Should X Rebirth's meta-critic score be re-reviewed?

[foxtrot76]

I think that is the part that has most ghasted my flabber. Egosoft had an extremely loyal and supportive (sometimes loud and shouty) fanbase, many of whom would have been willing to jump in and get dirty if only they had known. The choice to back-off, act cool and professional, and spin-doctor this whole debacle is the absolute opposite of what they should have done.

Most developers would kill for that loyalty, and they could not have done more damage to their own fan-base if they had planned it.

This is my personal feeling aswell. I have basically given up on this game and check the forums once per month to see progress. So far the game is still nowhere close to getting my attention. What's worse is my confidence in Egosoft has been shattered and as far as I'm concerned will be scheptical towards any further products from this company.

Please note that I'm simply expressing my personal POW and in no way want to influence others. Just my 2 cents

[khartsh]

As an accountant I would have to severely disagree. They were in terrible financial shape. What you are seeing in that report is massive reliance on non-tangible assets for leverage to acquire advance funding and loans.

Also the cash on hand is abysmal for any company, let alone one in the middle of a huge project. And lastly that would be all the cash they had left and a sizable amount of receivables unrealized from the sale of X3:AP

So while off-topic, Plynak would be correct, their financial situation (as confirmed by Bernd in two interviews now) was not one that would lend itself to wait another year for release.

That would explain the premature release of XR. I don't blame Bernd for that, he had to do what he had to do to survive.

But he could have informed us about it. At least then he would had received some sympathy.

The problem with this is when you see the report and you see a massive amount of assets (almost all of them) listed under some kind of intellectual property. They are valuing the non-tangibles very high. So they have a value in the X franchise they are using as the cornerstone of their capital.

Now the changes to International Accounting Standards dictates how licenses, non-tangibles and trademark/copyright assets are to be declared, and because of that they are placing a high emphasis on it. But if they were to come out and say "we are broke and our latest X project stinks" then they could be jeopardizing their only remaining bulk asset.

Regardless, it is off-topic and has no bearing on the situation we are in now. The game has not improved enough to bump its score higher and the fact it was released at all meant it was ready for the world to review back in November. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

WRT the old Engine being broken - it was broken in terms of being at the end of it's technical potential based on what Egosoft have told us (The old engine had apparently hit the last usable iteration of the MUNG cycle - MUNG = MUNG Until No Good - A classic problem with iterative designs and specification creep over a period of time). A fresh start was apparently required for XR in order to be able to do a proper technical refresh of the software architecture and pave a cleaner path for the future (a logical assumption given the obvious cost of the undertaking).

WRT my references to "perceived limitations" - it is not "belittling", deeming them irrelevant, nor indicating I do not understand the viewpoint being expressed. The fact of the matter is that none of us are in a position to say whether or not such issues have not already been considered in Egosoft's design for the Engine; However, Egosoft are not some new babes in the woods start up outfit and have already delivered us 3-7 games (depending on your point of view) in this genre and thus it is a reasonable assumption that they do know how to deliver if you actually give them a chance to do so.

WRT the years actually spent on the XR game - We have been led to believe that the TNBT Engine has been 7 years in the making but the actual game that uses it has been under development for much less than that (Egosoft admitted to having aborted at least one potential game idea for the new engine). The distinction is subtle perhaps but still a significant point when considering how long gameplay aspects have been under development.

When developing a new engine there are bound to be initial implementation compromises - and IMO most likely the key reason we are in the current situation. Was XR released too soon for the average consumer? Almost certainly yes. Would Egosoft have been better not doing their experimental TNBT games that never got released and concentrated on XR from the beginning? Who is to say for certain, but probably yes. In any case it is unproductive to repeatedly debate these points.

They would not be the first company to release a new game on a new engine in a popular series/franchise that failed to meet the expectations of ALL/MOST of the existing fan base and I doubt they will be the last.

XR may not be what we all hoped TNBT would be in it's first incarnation but it is obvious to me that Egosoft have made a BIG step in the right direction (at least from a technical perspective) only time will tell if things will pan out in the long run.

[SepticTooth]

Unfortunately regardless of any changes and/or improvements made to Rebirth and any potential desire of the masses to see the review score updated, it will never happen. Metacritic in particular refuse to change review scores, even if a reviewer publishes a new score for a game their original review will remain as their official review of the title on Metacritic. (Unless something has changed recently which I severely doubt)

This is one of the many reasons why Metacritic is crap and the usage of a number and/or star rating in association with the quality of a product is absolute garbage and means next to nothing. A 90/4.5 star game is not always better then a 75/3 star game and those numbers and stars never mean that another product with the same score is of equal quality or value. You gain no valuable piece of information from that system.

By the time you finish reading a written review or watching a video review of the product you will have come to your own conclusion in regards to the product and the reviewers arbitrary number and/or stars will ultimately have been meaningless.

Your best bet really if you want to encourage others to give Rebirth a try now that things have improved in your opinion would be to take your message and put it out there somewhere, be it Youtube, Steam reviews, or what have you. If your own personal review manages to influence one solitary human being in to giving Rebirth a chance, you'll have made a bigger difference then you will trying to get Metacritic to not suck.

That's my opinion anyway.

[Graaf]

Would Egosoft have been better not doing their experimental TNBT games that never got released and concentrated on XR from the beginning? Who is to say for certain, but probably yes.

Taken from an interview after "EGOSOFT and Deep Silver announce X Rebirth"

Now we're in 2011. Four years (again) of development of TNBT (the next big thing) as you guys knew it.

As I can see it, Rebirth is TNBT, no matter how much we would not like too. Which makes those 7 years Egosoft mentioned are also true, meaning you are wrong.

This is one of the many reasons why Metacritic is crap and the usage of a number and/or star rating in association with the quality of a product is absolute garbage and means next to nothing. A 90/4.5 star game is not always better then a 75/3 star game and those numbers and stars never mean that another product with the same score is of equal quality or value. You gain no valuable piece of information from that system.

Maybe nothing valuable for the consumer, but I think Rebirth's Metacritic score, along with all the other reviews, both professional and end-user, about Rebirth, send a very clear message to the developer.

[ravage_za]

Meta-critic is not the final word, nor is it utterly useless. It is an extremely useful gauge of which way the wind is blowing, if a person could be bothered to read between the lines.

Taking a meta-critic score as gospel is as daft as dismissing it because it doesn't agree with your personal opinion. Personal opinion is what scores are about. That implies the aggregate of those opinions yields a score that is more correct than not. The pertinent fact is that it doesn't actually matter how you got to your personal opinion, it doesn't make it any more or less important than someone else's. Especially a whole bunch of someone-else's.

There will be outliers, of course. People who vote a 10 or 0 are probably more than a little unstable. Nothing is completely worthless, nor perfect. These extremist views still don't really change the score much. If there are more 10's than 0's, the majority opinion skews the score to the good. If that is reversed, the score worsens. It may alter it slightly, but always in the direction of popular opinion.

Use it as a tool. Read the content. Learn to spot a troll or yes-man. I have enjoyed many games that got poor ratings. Rebirth is not one of those. To others, it it certainly the bee's knees. They are in the minority, and should probably just be happy they like the game instead of trying to indoctrinate everyone who doesn't see it their way.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

@Graaf: ScepticTooth is right (and is a point I have made before) - the MetaCritic score does not give a clear and unambiguous evaluation of the current state of any game because they do not update the included rating even if the author of rating revises it (for better or worse). As a professional metric it does not meet the SMART criteria due to the scores being related to an amalgam of software revisions.

The approach MetaCritic have taken is only valid for products that are not expected to change over their operational/shelf life (e.g. White Goods) even then a review score may need to be updated due to post-review realisations about the product that were not picked up on during the review (in the case of White Goods some kind of reliability issue perhaps).

NOTE: This is not about whether I personally agree with any given rating but rather that the MetaCritic rating system itself is flawed wrt the context in which it is being applied.

As for the development time, the fact they apparently wasted 4 years only emphasises my point (the exact time scales are not really relevant to the point I was making). We know they did a dalliance with console support by their own admission but when that dalliance ended is unclear, this would have had an almost certainly had an impact on the development timescales of X-Rebirth since some vestiges of that support remain.

Developing a new engine from scratch is not a quick nor cheap undertaking and we do not know how much of the development time was actually spent on aspects directly related to the nature of the gameplay, but the indications are that it was late in the development cycle (the state of the Gamescon demo is evidence enough of that).

Given the above, it is also obvious (at least to me) that the release of v1.0 of X-Rebirth was rushed for one reason or another, which only further emphasises what I was getting at - they really needed more time prior to release to develop the game as the Engine development seems to have occupied the bulk of their time (not unexpected - at least to me). However, Egosoft have a decent track record of supporting their products post-release which does mitigate such concerns to a large degree.

The comparative state of the release though is a bit moot though in the context of the MetaCritic scores as their approach is tantamount to playing a game of pinning the tail on a moving donkey.

[pref]

The fact of the matter is that none of us are in a position to say whether or not such issues have not already been considered in Egosoft's design for the Engine; However, Egosoft are not some new babes in the woods start up outfit and have already delivered us 3-7 games (depending on your point of view) in this genre and thus it is a reasonable assumption that they do know how to deliver if you actually give them a chance to do so.

I still hope you are right, but most likely the plan they set up for post release additions/updates are not valid any more - judging from communication they were based on the assumption that the new playstyle XR has to offer will be successful.
And i don't really see a plan B to reconnect with the old fanbase yet.
Except for the last interview, with the possibility for an 'X4' expansion pack. Which still is a bit frightening knowing how CEO relates to the X4 idea (full of cheats, and overcomplicated). Guess whole ES hated the old games already or were bored to no extent by them. If that is the attitude, wonder how that X4 pack could look like without the love and care.

[khartsh]

@Roger:

Metacritic never claims to be nor should it ever be considered a gauge of which a game is currently perceived. Metacritic is simply a collection of professional reviews where a Developer can say "Look I have finished my masterpiece" and reviewers can say "We will see about that".

All Metacritic tells us is that at release and the subsequent months post release this game was 33% of 100%. In any terms 100% of reviews agreed that it was not even close for release.

If you want that changed you need a time-machine, because nothing can unwind the first 6 months of this horrible game.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

@Kartsh: Despite that, some use it in that manner... see my point?

The trouble with metrics in general is that it is too easy to mis-use them or mis-quote them. People in general do not care about the publisher's intent if they are out to prove a point.

[spankahontis]

@Kartsh: Despite that, some use it in that manner... see my point?

The trouble with metrics in general is that it is too easy to mis-use them or mis-quote them. People in general do not care about the publisher's intent if they are out to prove a point.

Exactly, when it's not angry trolls with a vendetta, making several accounts to vote down a game.
Then you have astro-turfers, fake fanboys that give the game a 9/10 out of 10; paid for by PR Companies to give the game a shinning review.
I've never give such a high score, 9 is a rarity for me, the game would have to be something exceptional.

Even Game Reviewers are threatened with 'Black listing' from game companies if they're not given a shinning review.
I go running to Angry Joe or Total Biscuit if I want an honest review.

[yoyolll]

At this point egosoft should hire roger to be their PR man. He's doing a much better job than Bernd anyway

[Graaf]

As for the development time, the fact they apparently wasted 4 years only emphasises my point

But they didn't waste 4 years.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

@yoyolll: Ha ha! CBJ and linolafett have proven to be the best posters on behalf of Egosoft... Personally, I just call it as I see it (for good or ill).

@Graaf: If they spent "4yrs (again)" on development as per your quote then the implication that they did waste 4yrs. In fact, I believe they have wasted more than that based on other sources. In any case, the technicalities of how much time may have been wasted does not really matter in the context of the current discussion as any debate of "what if's" is rather moot. We are in the situation we are in, and how we got here is water under the bridge - it is not like we can go back in time and fix it now.

From the recent RPS article, Egosoft obviously have a handle on the situation and we all really need to be patient. Speculation over the potential X4/XR2 product/expansion is only likely to breed even more discontent - we would be better to wait for formal details on it's nature and hope that Egosoft are more open and clear in the details than they were with XR.

[khartsh]

As for the development time, the fact they apparently wasted 4 years only emphasises my point

But they didn't waste 4 years.

That is right, they didn't waste the time. According to Bernd in at least two interviews now they were experimenting with that they could do with the new engine.

Won't admit that means trying to get it on a... nevermind

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Experimentation beyond a certain point is almost certainly time wasting when in the context of planning to deliver a product. Whether they passed that point in the 4yrs of experimentation is debatable but what is not is that the game that was delivered did need more time to be developed/tested and it did not get that extra time pre-release (this is an all too common problem in the software industry IME). But as I stated earlier, the what-if speculation is pretty moot anyway.

[Graaf]

@Graaf: If they spent "4yrs (again)" on development as per your quote then the implication that they did waste 4yrs. In fact, I believe they have wasted more than that based on other sources. In any case, the technicalities of how much time may have been wasted does not really matter in the context of the current discussion as any debate of "what if's" is rather moot. We are in the situation we are in, and how we got here is water under the bridge - it is not like we can go back in time and fix it now.

Somehow you make it sound like they didn't start development of Rebirth until after they announced it to us in early 2011. Which makes no sense at all. Not that you were making sense before...

[Nikola515]

Not that you were making sense before...

[plynak]

Not that you were making sense before...

+1

[CBJ]

It seems like this thread has run its course, with the usual suspects wading in to make it personal.