Developers need to listen more closely to their players, says Fuller in this week's column. He looks at how the process works and what can be done to improve it.

Back in the dark ages of pen and paper RPGs we had Dungeon Masters. If you have never heard that term basically that is what a game designer is today, a Professional Dungeon Master. When you played Dungeons & Dragons you were most likely friendly with your Dungeon Master. If the game took a turn for the worse or the DM did something that was unfair, you could stand up at the table and say, “WTF!?” (although, that term had likely not yet been invented yet). They had to answer right there on the spot. Whether the answer was good or bad they were held accountable for the decisions made in their game as the developer of that world. Somehow the problem got worked out for better or worse in the game and most times you continued playing.

Read it all here.

It took Blizzard a rpg and 2 rts games to gain respect of gamers all over the world before they even made World of Warcraft.  It didn't matter what type of mmo Blizzard made but they were guaranteed almost instant success with it because gamers from all over the world knows they produce quality games. That is called gaining respect of gamers.Today it is completely different. You have developers with no prior experience or even have 1 successful game under their belt and claim they can take on the task of making a mmo. I wonder sometimes if some developers are even gamers at heart or they are just really into gaming just for the money. There is only a few developers now that I even look to for gaming, Blizzard, Arenanet, Bioware,Valve and Gearbox. The rest will really have to impress me to buy their products.

        The problem with betas is that 99% of the companies making mmo use it to save costs and hire very few professional QA guys. Unfortunately this has became modus operandi even for large companies not just small independent ones.

         Not that many years ago alpha stage was what pretty much betas are...many glitches, functional issues etc. Betas used to be stress tests and many rather small to a degree bugs. Used to be the same for non mmo games except the stress part for the servers. Dunno how they do it now since i haven't done a beta for a non mmo game since heroes of m&m 5 i think. It's normal for a beta to have very many small glitches since even with a large QA department usually the content even a new mmo is rather large compared to other kind of games.

       Another thing that sort of bugs me is the fact that many companies don't seem to get that they need an easy to access feedback form and not go there do 15k clicks then write what you ate last night. I get that its easier to recreate the conditions for the devs, but at the same time many don't bother to fill them unless it's a really major issue. Regarding the exploits i don't get why 99% of the devs don't reward the guys that find them. At least like that many more ppl would be tempted to report them instead of using them.

      As for the client is always right, don't know what to say really. Is easy to make everyone happy in a small game since there aren't that many ppl...talking about old rpgs. In a decently successful mmo there are many ppl which make it kinda hard. What some ppl would like others might not. Its all about how you ballance those 2 things i think

Developers are just players in other games. It is not that you somehow mutate into something different, once you pick up an industry job. In many cases developers are closer to the fans than it may appear.  Of course, developers will have different opinions (and usually more data) when tweaking your class, however, claiming that this or that was «not as fun as they thought it would be» is also a sentence you see sometimes popping up on presentations of new features or patch notes. You also have selective perception working  — there are literally hundreds of changes with every patch and most of the them go by (= at least it broke nothing), with a few causing controversy.

The controversy comes when players disagree. Wait. The players? They are comprised of thousands of individuals with different backgrounds, opinions, preferences and above all: interests. The interest of one player or group of players may not be in the interest of the game as a whole (or the company, or the developer personally or the marketing people etc.). Developers usually have no intention to work against interests of «the» Players, but they may have data indicating that something is not working as it should be and you may only see it from birds-eye perspective.

And as general rule: the «different» thing will always be evaluated. The standard always goes by unnoticed, even if its crap. I would call this «structural conservatism» which bleeds into topics like the often cited lack of innovation. That means in this context, that changes, whatever they are, will always be under scrutiny and with — possibly — less information than the developers had, it is easy to dismiss the change as something bad. Throw in forums and communities and how changes are discussed and escalate.

Being a developer myself, I can say that the powers of developers and their evil plotting is overestimated (and who are «the» developers anyway?) So closing with my first claim: game designers and such are certainly and most definitive players themselves. Sometimes we must do things, we must do — for whatever reasons. And sometimes we don't like it either.

I do get this sense that developers are more detached from their product now. That they are just developing it to earn the paycheck and they don't really care. As a former GM in Asheron's Call, I was always talking with Developers and they actually gave a crap what people thought. If something to nerfed and people were pissed, they wanted to know about it. If the fun factor was dying, they wanted suggestions to make it more fun. Sadly, AC2 was their death blow and I am hoping an AC3 will come someday.

But I digress. This is a good article and developers (as well as "community managers") need to read it. It's hard to find a fun MMO when developers are just looking to make a cash cow like WOW instead of a fun experience like the old MMOs (AC, EQ, UO, etc.) which still retain loyal, paying customers who adore the game for its development and replayability.

Very nice comments Bubu and Stormwatch.

A brief follow up, in that the Customer is not always right, this is just a catchy lip service slogan - no one who runs a successful business honestly believes this. Take a simple example, if you were to ask all the customers of every MMO if their tank should have a 'complete heal' spell, 85% of them would probably say "yes".  Same thing if you asked them if the monthly fee should be cheaper etc etc.

As to Stormwatch's take that the developers are game players - that is true, but they aren't necessarily in the target market for the particular game they're working on, and they may not have the same overview of a game as a simple Beta tester does.  A developer (and this is generalization, I know) is going to be most concerned that his bit works properly, in a perfect world that would harmonize exactly with the game overall behaving properly, but everyone knows who's worked on or played these games over the years that one thing 'working as per specifications' may not necessarily mean that it creates the desired end goal of a great overall game.  Then when you take into account how you're incentivized...

Originally posted by Stormwatch

Developers are just players in other games. It is not that you somehow mutate into something different, once you pick up an industry job. In many cases developers are closer to the fans than it may appear.  Of course, developers will have different opinions (and usually more data) when tweaking your class, however, claiming that this or that was «not as fun as they thought it would be» is also a sentence you see sometimes popping up on presentations of new features or patch notes. You also have selective perception working  — there are literally hundreds of changes with every patch and most of the them go by (= at least it broke nothing), with a few causing controversy.

The controversy comes when players disagree. Wait. The players? They are comprised of thousands of individuals with different backgrounds, opinions, preferences and above all: interests. The interest of one player or group of players may not be in the interest of the game as a whole (or the company, or the developer personally or the marketing people etc.). Developers usually have no intention to work against interests of «the» Players, but they may have data indicating that something is not working as it should be and you may only see it from birds-eye perspective.

And as general rule: the «different» thing will always be evaluated. The standard always goes by unnoticed, even if its crap. I would call this «structural conservatism» which bleeds into topics like the often cited lack of innovation. That means in this context, that changes, whatever they are, will always be under scrutiny and with — possibly — less information than the developers had, it is easy to dismiss the change as something bad. Throw in forums and communities and how changes are discussed and escalate.

Being a developer myself, I can say that the powers of developers and their evil plotting is overestimated (and who are «the» developers anyway?) So closing with my first claim: game designers and such are certainly and most definitive players themselves. Sometimes we must do things, we must do — for whatever reasons. And sometimes we don't like it either.

but by the same token if a change causes a uproar and you hid behind your rep your really just shoot yourself in the foot. their needs to be more transparency between Dev and customer or you end up with well...Champions Online.

Who has had their dirty laundry aired her at MMORPG 2 weeks stright.

Originally posted by nekollx

Originally posted by Stormwatch

Developers are just players in other games. It is not that you somehow mutate into something different, once you pick up an industry job. In many cases developers are closer to the fans than it may appear.  Of course, developers will have different opinions (and usually more data) when tweaking your class, however, claiming that this or that was «not as fun as they thought it would be» is also a sentence you see sometimes popping up on presentations of new features or patch notes. You also have selective perception working  — there are literally hundreds of changes with every patch and most of the them go by (= at least it broke nothing), with a few causing controversy.

The controversy comes when players disagree. Wait. The players? They are comprised of thousands of individuals with different backgrounds, opinions, preferences and above all: interests. The interest of one player or group of players may not be in the interest of the game as a whole (or the company, or the developer personally or the marketing people etc.). Developers usually have no intention to work against interests of «the» Players, but they may have data indicating that something is not working as it should be and you may only see it from birds-eye perspective.

And as general rule: the «different» thing will always be evaluated. The standard always goes by unnoticed, even if its crap. I would call this «structural conservatism» which bleeds into topics like the often cited lack of innovation. That means in this context, that changes, whatever they are, will always be under scrutiny and with — possibly — less information than the developers had, it is easy to dismiss the change as something bad. Throw in forums and communities and how changes are discussed and escalate.

Being a developer myself, I can say that the powers of developers and their evil plotting is overestimated (and who are «the» developers anyway?) So closing with my first claim: game designers and such are certainly and most definitive players themselves. Sometimes we must do things, we must do — for whatever reasons. And sometimes we don't like it either.

 

but by the same token if a change causes a uproar and you hid behind your rep your really just shoot yourself in the foot. their needs to be more transparency between Dev and customer or you end up with well...Champions Online.

 

Who has had their dirty laundry aired her at MMORPG 2 weeks stright.

I tremble as to what to expect from ST:O. I've been a fan of Star Trek since a wee little lad and got hooked on MMOs around the same time. It was my dream for a Star Trek MMO. Now...I think it might have been better had they never made one with the way ST:O is looking and how Cryptic apparently runs things.

I find that the people who utter the cliche 'the customer is always right' have never run a real business.

Yes there is a certain amount of give and take in any service industry, but dealing in generalities like the customer is always right will get you taken advantage of in a hurry.

The customer approaches things from one perspective, his own, and is only concerned with his particular issue, often times to the total exclusion of everything else involved, no matter how logical.  Listening to people like this would spell disaster in a complex system like an mmorpg. 

The best thing a game developer can do is stick to their original plan and polish it to a mirror shine.  Use customer feedback to identify and squash bugs, but taking design feedback from amateurs and allowing every armchair game maker on your forum to influence the direction of your systems is a horrible decision, and it's why there are so many shitty games out there right now.

Make a quality product and if people don't want to buy it because of a design decision you made, good riddance to them.  Someone else will buy it (as long as you have the stones to stand behind your work and not swerve all over the road trying to be all things to all people).

Originally posted by veritas_X

I find that the people who utter the cliche 'the customer is always right' have never run a real business.

Yes there is a certain amount of give and take in any service industry, but dealing in generalities like the customer is always right will get you taken advantage of in a hurry.

The customer approaches things from one perspective, his own, and is only concerned with his particular issue, often times to the total exclusion of everything else involved, no matter how logical.  Listening to people like this would spell disaster in a complex system like an mmorpg. 

The best thing a game developer can do is stick to their original plan and polish it to a mirror shine.  Use customer feedback to identify and squash bugs, but taking design feedback from amateurs and allowing every armchair game maker on your forum to influence the direction of your systems is a horrible decision, and it's why there are so many shitty games out there right now.

Make a quality product and if people don't want to buy it because of a design decision you made, good riddance to them.  Someone else will buy it (as long as you have the stones to stand behind your work and not swerve all over the road trying to be all things to all people).

Agree to a point but the bottom line is that you are not making a game for you, you make it for the masses to play.

Originally posted by LtJohnnyRico

Originally posted by nekollx

Originally posted by Stormwatch

Developers are just players in other games. It is not that you somehow mutate into something different, once you pick up an industry job. In many cases developers are closer to the fans than it may appear.  Of course, developers will have different opinions (and usually more data) when tweaking your class, however, claiming that this or that was «not as fun as they thought it would be» is also a sentence you see sometimes popping up on presentations of new features or patch notes. You also have selective perception working  — there are literally hundreds of changes with every patch and most of the them go by (= at least it broke nothing), with a few causing controversy.

The controversy comes when players disagree. Wait. The players? They are comprised of thousands of individuals with different backgrounds, opinions, preferences and above all: interests. The interest of one player or group of players may not be in the interest of the game as a whole (or the company, or the developer personally or the marketing people etc.). Developers usually have no intention to work against interests of «the» Players, but they may have data indicating that something is not working as it should be and you may only see it from birds-eye perspective.

And as general rule: the «different» thing will always be evaluated. The standard always goes by unnoticed, even if its crap. I would call this «structural conservatism» which bleeds into topics like the often cited lack of innovation. That means in this context, that changes, whatever they are, will always be under scrutiny and with — possibly — less information than the developers had, it is easy to dismiss the change as something bad. Throw in forums and communities and how changes are discussed and escalate.

Being a developer myself, I can say that the powers of developers and their evil plotting is overestimated (and who are «the» developers anyway?) So closing with my first claim: game designers and such are certainly and most definitive players themselves. Sometimes we must do things, we must do — for whatever reasons. And sometimes we don't like it either.

 

but by the same token if a change causes a uproar and you hid behind your rep your really just shoot yourself in the foot. their needs to be more transparency between Dev and customer or you end up with well...Champions Online.

 

Who has had their dirty laundry aired her at MMORPG 2 weeks stright.

 

I tremble as to what to expect from ST:O. I've been a fan of Star Trek since a wee little lad and got hooked on MMOs around the same time. It was my dream for a Star Trek MMO. Now...I think it might have been better had they never made one with the way ST:O is looking and how Cryptic apparently runs things.

the sad thing is they weren't NEARLY this bad when they ran The Other Super Hero MMO. So i'm thinking it's all Atari. I find it hard to belive Cryptic would get so much worse in 3 years...

Originally posted by nekollx

Quote by Stormwatch

 

but by the same token if a change causes a uproar and you hid behind your rep your really just shoot yourself in the foot. their needs to be more transparency between Dev and customer or you end up with well...Champions Online.

 

Who has had their dirty laundry aired her at MMORPG 2 weeks stright.

I personally love to be more in touch with players and we actually did a lot on that front. However, there is the problem that some players will repeat the obvious over and over and sadly, it steals focus in the forums and discussions. There is also a degree of generalization. See it from this perspective: you are reading the forums daily, and players state «everything is broken» (for the sake of illustration): what kind of note do you write down? How do you put this into your schedule? How do convince your boss/lead/whatever that you need to work on this issue? What is the issue anyway?

The key in communication here is that players need to communicate what is broken, preferably in a way that makes it «actionable». There are otherwise just too many things on the list and too many channels of information that you just won't have time to investigate why someone complains.

«Customers are always right» in the sense that players will gain prerogative of interpretation, so that whatever the developer intended, players play the game their way and that will change the way it is described. You may intend the game as being epic warfare, but when players make a skirmish gang wars of it, because that's the way the game plays best/most fun/most effective, than the game is no longer about epic warfare but about gang wars.

I'm with you guys, don't worry. I just want to shed some light on the other side as well :)

Originally posted by Stormwatch

Originally posted by nekollx

Quote by Stormwatch

 

but by the same token if a change causes a uproar and you hid behind your rep your really just shoot yourself in the foot. their needs to be more transparency between Dev and customer or you end up with well...Champions Online.

 

Who has had their dirty laundry aired her at MMORPG 2 weeks stright.

I personally love to be more in touch with players and we actually did a lot on that front. However, there is the problem that some players will repeat the obvious over and over and sadly, it steals focus in the forums and discussions. There is also a degree of generalization. See it from this perspective: you are reading the forums daily, and players state «everything is broken» (for the sake of illustration): what kind of note do you write down? How do you put this into your schedule? How do convince your boss/lead/whatever that you need to work on this issue? What is the issue anyway?

The key in communication here is that players need to communicate what is broken, preferably in a way that makes it «actionable». There are otherwise just too many things on the list and too many channels of information that you just won't have time to investigate why someone complains.

«Customers are always right» in the sense that players will gain prerogative of interpretation, so that whatever the developer intended, players play the game their way and that will change the way it is described. You may intend the game as being epic warfare, but when players make a skirmish gang wars of it, because that's the way the game plays best/most fun/most effective, than the game is no longer about epic warfare but about gang wars.

I'm with you guys, don't worry. I just want to shed some light on the other side as well :)

 

Good points but again using my test case there was no "ambiguity"

the first issue was the pulling of lifetime subscription without any real warning, and then ninja editing their powers post to make it seem like the deal was "limited supplies" not "limited time"

The second issue was a day 1 patch that broke many defeese builds to all the people in the head start as they nerfed defense across the board and buffed henchman dammage on launch day

they still haven't given a freet-con they promised the head start players a week later

oh and their going to be changing the stat some powers use so if people used say super-endurance to enhance their Ego blade the patch is going to nerf ego blades when they switch to base int.

Good article!!!!  I wish the guys over at Turbine would read this, as they seam to be catering to what the devs want and not what the customers have been screeming for.   Case in point Orion the dev and his one man mission to revamp all the low level areas. As if they were expecting groves of players to run through that content 2 years into game.

I have yet to find a game to keep me around for years now. An EQ2 expansion ruined my fun there. Not enough room for quests ran me from WoW early on as the travel time to get quests in the place I just went to do quest parts ruined that fun. I loved EQ and the first 2 expansions and that is what I enjoyed the most. I keep looking but have yet to find anything that hooked me like DAoC did. Only left that because my guild did and I could not find another one that worked for me.

I will post some things (such as about # of quests in WoW) but I try to focus when I say something. I agree with people in Champions Online that having a 15 minute fight with a boss type character because the HP is so huge that it is not the difficulty in the fight as it is just the tediousness of it. I try and let most things go but I agreed and posted about Champions flaws as I saw them. The launch day patch sucked my fun and the main reason I want to play a superhero game (I want to seem super not a mercenary clearing out invading goblins) to a point that I was so glad I resisted buying a lifetime subscription. I also posted how the game seemed to be so simplistic (not necessarily a bad thing) but if going to have pets then give a little more control at least. Take the Gadgeteering Field Drones power. Floating robots that heal but you have no control. You go into a fight but a second before that a 100 yards away some hero got hurt so they ran off to heal that hero. That is just the most current game I have said things. I have posted little in most games and most times not about bad things. Last 3 games I have posted about direction of the game is EQ2, WAR, and CO.

I normally just leave a game and that is where I feel I have the most impact as a customer. I know the customer is right when I am saying "you made your decision and this game is not for me anymore but thanks for the fun I had before then". Thanks for the article and wish more games would try to be what would be best and not try to have all elements.

one of the big problems is that games are mostly set in stone by the time they get to beta and only tweeks can ultimatly happen.

the thing thats hard about community managers is that they can and are bias  and if they are a hard core PVP/ raider  and your a casual/quester  your effectivly filtered out.

90% of issues that players contend with come from developers "controling" the charactors and not the players.. the old  block 3 paths so there is only 1 option,,  either do the quest or dont play the game.

*******

I once played a PnP champions game  where we spend 6 hard hours trying to recover an antimater gun only to have it litrally torn from our hands at the last minute and lost .. you know what the GM said? "it was too good of a plot device to let us keep it"

what that did is make the last 6 hours a pointless waste of time.  and he had taken the "freedom" out of our hands  because nothing we did mattered to the plot.

the next time he wanted to play and started in with rumors of  villans  destroying half the city with an antimater gun  we all had other things to do.

you cant really do that with a game you invested 50$  players usually just have to suck up their fustration untill they reach their boiling point ,, things like SWG  new player expirence (NGE) happens and drives off 2 million players.

current games only tend to cater to the warmonger or the achiever  leaving out the other 5-6 player types with "token" content  or half assed content  like a combat  based economy    or a cooking menu that looks more like a menu from some fancy resteraunt instead of trail food for explorers

I just betaed  FALLEN EARTH  and to me as a veteran player it had the foundation but everything else was bland and lacking  cars for example  had no physics engine (they were ground huggers) and no customization   there was also alot of "been there done that"  as there were no innovations their trailers are missleading  they show cool clothing but in game that is not practical after level 4-5  because they use a stat clothing system and have no costume clothing system so at level 10 and 20 your are wearing level 10 and 20 stat armor (oh and not even clothing toggles).

developers are allways saying their game is uber and next gen  but I have yet to see any game that isnt in the same generation as everquest 1     same  quest line,  same  stand toe to toe and exchange blows,,  and EVEN the same  simplton AI that is tricked by the same 15 year old tactics   and yes even the same vending machine quest givers  and lastly the same STATIC worlds and charactors.

the most EXTREEM of this was when I betaed SEED  all the testers were posting about its impending doom of being released far too early (it went live about 10% complete  most games try to sneek out the door at 70-80%)   excelent  premice for a game  but an abisimal  construction of the basic workings of the game code (in my opinion this primice is worthy of resurection with totally different engine and controls.) (coliny ship crashes on an alien world)

I love betas  because it does give me access to a game  and developers  so i can be part of making a game the best it can be. its also nice to get the inside rail  and lay of the land before a game is released live.

In my experience Comunity Managers don't know bubkis. I started playing Bounty Bay Online P2P when it was still in BETA. A year and a half later YUSHO opened a secon F2P version of the game, and a lot of P2P players switched. Worried, I e-mailed the Community Manager asking if there was a danger the P2P server would be closed. He assured me I had nothing to worry abou, there were no plans to close the P2P server. The next week YUSHO announced the closing of the P2P server. What we had there was a failure to communicate within the company.

For online gaming i think its wrong to use a Wal-mart style customer service philosophy. I want to play a creation made by a creative mind and not by a bunch of whiners. You know those that scream nerf this, nerf that. That class is OP. I've seen games destroyed because they lost focus of class design and gave into whiny paying customers. The customer is always right is one reason i would never work in customer service. I'm not the type that can let someone in the wrong be right if you will.

Player input and communication helps improve a game but again improving it doesn't involve ruining the player experience for others.  A MMO game is just that. Its not retail sales or every company would offer a money back promise on every title sold. Imagine if you had a 30 day return policy on MMO's . It won't ever happen because gaming companies could in no way afford to lose income from the point of sale.

Originally posted by LtJohnnyRico

Originally posted by nekollx

Originally posted by Stormwatch

Developers are just players in other games. It is not that you somehow mutate into something different, once you pick up an industry job. In many cases developers are closer to the fans than it may appear.  Of course, developers will have different opinions (and usually more data) when tweaking your class, however, claiming that this or that was «not as fun as they thought it would be» is also a sentence you see sometimes popping up on presentations of new features or patch notes. You also have selective perception working  — there are literally hundreds of changes with every patch and most of the them go by (= at least it broke nothing), with a few causing controversy.

The controversy comes when players disagree. Wait. The players? They are comprised of thousands of individuals with different backgrounds, opinions, preferences and above all: interests. The interest of one player or group of players may not be in the interest of the game as a whole (or the company, or the developer personally or the marketing people etc.). Developers usually have no intention to work against interests of «the» Players, but they may have data indicating that something is not working as it should be and you may only see it from birds-eye perspective.

And as general rule: the «different» thing will always be evaluated. The standard always goes by unnoticed, even if its crap. I would call this «structural conservatism» which bleeds into topics like the often cited lack of innovation. That means in this context, that changes, whatever they are, will always be under scrutiny and with — possibly — less information than the developers had, it is easy to dismiss the change as something bad. Throw in forums and communities and how changes are discussed and escalate.

Being a developer myself, I can say that the powers of developers and their evil plotting is overestimated (and who are «the» developers anyway?) So closing with my first claim: game designers and such are certainly and most definitive players themselves. Sometimes we must do things, we must do — for whatever reasons. And sometimes we don't like it either.

 

but by the same token if a change causes a uproar and you hid behind your rep your really just shoot yourself in the foot. their needs to be more transparency between Dev and customer or you end up with well...Champions Online.

 

Who has had their dirty laundry aired her at MMORPG 2 weeks stright.

 

I tremble as to what to expect from ST:O. I've been a fan of Star Trek since a wee little lad and got hooked on MMOs around the same time. It was my dream for a Star Trek MMO. Now...I think it might have been better had they never made one with the way ST:O is looking and how Cryptic apparently runs things.

I all too well know what you mean(shudder). Star trek fans tend to be RABID. Star trek also has so much intersecting lore, that it is almost literally impossible not to alienate some section of the player base or another.  Couple that with Cryptics well known approach to things, and this has TRAIN WRECK written all over it.  I hope it doesn't turn out that way... But only time will tell.

Originally posted by Wraithone

Originally posted by LtJohnnyRico

Originally posted by nekollx

Originally posted by Stormwatch

Developers are just players in other games. It is not that you somehow mutate into something different, once you pick up an industry job. In many cases developers are closer to the fans than it may appear.  Of course, developers will have different opinions (and usually more data) when tweaking your class, however, claiming that this or that was «not as fun as they thought it would be» is also a sentence you see sometimes popping up on presentations of new features or patch notes. You also have selective perception working  — there are literally hundreds of changes with every patch and most of the them go by (= at least it broke nothing), with a few causing controversy.

The controversy comes when players disagree. Wait. The players? They are comprised of thousands of individuals with different backgrounds, opinions, preferences and above all: interests. The interest of one player or group of players may not be in the interest of the game as a whole (or the company, or the developer personally or the marketing people etc.). Developers usually have no intention to work against interests of «the» Players, but they may have data indicating that something is not working as it should be and you may only see it from birds-eye perspective.

And as general rule: the «different» thing will always be evaluated. The standard always goes by unnoticed, even if its crap. I would call this «structural conservatism» which bleeds into topics like the often cited lack of innovation. That means in this context, that changes, whatever they are, will always be under scrutiny and with — possibly — less information than the developers had, it is easy to dismiss the change as something bad. Throw in forums and communities and how changes are discussed and escalate.

Being a developer myself, I can say that the powers of developers and their evil plotting is overestimated (and who are «the» developers anyway?) So closing with my first claim: game designers and such are certainly and most definitive players themselves. Sometimes we must do things, we must do — for whatever reasons. And sometimes we don't like it either.

 

but by the same token if a change causes a uproar and you hid behind your rep your really just shoot yourself in the foot. their needs to be more transparency between Dev and customer or you end up with well...Champions Online.

 

Who has had their dirty laundry aired her at MMORPG 2 weeks stright.

 

I tremble as to what to expect from ST:O. I've been a fan of Star Trek since a wee little lad and got hooked on MMOs around the same time. It was my dream for a Star Trek MMO. Now...I think it might have been better had they never made one with the way ST:O is looking and how Cryptic apparently runs things.

 

I all too well know what you mean(shudder). Star trek fans tend to be RABID. Star trek also has so much intersecting lore, that it is almost literally impossible not to alienate some section of the player base or another.  Couple that with Cryptics well known approach to things, and this has TRAIN WRECK written all over it.  I hope it doesn't turn out that way... But only time will tell.

*wipes froth from mouth* Hey i had my shots! I'm not rabid...

*whistles inocently*

A problem is that there is no unified customer to listen too. Your endgamers want one thing, your socials another, the soloists and party players are at odds, and so are your classes. So a lot of times you have contradictory needs and wants and no way to fulfill all of them.

I think just communicating though goes a long way. If developers explained the rationale why they did things more, it would make it easier for players to accept. What happens instead is the devs do a change which no one can understand why on earth they would, so players concoct reasons and get divided into pro and anti-dev camps over it on forums.

Originally posted by flydowntome

A problem is that there is no unified customer to listen too. Your endgamers want one thing, your socials another, the soloists and party players are at odds, and so are your classes. So a lot of times you have contradictory needs and wants and no way to fulfill all of them.

I think just communicating though goes a long way. If developers explained the rationale why they did things more, it would make it easier for players to accept. What happens instead is the devs do a change which no one can understand why on earth they would, so players concoct reasons and get divided into pro and anti-dev camps over it on forums.

and then there are changes like NGE that piss off pretty much everyone. Really transparency would prevent things like that, and test servers the devs actually paied attention to instead of using as a free preview with a "lump it or like it" atttitude.

Then again theire are the Dev Kissers who defend anything the devs do, you could light them on fire and they would just turn around and say "it's ok...we needed to be lite on fire. My clothes were itcy anyway."

Originally posted by SaintViktor

Originally posted by veritas_X

I find that the people who utter the cliche 'the customer is always right' have never run a real business.

Yes there is a certain amount of give and take in any service industry, but dealing in generalities like the customer is always right will get you taken advantage of in a hurry.

The customer approaches things from one perspective, his own, and is only concerned with his particular issue, often times to the total exclusion of everything else involved, no matter how logical.  Listening to people like this would spell disaster in a complex system like an mmorpg. 

The best thing a game developer can do is stick to their original plan and polish it to a mirror shine.  Use customer feedback to identify and squash bugs, but taking design feedback from amateurs and allowing every armchair game maker on your forum to influence the direction of your systems is a horrible decision, and it's why there are so many shitty games out there right now.

Make a quality product and if people don't want to buy it because of a design decision you made, good riddance to them.  Someone else will buy it (as long as you have the stones to stand behind your work and not swerve all over the road trying to be all things to all people).

 

Agree to a point but the bottom line is that you are not making a game for you, you make it for the masses to play.

Actually, not quite. You make a game for your target customer, to maximize your return on investment. This assures you funding on your next title, and keeps you doing what you love to do - making games. MMOs are rarely a philanthropic endeavor. At the end of the day, the "customer being right" comes down to whether they choose to subscribe or not. Giving input on your favorite MMO is not a human right - the only thing the player is owed is a straightforward and secure billing system.

The problem with communication is that devs have to be incredibly careful because anything they write in a forum could potentially affect stock price, and/or sales. This isn't a matter of being honest... there are no rules in game forums about taking things out of context or misquoting developers. You get outrage threads about the OPness and game-breaking nature of features which haven't even been implemented yet, and maybe announced to the point of "We plan to have X in the game." Players speculate, and 6 months later that speculation has turned into a promise. Community managers exist because your average developer is not trained in wording language to minimize risk of this kind of negative PR.

The writer of this article loses every bit of credibility when he cites Sony and SOE as a model of how to take community input.

SOE and Smed have been THE WORST at customer relations, respecting customers, taking customer input and actually doing anything with it.

For example:

1. SWG-NGE (after stating the Combat Upgrade was "there to stay")

2. SOE putting RMT and Station Cash across all of their games (again, in direct reversal of previous Smed promises)

3. Selling the ToOW expansion, knowing that many features in the expansion would be wiped away 2 weeks later.

4. Smed personally promising many features and upgrades to various games, in person, at the various Fan Fests, only to have them be "reprioritized" and never show up.

The list could go on.

This is not SOE hate, this is holding the company accountable for their actions.

Too bad the writer believes the Sony PR.

As a person who has been in Customer Service, Sales and Account Management, Ic an safely say that customers are only right whe evidence proves it.  Its just plain human nature to lie, manipulate and deceive to gain ones goals. Just today at work, I work in QA, we had a customer send us 20 assemblies saying we made them defective, yet upon inspection, all damage was done on thier end. Our reply is, "paid rework or we return as is."

When it comes to developers, they need to stick to the games premise and goals. Dont try to accomodate all the whinners. All you do is make more whinners and complainers. But if a dev pulls a SOE and trashes a game instead of fixing, then yes the customer is right.