Has design by focus groups and vocal minority ever worked out?
I've seen Call of Duty regress from its peak to what it is now, all on the spine of "we're listening to the fans, we love to get your feedback!"
half of the feedback on this board is "stop having a job, give it to (insert dev reddit likes here)"given how clueless people can be on this board (especially when it comes to game development), yeah I'd not listen to them
I kind of understand. It's like in WoW when people were asking for player housing, we got fucking WoD.
BioWare's next game, Anthem, looked incredible, at the expense of everything else. It appeared to be a direct reaction to that negative feedback – those viral gifs of goofy character expressions.
Also there's a big difference between "we had to sacrifice visual fidelity for the scope of the game" and "garbage animations". One doesn't have all that much to do with the other."Back in the day, it was a given that RPGs didn't look as nice as other games because of the scope."
I wonder when this was exactly. ME1 had great facial animation and it was released in 2007. Non-cinematic RPGs are still a thing today and receive great love.
Even terrible feedback can often have use if devs read it right.Not all feedback is the same. Some feedback are actually pretty terrible but using failed games that elicited bad fan reaction to argue against listening to fan feedback is backwards
Can you imagine if Capcom didn't listen to fans and instead of 7 and REmake 2, they continued to make over the top action RE games? ewwwww.
The game has dungeons Jesus Christ, I hate this narrative.
BioWare has a lot to answer for, basically. Mass Effect 3 feels like ground zero for toxic fan entitlement. I'm sure the developer was just trying to do the right thing, but it changed the ending of its game due to negative feedback, bending its creative vision to pander to the baying masses.
I think everyone who says that though paints that statement with a big asterix though.
MGS5 is a great game, it is a TERRIBLE Metal Gear.
Yeah the amplified toxicity is awful and it warps realityAlthough using EA's output to prop up the author's point is erroneous when you consider EA's behavior and relationship with consumers historically, I mainly agree with the thesis that gaming fanbases have a tendency to amplify toxicity and vitriol to ludicrous levels. Look at how every new Crowbcat video gets revered, nitpicking every small quote or glitch from a game to support a collective takedown that will often target developers themselves (No Man's Sky, Lawbreakers, Bethesda games.) There is merit in pointing out false advertising or blatant lying, but I've always noticed an excessive giddiness when people online lambast these games, as if they were deliberately made to be shitty and the team working on them wanted to trick the people buying them.
I'm guessing the morrowind era. I thought baldur's gate looked great 20 years ago."Back in the day, it was a given that RPGs didn't look as nice as other games because of the scope."
I wonder when this was exactly. ME1 had great facial animation and it was released in 2007. Non-cinematic RPGs are still a thing today and receive great love.
Classic Zelda dungeon design is the antithesis of everything great about BotW.
I was one of the first people to laugh at Microsoft's vision of the original Xbox One. Digital only? Online only? The cloud? What on earth where they talking about? Yet now, in 2019, almost all my games are digital. I'm always connected to the internet. Sure, the Kinect was a bust, but the rest was genuinely forward-thinking.
It definitely wasn't during the PS1 and 2 because I remember everyone being blown away by pretty much all of the Final Fantasy games, even if they didn't age well."Back in the day, it was a given that RPGs didn't look as nice as other games because of the scope."
I wonder when this was exactly. ME1 had great facial animation and it was released in 2007. Non-cinematic RPGs are still a thing today and receive great love.
Yeah, these are great points. The hype from Casey up to the release specifically argued against the very type of ending the game ended up having, and while the Citadel DLC was obviously 'fan service', it received lauded reviews from fans and gaming press alike. It's pretty well established now that one, if not the most significant reason for ME3's botched ending were the writers locking themselves in a room and ignoring any feedback from the rest of the team - it was an insular culture within a portion of the development team that resulted in the worst part of ME3, while listening to fans produced the best.ME3 people got mad because a month before the game came out one of the devs claimed that it wouldn't just be a 3 choice ending and your choices would matter. At no point did Bioware or EA correct this. Which also resulted in a better ending and the (IMO) best DLC in the game.
I don't think the creator is always right either specifically, but I do think because they're trained professionals and have a more unified creative vision, it is much better than design by committee almost every time. This said, fans will know how they feel, what they had issue with, and can report their feelings legitimately. Their feelings are important, and are the player experience. Part of being a game designer is thinking about the user end experience, so getting feedback from a collection of players does allow you to identify and consider further certain aspects of the game which can be invaluable. This said, if you asked each person a "fix" for the problems, or things they'd change, you're more likely to get a large number of uneducated guesses or people inserting their own personal preference.
No, not at all. Every Metal Gear game was pretty different from the game that preceded it; always trying to innovate. There is no magic formula that makes a Metal Gear game "Metal Gear".
MGS4 was a game that Kojima clearly didn't want to make, and that fact shows itself at almost every opportunity in the story. MGSV, while lighter on story segments, oozes love and care everywhere else.
Fans aren't the people that are doing focus groups majority of the time. I would blame Resistance 2's issues on chasing trends rather than making the type of game Insomniac and their fans would have wanted.They can be though. Focus testing turned Resistance 2 into a generic game whereas the first was so unique. Then they forgot the fans in 3 and made the best game in the series.
See also; Fuse (also Insomniac, unfortunately).Fans aren't the people that are doing focus groups majority of the time. I would blame Resistance 2's issues on chasing trends rather than making the type of game Insomniac and their fans would have wanted.
But I don't want the devs to listen to any fanbase. I want them to listen to me.Maybe not for reasons listed but I agree.
Fuck a fanbase.
Fickle and super short sighted.
Your statement is fickle and short sighted.Maybe not for reasons listed but I agree.
Fuck a fanbase.
Fickle and super short sighted.
I've always agreed. MGS4 is the worst game in series. Listening to fans and then they go ruin Raiden who was perfect in MGS2.
This statement confuses me everytime I see it.