Why do Steam Reviews have a max character limitation?

[Sharpie The Dragon]

The limitation is incredibly low at a maximum of 8000 characters. Which is about 1400 words, there is (at least for me), going to be hard to actually openly and honestly explain about a game and give a detailed review of it, you need to talk about multiple parts in detail, but this (horrible) max character limitation prevents this.

Shouldn't there be a min character limitation rather than a maximum character limitation? Wouldn't that prevent cheeky/cheesy one liners that practically isn't a review? I made my L4D2 review back in March, but have just updated it so I could give some extra detail, but I HAD to do this in the comments, which isn't professional.

[Start_Running]

引用自 Sharpie The Dergun：

引用自 Sazzouu：

The dislike counts became invisible long before YouTube even announced that upcoming change.

What do you mean? It was long used to show if a video was bad or had a controversial saying; It made whether or not a video was good to watch, I used this a lot and didn't waste my time. If a content creator hid the likes/dislikes on a video, it made the assumption (or rather suspicion) that something was not quite right.

So you let groups of random strangers dictate your viewing habits.

When people see a review, they should be allowed to see the ratio between likes and dislikes, this is a healthy medium for any constructive criticism and so future users can see if it's actually worth reading. Valve has proven that they don't really like negativity, even if it was constructive, as things like comments are also defaulted to off.

WHy?
I mean all you're seeing is how many people agree with the opinion versus disagree.

They are so worried about mass-downvotes that it negativity affects what a good review is and what isn't.

What is and isn't a good review is up to the person reading it.

I've personally never had an issue with FUIunding well written reviews, since they funnily enough tend to wind up fairly high in the helpfulness sorting.

[Tito Shivan]

引用自 Sharpie The Dergun：

When people see a review, they should be allowed to see the ratio between likes and dislikes

Information that can be used by bad actors to know if their votes are being counted (or discarded as spam) which was the main cause driving the removal of showing the downvotes.

引用自 Sharpie The Dergun：

Valve has proven that they don't really like negativity, even if it was constructive, as things like comments are also defaulted to off

Nothing to do with negativity but user control and privacy. Coments defaulted to off also blocks positive feedback on reviews from happening.

[Sharpie The Dragon]

引用自 Start_Running：

So you let groups of random strangers dictate your viewing habits.

You mean the tens of thousands of strangers that didn't like the video because the content creator did X or Y. This would only make sense in something like politics and I would rather not go down that route.

WHy?
I mean all you're seeing is how many people agree with the opinion versus disagree.

What is wrong with something so basic? You should (in my opinion) treat a review as to what it is. Terrible reviews, the ones that are consistently down-voted, should be known. You can then decide if you want to read it or not, and most likely downvoted reviews are either incorrect, spam or don't give any recommendation at all.

引用自 Start_Running：

What is and isn't a good review is up to the person reading it.

That would be a great case if Steam reviews weren't flooded with one liners. Or a quote from the game that gives no advice. This is why things like curator are also a problem with reviewers giving very informative lines such as "Nep Nep Nep" or "I'm Command Shepard."

引用自 Start_Running：

I've personally never had an issue with FUIunding well written reviews, since they funnily enough tend to wind up fairly high in the helpfulness sorting.

I don't doubt there are good reviews out there, I'd like to minimise reviews that just simply aren't reviews and give people greater control at how much they can write. Every person is different, some people simply want to write more. It's not a factor of condensing your words, some games are huge, have thousands of hours of playability in them and would be a good read if given the chance.

That being said, I would at least like to double the character limit, and an actual character countdown once you're getting close to the limit.

[Sharpie The Dragon]

引用自 Tito Shivan：

Information that can be used by bad actors to know if their votes are being counted (or discarded as spam) which was the main cause driving the removal of showing the downvotes.

There are always bad actors, the solution shouldn't just be to remove it. That's why in the case of something like Youtube, it was universally disliked.

It should also be noted that bad actors also exist in reverse, where a developer can donate to a charity and get a boost in popularity by it's user base, in this case, more positive reviews, even if it had nothing to do with the game. This is why the medium is letting people voice their votes publicly.

The same reason can be applied to game journalism. Some journalism and reviews suck, yet voicing your opinion on subjects like this matters.

引用自 Tito Shivan：

Nothing to do with negativity but user control and privacy. Coments defaulted to off also blocks positive feedback on reviews from happening.

If you make a review public, turning off your comments doesn't seem the right idea. By all accounts if people are concerned about their privacy or their opinion being discussed upon, you might as well let the user anonymize themselves when posting the review.

[Tito Shivan]

引用自 Sharpie The Dergun：

There are always bad actors, the solution shouldn't just be to remove it. That's why in the case of something like Youtube, it was universally disliked.

The dislike button is still there, still works and still can make a review worthless.

引用自 Sharpie The Dergun：

If you make a review public, turning off your comments doesn't seem the right idea.

People can make a review public but not be interested in having people knock at their door to share with them their opinions about it.

You're not owed to be heard by anyone who doesn't want to listen. The change on review comments just made it the way it should.

引用自 Sharpie The Dergun：

you might as well let the user anonymize themselves when posting the review.

I'm not against the option of making UGC anonymous, to be honest. Steam still has a long way to go in regards granularity in privacy.
It still doesn't dismiss my point above on blocking comments on reviews, which is independent from the user being anonymous or not.

[luckz]

引用自 crunchyfrog：

INdeed, in fact when this has been discussed in the past and people point blank say they need more I always ask for evidence, and am willing to be that any such review I can easily edit to fit while losing nothing.

NOBODY Has yet to take that offer up.

In the past I've definitely ran out of space in reviews, and that's using very concise / dense language.
(I'm a "cut down on words" person myself)

引用自 Sharpie The Dergun：

If you make a review public, turning off your comments doesn't seem the right idea. By all accounts if people are concerned about their privacy or their opinion being discussed upon, you might as well let the user anonymize themselves when posting the review.

I assume comments requiring an opt-in is more of a legal thing, much like profiles are private by default.

[Bloodpix]

I realize I'm a bit late to the party but I have an issue at current. I typically would write the rather long review, I'll admit. I was trying to write a review for Men of Yoshiwara: Kikuya and it came to an average for me- it was a little over 2000 characters. It told me that was too many so I began taking out words. I've since then brought it down to 850 and they're still complaining it's too many- did I miss something with a new whack character limit? And I don't mean words- it is telling me it's a character limit.

[rawWwRrr]

引用自 Bloodpix：

I realize I'm a bit late to the party but I have an issue at current. I typically would write the rather long review, I'll admit. I was trying to write a review for Men of Yoshiwara: Kikuya and it came to an average for me- it was a little over 2000 characters. It told me that was too many so I began taking out words. I've since then brought it down to 850 and they're still complaining it's too many- did I miss something with a new whack character limit? And I don't mean words- it is telling me it's a character limit.

The initial submission has to be small. I don't remember what the initial limit is. Just create the review with something small like a few words. Then after it's created, just edit the review and replace the few words with your actual review.

[Bloodpix]

引用自 rawWwRrr：

引用自 Bloodpix：

I realize I'm a bit late to the party but I have an issue at current. I typically would write the rather long review, I'll admit. I was trying to write a review for Men of Yoshiwara: Kikuya and it came to an average for me- it was a little over 2000 characters. It told me that was too many so I began taking out words. I've since then brought it down to 850 and they're still complaining it's too many- did I miss something with a new whack character limit? And I don't mean words- it is telling me it's a character limit.

The initial submission has to be small. I don't remember what the initial limit is. Just create the review with something small like a few words. Then after it's created, just edit the review and replace the few words with your actual review.

Thats gotta be new cause I have never had to do it before but thanks and I'll give it a try!!

[rawWwRrr]

引用自 Bloodpix：

引用自 rawWwRrr：

The initial submission has to be small. I don't remember what the initial limit is. Just create the review with something small like a few words. Then after it's created, just edit the review and replace the few words with your actual review.

Thats gotta be new cause I have never had to do it before but thanks and I'll give it a try!!

*shrug*

I just know what the available workaround is.

[crunchyfrog]

引用自 Bloodpix：

I realize I'm a bit late to the party but I have an issue at current. I typically would write the rather long review, I'll admit. I was trying to write a review for Men of Yoshiwara: Kikuya and it came to an average for me- it was a little over 2000 characters. It told me that was too many so I began taking out words. I've since then brought it down to 850 and they're still complaining it's too many- did I miss something with a new whack character limit? And I don't mean words- it is telling me it's a character limit.

Nah it's always been wonky like this.

Offttimes I can write any small review and it'll give that message.

So what I always do is write a review which contains just a single character. Post it.

Then I edit it to contain what the hell I originally wanted and it works.

[Start_Running]

引用自 luckz：

引用自 crunchyfrog：

INdeed, in fact when this has been discussed in the past and people point blank say they need more I always ask for evidence, and am willing to be that any such review I can easily edit to fit while losing nothing.

NOBODY Has yet to take that offer up.

In the past I've definitely ran out of space in reviews, and that's using very concise / dense language.
(I'm a "cut down on words" person myself)

Cut more.
Your reviews are long enough that it would take a normal person 5 or more minutes to read it out aloud. Literally thousands and thousands of other people can write detailed reviews without hitting the limit.

[crunchyfrog]

引用自 Start_Running：

引用自 luckz：

In the past I've definitely ran out of space in reviews, and that's using very concise / dense language.
(I'm a "cut down on words" person myself)

Cut more.
Your reviews are long enough that it would take a normal person 5 or more minutes to read it out aloud. Literally thousands and thousands of other people can write detailed reviews without hitting the limit.

Yeah the simple rule is, if you're still hitting that limit, YOU might think you're being concisem, but you most definitely ain't.

The reality is it allows THOUSANDS of words and there is no reason to realistically hit that limit.

If you do, you are making a review that nobody is going to want to read. You should be able to say what you want in FAR less.

In fact I'm prepared to prove it. If luckz can provide us evidence of such a review, I bet I can edit it to at least half the size and retain all the info.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

引用自 Bloodpix：

I realize I'm a bit late to the party but I have an issue at current. I typically would write the rather long review, I'll admit. I was trying to write a review for Men of Yoshiwara: Kikuya and it came to an average for me- it was a little over 2000 characters. It told me that was too many so I began taking out words. I've since then brought it down to 850 and they're still complaining it's too many- did I miss something with a new whack character limit? And I don't mean words- it is telling me it's a character limit.

It should be well more than 2000 characters, unless they changed it recently.

My most recent review has 3341 characters, and 559 words.

I remember hearing that the limit is 8000 characters. But I don't know how that limit is calculated; it may take into account various non-printing characters in odd ways.

引用自 Start_Running：

引用自 luckz：

In the past I've definitely ran out of space in reviews, and that's using very concise / dense language.
(I'm a "cut down on words" person myself)

Cut more.
Your reviews are long enough that it would take a normal person 5 or more minutes to read it out aloud. Literally thousands and thousands of other people can write detailed reviews without hitting the limit.

"it would take a normal person 5 or more minuts to read it out loud" is really not a particularly good standard. A normal person can't recite much text in 5 minutes (unless going way fast), whereas a review would be remiss to leave out details just to be able to fit into a single paragraph's worth of text.

Remember that people can read faster than they can recite text.

luckz's most recent review stands at 547 words and 3,269 characters. Which is about the length of a typical 5-paragraph essay. It's really quite reasonable, as long as it's well-organized so as to be skimmable.

引用自 crunchyfrog：

The reality is it allows THOUSANDS of words and there is no reason to realistically hit that limit.

Assuming my memory of the character limit is correct (8000), then I'd estimate there to be about 1000 words. So "thousands of words" is probably overstating it. (Even more so if there's a new, lower limit. Which I doubt because plaintext is literally the least size-intensive data format.)

[crunchyfrog]

引用自 luckz：

引用自 crunchyfrog：

INdeed, in fact when this has been discussed in the past and people point blank say they need more I always ask for evidence, and am willing to be that any such review I can easily edit to fit while losing nothing.

NOBODY Has yet to take that offer up.

In the past I've definitely ran out of space in reviews, and that's using very concise / dense language.
(I'm a "cut down on words" person myself)

引用自 Sharpie The Dergun：

If you make a review public, turning off your comments doesn't seem the right idea. By all accounts if people are concerned about their privacy or their opinion being discussed upon, you might as well let the user anonymize themselves when posting the review.

I assume comments requiring an opt-in is more of a legal thing, much like profiles are private by default.

But again, if you have run out of space, then you've used too many.

Again, take my offer up if you wish, as I bet I can halve the size and keep all the content.

The fact is the size offered is massive - way beyond needed for any rational limit. So if you butt up against it, you are doing something wrong.