Developers should focus on creating a game that they themselves would want to play, and let the playerbase develop around that.
I completely agree with that, 200%. But having a whole passionate dev team sounds like a higher luxury than "just having a good game", hence the suggestion about simply starting to look at gamers opinions.
(it's also the gamedesigner's job to filter through good and bad suggestions)
Glad to see someone agreeing with that. LAst time I said that line, I was blasted for it lol.
heh this is oviously the dream that never come true, why? i tell you one on point of view.
studios are not allowed so much hire " gamers " without the proper degree or education from the industry SO
people who mostly make games are fresh degreedants from schoolbench who just wanted to make games after playing
and only played super mario bros for example.
what should happen studios should hire experienced gamers who have genuine passion for gaming and making the best
game in this case mmo they would like to play and ALSO listen what people say on gaming forums, it is ignorant and very stupid not to listen and just follow your own great idea what formed from playing super mario ( agian as example )
Originally posted by m0llyheh this is oviously the dream that never come true, why? i tell you one on point of view. studios are not allowed so much hire " gamers " without the proper degree or education from the industry SO
Because having a neural disorder qualifies you for neural surgeon...
Because there are millions of conflicting opinions on the internet?
If you read the internet, everybody hates World of Warcraft and it fails at everything. If you look at the reality, it is the most popular game around.
And according the to litany of doom on this site, everything will fail. There's a basic disconnect here that renders exactly one verdict, ever.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Mainly because most of us have absolutely no idea what goes into making an actual video game. While it's all well and good to suggest solutions it is another thing entirely to implement them.
Some features are given to players because those suggestions work within the confines of the programming. Asking for features like showing stat changes or changing the way attributes work is reasonable. Asking for mounts or swimming is a completely different story.
There are animations, sounds, clipping and artisitic aspects to it. Making ONE mount is a lot of work because you have to consider everything that can go wrong with it. The bigger the game, the more that can go wrong.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
Originally posted by Magnetia Mainly because most of us have absolutely no idea what goes into making an actual video game. While it's all well and good to suggest solutions it is another thing entirely to implement them.
Very much this.
Gamers only see what they wish, not what it takes to fulfill that wish, lacking an insight of bigger picture.
Mainly because most of us have absolutely no idea what goes into making an actual video game. While it's all well and good to suggest solutions it is another thing entirely to implement them.
Some features are given to players because those suggestions work within the confines of the programming. Asking for features like showing stat changes or changing the way attributes work is reasonable. Asking for mounts or swimming is a completely different story.
There are animations, sounds, clipping and artisitic aspects to it. Making ONE mount is a lot of work because you have to consider everything that can go wrong with it. The bigger the game, the more that can go wrong.
True, but it is not incompatible with a gamedesigner juicing it all to a realistic gamedesign. And actually, that's the job of a gamedesigner : to canalize marketing+players+technical+R&D needs into a single, doable vision. It's a job, really.
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Mainly because most of us have absolutely no idea what goes into making an actual video game. While it's all well and good to suggest solutions it is another thing entirely to implement them.
Some features are given to players because those suggestions work within the confines of the programming. Asking for features like showing stat changes or changing the way attributes work is reasonable. Asking for mounts or swimming is a completely different story.
There are animations, sounds, clipping and artisitic aspects to it. Making ONE mount is a lot of work because you have to consider everything that can go wrong with it. The bigger the game, the more that can go wrong.
True, but it is not incompatible with a gamedesigner juicing it all to a realistic gamedesign. And actually, that's the job of a gamedesigner : to canalize marketing+players+technical+R&D needs into a single, doable vision. It's a job, really.
To achieve that, you don't kitchen sink everything that everyone has written in Powerpoint or on a gaming forum. It is not a developer's job, on any level, to make crappy ideas usable, despite the occasionaly valiant but often failing effort they will extend to do so here and there.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Mainly because most of us have absolutely no idea what goes into making an actual video game. While it's all well and good to suggest solutions it is another thing entirely to implement them.
Some features are given to players because those suggestions work within the confines of the programming. Asking for features like showing stat changes or changing the way attributes work is reasonable. Asking for mounts or swimming is a completely different story.
There are animations, sounds, clipping and artisitic aspects to it. Making ONE mount is a lot of work because you have to consider everything that can go wrong with it. The bigger the game, the more that can go wrong.
True, but it is not incompatible with a gamedesigner juicing it all to a realistic gamedesign. And actually, that's the job of a gamedesigner : to canalize marketing+players+technical+R&D needs into a single, doable vision. It's a job, really.
To achieve that, you don't kitchen sink everything that everyone has written in Powerpoint or on a gaming forum. It is not a developer's job, on any level, to make crappy ideas usable, despite the occasionaly valiant but often failing effort they will extend to do so here and there.
Gents, why so absolute ? Let's have a bit of perspective here : it's not about kitchen sinking, it's about "taking into account" gamers opinions by simply (at least) reading them. It is really a part of the job to include what people expect in the designing process.
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You know, strangely I don't think its an issue of SWTOR being too bad as in this is an issue every game faces and is an inescapable trend even if it was the second coming of a bug free Star Wars Galaxies. The salient point may be that the market is saturated, and no matter how good or bad a game is may not exactly matter, people will simply gravitate towards games that meet their immediate taste. Once they've satisfied that craving, no matter how deep, good, or the amount one may have invested, many will just move on.
Originally posted by k-damage Let's have a bit of perspective here : it's not about kitchen sinking, it's about "taking into account" gamers opinions by simply (at least) reading them. It is really a part of the job to include what people expect in the designing process.
And what makes you think they are not doing so already?
MMO developers should not really listen to the disgruntled players, but should take closer look at the feedback during the beta process. They should be willing to take more risks with the design and not simply copy concepts from previous products and apply coating on them. However, the former style of design is mostly done by smaller studios, which unfortunately lack the funding to make nothing more than niche titles.
Customers are seldom aware of all their wants and needs. They might have a generic idea that they want the product to provide, but not nearly all of them. A successful product provides those extra layers. However, those extral layers are the most difficult to create.
Apple and Blizzard have done this to a great effect, they took the older products, copied the key aspects of those and applied them wiht a coating of ease of use. However, this act is very difficult to follow. Android has been successful because they provide a wide range of free apps and also have the ease of use. EVE has been successful over time because they provide a product to more acquired taste and they have stayed true to their vision. If CCP had listened to the digruntled players who wanted a different type of game (there were many), the game would probably have failed by now.
In software development, finding out what really satisfies customers can be achieved with a proper development process where customers are able to interact with the product through out the process, for example by using agile method. The product might change quite significantly from original conceptualization. This is not really used in game development, but some variants might be.
I just recently watched the below post-mortem that touches on the risk of listening the disgruntled players over the other players (it is a good example because the first Deus Ex game is often regarded as one of the best PC games ever made, while the Invisible War was done more based on the comments from those players who did not like the first one):
Here is a good article that touches on the issue of hidden wants and needs. and why, for example, over 90 percent of new food products fail in the US:
"If you are trying to design a breakthrough product, you can’t just ask your customers what they would like because you won’t get a very good answer. You are likely to get ideas for incremental variations, on today’s product and which means that the new product is likely to fail.”
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Let's have a bit of perspective here : it's not about kitchen sinking, it's about "taking into account" gamers opinions by simply (at least) reading them. It is really a part of the job to include what people expect in the designing process.
And what makes you think they are not doing so already?
If you think they do, I do not see your point...
Simply sub numbers ? Constant decline for any MMO that has been released since WoW ? Constant deception we have to face ingame after one month of content consumption ? Boring, unoriginal mechanics ? Copycating WoW since 2007 ?
I think it's not even a debate to tell that mmo gamers expectations have not been met for 4 or 5 years (we'll see how GW2 holds itself at lvl 80).
Originally posted by thexrated
MMO developers should not really listen to the disgruntled players, but should take close look at the feedback during the beta process. They should be willing to take more risks with the design and not simply copy concepts and apply new graphics. However, the latter part is mostly done by smaller studios, which unfortunately lack the funding to make nothing more than niche titles.
Of course, we are indeed talking about educated gamers opinions, yes. And you've pointed at the other exact reason (besides head management being led by marketing instead of creatives) : a total lack of risk taking.
edit : nice article about the novelty in food. But the irony : 90% is a static number, so as more and more designers give up on novelty because they see that number, the less attempts at novelty we'll have, and the smallest the sample will be. Before, it was maybe 90% of 2000 attempts at novelty, but after it could be 90% of 26 ... So where's the hope in this ?
It's the snake biting its tail : the more designers / investors will fear for their novelty to fail, the more it will give them arguments to say that novelty doesn't work because nobody wants it anymore. Of course nobody wants it if there's only 3 poor attempts at novelty per year !
So we go back to ground zero : they have to take some risks
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True, but it is not incompatible with a gamedesigner juicing it all to a realistic gamedesign. And actually, that's the job of a gamedesigner : to canalize marketing+players+technical+R&D needs into a single, doable vision. It's a job, really.
Well, you just described a lead designer. The basic grunt of game designer is responsible only for his own little corner.
Back in the under-5000-subs days, design was a wee different. We could actually gather the entre team in the same location (physically or virtually) and lob things back and forth, committee concensus. Even in that much smaller team, I worked on the crittur/AI scripting, that was my "gig". Lead designer Marty, my boss, worked the overall sort of design you're discussing, with the general manager, and the heads of other departments (like CE or QC).
That's a team of less than twenty devs; I'd wager money Blizzard has never seen their entire dev team, and cannot. MMOs aren't even in the same order of magnitude these days. It is an entirely different scale.
They'd do their yackyack on a blog, or a twitter channel...with some General Chat in the development environment world(s).
But why would they need message boards to consult? That was at the end of the "public GMs" era, when we still popped onto the boards from time to time. Over the course of the following years, GMs were actually sealed off from participating in those venues--did more harm than good. Players tend to forget to treat OfficialFace ColoredText Company Reps with anything resembling respect.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Good point Icewhite. Good point. But this is an effect from a cause, and such an effect can be (has to be) corrected, considering the urge. They just have to adapt the tools & resources over the needs, not the opposite. (unless they don't want things to go better ...)
We have seen a very good illustration of that problem with swtor : half the resources were outsourced, internal structuration changed multiple times during dev process because it was completely cluttered and leads were walking blind. And here is the result.
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Originally posted by k-damage Simply sub numbers ? Constant decline for any MMO that has been released since WoW ? Constant deception we have to face ingame after one month of content consumption ?
That does imply causation.
When you have 2 games on the market, it may have 10M subs. When you add another 10, they will unlikely achieve same numbers.
It is nothing to do with the product itself, demand is simply not unlimited and competition increase with more products released on market.
Originally posted by k-damage I think it's not even a debate to tell that mmo gamers expectations have not been met for 4 or 5 years (we'll see how GW2 holds itself at lvl 80).
Weird that the sector is making more money each year...unless you suggest that people are spending money on products they dislike and do not want, I do not see your claim holding true.
Good point Icewhite. Good point. But this is an effect from a cause, and such an effect can be (has to be) corrected, considering the urge. They just have to adapt the tools & resources over the needs, not the opposite.
Okay, but bearing in mind how divided GMs are in their many different responsibilities, none of them can provide the kind of General player head-pats we're proposing here. Only X gm's know the whole story, and they're certainly too busy to spend much time on message boards. If you get one of the Y gm's who doesn't know the whole story, and misinformation results--firestorm, "you promised", all sorts of issues.
NDA. Get fired if something slips.
PR Firestorm disasters. Oops, you shouldn't have said anything about that Jim, uh oh. (Remember Bobby Kotick with "facebook integration", the longest thread in WoW General history (famous for some e-normous threads)?)
Employees were "outed". Death threats were issued. Kotick's family...well, that fellow made that unfortunate decision to expose all sorts of real world info on an external web site.
Players just kept getting more hostile, so companies retreated. It's just that simple. It clearly became a employee safety and legal libility exposure issue.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Simply sub numbers ? Constant decline for any MMO that has been released since WoW ? Constant deception we have to face ingame after one month of content consumption ?
That does imply causation.
When you have 2 games on the market, it may have 10M subs. When you add another 10, they will unlikely achieve same numbers.
It is nothing to do with the product itself, demand is simply not unlimited and competition increase with more products released on market.
Except the MMO market is not like a typical Arcade market : MMO gamers don't want to play several mmos at one time. They want a "homeworld". There can be only one, a MMO to rule them all. That's how it is, and that's why every new mmo tries to kill WoW, instead of just doing its own business.
Originally posted by Gdemami
Originally posted by k-damage
I think it's not even a debate to tell that mmo gamers expectations have not been met for 4 or 5 years (we'll see how GW2 holds itself at lvl 80).
Weird that the sector is making more money each year...unless you suggest that people are spending money on products they dislike and do not want, I do not see your claim holding true.
Unfortunately, it is the case, imo. Most of us are bored with WoW clones since 2007, but we still want to play a MMO. So we just .... try stuff. Even if all the signals are here to tell a new mmo is gonna be boring after one month, we simply try it out of despair for a fresh experience.
Originally posted by Icewhite
Okay, but bearing in mind how divided GMs are in their many different responsibilities, none of them can provide the kind of General player head-pats we're proposing here. Only X gm's know the whole story, and they're certainly too busy to spend much time on message boards. If you get one of the Y gm's who doesn't know the whole story, and misinformation results--firestorm, "you promised", all sorts of issues.
NDA. Get fired if something slips.
PR Firestorm disasters. Oops, you shouldn't have said anything about that Jim, uh oh. (Remember Bobby Kotick with "facebook integration", the longest thread in WoW General history (famous for some e-normous threads)?)
Players just kept getting more hostile, so companies retreated. It's just that simple. It clearly became a employee safety and legal exposure issue.
It's quite complex to manage litterally 100 posts per minute, I agree (swtor forums before launch were really close to 100/min). But there can also be an allowed error margin for feedback gathering, as nothing is perfect. Plus, generally, the great ideas are the ones receiving the most attention in forums, so there's a natural filtering. There are also tools, as "likes", which can really easen the CM work.
I also liked the idea of theAsna :
Originally posted by theAsna
Maybe some aspects of direct democracy might help improve the situation.
E.g. have elected player representatives which communicate with the developer.
Blizzard started to aim at that direction with MVP (Most valuable Poster). But it seems like 90% of them just turn into Blizzard agents more than bridges between corporation and players.
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Blizzard started to aim at that direction with MVP (Most valuable Poster). But it seems like 90% of them just turn into Blizzard agents more than bridges between corporation and players.
Colored text, it was the kiss of death. Unofficial, yet still capable of generating Firestorm. Legally Toxic.
"Spotlight Poster" generates similar resentment here, they just lack the colored text. Mostly, all they draw is snide comment occaisionally.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
We, gamers, constantly express ourselves about what we like and what we don't like, what will work and what will not. What is saturated and what is not. The internet is flooded with gamers opinions, suggestions, analysis, and dreams of a better MMO. Some of them even being redacted better than your best corporate spec document.
It's simple : being a successful MMO designer nowadays is as easy as parsing 3 - 4 mmo news forums, juicing the most intelligent suggestions, and make a game out of it. There are so many mature, intelligent analysis over forums nowadays that there's just no need to spend a few neurons in finding a new & original gamedesign. People are simply giving great ideas for free.
......
When will these studios seriously start playing those games they want to make ?
(I'm drunk, but it comes from the heart baby)
This makes me laugh hard when I look back. You are so wrong. Every mmorpg you see now is the product of player hints throughout the years. PLAYERS made it so bad, developers only follow demand to gain profit.
Flood of posts about how bad are death penalties, so they removed it. Hundreds of posts on how boring it is to move from one location to another and they decided to shrink worlds and make teleports. Retards having hard time finding NPC, so they started doing big fu**ing arrows, glowing and pointing at them. Someone didn't know that you need to press arrow to move, so they made ridiculous tutorials in case, someone is on drugs or touches computer for the first time, but decides to go straight to mmo. It all happened, people who were here long enough saw this as well. All the "bright hints" that gamers gave to developers.. they did it, and here is the result... cr*p.
So it is totaly the other way around. Developers should start to make the games THEY want them to be, with all the experience and inteligence, and stop reading suggestions from players, cause players have no idea what they really want, they just think they do. The ideas sound good, but if someone gives it more thought, they are either impossible with current limits, or will have some negative effects that excited "inventor" doesn't see yet.
As for immersion:
Games back in 90' : I have awesome idea about fantasy universe, lets make a game out of it.
Games now: Here is a new game, lets create universe for it.
Before, it worked like with artists, you are inspired, you make something. Now someone makes game and you have to create world for it, fast. No inspiration, no "eureka, this is gonna be great", just "I have to think of something before dead line."
This makes me laugh hard when I look back. You are so wrong. Every mmorpg you see now is the product of player hints throughout the years. PLAYERS made it so bad, developers only follow demand to gain profit.
I agree that a part of these gamers feedback is responsible for the current state of MMOs (instant gratification, etc). But for the life of me, never did I meet a single time where the global feedback/wishlist trend was "Please make a WoW clone".
There might have been a few people like that, but just parse this very forum, or video game blogs, or communities : it's crystal clear for years that nobody wants a WoW clone anymore, with the same mechanics that we've been fed with a funnel since 2007. And what do we got since 2007 ... ?
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Except the MMO market is not like a typical Arcade market : MMO gamers don't want to play several mmos at one time. They want a "homeworld". There can be only one, a MMO to rule them all. That's how it is, and that's why every new mmo tries to kill WoW, instead of just doing its own business.
2) With the exception of Rift, no MMO has ever set out to challenge WOW, nor has any other dev had that as a goal.
Unfortunately, it is the case, imo. Most of us are bored with WoW clones since 2007, but we still want to play a MMO. So we just .... try stuff. Even if all the signals are here to tell a new mmo is gonna be boring after one month, we simply try it out of despair for a fresh experience.
Your projecting your views onto the rest of us, although I'm sure you can add enough criteria to the nebulous 'WOW clones' group to eventually prove your stance true.
It's quite complex to manage litterally 100 posts per minute, I agree (swtor forums before launch were really close to 100/min). But there can also be an allowed error margin for feedback gathering, as nothing is perfect. Plus, generally, the great ideas are the ones receiving the most attention in forums, so there's a natural filtering. There are also tools, as "likes", which can really easen the CM work.
Forums are currently one of the many areas devs gather information and feedback from. Forums, however, are rarely indicative of the interests of the greater group. I said 'rarely' not 'never'.
I also liked the idea of theAsna :
Originally posted by theAsna
Maybe some aspects of direct democracy might help improve the situation.
E.g. have elected player representatives which communicate with the developer.
Several developers do that and, IMO, they are rather effective. DAoC was one of the pioneers with the Team Leads, and others have followed suit. Two of my favorites are:
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Your projecting your views onto the rest of us, although I'm sure you can add enough criteria to the nebulous 'WOW clones' group to eventually prove your stance true.
Sorry yeah I did put it quite bluntly. I wrote "we" as a shortcut for "subscription trends and forum feedback", overall.
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Comments
heh this is oviously the dream that never come true, why? i tell you one on point of view.
studios are not allowed so much hire " gamers " without the proper degree or education from the industry SO
people who mostly make games are fresh degreedants from schoolbench who just wanted to make games after playing
and only played super mario bros for example.
what should happen studios should hire experienced gamers who have genuine passion for gaming and making the best
game in this case mmo they would like to play and ALSO listen what people say on gaming forums, it is ignorant and very stupid not to listen and just follow your own great idea what formed from playing super mario ( agian as example )
cheers
Because having a neural disorder qualifies you for neural surgeon...
And according the to litany of doom on this site, everything will fail. There's a basic disconnect here that renders exactly one verdict, ever.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
oh yeah and that is good example , troll someone else dude, gaming is quite different than meds , son.
Really? Can you elaborate more on that?
Mainly because most of us have absolutely no idea what goes into making an actual video game. While it's all well and good to suggest solutions it is another thing entirely to implement them.
Some features are given to players because those suggestions work within the confines of the programming. Asking for features like showing stat changes or changing the way attributes work is reasonable. Asking for mounts or swimming is a completely different story.
There are animations, sounds, clipping and artisitic aspects to it. Making ONE mount is a lot of work because you have to consider everything that can go wrong with it. The bigger the game, the more that can go wrong.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
Very much this.
Gamers only see what they wish, not what it takes to fulfill that wish, lacking an insight of bigger picture.
Just...armchair generals.
True, but it is not incompatible with a gamedesigner juicing it all to a realistic gamedesign. And actually, that's the job of a gamedesigner : to canalize marketing+players+technical+R&D needs into a single, doable vision. It's a job, really.
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To achieve that, you don't kitchen sink everything that everyone has written in Powerpoint or on a gaming forum. It is not a developer's job, on any level, to make crappy ideas usable, despite the occasionaly valiant but often failing effort they will extend to do so here and there.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Gents, why so absolute ? Let's have a bit of perspective here : it's not about kitchen sinking, it's about "taking into account" gamers opinions by simply (at least) reading them. It is really a part of the job to include what people expect in the designing process.
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You know, strangely I don't think its an issue of SWTOR being too bad as in this is an issue every game faces and is an inescapable trend even if it was the second coming of a bug free Star Wars Galaxies. The salient point may be that the market is saturated, and no matter how good or bad a game is may not exactly matter, people will simply gravitate towards games that meet their immediate taste. Once they've satisfied that craving, no matter how deep, good, or the amount one may have invested, many will just move on.
And what makes you think they are not doing so already?
If you think they do, I do not see your point...
MMO developers should not really listen to the disgruntled players, but should take closer look at the feedback during the beta process. They should be willing to take more risks with the design and not simply copy concepts from previous products and apply coating on them. However, the former style of design is mostly done by smaller studios, which unfortunately lack the funding to make nothing more than niche titles.
Customers are seldom aware of all their wants and needs. They might have a generic idea that they want the product to provide, but not nearly all of them. A successful product provides those extra layers. However, those extral layers are the most difficult to create.
Apple and Blizzard have done this to a great effect, they took the older products, copied the key aspects of those and applied them wiht a coating of ease of use. However, this act is very difficult to follow. Android has been successful because they provide a wide range of free apps and also have the ease of use. EVE has been successful over time because they provide a product to more acquired taste and they have stayed true to their vision. If CCP had listened to the digruntled players who wanted a different type of game (there were many), the game would probably have failed by now.
In software development, finding out what really satisfies customers can be achieved with a proper development process where customers are able to interact with the product through out the process, for example by using agile method. The product might change quite significantly from original conceptualization. This is not really used in game development, but some variants might be.
I just recently watched the below post-mortem that touches on the risk of listening the disgruntled players over the other players (it is a good example because the first Deus Ex game is often regarded as one of the best PC games ever made, while the Invisible War was done more based on the comments from those players who did not like the first one):
Deus Ex: Invisible War Post-Mortem (Harvey Smith)
Here is a good article that touches on the issue of hidden wants and needs. and why, for example, over 90 percent of new food products fail in the US:
"If you are trying to design a breakthrough product, you can’t just ask your customers what they would like because you won’t get a very good answer. You are likely to get ideas for incremental variations, on today’s product and which means that the new product is likely to fail.”
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
Simply sub numbers ? Constant decline for any MMO that has been released since WoW ? Constant deception we have to face ingame after one month of content consumption ? Boring, unoriginal mechanics ? Copycating WoW since 2007 ?
I think it's not even a debate to tell that mmo gamers expectations have not been met for 4 or 5 years (we'll see how GW2 holds itself at lvl 80).
Of course, we are indeed talking about educated gamers opinions, yes. And you've pointed at the other exact reason (besides head management being led by marketing instead of creatives) : a total lack of risk taking.
edit : nice article about the novelty in food. But the irony : 90% is a static number, so as more and more designers give up on novelty because they see that number, the less attempts at novelty we'll have, and the smallest the sample will be. Before, it was maybe 90% of 2000 attempts at novelty, but after it could be 90% of 26 ... So where's the hope in this ?
It's the snake biting its tail : the more designers / investors will fear for their novelty to fail, the more it will give them arguments to say that novelty doesn't work because nobody wants it anymore. Of course nobody wants it if there's only 3 poor attempts at novelty per year !
So we go back to ground zero : they have to take some risks
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Well, you just described a lead designer. The basic grunt of game designer is responsible only for his own little corner.
Back in the under-5000-subs days, design was a wee different. We could actually gather the entre team in the same location (physically or virtually) and lob things back and forth, committee concensus. Even in that much smaller team, I worked on the crittur/AI scripting, that was my "gig". Lead designer Marty, my boss, worked the overall sort of design you're discussing, with the general manager, and the heads of other departments (like CE or QC).
That's a team of less than twenty devs; I'd wager money Blizzard has never seen their entire dev team, and cannot. MMOs aren't even in the same order of magnitude these days. It is an entirely different scale.
They'd do their yackyack on a blog, or a twitter channel...with some General Chat in the development environment world(s).
But why would they need message boards to consult? That was at the end of the "public GMs" era, when we still popped onto the boards from time to time. Over the course of the following years, GMs were actually sealed off from participating in those venues--did more harm than good. Players tend to forget to treat OfficialFace ColoredText Company Reps with anything resembling respect.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Good point Icewhite. Good point. But this is an effect from a cause, and such an effect can be (has to be) corrected, considering the urge. They just have to adapt the tools & resources over the needs, not the opposite. (unless they don't want things to go better ...)
We have seen a very good illustration of that problem with swtor : half the resources were outsourced, internal structuration changed multiple times during dev process because it was completely cluttered and leads were walking blind. And here is the result.
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That does imply causation.
When you have 2 games on the market, it may have 10M subs. When you add another 10, they will unlikely achieve same numbers.
It is nothing to do with the product itself, demand is simply not unlimited and competition increase with more products released on market.
Weird that the sector is making more money each year...unless you suggest that people are spending money on products they dislike and do not want, I do not see your claim holding true.
Okay, but bearing in mind how divided GMs are in their many different responsibilities, none of them can provide the kind of General player head-pats we're proposing here. Only X gm's know the whole story, and they're certainly too busy to spend much time on message boards. If you get one of the Y gm's who doesn't know the whole story, and misinformation results--firestorm, "you promised", all sorts of issues.
NDA. Get fired if something slips.
PR Firestorm disasters. Oops, you shouldn't have said anything about that Jim, uh oh. (Remember Bobby Kotick with "facebook integration", the longest thread in WoW General history (famous for some e-normous threads)?)
Employees were "outed". Death threats were issued. Kotick's family...well, that fellow made that unfortunate decision to expose all sorts of real world info on an external web site.
Players just kept getting more hostile, so companies retreated. It's just that simple. It clearly became a employee safety and legal libility exposure issue.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Except the MMO market is not like a typical Arcade market : MMO gamers don't want to play several mmos at one time. They want a "homeworld". There can be only one, a MMO to rule them all. That's how it is, and that's why every new mmo tries to kill WoW, instead of just doing its own business.
Unfortunately, it is the case, imo. Most of us are bored with WoW clones since 2007, but we still want to play a MMO. So we just .... try stuff. Even if all the signals are here to tell a new mmo is gonna be boring after one month, we simply try it out of despair for a fresh experience.
It's quite complex to manage litterally 100 posts per minute, I agree (swtor forums before launch were really close to 100/min). But there can also be an allowed error margin for feedback gathering, as nothing is perfect. Plus, generally, the great ideas are the ones receiving the most attention in forums, so there's a natural filtering. There are also tools, as "likes", which can really easen the CM work.
I also liked the idea of theAsna :
Blizzard started to aim at that direction with MVP (Most valuable Poster). But it seems like 90% of them just turn into Blizzard agents more than bridges between corporation and players.
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nvm...
Colored text, it was the kiss of death. Unofficial, yet still capable of generating Firestorm. Legally Toxic.
"Spotlight Poster" generates similar resentment here, they just lack the colored text. Mostly, all they draw is snide comment occaisionally.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
This makes me laugh hard when I look back. You are so wrong. Every mmorpg you see now is the product of player hints throughout the years. PLAYERS made it so bad, developers only follow demand to gain profit.
Flood of posts about how bad are death penalties, so they removed it. Hundreds of posts on how boring it is to move from one location to another and they decided to shrink worlds and make teleports. Retards having hard time finding NPC, so they started doing big fu**ing arrows, glowing and pointing at them. Someone didn't know that you need to press arrow to move, so they made ridiculous tutorials in case, someone is on drugs or touches computer for the first time, but decides to go straight to mmo. It all happened, people who were here long enough saw this as well. All the "bright hints" that gamers gave to developers.. they did it, and here is the result... cr*p.
So it is totaly the other way around. Developers should start to make the games THEY want them to be, with all the experience and inteligence, and stop reading suggestions from players, cause players have no idea what they really want, they just think they do. The ideas sound good, but if someone gives it more thought, they are either impossible with current limits, or will have some negative effects that excited "inventor" doesn't see yet.
As for immersion:
Games back in 90' : I have awesome idea about fantasy universe, lets make a game out of it.
Games now: Here is a new game, lets create universe for it.
Before, it worked like with artists, you are inspired, you make something. Now someone makes game and you have to create world for it, fast. No inspiration, no "eureka, this is gonna be great", just "I have to think of something before dead line."
I agree that a part of these gamers feedback is responsible for the current state of MMOs (instant gratification, etc). But for the life of me, never did I meet a single time where the global feedback/wishlist trend was "Please make a WoW clone".
There might have been a few people like that, but just parse this very forum, or video game blogs, or communities : it's crystal clear for years that nobody wants a WoW clone anymore, with the same mechanics that we've been fed with a funnel since 2007. And what do we got since 2007 ... ?
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There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
1 out of 4 is quite not a majority
Sorry yeah I did put it quite bluntly. I wrote "we" as a shortcut for "subscription trends and forum feedback", overall.
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