GalCiv3 down to 79% ("mostly positive") on Steam...

Not too surprised, actually.  Day Two reviews can get pretty brutal as people get upset for not getting X/Y/Z/A/B/C, even if Y/Z/B/C were never promised/part of the game.  But if the game is good (or what was problematic gets fixed), it should bump back up over the days/weeks/months.

Yeah, I hope so too. I am confident most of the issues these folks are talking about will get fixed and probably soon, too.

I think under 80% is a pretty fair result for how the game is.  I'm surprised that Meta has it at 86% to be honest.  It's a good game, but not great.

It's under 80% because Stardock fell into the early access trap, and people have been reviewing it for months in an unfinished state.  Regardless of what rating it deserves, it's weighted down by all the low reviews it's received in the past.

This is one of the big reasons that Steam needs to have a "sliding window" average for reviews, especially for Early Access.  Reviews more than 1-2 months old should be excluded from the ratings.  Even for released games, I'd show nothing more than 6 months back in terms of reviews, because, let's face it, reviews of games long after patches have been released are pretty much useless in terms of telling me whether or not I should buy a game NOW.

Or, if Steam could manage it, reviews should show 1 month prior to the last UPDATE (of any kind) to the present. That would be both fair and informative.

Many complaints are about bugs and they are right, the game was released about one month too early.

There are so many little things which are still not in there, for example the game advertises up to 128 opponents but there is still no randomize race option which is pretty much required to play with a lot of races.

Also many tooltip errors/incomplete tooltips confusing people a lot and I could not get my last 2 games past round 100-200.

That's a great point.  Perhaps Steam should delete beta reviews after game release.  Or at least segregate them in some way.  I mean lets get real; 1.0 is so different in terms of AI,balance, polish,stability, etc. than beta 6 to say nothing of beta 1.  It is not really fair to compare.

My review may have sucked but I was right when I told Derek via email that they should have backed the release day up by a few weeks.

During early access, it was at 62% until Beta 6 where it crawled up to 79%. Then during the last week it made it past 81%.

These sorts of things are always subjective. We all care about different things in our games.  

By the end of early access, crash reports had gotten so infrequent that more time wouldn't have mattered. I know some people will object to me saying this but GalCiv III, 1.0, out the door, is as stable as any other 1.0 in my experience over the past 20 years.  

I can think of major, well known, 4X games and well known games that shipped where you couldn't possibly finish a game.  That's the nature of PC development. Everyone has different boxes.  On our boxes, the game is rock solid. It's when you get out there and someone has a sound driver or a configuration we didn't take into account that things get strange.  

Not to mention, the game has so many different options that unless people wanted us to nerf the game experience, there's going to be some rough edges.  Look how many people complained about MP not supporting custom races during the first week without people considering the significance that they can, right out of the box, create truly custom civilizations both visually and functionally. 

Anyway, what should happen is that 1.01 will come out and it should feel a lot better for those players experiencing issues.

The thing you have to watch with Metacritic are the number of reviews as well as the ratings given.

For instance, Out Of The Park Baseball 2007 is rated on Metacritic as their second best game Eevverr. With a 96 rating. Which sounds cool until you look and see it only had 5 reviews. So for me a game with a rating of 86 but with 24 reviews is probably better value.

I also know they weigh some ratings site higher than others - which is fair enough.

I'd rate it 7.5/10 at the moment. Which....might be a bit unfair, actually - I'm doing what BuckGodot's said about complaining about things that aren't in the game and I was told they wouldn't be. So more like 8.5.

Very good points Frogboy.  Despite the crashes i continue to see, i totally agree and am getting many hours in.  I was one of those that voiced concern about your release because i was worried about the review fallout.  I had faith you would be patching often (Monday for 1.01?).  Thanks for a great game so far, your support of us players (not many in your position would be doing what you are)  and a general hats off to your whole team.

that is great to hear, But the sad part is the most people don't have any patients and want it all yesterday. I know i am certainly excited to play it, and even more excited to see how much better it gets in the next 2-3 years. GC2 is one of the coolest games i ever played, and this one looks even better from what i have seen. But on the bright side, more of what i have read has been more than positive. Besides you are never going to please everyone, the key is pleasing most  Some people are just gonna say a game is not worth X amount, or it should of been included with X,y and z.. but honestly they would probably never be happy. Often you read a review is nothing but a slam, and then check their other reviews and find WWE wrestling as a glowing rave..  kinda almost makes you cringe. 

It's a lot more polished than Civ V was at release.  It took two major expansions for Civ V to become a great game, GCIII already is a great game, it just needs a polish.

Besides often a bad review is simply because a game doesn't feature some detail that a player wants, it's entirely subjective. It doesn't mean it's not a fantastic game.

I would agree with this. The beta of a game is not the same thing as the game.

Some people will rate it lower because of the unfinished parts. Some will rate it higher because they have connected with the game and the designers in the beta and so give it more than it should be.

Simply put, a beta review of a game is not that useful.