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Forums - Gaming - Metacritic Is Flawed (Final Fantasy XIII Related)

Barozi said:
BW_JP said:
ymeaga1n said:
GenoZStriker said:
^ the orange box on the Xbox360 wasn't any better. Gamers were better of getting it for the PC.

LOL Are you joking? Sorry dude but you have no idea what your talking about. 

? he's absolutely right. While the 360 version was a decent port (as opposed to the ps3 one being a horrible port)
The PC version is superior by a landslide.


Not only that, it has infinite free content and no need to pay for any of the updates/map packs, dedicated servers. mods, better community, much much much less lag and no reason to pay to use your internet twice.

 

Has far superior graphics, controls, sound and resolution.

 

How can you possibly say his statement is incorrect? 

I'm sure he was reffering to the PS3 version of Orange Box versus the 360 version.

As for the PC version, almost everything you said is not reviewable. You can't give scores for potential. Mods don't come with the game, so they can't be reviewed. Better community shouldn't even be mentioned, lag depends on internet connection, better controls are subjective, better sound is arguable, better graphics is actually wrong, because the 360 version of Half-Life 2 and Episode One use the updated Source engine. So only the higher resolution is actually true.

So the PC version barely wins.

On the other hand the 360 version has achievements....

I changed my mind. I personally think the 360 version is superior.

So does the PC version.

Have you ever tried TF2 on consoles? =/



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Reasonable said:
CommonMan said:

It's not a flaw, it's an aggregate. Thre are 3 "Averages": the mean, median and mode. Mathmeticians really have never decided what the "best" average is, it's a case by case basis. What metacritic shows is the mean score. Meaning take the scores, add them up and divide by how many scores there are (plus weighting but we can leave it out of this discussion). Each of the average types have strengths and weaknesses (for instance the mode is the most common number in a set, so Uncharted 2 would be 100 on this scale, in fact we'd have a lot of 100's this gen if that was the case, not very helpful) and the median is arrived at by listing the numbers and finding the right in the middle and taking the mean of those two, which isn't very helpful either as outliers would put a lot of games way lower. So unless you can come up with a brand new type of average that no mathmetician since ancient Egypt has been able to come up with, it's as good as it's going to get.

That's basically correct, but Meta is nonetheless statistically flawed (to be fair mostly in terms of how people apply the results but also within its own right) because:

1 - number of samples is inconsistent not only between different games but different console versions.  This makes it impossible to reliably compare titles.  Right now FFXIII for PS3 has way more reviews, and because consoles have official mags, etc. this means statistically 360 should come out with a higher score despite being the same game with somewhat weaker graphics - that's clearly useless for comparison

2 - the real biggie in terms of their overall average, they weight some reviews using a 'secret' formula plus for reviews that are text only they 'guess' the score implied by the words.  This is the biggie.  This means the metacritic average is fundamentally unreliable.

 

Now the site does have some merit, if you understand all this (and you clearly do) and approach it's contents wisely.  But few do, let's be honest.

Good points and reasonable as usual. I didn't want to get into the weighting thing, because I think they shouldn't weight anything. They should have reviewers that qualify and others that don't and only include the reviews from the smaller list of publications that qualify. People should treat a meta-score exactly as they do any other score, as something to start with and then look at reviews and even forum chat about the game. I personally have used meta for back catalog as I didn't get into this gen until 2008 and it really hasn't let me down. As long as you use your head it works just fine. Don't buy a highly rated FPS if you hate FPS for example.



Isn't flawed now. Xbox version is lower than PS3 now.



Wagram said:
Isn't flawed now. Xbox version is lower than PS3 now.

No it isn't. Look again.



Damn I thought it dropped to an 80 lol



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CommonMan said:
Reasonable said:
CommonMan said:

It's not a flaw, it's an aggregate. Thre are 3 "Averages": the mean, median and mode. Mathmeticians really have never decided what the "best" average is, it's a case by case basis. What metacritic shows is the mean score. Meaning take the scores, add them up and divide by how many scores there are (plus weighting but we can leave it out of this discussion). Each of the average types have strengths and weaknesses (for instance the mode is the most common number in a set, so Uncharted 2 would be 100 on this scale, in fact we'd have a lot of 100's this gen if that was the case, not very helpful) and the median is arrived at by listing the numbers and finding the right in the middle and taking the mean of those two, which isn't very helpful either as outliers would put a lot of games way lower. So unless you can come up with a brand new type of average that no mathmetician since ancient Egypt has been able to come up with, it's as good as it's going to get.

That's basically correct, but Meta is nonetheless statistically flawed (to be fair mostly in terms of how people apply the results but also within its own right) because:

1 - number of samples is inconsistent not only between different games but different console versions.  This makes it impossible to reliably compare titles.  Right now FFXIII for PS3 has way more reviews, and because consoles have official mags, etc. this means statistically 360 should come out with a higher score despite being the same game with somewhat weaker graphics - that's clearly useless for comparison

2 - the real biggie in terms of their overall average, they weight some reviews using a 'secret' formula plus for reviews that are text only they 'guess' the score implied by the words.  This is the biggie.  This means the metacritic average is fundamentally unreliable.

 

Now the site does have some merit, if you understand all this (and you clearly do) and approach it's contents wisely.  But few do, let's be honest.

Good points and reasonable as usual. I didn't want to get into the weighting thing, because I think they shouldn't weight anything. They should have reviewers that qualify and others that don't and only include the reviews from the smaller list of publications that qualify. People should treat a meta-score exactly as they do any other score, as something to start with and then look at reviews and even forum chat about the game. I personally have used meta for back catalog as I didn't get into this gen until 2008 and it really hasn't let me down. As long as you use your head it works just fine. Don't buy a highly rated FPS if you hate FPS for example.

spot on.  nice Avatar, too.  I so wanted to look like that as a kid.



Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...

dobby985 said:
Barozi said:
BW_JP said:
ymeaga1n said:
GenoZStriker said:
^ the orange box on the Xbox360 wasn't any better. Gamers were better of getting it for the PC.

LOL Are you joking? Sorry dude but you have no idea what your talking about. 

? he's absolutely right. While the 360 version was a decent port (as opposed to the ps3 one being a horrible port)
The PC version is superior by a landslide.


Not only that, it has infinite free content and no need to pay for any of the updates/map packs, dedicated servers. mods, better community, much much much less lag and no reason to pay to use your internet twice.

 

Has far superior graphics, controls, sound and resolution.

 

How can you possibly say his statement is incorrect? 

I'm sure he was reffering to the PS3 version of Orange Box versus the 360 version.

As for the PC version, almost everything you said is not reviewable. You can't give scores for potential. Mods don't come with the game, so they can't be reviewed. Better community shouldn't even be mentioned, lag depends on internet connection, better controls are subjective, better sound is arguable, better graphics is actually wrong, because the 360 version of Half-Life 2 and Episode One use the updated Source engine. So only the higher resolution is actually true.

So the PC version barely wins.

On the other hand the 360 version has achievements....

I changed my mind. I personally think the 360 version is superior.

So does the PC version.

Have you ever tried TF2 on consoles? =/

PC version doesn't have achievements for HL2 and EP1.

I did play TF2 on 360 once, but not online.



The problem is places like Eurogamer where they admit themselves that the PS3 is in fact superior yet when it comes to review time they review the PS3 version and award the 360 version with the PS3 versions score.

In other words the 360 version isn't getting reviewed. It is actually quite unfair and makes no sense, especially in Eurogamers case.



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ymeaga1n said:
GenoZStriker said:
^ the orange box on the Xbox360 wasn't any better. Gamers were better of getting it for the PC.

LOL Are you joking? Sorry dude but you have no idea what your talking about. 

I own the fucking game for the Xbox360 and have a friend who has the PS3 version. Nothing about the 360 version was better than the PS3. They were both the same crap. Don't even think about throwing reviews score at me pretending they were not the same based on that. The 360 version also had framerate and long loading times. My game froze on me various times during Half Life 2 and the episodes and it had nothing to do with my 360 since others were also having problem with those spefic moments. When you reach certain check points or come to a point where you are have reached a new area the game seems like it freezes for like 5 seconds and than continues. TF2 was dead and laggy on 360 just as it was on the PS3. PC > PS3+360.



Khuutra said:

Metacritic has never been a valid metric for measuring the quality of games!

I guess its a decent metric on the popularity of a title over a wide range of reviewers.



Do you know what its like to live on the far side of Uranus?