What are you waiting for? Go review on steam.

TL;DR

1) Go like the reviews you find helpful on steam. Positive or negative, put the best reviews near the top.
2) Go write a review on steam. LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD. Postive or negative, just go and review the game, try and put a little thought into it.
3) Steam patcher is a great back-up during the landrush, steam has a lot of bandwidth and it doesn't hurt to have a second source to update your game if everyone else is downloading from the launcher.
4) I think you may need to install via steam to get the 5 minutes in for reviewing, though not to "like" the reviews you find helpful.


Links:
Create a steam account: https://store.steampowered.com/join/
Vote on the reviews you find helpful!: http://store.steampowered.com/app/326160/#app_reviews_hash

Done! And if you want to review the game (please do!)
Link your SotA to Steam: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=4557#tab-client
(read this thread before linking your game)
SotA page on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/326160/
(you can write a review once you've linked your game from the page and played 5 minutes of time via steam)

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You know 4 of the last 5 reviews have been positive.

But you don't notice them because steam has a voting system for their reviews and there's a number of people who "upvote" all the negative reviews. We don't seem to have a similar number of people upvoting the postive reviews. Which is fine. What is unfortunate is we don't even have a large number of people liking the useful reviews. Sure, it helps grow the SotA player base by having the positive reviews at the forefront, but just going and liking all the useful reviews will put the useful reviews near the top instead of reviews like "Are you kidding me?" (53 of 63 people found this review useful).

We have a huge population of players here who don't care or use steam, who I know have positive experiences to share about this game.

I don't think the negative reviews are "unfair" - I think a number of them are a good read and a "heads up" to some of the concerns out there, and good to new players and developers to see.

But there are a ton of reviews with a high rating simply because a club has upvoted anything negative.

This gets me to my request:

Step 1) Please take a look at the steam reviews, sort them by whatever method you want (I prefer recent) and "thumbs up" the ones you feel are helpful reviews, (whether negative or positive), so that the more thought out reviews do get better standing and "thumbs down" the ones that are not helpful so they're not at the top of the page.

-You DO NOT need to download steam to vote, but you do need to login, and you do need to have connected a game to steam. Creating an account takes under a minute. You need to either spend 5$ or, you know, own SotA (or some other game)
-EVERYONE can vote, if you have any games on steam at all, or just 5$ in your waller. You don't need to hook SotA itself to steam if you do not want to.

2) Go and write a review!!!

- You do need to connect your game to steam. This is super easy, you already have an account from Step 1 (above).

-You verify you own this game and connect it to steam (READ all of this post before you connect to steam) from this link on the SotA mainpage (https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=4557#tab-client)

- You will need to play about 5 minutes in steam before you can leave a review. But after that you can uninstall steam and never look at it again! Nothing need change and you can continue using the launcher.

-There has been a "downside" to connecting to steam, namely, to those who planned to sell their pledge - you needed a 45$ replacement pledge to do so. Presumably everyone here plans to be playing a couple of weeks from now (final wipe) and will claim their rewards in-game. You can't move your pledge after that anyways.

-The other downside I guess would be that you would not be able to securely give your account and the characters on it to someone else in the future. Most people never sell their whole account to a game after launch, there's really very little stuff here that is "account bound" (basically access to the game itself and your titles/emotes?). The MEAT of every pledge is tax free deed that comes with it, and you can trade the deed and every other digital decoration or piece of equipment your character has. So you can STILL trade just about anything in the future. At this point there is very little downside to connecting to steam (personal opinion) and a very GOOD, overwhelmingly good reason to connect to steam.

LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD.

Many of us are here because we want our voice to be heard in the game making process. And yes, many of us upgraded for the perks and rewards that come from higher tiers. Odds are though, if you are reading this post, you are vested in the game, and you post in the forums with the fellow community members and to the developers. Sharing your voice.

For me the single most important reason to be here was to have a voice, and I've mostly just been using it in these forums (and a few other forums and guilds I've been in). I've been talking and sharing my experiences with other players and the developers. But by posting a review on steam I can reach thousands of other people and share my experience with them too. And I haven't done this, mostly because I don't use steam for most games and didn't really like steam.... but a heck of a lot of other people do like it - so I'll be going and posting a review and connecting to steam.

You can all be ambassadors of SotA by sharing your voice (and updating your review if it's old and you've learned more - again, whether positive or negative, your review is HELPFUL to those reading about this game. Helping attract the right players helps you, and all your fellow players as well.


PS> So far it seems that the STEAM patcher and download speed is superior to using the SotA launcher and easier to roll-back updates on. With the land-rush coming up, it doesn't hurt to have two choices of where to download from.

PPS> Sorry for all the text, but do go and like the reviews you like, and dislike the ones you don't and write your own review to share your own thoughts. Seriously, let your voice be heard.

 

I'm sorry, Lord Andernut, I'm not going to Steam Link my account.

 

That's fine. There's really no downside to my mind since town, items, lots can all be traded after launch in-game, and it doesn't hurt you to be connected to steam - but that's everyone's choice. (I'm surprised though because I thought you would have already left a review haha).

 

I've already reviewed on Steam. I plan to use Steam as my primary method of playing the game because it downloads patches much faster.

 

I just found this out when I was downloading at less than 100 kb/s last release :/

Steam was WAY faster.

 

I don't use steam. It sucks that most game publishers are using steam now rather then putting out disc's or using their own websites to publish their games. I would much rather have the physical media then to just download on a third party application.

I'm positive that I've missed out on a lot of games over the years because of this, but at the same time all of the games I'm playing I do own or will own (in the case of SotA) a physical media copy of the game.

If I could from here my review so far is... It is good. Very unstable and crashes a lot. But it is good.

 

You may not use steam, but if you have a review to share you can get steam just to put your review up

I just think there's a skewed response there. There is probably a skewed forum response as well, but it's nice for people looking at the game to see two sides.


At the very least people should create the steam account (no download) and upvote the reviews they find useful. Unfortunately just 20 people going around can boost all the negative reviews if they want, even one-liners, to the top of the reviews page and bury any positive ones.

 

Trolling, it's called trolling.

 

I don't think so, I just want to see the helpful reviews boosted. Whether positive or negative. Voting on every negative review is attempting to harm the game, voting on every positive review is attempting to boost the game, voting up all the well-thought reviews that have factually correct information is what I am looking for.

Seeing a negative review that says Portalarium is failing it's promise to include VR is a bit disheartening. Likewise I don't find reviews that say "best game ever, buy it you will love it" to be that helpful either. When I buy a product I want to see the positive and negative reviews and to see which ones resonate with me.

I can appreciate the humour of these responses however.

 

There's nothing wrong with Portalarium asking people to post reviews, even "positive" reviews. The visceral reaction by some people, posting reviews completely out of spite for that though, that's wrong.

Coming to these forums and posting non-stop negative comments on every subject under the sun, that's wrong.

Being a troll, that's wrong.

 

I think you both have valuable comments to share, I actually don't care about positive comments or negative ones in the forums, I just tend to prefer the ones that are not insulting and that they stay on my favourite side of polite.

I did find kristof's response funny - I might believe differently, but from his shoes I'd say the comment was outright hilarious and others will find it so as well.


My take on Portalarium's initial request - poorly phrased. They should have asked for reviews period, not to share your positive experiences. Now sharing your positive experience is what people like - Car Dealerships, Retirement Homes, Home Renovation Projects, everywhere - when they have a brochure out they share the positive reviews in the brochure, it's natural.

If Portalarium could go back and say "Please share your experiences on steam" and left out the word "positive" - I'm sure they would.


BUTBUTBUTBUT - please don't get too offtopic here. Nobody needs to justify their reviews here.

Kristof is free to not enjoy the game and I'm free to enjoy the game, and hopefully our experiences would both provide helpful input for those reading about it.

Let's stay classy.

 

I'm waiting for persistence. I've already started writing bits and pieces of a review.. but it'll be a work in progress until some time after finale wipe when game mechanics are more established and unlikely to see dramatic changes. That, and waiting for the DoF and blur thing to go away... the visuals are painful right now.

 

YES! Go review!!!

 

I have critiques and positive comments. I think I'll post when I feel the game is ready (Ep 1). That way I'm not buried by more "this game is in development! ugh!" posts. When they say it's finally launching is when I feel we should review so it is accurate and up-to-date.

 

Didn't you sell your account?

 

I dont get why a company saying "hey if you like our game, go give us a review, we could use it" is a bad thing. Im not in to the whole gaming world so maybe I just dont get it, I understand that its probably full of a lot of social misfits that have weird rules in life

I used to actually offer people in game bonus's in my Never Winter Nights module to go to Stratics and leave me a review. These were all dedicated players and I needed the reviews.


go figure...

 

As Good as it is, "We Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" and our best is yet to come
I accept the great, good, bad and ugly of our game because we are soon moving into what could be called our Beta just coming out of our Alpha
There's no reason to deny facts. This is one game who's reviews sometimes judge it as if it's suppose to be something more than an Alpha.
For just beginning our Beta, "that's pretty dammed good I think" !'
~Time Lord~

 

You can review now and update it for episode 1 as well.

 

Pretty optimistic if you think we are actually coming out of alpha and going into beta (official terminology change being ignored). There is still basic functionality that is not implemented yet, so I'd say we are still equivalent of in alpha with more content being added.

 

It's not, but the problem is some people see it as a way of trying to silence legit complaints by "firing up the fanboys" to offset negative reviews. I personally agree with OP that we should post both good and negative feedback. Get the voice out and be active. If you like what is going on, write a positive review and like/comment on other reviews. If you don't like what is going on, write a negative review and comment why. My review from R17 was VERY positive. My most recent review update is not. Feedback on both sides is very important so devs can see what people are thinking and saying.

I'm also a big believer in people needing to update reviews every few months on a work in progress. Things change but if reviews don't reflect that change then it is really not very helpful at all.