Quote Originally Posted by Nitelancer View Post
But the user sample is about the same (~1000, which is not at all a "very low" sample if you know anything about statistics), and the critic reviews are also higher for ARR.
It's still what is statistically called a "voluntary sample" (people choose to join the sample by submitting a rating), which is universally panned as one of the two most unreliable approaches to gathering useful data.

For the critic reviews, what I look for are reviews from the same critics. For example, PC Gamer gives ARR 79/100 vs. DT 80/100. IGN gives ARR 8.6 vs. DT 8.0.

There's also the reality of what they're following. ARR followed 1.0, which was a disaster. DT is following ShB and EW, which were high-points of the franchise. That's necessarily going to make ARR "feel better" and lead to higher ratings, while "deflating" DT. I mean, look at the ARR scores, and then compare it to how many people today point to ARR as a long slog and the infamous "the story doesn't get good until you get to HW." Which isn't to say that I think ARR was bad at all, just that its scores will be naturally inflated because it followed 1.0 (and if you read the actual ratings for it, you'll see exactly that "brought the series back to life" as a key point).

Regardless, I think the User Score is often initially a lot of frustrated players protesting and will probably change over the long-term as the more casual players leave their reviews and balance the score. If you check back some years from now, the User Score will probably be a lot higher.
This. Remember that the initial score people pointed out for DT was 8.6 and then as soon as that became known, it started dropping. There's no doubt in my mind the "current" score is anything resembling an actual representative sample of the playerbase. Give it time for the larger playerbase to complete the main game and post, and watch how it counters those bombing on it.