The simple solution to the Metacritic problem

[Epic Fail 1977]

NOTE: THIS IS A SUGGESTION FOR USER SCORES ONLY, not critic scores

Hard to imagine this hasn't been said before, somewhere, but anyway...

Instead of allowing users to assign a score, only allow them to assign a rank (relative to games they've previously ranked) and derive the score from that. So if I have ranked 9 games on metacritic then the highest would be scored let's say 9, the next 8, and so on down to the lowest, which would get 1. When I decide to rank a 10th game, I can't assign a score to it, I can only say where it ranked relative to the other 9. Metacritic could then adjust the scores for all 10 of my games accordingly. It's not a perfect solution, but in many ways it'd be an improvement on what they have now. Discuss.

Edited to add:
Apparently this requires further explanation.
You don't have to choose 10 games. You can have 1, or a million. You just say what order they're in. So if you have 10 games ranked, and you buy an 11th and want to rank it, then you have to say whether the new game is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, or 11th on your list of games.

 

[tippy2k2]

That makes absolutely no sense. The entire point of review is to tell people what you think of a game but you're forcing me to choose ten games and that's all I can do. If I do an eleventh, what happens to my old review? I assume it goes away (since the only other possibility is I can't), so we'd basically have rankings for games released in the last year and nothing else.

The other thing with that is these bombers are going to bomb it without either direct mod intervention or make it such a pain in the ass to review that it's not worth it to them.

 

[Radeonx]

That's terrible idea.
That means that only recent games get reviews, making the whole system useless.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

you're forcing me to choose ten games and that's all I can do. If I do an eleventh, what happens to my old review?

I guess I didn't explain it right?

You don't have to choose 10 games. You can have 1, or a million. You just say what order they're in. So if you have 10 games ranked, and you get an 11th, you have to say whether it is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, or 11th on your list.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

That doesn't make sense because the scores would only be relative to other stuff.

You could have a gem of a game that would be ranked badly relative to other good games, or an average game getting a great rank because it's in a group of games that are complete ass.

 

[Nooh]

I guess I didn't explain it right?

You don't have to choose 10 games. You can have 1, or a million. You just say what order they're in. So if you have 10 games ranked, and you get an 11th, you have to say whether it is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, or 11th on your list.

Do you know how bothersome that'd be? What if you found two games on par with each other? Or four games on par? Or 10 games on par? How would you fix that?

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

That doesn't make sense because the scores would only be relative to other stuff.

You could have a gem of a game that would be ranked badly relative to other good games, or an average game getting a great rank because it's in a group of games that are complete ass.

If the gem really is so great then why did you rank it so low?
And if all your games are complete ass in your opinion (which is what your metacritic score is supposed to reflect) then why are you even a gamer?

 

[Gennadios]

Anything but simple. The main Metacritic problem is that the average internet tard can't think past emotions and a 1orwhile 10 score. Just let them thumb a game up or down. Ranking will just ebb and flow as new games take up people's limitedattention spans and older games fall off.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

I guess I didn't explain it right?

You don't have to choose 10 games. You can have 1, or a million. You just say what order they're in. So if you have 10 games ranked, and you get an 11th, you have to say whether it is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, or 11th on your list.

Do you know how bothersome that'd be? What if you found two games on par with each other? Or four games on par? Or 10 games on par? How would you fix that?

You'd have to decide which is better, obviously.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Anything but simple.

You have 15 games ranked. To rank a 16th, you have to pick a number between 1 and 16. That's not simple?

 

[Nickompoop]

There is no Metacritic problem. It's a user problem. Some people cannot accept that some game they enjoy got a moderate or poor review from some publication. That's the real problem--we need to get past this entitled attitude that games like Gears of War deserve high scores. These people give gamers a bad name. We need to clean up our community. This kind of shit has to stop.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

There is no Metacritic problem. It's a user problem. Some people cannot accept that some game they enjoy got a moderate or poor review from some publication. That's the real problem--we need to get past this entitled attitude that games like Gears of War deserve high scores. These people give gamers a bad name. We need to clean up our community. This kind of shit has to stop.

That's... really not going to happen. Ever.

 

[Nickompoop]

There is no Metacritic problem. It's a user problem. Some people cannot accept that some game they enjoy got a moderate or poor review from some publication. That's the real problem--we need to get past this entitled attitude that games like Gears of War deserve high scores. These people give gamers a bad name. We need to clean up our community. This kind of shit has to stop.

That's... really not going to happen. Ever.

I know, but a guy can dream, can't he?

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

There is no Metacritic problem. It's a user problem. Some people cannot accept that some game they enjoy got a moderate or poor review from some publication. That's the real problem--we need to get past this entitled attitude that games like Gears of War deserve high scores. These people give gamers a bad name. We need to clean up our community. This kind of shit has to stop.

That's... really not going to happen. Ever.

I know, but a guy can dream, can't he?

Fair enough.

 

[tippy2k2]

you're forcing me to choose ten games and that's all I can do. If I do an eleventh, what happens to my old review?

I guess I didn't explain it right?

You don't have to choose 10 games. You can have 1, or a million. You just say what order they're in. So if you have 10 games ranked, and you get an 11th, you have to say whether it is 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, or 11th on your list.

Alright, that takes care of my first point but what about the second? All this is doing is adding a complication to a system. If I'm going to bomb MW3 down, your way is not going to stop me. If I'm a legit user, your system is just going to complicate things. Essentially, you're DRMing a system that is going to require either:

1. An army of mods (and give them the unholy power of mind viewing to tell if it's a legit review)
2. Normal people to realize that user review Metacritic is about as reliable as a one legged table.

 

[Nooh]

You'd have to decide which is better, obviously.

And you don't see how that could pose a problem when there are tens, if not hundreds, of games for a user to account for?

Besides, fanboys will always be fanboys, they will include games they have never played, but they hate for some reason, and create exactly the same problem. And who seriously looks at the user score as a 100% accurate source of information anyway?

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

If I'm going to bomb MW3 down, your way is not going to stop me.

My way requires that you either:
a) Put MW3 at the bottom of your list. This will increase the score of every other game on your list. If you're a frequent review-bomber then that means all your other bombed games go up in score.
b) Open a new account and rank about a dozen games with MW3 at the bottom. You'd have to do this for each new game you want to bomb. This would be considerably more hassle than the current system, which allows users to rate as many games as they like with a zero using just one account.

As I said, this system isn't perfect, but it's more difficult (i.e. time-consuming) to abuse it.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

And who seriously looks at the user score as [an] accurate source of information anyway?

Currently, nobody.

 

[Nooh]

Currently, nobody.

Exactly, you go on Metacritic, look at the user score, take it with a pinch of salt... or a handful, and you make your judgement based upon that. The problem is not the system in itself, it's the users, and that problem will not get solved so easily.