Ringing Endorsement
Does anyone else remember playing Dungeon Defenders? You know, that 4-player co-op pseudo-tower defense game from a while back? I knew that the sequel was in Early Access, so I decided to check on it’s progress since it reappeared on my Steam window.
“Still in Early Access, eh? Let me check the reviews…” Top one:
Oh, Steam. Never change.
Although the review goes on to point out that things have since changed – the endgame grind has become easier than before, best weapons were nerfed, etc – the juxtaposition between the 1,095 hours played and the Not Recommended score is just… I don’t know. Funny? Sad? Nostalgic from an MMO perspective?
The developers actually responded to Karthu’s review, assuring him that the changes are a work in progress as they shift some of the systems around in an attempt to provide more depth. Which highlights the Sisyphean absurdity of the situation even more as this dude played an Early Access game for over 45 days straight. Or to put in another perspective, that’s roughly 2.5 hours a day, every day, since it’s Early Access release on Steam (December 2015).
I dunno, man. That sorta sounds like a ringing endorsement to me. Even if it no longer takes 50+ hours of grinding the same map to get the best weapon. Especially if it no longer takes 50+ hours of grinding the same map to get the best weapon. I guess we’ll see.
Posted on March 31, 2016, in Miscellany, Uncategorized and tagged Dungeon Defenders, Dungeon Defenders 2, Early Access, Ringing Endorsement, Steam. Bookmark the permalink. 11 Comments.
In An Age 
There should be some kind of auto-default to a 10/10 if you played a game more than 100hrs, because yea, unless you hate yourself, spending that amount of time with a game means it did a lot more good than bad.
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I mean, you can see the WoW scenario right? You play vanilla/TBC for years, but then quit in Wrath/Cata due to the changes. Would your own WoW review say “Recommended”?
I suppose this just highlights the binary nature of the reviews themselves.
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I don’t know, there has to be some room for “I spent a lot of time doing this and, looking back, kind of regret that.”
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I think that room for that is somewhere between 10-50 hours, maybe up to 100, no?
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Hmmm no sorry, but if you spend 100+ hours in a game, independently of what you may think after, it means that at that time you were enjoying the game and you clearly considered it time better spent than doing something else. So it should indeed be a default 10/10. I’d go as far as saying that a worthwhile addition would be that if you change the recommendation to 1/10 you get an auto-mail message suggesting to go see a psychologist. :P
BTW does steam record active time or it’s like raptr where staying 10hrs on a login screen counts as 10hrs of “game played”?
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But you could say the same thing about crystal meth.
“10/10, can’t recommend more highly, 1000+ hours and I’m still going!”
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I laugh at comments like this but at the same time, I’ve spend much more than 1000 hours in WoW and would never recommend someone start playing it.
Sometimes it’s about more than a positive time:cost ratio.
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“That sorta sounds like a ringing endorsement to me.”
I don’t know, really. It’s like your parents, isn’t it, they’ve probably done a lot of shit for years but I wouldn’t call it an endorsement. Does the pack a day smoker tell his kids “don’t believe the lies, it’s fucking great for your lungs”?
I mean I invested my youth into WoW, but if I could I’d go back in time and make myself stop much earlier; it would never even cross my mind to suggest someone play WoW *now*.
To be honest, as well, I quite like these steam reviews from bittervets, because although most of the time they really are just bittervets, occasionally you can get a glimpse of how the devs are running/ruining a game without relying on some hackneyed commercial review of the first 5 hours for your own opinion. Especially in games that require a significant investment, I’d rather know upfront if they’re going to screw me 300 hours in rather than wait to find out myself.
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There is such a thing as an “epiphany”. Maybe this player had one and realized the game was terrible.
I’m not really sure that we can assume that behaviour before the epiphany is indicative of the true state.
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If nothing else, we cannot accuse such reviewers of speaking from ignorance.
This kind of dichotomy actually makes more sense with an Early Access game, since participating means one is probably quite invested in the game eventually becoming good, and the sunk cost fallacy is more seductive than usual.
Anyway, the MMO analogy works: Karhu seems to be saying that while you, too, might have had a thousand hours of fun had you gotten in on the ground floor, as of March 8th you shouldn’t bother. The game is headed for the dumps.
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