I’m not denying that. I am saying that stars trigger a psychological response towards objective qualities rather than subjective experience - out of habit - regardless of what happens when you hover over them (which doesn’t really apply to smartphone/tablet users of the site btw). So yeah, it may seem stupid to you, but I suspect that changing the graphic of the stars would be simpler than having people abandon all their rating system baggage.
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That is not a bad point. Stars do connote something specific, even if they don’t mean that here on Grouvee.
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Just for anyone interested, Polygon’s review scoring system is very well thought out and worth a read:
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I disagree.
Infact, I think they should expand the rating system to allow half-star votes (a 1-10 scale rather than 1-5, in essence).
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So I found yet another unreleased game with a rating. Five stars no less:
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A shoutout to Peter: are you fixing the 1-star description “did not like it all”? 
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I might get around to that some day. I think it adds character to the site 
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Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
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So very entertaining 
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Yeah, sure… “entertaining”… that is the right word for it!
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Charming? Yeah, that’s it. It’s charming.
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The 5 Star Rating system should be replaced with a half star rating system with the ability to give ratings such as ★★½. Is there somewhere on Grouvee I could start a poll or send a message to the website’s administrators?
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Hi @QDB, thank you for the feedback. Your request is one that has been discussed in past, as are similar requests, because we all have very individual ways of rating our favourite media. There are many ways to handle ratings, and I think it can be fair to say that no system is perfect, and no one system will satisfy everyone’s needs. Grouvee’s founder, @Peter has touched on the subject before, and has indicated a preference for leaving the system in its current state for the moment. However, I am sure he will take your opinion into consideration if the need to reevaluate the rating system arises. Crucially, I don’t want to suggest that your input and feedback are not important. Please feel free to discuss your request further at any time. I know many people have different reasons for wanting certain granularity, and it is always good to get a discussion going.
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+1 to what BMO said. I don’t mean to just push your comment aside, but right now I don’t intend on changing it. I seriously considered it at one point, but mostly decided that I wouldn’t like the system, and I don’t want to build a website that I don’t like. Hope that’s enough of a reason!
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Have you ever considered, doing something similar to HowLongToBeat, where the users can chose their rating scale? They have the option of 5/5, 10/10, or 100/100. Since here it adds up to a decimal rating anyway for the average rating, it wouldn’t change as much on the whole, apart from satisfying those people who really crave more precision in the ratings. For example having an option of half stars bringing it up to 10 point rating scale.
I respect all the effort you’ve put into this site, and understand if that’s something you won’t do, but was just wondering if you have considered this kind of workaround?
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I think, it’s enough to have 4 stars:
- bad - you just didn’t like it
- nothing really special
- good - the one you could recommend to others
- great - one of your favorites
Because when you claim the game as “bad”, it doesn’t really matter, how bad it was - mostly or completely.
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For me it just means almost every single game gets the same exact score, bar a few exceptional games. 100s of different games all with the same exact score kind of devalues the scoring for me.
Either way each person will prefer a different method of scoring and organizing their games. I was just wondering if Peter had considered having an option to choose a half star scale, for those who really want to, while leaving the default as it is.
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If we wanted to change the rating system what would the change be addressing or trying to do? I like a five star system OK. For me, the only real utility in doing anything with this stuff is to find something or keep track of it. Maybe a star system could be used for ‘discovery’ of content among users but i’m somewhat skeptical of it being that useful. If we had a 10 star system or a 100 star system. What would i be looking at with that expanded tiering?
Here’s how i use the 5 stars and why 5 stars works for how i use it. I have a tendency to give a lot of 3 star ratings to maybe 65-80% of stuff it feels like. Is that bad? Hmm. Most games I feel are mediocre plain and simple! More stars/depth wouldnt do much to change my habit. I’d give it a 5/10 or 50/100. I certainyl can’t look at my collection and filter things and compare games that are 49s and 51s. (if i’m looking for stuff in the 60s range i’m going to be missing things or vote things unfairly anyway)
5 stars are for the best games that i want to stick out. (So that’s basically a ‘favorites’ button for me.) And they dont get it easy from me. I also give 1 stars to games i wont touch with a ten foot pole and want to remember to stay away (And warn others?) Likewise few things really are so bad there is nothing good about it. Fours and two are hard and tend to be loose in my mind becuase generally if i’m thinking it it it’s a 2 star its because there is some weird feeling of ‘i didnt enjoy it myself but thought it was okay’ or something like that. Fours are games i tend to love but have technical issues or something, had higher expectations/overhype, OR they are just mediocre games that hit it right for me/i just tend to like too much 
Reviews work better than stellar debris. I really think the stars could be condesnse down to three stars the way i use it lol. 3 4 5 and an option to make something dissapear (a black hole button?)
Adding ratings to subcats like graphics, gameplay, sound, design, seems more trouble than it’s really worth (i dont see myself doing all that but hey i’d look at someone’s SNES shelf who did and sort it that way!) It would be interesting to look at SNES games that the community gave 5 stars to graphcs in, sound etc. I’d be curious to look at it, but I dont think i’d particpate.
If we really wanted to do something like a subcat star system for the intent of content discovery maybe make some append where every user could ‘vote’ on some quality of a game for ‘best aspect of it’ from various categories. The games that actually have an edge in some respect would say that on the main page. (‘Grouvee thinks Chrono Trigger has strong quality in Graphics’ This doesnt mean it has five star graphics but it means it is a game where grouvee users who vote its best quality is the graphics, are in the majority amongst other categories (basically a poll) It would be interesting to participate in and look at, especially if everyone gets one vote per title) it woudl also be kept semi-simple.
off topic: 120 star rating system would be ideal. with an option to let users get stars themselves for writing reviews or recruiting members to the site. there could also be powerups and combo breakers. come on! shoryuken!
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That’s mostly how it goes for me and most games end up with a 3 star rating, but for me it annoys me a little bit having so many games with the same rating. I have gotten somewhat used to the 5 star system given how long I have been on this site and have had to deal with it, and I like it a lot more than initially. Still giving people more options is almost never a bad thing.
And I like the idea, of different ratings for different categories for content discovery. Some categories like: soundtrack, graphics, asthetic, fun-factor, story, etc. would really allow for a great way to discover new games in a category you like. The more I think about it the more it sounds like a brilliant idea. Why hasn’t this been done somewhere before?
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I thought I’d chime in and say that I also prefer a simple rating system. I’d probably be content with a three star system myself, but the five star system works as well. I really like the tooltips for the ratings as well, because then I can simply try saying the phrases “I liked it”, “mostly didn’t like it” and so on and see what feels most right.
I am not sure if I can agree with that. From a UI point of view that is definitely not that black and white, it is very easy to boggle down something with too many knobs and dials. On top of that, ask anyone writing a somewhat large application, the additional cost of maintaining a bunch of rarely used features quite often adds more stress to the developer than it adds value to its users, and slows down development in general.
When it comes to ratings I find it harder to use the more options I have. It happens way too often with me that I feel like I have to go through my entire library in these database services because I have rated things inconsistently (i.e. by giving thing X a .5 higher score than Y even though I actually like Y better when I think about it later). With fewer ratings to choose from, I am less likely to have these inconsistencies, and I generally feel better about it all. That’s me though, not saying it’s like that for everyone.
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