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Are Humans Too Picky?
sunandshadow
Member RarePosts: 1,985
No this is not a joke/troll thread. I wanted to address an issue I thought was relevant but ignored in favor of flashier issues in the sandbox thread. I see the question of 'pickiness' as coming down to this: MMOs are inherently group entertainment and it requires a group of people to be enthusiastic about an MMO's design to finance an MMO's creation and survival. AAA studios aren't directly tied to player demand, nor are their design choices directly influenceable by players, but still those studios only make what they think will sell well. As a player in an audience segment which is not central to AAA research and marketing interests, aka a "niche", it is very frustrating to see game after game come out for other people's taste (probably bad taste in your opinion). and none for yours. Worse, if a game tangentially supports your interests at first, it will most likely develop away from them due to a lack of players similar to you voting with their wallets and in player surveys.
The problem of being a marginalized audience is much clearer in indie game development projects and kickstarter projects. When it comes to any kind of indie creative endeavor it is nearly impossible to get 3 people to agree on what kind of game they want to make, much less the larger group needed to create an MMO. When no one agrees on what they want, the community's development resources get split a million different way and few playable games ever emerge from the chaos. And this is not a fixable problem - you can't change what one person likes, nor force any group to agree more about what they like. You cannot make a human less picky, thus the futility of the original question. So, my conclusion: if you want to know why we can't have nice things, the answer is human nature.
Please agree, disagree and explain why, or propose a solution. How would you go about getting enough people to agree about an MMO design to get that MMO produced, assuming that the design is less than 85% similar to any currently successful MMO (i.e. its not a clone of anything).
Comments
I think the real problem with MMOs are, they're a daunting task. MMOs are not cheap to develop and they time a lot of time and require a lot of upkeep and service. The problem is if a company were to come out an make a themepark MMO they will have a huge challenge on their hands. Blizzard has what I like to call an economic moat, meaning it has many costs advantage such as switching costs and intangible assets to keep other developers out of the themepark market.
The switching cost is that WoW has been going on for 10+ years which comes with 10+ years of content and polish. Many people have been playing for those years and they simply do not wish to switch to another game after spending "x" time into WoW. Not to mentions it's going to be hard for a new company to come out and have 10+ years of content and polish right at the bat.
The intangible asset is the IP. Warcraft has been around since the early 90s and developed quite a fanbase over decades. Of course a few big time IPs have came out with their own MMOs (Warhammer, Star Wars, Dungoens and Dragons and etc) but they do or did not have the content and polish available.
Quite frankly I don't think WoW will be toppled, because the themepark MMOs right now is too saturated and its going to be a massive undertaking for a company to compete with WoW that it doesn't make sense financially to do it which is why I think Blizzard scrapped their project Titan.
I think the best thing to do is to get in on the smaller market that has potential like sandbox MMOs. Even though they've been around the longest, nothing has really been established in this market so its still fairly young.
Finally I also think the huge deciding factor has to do with revenue. AAA companies have one motive and that's to increase shareholders wealth, so it's only natural for them to make games or mmos that are going to reach out millions of players, thus they make them user friendly (even though they may not be fun). So in a sense I think you're partially right that it is human nature that doesn't allow us to have nice things, but really you have to look at the bigger picture of our economy and realize that the only reason why the stock market is high is because people are putting their money into it (and other assets) to avoid inflation and for a CEO to remain a CEO or get maximum profits he/she is going to want to maximize shareholdings.
(It's long didn't quite get to everything you said but I thought I should throw this out there)
Check out this article on Why Crafting Sucks
People just like what they like. The number of people who are willing to spend money on the theme park feature set exceed the number of people willing to spend money on a sandbox feature set. This has been happening long enough that it's easier to put together a theme park feature set in the design phase than it is to put together a sandbox feature set in the design phase. The actual development is just as hard either way, but developers have much more of a known quantity when working with standard, theme park, RPG elements.
I don't think being picky has much to do with it. Players should play what they like. It really sucks if what they like isn't getting developed, but there's not a lot they can do about it other than crowd fund games they think they'll like. I've been wanting a MechWarrior or Battletech RPG for a very long time. A sequel to The Crescent Hawks Inception "series" would be really cool. It will never happen. I'll never see a Kickstarter for one of those games, and I'll never have the ability to build such a game or start a company for such a game. So there you go. Sometimes things suck.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
"You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit." Took me a while of chanting but my daughter now understands.
In short, if YOU want a specific game, YOU develop it with YOUR cash. ((MMO specific breakdown))
Seems over simplified, but it actually pertains to all of life. We are free to be a "picky" as we want, but it may mean we don't get what we want.
The better questions should be, Is the customer always right?
Should we as the consumer, the ones paying for a service get the product or service that we are paying for?
Personally I believe they should be showing some gratitude and making every effort to provide exactly what we ask for.
Instead they are cussing us out, laughing at us, calling us stupid, making threats against us, stomping around with some godlike ego and attitude and demand we bow down and worship them.
Fuck them , if we as a community of gamers would just organize and work together, we could get what we deserve, what we pay for, and the respect we deserve as consumers and customers.
Do you live in some alternate, dystopian universe? I mean, there are always going to be jerks, but most developers I've talked to or interacted with have been very polite. Nice even.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I think that question is flawed: It's easy to get large community agree that Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Darkfall, Camelot Unchained, Archeage, Star Citizen, etc. are the perfect messiah game as long as it's only talking about design. We want to believe, and if we find something that looks worth believing in we're ready to change some of our expectations and opinions to match the upcoming game we believe in. New and different games get produced all the time. It's only after they are produced that people decide they have flopped.
The problem is, we're not only picky but stupid. We're picky and always looking for the perfect game, and so stupid we can't admit to ourselves that when it's released we won't be playing it for long. We don't really want to find one, we want to dream of one, to look for one, to create images of one in our mind. Thus we're never happy with any one game, and since we can't admit the fact to ourselves, it'll seriously hamper our ability to enjoy the journey of looking for one.
Nice post. Glad you said it and not me.
These are just silly games and we treat them like necessities of life.
Oh where is my perfect MMO and how shall I live without you?? !! Everyone has more fun trashing games than they do playing them anymore.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
You want to make people agree about your MMO design ?
Make demo about gameplay .
Show them how your idea work , test it on them and make them agree with you that your idea is good,
Being picky is good, buying all what's delivered to you is not. That's as simple as I can put it.
You're right an indie game that tries to design by committee like that will fail. An indie game should have a clear vision of what the devs want to make. Small details can be changed based on player feedback but the core design should be set in stone. This is one of the things I look for in backing projects like this. If you don't have a clear design of the kind of game you want to make and are just riding trends and popular opinions the game will likely fail.
This takes the courage to say "This is what our game is. Back it or don't back it." rather than "Please back us and maybe we'll change the game to accommodate you later." but it avoids the kind of problems you describe.
This also means players have to be a bit forgiving "Maybe this game has A that I don't like but it has B,C and D that I do so I'll give it a shot." Or just rant on forums waiting for that perfect game custom-designed for them that will never come unless they get $100 million to build it themselves.
I think overall, not really. Rarely does a human hold out for "the perfect job" or "the perfect spouse." More humans than not have the attitude, "This will do." That is not being picky. That is "settling."
As far as gamers go, vocally (or the written word) players are very picky. In reality, many just play whatever game and bitch and moan about it.
If every player held out for "their perfect game", no games would get sold. My perfect game is no one else's (I think) and I doubt anyone else's prefect game would be mine.
Going way back when, if Caveman A was not as strong/desirable as Caveman B, Caveman A would not pair up with Cavewoman A (most desirable), but rather settle for Cavewmoman B (less desirable). Propagating the species relies on this "settling."
Now, that being said, the level of "pickiness" will vary greatly. 1 or 2 things bugs you? Acceptable. 10 or more? Now a decision needs to be made
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I am one of those people though. I wouldn't be surprised if a higher percentage of MMO players (or higher percentage of forum posters who post about MMOs) than random humans were the kind to fantasize and daydream strongly about perfect jobs and spouses along with perfect games.
I'm going to go with yes. But we have a right to be. IMO... I think MMOs try too hard now a days..
Anyway, i'm so going to break this and say,
If I had it my way... I would take Tera's Graphics and Battle system and put it in the world of Wildstar. I would be very happy. It would have a very good story with graphics and a battle system that doesn't put me to sleep
I could play that for ever 
There are some lizard people who are very picky about their MMO's and a dark elf or two...
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
"People that bash games are less tha1%." Not if it's a bad game.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
This.