How do you rate your VNs?

[Dreamysyu]

39 minutes ago, ChaosRaven said:

I also tend to rate like this, even though I consider Dreamysyu's rating system superior. His system makes better use of the full range and 5 is the average like it is supposed to be.

Well, actually my average vote is just below 7, mostly because, just like @bakauchuujin said, I just don't finish most of the VNs that fall into 1-5 category according to my system, unless they are very short. 5 in my case is more or less a vote for a VN of absolutely average quality, which is something I wouldn't normally enjoy if there are better VNs out there.

[Clephas]

Because of my blog, I have a baseline for VN of the Month quality.  I won't rate anything that isn't worthy of a VN of the Month (meets the basic criteria) above a 7.9.  If the game meets basic quality standards (industry standards) for visuals and audio, I give it an automatic five points.  Slice of life quality is two points, and the rest is story... However, if the story turns out to be shit, I'll subtract points, up to five.  Exceptional quality in various areas (like visuals and music) will also add increments to the point total.  For example, Minori's visual quality is generally exceptional, so they start out with a basic 6.  Purple Software usually has exceptional audio quality, so it generally starts with the same. 

By definition, negatives take away points, so the end issue is always going to be the storytelling and writing, but that is where most of my VNs start out.

[ittaku]

Shafted, I started playing VNs in about 1998 and never once thought to rate anything back then and only relatively recently joined a community that expects ratings so I have no documentation of what I thought of 20 years of them. It was all too long ago to try and backdate the ratings now so I'm not even trying now.

[Jazid-Kun]

I Just follow my instinct when rate VNs, sound childish, but I just rate after really finished it. 

[Inorin]

anything below 5 is utter trash. I rarely rate anything 10 unless it had some sort of emotional impact on me. Plot twists and incredible character development won't be enough to convince me to rate a vn 10 unless it makes me cry, which is why to this day, I've rated only 1 vn a perfect 10.

Edited March 21, 2018 by wei123

[solidbatman]

poorly

[VirginSmasher]

2 hours ago, solidbatman said:

poorly

Don't we all?

[the tales of Sora]

I mostly rate based in my enjoyment with the VN, but I tend to give more points to some VN that has great sound tracks. 

[Darklord Rooke]

Good:

Bad:

Moege ... and Key shit:

VNs translated by somebody's pet Labrador:

[the tales of Sora]

6 hours ago, wei123 said:

anything below 5 is utter trash. I rarely rate anything 10 unless it had some sort of emotional impact on me. Plot twists and incredible character development won't be enough to convince me to rate a vn 10 unless it makes me cry, which is why to this day, I've rated only 1 vn a perfect 10.

What is the VN you gave 10?

[Inorin]

12 minutes ago, the tales of Sora said:

What is the VN you gave 10?

Muv Luv Alternative

[VirginSmasher]

23 minutes ago, Darklord Rooke said:

Moege ... and Key shit:

 

I relate. Moege also makes me want to commit arson.

[Narcosis]

Most people aren't able to rate anything properly and their final ratings are severely biased.

[Overlord87]

I've rated 10 only three visual novels:

MuvLuv Alternative, because it hit me in ways I would not have believed possible.

Hoshizora no Memoria, because it just clicked with me. Loved every moment of it. To this point I have not loved any visual novel more than this one.

Cross Channel, because it was a story with a message to convey, and managed ti do so with incredible clarity of purpose. Everything just added up together in the end, and the funny thing is, I don't even agree with the author philosophically, but it was just so brilliantly done, so pure and straightforward, I thought anything less than a 10 would not have been fitting for it.

Mostly subjective ratings, all in all. But after all, it's my VNDB page. Should I have written reviews for a blog, I would have rated differently. Only Alternative would still be a 10.

On the range from 8 to 10 are the great titles with minor flaws. Any title with a rating above 8 I would strongly suggest reading to anyone.

Nukiges are capped at 8 by the way. I don't play them anymore these days, but I enjoyed them for a while, and the best among them I rated an 8. Like Bible Black back in the day, because it also had a relatively decent plot (safe to say in the early 2000s it was probably among the best translated VNs period).

Anything between 7 and 8 is good, but nothing to write home about.

Between 6 and 7 are decent, but mostly titles one could play as time sink.

Between 4 and 6 are bad titles I would not recommend.

Below 4 is utter shit.

I'll add that there are titles I dropped but still rated with decent votes. That's the case of titles I could not really get into, but recognized objectively being decent/good, and rating them badly would have been unfair (like Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo Yori mo,).

[Norleas]

I rate all works in separate categories, everything start with a 7, my standard note to a decent/average work and i subtract or add points most of time comparing with other works that gravitate on the average sphere (7 points). The great difference on my system is that i rate different genres with different categories and that categories differ on weight. For example, the equation that describe a charage is described by:

Rating = (art + characters*2 + story + humor + enjoyment*1.5 + sounds*0.5)/7

In comparison, a chunnige rating could be written as:

Rating = (art + characters + story*2 + story concept + action*1.5 + sounds*0.5)/7

But even with a standardized method, it's inevitable some subjectivity.

Only to note, after read more than 200 titles, i never gave a note higher than 9.5 and never will give a 10, cause perfection is impossible.

[Plk_Lesiak]

6 hours ago, Narcosis said:

Most people aren't able to rate anything properly and their final ratings are severely biased.

Assuming there is such thing as "unbiased rating" (spoiler: there isn't) or that most people care about being "objective" when rating media (spoiler: they don't).

[solidbatman]

6 hours ago, Narcosis said:

Most people aren't able to rate anything properly and their final ratings are severely biased.

what defines properly? 

[Thyndd]

I'm not a fan of numerical rating, or at least, I don't think it's a system of one degree of freedom  Never a single number has accurately reflected my critical view or overall enjoyment of what I consider a piece of art. 

 

[bakauchuujin]

On 3/21/2018 at 3:13 PM, solidbatman said:

what defines properly? 

It means exactly the same score Narcosis would give it, since he is all knowing

Edited November 23, 2018 by bakauchuujin

[solidbatman]

34 minutes ago, Thyndd said:

I'm not a fan of numerical rating, or at least, I don't think it's a system of one degree of freedom  Never a single number has accurately reflected my critical view or overall enjoyment of what I consider a piece of art. 

 

this response is a 7/10

[VirginSmasher]

3 hours ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

Assuming there is such thing as "unbiased rating" (spoiler: there isn't) or that most people care about being "objective" when rating media (spoiler: they don't).

I actually remember there being one guy who said he rated everything objectively on this site, but I cannot for the life of me remember who.

[Soulless Watcher]

My rating system is mainly emotion based.

If it actively pisses me off it usually gets a 1-4.

If I am bored to tears, but everything is competently made it is usually a 5.

6-8 is anything that engaged me on some level, be it the comedy, art style, character development, or story. 

9 is reserved for something that made me openly weep at least once, or it has great masturbation material that I never get sick of, or caused me to skip meals because I didn't want to stop reading.  

10 is only for things that had an actual impact on my worldviews, my beliefs on the world changed in some way because of the visual novel and therefore made me a different person. 

[littleshogun]

Honestly I'd never put my thought on the rating, so in regard of my VNDB score I'd just randomly voted it with whatever number that was fit to me. As for the decimals, well occasionally I using that. For the last question here, I make sure that I finished the VN first before vote it, so no score from me for the VN that I dropped.

Edited March 22, 2018 by littleshogun

[adamstan]

Hi there,

Recently I started to think how do others interpret the 10 point scale used for example on VNDB, and if mine isn't off or something. What ticked me off was seeing several posts in VNDB forums that boiled down to somehting like "This VN was lame, didn't like it too much, 7/10", and I was like - WTF? And then I started to worry if, say, people looking at my list in search for things to read won't get wrong impression.

I don't feel confident about giving 10s, so the best ones that I've read are 9's (currently this list has three Key nakiges ). And on the other side of the spectrum - I consider anything above 6.5 to be good enough to recommend to others. 

Two 6.5's on my list are borderline cases - True Love gets dragged down by poor translation and it's system relying too much on random events. Harukoi Otome had good moments, but also some terrible ones.

7's for me are titles that were enjoyable, but suffer from some serious drawbacks - like, poor editing on Kazoku Keikaku or tiresome "adventure gameplay system" on Sakura no Kisetsu coupled with some translation problems.

7.5 is "normal" grade for me - this is base level, titles that I thoroughly enjoyed, but didn't consider "special" enough to rate them higher, or some would-be-eights that got dragged down to this level by some annoying fault (like Nocturnal Illusion, dragged down by abysmal translation, or Miagete, with Korona and Orihime routes significantly weaker than Saya and Hikari)

8 and 8.5 are for VNs that had something in them that enabled them to rise above that base 7.5 level.

I wonder if one day I encounter a VN that I could rate 10?

So, that's me. What are your thoughts about this topic?

 

EDIT: I see that there's already a topic like that ("How do you rate your VNs?"). I didn't find it because I used wrong keywords. Mods, could you move my post there?

Edited November 23, 2018 by adamstan

[Dreamysyu]

Quoting myself from this thread:

On 3/20/2018 at 9:46 PM, Dreamysyu said:

Basically, it's like this:

10 - my absolute favorite. It might have some not very serious flaws, but it's still good overall. And the key reason for giving something a 10 is always my enjoyment.

9 - excellent work. No flaws that I consider serious, I enjoyed it overall.

8 - either 9 with some serious flaws (for example, Grisaia, Ever17), or a 7 which I enjoyed very much for some subjective reason.

7 - simply good, nothing outstanding.

6 - two possibilities: it's either just above average (Grisaia and Umineko fandiscs), or something that I understand is good overall, but it had so many gamebreaking flaws for me so I simply couldn't enjoy it.

5 - absolute average. Somewhat equal amount of good and bad points.

1-4 - different levels of trash.

I only rate VNs when I drop them if I'm absolutely sure that I'm never going to continue reading them. And I don't use decimals. Seriously, I don't understand how it's possible to differentiate between 8.7 and 8.8. I used half-integers at some point, but I decided to drop them.

Also, I often revise my ratings. I try to make it so the histogram of my votes looks similar to a bell curve with an average at 7.

The only thing that changed since then is that I decided to start using half-integers again for the cases where none of the integer ratings feel appropriate.