I'm assuming you weren't here when the steam reviews for this game fell to like 45% when 2.0 came out. THE community.
On Steam's review history, the June-August three-month review dip was 25% negative, 48% negative, and 38% negative. Average 37% negative.
Based on Steam Charts, the player count for that period was average ~60,000 (82k, 63k, 48k).
Using the highest ratio of negative reviews against the highest playercount period (not the exact same timeframe but I can't get higher timeframe accuracy from SteamCharts), 48% negative from 4,305 reviews during the 82,843 player count.
5.2% of players total decided to leave a review, and of those 5.2% of the "community" whom decided to leave a review, 2.5% so decided to leave a negative review. (Disclaimer: based on my number sources, so subject to error. I'm not about to deep-dive research this, I'm not that invested in making this point.)
Reviews as a metric are, subjectively speaking, sure, not a great method of appraisal. Looking at today's reviews, I see two negatives that are "should be called one week to die" and a complaint about lost savefiles after five days. One is a technical issue, so valid but also could have been brought about by any number of user-end issues we have zero context about, the other is entirely inane. Negative reviews are, as a metric, made by people who have a frustration with a product. Is that frustration always a valid criticism of the product? What rates of low-scoring reviews for things on retailer websites where the 1-2-3 star reviews are based on the customer's misuse of an item, shipping issues which could be attributed to the carrier, or difficulties not directly related to the product itself? Recent personal example, I was looking at part of a shelf from IKEA; lower-end reviews were typically because of difficulty and tremendous frustrations and hammering noise for hours from assembly (several reviews mentioned weeping). When I assembled it, I did it silently and fairly quickly, because I had the proper tools to do so. That is an external factor to assembly not part of the product, so if I left a positive review that "shelf works", I would have unaccounted for external factors affecting a positive review, as well; in 7DTD context, maybe that's mods enhancing experience- mods which TFP are typically quite accommodating towards.
94.8% of players, AKA "the community", did not express
any review sentiment during that period. People who feel good or neutral about a product aren't always going to leave a review, but people with a gripe, a complaint, a negativity, are much more compelled to do so
(especially if a large content creator echochambers with their like-minded community with sentiments of criticism, just saying), so reviews will typically skew a little bit more negative- always varying due to other factors, I'm sure, and even so, showing 48% negative also means 52% positive, meaning the negative side of things is still a technical minority. You can argue more validly that the playercount itself is a better metric of enjoyment, and the player counts according to Steam Charts would support that: pre 2.0, VERY steady 40k, whereas after 2.0 it dipped down to 31k before bumping back up with 2.5, the surge of which is too recent to inspect fairly.
Using unsolicited and voluntary reviews as basis for something's approval is not a reliable metric.
If you're thinking GNS is just whining and pushing negativity I genuinely don't know how I'm supposed to take that seriously lmao.
I knew like 5% of the active community wants my head on a pike because I continue to point out flaws in the game (which get like 10-100k views with 99% positive responses, but muh tiny smol insignificant community of complainers) but I didn't realize there were people so slopwashed that GNS and Woodle would be considered whiners holy ■■■■.
Disclaimer: I haven't watched GnS videos, I haven't watched your videos, so I have zero opinion to his or your own content.
I had started to watch some JaWoodle videos, so I'd probably fall more into the "prospective dedicated viewer" camp - but what turned me away from his videos was not just his own statements, but also his community comments. One specific example: he had a video testing "barrier blocks", where zombies can't path over a block because it has an open center but the player can. I would personally attribute this to number of blocks + rotations per block, versus TFP employee time spent checking every block's every rotation - but his attitude, and that of his comments, was that TFP 'singled out' ones he used/showed in previous videos for fixing as though he was specially targeted to break his suggested designs.
I have my own personal dislikes about the pathing/'zombie demolitions engineer' system, but fixing logical pathing errors on blocks that are highlighted in popular videos is hardly a rational topic of complaint- but alas, according to 'his community', that's another mark supporting the nickname 'Anti-Fun Pimps', because they patched a pathing bug/exploit, how
dare they
ruin fun yet again.
That was the tone he gave, the tone his comments had, and the tone that's maintained in his other videos and in several comments for his other videos. It's perfectly fine to have frustrations with something you still enjoy, but it wore down on my enjoyment. The negativity gives a bad impression, so I do not and likely will not watch more of his stuff, because I prefer positive entertainment and not piling-on of
negative vibes, maaan.
