I think developers should always listen, be accepting to input. SWG NGE is an example where they ignored the community completely, did their own thing, and we know what happened.
But there are times when some people might be better ignored I think. Especially when the issue concerns underrepresented forum groups, like more casual players who rarely frequent forums. Almost every suggestion to do partial gear resets to get casual players enjoying the latest expansion or content, is met with resistance from more dedicated players. Even though most people know that partial gear resets are often needed to keep the population healthy. People don't like the idea that part of their effort might be partially reset, that older gear might become easier to acquire, they tend to be extremely vocal about this, resisting any change, but it is often essential to keep casuals interested in the game, and to prevent them from falling hopelessly behind.
What, in the bluest of blue moons is a "Partial Reset" it sounds like the sort of corporate phrase most MMO devs have been condition (And condition their players to use).
Do you mean the type that happens when the Level cap goes up, or the type FF uses when they release new tiers of gear with each content patch?
Next to none. These forums are filled with people that think Path of Exile is an MMO. The majority also complain they want something different, only to complain afterwards that its the same because they complained during development they didn't like something.
A camel is a horse that was developed by a committee. The devs need to stick to their guns and create something that people on here don't have a say in. The people here have no idea how things work and how all the systems intertwine. Change one thing.. then another... then another... now you have a new game thats generic or crap like the rest.
You can gauge certain aspects of your game based on players reactions. If you ignore how people feel towards the game you're developing then you have no clue about business. The developers opinion and philosophy means very little if people aren't spending MONEY. People who post in forums tend to spend money on games therefore their opinion needs to be accounted for, because forum posters good or bad influence games more then we think. Personally when I am interested in a game I tend to read reviews. If I see a lot of bad reviews it does make me a lot more cautious. I don't let reviews decide for me but it does have a impact on my decision making.
I'm sure we've all seen the threads in various forums on how the devs need to do this or that. That if they don't listen to their community (forum wise), they are gonna fail. The list goes on with the many things people suggest/demand/comment on forums. Some of these are good, some bad, some bizarre.
How much weight should/do forums carry. IMO forums should be taken 'tentatively.' They are a relatively small sampling of the overall population which means that they don't necessarily reflect the whole. It also seems that forums create a kind of hive mind where people enjoy piling on to topics. People also enjoy making grandiose statements as if they are speaking MMO Gospel. I don't say to discount the forums because there are a lot of intelligent people who provide good feedback. I just think that it isn't the be all/end all of community sentiment.
A follow up question would be: Where method should the devs give the most weight to, when it comes to feedback. The proper answer IMO is several sources. Given that, which single method should be given the greatest weight amongst those several sources?
Very little if any. Honestly I believe the Dev's should monitor the forums, but I believe it should have very little weight on their decision(s) on how to move forward with their game.
Someone said it earlier and they are dead wrong, that SWG NGE was a result of not listening to the community. I disagree in that they listened to the forum warrior not the people that were actually too busy playing the game to camp on the forums and dream of way's to make it easier. In the end the forum warriors were directly responsible for the death of SWG.
My answer would be to hold in game community meetings. I know this is hard to do, especially in the larger triple A MMO's that can have several thousand people on line simultaneously but I would try every avenue to poll the girls n guys that are more interested in actually playing a game than talking about it. There are several people on these forums that like to spout off about this and that and have no clue what they are even talking about. This is true for every forum I have ever read. I am no exception either. So forums, polls in my experience, catch the very boisterous minority of a player base and do not give a honest over all feeling about anything.
Another solution would be to poll Guild/Clan/Outfit/Corporation leaders. Get them involved in the development of the game by polling their members and returning the results to the Dev's. Not sure any of these idea's are that great, but I know for damn sure that the forums are about the worst way to go.
I also will point out that I am generalizing here, there are people that post on game/MMO forums that have real solid idea's founded in reality (I am not one of them obviously) but they are truly few and far between imo.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
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none , they should ignore it entirley , Most games are ruined by forum whiners ... and Devs caving to them ... They have systems in place to gather data , test and determine the best fixes/tweaks .. It is always an endless cycle with MMOs ..But listening to forum cry-babbies never brought anything good to games , on the contrary , usually damaging the experience
This 100% game devs should have a game plan in place that they stick to. I can't stand arm chair game experts that think they speak for everyone. So many game are so out of wack because of this. I remember the bnet kiddies back when wow was being developed. They were screaming and making threats because of the direction Blizz was taking the mmo. They wanted complete open world pvp and it should be like the rts games. Screaming they would badmouth the game all over the internet if they didn't get what they wanted. Well we all know how that turned out.
Devs should spend more time playing their games then reading the forums. That said each game sets a stage for their forums depending on the type of game it is and the type of moderation that is happening within the forums. For example one game might have the most toxic forums and another game might actually have a forum worth reading. But regardless of the topic you will always see trolls and white knights bashing each other on every thread. So any topic that comes up has to be evaluated properly by the developers.
As far as game play, never keep on the plan ahead. Only person from the company that should read the forums is community developers. They should let posters know they will forward certain ideas up the chain (but make it plain, no guarantee he would hear anything back), or tell poster why that idea would never get added. But when you get multiple threads of bugs that are game breaking or close to it then that has to be jumped on by the company. When gamers notice how fast they take care of the bugs you will end up with a lot of happy gamers and that will be good for the game.
Its really hard to say what to lsiten to...Reason being we usually cant agree on anything anyway...What one person may detest another may enjoy.....Often you get a vocal minority that want the PVE game to be totally PVP and it gets ugly from there.
More than they do. Over and over we tell them what is needed. Over and over, they ignore us and we are given more of the same, while they remove pieces of the genre that they think takes too much time, spend way too much money on graphics and not enough on the game itself, etc. The genre is in trouble precisely because they all decided to copy wow with different graphics and ignore what the players have been asking for that would make a more well rounded game. The genre held so much promise when it was first introduced. Now they are more concerned with short term profit and tiny gimmicks to keep the players. They need to actually listen to those of us that really do have great ideas, instead of listening to the wow babies that insist on everything being so easy. The game creators have stopped bothering with anything beyond pve, raiding, and pvp. And the whole genre is suffering because of it.
No weight at all. Devs have much better ways to collect the needed feedback. In open internet discussions people don't say what they truly think or feel, they say whatever gives them the most street cred and tough guy factor in order to feel a bit better about themselves.
Depends, if your not seeing significant player loss, and it's the same people posting maybe skim. If you see a notable player drop or start seeing a lot of long standing accounts that are just beginning to post a lot, may want to pay attention.
EDIT caveat is: if you don't play your own game forum posts aren't gonna give you a whole lot of actionable feedback and you probably have bigger problems anyway. Forum feedback is only truly useful if your on the same page. If you have a different perspective than the poster(he/she plays ;you mess around databases ; your a community manager who does neither) you'll likely just be talking past each other. If you aren't familiar with how your own game plays any feedback you act on will more likely than not be the squeaky wheel type. Not necessarily what's good for balance, various curves, longevity, or flow.
Not sure they should pay any attention to the forums, it would be better for them to pay more attention to what actually happens in the games themselves.
Given the way games are monetized these days their sources of input are not the forums. Sure they might hire someone to skim forums for ideas but I doubt they would rely on them for data or input that will change their focus.
They might only listen if you highlight a hack and give a youtube link explaining the hack. Other than that forum input is not a very good indication of how your game is doing as many drama queens and self important posters who enjoy flexing their long winded rants and just post to get hits on their threads. Some people even create threads for the sole purpose of getting the quickest and voluminous responses by baiting folk.
Forums nowadays are places where certain individuals go to get attention so sifting through the garbage is really not very useful for a game developer.
You're right in saying that the forum is a small fraction of your player base that are usually over emotional and biased to their own desires.
That being said, they will often bring to your attention problems or good ideas that you wouldn't have thought on your own and are very useful for the occasional gem they produce
I think one of the best ways to leverage the forum is to take some of the ideas or complaints you hear about there and then use that as a "poll question" against the entire playerbase by adding that feature in some small way or in a limited area and see how it does.
You're right in saying that the forum is a small fraction of your player base that are usually over emotional and biased to their own desires.
That being said, they will often bring to your attention problems or good ideas that you wouldn't have thought on your own and are very useful for the occasional gem they produce
I think one of the best ways to leverage the forum is to take some of the ideas or complaints you hear about there and then use that as a "poll question" against the entire playerbase by adding that feature in some small way or in a limited area and see how it does.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
What, in the bluest of blue moons is a "Partial Reset" it sounds like the sort of corporate phrase most MMO devs have been condition (And condition their players to use).
Do you mean the type that happens when the Level cap goes up, or the type FF uses when they release new tiers of gear with each content patch?
The concept of resetting the baseline of gear required for newly tuned content, and thereby partially resetting progress made by more advanced characters.
This often happens when a new expansion launches, but it can happen prior to an expansion too. Developers need to anticipate what the average player will be wearing in terms of gear and stats, to make sure the difficulty is appropriate.
The easiest way to make sure casual players can keep up, is to partially reset the progress made by more advanced players by making gear that used to be hard to acquire more accessible.
I guess another way to say it would be "partial socialism" heh.
Listen - yes Discuss - yes Consider - yes Do what all the posters say - no
zero....
if its not posted in 'bug reports and suggestions' on the offical forums then the devs should just not worry about it
So you have posted 7,299 times in the hope that no one will listen to you?
I've posted 18,000 + times knowing no one is, this isn't the place to be "listened to"...Sean is exactly right, that's what official forum feedback sections are for.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
Do you mean the type that happens when the Level cap goes up, or the type FF uses when they release new tiers of gear with each content patch?
A camel is a horse that was developed by a committee. The devs need to stick to their guns and create something that people on here don't have a say in. The people here have no idea how things work and how all the systems intertwine. Change one thing.. then another... then another... now you have a new game thats generic or crap like the rest.
Someone said it earlier and they are dead wrong, that SWG NGE was a result of not listening to the community. I disagree in that they listened to the forum warrior not the people that were actually too busy playing the game to camp on the forums and dream of way's to make it easier. In the end the forum warriors were directly responsible for the death of SWG.
My answer would be to hold in game community meetings. I know this is hard to do, especially in the larger triple A MMO's that can have several thousand people on line simultaneously but I would try every avenue to poll the girls n guys that are more interested in actually playing a game than talking about it. There are several people on these forums that like to spout off about this and that and have no clue what they are even talking about. This is true for every forum I have ever read. I am no exception either. So forums, polls in my experience, catch the very boisterous minority of a player base and do not give a honest over all feeling about anything.
Another solution would be to poll Guild/Clan/Outfit/Corporation leaders. Get them involved in the development of the game by polling their members and returning the results to the Dev's. Not sure any of these idea's are that great, but I know for damn sure that the forums are about the worst way to go.
I also will point out that I am generalizing here, there are people that post on game/MMO forums that have real solid idea's founded in reality (I am not one of them obviously) but they are truly few and far between imo.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
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4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
Devs have much better ways to collect the needed feedback.
In open internet discussions people don't say what they truly think or feel, they say whatever gives them the most street cred and tough guy factor in order to feel a bit better about themselves.
EDIT caveat is: if you don't play your own game forum posts aren't gonna give you a whole lot of actionable feedback and you probably have bigger problems anyway. Forum feedback is only truly useful if your on the same page. If you have a different perspective than the poster(he/she plays ;you mess around databases ; your a community manager who does neither) you'll likely just be talking past each other. If you aren't familiar with how your own game plays any feedback you act on will more likely than not be the squeaky wheel type. Not necessarily what's good for balance, various curves, longevity, or flow.
They might only listen if you highlight a hack and give a youtube link explaining the hack. Other than that forum input is not a very good indication of how your game is doing as many drama queens and self important posters who enjoy flexing their long winded rants and just post to get hits on their threads. Some people even create threads for the sole purpose of getting the quickest and voluminous responses by baiting folk.
Forums nowadays are places where certain individuals go to get attention so sifting through the garbage is really not very useful for a game developer.
I'm a dev, with a forum, working on a game.
You're right in saying that the forum is a small fraction of your player base that are usually over emotional and biased to their own desires.
That being said, they will often bring to your attention problems or good ideas that you wouldn't have thought on your own and are very useful for the occasional gem they produce
I think one of the best ways to leverage the forum is to take some of the ideas or complaints you hear about there and then use that as a "poll question" against the entire playerbase by adding that feature in some small way or in a limited area and see how it does.
http://baronsofthegalaxy.com/ An MMO game I created, solo. It's live now and absolutely free to play!
How about a link to that forum you are dev for?
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
if its not posted in 'bug reports and suggestions' on the offical forums then the devs should just not worry about it
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
This often happens when a new expansion launches, but it can happen prior to an expansion too. Developers need to anticipate what the average player will be wearing in terms of gear and stats, to make sure the difficulty is appropriate.
The easiest way to make sure casual players can keep up, is to partially reset the progress made by more advanced players by making gear that used to be hard to acquire more accessible.
I guess another way to say it would be "partial socialism" heh.
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For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson