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Player feedback - a suggestion
adinosii
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,294 Arc User
I am not saying that decisions on game development should be player-driven, but it is my firm opinion that properly making use of community feedback would be a good thing. However, to be fully effective, the feedback has to be provided early enough for it to matter.
What I mean is that back in January a group of players was invited into a closed alpha playtest that ran through February. This had been done earlier (mod 9, at least), and despite some issues (like NDA violations), I consider this a good thing - there were a number of issues that were found, most (but not all) of which which have been fixed, and there were various changes made, based on player feedback.
However....all the "big" decisions had already been made - dumbing down character creation, moving away from D&D primary/secondary stats, the stat/counterstat system, enchant changes, companion changes, scaling and so on. Some of those changes were well-received, but Cryptic has had to backpedal on others - and in some cases the alpha testers (and later, Preview testers) had warned about those changes. It would have been better to avoid various issues in the first place.
My position is that some player feedback should be incorporated even earlier, during the design phase, so my suggestion to @nitocris83 and the developers is to look at what selected other companies have been doing. My favourite example is CCP, the makers of Eve Online.
While they have made a few mistakes - they got this right. See https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/ for a description of how their player council works.
I think something similar would work nicely for NWO (OK, maybe not regularly flying the representatives over, but basic principle).
What I mean is that back in January a group of players was invited into a closed alpha playtest that ran through February. This had been done earlier (mod 9, at least), and despite some issues (like NDA violations), I consider this a good thing - there were a number of issues that were found, most (but not all) of which which have been fixed, and there were various changes made, based on player feedback.
However....all the "big" decisions had already been made - dumbing down character creation, moving away from D&D primary/secondary stats, the stat/counterstat system, enchant changes, companion changes, scaling and so on. Some of those changes were well-received, but Cryptic has had to backpedal on others - and in some cases the alpha testers (and later, Preview testers) had warned about those changes. It would have been better to avoid various issues in the first place.
My position is that some player feedback should be incorporated even earlier, during the design phase, so my suggestion to @nitocris83 and the developers is to look at what selected other companies have been doing. My favourite example is CCP, the makers of Eve Online.
While they have made a few mistakes - they got this right. See https://community.eveonline.com/community/csm/ for a description of how their player council works.
I think something similar would work nicely for NWO (OK, maybe not regularly flying the representatives over, but basic principle).
Hoping for improvements...
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it was too much at once for a myriad of reasons.
even including the player base in decision possibilities with polls and things might help a lot. the player base and the company are synergistic. we can't have the game without you and you can't keep making the game if the game isn't giving the players what they want. at this point its looking like you've really really lost sight of what the players want.
you need to have us involved to some degree it seems because the decisions aren't reflecting on what we want to buy. that's why you get all the comments in the stream.. you don't even play.. because it feels like you really don't understand what is motivating an actual player to play and stay.
Basically my honest answer to @adinosii , Eve online is there own creation. They have no one to answer to other than the players. The game is not based on a movie or comic book or another game. But that should not stop them when it comes down to major issues reported by the alpha testers. I was an alpha tester back at the start of Neverwinter, proud to be invited, but regretfully I was ignored as well. I would never volunteer my time to be an alpha tester again for Cryptic. I only preview and attempt to warn the users here, what is floating up the pipe next. I know the developers are always right and the testers are always wrong.
Cryptic has made improvements since module 6, Elemental Evil. But the improvements are not enough to hold most players interest long in this game. Now they plan to creep along without the Foundry, the most unique and under developed part of their game. This is their game, as it belongs to Cryptic Studios and not the players. The idea that they would even consider the notion of a player council is beneath them.
for me personally it's the complexity of the economy and balancing stats and character build and figuring out how to maximize dps etc that keep me interested.
"Will this be fun?"
"Will this add replay value?"
"Will this add a degree of risk that provides a worthwhile reward?"
"Is this going to retcon, undermine, cheapen or steal previously earned player gains?"
(As I look at the mind-blowing (pun intended) Baldur's Gate 3, I can't help but think that Neverwinter truly needs to do something. Either dial back the changes that have been made with mod 16 and return to its D&D roots, add new classes or add more paragon paths to make up for the removal of the skill trees. Regardless, the Mind-Flayers are coming!)
Things like..."We are thinking of ...
- ... redesigning the profession system so you can ...
- ... changing the strongholds to allow players to ...
- ... encouraging players to run lower-level content by ...
- ... revamping the whole PvP system ...
- ... adding open-world raids, where ...
- ... changing dungeon rewards, so that ...
- ... adding items with the following bonuses ...
Sure, you might get feedback like "sure, that looks great! I look forward to it", but that is not very useful. What would actually be more useful at that stage would be feedback like "The idea is fine, but there will be a problem with...", "Have you considered how that will impact ..." or even "I do not think you have thought this through, as this would cause a big problem with,,,,"Based on past experience, I would say the development needs more feedback at the stage where there is still room to change design decisions.
* Scaling - the players *want* to be all-powerful in content they are done with(and also the rewards there then usually are useless)
* Dumbing down feats and boons - *some* complexity is desirable and the game is too simple now
If these major changes were bounced on the playerbase before they were implemented things could have been different.
It is common practice in most industries to run focus groups to evaluate major product changes before they are executed. The technique is known, Cryptic is not doing themselves a favor by not using it.
Just becouse you and few others were invited to closed beta tests of MOD 16 does not mean that you may have any serious impact on how the game is going to be desined.
All you were was just a initial wave of free testers - and thats it.
They invited you to TEST content not to design it - you are not even close to it.
How could you be so naive to even think about having greater influence on game development?
Any serious developer cant afford to make decisions besed on opinion of very, very tiny minority of player base witch you in fact were there. Heck a forum users are just a tiny bit of player base - and your tiny beta testers grup is practicly irrelevant.
You did your job, you got your payment in a advanced knowledge (AH influence) and thats it.
Now none of the changes MOD 16 bringed was minor in both resources and coding. That alone mean that working on it was underway long before any1 of player base could test it - as you said - decisions were already made, and keep in mind - show must go on - so without any serious bug - showstopper kind - NONE of your opinions had a chance to make a serious change – tweaks/bug hunt/corrects – yes of course – but nothing above that.
I bet there is a lot of things you actually make better ingame due to your testing, but I am sure none of those were really crucial.
Now you proposed to create a kinda of player council similar to EVE solution.
Well its not possible here – first of all this game is not a sandbox like EVE and devs are tied to WotC brand, and almost every detail have to be agreed with them before release. Eve is not connected to any other brand and you can add to it literally whatever you like.
With that any chance to incorporate „players ideas” is pretty much impossible.
Keep in mind we – players – also do not know what resources Cryptic have at its disposal – and we do not really know what real limits to our wishes are – and its highly unlikely they gona share this knowledge with us.
But that above is not really important
Well I guess you may not be aware how that CSM really works. At the start it was awesome solution ( I am EVEcitizen since 2007) but in time it ended up ...bad (not going into details but belive me it only looks good on paper while long term it bringed a mess).
To make long story short – form 40k+ (few yers ago) players daily it went down to 20k+ players daily (present).
And a cherry on top – are you aware that CCP recently fired entire community menagement team?
So... even if devs decide its a good idea – who is going to be a member of such a council? How its gona be created?
Election among players? LOL how we gona choose candidates and how to vote for them if any1 can easly create hundreds of accounts.
Or mayby a forum elections – LOL – there is already just a few of us here – and I doubt it would be a good idea to leave any in game decision to old timers/forum trolls/no lifes like you or me
Or maybe - guild leaders - LOL you gona see more guilds created then for regular guild mark exploit
etc, etc
And last but not least – there is such a council already.
Its this forum – we discuss here every matter we want.
Any1 interested with a game or simply wanting to share his visions/ideas is free to join and make a threat/post.
Devs sometimes even listen.
And in fact devs do have many tools they can use to contact us or gather our opinions.
That would be more than enaugh to send a pool to active forum users and incorporate ideas out of such feedback. - @nitocris83
Cant see any different really meaningfull option to impact game development except
Here in this game - all kind of beta testing/preview is only to save for quality team resources.
You want to play your game - go find yourself a bugs preventing you form having fun
And on top of that - we are a group of customers who are - I know how it sounds - used to bugs/issues/ not working system etc. And devs know that. Any1 here remember any MOD released without serious bugs? I dont.
We literally created such environment for a devs here - so yeah we need to blame ourselfs for current state as well....
As an example of how this could have worked, if something like this had existed last year, Cryptic might have said "We are thinking of implementing automatic downscaling, both item- and level-based, which will work like this ....", and if they had gotten feedback like "players are going to absolutely hate this because..." then maybe some of the resent unpleasantness could have been avoided and the whole mess of making and then reverting a good chunk of the scaling system could have been avoided.
The basic problem is that the Cryptic designers and developers do not play the game like their typical (paying) customers and past experience has shown a a definite lack of understanding of what really motivates players. The constant fiascos (like "scaling is in a good place" and "it's an easter egg..") do not help either, but the thing is that this mess could have been avoided....problem is just that by the time they got any player input at all, it was too late.
Polls are a powerfull tool to take decisions that will make most players happy and avoid bad design choices without giving players information. You can make polls of everything, asking for concrete answers and receiving a lot of feedback.
Even if you are making a very unpopular change like scaling, you can ask for example:
"We decided to scale people in low level dungeons, that will go ahead. What do you preffer, better rewards or lower difficulty"
Is a dump example but they could get imput of what things are more important for players (pvp, pve, solo play, etc.) or what things they like more (hard dungeons, events, etc.)
I wouldnt mind to give 30 mins of my time every module answering questions even if things arent going the way I like. I think they could avoid future bad decisions or rework them in a way players can accept them.
Caturday Survivor
Elemental Evil Survivor
Undermontain Survivor
Mod20 Combat rework Survivor
Mod22 Refinement rework Survivor
It doesn't matter if you are experienced or not. It doesn't matter what you claim about me or any1 else here.
What matter is that idea about super duper gamers council is just wrong - plain and simple.
There is just too many reasons it wont work here, starting from not so minor as you claim legality issues ending on simple inside council players quarrels. I will spare you and the others wall of text here to explain it.
I understend that you feel used and disapointed as beta tester for MOD 16. But I guess its your own fault.
You expected more then devs could give you. You were asked just for technical teting and some opinions but wihout a promis its gona be taken into consideration.
And if you are as experienced as you claim - you should know better how it works up front. Thats why I typed I am suprised with your post.
I am not saying that idea of discussions before changes is wrong - far from it. But it simply wont work.
Simplest example - few changes - coal gate, bondig nerfs had mainly economical reason. While those changes impacted players severly stoping or rewersing them was out of the question cos of economical reasons.
Even better - Last change in ZEN to AD ratio - ask players before puting it live - ow boy that would shake a market more then beta testers before lunch of MOD 16
Most of crucial changes are for economical reasons here, game code/engine changes included.
Such changes never gona be putted under any discussion with player base for obvious reasons.
Story changes are strictly limited to orders from WotC.
For any other not crucial changes forum discussion is more then enaugh.
Devs admited that they want to make running a game simpler (cheaper) for them, while refreshing a game to bring more new players.
And since you didnt reffered to my CSM opinion I assume you have nothing to do with EVE. I even dare to say I am sure of it, cos if you were you would never try to create anything like that here. It neither the place nor a time to discuss it here. Google it and you will find out, as I said looks good on paper (and now it wasnt like that from a start, thats why idea seems interesting).
Deves and comunity menagement are doing much better lately here on forum.
I know its far from perfect, but I can see a progress here, so instead of wasting a steam on not too resonable efforts we schould keep our efforts to making forum contacts even better, and more effective.