4E Poorly Rated on Amazon...

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yes, but there's also a bunch of five-star review simply saying

"4e brough back the FUN!!"

Thats not any more objective? Is it?

It's not objective (can a review ever be), but mostly it's entirely useless. Why is it fun? Why is a crime against nature? If you can't tell me, what should I do with your review? You might have just as well said "I don't like domestic violence" or "I love watching birds".

There is a reason why I personally haven't posted something like a definitive review anywhere. I like what I see from 4E, an initial playtest worked well, and I am pretty sure that it's good and I want to continue playing it.

But I haven't even begun a real campaign yet. I want to run a "real" session before I give any definite reviews. Even that is imperfect, I admit, but it is at least "4E in its natural habitat, the gaming room".

 

[Darrin Drader]

Hey, I've played 4E and enjoyed it, I consider my opinion about 4E to be pretty positive overall, but I don't see myself getting rid of or putting away my 3.5 books anytime soon, nor will I be canceling my Pathfinder subscription. I will be subscribing to DDI when it becomes available. As a rules set, I don't consider 4E to be superior to 3.5, nor do I consider it inferior. It is simply a different game, and just as I don't always feel like eating chocolate cake to the exclusion of all other food, I will not be playing 4E exclusively.

Because of the fact that I don't think 4E really replaces 3.5, I would have to give it an average review myself. Three stars out of five seems fair.

 

[catsclaw227]

There is a reason why I personally haven't posted something like a definitive review anywhere. I like what I see from 4E, an initial playtest worked well, and I am pretty sure that it's good and I want to continue playing it.

But I haven't even begun a real campaign yet. I want to run a "real" session before I give any definite reviews. Even that is imperfect, I admit, but it is at least "4E in its natural habitat, the gaming room".

Ditto --

I will post a review when I have enough experience with the system to post an honest and thorough review. Though I could write a review brief with first impressions.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yes, but there's also a bunch of five-star review simply saying

"4e brough back the FUN!!"

Thats not any more objective? Is it?

Reviews aren't meant to be objective, but there's a qualitative difference between "brings back the fun" and "crime against nature."

 

[pawsplay]

Would you trust a review of a cookbook by someone who didn't actually try any of the recipes?

If they panned it on a few very obvious problems, I would definitely be interested in that.

 

[DaveMage]

It's still as high as 2.5?!?!?!

I've had to register under 85 different names just to get it that low!

Man this is tough....









(I kid! I kid!)

 

[jdrakeh]

If you look at the reviews of the gift set, one of the one-stars calls it "A crime against nature." That's about the level of most of the one-star reviews out there: most just say "It's not D&D!" or "It's a minis game, you can't role-play with this!" with no actual reading behind it. Many of the rest just bemoan that their favorite sacred cow is dead ("Dwarves can't see in the dark!" was one of the reasons given to hate it. Seriously.).

And most of those reviews say, "Stick with 3.5, it's REAL D&D!"

Reviews like this are exactly why I am sold on D&D 4e. As recently as two months ago, I couldn't have cared less about the game. Today, as I mention elsewhere, if playing 4e makes it less likely that I'll l run into such sad, hateful, people IRL, I don't need any other reason to buy it

 

[Zweischneid]

Reviews aren't meant to be objective, but there's a qualitative difference between "brings back the fun" and "crime against nature."

As both fail to inform potential buyers in their decision to purchase this product or not, whatever qualitative difference there may or may not be, is absolutely meaningless...


I also went back to Amazon.

There are as of now 27 1-star-reviews. Only 6 of them less than 100 words and all the remaining 21 reviews give at least two (usually more) reasons for the low rating. If you agree with these reasons may be another matter. But unqualified nerd rage this is not...

There are as of now 22 5-star-reviews. Equally though, 6 of them have less than 100 words. Of the remaining 16, at least half (from cursory reading) tell you little about the game itself, but seem to be pre-emptive counter-arguments against commonly heard critizism of 4e (like being to MMORPGish). Many start out with explicitly statements like "Don't listen to all the haters out there." or "First, I want to rebuke the most common complaints from people who read the books (but apparently didn't play the game)." instead of actually talking about the game.

Dunno, but from what I see, the "want-to-influence-over-all-rating-motivation" seems actually to be more explicit in the 5 star reviews, than the 1-star-reviews.

 

[Shade]

Note also how Amazon has set up their rating system:

5 stars = I loved it.
4 stars = I liked it.
3 stars = It's OK.
2 stars = I don't like it.
1 star = I hate it.

I'm not saying that makes the results any more valid, but it does make sense why the lovers and haters are leaning heavily toward the extremes.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As both fail to inform potential buyers in their decision to purchase this product or not, whatever qualitative difference there may or may not be, is absolutely meaningless...

No, it's not. One set of short reviews at least gives you an idea of what they like. The "crime against nature" stuff is so over the top, it's impossible to even guess at what their issue is.