Most players suffer from bad cases of USI. Some odd sense of entitlement also comes into play.
I remember when gaming companies were somewhat perceived as mystical developers that ruled from afar in their ivory towers. They were... untouchable.
Nowadays... a lot of posters think that nearly every forum post they create has a direct line to the dev's. And some go so far as to think that because they have scribed their request, it MUST be fulfilled.
Amazing stuff.
I would say the gaming community keeps changing. I don't like the direction that it's heading... but no way to stop it, unless the dev's hold fast to their standards.
while i do agree that the majority of gamers shouldnt be listened to because every one has something they like best in mmo's. their is also alot of the comunnity that has no clue about what an mmo should be like, reason is their is so many types of mmo's now that there is very few gamers that have had the luxery of playing alot of them. i.e. lacking in the experience so to speak.
a dev team cannot give every one the perfect gameing experience.
but their is one massive problem!!! dev teams are not listening to anyone, we keep getting the same style of game with the same features and the same feeling and the same mechanics as every other game.
its almost as if they dont know how to programme or develop any other way.
everything thats new looks an aweful lot like world of warcraft. everything plays like world of warcraft and pretty much all new games are as boreing and dull as world of warcraft.
and whats this business with end game in mmo's. since when has end game ever been a viable option for an mmo???
mmo's are not supposed to end, they are supposed to be living breathing evolving worlds. players are meant to feel apart of the world and have customistion and freedom to allow it for a realistic feeling within the fantasy enviroment.
but no!! every single game foccuses on engame geer and pvp. while driving every one nuts in a arms race by means of raid bashing.
and its for this re ason i think swg and eve are still the best games out there, no one has tried to copy them. it makes them unique and diffrent and thats what alot of people like.
here is another example of a really bad game, sto, startrek online, thats not even an mmo. its a series of servers linked together giving it a shoe box type feel. and the so called sector space is nothing more than a really fancy chat room/lobby where players can chat about the game and arrange groups to do one of the gazzlion instance, and if i may add!!! the entire game is instanced. its really shabby and really really rushed.
gamers whine because its the gamers money that creates these games. with out gamers subscriber and buying these products a games development company wouldnt be in business for long.
gamers are your customers, if your customers dont like your product or feel they can get the same thing some where else but cheaper and better they will simply stop shopping with you.
its really that simple. i see too many threads and comments over complicasteing things. #
truth is these companies care little for the ewnjoyment of their customers and focus on whats easy and quick to create, the result is a bunch of games that look alot like other games before them because their is a universal programming code that seems to become a trend in the games development industry.
it would seem that every single editor and programmer can only work one specific way.
hence all the stupid wow clones, and lets face it wow is not a good game, its a successful game, successful and good are too entirely diffrent words. the term successful as far as wow is concerned relates to how many players it has, players dont start playing wow because they know its a good game, they start playing wow because the tv and other a dverts tells them its a good game.
and i can tell you that wow isnt a good game, ive played wow and many many other games and im afraid to say other than sto wow is at the bottom of my list in terms of good games.
come on guys, navyfield is better than wow. and thats 2d more or less its better because its diffrent, its better because it grants the players control over their individual progression. its better because your set on any one path and its better because the game doesnt end.
sure navy field has end game content like bb6 and cv6 lol but all thats for is further enjoyment of the game. navy field is about tactical pvp. not this crap whack and smash you get in wow. none of this stactic pvp auto fire auto aim instant hit crap. it requires some level of human skill to play. and that makes it better than wow.
im not wowed by bright lights pretty colours and lovely picturess screens of background beauty, im wowed by depth mechanics control playerbility enhanced game interfaces, puzzle challange and a whole ton of boundless freedom. i for one am dedicated to the beliefe that crafting and player driven economy is and should be and remain the driving force of online mmogames. it doesnt make sence to have it any other way. playes should pull all the strings in these fantasty vurtual reality worlds.
but we dont.
the mroe games that are released the more that is taken from the gamer, all we get now is a string of quests which hold your hand through the game giving you the necesary loot and guiding you to the best loot so that you dont have to work hard or explore or discover the very best things the games have to offer, no no itsd all served up on a plate for you.
its lazy and it ruins games, it makes them dull.
all new games recently have been dull and just another feather off the back of the same old chicken.
players need to be heared but developers need to take action, they need to round up a community thats diverse enough with players from al types of games and use their information to prepare mmo's before they go into development.
asking us once you already have your master plan does nothing. all they ask you is how could we make our idea better.
what they should be asking is, what would make an awesome game!!!
but they dont, they should all have research done from the gaming communioty to find out what players actually want.
lmao you cannot sell television to a shopper looking for a new pc game. you can trick them into trying it and probably play testing it, but they will eventualy work out whats occured.
Cranky players can definitely be problematic but certainly not the source of all MMO problems. Although, from the perspective of someone who owns, operates, or otherwise makes a living of some sort on a fansite - cranky players are pure gold.
Nobody comes out smelling fresh when a topic like this comes up. Bad games, bad communities. It's a shame how poorly the MMORPG genre has (de)evolved over the years.
It's the CEO's and the Marketing Directors and the Business Analysts and the MBA's and the investors that are giving the marching order to make uncreative games. That's the dirty secret no one wants to tell..... Most of the people making top level decisions about game development know nothing about game development....and often even about game playing. They know about marketing, finance, self-promotion and corporate politics. Those are all important skills in thier own right but they really have nothing to do with designing good games.
This isn't too far off in many studios. But actually, these things you list above have a lot to do with making a good game... because a good MMO costs tens of millions of dollars. The guys that are able to secure funding are the ones that have to answer to the investors, so yeah they want to be involved. When you try to sell an idea to investors (or shop it to a publisher), if "having wizards" means you can get $40 million instead of $10 million, then yea you are going to have wizards.
I actually agree with your point, but it is the way is. I guess someone on these forums needs to win the lottery. And (since that person likely isn't a professional game developer), hand over the money to a studio to make their perfect game and then back off. Wait, what? No, why should they back off? Of course they'll be involved! It's their money after all, so they'll tell the studio of professional game developers they hire exactly how to make the game, and how it all should work! Well, there ya go.
I think you are misunderstanding my point a bit. I'm not saying that the Suits and investors shouldn't expect Dev's to make games which will be highly proffitable....I'm saying that the Suits don't have the first clue which decisions will lead to a highly proffitable game or not (hence why we see so many MMO's struggling financial or pulling in very mediocre returns).
Your best chance of having a product be financialy successfull is producing a quality product at a reasonable price. Problem is that having the Suits involved in the DESIGN aspect of producing a game leads directly to producing a poor product. That's because the Suits have no knowledge or expertiese in Game Design...so having them make decisions about game design is about as successfull as having a Car Salesmen tell a Surgeon how to perform brain surgery.
The Suits understand finance and they understand marketing and the basics of running a business... THOSE are the areas they SHOULD be focusing thier efforts on. As far as Design decisions...they should pretty much be COMPLETELY hands off.
Smart Managers understand thier own limitations and thier own skill areas....and when something falls outside of that skill area then they delegate decision making for that to people who's skill area it actualy happens to be...and STAY OUT of it themselves. Unfortunately most Exec's in the MMO business seem to to be very poor managers.....and are unable to grasp that basic concept.
I can be a little forgiving of investors....as it is thier money on the table....but the Execs themselves are largely the cause of thier own woes.... If they were smart enough to recognize that they actualy don't know squat about making games...and leave those decisions to the guys who do...they'd be miles more successfull.
I have to say, the more a company or it's employees complain about the people who shell out their money the less likely I am to ever buy a product from them. I mean why would I pay you for your work when you infer that all your customers would pirate if you didn't have all these "features"
What are they supposed to do - telephathically realise that you're a good guy?
There are developers and then there are gamers. There is a difference why a fence seperates both.
Creativity isn't ruined from people complaining in-game due to the game already sold as a "completed" product. Creativity always remains in the hands of the programmers and developers. Never in the hands of the gamers who biasedly play a game.
A gamer can only use what exists within the game itself. If that is judged as being creative, then what do you call the modders and mappers who slave away their time and energy to bring you new content downloadable for free and unofficial? Sure that there are many crappy mods, but there are many Good Modifications.
The day companies stop catering to everyone to make a dollar and start catering to their own creativity is the day by going independent under moderate budgets they will revolutionalize the world.
I could write a logical argument about what exists in MMORPG Internals and half of it would fly over your heads and the other half would probably get so bored out of your minds you will run away to the games that you play and forget that you ever read such a reply. Only the VERY few people who wish to learn about internals would read and chance to understand which also reflects that for every million MMORPG gamers you find perhaps a single programmer who dedicates their abilities to making MMORPGs with enough sense to make a difference.
There are developers and then there are gamers. There is a difference why a fence seperates both.
Creativity isn't ruined from people complaining in-game due to the game already sold as a "completed" product. Creativity always remains in the hands of the programmers and developers. Never in the hands of the gamers who biasedly play a game.
A gamer can only use what exists within the game itself. If that is judged as being creative, then what do you call the modders and mappers who slave away their time and energy to bring you new content downloadable for free and unofficial? Sure that there are many crappy mods, but there are many Good Modifications.
The day companies stop catering to everyone to make a dollar and start catering to their own creativity is the day by going independent under moderate budgets they will revolutionalize the world.
I could write a logical argument about what exists in MMORPG Internals and half of it would fly over your heads and the other half would probably get so bored out of your minds you will run away to the games that you play and forget that you ever read such a reply. Only the VERY few people who wish to learn about internals would read and chance to understand which also reflects that for every million MMORPG gamers you find perhaps a single programmer who dedicates their abilities to making MMORPGs with enough sense to make a difference.
Going independent doesn't fix everything, just look at Stardock. They still rolled out a incomplete game with features printed on the box not in place. It's not a company problem, its a culture problem within the industry itself.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
It's quite right that devs shouldn't listen to whiners - but they probably don't really. It's just an illusion.
IMHO, professionals (in any modern entertainment medium) seldom listen to the customer in that sort of way (the way the customer imagines).
What they are doing is datamining and watching playing patterns.
So in the end, yes, it's the customers that drive it, but via their revealed preferences rather than what they say. (i.e. that's the illusion, sometimes their revealed preferences will coincide with what they say, but the link is accidental, because what people think they want or say they want isn't always what they'll plonk down money for, or what they actually spend time doing. What people say often masks what they really want; or it carries baggage to do with who they're trying to impress, or some other sort of psychological game in the costless, anonymous snakepit of the interwebz; whereas what they plonk their money down for, how they actually spend their time in-game, reveals what they really want.)
^ This.
The value of querying the players' data is remarkable. I am not surprised that people who spend their whole lives complaining on forums think that they are The One True Source of Truth in Gaming. If developers didn't have the ability to dig through the game's databases for gameplay patterns and make changes based on those, if they were stuck with only the pulse of customer feedback to use as a guideline, the industry'd be in much worse shape than it is now.
I'm reminded of a bit of developer commentary regarding the creation of Team Fortress 2. Early on, players were very unimpressed with the Medic and complained that Valve needed to make it better because having one on the team was a big waste of a slot. And yet datamining showed that there was no question that teams with a Medic did substantially better than teams without one. They were stuck with the task of making the Medic class seem more useful and more appealing without actually making it any better than it already was.
To a skilled dev team, analyzing player data is more valuable than any information you could possibly get from player polls or browsing the fan forums.
"No one begged for the Wii and now the other two major consoles mimic the tiny white Nintendo juggernaut."
And btw, I am genuinely shocked that this thread has not yet been flooded with 360/PS3 fanboys ignoring the topic to disprove the little dig at their beloved consoles.
I have only played a couple online games, and in all the forums I have read, the most vocal complainers have one thing in common. They just like to complain. "Why do I have to grind all these mobs, why I can't I just do like a couple quests?" OK, so a game is put out there letting people level up at stupid speed, level cap in a week and the forums say "It is too easy, make the game more challenging".
You can't make them happy. They complain because that IS their hobby, nearly as much as playing the game is. Like cranky senior citizens. They have nothing creative to say, so instead they try to see who is paying attention to them by using progressively worse language and behavior. If managers and devs want to really see what people think of the games, they need to start of as a penniless newbie and chat with random players in the game. Find the people who are actually playing and get their opinions. Say "Hey, I am new here, how do you like this game?" I think most will get a completely different answer than the feedback on forums provides.
In my opinion it is not the critical, or overly negative fans of gaming, that are hurting the game industry, just the opposite in fact, it is the overly zealous fans who see nothing wrong, and think a game is perfect, despite its glaring and in your face flaws. Read a review right here on this very website that gave DC Universe Online an 8. Even though the writer of the piece said there were times he wanted to punch his monitor because of the games unresponsive UI, and the fact that the chat system is borked to hell, and the game has many bugs. Despite all that he rated the game an 8. That 8 on this website also equates to the word "Great". It means the writer basically loved the game and it is worth buying and playing.
Now I dunno about the rest of you, but that right there, does more harm than good. It sends a message to the developers that despite the fact that their game has issues with game play responsiveness, chat and various other bugs, the developers did a banging job. That, does more harm to the industry than anything else.
Go on gaming forums and say one critical thing, just one, about someones favorite game, and the zealous fans will come out of the word work to defend it. Doesn't matter if the person that wrote the critic was dead on. Doesn't matter if the critic pointed out that the games flaws, represent the whole. The over zealous fans do not care. This sends a vey clear message to the developers that it doesn't matter how bad the game actually is, and this in turn causes developers to become lazy - complacent. They start thinking that they are not doing something wrong, and that in turn means that the quality, and polish of future games from this developer will dwindle. Why do better? Doesn't matter how bad we do this, or that, the customer doesn't care. Look they love our game.
No, it is not the gamers that critic games, or say something negative about them that are hurting the games industry, it is the over zealous fans that think that whatever garbage a developer delivers is "perfect" that hurt this industry the most. That is why we continue to get clone after clone. I mean right here on these boards, not long ago, people were saying Aion was a WoW killer and predicted it would have 2million+ subs. Same goes for Warhammer and Lord of the Rings Online. Look where thosegames are now in the US and EU. One is doing so-so, one went free to play, and the other is down to two servers.
Another thing that results in bad games is, using study groups. Game companies often have advertising agencies perform study groups to determine if a game is good or not. These study groups are not always made up of people that would enjoy this sort of game or know much about the genre. This can lead to such things as SOE's NGE. I think we can all remember that.
One last thing. Bad game design is bad game design. Bad implamentation is bad implamentation. Those fall squarely on the shoulders of the game designers. So to blame the people that actually care enough to voice their concerns is ludicrous. We're the ones that would actually play a game for longer periods of time if the designers actually made games worth playing.
Many of us were quite happy playing SWG pre-NGE. Many of us were happy playing Planetside before SOE neglected it. Vanguard would have been a great game if SOE had not neglected it and slowly let it die. Dark Age of Camelot took a nose dive after ToA - and we players told Mythic ToA sucked. By the time they got around to addressing it, it was to little to late.
It is not the ones voicing their concerns that make bad games, it is bad designers, and the gamers that think whatever the desginer gives them is peaches and cream that make bad games.
Cranky players ? No they are not the problem. Part of the problem is that developers want the easy work for the easy money. There has not been anything innovative and good since Everquest. Sure some mmos have a certain unique feature but the rest of the game is the same old boring quest grind to power. The big rat race to see who reaches level 85 first. Nopbody yet has had the guts to make somethign truely unique because the almighty dollars is too important to them instead of being passionate mmo developers. Quality has gone down and the prices have been going up.
I will be blunt here. *Smile* If you whinners are so talented, why not make your own gaming company and start making games. With that said, have a nice day.
Better empty out your house, because unless you can create everything in it by yourself, your philosophy says you shouldn' thave an opinion on anything you don't make.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
I will be blunt here. *Smile* If you whinners are so talented, why not make your own gaming company and start making games. With that said, have a nice day.
Better empty out your house, because unless you can create everything in it by yourself, your philosophy says you shouldn' thave an opinion on anything you don't make.
When you go to buy a car do you say to the car salesman:
"Geez, those guys at Honda don't know wtf they are doing. Why can't they make a hybrid hovercar that's cheaper than a gasoline car with wheels? It's easy for anyone that knows how to build cars. Why do they take the easy way out and give us cars with 4 wheels as they've been doing since 1900. It's just lazy car design, and worthless car designers who shouldn't be making cars in the first place."
I will be blunt here. *Smile* If you whinners are so talented, why not make your own gaming company and start making games. With that said, have a nice day.
Better empty out your house, because unless you can create everything in it by yourself, your philosophy says you shouldn' thave an opinion on anything you don't make.
When you go to buy a car do you say to the car salesman:
"Geez, those guys at Honda don't know wtf they are doing. Why can't they make a hybrid hovercar that's cheaper than a gasoline car with wheels? It's easy for anyone that knows how to build cars. Why do they take the easy way out and give us cars with 4 wheels as they've been doing since 1900. It's just lazy car design, and worthless car designers who shouldn't be making cars in the first place."
Cuz, I read the MMO equivalent here all the time.
There were not a lot of people who blamed the consumers because Toyota messed up with their pedals. This industry takes responsiblity for nothing and credit for everything. Some of the crap they put out is just that, crap. You don't have to be a programmer to know that a game shouldn't be released without advertised features on the box working, without servers being up, with so many crashes that people spend more time trying to get the game to work than play. You can be a gamer and tell them to shape the hell up, and yes, sometimes its just greed and laziness.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
When City of Heroes put sweeping changes to PvP on their test servers, they received 300 pages (not posts) of feedback explaining how negatively the changes would impact gameplay and player progress. They didn't listen. As a result, I watched PvP die on 8 of 10 servers. Not only that, but the overall populations on those servers seemed greatly diminished.
When StarWars Galaxies failed to listen to players regarding sweeping revamps known as the Combat Upgrade and New Game Enhancements, they lost probably tens of thousands of players, and many of their servers were shut down due to low populations.
In both of these examples, those expressing concerns were labelled a vocal minority, and their views were dismissed. Sadly, this did not help either game.
Having said that, I too have seen people who seem to enjoy creating forum drama more than playing the associated MMO. What I find unfortunate is that MMO developers/producers seem unable to determine which feedback is valid, and which is drama for its own sake.
If they hired a qualitative research analyst to sift through their forums and polls, they might screw this up a lot less. In my experience many MMO companies may (or may not) know how to code good games. They don't, however, seem highly skilled at working with people.
Recently, the community manager of a well-known online franchise blasted game fans as "stifling the creativity of game developers" with their constant barrage of complaints.
Creativity? What creativity? They are all releasing the same shit. Maybe if they actually listened to what their fans want, as oppsed to adopting the usual "we know better" attitude, their franchises would do better.
I'm mostly talking about the MMORPG genre. The rest of them need to stop with the whole DRM nonsense. Not only does it not deter piracy, it actually promotes it because a pirate often gets a better product.
its exactly the opposite.. It's prude untalented developers and publishers being the cause.. I posted 10 paragraphs explaining all this, but deleted it.. too much for your brains to handle.. trust me ;D
Agree 100% with Teala, i spent about a year (still spend time now and again) on the Bioware forums, Dragon age while a game which i loved and enjoyed, but still was some flaws to it, more major ones when the Awakening add on came out.
Alot of diehard fans would jump on you if you even tryed to point out something that was majorly wrong, or if you even dared to voice a problem. Same thing on World of Warcraft forums and of late, the Rift forums.
I know i'm tired of games that just poor and underdeveloped, with companys like Activision ef'fectively supporting developers that make very poor awfull games, and allow the most creative developers to fall and die (Bizarre Creations)
I played games for 25+ years now, something has to happen to stop what is slowly becoming a painfull death of imagination, and the rise of decay.
Comments
Someone tell Josh to suck an egg.
Respectfully, of course.
Most players suffer from bad cases of USI. Some odd sense of entitlement also comes into play.
I remember when gaming companies were somewhat perceived as mystical developers that ruled from afar in their ivory towers. They were... untouchable.
Nowadays... a lot of posters think that nearly every forum post they create has a direct line to the dev's. And some go so far as to think that because they have scribed their request, it MUST be fulfilled.
Amazing stuff.
I would say the gaming community keeps changing. I don't like the direction that it's heading... but no way to stop it, unless the dev's hold fast to their standards.
Activision and EA and the rest of these crappy publisher can die.... DICE, TRION and these game developer will live now that we have steam.
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
while i do agree that the majority of gamers shouldnt be listened to because every one has something they like best in mmo's. their is also alot of the comunnity that has no clue about what an mmo should be like, reason is their is so many types of mmo's now that there is very few gamers that have had the luxery of playing alot of them. i.e. lacking in the experience so to speak.
a dev team cannot give every one the perfect gameing experience.
but their is one massive problem!!! dev teams are not listening to anyone, we keep getting the same style of game with the same features and the same feeling and the same mechanics as every other game.
its almost as if they dont know how to programme or develop any other way.
everything thats new looks an aweful lot like world of warcraft. everything plays like world of warcraft and pretty much all new games are as boreing and dull as world of warcraft.
and whats this business with end game in mmo's. since when has end game ever been a viable option for an mmo???
mmo's are not supposed to end, they are supposed to be living breathing evolving worlds. players are meant to feel apart of the world and have customistion and freedom to allow it for a realistic feeling within the fantasy enviroment.
but no!! every single game foccuses on engame geer and pvp. while driving every one nuts in a arms race by means of raid bashing.
and its for this re ason i think swg and eve are still the best games out there, no one has tried to copy them. it makes them unique and diffrent and thats what alot of people like.
here is another example of a really bad game, sto, startrek online, thats not even an mmo. its a series of servers linked together giving it a shoe box type feel. and the so called sector space is nothing more than a really fancy chat room/lobby where players can chat about the game and arrange groups to do one of the gazzlion instance, and if i may add!!! the entire game is instanced. its really shabby and really really rushed.
gamers whine because its the gamers money that creates these games. with out gamers subscriber and buying these products a games development company wouldnt be in business for long.
gamers are your customers, if your customers dont like your product or feel they can get the same thing some where else but cheaper and better they will simply stop shopping with you.
its really that simple. i see too many threads and comments over complicasteing things. #
truth is these companies care little for the ewnjoyment of their customers and focus on whats easy and quick to create, the result is a bunch of games that look alot like other games before them because their is a universal programming code that seems to become a trend in the games development industry.
it would seem that every single editor and programmer can only work one specific way.
hence all the stupid wow clones, and lets face it wow is not a good game, its a successful game, successful and good are too entirely diffrent words. the term successful as far as wow is concerned relates to how many players it has, players dont start playing wow because they know its a good game, they start playing wow because the tv and other a dverts tells them its a good game.
and i can tell you that wow isnt a good game, ive played wow and many many other games and im afraid to say other than sto wow is at the bottom of my list in terms of good games.
come on guys, navyfield is better than wow. and thats 2d more or less its better because its diffrent, its better because it grants the players control over their individual progression. its better because your set on any one path and its better because the game doesnt end.
sure navy field has end game content like bb6 and cv6 lol but all thats for is further enjoyment of the game. navy field is about tactical pvp. not this crap whack and smash you get in wow. none of this stactic pvp auto fire auto aim instant hit crap. it requires some level of human skill to play. and that makes it better than wow.
im not wowed by bright lights pretty colours and lovely picturess screens of background beauty, im wowed by depth mechanics control playerbility enhanced game interfaces, puzzle challange and a whole ton of boundless freedom. i for one am dedicated to the beliefe that crafting and player driven economy is and should be and remain the driving force of online mmogames. it doesnt make sence to have it any other way. playes should pull all the strings in these fantasty vurtual reality worlds.
but we dont.
the mroe games that are released the more that is taken from the gamer, all we get now is a string of quests which hold your hand through the game giving you the necesary loot and guiding you to the best loot so that you dont have to work hard or explore or discover the very best things the games have to offer, no no itsd all served up on a plate for you.
its lazy and it ruins games, it makes them dull.
all new games recently have been dull and just another feather off the back of the same old chicken.
players need to be heared but developers need to take action, they need to round up a community thats diverse enough with players from al types of games and use their information to prepare mmo's before they go into development.
asking us once you already have your master plan does nothing. all they ask you is how could we make our idea better.
what they should be asking is, what would make an awesome game!!!
but they dont, they should all have research done from the gaming communioty to find out what players actually want.
lmao you cannot sell television to a shopper looking for a new pc game. you can trick them into trying it and probably play testing it, but they will eventualy work out whats occured.
Cranky players can definitely be problematic but certainly not the source of all MMO problems. Although, from the perspective of someone who owns, operates, or otherwise makes a living of some sort on a fansite - cranky players are pure gold.
Nobody comes out smelling fresh when a topic like this comes up. Bad games, bad communities. It's a shame how poorly the MMORPG genre has (de)evolved over the years.
I think you are misunderstanding my point a bit. I'm not saying that the Suits and investors shouldn't expect Dev's to make games which will be highly proffitable....I'm saying that the Suits don't have the first clue which decisions will lead to a highly proffitable game or not (hence why we see so many MMO's struggling financial or pulling in very mediocre returns).
Your best chance of having a product be financialy successfull is producing a quality product at a reasonable price. Problem is that having the Suits involved in the DESIGN aspect of producing a game leads directly to producing a poor product. That's because the Suits have no knowledge or expertiese in Game Design...so having them make decisions about game design is about as successfull as having a Car Salesmen tell a Surgeon how to perform brain surgery.
The Suits understand finance and they understand marketing and the basics of running a business... THOSE are the areas they SHOULD be focusing thier efforts on. As far as Design decisions...they should pretty much be COMPLETELY hands off.
Smart Managers understand thier own limitations and thier own skill areas....and when something falls outside of that skill area then they delegate decision making for that to people who's skill area it actualy happens to be...and STAY OUT of it themselves. Unfortunately most Exec's in the MMO business seem to to be very poor managers.....and are unable to grasp that basic concept.
I can be a little forgiving of investors....as it is thier money on the table....but the Execs themselves are largely the cause of thier own woes.... If they were smart enough to recognize that they actualy don't know squat about making games...and leave those decisions to the guys who do...they'd be miles more successfull.
What are they supposed to do - telephathically realise that you're a good guy?
Blame the c***s who pirate, not the developers.
There are developers and then there are gamers. There is a difference why a fence seperates both.
Creativity isn't ruined from people complaining in-game due to the game already sold as a "completed" product. Creativity always remains in the hands of the programmers and developers. Never in the hands of the gamers who biasedly play a game.
A gamer can only use what exists within the game itself. If that is judged as being creative, then what do you call the modders and mappers who slave away their time and energy to bring you new content downloadable for free and unofficial? Sure that there are many crappy mods, but there are many Good Modifications.
The day companies stop catering to everyone to make a dollar and start catering to their own creativity is the day by going independent under moderate budgets they will revolutionalize the world.
I could write a logical argument about what exists in MMORPG Internals and half of it would fly over your heads and the other half would probably get so bored out of your minds you will run away to the games that you play and forget that you ever read such a reply. Only the VERY few people who wish to learn about internals would read and chance to understand which also reflects that for every million MMORPG gamers you find perhaps a single programmer who dedicates their abilities to making MMORPGs with enough sense to make a difference.
Going independent doesn't fix everything, just look at Stardock. They still rolled out a incomplete game with features printed on the box not in place. It's not a company problem, its a culture problem within the industry itself.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
^ This.
The value of querying the players' data is remarkable. I am not surprised that people who spend their whole lives complaining on forums think that they are The One True Source of Truth in Gaming. If developers didn't have the ability to dig through the game's databases for gameplay patterns and make changes based on those, if they were stuck with only the pulse of customer feedback to use as a guideline, the industry'd be in much worse shape than it is now.
I'm reminded of a bit of developer commentary regarding the creation of Team Fortress 2. Early on, players were very unimpressed with the Medic and complained that Valve needed to make it better because having one on the team was a big waste of a slot. And yet datamining showed that there was no question that teams with a Medic did substantially better than teams without one. They were stuck with the task of making the Medic class seem more useful and more appealing without actually making it any better than it already was.
To a skilled dev team, analyzing player data is more valuable than any information you could possibly get from player polls or browsing the fan forums.
"No one begged for the Wii and now the other two major consoles mimic the tiny white Nintendo juggernaut."
And btw, I am genuinely shocked that this thread has not yet been flooded with 360/PS3 fanboys ignoring the topic to disprove the little dig at their beloved consoles.
If you build it (right), they will play. Blaming the customer/consumer for your products failing is kinda moronic, no?
I have only played a couple online games, and in all the forums I have read, the most vocal complainers have one thing in common. They just like to complain. "Why do I have to grind all these mobs, why I can't I just do like a couple quests?" OK, so a game is put out there letting people level up at stupid speed, level cap in a week and the forums say "It is too easy, make the game more challenging".
You can't make them happy. They complain because that IS their hobby, nearly as much as playing the game is. Like cranky senior citizens. They have nothing creative to say, so instead they try to see who is paying attention to them by using progressively worse language and behavior. If managers and devs want to really see what people think of the games, they need to start of as a penniless newbie and chat with random players in the game. Find the people who are actually playing and get their opinions. Say "Hey, I am new here, how do you like this game?" I think most will get a completely different answer than the feedback on forums provides.
In my opinion it is not the critical, or overly negative fans of gaming, that are hurting the game industry, just the opposite in fact, it is the overly zealous fans who see nothing wrong, and think a game is perfect, despite its glaring and in your face flaws. Read a review right here on this very website that gave DC Universe Online an 8. Even though the writer of the piece said there were times he wanted to punch his monitor because of the games unresponsive UI, and the fact that the chat system is borked to hell, and the game has many bugs. Despite all that he rated the game an 8. That 8 on this website also equates to the word "Great". It means the writer basically loved the game and it is worth buying and playing.
Now I dunno about the rest of you, but that right there, does more harm than good. It sends a message to the developers that despite the fact that their game has issues with game play responsiveness, chat and various other bugs, the developers did a banging job. That, does more harm to the industry than anything else.
Go on gaming forums and say one critical thing, just one, about someones favorite game, and the zealous fans will come out of the word work to defend it. Doesn't matter if the person that wrote the critic was dead on. Doesn't matter if the critic pointed out that the games flaws, represent the whole. The over zealous fans do not care. This sends a vey clear message to the developers that it doesn't matter how bad the game actually is, and this in turn causes developers to become lazy - complacent. They start thinking that they are not doing something wrong, and that in turn means that the quality, and polish of future games from this developer will dwindle. Why do better? Doesn't matter how bad we do this, or that, the customer doesn't care. Look they love our game.
No, it is not the gamers that critic games, or say something negative about them that are hurting the games industry, it is the over zealous fans that think that whatever garbage a developer delivers is "perfect" that hurt this industry the most. That is why we continue to get clone after clone. I mean right here on these boards, not long ago, people were saying Aion was a WoW killer and predicted it would have 2million+ subs. Same goes for Warhammer and Lord of the Rings Online. Look where thosegames are now in the US and EU. One is doing so-so, one went free to play, and the other is down to two servers.
Another thing that results in bad games is, using study groups. Game companies often have advertising agencies perform study groups to determine if a game is good or not. These study groups are not always made up of people that would enjoy this sort of game or know much about the genre. This can lead to such things as SOE's NGE. I think we can all remember that.
One last thing. Bad game design is bad game design. Bad implamentation is bad implamentation. Those fall squarely on the shoulders of the game designers. So to blame the people that actually care enough to voice their concerns is ludicrous. We're the ones that would actually play a game for longer periods of time if the designers actually made games worth playing.
Many of us were quite happy playing SWG pre-NGE. Many of us were happy playing Planetside before SOE neglected it. Vanguard would have been a great game if SOE had not neglected it and slowly let it die. Dark Age of Camelot took a nose dive after ToA - and we players told Mythic ToA sucked. By the time they got around to addressing it, it was to little to late.
It is not the ones voicing their concerns that make bad games, it is bad designers, and the gamers that think whatever the desginer gives them is peaches and cream that make bad games.
Cranky players ? No they are not the problem. Part of the problem is that developers want the easy work for the easy money. There has not been anything innovative and good since Everquest. Sure some mmos have a certain unique feature but the rest of the game is the same old boring quest grind to power. The big rat race to see who reaches level 85 first. Nopbody yet has had the guts to make somethign truely unique because the almighty dollars is too important to them instead of being passionate mmo developers. Quality has gone down and the prices have been going up.
Better empty out your house, because unless you can create everything in it by yourself, your philosophy says you shouldn' thave an opinion on anything you don't make.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
When you go to buy a car do you say to the car salesman:
"Geez, those guys at Honda don't know wtf they are doing. Why can't they make a hybrid hovercar that's cheaper than a gasoline car with wheels? It's easy for anyone that knows how to build cars. Why do they take the easy way out and give us cars with 4 wheels as they've been doing since 1900. It's just lazy car design, and worthless car designers who shouldn't be making cars in the first place."
Cuz, I read the MMO equivalent here all the time.
There were not a lot of people who blamed the consumers because Toyota messed up with their pedals. This industry takes responsiblity for nothing and credit for everything. Some of the crap they put out is just that, crap. You don't have to be a programmer to know that a game shouldn't be released without advertised features on the box working, without servers being up, with so many crashes that people spend more time trying to get the game to work than play. You can be a gamer and tell them to shape the hell up, and yes, sometimes its just greed and laziness.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
When City of Heroes put sweeping changes to PvP on their test servers, they received 300 pages (not posts) of feedback explaining how negatively the changes would impact gameplay and player progress. They didn't listen. As a result, I watched PvP die on 8 of 10 servers. Not only that, but the overall populations on those servers seemed greatly diminished.
When StarWars Galaxies failed to listen to players regarding sweeping revamps known as the Combat Upgrade and New Game Enhancements, they lost probably tens of thousands of players, and many of their servers were shut down due to low populations.
In both of these examples, those expressing concerns were labelled a vocal minority, and their views were dismissed. Sadly, this did not help either game.
Having said that, I too have seen people who seem to enjoy creating forum drama more than playing the associated MMO. What I find unfortunate is that MMO developers/producers seem unable to determine which feedback is valid, and which is drama for its own sake.
If they hired a qualitative research analyst to sift through their forums and polls, they might screw this up a lot less. In my experience many MMO companies may (or may not) know how to code good games. They don't, however, seem highly skilled at working with people.
Creativity? What creativity? They are all releasing the same shit. Maybe if they actually listened to what their fans want, as oppsed to adopting the usual "we know better" attitude, their franchises would do better.
I'm mostly talking about the MMORPG genre. The rest of them need to stop with the whole DRM nonsense. Not only does it not deter piracy, it actually promotes it because a pirate often gets a better product.
its exactly the opposite.. It's prude untalented developers and publishers being the cause.. I posted 10 paragraphs explaining all this, but deleted it.. too much for your brains to handle.. trust me ;D
Regards,
Nobotters - A better gaming experience
Agree 100% with Teala, i spent about a year (still spend time now and again) on the Bioware forums, Dragon age while a game which i loved and enjoyed, but still was some flaws to it, more major ones when the Awakening add on came out.
Alot of diehard fans would jump on you if you even tryed to point out something that was majorly wrong, or if you even dared to voice a problem. Same thing on World of Warcraft forums and of late, the Rift forums.
I know i'm tired of games that just poor and underdeveloped, with companys like Activision ef'fectively supporting developers that make very poor awfull games, and allow the most creative developers to fall and die (Bizarre Creations)
I played games for 25+ years now, something has to happen to stop what is slowly becoming a painfull death of imagination, and the rise of decay.