People leave critical reviews for my apps and I don't know about them so the app rating goes down.
Knowing about the bad reviews will not stop the rating from going down.
Knowing about the bad reviews, and then replying to them, will also not stop the rating from going down.
My advice regarding App Store reviews is still “don’t look at your reviews”. Nothing good can result from reading them, and it can be very bad for your mental health.
This advice predates the reply feature. I did reconsider when that feature was added, but on reflection I think “don’t read the reviews” is still the right choice. I guess that if you have read a bad review it could be cathartic to reply saying “Idi0t user”, but that doesn’t stop the rating from going down, and it’s still less healthy for you than not reading in the first place.
I suppose you might imagine that someone posts a review saying “app doesn’t have feature X, 1 star”, and you can reply saying “it does have feature X, press the button that says X”, and then they will read that reply, understand their mistake, and change the rating to 5 stars. Realistically, though, that’s going to happen about 0.0000% of the time. Most likely, after posting the initial review they will have deleted the app, and their idiotic review will remain there unchanged.
