Fallout scores over time.

cratchety ol joe

cratchety ol joe

Mildly Dipped
Warning, boring post ahead!

It's no secret I work in 'business intelligence' which is posh speak for 'excel charts' so I decided to apply my crappy vocation to something I like, and that something is Fallout...

I wanted to know: are we players getting better or worse product over time?

The only tangible details I can think of are those provided by the metacritic site, which not only has a collective average of 'professional' reviews but also an aggregate of user reviews (I personally have a far stronger belief in user reviews...)

I sat down, grabbed the teeny-tiny amount of data that was the scores given to each game and this is what came out...

cX5VEvO.jpg

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So, I hear you asking... "Hey, Dull person with apparently too much time and no life, what does that crappy chart mean?"

I'll tell you what I see... I see a growing trend in falling user scores over time, and I think It's no surprise that a favourite of NMA Fallout: NV was the exception to this rule! nearly reviving the users scores to high 80's or 90's

Now, any Business Intelligence Analyst (see also monkey with a keyboard) will tell you that if this trend continues, the next forecast score would be expected to be cast against Fallout 5 (release date apx 2022) which according to exponential trend, logarithmic trend and the rather dull linear trend would be expected to garner a user score of 55 (+/- 3 points)

Long story very short - Things are literally getting worse over time.
 
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Some more data!
Average critic review score for the main Fallout series: 86.8/100
Average user review score for the main Fallout series: 79.8/100
Average critic review score for BI/Obsidian Fallouts: 86.3/100
Average user review score for BI/Obsidian Fallouts: 88.7/100
Average critic review score for Bethesda Fallouts: 87.5/100
Average user review score for Bethesda Fallouts: 66.5/100 (ouch!)
Average critic review score for the entire Fallout series (includes BoS and Tactics): 82.9/100
Average user review score for the entire Fallout series (includes BoS and Tactics): 73.9/100
 
Might also be worth looking at percentage of positive vs negative user reviews on Steam.

The downward spike in Metacritic user reviews for Fallout 4 is so dramatic that it's hard to believe it's not in some way anomalous. I don't put much stock in "metabombing" or whatever as further influx of user reviews over time should at least partially iron out spikes caused by this. I have to assume it's representative of a large number of people who were either heavily invested in Fallout 3 or not invested in the series at all expressing their disappointment with the latest offering.
 
@Lanfear you know what... that is a cracking idea, steam scores are in themselves another agregate score of user experience...

The steam scores are even more damning clearly showing that people have (as average experience) not enjoyed Bethesda games as much as the others.

BkbQZbl.png

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Title // Steam user score
fallout // 92.23%
Fallout 2 // 92.11%
Fallout 3 // 80.76%
Fallout: NV // 95.79%
Fallout 4 // 79.96%
 
These charts make sense. I can see myself having fun playing F4 but I would quickly get bored of it and complain about it´s flaws
 
Well what I have to say about those statistics and charts:

Short answer: Whoa!

Long answer: Holy shit!

That chart shows quite a bit of information in the sense that it falls a decent a bit with Fallout 3 then is violently cast down with Fallout 4. Not looking too good for Bethesda but who needs to care about scores, making good games, or caring about fans wwhen you're making all that money. Only one thing seems to matter to them...sales.
 
Well this is very interesting. So it seems that Bethesda's spell of hypnosis is slowly getting broken. Can't wait to see the scores for Fallout 5.
 
@MercenarySnake sales are indeed important, and I for one often refer to user scores before purchasing, I rarely buy anything below 80% user score.

Sadly #HypeTrain had my ticket on FO4 ... I should have waited, but impatient as I am I just had to get it... should have waited for 50% steam sale, such is hindsight.
 
cratchety ol joe said:
@MercenarySnake sales are indeed important, and I for one often refer to user scores before purchasing, I rarely buy anything below 80% user score.

Sadly #HypeTrain had my ticket on FO4 ... I should have waited, but impatient as I am I just had to get it... should have waited for 50% steam sale, such is hindsight.
Click to expand...
Should've specified, I meant caring about making billions of dollars or some other unrealistic scale to appeal to the masses.
 
Because charts are pretty, and because I'm ill and have little else to do right now...

I thought about some of the constructive criticism I've had about my data methods for the charts, and I think @Izak might have a good idea... The meta data! .. The data about the data, That might be a nice thing to see.

So I present the average of the aggregate scores from the critic reviews, the metacritic user reviews and the steam reviews...
The important line here is the pinky coloured one:

iJeCCJy.png

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I think this highlights a few things perhaps not noticeable at first in the other graphs, firstly that the critic reviews and the user experience of Fallout 3 are quite different and secondly I think it only goes to reinforce the falling appreciation of the Bethesda produced games.

On an unrelated detail, it seems steam users loooove New Vegas :dance:

on a side note: I think comments by @Lanfear and from outside NMA about the veracity of metacritic user scoring is somewhat brought to light as it seems to have fallen even from the time I drew up the first chart...

OK, enough now, I'm starting to feel a little too much like I'm at work, and I don't get paid for this shit...
 
If you want even a more statistics... there is a some polish site.

Fallout:
http://www.gry-online.pl/gra-ocena.asp?ID=6410
9.0 by over 3k people

Fallout 2:
http://www.gry-online.pl/gra-ocena.asp?ID=5328
8.9 by ~5800 people

Fallout 3:
http://www.gry-online.pl/gra-ocena.asp?ID=1820
8.2 by ~7300 people

Fallout New Vegas:
http://www.gry-online.pl/gra-ocena.asp?ID=1087
9.1 by ~ 3200 people

Fallout 4:
http://www.gry-online.pl/gra-ocena.asp?ID=16974
5.6 by ~4900 people

(see difference in ppl beetwen F3, FNV and F4? Let's talk about hype train now)
 
So there's a trend that User reviews are more critical of Fallout than professional reviews are but that, that trend doesn't apply to Obsidian/BI Fallouts, does that mean that there's a biased towards Obsidian or that Bethesda buy professional reviews?
 
Bethesda didn't have anything to do with Fallout when 1 and 2 were made, so bias against Obsidian wasn't a factor during the reception to FNV. The bugs were the biggest detractor to the average press score. Fallout 3 of course was the first Fallout game for many, released after a long enough hiatus for the main series that it faded out of the scene until the first teasers for 3, which also were how I first got into the series. So the lack of perceptions on the series due to this hiatus in addition to the scale of the game at the time were perhaps the biggest contributors to its critical acclaim. As we've seen, those perceptions have changed to be better critical of Bethesda, largely owing to FNV for showing how a good Fallout game plays, as well as the benefits of prioritizing the desire to make a wonderful game above all else.
 
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Ouch! Fallout 4 is fucking up badly.
To be honest, I think I've worked out the reason why the user critic is so bad.
I am happy to see New Vegas get some love, there are some stupid, stupid people on Facebook who believe Fallout is Bethesda's idea (I'm not kidding, his hatred for New Vegas came from the fact that he thought Obsidian stole Bethesda's idea for a game).
 
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