Forums > MobyGames > Can we get the average scores back now?
lights out party (87332) on 3/29/2021 6:03 PM · Permalink · Report
It's been a few months now since the average scores were removed, and I don't think anyone can claim it has improved anything.
So can we get them back? It makes it feel slightly pointless to rate games and submit reviews when nobody is gonna see it as it's hidden away so deep.
If you really wanted to make voting more active, it would have been better to remove the poorly thought-out requirement of five ratings to show an average.
Cavalary (11448) on 3/30/2021 1:21 AM · Permalink · Report
Well, no, that's a decent minimum requirement. The only thing that should be removed is the requirement to rate all categories, just personal slant being required, the rest being for those who want to get more in depth, in which case the displayed average (heh...) should likely also be just the personal slant average, while if you click for details, on top of averages for each individual score and the overall one, there should be also a "technical average" or something of the sort (that does sound odd if also including story...), taking into account all except personal slant.
lights out party (87332) on 3/30/2021 8:05 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
It would be, if we actually had those votes, but as it stands we don't. We have a lot of super-obscure games, with even more obscure platform versions, on MG, that not a lot of people are going to have played and thus rate.
And I'm quite certain people are less likely to vote if their vote is likely to not be counted, maybe never, unless four more people show up to rate this really obscure, old game.
As a user, I would rather see one or two ratings on a game/port than none. And, generally, we have a more mature userbase than a lot of other sites, and I would easily take one Unicorn Lynx vote over a thousand GameFAQs votes.
Since "bad scores" could be a problem, scores with very few votes could maybe be displayed as greyed-out/dimmed or something?
We already only require "personal slant" to be filled in (I often skip certain categories myself), although it could (and should) be made more clear that those others are optional.
(To be clear, I'm only talking about the 5 vote requirement for user scores, which was added quite recently; not the requirement for 5--or was it 4?--critic reviews to display an average -- that one was always reasonable to me.)
lights out party (87332) on 3/30/2021 8:05 PM · Permalink · Report
If space was a concern it could just be made smaller.
Patrick Bregger (303489) on 4/2/2021 8:30 AM · Permalink · Report
It is clear that no one important cares, but I fully support this. Now that Gamerankings is gone, we are simply the best international review collection for many older games and I just don't get why we would hide that.
RhYnoECfnW (2391) on 4/4/2021 3:13 PM · Permalink · Report
Would love to see the average critic scores come back. Never understood the logic behind removing them. I've also suggested removing, or at least lowering the limit of 5 scores needed to show an average. My use of this site has decreased so much since the scores were removed.
Just wanted to add my voice (again) to the chorus of people who want this brought back.
eddiecochran on 6/18/2021 8:02 PM · Permalink · Report
I also never get the point of removing such an important game info. It's a quite tedious task to scroll through the critic reviews of every game and roughly guess the average score.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66542) on 6/19/2021 1:47 AM · Permalink · Report
I also miss them.
Patrick Bregger (303489) on 6/27/2021 7:33 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
That weighted average stuff (which probably never worked in the first place) was deactivated at the latest when the calculations caused the backend to break for games with a lot of scores. Of course they should return nevertheless.
WONDERなパン (17701) on 11/10/2021 6:29 AM · Permalink · Report
I'm late to this, but I too support bringing this back. Both MobyRankings and MobyScores hold valuable, useful data to site visitors. It really makes submitting or approving those materials feel a bit meaningless. Yet here I am, still submitting and approving more of 'em. 🐳
Cavalary (11448) on 11/11/2021 2:28 AM · Permalink · Report
Actually expected the submissions to drop too, but checked the numbers of the top 10 contributors and that hardly seems to be the case, they were significantly lower in 2018 and 2019, last year level with 2017, this year so far 90% of that, so likely to go even higher.