monsters for two hours max, beat the boss through strategy (as opposed to sheer numbers and high levels) and get the reward. Storylines are another thing: FFXI has one but the missions involved have level requirements too far apart. In Tales, for example, you'd be at the required level for the next dungeon when you finished the current one. Having to go up 10 levels before you can even attempt the next story mission is annoying. Another issue are stupid quests like "kill 50 goblins".  

Skyfire: I use several reviews to learn what a game attempts to be and how well it succeeds. The most beautiful game with the best idea ever could be awfully boring because the level design sucks or something.

[Pale]

Ok, I won't refute anything you are saying but I guess we just have differing opinions.  I mean, most of what you are saying is true, but I (and thousands of others) do think its fun.  It's ok if you don't like MMOs... I'm not a huge strategy game fan...just don't say they are poor game design.  I think they are awesome.

Saying that there is no strategy in an MMO (FFXI cause its the only I've truly gotten into) is also false.  All of the most difficult boss battles have level caps that keep high levels from just slaughtering them.  FFXI alone taught me what real strategy in an RPG is..so much so that it has improved my ability to play offline RPGs.  I won't argue that occasionally there is a huge level jump, but a lot of times its because players go against the design of the game so I can't really complain.  For example, I just achieved Rank 5 at only level 30.  I know this may not make sense but bear with me.  I basically cheated to get rank 5 that early and had a level 75 person escort me while i was invisible.  The Rank 5 mission allowed that sort of cheating.  Now, the rank 6 mission requires level 55 to even have a shot at winning.  Thats 25 levels and seems outrageous...  But its only because of the way i played so I can't really fault myself.  The Rank 5 mission is designed for level 40-45.

I dunno, that's why designing MMOs intrigues me so much.  All of that stuff needs to be taken into account and thats cool...  I guess we should just agree to disagree.

Oh, and you _could_ say that there are chemicals involved inside your body that make Wind Waker fun....does that make it addictive?  I still don't understand how you can differentiate between fun and addictivness... =P

[Talon]

Quote
Originally posted by: Zach
To make this a true experiment, someone should make a similar negative review of the DS, and we will all get on gamefaqs and b!tch about it, better yet make one that is even more negative of the DS (one that actually has blatant lies in it, maybe say that the games cost $50) and see what happens.

Gamefaqs would probably pay you to write a negative review of the DS. Likewise if you made a positive review they would probably delete it

[Deguello]

Quote
How many games from 5 years ago do you play or ever think you'll play again?

Immaterial.  The issue is that online games will not be there in 5 years.  I still have the possibility of playing a 5 year old game should it not be dependent on an expiration date, as are most MMOs.

[oohhboy]

"After 6 hours of WoW, I felt like I was back working at Burger King".

This is how I would classify MMORPGS. I found it adgervatingly balanced in terms of being forced to kill monsters one at a time or else no reward, the lack of soul in battling (use power 1,2,3 in order to kill). You simply knew whether you would win or not. The infinite number of kill XXX number of this quests. The sheer lack of randomness. Massive "travel" time. The sheer pointlessness of it all.

Give me KOTORs, Zeldas, Diablos, WC3 UMS  anyday.

[Hostile Creation]

Quote
How many games from 5 years ago do you play or ever think you'll play again?

Based on last generation?  Six at least.  But I have more games this generation and I preferred the games released this generation.  I still play Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Mischief Makers, Starfox 64, Mario 64 (albeit on DS now), and Mario Kart, among others, on a fairly regular basis.  I'm playing games I never got to play on SNES, not having owned one.  I still plug in my NES from time to time and play Jackal, River City Ransom, Mario, Kirby, etc.

So yes, I'll be playing quite a few of the games I own now five, ten, and even more years down the road.

[KDR_11k]

Most would argue that by then you've either gotten your money's worth and are so tired of the threadmill that you won't ever play again or there's some hacked third-party server available (Ultima Online for example has loads of them). For pretty much any online service there's a hacked alternative.

Pale: Not everything that can lead to an addiction is fun. Perhaps the term "obsessive compulsive behaviour" is more appropriate because among gamers the term "addiction" has positive conotations. You get an adrenaline rush whenever you archieve something in a game but these rushes are paced out and carefully planned in MMOs. They want to keep you busy as long as possible because they know nobody will start a new character when their first one hits max.
Another fault in the design of MMORPGs is that you need to be at least of some certain level to experience most of the game which takes tens of hours to archieve usually. One hour of warmup or something is okay but then it exceeds my tolerance for what a game can ask of me. Before you reach that certain level there's zero strategy because you have only one or two attacks anyway.

Some blog. Article with actual substance.

[Pale]

Do you guys like the collect all / trading sidequests in Zelda?  If you do, I don't see what your complaints are with simliar stuff in an MMO.

If you don't then I'm assuming you don't do them as they are just side quests.  Well thats usually the case in an MMO too.  If you don't want to bother killing the 500 monsters, or delivering the 500 parcels, there are usually other things you could be doing.  There is a lot of freedom there.

As for oohhboy saying he likes KOTOR....  if you like that game and don't like MMOs i'm downright confused.....

Me asking the question about how many 5 year old games you are gonna play was kind of rhetorical (sp?).  I mean, its easy to say that now...but I dunno... I haven't hooked up my N64 in a dog's age.  The 5 year number was also kind of pulled out of nowhere too.  Most popular MMOs outlast the 5 year point.  I am quite confident that FFXI will go for quite a bit longer than that (assuming they take care of the current dDOSing bastards) unless they release a FFXI-2.

[SgtShiversBen]

I play TimeSplitters for the PS2, and that's almost 5 years old already o_0.  Not to mention I still play the SNES, Game Boy games and my 64 when I get the chance.  Also I play a buttload of DC games.

You should have at least said 10 years rather than 5, would have made more sense.

[Deguello]

Quote
Do you guys like the collect all / trading sidequests in Zelda? If you do, I don't see what your complaints are with simliar stuff in an MMO.

That would be a good analogy except when I buy Zelda, that's it.

When I do that in Everquest, I'm paying $13 a month for doing "Zelda sidequests" as you say.

[oohhboy]

Kotor has a forseeable end to it all. There is an actual story. There is the feeling that your actually doing something that affects te game world. In WoW you can kill a million creatures not not change the world state what so ever.

The conversatioins I got out of Kotor was far more enjoyable then real people online which mostly amounted to silence or "I got a big knife!11!".

Also Kotor is closer to a dungen crawl oppose to WoWs erand boy quests which gets you running around mugging the native spawns for some inane reason. In WoW your some Joe-nobody, in Kotor you have the death sentence in nine star systems.

WoW maybe vast, but does it really contain anything in it? A story? Some moral question? A real end to it all? The answer to the question of life? All I found was rinse and repeat.

[KDR_11k]

The answer to the question of life?

That's easy. 42.

What other things are there to do in an MMORPG except doing stupid fetch quests that devolve into killing monsters for hours? Oh, yeah, I could be killing monsters for hours in order to increase my stats! Or camping a boss for hours in order to get that rare item drop! To be fair, in some MMORPGs I could also be crafting for hours to level up my tradeskills. But that option is not available everywhere.

[oohhboy]

Don't play smart with me pal 42 ha! Next thing your going to tell me is that I always need a towel.

[odifiend]

We're pretty off topic... Please allow me to continue the trend.
Does anyone know how much EA online stuff costs?  I played some TS3 over at a friend's house it was pretty damn cool.  I definitely like how you and your friends playing on the same console can go online together.  It has its flaws like waiting for a match to fill up but there is limited communication which stops the proliferation of expletives but if you generally have something to say you can.  It works well and is free for the player.