Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Players have no power or voice on anything !
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
Have you ever thought how little say the mmo players have on anything ?.......Official Game Forums are actually worthless if you think hard about it. mmorpg.com is the same.
**** We have no Rally point ****...............**** Each poster stands alone****
Here's why:
Lets say something bad is about to happen to a game. Developers announce an up coming change. This change is undesired by the larger population.
On the games forums the first player expresses his opinion. Then in every case that poster gets derailed by the next five posters for some odd reason. Now understand the larger population really doesn't like this change. That player seemingly stands alone ! A few hours later another poster expresses the same opinion, he to gets derailed by the next five posters.....This happens over and over until the change is made anyway, then the game looses its population because of it.........I'm sure everyone of us had seen this.
Black Desert Online - Is a good example at least here on mmorpg.com....It seems their are EXTREMELY STRONG FANS that welcome a change no matter how bad the magnitude of the change is......I for one, cant figure out where these people come from ?......In many cases, it's crystal clear what's about to happen is bad, yet poster after poster gets derailed, and seemingly stands alone !.....Then the population drops !
World of Warcraft - Is a good example. The game that took the industry by storm. First we had Vanilla, slowly the population raised to 13 million. World of Warcraft was a household name. Talked about in every school yard, talked about in the work place. Even non-gamers knew what it was just from voices around the house. Well, because of undesired changes the game is down to 6 million, even that's a lie !
I know what your thinking, I know what your about to say !......The game is getting old and this is natural !......Wrong !......The game has changed for the bad. People rage quit by the millions !......Yes, 7 million !
Vanguard - What a topic right ?......It's history is long, so I'll start in the middle. SOE took the game from Sigil. Added a new starter area, and patched it to be playable. People raged in a bad way about this game, yet it still had a large following regardless. SOE did the poorest job in history of advertising.
Some facts about the consistent low population. Trickling !........Players cycled in and out, thousands if not millions. Weekly 50 players in 50 players out. Never all at once, EVER !.......It's a fact, the largest complaint was low population. Yet every one cycled through.
Developers don't ever take opinions, NOT AT ALL, and the players have no say. mmorpg.com is nothing more than a web site.
..........................................Optional Example of standing alone..................................
A popular mmo is released, two weeks in the population drops 10%. Developers decide to reduce the difficulty 80% to bring in more players ( clear bad choice ).
- Player #1, expressed, no I'll quit !.......An individual statement
- Player #2, expressed, no I'll quit !.......An individual statement
- Player #3, expressed, no I'll quit !.......An individual statement
What developers don't know is ONE MILLION feel the say way, and will quit............Everyone stands alone !
Comments
How can you be so sure the majority of the player base's alignment?
Pro tip: people that bang their drums loudly around the internet are not always the majority either.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
Most of the time devs can not take our advice on how the game should be done because any advice that's detailed enough to be executed is usually also wrong and would be bad for the game.
It's always the same five posters. Where do they come from ?.........And I'm talking about a crystal clear change for the bad. I'm sure you can come up with your own crystal clear bad game breakers on your own !
None of this matters anyway. Everyone stands alone !......500 complaints about the same thing, yet everyone seemingly stands alone. Developers will do what ever anyway.....Zero regards for the population !
You have no way of knowing how many actually like a change that is coming or not. Population drops or increases after a change takes place is often a good indicator on how well received the change was. I think most gamers just see games as, well, games and not something that they can't survive without.
Should devs listen to what the vocal minority has to say? Eve-Online did that back in 2008 changed some things and they wonder why they have a hard time keeping new players and it's not really the complexity. Other games have listened to players and it didn't always turn out very well. Ask 100 gamers what changes should be made, you most likely will get close to 100 different answers. How do they know which changes to make?
Sometimes the vocal player is right, sometimes not. It's just a game so If you don't like something, leave and find another game you do. Same can be said of websites or most things in life.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
I have seen many a gamer praise games they know almost nothing about,how is that even possible?Or even if they THINK they do,what basis do they rely on, the marketing and advertising,yeah not so bright if you believe any of that.
I feel every gamer should at the very least want improvements and keep developers honest,instead i sort of see the opposite.
I have chimed in on it many times,the problem is >>>$$$.Too many various people have their hands in that cookie jar so we get far too many positive spins from several different angles.
I( doubt you need to be a rocket scientist nor even a game designer to realize MOST like 99% of developers are giving us a VERY cheap lazy effort.
in most cases you can see games are just a game ,to fulfill their business model,to make profits,not much looks like heart felt passionate game design.
Actually the problem is even worse than the picture i just painted,somewhere along the timeline,gamer's have started to fund "ideas"games that are not even remotely a game yet and to me that is just dumb.I see the same thing in Twitch all this money thrown around to "buy a fiend" or feel like the streamer actually likes you ....sigh,they want your money and couldn't care less about you,the same as developers.
If you realize what i am talking about then you realize that money is the ONLY way to buy some voice,either directly or indirectly.Everyone is using money to buy that voice,either through advertising or through Twitch or via You Tubers etc etc,yes even many a game now ONLY allows you a meaningless voice in a game forum IF you paid them money.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Additionally, I see a large group of players on these forums who make it clear they will spend no ongoing money inside a game ever. They want to cry about bugs or hackers, but they wan't no part in paying for fixing it or ongoing maintenance costs. We've become a society of takers, standing around running our mouth with our hand out expecting something.
However, I do not think that is really what you are saying. You seem to want everyone to agree with your point of view, and that seldom happens anywhere. Yes there are a lot of trolls out there, there are a lot of people that just like to argue but if you look at a lot of these conversations (citing this board) objectively you will see more people want to actually discuss than just argue. Yes insults get thrown around, but not by the majority of posters.
Just because someone disagree's with you does not mean they do not like you, it just means they do not agree with you on that particular topic.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
We need an International Gamer's Union, that can be the voice of the disenfranchised and downtrodden !
The players should own the means of entertainment, not the bosses !
Rabble, rabble !
What's invisible to the public, is all the money is made on the front load, very little or at least not as profitable to sustain.
Therefore we have 30 day games, who even cares if there mmos
That's what is invisible to the public !
Games have grown and with it the people who enjoy the game and the reasons for enjoying them vary. If people oppose a change they can express it and if the change goes ahead they leave if it makes them unhappy enough but nowadays with F2P games where we as players are not even paying a subscription your voice has become even less significant.
One must not forget that WoW grew a lot more after vanilla and the changes and expansions brought a lot of players to the game and the genre. Insisting that the reason WoW is losing players can be remedied by staying as vanilla has no basis since the game grew after vanilla.
The biggest contribution WoW made is bringing many players to the genre and that would never have happened if WoW had remained stagnant.
Looking at things in hindsight is not very helpful as you cannot change what has happened and crying about what has happened even less so. Complaining that others are derailing dissatisfied threads about changes seems to be like you want to shut dissent up so that only your point of view gets aired. If an argument is good enough it should be able to withstand attempts at derailing it.
All you say is true, again as always you state the oblivious.
Who ever develops a TRUE MMO will hit a Gold mine.
All we need is someone to have the nuts to do it
There is also the "voice" players have always had: not to buy. And there are many more ways to check out games these days to inform ones decision.
Players can also delay their purchase and - in particular - not to opt for a pre-purchase options. Especially months and months in advance what incentive does that give for a developers to release a polished game; if its a small studio and you want the game to release OK but something like WoW?
And interestingly enough EA have changed as a result of "winning" the golden poo award twice in a row. Yes I know some folks don't want to recognise that companies change but they can for better or for worse. So the public voice can make a difference.
MMORPG isn't a golden cow anymore and due to the high risk involved in making them publishers invest their money in making other types of games instead.
If it was up to publishers they would have loved to stick to P2P-model, it was players that wanted fremium models instead.
Metrics and charts don't show how " mad " players get....There is no " mad " meter in the equation.
It does show players only play for 30 days.
It's like this. Cars only last for 30 days, then they break.
Metrics will show. people only like cars for 30 days
Part of the problem is that different players have different opinions and say different things. You can't please everyone, as different players want different and mutually exclusive things.
But in a free market, a developer who figures out what a considerable swath of players wants but isn't getting and gives it to them can make a ton of money.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/Now a days you have a bunch of sadists who demand each game be the same so that they can bitch that it's the same thing over and over again.
They complain leveling is slow until the games got the speed down to a weeks gaming or so, then they quit once they hit max level because they think the games become boring then... But if leveling is the fun part one would assume people want more of it, not less of it.
And that is just one example.
Your statement describes just how the governments are thinking: "If you give people a choice, they will chose the wrong option"
But i see your point and i agree and also disagree at the same time.
Of course you can't cater to the complainers and whiners that only see their own point and not the bigger scope of things.
Taking WoW as an example, as there is just this discussion about the change of max.cam distance going on:
WoW did not fall from 13mio to 2-3mio because all of 10mio players were too "stupid" to give reasonable input or stupid for not liking what has changed about the game over the expansions. Like not every raidleader was stupid when he had to exclude a certain class from a raid because Blizzard messed it up with unneeded nerfs out of nowhere and refused to fix it.
If Blizzard had ever taken an advise from the playerbase instead of always pushing through their stance of "it is our game, we do what we want" the game would definately not be in such a pitiful state.
What kind of weird logic is "We know that you won't like it, but we think it will be the most fun for you guys" even supposed to be?
In about every other multimillion dollar service-branch of industry any suit coming up with such insanity would be grabbed by his tie and thrown out of the window.
At times hundreds of forumpages against certain changes did not give Blizzard the smallest idea of an alternative.
Yes, the excuse has always been "but Blizzard has the numbers..." -so what? At times these elusive "numbers" had them change an ability forever for 98% of the playerbase because 0.5% of the players of 2% of the total raiding population used it on a single boss that became obsolete weeks after.
Blizzard always did what they love to do, which has basicly always been taking away from the players/customers. 99% it happened with no alternative and with no compensation. Many times it were total bullshit decisions (remember the swirly ball incident?). If in doubt, remove it and post a shady and irrational explanation on the forums.
They have a huge history of arrogantly hammering through the most unpoplar and unreasonable changes against all the player's advice, just to flex muscles. That is a huge stupidity on their part and the numbers show that.
It's not that every player input is stupid, more often than that many studios are absolute control freaks that can't get over their egos, while they cling to numbers in a line of code and don't see the product anymore.
Consumers have the last say in any product. Speak with your wallet that's the best way to show displeasure because if you keep shoving your money down their throats then I assure you, most of them won't care what sort of shit they spew out and nothing will change.
For me when it comes to a new release for a MMO, first thing I check is if F2P or P2P, if F2P it's on my black list for life.
Now speaking of WoW that dropped from 13mil to 6mil, the game has been running for how long now? Do you know how F2P devs WISHES so hard to have 5% of WoW subs playing their ****ty games? I mean there comes a time man where you played enough of one game and need to move on in life, like me with EVE-Online after 8 years, not because the game sucked or anything, but because I wanted to move on to something else in life. And that's the problem with people, a MMORPG is for your enjoyment, you play to have fun and like pretty much everything in life, if you want some awesome fun you'll have to pay, but if you're cheap and don't know the meaning of the word FUN, then you'll go F2P and keep on switching bandwagons month after month saying the MMORPG world sucks, but in the mean time you got WoW with 6mil? FF14 with 2mil? LoL with a dozen million, if not more?
As far as BDO goes, why would the devs care about the community? The game will be P2W F2P, they'll get enough idiots to waste their cash on the game and BDO devs will be happy with that. And I'm pretty sure OP you're the type of player that complains but will still give the game a shot, so in the end you're no better, lol. People act really tough online by posting on game forums saying they'll quit, but little do they know in life, will still stick around with the game and play the hell out of it.
So yeah, players got the power, but are too stupid to use it properly, what more is there to say? People want change, but keeps switching band wagons knowing themselves that the game is another P2W clone of the previous title, so what was the saying again... "you can't fix stupid"? Well there's the perfect example.
Why should you? what right do you have, when you subscribe to Cable TV do you have direct control over what they charge or the programming? How about your cell phone? Your a consumer not a share holder or board member with voting rights, the universe does nor orbit around your opinion or what you want. If a manufacture makes something you want or like, then buy it, you don't have the right and should not have the right to change what they make. If they have made the right decisions as a company they will survive if they haven't they will fail and someone that has made the right decision will succeed. That's how business works, consumers do not have an active voice in how people run their businesses. It's impractical, self centered and simply minded to think they should.
The only power you have is to spend or not to spend. And you will be surprised how powerful that ability actually is.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
We may not have much to say in when and what can be delivered to us, especially since we depend on a private sector, but if for instance some of us make our statement one day in society that delivering great MMO's is best interest for the government and more importantly for national security, we can see complete change in MMO's.
I already know that games are the reason many can afford to have entertainment, something to do for far cheaper and in a way this doesn't benefit the government since we pay less taxes the less we spend and need to work. Truth is though if gaming today didn't exist, specifically games interesting enough to keep the population focused on conflicts that happen in games, those conflicts would translate to real life and you would find yourself forced to PvP and defend/protect what you have from someone taking it from you.
It is essential gaming and specifically MMO's to continue in development and be good enough to keep people entertained, and I'm convinced world war III is delayed thanks to humans being distracted with affordable, cheap entertainment. Once governments through the world recognize this reality they will be directly invested in spending tons of $ in game development over military because as you have all seen if somebody wants to bring chaos in the society they cannot do anything to stop it, only to clean the mess afterwards.