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I really wish developers wold stop listening to the whining forums.
Varny
Member Posts: 765
God forums for mmos with PVP are some of the whiniest out there. Just people whining who want things their way to make them better and yet developers seem to listen to them and ruin the game for everyone else just so they can be happy. Star Wars Galaxies is a great example of a game ruined for the constant nerfs and buffs that went on. Just as one profession got buffed everyone said it was overpowered and then it got nerfed into oblivion. Instead of the developers having their own plan they clearly had no clue. People whining that Jedi was too hard... well guess what it's meant to be hard! However the devs gave in to the constant forum whiners and ruined the game some more. People whining about travel taking so long which was a balance feature for the game and oh guess what they ruined the game some more with instant travel.
It seems like it's only getting worse I mean look how how the Champions Online community just keeps on whining. I mean guess what mmorpgs have problems at launch... I've never known one not to so stop whining and get over it. You ain't suffered unless you played SWG where every patch got pushed onto live without testing fixing 1 thing and breaking 20. That was caused by the constant noise of the forums over shadowing the good posts. See in theory people want stuff like decay and death penalties, but when you give it to them they'll whine that the games too hard.
I'm just so fedup of official forums for mmorpgs because they'd do better without them.
Comments
Just curious, but in your mind, what is the difference between whining and a valid complaint?
constructive feedback is great when you get the people of the community making long write ups of why something is wrong and how you could fix it. However too many posts on forums are "you suck" or "nerf this" etc etc and it offers nothing. However so many people are doing it on forums these days that it puts new players off and developers have to give in to the pressure of the whining forum.
Like Smedley said after SOE ruined SWG was they're just the vocal Minority and he was right. I was happy with the mechanics of SWG like TEF and all that and my guild was happy with the game. All we wanted was bug fixes and content but there was a handful of whiners who came to the forums and it's like if you don't like the game then stop playing. All they ever want is stuff for their selfish self because they hate something being hard or whatever.
The rest of the community happy with the game has to suffer and can't even go to their own forums because of these people and it pisses me off.
I'll 100% agree with you about game developers dumbing down content to appease the masses. I haven't had fun with PvE since the original everquest, and maybe a little in the original Naxxramas in WoW. Which is why I've basically become more of a PvP'r.
Complaint I agree with = Valid complaint.
Complaint I disagree with = Pathetic whining.
That's how it works on these Internets.
It's natural given the way we live, given that greed and the sense of frustrated determination that comes from it is rewarded most by our predominant economic system, that some people are self concerned while being less concerned with the smaller, I think and less vocal, macro consensus. Rather than see a game that could be enjoyed over a number of years by a lot of people that simply is that, a game, they see the truth which is that MMO games present an opportunity for gain, be that gain in status amoung their peers or wealth; because that's the truth and because MMO games model the way we live in real life, by presenting a sense of development that's similar to the way people develop and grow through-out their lives, the whiners you mentioned are not to blame for bad patches, nerfs or fixes. Only the people who implement bad patches, nerfs and fixes can and should be accountable for them.
the problem is that whiners will spam the forums with THIS IS OP , NERF NERF NERF... SO OP OMG WTF
and there will be about 6000 topics like this where as a Helpful topic or opion with constructive info will just be 1 topic will a wall of text..
what are u more likly to read, that ONE topic of constructive critism that more than 75% of the community might agree with
or the 6000 topics by that said 25% that want everything to come easily to them..
Well observing from the outside my impression of SWG has always been that they made two mistakes:
I dunno, I just can't imagine not letting everyone who wants to play a jedi play one. Pick a SW Universe timeframe where it makes sense to have thousands of jedi running around, and let people live out Star Wars. That's sort of the point of a SW game.
But yeah...game released and the typical big chunk of players unsubscribed after the first month (as always happens) for Reason A. The devs see this and decide to switch to be more like Thing A, except that those players are already gone and now they've pissed off their remaining subscribers.
I don't even mean to seem hard on SWG's devs. It's not an enviable position. (Well, aside from being hard on them for missing the obvious opportunity of choosing a timeframe with tons of jedi.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Players shouldn't be the ones fixing the game. Developers should determine the source of the complaints themselves. After all they are experts in the game they make, right?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
To me Jedi isn't something that should bve given to you from the start, you should earn it like the movies where Luke is a normal guy and has to earn the right to be a Jedi and learn how to use the powers. I think it's dumb to be like here you go start off as Jedi because it doesn't feel special anymore and just feels common. The magic of the old films was Jedi are rare and they are very special. In the new films it's ruined by Jedi being common and as shit as normal people.
When I first saw a Jedi I was amazed and it was so special because you never saw them. Then it became easier and after Pub 9 everyone had a Jedi and it wasn't special anymore. Just ruined the whole magic of the game because they listened to the whiners who didn't want to put the effort into becoming Jedi.
Hah. The OP reminds me of the classic John Smedley(CEO at sony) comment about EQ players.
"Who cares what they think, they don't even know what they want." (paraphrased)
I'm not so sure it turned out that well for EQ, though.
Because they is a generalization of an entire playerbase. The problem in my opinion is that most MMO's try to appeal to the largest amount of players for financial reasons and normally the most feedback received is from vocal minorities. That's not always a bad thing and it's better than no feedback at all. Stoping to listen to the community on forums because those forums may not always represent the majority is overkill imo.
Yeah well its not like any of us can call Blizzards office and suggest things for development. So the forums are really the only place to voice opinions and that's why the companies come here to gather information. Unfortunately nobody at Blizz hears me yelling " Starcraft mmo Please"!!! Also what's with all the new hello kitty games that have popped up? Dragonica, Fiesta, etc....How about a really good game, with great graphics and you can actually play it. Not like, let's say a three day download and then a tiny glitch keeps you from meeting requirments. AOC, DDO, Warhammer, etc.. So devolopers need to listen to the complaints, but they really don't. It's what makes the money in the end that they listen to. I really wish they would listen to us
The problem was that becoming a Jedi was supposed to be EPIC. Instead they made the process of becoming a Jedi a massive, pointless grind that destroyed any immersion into your character that you might have had. The later changes replaced the massive pointless grind with a less massive pointless grind and did not add any epicness to the process.
The problem was that becoming a Jedi was supposed to be EPIC. Instead they made the process of becoming a Jedi a massive, pointless grind that destroyed any immersion into your character that you might have had. The later changes replaced the massive pointless grind with a less massive pointless grind and did not add any epicness to the process.
Thing is when it was first realised by Raph Koster he wanted it to be like you can play how you want and not play the way the game tells you to. However people hated not having a clear goal so they stuck holocrons in and it forced everyone to grind professions they hated.
I really wish developers wold stop listening to the whining forums.
Me too.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
I don't think it would ever be a good idea to solely listen to complaints lodged on the forums. From a purely statistical point of view, forum-posters would probably not provide a very good sample of the general population playing the game. Not everyone who plays the game posts in the forums. And people who complain on the forums are generally those who feel very strongly about a particular subject - an even smaller proportion of that smaller forum-posting clique - providing quite a bit of skew if that is the only place you look towards for advice on how to run your game. I guess this can explain why some courses of action taken by MMO developers are ultimately disliked by a majority of the game population (a la SWG).
Yeah noone I knew in the game SWG ever posted on the boards other than the trade forums and they were all perfectly happy with the game but wanting more content. The guild I was with never complained about the game and even went through the CU and just put up with it. However once the NGE hit our guild and everyother guild just left and it was depressing to see the game full of life turn into a ghost town.
To me Jedi isn't something that should bve given to you from the start, you should earn it like the movies where Luke is a normal guy and has to earn the right to be a Jedi and learn how to use the powers. I think it's dumb to be like here you go start off as Jedi because it doesn't feel special anymore and just feels common. The magic of the old films was Jedi are rare and they are very special. In the new films it's ruined by Jedi being common and as shit as normal people.
When I first saw a Jedi I was amazed and it was so special because you never saw them. Then it became easier and after Pub 9 everyone had a Jedi and it wasn't special anymore. Just ruined the whole magic of the game because they listened to the whiners who didn't want to put the effort into becoming Jedi.
I'm not trying to argue that rare jedis doesn't have a sideeffect of jedis being cool. It does.
Nor do I think I could convince anyone who played SWG. They're used to things being the way they were.
And I even agree that some form of "jedi training" makes sense and could be a lot of fun.
But at the end of the day, people buy star wars games to be jedis, and a game failing to make that part of the experience sort of fails.
Although if someone were to concede that Star Wars just isn't a great MMORPG universe (partially due to this very issue,) I could see that argument too. Although it's like LOTRO: the IP is what holds the game up, and what keeps it down.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
mm in swg case they could remove nge and lot would be very happy ,but soe spent so much money on that it would never happen its like trowing money out of the window .
swg would close before lol
Well, let me put this in perspective for you.
The masses are the ones who make up the bulk of the playerbase. If your community has 100,000 people, and 60,000 of them make posts about wanting the entire game nerfed in a certain way --whether or not it's a good idea-- you either do it or risk losing 60% of your playerbase overnight.
It's not like devs just read the forums, see what people are talking about, and then go do it. They have to watch the majority, and that's what matters. Sure, people hate it when PvE is changed due to PvP, or vice versa. If you don't like it, then you better speak up and get everyone you know to speak up, because they're *always* going to go with the larger faction.
That's the way it works in everything. Even in politics you never seem to hear about anything middle of the road. This health care debate is a perfect example of the screamers getting all the attention. DAoC was great when it first came out. Over time some things were overpowered but the vocal minority slowly began getting their voice heard and the bs started instead of fixing the things that should have been fixed. The AOE casters wanted to run into the midst of battle and lay waste to tanks, but being casters they died quickly. Rather than wait for the right time or playing their toons the way they were designed to be played they cried so hard that mythic decided to add buffs into the game that basically changed the entire game into a ranged battle where tanks were laregly irrelevant. Armsmen went from being devastators to laughed at. Pallys could still be useful at times but why bother when another sorc would be so much better?
Champions online is a good idea poorly executed. I'd bitch too if I had been duped into buying it. Especially if after playing the headstart weekend to get a 'headstart' they nerfed all my character's best powers effectively making me roll a new character all over again.
As for SWG, I felt it was a boring game that many people treated like it was a second life. More people played that game to craft and gold farm than anything else. It just didn't appeal to a wide audience and SOE had too much invested in the game to just sit idly by with less than half of their projected subscribers. So they did what they thought would encourage more people to play. Unfortunately this was a big mistake on their part as they spent even more money on advertising that failed to bring in new customers and the changes they made caused them to lose many of those who enjoyed the game as it was.
In neither case is it the 'whiners' on the forums that caused the problems.
I agree that devs should have classes balanced by launch time and not screw around with them just because some people are complaining. Just because a class seems OP in a certain situation doesn't necessarily mean that it's unbalanced.
whining = "I can't kill X class with my Y class, X is too strong!!!!!" "I can't solo X boss, its too hard and I don't have time to figure out how to kill it!!!" "Item Z quests take too long to complete, no other person has enough time after work to do this! I pay so I want!!!!"
valid complaint = "Whenever I walk over a certain bridge to get to X town I fall through and get stuck please fix it!"
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
Complaint I agree with = Valid complaint.
Complaint I disagree with = Pathetic whining.
That's how it works on these Internets.
LOL QFT
By the way, for the OP, if companies stop listening to the "whining forums", they are accused of not listening to their playerbase. So as you can see, either way, they're screwed and criticized.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
whining = "I can't kill X class with my Y class, X is too strong!!!!!" "I can't solo X boss, its too hard and I don't have time to figure out how to kill it!!!" "Item Z quests take too long to complete, no other person has enough time after work to do this! I pay so I want!!!!"
valid complaint = "Whenever I walk over a certain bridge to get to X town I fall through and get stuck please fix it!"
But..... what if X class is too strong vs class Y? Are you saying developers shouldn't try to balance their games, esp PVP games?
What if quests (or raids) do take too long to complete, meaning few players actually ever experience the content.
What if Boss X is too hard, should it be left as is?
I'll agree, if developers listen to a small vocal minority about issues like these, they are probably making a mistake.
However, if a large portion of their target subsriber base agrees then perhaps the changes are warranted.
But how to know?
SWG was changed because SOE/Lucas Arts could not believe that a Warhammer/LOTOR rip-off could garner millions of subscribers while their game with its "magnificent" IP was mired in the under 250 range.
They took a look at what made WOW successful, noticed that some of their users were asking for similar things, and made the (incorrect as it turns out) decision to try and WOWify their game.
Mythic did the same with DAOC, decided the game needed raiding like EQ for some reason, and it turned out to be the last thing most of the player base was looking for.
The MMORPG landscape is littered with bad decisions, sometimes as a result of listentng to player feedback, but in many cases the dev's came up with hairbrained schemes all on their own.
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