Amazon ratings of Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Paul Farquhar · May 22, 2019

CydKnight said:
From my observations of the Amazon reviews of 5E adventure and rule books, a good bit of the low star reviews have to do with shipment packaging and handling

Amazon seem to be pretty much always late with D&D hardbacks in the UK (my copy is currently due on the 24th) but that is clearly a supply chain issue, and thus the fault of Amazon, not the product.

Guest 6801328 · May 22, 2019

OMG the map of Saltmarsh has North pointing in the wrong direction!!! One star.

Mistwell · May 22, 2019

Morrus said:
Well, presumably 1 star and 5 stars are equal extremes, unless you don't agree with them. It's a binary world these days - things are either the best thing ever or the worst thing ever.

I rate your opinion 1 star.

ONE STAR I SAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Worst. Post. EVAR!!!!!

jayoungr · May 22, 2019

Paul Farquhar said:
Also, given the tendency for the internet to be negative, it is much more likely that a One Star is political (by which I include any reason unrelated to the quality of the product itself, such as "I hate what Hasbro is doing with Eberron").

Could be something as superficial as "There are two female humanoids to one male on the cover (plus a monster of indeterminate gender), so obviously it's a feminist product!"

Parmandur · May 22, 2019

Morrus said:
That's not how I would interpret 5-stars.

Reasonably, yes; however, ratings online are weighted to 5 stars.

Celebrim · May 22, 2019

Hussar said:
True, but, that is generally how ratings are done.

I'm involved in another community where books are regularly rated, and 'normal curve' does not normally happen.

Most reviewers have one of two curves:

A) Bimodal Distribution: Everything is either good or bad, and good things tend to receive the highest rating and bad things the lowest. Average ratings tend to be rare, as cases where a person has mixed feelings about something unusual. Basically these people are rating their feelings. If they like it, praise it, and if they didn't, then hate it.
b) The Bad Long Tail: Almost everything that they read is a 5 star book, and each worse rating is rarer than the one before. These people like reading, and reading itself gives them pleasure, and they will read almost anything and certainly almost anything in the genres that they prefer. It's rare that they encounter a book that makes them uncomfortable or has any flaw that meaningfully impacts their enjoyment. They just like to read.

The reading habits of the public then create all sorts of counter-intuitive weirdness, such as, "The worse a series gets, the higher the average rating of subsequent books in the series." The reason for behavior like this is that most readers are turned off by the decline in quality in the series and so stop reading, leaving the series to be rated only by its most devoted fans. The number of reviews on later books in the series tends to decline sharply, and the most popular review tends to be negative, but the average review tends to be more and more positive.

Another counter-intuitive result of aggregate human behavior is that anything with an average rating much below 4 stars ("it was really good") probably sucks, because the average reader is so reluctant to give ratings lower than 5 stars, that anything much below 4 indicates most readers hated it. Yet at the same time, it's almost impossible to have an average rating much above 4 stars, since it's almost impossible to find a book most people liked and those that didn't like it tend to give it 1 star. So the actual range tends to be between 3.8 and 4.3, and that 'half star' worth of rating is almost the full difference between a classic and trash.

jgsugden · May 22, 2019

My oly real criticism is that Locathah are too mobile out of the water. In most prior editions, they had a speed of 10 ft outside water. which made them a 'fish out of water' race. This encouraged certain strategies for the locathah that did not involve moving once out of the water...

collin · May 22, 2019

Here is a wacky idea (just spit-balling here): go to your local game/hobby or book store, pick up a copy, look through it, then decide for yourself if you think it is a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5-star piece of work. :lol:

Smarmot · May 22, 2019

It was missing the dice and the game board and the little fish people. And I couldn't understand the rules. One star.

pogre · May 22, 2019

I typically only bother to rate products I am very pleased with or products that disappoint me incredibly. Products that fall in the three to four range I rarely bother to rate.

I coached American football for many, many years - we were required by our state high school athletic association to rate officials. If I gave an official the lowest rating I was required to provide an explanation.

Requiring an explanation of super low ratings really is much more helpful to future consumers.