It's a yes or no question.

"Maybe", "I don't know" or shrugs aren't helpful.

If you can't thumbs up without significant reservations, thumbs down instead and elaborate why in your review.

引用自 ItsColeslaw：

Only having "Recommend" or "Do Not Recommend," and requiring a selection of one or the other to leave your opinions on a game - is rough. A "Not for Me" and "Try Again Later" would be perfect!

"Not for Me" Means you didnt like it and you dont know if the other person would like it. So its a not recommend or at best a maybe/i dont know.

"Try Again Later" Means the game didnt convince you right now and you put it aside. So you wouldnt recommend it to someone at the moment.

How would any of this help me to decide if i should by the game or not?

引用自 ItsColeslaw：

We all have different preferences, play styles, pet-peeves, etc. I'm far less likely to leave any review because I'm unable to say why the game didn't win me over, without hurting their ratings; especially when it's clear it's a passion project for them.

Thats why there is a text box so you can explain your reasons.


You dont have to like/love a game to recommend it.
For example i hate Witcher 3 but i would still recommend it to other people because its not a bad game.

The review system is to see if people like something or not.
Two options are more than enough for that.

引用自 ItsColeslaw：

I'm unable to say why the game didn't win me over, without hurting their ratings

When a game has hundreds or thousands of reviews, whether or not you, individually, recommended or didn't recommend the game is irrelevant. You are assigning too much importance to one review when the whole reason the aggregate has any value at all is because there are a large number of participants, all of whom had an equal say.

引用自 ItsColeslaw：

Only having "Recommend" or "Do Not Recommend," and requiring a selection of one or the other to leave your opinions on a game - is rough. A "Not for Me" and "Try Again Later" would be perfect!

Recommend
Do not recommend
Not for me = Do not recommend
Try Again Later = Do not recommend

Sounds like you want three different version of the "Do not recommend" answer.

Let's add:

Recommend if it's below 10 bucks
Recommend if it's below 5 bucks
Don't recommend until they remove that character
Don't recommend until they change the guys shirt to green

Yes/No

It's simple... period. There are other ways to rate, there are also other places where games are rated.
Steam decided to stick with a simple Yes/No system. It's not better or worse than others, however imagine the havoc and ruckus it would cause if steam decided to change it now. The most important part of "statistics" is to pick a system and stick with it. All the relevant statistics to game rating on steam are based on the system put in place, and I am not just talking about the rating we see for the games. That data is processed in many ways I am not aware of, but steam knows their stuff.
If steam were to change now, all present and past data would rendered useless and future data would be compromised by the users "adapting" from one system to another. It would take some time until the new system would be "trustworthy".
Steam has over 20 years of invaluable data and it would be foolishly risky to change things.

You have a text box to explain any caveat you can think of. There is no need for a shrug option.

引用自 Mr. Smiles：

You have a text box to explain any caveat you can think of. There is no need for a shrug option.

There is an "informational" review option if you're reviewing as a group rather than an individual. Those reviews don't contribute to the score and the expectation is that someone would be looking for the curator's reviews directly and not the overall average.

If your answer to "should I play this" is "yes, but" or "no, but", that is indeed a good time to use the text box.

引用自 ItsColeslaw：

The amount of care, passion, time, and energy that creators put into their games is amazing. So it's particularly hard that Steam's review/comment system hasn't been updated.
Only having "Recommend" or "Do Not Recommend," and requiring a selection of one or the other to leave your opinions on a game - is rough. A "Not for Me" and "Try Again Later" would be perfect!
We all have different preferences, play styles, pet-peeves, etc. I'm far less likely to leave any review because I'm unable to say why the game didn't win me over, without hurting their ratings; especially when it's clear it's a passion project for them. Watching friends completely pass over games because they aren't listed as "very" or "overwhelmingly" positive is frustrating to me.
I read the comments/reviews and it can be for, what seems like, the silliest things (things like - "It's a platformer, I hate platformers," "Game was awesome, but I didn't like the style of music," "I raged quit because I didn't understand," only to learn they didn't even play the tutorial...etc).
As a gaming community, we can do better, and we should.

If the games are made with such quality then surely our feedback should reflect that. Put some time and effort into the recommendation then give your yes or no to it.

I get where you’re coming from, OP.

This is why:
A) I tend not to review games until I’ve 100%-ed them or, if they’re incredibly long games/unending games-until I have at least 50 hours of playtime.
And
B)I tend to give indie games a “Recommended” with caveats (“wait for a sale,” “this may not be for you if….,” etc.) unless I overwhelmingly feel like I had to force myself to complete the game-even if the game wasn’t anywhere near perfect.

There are exceptions to this-if a popular game puts me off playing it again in less than 2 hours-I’ll leave a negative review.

One of the few, if not only, places where consumers can have a say to a broad and interested audience and Steam deliberately removes all nuance.

The review system is far from perfect but it gives a general idea and the fact there are only two clearly identified choices makes it probably more reliable/consistent despite being less precise. I tend to read the 3 or 5 most-voted positive review and 3 or 5 most-voted negative review to have a better understanding of what to expect.

That being said, I've always been confused by the steam review system. Why ? Because Steam is asking two independant things : what you liked or disliked about a game and whether you recommend it to others.

I'm not even sure I would have recommended at its release 20 years ago what remains one of my favourite game today. It have always been flawed / too rough around its edges to recommend it without a lot of reserve.
Despite that, I have not doubt I will keep on playing this game and I love a lot of things about it. Another example, I play and enjoy mediocre RTS games because there is not a lot of released games in this genre and I'm only playing these games for their campaign and some skirmished against bots. But objectively, I would not recommend these games even if I have no regrets for playing these games.

To the contrary, even though I dislike a game, that doesn't mean I shouldn't recommend it, I can objectively recognize why it's a good game even if for whatever reason I dislike it.

引用自 wibblywobblywonder：

One of the few, if not only, places where consumers can have a say to a broad and interested audience and Steam deliberately removes all nuance.

You have a text box where you can express your thoughts about a game with as much nuance as you could possibly want.

I am entirely neutral on this suggestion.

Yes, my post is pointless just like the idea itself.

i, personally, prefer the grading method to the pass fail

1-5, using stars numbers or whatever

i like giving the grade then my opinion

not telling someone if i think they should buy it

but this is the method that steam has used since they have had reviews

they have seen these threads and do not seem to agree that it should change

not a big deal, really, just a preference

but i would review more of my games if it were the graded system