LOL! They’ve turned off reviews in the App Store!

Kaazz

I went to write a review after this latest update fiasco, and they’ve disabled new reviews. Not a surprise since all the recent reviews were roasting them for what a disaster it is!

Here’s what I had planned to write:

I’ve played this game for over 10 years. It’s been my favorite way to unwind in the evenings, playing at least a couple hours every night. But this latest update literally gives me a headache to play! All kinds of unnecessary animations during game play (explosions, bulging and pulsing tiles, characters moving around), and even switching between screens (images jumping before they settle into place, which looks intentional, not a bug). And then add in the slow scrolling, and the battery drain (playing less than an hour drains my iPad by 10%), and it’s really a painful experience. I’m afraid that if they don’t provide a way to opt out from all these unnecessary animations I will have to quit playing. It’s literally too painful!

entrailbucket

The Android store has plenty of reviews from yesterday. Does Apple let app developers turn off reviews? That would be pretty weird, but I guess Apple is pretty weird.

Edit: both Apple and Android apparently have algorithms in place to try to mitigate review bombing. The MPQ devs didn't (and can't) turn off reviews.

Read_Only

Nah it can't be because of review bombing, from the app store sorting by most critical shows very few recent poor results and also searching by newest shows about 8 reviews in 2 years. There's only about 2.4k total reviews on the app store.

Never been negative about this games future but I think we are in the end game now. Far too long with broken features and characters continually released broken, which should be a priority before moving on to the next.

Right now would it really matter if no one had a new release until this was all fixed? They should be sticking in easy cover and item captures to keep people logging in. Right now they should be paying us to play the game, not the other way around.

The update should've been pulled, they have left it too long. I doubt the game recovers from this.

DAZ0273

If I was the Devs the very first thing I would do is pull Devpool from playable. It was always a bit self serving and not very funny but now you are proudly displaying a character with a “power” about bugs and shoddy customer service. The joke is biting you on the backside.

bluewolf

I'm not sure about new reviews but the App store (apple) will let me update my existing MPQ review, which is where the "write a review" link takes me to.

As I said elsewhere, people should review honestly and fairly. IMO a review bomb is one that either didn't engage with the product at all or had a giant chip on its shoulder (I have seen an MPQ review that gave it 1 star because of the Kitty Pride costume.) That said the game has annoyed a lot of people by making itself perform terribly on their devices.

Kross

I never understood the progression of "review bombing."

I always took it to mean a plethora of bad reviews before a thing was even released. So it made no sense to review something before you could even see/play it.

But it seems recently that review bombing just means when something gets a lot of bad reviews all at once.

I mean if the thing (usually a movie or game) has been released review bombing is kind of impossible to prove. Maybe people just really hated the media.

I remember this from the Acolyte, Star Wars show. The media said it was review bombed, when most people, including myself, just thought it was really bad.

dianetics

@Kross said:
But it seems recently that review bombing just means when something gets a lot of bad reviews all at once.

It is the only way the customer base can actually make their voices heard.
On app stores it is less effective, but Steam is by far and away the best way to deal with review bombing. Bomb periods are marked with asterisks so you can go to the bomb period and investigate why.
It works.
It is a general good for the gaming community, For the past 6 years or so publishers (not developers) have ignored, punished consumers, and placed unfair/anti consumer policies in their games.
Smart devs and publishers will use the bombs to cultivate positive user experiences and help to restore faith.
Just look at the Sony and Helldivers 2.

DAZ0273

There is always a difference between negative reviews from an agenda vs negative reviews from some thing that is able to be critiqued from a balanced perspective. Unity is a disaster. The fixes so far don’t work. What is R327?

bluewolf

R327 is the next update which will have some undefined number of fixes and improvements. Supposedly coming this week yet.

DAZ0273

Thanks, let’s hope that helps.

JoeHandle

I posted my negative review back in 2015 and it still stands. A thing run by humans has capacity for doing untoward things. Surprise. If you like roster management, match-3, a/o comics lore and characters, in some combination and choose to participate anyway, you've been warned, ha.

I have not reviewed it on Google Play ... and ... looks like I can. So, the OP is referring to Apple? Kindle? Probably Apple, I would guess. Don't know nothing about no apple anything. It would be surprising to me if publishers can diasable / block reviews anywhere, seems like that is a power the platforms would reserve unto themselves to prevent shenanigans.

IceIX

Just to pipe up here, we have not shut off reviews on any storefront. I'd be the one pressing the button if one even exists, and I haven't even looked into the existence of that functionality on any given platform. So if you can't post one, it's not us!

I'm not a personal fan of review bombing, and I'm very against brigading for any game. But as stated by others above, low review scores are a way when warranted for players to get their points across in a tangible manner besides throwing it into the social media ether. Which, in our case we do our best to read so it's less useful. We've been tossing around forum threads, Reddit threads, heck, even some Youtube comments for the past couple weeks. So low review scores aren't doing anything to bring extra visibility to us. We're working as fast as we can already, have a build in process with a bunch of improvements and are working on more. The review scores aren't lighting more of a fire than already going at 100%. We're much better served as this point by any bug reports or platform instability reports than yet another 1-Star no comment review from NowMPQHater49 that doesn't give us any information to fix things.

So, I get it. Not happy about any negative reviews rolling in (nor am I happy about it even when things are rosier, but still). But yeah, it's not us!