ARR > Dawntrail

[Xelanar]

Personally I agree if we're talking about the story. For everything else I enjoy Dawntrail more.

[Turtledeluxe]

Your correct. ARR on PC has a Critic rating of 83, and a user rating of 7.8

It's interesting to me when people type up long comments but don't double check something like that. Then again that's probably why they didn't mention it in their post.

[Striker44]

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.

[Verathel]

ARR is better for sure.

I'm personally very big on themes, underlying purpose and motivations alongside worldbuilding. ARR definitely had very shallow moments but even those shallow moments had purpose and that by itself makes it better than Dawntrail. The patches can change this opinion and I certainly hope they do.

This is for the story only, obviously in other aspects Dawntrail is vastly superior.

[Chasingstars]

The numbers don't lie.

[Voidmage]

The numbers don't lie.

I don‘t wanna be that guy but a sampling size of at least 30 is normally the minimum requirement to see a trend.

At topic:
I actually really like ARR. For me it had the best level experience to date, the best worldbuilding and was just a fun experience.
It was nice and down to earth. Kinda cozy.

I would also see the DT story behind it but I am actually not neutral in that regard.

ARR came after 1.0 so it’s hard to say how that was part of the review but on the other hand DT had the actual luck to have experienced devs behind it. ARR didn’t have that.

Hmm yeah. I put DT under ARR also.
For me the experienced Devs and the goodwill from Shb and EW give it a slight edge at having an easier time for me.
ARR didn‘t have that back then and it also had a strong competition in WoW.

[Nitelancer]

The numbers don't lie.

That's only because the PS3's performance issues. Otherwise, critics rate it higher for other platforms. So yea, numbers don't lie.

[Nitelancer]

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).



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.

All survey responses are voluntary. Can't force someone to take a survey or give a rating. But it's true that there is a question of how representative the sample is of the population in question. However, that would depend on additional characteristics of those who gave a rating, such as their age, income, behaviors, etc. The proportion of these characteristics might not perfectly reflect of the proportions that would be found in the whole NA XIV population. We can't really know, but I would think that now with a sample of 1000, the sample would more closely resemble the population than when the score was 8.6 and the sample was smaller. I think user reviews do count for something, otherwise, there would be no point to having them.

[Isala]

The numbers don't lie.

That's actually a bit more damning, really... A decade of experience, and even the best comparison is still equal to the game they literally had to save from shutting down.

[Maxilor]

ARR gave us the greatest voice acting moment of all time and I'm tired of pretending it wasn't peak:

https://youtu.be/bj6eQ7oitJo