Steam Reviews
Finneus_G
Member Posts: 2
Hi everybody. first time here for me.
ok. Siege of Dragonspear has officially moved to "Mostly Positive" on the steam reviews. however the displayed reviews remain negative reviews by individuals who don't appear to have even played the expansion. "446 people out of 584 found this useful". Please, everyone out there looking at getting this game or even just looking at it: check to see if the people complaining have even played it. don't help people harass the developers.
Let's all try to make those steam reviews that show up first ACTUAL reviews.
for those wondering how to check: when you see the review, click on the reviewers name. this will take you to their profile page where you can see their recently played games. Now your looking for an expansion here, so it might say they have played Baldur's Gate but the doesn't necessarily mean they have played the expansion. click on their achievement progress for the game and look for any achievements from the expansion. luckily for us, the developers have made this easy to differentiate. base game achievements are a square icon, expansion are a circle. if you don't see any achievements with the round icons, odds are pretty good that they didn't even play it.
The people causing all these problems claim that their primary concern is ethics in game journalism. I'm going to say that again, because i can't stress it enough. These people claim that their primary concern is ethics in game journalism.
So what I ask of all of you is quite simple. Look at some steam reviews. check if the reviewer played any of the expansion. if they didn't, click the thumbs down. if they did play it, click the thumbs up.
ok. Siege of Dragonspear has officially moved to "Mostly Positive" on the steam reviews. however the displayed reviews remain negative reviews by individuals who don't appear to have even played the expansion. "446 people out of 584 found this useful". Please, everyone out there looking at getting this game or even just looking at it: check to see if the people complaining have even played it. don't help people harass the developers.
Let's all try to make those steam reviews that show up first ACTUAL reviews.
for those wondering how to check: when you see the review, click on the reviewers name. this will take you to their profile page where you can see their recently played games. Now your looking for an expansion here, so it might say they have played Baldur's Gate but the doesn't necessarily mean they have played the expansion. click on their achievement progress for the game and look for any achievements from the expansion. luckily for us, the developers have made this easy to differentiate. base game achievements are a square icon, expansion are a circle. if you don't see any achievements with the round icons, odds are pretty good that they didn't even play it.
The people causing all these problems claim that their primary concern is ethics in game journalism. I'm going to say that again, because i can't stress it enough. These people claim that their primary concern is ethics in game journalism.
So what I ask of all of you is quite simple. Look at some steam reviews. check if the reviewer played any of the expansion. if they didn't, click the thumbs down. if they did play it, click the thumbs up.
2
Comments
from what i can tell, there are roughly 500 people up-voting any negative review they can find. It wouldn't be to hard to offset that trend and get legitimate reviews (good or bad as long as they're legitimate) to show on the expansions main page.
Beamdog is under some form of misguided smear campaign here. we can do something about this part of it. that's got to be worth something, right?
I feel a lot of compassion for the devs right now. To put years of passion and work into something and release it to public scrutiny just to end up the target of, at best, overblown criticisms of minor issues and at worst a concerted hate campaign....that's got to be disheartening. For the record I've thoroughly enjoyed what I've played so far and I hope there will be plenty of genuine review articles providing balanced critique.
Since I love this game, I'm only going to "Yes" the positive ones. But even "true" bad would be fair to vote, if you agree.
If you don't think is necessary, reflect on this: the above mentioned one-line review is higher (so more visible) than any of the good reviews. This is crazy.
@Topic: It'll balance itself out in time.
If there is any validity to this perspective, I've yet to see it displayed in any constructive way that doesn't just reek of a smokescreen for 'I'm an entitled whiner, stay away from my toy box,' but I'm more than willing to be educated.
I wrote a Steam review and it was negative (good luck figuring out which one), I tried to be objective in my review, and the truth of the matter is I don't like the expansion. I thought it was badly written and it flat out had me bored for long stretches of it, and it didn't help that I saw the "twist" at the end coming after the first hour of playing. The story is fan fiction level and this feels like a user created mod more than official content. How can I say that? Because I wrote BG2 fan fiction when I was 16 and it read like this expansion.
After playing it I just got the feeling that Beamdog took what was originally intended to be a 4-ish hour adventure to bridge the gap between BG1 and 2, and turned it into an epic 20 hour audition for them to make BG3. But it lost sight of the original goal somewhere along the line and failed to accomplish it, just look at the contrived appearance of the canon team at the end. I find the final product lackluster, and it has absolutely nothing to do with homophobia. The SJW issues of the game are the least of the games problems in my opinion.
I've been on these forums since the first BGEE was announced, I may not have been the most active member, but I've got years of history showing I've been supportive of Beamdog up til now. And I've bought both BGEE 1 and 2, two times in fact.
No one can accuse me of not playing this expansion, not giving it a fair shot or hating on Beamdog. This whole debacle about there being some conspiracy to smear Siege of Dragonspear because of the SJW stuff is just bullcrap. The fact of the matter is a lot of people simply don't like the expansion, I'm one of them. So throw your tinfoil hat away, screaming about smear campaigns and playing victim when you are in the wrong isn't going to fly.
Don't you even dare suggest my review isn't "legitimate" because it's negative. This expansion isn't some instant classic or a gem in any sense of the word, and I have every right to have that opinion, and it is absolutely legitimate. You may not agree with it, but it's still legitimate.
On Steam, the user reviews were mostly positive, dipped down to mixed for a few days, and is now mostly positive again. This does not suggest to me that the majority of people playing the expansion don't like it. And it suggests to me that the majority of negative reviews on Metacritic did not come from people who actually own the DLC.
You personally may dislike SoD, but that doesn't mean that the majority of negative reviews are actually legitimate reviews.
For that matter, BG:EE and BG2:EE would have many more reviews as well. The fact that there are only 243 SoD reviews on Steam (which requires you to own the game to review it) kind of makes it unlikely that all that many people own the product.
Compare to Fallout 4 DLC reviews, which add up to 1,808 on Steam. On Metacritic, where you're not required to own a game in order to review it, SoD has more reviews, but on Steam where you are required to own it, the Fallout DLC has seven times as many reviews.
Anyone who looks can see exactly what's going on, and your version just doesn't fly.
And, indeed, *most* of the negative reviews on Steam actually have intelligent/valid points (because these people have actually played the game). It's not the content of these reviews that I have a problem with, but the aggressive upvoting to keep them at the top in an attempt to deter sales.
As far as the smear campaign being a "conspiracy" I would suggest taking a look at the reviews on metacritic and GoG. On these sites, SoD has far and away more reviews than the recent DLC for Fallout 4, one of the best selling games in years. Many of these reviews directly cite the "SJW" content and give a 0 rating for that alone. One literally adds "oh and bugs" to the end in a sad attempt to add credibility. On Steam, where you actually have to own a game to review it, SoD is at 71%. On GoG and Metacritic, where you don't have to own the game, SoD is at 2.2 - 3.8 out of 10. What does that disparity tell you?
Just because people are saying that review bombing is happening doesn't mean that they are denying that any of the negative reviews could possibly be real - it doesn't have to be that black and white. There are some people who legitimately dislike the game...and then there are many others who are voting it down without having ever even played it. But denials that this is happening are either intentionally dishonest or detached from reality.
Why does SOD have a lot of reviews? Because it's something people are passionate about, after two decades there are plenty of people with strong opinions about this game. People don't usually take the time to write reviews for the sake of doing so, they do it because they have something to say. I didn't like Fallout 4 when it came out, although I've been a diehard fan of Fallout since the 90's I didn't write a review. Arkham Knight I didn't review either, despite tons of performance issues with it. SOD on the other hand I did write a review for, in fact it's the only steam review I've ever written. Why? Because it's a game I've loved for TWO DAMNED DECADES! And I'm not the only one. So when you shit all over something that people love, there will be backlash.
Anyway, I made my point in my last response to you. People who are paying attention can see what's up, even if you refuse to.