Aren't you making the game for your players?

[yjmark]

Of course they are making the game "FOR" the players. However, they should not/cannot be making the game "BY" the players because there are infinite conflicts within the playerbase opinions.

Blizz has delivered a ton of things that the playerbase requested. Just because they can't deliver all of it - does not mean they ignore the players or their opinions.

[Rankin]

I read Street's drivel and think of how bad the game is. I read Chilton's interviews and think how awesome it is.

I remember a couple years back when people would cry for Tom Chilton to be fired. Then he stepped back from the forums and Greg Street took over as the public face of the developers. Now everyone hates him instead.

[Pull My Finger]

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...87338077835264

.@CybranSpiderbot you don't get good games by just giving people what they ask for. Game design isn't just polling.

You don't get good games by giving people what they want in the game they play?

Anyone have opinions on this?

edit:

It's obvious Game design isn't just polling, a game designer needs to take ideas from the community and make them better and fit with the rest of the game, but a game designer also needs to make changes that make sense and make the game more enjoyable.

I really don't understand why this guy is a game designer, he seems big headed.

He's absolutely right. You wouldn't last very long in the industry with your kind of mindset.
Also, who says that what the players want actually "makes sense" and "makes the game more enjoyable"? I assure you, if Blizzard realized just 30% of what people seem to "want" on forums, the game would end up being a catastrophy and a total mess.

Finally, I really doubt that "the players" really see all the stuff that gets done because the developers realized it's a good and legit expectation from the player base. People are always just aware of their stupid and unreasonable demands not being implemented.

[melodramocracy]

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...87338077835264

.@CybranSpiderbot you don't get good games by just giving people what they ask for. Game design isn't just polling.

You don't get good games by giving people what they want in the game they play?

Anyone have opinions on this?

edit:

It's obvious Game design isn't just polling, a game designer needs to take ideas from the community and make them better and fit with the rest of the game, but a game designer also needs to make changes that make sense and make the game more enjoyable.

I really don't understand why this guy is a game designer, he seems big headed.

Games should never apologize for what they aren't, nor should they try to appeal to everyone. WoW already tries to do too much placating of multiple player types, so I'm basically in agreement with him.

[DeadmanWalking]

From another perspective sometimes players don't know what they want but sometimes they don't know what they would want. Sometimes you have to create things that they didnt know they wanted and see how it is recieved. Sometimes those new things flop, and sometimes they are well received but a overly loud and annoying vocal minority runs around screaming their heads off like everyone else is just like them. Sometimes people just hate any kind of change no matter what.

back in the days of music being recorded on tapes and DVD's people didn't know they wanted a tiny machine that could store 100,000 songs that they could pull up at any time and in any order. Steve Jobs figured out that people would want that if they only knew they needed it. If it was not for that Apple would be bottom of the barrel comp system to this day.

[clevin]

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...87338077835264

.@CybranSpiderbot you don't get good games by just giving people what they ask for. Game design isn't just polling.

You don't get good games by giving people what they want in the game they play?

Anyone have opinions on this?

edit:

It's obvious Game design isn't just polling, a game designer needs to take ideas from the community and make them better and fit with the rest of the game, but a game designer also needs to make changes that make sense and make the game more enjoyable.

I really don't understand why this guy is a game designer, he seems big headed.

For anyone who's designed products this is axiomatic. People will ask for a better horse... not a car. A bigger TV... not a flat one. Certainly you listen to customers but customers are generally terrible at product design (just as I'd be terrible at their specialty). What they do is this... "See Problem... "come up with solution to that specific problem" What you want to do as a product designer is to see a problem and dive into it... is it revealing a deeper set of issues? Is what the player/customer wants best done some other way? Does their request imply other things?

Combine that with the fact that creativity and coherent product design comes from a vision... shared amongst a team or one person's, but it's a vision of what the product should be. A great author telling their story is much better than a bunch of amateurs who all want to talk about themselves in each chapter.

Finally, a lot of community requests are contradictory. "Nerf Rogues!" vs "Rogue mobility sucks and too much of our damage is passive - buff mobility and yellow damage!" OK, which do you do? For that example, sub in almost any other request. Most of you want things that help YOU but there are other people in the game and the effects of your wants have to be measured against how they'd affect others. IN general the community sucks at doing this.

[TheWindWalker]

But what "bad" is there in them? If current dailies are "okay" by devs, then how an attunement that takes one evening of dedication is bad?

The problem is that often you need 4 people to escort 1 person to an instance. Then another. Then another. Then get 5/20 more people and do an older raid. Then that new person or new alt can come to the current raid.

Now have someone else offer to "go heals" with their alt. You have to do it again.

New tank? You have to do it again.

DPS spec gets the super nerf bat? Have to do it again.

People start going to other guilds or pugging those weeks and sitting out.

[clevin]

GC's worst mistake ever happened on WotLK. he listened to what the beta testers had to say, and they kept asking for DK buffs. in the end, DKs got extremely overpowered, and it took the whole expansion to nerf them into balance.

does he listen to feedback? yes. does he have to do exactly what feedback says? no. he has to use his own tools and sense of critic to determine if the feedback is appropriate or not.

You have no idea WTF you're talking about. I was in LK beta and played a DK there. They were FAR more powerful in beta than they were in live.

And this, children, is why most of you would fail utterly at design.

[chocobo606]

I dunno, the guy who made RE6 thinks that game and its changes were a step in the right direction, and that we're somehow not used to change or whatever...but if they made a RE7 and it was similar to RE6, I wouldn't buy it. The same can apply to WoW, if you do things like for example the way they did dailies, you can make people angry. I enjoy my alts, gearing my alts, the same as my main because I don't play to raid anymore, I don't have the time with work and school. If you change and make things different that is a big part of why someone plays a game, they won't play your game. They don't have to change everything because the players want, they have to listen and understand what the players don't like, and change it so that it fits their ideas and that of the people playing... they are pretty good at that.

[Dasffion]

It the game designers job to balance the class with the rest of the game, the players had a lot of great ideas and that is why death knight is such a fun class to play.
No reason to blame the players for the short comings of the designers.

The players didn't come up with the stuff that makes Death Knights fun. Players came up with the feedback that made Death Knights overpowered. The developers then had to scramble to balance it out. This is the point, they've learned from that mistake and now take player feedback with a grain of salt and do more internal testing rather than just listening to the players.

---------- Post added 2012-12-11 at 12:22 PM ----------

You have no idea WTF you're talking about. I was in LK beta and played a DK there. They were FAR more powerful in beta than they were in live.

And this, children, is why most of you would fail utterly at design.

Even if this was true, not saying it is, they were still horribly overpowered in live.

[Freia]

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...87338077835264

.@CybranSpiderbot you don't get good games by just giving people what they ask for. Game design isn't just polling.

You don't get good games by giving people what they want in the game they play?

Anyone have opinions on this?

edit:

It's obvious Game design isn't just polling, a game designer needs to take ideas from the community and make them better and fit with the rest of the game, but a game designer also needs to make changes that make sense and make the game more enjoyable.

I really don't understand why this guy is a game designer, he seems big headed.

If they went by what players said, then the most played class would end up being the most overpowered. Most players do not want balance.

[Dasffion]

See my last post.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post19407300

His post on twitter suggest he is not willing to listen to feedback, no one ever said he had to listen; just to consider.

You're twisting his words around a lot. He said you don't make good games by JUST giving players what they want. Take a minute to think about that. What he's saying is they're not going to buff x or nerf y just because players want it.They have to think of the game as a whole.

[Chirri]

I think there's a big difference between making your game, and making someone else's game.

Say you make a game. You've made your game. You had a vision of a way you wanted to entertain people, so you created your game with a certain theme, a certain flavor. You hope, but don't expect, that players will find it engaging, entertaining, and worth giving you money for. With luck, you get "enough" players. Players who are enjoying your vision, your theme, and want to see where your game is heading. If your game is not popular, you have the choice of changing your game into something outside your vision, or you can scrap the game (perhaps keep supporting it, but additions slow or stop) and instead focus on creating an entirely new game with a different theme and story, and again, hope that it resonates with enough players to allow you to make a profit and still tell the story you have in mind for that game.

Say you don't have a story or a theme, you're just looking to con money from people. You'll instead make a point of cobbling together a game that should appeal to several different kinds of people. You aren't all that interested in a story or stability (by which I mean consistency, not whether it'll run on a system) or something that makes sense - bright colors, things that sparkle and flash, short term gratification are a greater theme than anything else. You don't expect much of your own ideas, and you don't expect much from your players. When a set of players freaks out because there's something they don't like about the game and demand changes, you listen to them and change it; now the people who were content with the way things were are unhappy and demand changes - either they want things back the way they were, or the simply demand some other change as "compensation" for what they now dislike. Which repeats, each time you change the game, since you're not all that invested in the direction and theme the game is taking.

Personally, I enjoy games that aren't tailored to my personal taste, but to the taste of the people in charge of the game. The game becomes more memorable to me. If I don't like a game, I don't like the game. Rather than altering a game I'm not that impressed to try to please me, I'd rather play something else entirely. I suppose my bias is rather clear to begin with, but this is generally how the entire thing strikes me.

I feel the same way about people. Wishy washy, undefined personalities irritate me.

[Mammoth]

Loads of players went on and on about bringing back world bosses to WoW. Now we have Galleon. Turns out world bosses aren't a great idea after all, because most players don't ever get to see him. Oh and of course there's Sha of Anger, what fun you can have when it only takes a group of 5 enemy players to wipe you all.

Having the playerbase design the game is a bad idea. The developers are in control and they should take and leave ideas from the playerbase as they see fit.

[Firecrest]

You don't get good games by giving people what they want in the game they play?

This is entirely correct - with a minor caveat. You don't give people what they say they want.

People are fucking stupid. They don't know what they want. A game developer's job is to listen to what people say they want and then guess what they really want. Blizzard guesses pretty well most of the time.

[abovebeyond]

Read the first line in the EULA:

This game is licensed, not sold. Yes, they make the game for the players, yes occasionally good ideas spring up on the forums and the devs WILL listen and seriously consider it. But no, that does not mean you can expect 100% of your ideas to be included, or that you can say "implement x or I quit".

[Pull My Finger]

But what "bad" is there in them? If current dailies are "okay" by devs, then how an attunement that takes one evening of dedication is bad?

How is that a question?

Daily quests don't keep you from participating in content. Attunements do.

[TheWindWalker]

Personally, I enjoy games that aren't tailored to my personal taste, but to the taste of the people in charge of the game. The game becomes more memorable to me. If I don't like a game, I don't like the game. Rather than altering a game I'm not that impressed to try to please me, I'd rather play something else entirely. I suppose my bias is rather clear to begin with, but this is generally how the entire thing strikes me.

I feel the same about tv shows, honestly. If a series becomes popular enough to start referencing its own fandom then it tends to start feeling more like "patronizing" rather than "tailoring to" its fans.

[Keoren]

Players don't always (often) realize what they actually want or what is reasonable, and many of the changes wanted by the players would have a negative effect on the game. With such a massive community there is also not one single vision that is shared by everyone, including the developers.

[Deleted]

I really don't understand why this guy is a game designer, he seems big headed.

I don't understand how he can still be in charge after the Cata fiasco.