Steam Review System could benefit from a rework

[Vendrium]

I think the Steam Review System could really benefit from an overhaul.

Currently it's too easy for it to be abused and for people leaving negative reviews for ridiculous reasons.

As a prime example I feel there's unhealthy levels of testosterone being thrown at which games can be run at the highest settings when there's seemingly no regard to whether or not a user's hardware can even handle those settings.

I find that very strange given the fact that Steam already has the capability of collecting hardware information.

Why not collect customer hardware information and perhaps even performance data at a per product level and display that data on steam pages?

ie. This is how many people have this particular graphics card and have run X game and this is the average performance they have had with game X.

ie remove the ambiguity around performance that comes up in so many steam reviews and display the raw data collected from steam instead.

I would then further flesh out steam reviews to focus on some key essential metrics (ie fun factor or similar) rather than having a general comment field for steam reviews that invites everything from meme reviews to ASCII art.

I maintain that it currently doesn't help the undecided customer nor the developers.

[nullable]

引用自 Vendrium：

I think the Steam Review System could really benefit from an overhaul.

Currently it's too easy for it to be abused and for people leaving negative reviews for ridiculous reasons.

So? People can have negative opinions, and you can think they're ridiculous. Everyone is free to their own opinion there.

If your hope is to micromanage users to post quality reviews that meet your high standards, forget it. You can't use Valve to solve the human condition.

引用自 Vendrium：

As a prime example I feel there's unhealthy levels of testosterone being thrown at which games can be run at the highest settings when there's seemingly no regard to whether or not a user's hardware can even handle those settings.

Users are allowed to be uninformed morons. You can't fix that.

引用自 Vendrium：

I find that very strange given the fact that Steam already has the capability of collecting hardware information.

Why not collect customer hardware information and perhaps even performance data at a per product level and display that data on steam pages?

Well that would require Valve to have a lot of visibility into your system. Maybe you think that's a great idea, but most users I don't think want Valve monitoring their systems quite like that.

Also it won't stop users from being uninformed morons. You can't fix that. See every question a user has ever asked that could have been resolved by reading the product page, or googling.

引用自 Vendrium：

ie. This is how many people have this particular graphics card and have run X game and this is the average performance they have had with game X.

ie remove the ambiguity around performance that comes up in so many steam reviews and display the raw data collected from steam instead.

Well it wouldn't. Because I might have a i7 12700 and 3080 ti. But my 1440p performance ain't going to translate for people running at 1080p or 2160p. Not to mention all the graphics options I choose to run and why. Do I favor more FPS or better visuals? Is my monitor running at 60hz, did I frame limit the game to 60FPS? It's not too difficult for me to, through normal use and decisions skew my data. And everyone is doing variations of that. Which one is the right one, the one we should use for non-ambiguity?

And keep dreaming if you thin users will sift through the data, or if you think the average will be good enough when their performance doesn't match up. It's still going to be fuzzy, and you can already look up how systems run games anyway on the Internet. Not everything a user wants to know is always going to be on the store page.

引用自 Vendrium：

I would then further flesh out steam reviews to focus on some key essential metrics (ie fun factor or similar) rather than having a general comment field for steam reviews that invites everything from meme reviews to ASCII art.

I maintain that it currently doesn't help the undecided customer nor the developers.

Well good luck trying to curate reviews just so. But I think you'll find the NPC's in your imagination behave a lot nicer than tens of millions of barely functioning primates whose evolution never prepared them for PC gaming.

[Chungo Beepis]

I agree with using telemetry to qualify a review, but anyone should be able to review regardless of that, but the unqualified review should just be a deviated statistic so you can make your own mind up if unqualified opinions are relevant because you have an amazing new rig etc. It's impossible for a potential buyer to make an informed purchase if 30% of the reviews are "no controller support, refunded" if i couldn't care less about controller support or ancient GPUs. Steams is virtually the same as it was back in the day tho, i haven't seen any real enhancements for a long time, and emoji's and achievements i don't consider to be anything all but fluff.

It's odd how the only way companies actually innovate is if there is pressure to do so, conversely individuals innovate madly, it's almost like it would be a good idea for Steam to open it's source to selected developers that are then free to develop modules they can option for Steam to purchase or provide as plugins to users as commercial or free products

[Anxiety]

引用自 Vendrium：

I would then further flesh out steam reviews to focus on some key essential metrics (ie fun factor or similar) rather than having a general comment field for steam reviews that invites everything from meme reviews to ASCII art.

So you, uh, want to remove free-form text field from reviews?

[Vendrium]

引用自 Anxiety：

So you, uh, want to remove free-form text field from reviews? :lunar2020thinkingtiger:

引用自 nullable：

Users are allowed to be uninformed morons. You can't fix that.

Sure, I agree that you can't fix that nor am I trying to - all I'm suggesting is to guide gamers towards making more useful reviews by tailoring the review system towards what information is useful to developers in order to use that information to potentially improve their products.

In its current state you - as a developer - have to filter through hundreds of reviews and spend a significant amount of time going through what may end up being a large quantity of really unhelpful reviews before you get to the more helpful constructive ones.

And of course those can still be negative - but I think that's a better way of describing what I'm suggesting: a template or more guidance of sorts for gamers to leave constructive reviews that actually help developers understand the issues more quickly.

At the moment I feel that the Steam Review system is much like the discussion we're having right now or comparable to any internet discussion board: you get a text field and you can start typing.

That works for having discussions, but I would argue it isn't the most ideal solution for when you are trying to understand problems in software.

It's like filling the room with 300 people and asking them how they felt about playing your game: chaos ensues and at the end of the day you may not really have gotten good feedback that really understands the sentiment beyond "Positive" or "Negative" and if you want dig into more details, you have to grab every person in that room individually.

Faced with that in a real life scenario, you would likely rather have them fill out a survey with exactly the sort of things you would like to know that will help you improve your game, and you can still stick a "general comment" section at the bottom of the survey for people to summarise their experience.

[Anxiety]

引用自 Vendrium：

Sure, I agree that you can't fix that nor am I trying to - all I'm suggesting is to guide gamers towards making more useful reviews by tailoring the review system towards what information is useful to developers in order to use that information to potentially improve their products.

...

And of course those can still be negative - but I think that's a better way of describing what I'm suggesting: a template or more guidance of sorts for gamers to leave constructive reviews that actually help developers understand the issues more quickly.

...

That works for having discussions, but I would argue it isn't the most ideal solution for when you are trying to understand problems in software.

...

Faced with that in a real life scenario, you would likely rather have them fill out a survey with exactly the sort of things you would like to know that will help you improve your game, and you can still stick a "general comment" section at the bottom of the survey for people to summarise their experience.

Gosh, no. A thousand times no. What you're suggesting seems like forcing consumers to test your game for you. You know there are special people for that, right? And that they are supposed to be paid for that?

Reviews on Steam are PERSONAL opinions and experiences. They are allowed to be as subjective as their posters want. Developers should not shift their responsibilities to users. If a player wants to be helpful to the dev specifically, they are free to be so with the current system of reviews/forums/bug reports/contacting devs, etc.

Most of the times I couldn't care less if my review is "useful to developers in order to use that information to potentially improve their products". That's salesman's talk. It's not my duty in any way nor should I be forced to even consider it. My only responsibility in writing/posting my review in public place is basic courtesy of being fair and not using garbage tactics like memeing/spamming (though some may argue that even this kind of reviews is valid).

I'd rather prefer being able to continue posting my useless essays and lengthy ramblings, thankyouverymuch.