My motivation here is to get a discussion going and not just fill the responses with troll posts. Now this is another "where did everything go wrong" post so bear with me while I explain my point. I assume a lot of you are like me and have fond memories of games that have come and gone and most new game just don’t live up to our expectations. I think these expectations are completely community and media created. Our involvement with a game is much earlier than it has ever been, even influencing some of the design aspects. I would argue that this lessens the excitement of the game when you already know the world since you helped shape it. Developers rely too much on what the community wants then coming up with something new and exciting. Now I’m not saying to block out your community completely but take their suggestion with a grain of salt. Make the game you want to make developers, and if you show your passion players will want to play that game.

Originally posted by fuzzylogic11

My motivation here is to get a discussion going and not just fill the responses with troll posts. Now this is another "where did everything go wrong" post so bear with me while I explain my point. I assume a lot of you are like me and have fond memories of games that have come and gone and most new game just don’t live up to our expectations. I think these expectations are completely community and media created. Our involvement with a game is much earlier than it has ever been, even influencing some of the design aspects. I would argue that this lessens the excitement of the game when you already know the world since you helped shape it. Developers rely too much on what the community wants then coming up with something new and exciting. Now I’m not saying to block out your community completely but take their suggestion with a grain of salt. Make the game you want to make developers, and if you show your passion players will want to play that game.

Agreed 100%. Been saying nearly the same thing for quite some time now.

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Originally posted by fuzzylogic11
My motivation here is to get a discussion going and not just fill the responses with troll posts. Now this is another "where did everything go wrong" post so bear with me while I explain my point. I assume a lot of you are like me and have fond memories of games that have come and gone and most new game just don’t live up to our expectations. I think these expectations are completely community and media created. Our involvement with a game is much earlier than it has ever been, even influencing some of the design aspects. I would argue that this lessens the excitement of the game when you already know the world since you helped shape it. Developers rely too much on what the community wants then coming up with something new and exciting. Now I’m not saying to block out your community completely but take their suggestion with a grain of salt. Make the game you want to make developers, and if you show your passion players will want to play that game.

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In short, You have 2 camps:

1. Give the people what they want its good for biz+makes the communtiy "happy".
2. Let the designers fulfil their vision by creating a world they want.

Now personally, I think they should design a good product according to the vision. if you like what their selling pick it up and buy it, if not don't.

Originally posted by madazz

Originally posted by fuzzylogic11

My motivation here is to get a discussion going and not just fill the responses with troll posts. Now this is another "where did everything go wrong" post so bear with me while I explain my point. I assume a lot of you are like me and have fond memories of games that have come and gone and most new game just don’t live up to our expectations. I think these expectations are completely community and media created. Our involvement with a game is much earlier than it has ever been, even influencing some of the design aspects. I would argue that this lessens the excitement of the game when you already know the world since you helped shape it. Developers rely too much on what the community wants then coming up with something new and exciting. Now I’m not saying to block out your community completely but take their suggestion with a grain of salt. Make the game you want to make developers, and if you show your passion players will want to play that game.

Agreed 100%. Been saying nearly the same thing for quite some time now.

Same here. We used to buy games on word of mouth based on reviews of finished games and friends who had the game, sometimes popin round to watch them play it then go out and buy it ourselves. The game was made according to how the designers vision wanted it to be. If it was well made and fun it was successful, if not it wasn't. Now games get diluted by too many opinions, money people reading these opinions and diluting the original design, and out pops these half baked messes.

We often forget that we ourselves change.  We can't experience something for the first time again.  We will numb to some experiences which used to excite us, while other experiences will grow into habits we will quickly fall into.  We can play games, but we are not Lost Boys, we cannot join Peter Pan in Neverland and developers cannot stop us from growing up, no matter how much we might want to cling to the moments we crowed.

I agree OP. Just looking at the market now, its flooded with games that have listened to the players and you know what it got them? Clone wars and piles of crap. Players don't know what they want, they complain about games being similar and complain if they are different. Its the job of the game dev's to stick with the plan they themselves set out with and do not let naysayers or loud mouths make them deviate from their original plan.

Sorry OP but you are VERY naive to think devs listen to forum users.

They listen to MONEY and investors and share holders.

It shoudl be OBVIOUS since MOST of the simple things people ask for are being omitted,pretty mcuh becuase of money.

graphics/housing/mounts /owning land plots/manipulation ect ect ,games are NOT delivering.

The design has been 100% the same throughout EVERY game of late>>>>linear questing with a hint of end game,be  it raiding or pvp or both,NOTHING more.FFXI a game released what seems like IONS ago ,is the LAST mmorpg to be different,everything since is a copy cat clone of boredom.

Originally posted by madazz

Agreed 100%. Been saying nearly the same thing for quite some time now.

I'll second that.

When you have people "following" a game that's in development like a religion for 8 years or so (original Darkfall), you know there's a problem. That isn't something I would describe as healthy or normal. Imagine doing the same thing with a movie or book. Talk about sucking the life out of it.

I know that just by mentioning this will derail the entire thread but,

I think Funcom has done a good job at trying different things. Did I say they were successful? Or failures? No.

I think that they tried unique things within games like AO, AOC, and TSW.

At least they are willing to take chances. I wish more developers did.

The day developers stop trying to get WOW numbers is the day MMOs start in a right direction.

Oh, I'll throw CCP in there too.

I havent looked into games before its release uch for a while now.   I just know the ones that gets passed around here but I dont really pay attention.  There are lots of good games out there and there are a lot better things to "progress on" imo.

Edit :

What I said prolly doesnt work if you play only mmorpgs o.O

I don't think it's smart to completely ignore a community and just go ahead and follow some vision. Sometimes certain mechanics just doesn't work, then it's up to the community to let the developers know about it.

Otherwise I agree with the general gist of the OP. A developer should never create a game based on what a community want. They should create games based on what they themselves have a passion for (their vision). They should however not completely ignore valuable feedback

I don't know if developers actually change any key elements of the game based on community feedback.  I feel that the developers need the community more than the community needs them -- for beta testing and the like.

I actually would love to see a player driven and designed game -- one that is organic in it's secondary elements and has our continuous input.  Mostly what happens is that we get used for stress testing and then ignored after the subs start pouring in, except for bugs.

Nope the problem is MMO's are in that weird place of almost being mainstream while also being still quite niche.  We have WOW which is leading the way but it's getting pretty long in the tooth so while it still maintains some very impressive numbers it seems that each expansion patch brings in an extra million accounts then a few months later loses 2 million.  Unfortunatly evan with "only" 8 million playing it it blows the competion out of the water who if they are lucky peak at a couple of million before settling down with less than 500 thousand within 6 to 12 months.  (I said if they were lucky most don't do that well).

Then we look around this site and lets be honest we arn't exactly an easy bunch to get along with.  I t seems most of us come from games like UO or Everquest or AO or DAOC or SWG.  Games we stopped playing years ago usually because of some sort of expansion that happened to not coincide with the direction we thought the game should of gone in.  We may evan try some of the new games butare blinded by what we thought we had with the old versions of these old games and we just can't seem to let go of these false memories of how good it all was before expansion X.  As an example take UO for me the greatness of that game was about what you could be you didn't have to be a combat character you couldbe nearly anything from a fisherman to a blacksmith or a prospector or an animal trainer but you couldn't be all of them at the same time.  However to hear people speak of the game now you would be forgiven for thinking it's only feature was 2 weeks to get a decently skilled character and then PvP the whole day long.  Now yes you could do that but in all honesty that was actually such a small prt of it and why I think games like Darkfall who claim they are the 3D UO have missed the whole idea of UO.  Darkfall to me is much closer in spirit to another decent game from the past now sadly no longer with us Shadowbane about all thats different between Shadowbane and Darkfall is Darkfall has the  skill system (UO like but again missed the point of UO's skill system entirely) while Shadowbane had classes.  So evan what we once called sandbox has become diluted to the point where everyone seems only to focus on PvP or combat and forgets the world community side of the equation. that made the early sandbox games great.

The producers would like to pont out the previous pargraph is an opinion your milage with it may vary.

As to the themepark style of game  I feel the problem lies simply in the fact no mattter how great a story you lay out in an MMO eventually several thousand people are going to do the exact same story and every one ends up as pretty much the exact same in the end if they plug away at the "endgame" for long enough and in the end it all just seems fairly pointless.  Now don't get me wrong I do enjoy jumping into a themepark every now and then to check out the rides the devs have set up in bits and peices it's good fun it's just after a while the story pushes the idea of heroics and well I just don't feel it because I go where thousands of others have gone before and when everyone you meet is a hero then it kind of defeats the purpose.

Again the producers would like to highlight the above paragraph as an opinion.