Thursday, June 23rd 2022
Epic Games Store Updated to Include Game Ratings & Polls
We've just updated the Epic Games Store with a new feature we know players have been waiting for—Ratings and Polls. These new features allow players to provide direct feedback to the Epic Games Store community for the games they're playing. Responses will populate the store product pages with information about games and apps, creating a better experience and helping players find games they're more likely to love. After playing a game or using an application, players may find the Epic Games Store launcher requesting feedback at the end of your session.
Game Ratings
Our ratings system will ask random players, who have played a game for more than two hours, to give a rating on a five point scale. Here's how it works: Following a play session, random players will be offered the opportunity to score the game up to five stars. Over time, these scores will help populate the "Overall Rating" that will appear on the product's store page. Because these requests are randomized, we won't spam our players, and we probably won't ask about every game or app used. This approach protects games from review bombing and ensures people assigning scores are actual players of the games.
Game Polls
Separately from ratings, players may also be selected at random at the end of a play session to answer a poll. For polls, players will be asked a question that relates to their most recent session. The questions cover a broad range, and will have a number of potential responses. Players might be asked to respond "Yes" or "No" to "Is this game good to play with a group?". Players could also be presented with a multiple choice poll asking "How challenging are the bosses in this game?".
After enough players have responded to the polls, their answers will help generate tags for the respective product pages. These tags can be used to filter games and apps within the Epic Games Store. As these tags grow over time, they'll be able to inform players on content and improve discoverability—helping our players find more games to enjoy! Over time, the store pages will accumulate a wide range of tags from confirmed players that will inform the community about more aspects of each game's content. Over time, these tags will also populate our Category pages, and will be used to generate custom tag-based categories driven by our players that will appear on the Epic Games Store home page.
Source:
Epic Games
Our ratings system will ask random players, who have played a game for more than two hours, to give a rating on a five point scale. Here's how it works: Following a play session, random players will be offered the opportunity to score the game up to five stars. Over time, these scores will help populate the "Overall Rating" that will appear on the product's store page. Because these requests are randomized, we won't spam our players, and we probably won't ask about every game or app used. This approach protects games from review bombing and ensures people assigning scores are actual players of the games.
Game Polls
Separately from ratings, players may also be selected at random at the end of a play session to answer a poll. For polls, players will be asked a question that relates to their most recent session. The questions cover a broad range, and will have a number of potential responses. Players might be asked to respond "Yes" or "No" to "Is this game good to play with a group?". Players could also be presented with a multiple choice poll asking "How challenging are the bosses in this game?".
After enough players have responded to the polls, their answers will help generate tags for the respective product pages. These tags can be used to filter games and apps within the Epic Games Store. As these tags grow over time, they'll be able to inform players on content and improve discoverability—helping our players find more games to enjoy! Over time, the store pages will accumulate a wide range of tags from confirmed players that will inform the community about more aspects of each game's content. Over time, these tags will also populate our Category pages, and will be used to generate custom tag-based categories driven by our players that will appear on the Epic Games Store home page.
37 Comments on Epic Games Store Updated to Include Game Ratings & Polls
arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/04/how-long-can-epic-afford-to-throw-money-at-the-epic-games-store/
Remember Valve Time.
developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time
I have snagged quite a few free games lately
Not sure why all are just bloody mindless violence but graphic animation effects wise look pretty good for free and I do not like old pixelated games that keep popping up from gog and other sites hell might as well buy and old space invaders or pac-man arcade game unit at least the kids can play them :laugh:
Its as if they want reviewers to be limited to professional reviewers who can be manipulated.
I trust user reviews more, as with steam you can easily identify the issue people have with the games (like a review bomb due to a bad update, or something), and you can see the play-time of the reviewers
For Steam reviews, I always just sort by verified reviewers and minimum playtime of at least 5-10 hours in the game and then I read a good 20 or so reviews of both bad and good to get an idea of what the game is about.
Prefer GOG the most though for it's no-drm / offline installer angle. Not to mention best return policy.
What I dislike about user reviews is that for one thing review bombing is a thing and can happen for reasons not tied to the game, like if the playerbase gets their knickers in a bunch because of a wrongly coloured person is in the game. Or if they feel a dev has "abandoned" a game and so they only had a fun time in that $20 game for 50 hours but they are mad because they are owed one million fun hours. Or the classic "at the time of writing I have 200h and this game is now horrible it's just a cash grab at this point AVOID" but their stats say they now have 400h and the game is like $30, or "game is basically dead" and they somehow rack up hundreds of hours and the game is $30.
The only metric I have for a game is "do I like it" and no one can answer that for me, but honestly I prefer reading about games in articles by professional writers and not mad ramblings on Steam, but somehow two thousand thoughtful words in good english is being biased and bought by the industry but "after 2000h i can sfaley say this game is bad" is Good and honest and pure.
I have lots more to say about this.
All of this reminds me of why I don't care about games anymore, or rather the talking around the games, and most of all "gamers".
EPIC will be in the green numbers once the licensing fees from the floods of "Unreal Engine 5" games is flocking in. For sure their smartest move.Sure you get tons of clown reviews, but it's still 1000% better than reviews from paid shills aka. "Professional Gaming Journalists". :oops:
The only thing Steam could do better is a) allow more options than thumb up or down and b) include Metacritic Metascore & Userscore from the getgo.
I have found the steam reviews a very useful resource, with people pointing out performance issues, workarounds, bugs, and so forth, also a great place to find out if a expensive DLC is worth buying.
To Epics credit, these are good features to add. But I would have much rather seen better implementation of being able to move games to other folders or disks easier, and resuming downloads being easier after closing the launcher. There is a reason why I only have two games on Epic, one I got for free thanks to their giveaway, Control, and the other Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 was/is still only available on Epic. I don't like how they don't have these basic expected features implemented yet, among others at that.