Every game has been reviewed by many people, around the world. Some reviews are bad, some reviews are good. Some can also be mixed. Reviews are helpful in a way. They give you an idea of what the game is, tell you if the game is good or bad. Most good reviews give out cons and pros, which are reasonable. It shows that they have researched and played the game. Reviews are also depended on their experience. Some players may feel different about a game.
But, there are also bad reviews. Most of which are random spam, unreasonable, hadn't researched, or just judge by the cover. Of course, there are many more and bad stereotypes which I will be going through this topic. I'll be going through the bad stereotype reviewers. Showing their errors and their ways.
BAD REVIEWER STEREOTYPES:
1. Graphics Judge Reviewers
This one is common for games with pixel graphics such as 8bitmmo itself. These reviewers would make you want to punch the screen. They don't review the game mechanics or the story itself, they review the FREAKING GRAPHICS! Once the graphics is bad, they rate the certain game an incredibly low score! It also happens to Minecraft. I've seen lots of reviewers review about the graphics. Rate and Slap a low score to the game. You got that right, slap a low score till the end.
That's not the only thing. Some reviewers rate an incredibly bad game a good score just because of amazing graphics. An example would be a game that just makes you walk around in a forest doing nothing but seeing the view itself. They will just rate it a high score just because of the graphics. AND there is absolutely no gameplay or story in it. They just slap scores based on the graphics.
2. Title and Title logo reviewers
You would want to delete their review after seeing theirs. They say stuff bad or good about a certain game. Yet, when you look into their games that they own. Struck with shock and terror, they only played for 1 - 5 FREAKING MINUTE! Seriously, they are the type of people who don't go in depth to the game. Neither did they did some research.
3. 'I haven't played it but it looks good/bad' reviewers
These reviewers are least helpful. Yes, they did some research but they haven't experience a certain game themselves. To get it straight, they just research reviews of cons and pros and look at video game reviews itself. They could be watching IGN Reviews, and then just base their reviews on IGN and some other researched stuff. But if they ever played the game itself, their review could have more detail and would make more sense. And atleast the review would be more helpful
4. Spam Reviewers
I don't need to say a speech to say this. But to just explain it, they just right a bunch of random words and then put a good rating or bad rating. Less helpful then the reviewers who haven't played it. One example would be "I recommend this because it's construction makes you want to fall of a building. 10/10, get this game" obvious troll is troll.
5 Unreasonable Reviewers
2 types of reviewers at the same time. The first one is that they just say "It's a good game, get it 10/10" or "It's a bad game, don't get it. The developers suck". These reviews aren't helpful. Yes, they might be funny. But they give you absolutely no information about the game.
The second one is that they just give you cons and pros, but it absolutely makes no sense. Or they just tell you a story or some steps. Examples: "to beat this game step 1: kill and farm step 2: buy black racist tiles step 3: kill and farm step 4: die step 5: kill and farm step 6: buy white racist tiles... 10/10" "I played this game and I died, WORST GAME EVER" "Cons: Suck, bad gameplay, just kill, it's a game Pros: it's a game, funny, ugly, styled"
Nyao!
PLAYERS STEREOTYPE REVIEWERS:
1. LegoBox - "Micro Transaction socks' reviewers
"Plus they say 'Mirco Transactions' are putting the game down. They say quote " there is literally only 2 ways to get gold: pay money or work your --- off all day"
"PLAYERBASE SOCKS"
Plus another problem they say is quote in my own words (meaning it has the same base but exaggerated) "omg dem playerbase is so f------ men -30/10"
2. A player....
WHAT REVIEWERS WANT (BASED ON REVIEWS): \
8bitmmo:
1. They Seem to don't like the humor...
So I've seen some that don't like it but a handful that says it's " RobbyZ isn't Jerry Seinfield, but he sure isn't bad!". So maybe try on more known jokes?
2. PvP
The next one is the pvp, described as 'clunky'. RobbyZ, you might wanna include MOBA stuff there but ehh.... nothing much else left other than adding new weapons and probably armor at some point.
3. Building
Robby, if you're reading this, try and include the Z Axis Point in the tutorial and make an area that lets the players experiment.Many of the players didn't know how to actually build with Z Axis and tried using Shift and failed horribly .Of course there's gonna be that one guy who griefs the area, so make it delete every 20 minutes?
4. Dungeons
THE. PLAYERS. WANT. DUNGEONS!!!! They Say player quests are quite.... horrible. They don't like the randomized order, so they would want it sorted into different categories to choose from easy to hard. Plus, WHERE ARE THOSE NEW DUNGEONS YOU PROMISED US!!!
ROBBYZ'S OPINION:
Yep, the reviews kill me a little inside every time I read them. Some of them are pretty useful, but most of them are vitriolic drivel. Such is the internet.
There used to be ~16 different feedback points, but fortunately during early access they've mostly been resolved except for the notable ones you pointed out. These are the most tricky, and may even be unfixable.
Dungeons - Up to the players to build. I'm not opposed to lowering the price on spawners to make this more possible. A quest browser would be a pretty neat feature too.
Graphics reviewers are the worst posts to me, because seriously, the screenshots and video tell you EXACTLY what to expect. How is it people download the game and are then surprised by the graphics? Pure idiocy. It's fine to not like the graphics, but then shouldn't you spend your time wisely and go download a game with an art style you like better? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Microtransaction Haters - A lot of people on the internet legitimately think that everything should be free. The average rating of free to play games on Steam is much lower than the average premium game. I just now checked the most recently released F2P games tab -- every single one that has microtransactions has a 55% or lower review score. Only the ones that have no monetization whatsoever are positive. It's really hard to succeed in this environment.
To be fair, there was also a lot of confusion about plat initially. People didn't realize you could trade plat items for gold. Fortunately, I haven't seen the MTX Haters opinion surface nearly as much after adding information text about that to get Buy Plat screen.
Direct plat trading is also something I am considering adding in future.
"I got banned for being a troll" - ...yep.
Humor - The humor is definitely intended for an older audience. Regardless, people either seem to really like it, or really hate it. This is quite related to a larger issue of a lot of people just don't like playing tutorials. The tutorial is only about six minutes long, but the reviewers sure make it sound a lot longer (assuming they even finish it). To be fair, it used to be even longer, and has been improved over the years. Now it's down to the essentials of teaching you movement, combat, getting/returning quests, visual overlaps, and respawn. I've considered adding a tutorial skip, but I think players would get super confused. A dialogue skip would be a useful feature though, since you can still get the key info on the right tab.
PvP - A lot of reviews from people complaining the combat consists of one weapon. They also uniformly have .1 hours played. None of these people are getting to the more advanced weapons, arenas, or transponder matches. It's unfortunate, but if they quit during the tutorial, their impression is going to be ill-informed.
Building - This is a legit concern. Z axis manipulation is not easy to learn, and would be hard to teach as the first lesson in the building tutorial (which is why it's farther in Draco's quest progression). Ultimately, a 3d perspective view is much better for building with no prior learning, but obviously that's not something that will be happening anytime soon.
The Real Core Issues (IMO)
Keeping an eye on feedback, I've improved various points about the game over the past few years, since before even Steam. The tuning has helped a little, but all this improvement hasn't massively changed retention or monetization metrics. At this point, I don't think it's a matter of making just a better tutorial. Here's the core problems as I see them:
1) Top down building is hard. People just aren't used to it and it takes time to learn it. With F2P, people won't take the time to learn things. 3D would have been a better choice.
2) The game appeals to a younger target market than planned, and that market usually does not have a disposable income. This is obviously bad for a F2P game. I thought a retro aesthetic would have appealed to an older demographic. Possibly the block building genre skews younger than I anticipated as well.
3) Some players are super creative and self-guided, but most players need a lot more direction. After you build a house, a lot of players seem to be unsure of what to do next and leave. There's no intrinsic benefit to building. Survival games often employ environmental challenges to keep you on the defensive and reward smart base design. With transponders, the raids do now provide a benefit to building, but transponders are not well integrated into the core of the game currently (I doubt most new players ever even find them). Designing from the ground up around PvP base building might have been smart.
Next Steps
Sometime this month, I'll be transitioning out of Early Access into Full Release. If I look at ancient screenshots of the game, it barely even looks or plays the same. I'm super proud of how far the game has come, and the feature complete 1.0 release.
I will also be thinking about the Next Project. Don't panic, 8BitMMO isn't going away. I'll be continuing to support 8bit with new content. We'll do some more in-game events also. Mostly, it'll be business as usual, just with some part of my day set aside to experiment with something new to share with you guys.
It should be an exciting 2015!