This makes the differences between similar products of varying quality/polish very visible.
For example, et's take Paladins and Overwatch. Developed/released at the same time, with similar playstyles and roles.
Paladins, although having more features and variations allowing changing playstyles, suffers from so many bugs that it's basically all you hear about. On the other hand Overwatch has somewhat less variation in playstyle and a more toxic playerbase, but is very reliable with excellent quality, and the devs fix bugs as fast as they can with a focus more on polish and gameplay than putting out tons of skins.
It becomes super clear that Overwatch has way higher sentiment. I assume this may be slightly biased as Paladins, having a smaller playerbase, probably mostly has posters who are dedicated to the game and so are more heavily influenced by bugs and QoL issues; but I don't see it being enough to justify a 100:15 ratio in relative sentiment. You can also see clear dips around the times that game-breaking bugs were discovered, or when HiRez/EvilMojo did an oopsie.
This is just an example but I figure offsetting trends in this way is going to be very powerful. It better visualizes product sentiment across competing products in a way that is mostly offset at scale from "popularity" (which makes other trend metrics i.e. Google Trends too biased to use).
For example, et's take Paladins and Overwatch. Developed/released at the same time, with similar playstyles and roles.
Paladins, although having more features and variations allowing changing playstyles, suffers from so many bugs that it's basically all you hear about. On the other hand Overwatch has somewhat less variation in playstyle and a more toxic playerbase, but is very reliable with excellent quality, and the devs fix bugs as fast as they can with a focus more on polish and gameplay than putting out tons of skins.
At a high level it seems like pro/cons, and it is difficult to gauge interest because Overwatch is much more popular/instated, but then looking at the trends: https://redditprofile.com/compare?search=paladins,overwatch
It becomes super clear that Overwatch has way higher sentiment. I assume this may be slightly biased as Paladins, having a smaller playerbase, probably mostly has posters who are dedicated to the game and so are more heavily influenced by bugs and QoL issues; but I don't see it being enough to justify a 100:15 ratio in relative sentiment. You can also see clear dips around the times that game-breaking bugs were discovered, or when HiRez/EvilMojo did an oopsie.
This is just an example but I figure offsetting trends in this way is going to be very powerful. It better visualizes product sentiment across competing products in a way that is mostly offset at scale from "popularity" (which makes other trend metrics i.e. Google Trends too biased to use).