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Are Developers trying to change player behavior?
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Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,987
It seems to me that the games that have been released in the last 5 years are increasingly focused on one type of play, and developer candid talk references "wasted" time on features like player housing, secondary or tertiary activities, and role-playing accessibility.
It seems to me that the idea here is to be able to shape player behavior to allow developers to spend the least amount of effort and money on something that is appealing to them, versus being a long term experience for players.
Player wiggle the market economy stick at devs and clamor for games that will sate appetities Or Else! But I think that this is really a toothless threat from a disjointed customer base that fights itself more than anything.
Developers are making games that are aggressively marketed, played for a short period of time, and fall short of the fetures that can keep players engaged. Even if you are a combat 24/7 type of player, having things in your game that keep the fishers and dancers there is not a bad thing for you. Population is the key in real MMOs, and so the big tent approach should really be what everyone wants.
So should the play style be dictated by the game designers?
Or should customers dictate the style of play?
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Comments
Yet another thread that asks the same question in a different way, "Why don't developers make MMOs with features that I like?"
Answer is the same too, because the current model has proven to be popular and profitable enough to justify making more of the same.
In the end, they are reacting to player behavior, not attempting to modify it.
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Customers already dictate the style of play. Millions of people buy what the developers produce, and the shallower the game play the more boxes get sold.
What a few people on a forum say is completely irrelevant, they may complain 24 hours a day but they buy the boxes anyway.
I maintain this List of Sandbox MMORPGs. Please post or send PM for corrections and suggestions.
Only truly artistic developers try to change player behavior, because they are busy implementing their vision and not the players' vision, of which they care little (i.e., CCP). Most developers are shackled by money grabbing publishers, so they're busy developing for what the publisher wants, and the publisher wants to find the lowest common denominator in the playerbase and appeal to them. Also, developers don't market anything. Developers are not driving the least amount of effort. That is publishers. Please direct your hate where it belongs.
Play style should always be dictated by game designers. What players want, or think they want, is irrelevant, because they typically miss the forest for the trees. If you are so smart as to know what you want from a game, go make your own. If not, sit tight, and appreciate the products of developers.
...which kinda don't exist anymore. Oh well.
By the way, a lot of people really do not care about player housing or consider it neccessary. I know that's unbelievable, but it is so. It's not an indicator of a bad game or anything, not every game needs to have every feature from every other game - this is another reason why players should stay the fuck out of development, they're the very same group that tries to turn games into a burger joint that tries to appeal to everyone even when the different elements do not really fit the game.
The things that bother you are not the same things that bother me. What bothers me is that game developers are launching crap games and people are reinforcing that behavior by throwing money at them. There is no need to have to spend more in development to produce a complete, polished offering when people are so bored they will pay for a lot less. And no, by comlete and polished I don't mean nothing need ever be added or that there are no bugs. I do mean that the game is a solid offering with plenty to do out the gate, and that it does not have a plethora of game- or fun-breaking bugs that were well-documented during the game's beta.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
There is a term called Over Development that gets used from time to time which basicially means to avoid producing too much content/features as it is believed (by some) that there is a diminishing returns on each added feature.
Take races, they offer a small core number of them. They could add more but as you increase the number teh meaningfulness of each new on is smaller. So adding more is kind of a waste.
Take starting zones. Since players race through them these days, why offer more than a few. Just enough to get them to learn a little bit about the game. For get having multiple zones to level in since you only need one zone at a time to level in. Anything more would be over producing.
Then you will get, why have thousands of items, when people just want the BIS ASAP. It take resources to make the artwork for all those items. Money that could be better spent on ceo bonuses.
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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."
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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?"
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Seems to me they are trying to control your behaviour and everything you do to an extent. We want you to go here, here, here, then there, but you are forced to now go here, then there, now over here.
Shitiness won't stop either since people eat up games like D3, CoD series, Halo, Gears of War..eck.
5 years? Try 11...Raph Koster was the first developer I heard state that game makers need to focus on telling players what they like and dont like and stop listening to them because they are too stupid to know what they want. He was also the one that stated an MMO maker should expect to lost 30-50% of their initial players and not to pay attention to those posting on a games forum as they are the vocal minorty...I guess minorities mean nothing along with losing half your playerbase...
And thank God that man hasnt been able to get his hands on another MMO since Sony sent him off to make single player console games for what he did with EQ2...sadly, he still gets invited to speak at the developer conference and people still listen to him, he got cheers from the Bioware and Funcom devs a few years back...its no wonder, those two companies dont address player issues directly unless they just so happen to have what they are asking for already on their to-do lists...everyone else is ignored.
I think you've got it wrong. They're called "wasted" efforts because the majority of the playerbase just doesn't give a damn about them. How many people roleplay versus those who don't? Tertiary features like mini-games, the ones people play when they're shiny and new than completely ignore within a month? Then player housing! Why this is being touted as the holy grail lately, I don't know. My guess is that someone shouted it, and everyone else jumped on the bandwagon out of reminiscent principle of what once was, not the feature itself. Once again, unless you roleplay, it's only purpose is to decorate and frill up. Once again, shiny thing people leap at when it's first introduced, then ignored in favor of the ~actual~ gamplay, especially in the case of games that offer housing at ridiculous purchase/upkeep prices (*cough* AION *cough*).
Housing is far more profitable as a sandbox feature where the kind of house you have is dictated by imagination and actual crafting, and the only upkeep is kicking anyone's ass who tries to tear it apart.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
I think the amount of games has changed player behavior to being that of spoiled brats, expecting developers to pump out insane amounts of content they can throw away and ignore a few weeks after release. Its kind of upsetting to think MMO players have become such spoiled brats, myself included, that we see things needing to be perfect and anything 'hard' or 'taking times' shouldn't be there and that a game has to come up with new things all the time to replace other things.
I remember playing Ragnarok ONline and having a blast grinding the same mobs over and over getting my character leveled up. Today, if a game had you doing only 5 things to level that weren't completely different, they would be called boring and tossed out as unetertaining even if a game was brand new.
I want players to change their behavior cause this spoiled brat and unloyal attitude is driving MMos down the drain and allowing for worst and worst games to be made following a generic formula designed to cash drive people, knowing they won't be able to keep people since people have such a tiny attention span.
You mean like people who played Asherons Call and got an update every...single...month?
You do know spoiled brats also act like no one else has a right to say anything because they know best, and you...claimed to know people shouldnt expect something because it isnt possible...when it is...or at least was when developers didnt know how clueless so many players are that they can get away with not giving updates that often and still get them to pay monthly for the exaxt same content for half a year+.
Something like that, yes.
Most studios prefer making more of exactly the same since it seems safer to the suits making all decisions. A game that is similar to Wow rarely nankrupts your company even if it probably wont earn that much money either.
A truly new thinking game can get anything from zero to 20 million players and companies like EA and Activision just don´t like taking such chanses.
People did..that's why he's saying it's the peoples behaviours now. People played those games for months without a 3 Wafront 5 Dungeon update every 2 months.
At best they added some content and stuff but likely was bug fixing, etc.
This is a simplification of the truth. A good example would be the dove campaign about armpits. The campaign is all about helping women but actually this wasn't an issue before the campaign in any serious way. They created another thing for women to be anxious about appearance wise in order to make money.
The idea that businesses react purely to customer demand is bullshit.
With good marketing Blizzard could invent a game and market it as existing and have millions of preorders. Now you will say, once the release happens people will know and the FTC and SEC will sue the fuck out of them, its true, but the point is that those are after the fact issues. Millions of people will still pay for the product.
Not only are people affected by social pressures as to what games they play, but they are also affected by first exposure. If the first MMO a player played was a high quality sandbox instead of a high quality themepark, its likely that they would favor themeparks for the rest of their lives.
This theory is proven in the areas of food. If you give a person a blind taste test of a soda, they will often pick the one they did not express a preference for previously. However if you tell a person this is coke and this is pepsi, if they previously claimed they liked pepsi, there is a very significant statistical demonstration that they will claim they liked the pepsi better, even if they would not claim that if they didn't know which was which.
You can track people's product preferences across their lifetime for low cost consumer products like food or body care items. Marketing provides a significantly stronger effect than 3rd party product quality evaluation.
Game companies are just like every other type of company. They constantly work to control player behavior with every tool at their disposal and they quite often succeed. You can make distinctions between games where the interface is just so fucking terrible and hard to use that the game will not succeed financially, and polished games, but that's a polish issue and not a feature issue. Minecraft is effectively a sandbox and its hugely popular. Similarly angry birds was more polished and stylish and well marketed than Crush the Castle. I know people think these are cliche examples but they are used because they are true.
Reactive businesses are constantly shut down by proactive ones.
Ahh, but he said the amount of games changed players into spoiled brats...not that early games made us spoiled which would then be correct.
People who played Asherons Call were spoiled, games today for the most part receive crap updates. And his stated reasons are also far off...he actually thinks people want content that only lasts a few weeks. Not even AC1 players did that with the massive amounts being pumped out continually. Hell, I was still doing Aerlinth Island runs 3 years after its release and was able to run low level guildmates through it on my own...
Expecting more for your money is not being spoiled, its being smart...not seeing your low expectations and expecting people to act just like you or be silent...is being spoiled...rotten.
That's not entirelly true.
Marketting 101 is about CREATING needs as well and make a product to fullfill that need.
Not only reading them and reacting to them.
That's what is teached on any basic marketting course in any college since 90's.
That idea was of course present earlier, but started to be 'core' of modern corporationism and economy relatively recently.
Best example from last 10 or so years. Apple.
well I figure that even for the people whop dont like certain features, is it only that you want to play games with others who only enjoy that one style of gameplay?
If so then a market full of mono-style games, played for short periods, is really ideal.
For those who responded according to my tastes, I really wasn't trying to make the thread about me. I can't avoid having a perspective, but I was more interested in the game market mechanics.
There's a bit of a chicken and the egg thing at work here, because they players play what is offered, throwing money into the best of the existing choices. While I agree that this does produce winners in what is put out, it doesn't necessarily mean those are great games, just the greatest of what is out.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I don't know how this can be a shrewd thing to do. In what business do you look at the customer, say "Fuck your couch," and then do whatever. I understand you need to have a vision, but it's not an oil painting. No customers = no game.
You seem tense btw. Relaxation breathing works great.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I think developers are making games more based on statistics. They probably look at what is working at the time, like WOW and other "themepark" mmos that are on the market. They see that these mmos are successful or somewhat successful and go that route. They more or less want the initial influx of money when the game launches and leach off of what is left over after the initial release.