https://www.vg247.com/2019/07/12/game-developers-time-stop-listening-fans/

Once in a while maybe step back and really think of the amount of work and effort it take to make this game run and add new content. Now I don't always agree with all the decisions made but I love this game and there is not another like it that offers so much for a one month sub.

https://www.vg247.com/2019/07/12/game-developers-time-stop-listening-fans/

 

Once in a while maybe step back and really think of the amount of work and effort it take to make this game run and add new content. Now I don't always agree with all the decisions made but I love this game and there is not another like it that offers so much for a one month sub.

It's not really a good article.

The author flits around some good points, but then dives back in to the cardnal sin of game development:

"If a game doesn't succeed, its those damn players' faults for not liking what we are giving them!"

This hubris, which saturates that article, is how bad games get made.

Good games always start with this premise:

"If I were making a game, what kind of game do the majority of people who are a fan of that genre want to play?"

Bad games always start with this premise:

"If I were making a game, what kind of game do I (the developer) want to play?"

On rare occasion, you will have a developer who is representitive of the players and a game can succeed that way. But the players are your paying base. To ostracize them is just a stupid business decision. To blame them is business suicide.

There is one point the author made that is valid:

You can't make everyone happy. No matter what, you will run into headwinds, and if you listen to all of it, it will mess you up or paralyze you. That was what killed SWG.

HOWEVER

You can't go the other way either, and just say "fine then, I will develop a game solely for myself". That is what led to KotFE and KotET and drew a mass exodus of people upset that bioware just pissed all over their characters' individual stories (yes, I know about the initial success of KoTFE - it speaks to players giving it a chance initially. What then happened is months long forum ranting and players leaving over what bioware did to the characters - developers chose short term gain for long term pain).

Those who are good at making good games have a good "filter". In other words, they can filter through players cries or requests, and figure out whats reasonable, or even look at the root cause behind the players complaints and come up with a potential solution to that rather than some of the off the wall suggestions players make. At times, they DO listen to the players if they feel a complaint is valid, or they find the majority people currently playing the game play in a style different to what they expect - good developers will adjust to the PLAYER BASE in this case, rather than demanding the players conform, so long as it doesn't break balance in the game.

The key in all things though, is remember, this is a business. So the job is to make as many players as happy as possible for as long as possible.

Being a good mmo developer means being part psychologist and figuring out what your players want.

Being a bad one means insulating yourself, and then blaming the players for not understanding your "genius" like a bloated avant garde narcissist.

Agreed, ZionHalcyon. This article is mostly nonsense. The author cherrypicks examples of some of the most obnoxious of player behavior, ignores all of the calm and reasoned feedback that players give - the hours upon hours of devotion that some communities put into supporting a game with volunteer work that nobody is paying them a dime to do - and then uses those cherrypicked examples to draw an absurd conclusion:

it makes me worry whether this environment of fan feedback development is holding back triple-A game development from reaching its true potential.

Like... seriously? It couldn't be the financial politics of game development holding AAA back? It couldn't be mismanagement? It couldn't be undercompensated, overworked, and burned out workers? It's the players holding it back?

The author even claims:

video games are a complex chimera of publisher goals, developer goals, and the realities of working with an ever-shifting vision. It’s like moulding a jar from clay on a rollercoaster. Games are a broken mess right up until launch – when the rollercoaster finally comes to a halt and the clay stops flopping around like one of those car dealership balloons – and developers are usually aware of the major issues they launch with.

Yet it's the players that are holding things back? It couldn't be that you just described an extremely messy industry and development process, Mr. Author? Come on.

I'm pretty tired of the narrative that paying customers are to blame for the failures of a business.

That said, there is a sliver of truth in what the author writes. There is some toxicity in video games that goes too far. But this is not only in customers; there are development studios that have cultural problems as well (I think of some of the stuff that came out about Riot's work culture or Rockstar). And some of the toxicity in video games customers is just an extension of toxicity that happens on the internet in general. It's also not most people.

Furthermore, I think any ire from customers in video games needs to be taken in the context in which it often exists nowadays. Video games rushed out and stuffed up to the hilt with microtransactions. Video games that regularly update and change things because "live service," which is always going to provoke volatile emotions when it's a piece of creative work. The author makes a comparison to TV/film. Most TV/film doesn't have a practice of changing things after release. Literally the only instance of that happening I can think of is George Lucas making some tweaks to the OT on his own artistic whims (which were very controversial) and instances of things like a "director's cut," where a slightly different edited version is sold in some capacity. Nothing remotely close to the ongoing changes that people who play video games have to deal with in "live service" games.

It's a well-known concept that people tend to struggle with change and video games have adopted a practice of changing things on a regular basis, as part of the business model. Any toxicity has to be understood in that context or we aren't being fair to the people who get frustrated at the direction video games go in (which, if we're being real, is probably just about everybody at one time or another, developers included - just a question of degrees).

This article reminded me of the Term "Company Centric" right off. Disney and EA are both killing themselves thinking they control, even set what fans like or would pay for with Disastrous results.

https://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/

One example from this article is I build 3D Objects for different venues and whether its a Medieval Castle, Spaceship (that actually does have an interior) or office building I have tendencies to make the rooms, doorways and corridors too small, realistically sized. Its just that the players, owners say "their camera's *^%$", "Cant see%$#@", "the angles *^%$#", and so on so I remind myself *Continually... otherwise I would build these my own instinctualy too small; the end result after hearing that is a "Better Product" for all. Stories, game mechanics and other facets are different but noting player (Customer) feedback in any facet is good.

This article reminded me of the Term "Company Centric" right off. Disney and EA are both killing themselves thinking they control, even set what fans like or would pay for with Disastrous results.

 

https://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/

People who tell you you’re awesome are useless. No, dangerous.

They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is. Especially watch out for the ones who tell you that nobody understands your genius.

Honestly, this is going to sound horrible, but self-doubt is one of your most powerful tools for craftsmanship. None of the designers you admire feel self-confident about their work in that way. None of them think that they are awesome. They all suffer from impostor complexes the size of the Titanic.

I am not saying that you need to lack confidence in yourself. (Heck, you’ll never put anything out if that’s the case! You need to have the arrogance to assume anyone will care in the first place). I am saying that nobody is ever done learning, and people who tell you you have arrived will give you a sense of complacency. You should never be complacent about your art.

This part reminds me of the people who are left who praise KotFE, even though it resulted in one of the largest exoduses from the game eventually since people were pissed that after having lost their class story now lost their companions AND any connection to their original story. They remind me of Nero fiddling as rome was burning.

This part reminds me of the people who are left who praise KotFE, even though it resulted in one of the largest exoduses from the game eventually since people were pissed that after having lost their class story now lost their companions AND any connection to their original story. They remind me of Nero fiddling as rome was burning.

Yes, because people aren't allowed to like content that others don't like, unless those others are on "my side"? KotFE, and by extension ET had their problems, not the least of which was indeed their "pacing" on returning comps, noting that as of now they're still not all back through the story, however, some of the content was actually interesting, and entertaining. Some of it, not so much. I can, however, say the same for the Vanilla game, and then there's Makeb… I do love "eventually" though. So if someone quits tomorrow, it's pretty easy to say "they quit solely because of KotFE", right?

Some of the best games out there started out as "I'd love to see this as a game, I think I'll make it". I wonder, how many dev meetings were had during the development of Baldur's Gate, or Diablo, going "Our player base is going to love this"? Hmm, I wonder how long they fussed over that point making Mass Effect 1, or DA Origins? Games that were totally based on "I'd like to play this, so let's make it". I guess they were total flops, eh? I know I never got any surveys from BW concerning Baldur's Gate, how about you?

Crap games get made when they follow exactly what their community is going on about too, due to the lack of that filter that was mentioned earlier. Because I've seen some real doozies when it comes to what is going to make a game popular or not. My favorite example is from Aion, in the Beta forums, where it was "it's going to fail if you don't make it more like WoW" on Tuesday, and on Thursday it's "it's going to fail if you make it too much like WoW". I watched 45 minutes of a 1.5 hour long critique video on ME Andromeda, before the creator finally listed his biggest complaint: "Mass Effect is Shepard's story". If he'd said that in the first 5 minutes, I could have saved myself 40 minutes before disliking and closing the vid. It for sure had issues, but seriously, if you're going to hate on it because it's not Shepard, at least do that first, so that people looking for legit criticism can go somewhere else.

This part reminds me of the people who are left who praise KotFE, even though it resulted in one of the largest exoduses from the game eventually since people were pissed that after having lost their class story now lost their companions AND any connection to their original story. They remind me of Nero fiddling as rome was burning.

no...

This is your opinion. That's all that needs to be said !

AND ...IMO... your opinion is not worth $.01 more than mine ... or any of those who really have enjoyed the game INCLUDING KotFE / ET. (Nor is my opinion above yours either ).

No brag ... just fact ! (like it or not)

The real issues lay else where ... and from what I've seen 6.0 just might be a good change in the mechanics that are needed: particularly in PvP and possibly in new gear system. Granted that remains to be seen. BUT.. IMO before we start piling up the wood to burn the heretics ... perhaps we should see what happens first.

Edit: I have also noticed the usage of terms and language to describe those who disagree with you or other "developers" that tends to belittle or make allegations that are considerable less than polite in order to prove your point. I suppose this is your attempt at some form of " reductio ad absurdum " in order to further reinforce your point as being what must be seen as the only real answer.

IMO... that sort of belittlement of others is not in your favor either. (but that's just me)

Quite possibly the dumbest article I have ever read on this subject. I may suffer from "recency bias" because I just read it, but I bet over time I will rank it in the top 3 dumbest articles on this subject I have ever read.

The easiest way to refute the ENTIRE premise of the article is simple: account for variation and allow developers to separate trolls from legitimate critiques (aka -- doing their job).

There are games that have been lauded and had heaps of praise bestowed on them (e.g. Witcher 3) for a simple reason -- the game is good.

The author's underlying premise is that people are opposed to change (i.e. his Henry Ford quote). Wrong. He brings up the example of ME Andomeda and says it was brought down by GiFs. Wrong. I don't think it is unreasonable for people to ask for graphics to be on par or better with each new iteration of a game.

He then has the nerve to suggest that Anthem suffered because of the backlash in ME Andromeda and pushed BW to make a game that was good on graphics only. He somehow conflates graphics with the complete disaster of gameplay that hobbled Anthem's launch -- and plagues it to this day. The game is fundamentally flawed. I find it difficult to believe that the push for graphics led BW to neglect gameplay.

I don't think it's too much to ask for the graphics of a game in 2019 to be better than those released in 2015. I don't think it's too much to ask gameplay to not be stultifying like it is in Anthem. When EVERY review says basically the same thing -- there is a problem.

But I return to my original point: There will always be trolls and naysayers, but the author's premise that we jump on bandwagons and can't decide for ourselves objectively -- and communicate that point -- is utter rubbish.

Terrible article. Good game developers can separate the wheat from the chaff. More broadly, if they are so weak that they allow memes to influence their decisions they should not be in this industry.

Dasty

P.S. Oh double snap and a 'round the world twist!' I just reread what I wrote and was so impressed I'm starting my martinis early here on the West Coast of the USA.

So far I have agreed with just about everyone’s assessment of this article except the OPs.

All of you have hit on why things have turned pear shaped in this game and the article comes across as someone justifying their own arrogance.

So far I have agreed with just about everyone’s assessment of this article except the OPs.

 

All of you have hit on why things have turned pear shaped in this game and the article comes across as someone justifying their own arrogance.

I would agree on the following:

1. Game mechanics (not so much the story line. I'll touch on that later). BUT... IMO items such as PvP which has totally tanked (from what I understand) ... This is a primary example of one of the things that has hurt the game. (more on PvP vs PvE in just a second.

2. The entire currency system to get the latest gear. I'm guessing all of the grinding to disintegrate tons of stuff to get disassembled stuff .. get something else to finally get a single gear item is considered a part of the current currency system.

3. Hiding stuff in PvP for PvE players and visa versa hasn't helped much either.

4. New PvE / related PvP content drought ..

5. Other game mechanics that are similar to these and frankly would take a wall of text to plow through. (And I really don't think that those who are in the know really need to be reminded of everything... frankly. )

6. The story lines : IMO .. this is subjective as much as anything. There is no need to beat a dead horse over this subject. IMO.. the biggest thing I see was the long drought over new material. IMO ... that hurt as well.

Now then: 6.0

IMO... a LOT of people are watching for this one. Make no mistake about it there are employees at BW who are just as concerned about this next release being a success as we are. BW really needs this to work !

IMO ... it looks like from where we are right now several issues are being addressed. I'm hoping that we hear some good solid announcements regarding PvP zones OR possibly new ideas in PvP that will help heal that part of the game. It is needed ... bad !

And yes I agree ... the article is not the best in the whole world either. Not something I would have published. IMO it sounded more like someone letting off a little steam at players than anything else ! And IMO ... it's really not that well researched or written.

I’m feeling a bit disillusioned about 6.0

They said we’d be able to test all these class changes on the PTS, starting with the Sorc. But each week they tell us a new classes changes and then dont put them on the PTS. So any feed back we give them is totally hypothetical and guess work.

My fear is they are going to run the clock down and finally release stuff to test when it’s too late for them to change anything.

Which goes against everything they said they were going to do about listening and having two way communication.

Since the announcement, there hasn’t really been any back and forth communications. They just dump the info and move on.

It took Musco nearly 5 weeks to reply to us about the Guild bank bug. Which doesn’t bode well for any problems before and especially after 6.0 launches.

I’m feeling a bit disillusioned about 6.0

They said we’d be able to test all these class changes on the PTS, starting with the Sorc. But each week they tell us a new classes changes and then dont put them on the PTS. So any feed back we give them is totally hypothetical and guess work.

My fear is they are going to run the clock down and finally release stuff to test when it’s too late for them to change anything.

Which goes against everything they said they were going to do about listening and having two way communication.

Since the announcement, there hasn’t really been any back and forth communications. They just dump the info and move on.

It took Musco nearly 5 weeks to reply to us about the Guild bank bug. Which doesn’t bode well for any problems before and especially after 6.0 launches.

IMO ... If they need to back the release of 6.0 to Dec 1... then they should. Just make sure they squash some bugs along the way !

Let's face it: Sept is not that far away. And I'm certain that BW team is acutely aware of it !

IMO ... If they need to back the release of 6.0 to Dec 1... then they should. Just make sure they squash some bugs along the way !

 

Let's face it: Sept is not that far away. And I'm certain that BW team is acutely aware of it !

December is too late in the year. Past experience shows when they release the expansion in December, they don’t fix anything before they go on holidays and we end up with 8 weeks worth of game breaking bugs or problems.

I agree, September is probably too early to release at this stage because they’ve still not released the PTS combat testing. They could push back the final launch to the end of October and still have 8 weeks to fix problems before their Xmas holiday break.

December is too late in the year. Past experience shows when they release the expansion in December, they don’t fix anything before they go on holidays and we end up with 8 weeks worth of game breaking bugs or problems.

 

I agree, September is probably too early to release at this stage because they’ve still not released the PTS combat testing. They could push back the final launch to the end of October and still have 8 weeks to fix problems before their Xmas holiday break.

[/scratches head]

hmmmm

I see your point. And it's one that is well noted.

Agreed ! Makes good sense !

This part reminds me of the people who are left who praise KotFE, even though it resulted in one of the largest exoduses from the game eventually since people were pissed that after having lost their class story now lost their companions AND any connection to their original story. They remind me of Nero fiddling as rome was burning.

Your arguments have about as much basis as your example about Nero playing the fiddle...

Who are you to make grandiose judgements about the views of the wider player base? Please speak for yourself and no one else. (I for one enjoyed KOTFE/KOTET. Not perfect for sure, but still enjoyable. Certainly wasn't "pissed")

FUN FACT: the fiddle was not invented until about 1000 years after Nero.

I’m feeling a bit disillusioned about 6.0

They said we’d be able to test all these class changes on the PTS, starting with the Sorc. But each week they tell us a new classes changes and then dont put them on the PTS. So any feed back we give them is totally hypothetical and guess work.

My fear is they are going to run the clock down and finally release stuff to test when it’s too late for them to change anything.

Which goes against everything they said they were going to do about listening and having two way communication.

Since the announcement, there hasn’t really been any back and forth communications. They just dump the info and move on.

It took Musco nearly 5 weeks to reply to us about the Guild bank bug. Which doesn’t bode well for any problems before and especially after 6.0 launches.

Odds are we are once again going to be given a mess to deal with and more people will hit the breaking point and leave. I don't like those odds. I don't want it to be the case. But if we look at how the studio has performed over the life of this game, that's what is most likely. What form that mess takes is anyone's guess. I mean, who would have guessed a conquest change would result in ability lag for a week straight.

If Onslaught is released without any major hitches (design or technical) I will gladly take the egg on my face for being wrong. I see no reason to believe it will happen that way though.

Your arguments have about as much basis as your example about Nero playing the fiddle...

 

Who are you to make grandiose judgements about the views of the wider player base? Please speak for yourself and no one else. (I for one enjoyed KOTFE/KOTET. Not perfect for sure, but still enjoyable. Certainly wasn't "pissed")

 

 

FUN FACT: the fiddle was not invented until about 1000 years after Nero.

Sad Fact : many, many players left during that period because they didn’t like the direction the game took.

It doesn’t matter if you or I liked it. There were more people who disliked it and left because of it. Sure some people came to the game because it went more solo. But then left again once they played through the story content and didn’t hang around for the other MMO parts of the game because they didn’t want to play an MMO, they wanted to play a solo RPG game like KOTOR.

Those expansion hurt the overall stable player base that hangs around between expansions or new content. When 5.0 was launched, they drove off a lot of the most stable player base in the game, the pvpers (Bioware themselves have acknowledged in the past the pvp community was the most stable).

Those people they drove away and alienated during the expansions were mainly the MMO centric players and some of their longest and most loyal subscribers. Why do you think we have such a significantly reduced population now? Yes, there is natural player attrition, but not so drastic.

Bioware banked on getting enough RPG solo people to come play and expected the MMO guys would just hang around anyway because we always had. Problem is, when they turn an MMO into a solo “only” experience in the story, the MMO players leave. Especially when the other MMO parts of the game are ignored and become stale while they focus 3 years on Solo RPG players. Then the Solo RPG players start to leave when they run out of content because Bioware can’t release it fast enough for them.

Bioware went from having a fairly stable subscriber base to seesawing backwards and forward. I think they realised this after 5.0 was released and a bunch of the stable pvp player base just up and left and have never returned. (Id say half considering whole pvp guilds disappeared, including my own),

That is part of the reason Keith started to spread out the content between story, pvp and Operations/Flashpoints. They knew they would keep losing more of their loyal player base if they didn’t stabilise the game to be more balanced around all game play.

So, it doesn’t matter wether we liked those expansions or not, even Bioware have acknowledged they went to far with ignoring the MMO feel of the game.

That’s what he’s trying to point out, that the direction the game took at the time was detrimental to it,

First words said on the article: "Game developers, it's time to stop listening to the fans" and then it starts off "Don't get mad..."

It's already dead before it even got published, just on those few words alone.

Game developers rely on their customers every bit the customers rely on the game developers to bring out something good. if game developers start ignoring their customer base, you'll end up with another delta rising from Star Trek Online and that stupid meme about the playings loving DR because one of the management people in Cryptic was so out of touch during one interview that every other customer started teasing Cryptic relentlessly because the players loved DR so much.. apparently. It went from teasing to abusive pretty quickly.

Developers who don't act towards what the players want about half the time expect to be burned for it, if there are changes made that don't help anyone it is always going to end in a disaster. SWTOR for example; with 5.0 launched it came with GC, and GC was a disaster by itself without any help from anyone, it was like a heavy weighted object that was automatically clipped to the F2p customer base which dragged most of them to their deaths in a figurative sense. Someone went out of their way within BW to commit virtual suicide and that is without any discussion from the customer base before hand.

Developers lose their way altogether if they don't have a counter-acting force to keep them in balance from thinking of the worst possible ideas they can come up with and say it is something wonderful, only to realise before launch there is a backlash and privately realise it was a mistake and now it is par for the course.

I'm not going to put the developers themselves in that, they do what the management says they should do, and ultimately this mess could and should of been avoidied if there was greater, constant feedback and discussions between developer and customer.

consequently absent developers from their own forums often lead to toxicity building up over time and that leads to self-destruction within the community. it has happened in other game forums in the past and it can and will happen again. This is opposite to customers liking to interact with developers, share thoughts and ideas, to feel like they're a contributing factor and it makes everyone happy, more so when developers get involved and are happy to spare some time to interact.

There is nothing wrong with developers listening to the fans, but there is just something wrong when there is no communication at all; be it by design or accident, it has the same consequence.

consequently absent developers from their own forums often lead to toxicity building up over time and that leads to self-destruction within the community. it has happened in other game forums in the past and it can and will happen again. This is opposite to customers liking to interact with developers, share thoughts and ideas, to feel like they're a contributing factor and it makes everyone happy, more so when developers get involved and are happy to spare some time to interact.

I have to say, I don't expect the developers themselves to go above and beyond their jobs to talk to players - I think that's always something that should be left up to them - but the idea that a studio with hundreds of people involved in development can't afford the budget to have a single person whose primary role is to communicate back and forth with the players boggles my mind.

In theory, intuitively, you'd think that's Eric's role, but unless he's just showing up at work and watching Netflix all day, I'm pretty sure that's not what most of his job is. Presumably he has lots of other duties (I guess stuff like writing tweets, organizing events, writing blog posts maybe, attending meetings and taking notes), which is why he so rarely communicates directly with the players.

So then you think, well why can't they have someone under him whose actual job description is just to communicate? Who knows, probably not considered to be a justifiable expense. Even though that kind of presence - if done well, by the right kind of person - could work wonders in terms of how people feel about progress on the game and concerns being heard.

I have to say, I don't expect the developers themselves to go above and beyond their jobs to talk to players - I think that's always something that should be left up to them - but the idea that a studio with hundreds of people involved in development can't afford the budget to have a single person whose primary role is to communicate back and forth with the players boggles my mind.

 

In theory, intuitively, you'd think that's Eric's role, but unless he's just showing up at work and watching Netflix all day, I'm pretty sure that's not what most of his job is. Presumably he has lots of other duties (I guess stuff like writing tweets, organizing events, writing blog posts maybe, attending meetings and taking notes), which is why he so rarely communicates directly with the players.

 

So then you think, well why can't they have someone under him whose actual job description is just to communicate? Who knows, probably not considered to be a justifiable expense. Even though that kind of presence - if done well, by the right kind of person - could work wonders in terms of how people feel about progress on the game and concerns being heard.

Eric has been with us for a long time, i have no complaints about his performance over the years, i just have a problem that a few years back there was non-existent communication and before that BW make an assurance there was going to be communication but it dried out.

At one point this forum almost self-destructed from that lack of communication, if i hadn't of stepped in over that stupid Kotaku article a few years ago that Zion posted and showed everyone what they are doing, this place would of been a boneyard today. We can't have another situation like that develop again.

Eric has been with us for a long time, i have no complaints about his performance over the years, i just have a problem that a few years back there was non-existent communication and before that BW make an assurance there was going to be communication but it dried out.

 

At one point this forum almost self-destructed from that lack of communication, if i hadn't of stepped in over that stupid Kotaku article a few years ago that Zion posted and showed everyone what they are doing, this place would of been a boneyard today. We can't have another situation like that develop again.

I don't have issues with Eric specifically, but I think he's stretched too thin and that's been clear for a very long time. Even with Tait helping out, it always felt like they were stretched too thin when I was around.

First words said on the article: "Game developers, it's time to stop listening to the fans" and then it starts off "Don't get mad..."

 

It's already dead before it even got published, just on those few words alone.

 

Game developers rely on their customers every bit the customers rely on the game developers to bring out something good. if game developers start ignoring their customer base, you'll end up with another delta rising from Star Trek Online and that stupid meme about the playings loving DR because one of the management people in Cryptic was so out of touch during one interview that every other customer started teasing Cryptic relentlessly because the players loved DR so much.. apparently. It went from teasing to abusive pretty quickly.

You present the very reason most devs don't spend a lot of time on their forums, right there. We don't have to leave the BW community to find devs receiving death threats because some forumite didn't like what they posted. It's a classic catch 22, if they don't communicate, it's bad, if they do communicate, and say something the community, or parts of it, don't like, it's bad. You absolutely cannot build a game based on player feedback, because that feedback is going to be diametrically opposed a lot of the time. "Focus more on PvP" "Focus more on Story" "Focus more on Operations". All of these have different baseline requirements, and all of these are easily searchable right here on these very forums, so which players are they supposed to listen to?

I've seen "we need a droid class" listed as a reason people are quitting, on this forum. I've seen "we need to see our ships traveling to places in a game where the most common communication in your average FP pug is "spacebar". So there's some really crap ideas coming out of the community, and some run counter to the way the game is actually played, so they should be listening to that when they build stuff for us to do? Hell no.

You present the very reason most devs don't spend a lot of time on their forums, right there. We don't have to leave the BW community to find devs receiving death threats because some forumite didn't like what they posted. It's a classic catch 22, if they don't communicate, it's bad, if they do communicate, and say something the community, or parts of it, don't like, it's bad. You absolutely cannot build a game based on player feedback, because that feedback is going to be diametrically opposed a lot of the time. "Focus more on PvP" "Focus more on Story" "Focus more on Operations". All of these have different baseline requirements, and all of these are easily searchable right here on these very forums, so which players are they supposed to listen to?

 

I've seen "we need a droid class" listed as a reason people are quitting, on this forum. I've seen "we need to see our ships traveling to places in a game where the most common communication in your average FP pug is "spacebar". So there's some really crap ideas coming out of the community, and some run counter to the way the game is actually played, so they should be listening to that when they build stuff for us to do? Hell no.

Nothing saying the developers can't pick and choose some elements of some ideas, and elements of others to build something in the game for the community. recently Bioware have made efforts to communicate and get back to us with something, now we got the end of the eternal alliance and return to the old factions, old companions have returned and changes for 6.0 on PTS are going to be acknowledged as well.

When it comes to the occasional rotten apple, they can't be taken as the majority. one deranged person threatening developers is not to be tolerated, i even sent a pm to Eric years ago in support of the developer and Bioware over that whole threat a number of years ago. No one likes that type of person, no one wants that type of person. Everyone here from what i can tell are decent respectful people that enjoy having that kind of access they sorely missed a few years ago. i doubt every forum with a big game has people making any type of death threat because of a design choice.

Who are you to make grandiose judgements about the views of the wider player base? Please speak for yourself and no one else. (I for one enjoyed KOTFE/KOTET. Not perfect for sure, but still enjoyable. Certainly wasn't "pissed")

4.0 and 5.0 killed whatever magic the game's original path had and despite have a few years to fix that, has only regressed and absolutely none of the players I knew out of the hundreds have returned. Guilds collapsed, rebalancing content poorly killed any and all options for fun besides what BioWares wants you to experience, the stories killed narratives that were left in a strong place by end of vanilla or even SoR (and I have quite a few critiques of SoR's execution on it's own) and class balance has been abysmal for a team that wasn't pumping out anything substantial (let alone wanted) for a few years.

How we still argue the merits of the Eternal family storyline when the game is in the piss-poor state it currently is in bewilders and upsets me. The few redeeming qualities it had are absolutely beaten over the head by the number of problems and the sooner we leave it all behind, the better.