Meanwhile back at Turbine HQ...

[HaemishM]

Cal, it's real simple. You listen to the people who can put together cogent posts and you ignore the real fucking idiots.

Generally speaking, you'll know the difference real quick.

[Nyght]

One thing I do have to mention though is the concept of listening to players. I read a lot of posts from people (on these very forums sometimes) who say developers listen too much to players. At the same time, I see people (some of them the very same people who have made the previous comment in the past) talking to Raph on the SWG thread about how they believe the SWG players aren't being listened to enough. From my perspective, you can't have it both ways.

I have my own thoughts on the topic, having worked at places where feedback was used in a good way and in some places where it wasn't. So, not to get off topic, but who do you guys think we *should* listen to.  And "you should listen to me" isn't an answer. :)

I think you are confusing posters Cal. I think you should listen to reasonable game play experiences and reasonable criticisms. I have no illusions in general, that ain't me. Perhaps you guys need an invisible poster ranking system to help sort the clutter.

And yeah.. what Ham said.

Edited to add: SWG's problems were 90% impliementation and management. What happened seems unlikely to repeat and has little relevance to anything else.

Okay. Maybe the industry is doomed to repeat the same mistakes.. multiple times.. lets hope not.

[Calandryll]

Cal, it's real simple. You listen to the people who can put together cogent posts and you ignore the real fucking idiots.

Generally speaking, you'll know the difference real quick.

Honestly - I wish it were that simple. That would make my job SO much easier. :)

A few things I have learned though:

• polls are bad
• petitions are bad
• surveys are dangerous and are often bad (this is mostly because of poor survey design)
• the majority doesn't always rule
• the forums represent more people than one might realize - although it is self-selected
• sometimes its not as much about feedback as it is helping people understand

The last point is actually the one that is most often overlooked and it's a LOT of the reason updates to a game can go horribly wrong. Even if you know your community will resist a change, if you as the developer truly believe it is what is best for the game, then you have an obligation to explain the change to the community as early as possible and try to at the very least, help them understand the change even if they don't immediately embrace it. Waiting until the last minute to explain something only delays "teh hate" and in most cases makes it worse.

[HaemishM]

The community fears change.

Also, change the word "community" to "mob" and you have a better understanding of the mentality you have to deal with on official forums. But you all know my thoughts on official forums. 

If the forums represent more than 2% of the actual player base, I'd be surprised. They are the same kind of minority as the raiders.

[Nyght]

sometimes its not as much about feedback as it is helping people understand

The last point is actually the one that is most often overlooked and it's a LOT of the reason updates to a game can go horribly wrong. Even if you know your community will resist a change, if you as the developer truly believe it is what is best for the game, then you have an obligation to explain the change to the community as early as possible and try to at the very least, help them understand the change even if they don't immediately embrace it. Waiting until the last minute to explain something only delays "hte hate" and in most cases makes it worse.

Welp. There ya go. Wasn't so hard was it?   Just whip them Devs. Whip 'em good.

I've been reading and posting since back before DD and xroads and probably a lot of others here have too.

First thing to do is identify when someone is expressing a playstyle issue. The alarms should ring at that point. It doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means you need to be circumspect about it and consider how it fits to the audience of the game. As an example, is the stuff about Dave Sirlin's article. Just shows Devs are influenced by playstyle too.

[Calandryll]

The community fears change.

That's true. But we can't fear the community.

[Arthur_Parker]

The problem with pre-beta communication on official boards are the two extremes.  

Fanboi
How to be one :- Anytime a dev says anything, loudly cheer and restate your loyality.  Anytime a normal human posts anything negative or asks a difficult question, flame them.
Rewards :- Early Beta access and the Dev's act friendly and refer to you by name once every 6 weeks.

Troll
How to be one :- Make negative posts or ask difficult questions.
Rewards :- Fanboi's flame you.

It's the posters who are not in either extreme that you want input from.  I'd be tempted to make fake troll/fanboi accounts and then make a big deal out of banning them at the same time, saying neither type of behaviour helps the game.  That would shake things up.

An easier option is to ignore the fanboi's (they are going to buy the game no matter what you do) and start responding only to the negative posts, the fanboi's will soon start giving real opinions to get attention.

Beta communication :-
This should just be bug fixes, the players should already know the design before this point.  If they didn't know the real design of the game and it doesn't work, you are screwed.

[Nyght]

On a more general note: People have suggested to me the LotR maybe something I should look at. Reading that posting today made me less inclined to do so. Small data point: I do wear glasses but they are devoid of tape of any kind.

[Orion]

If the audience for the article were denizens of this site it would have read, ‘You can solo, ‘nuff said.’

[schild]

If the audience for the article were denizens of this site it would have read, ‘You can solo, ‘nuff said.’

Actually, a lot of people here group - often. It's just that we don't want to group with people not in the community for the most part. As such, soloing MUST be an option. But if the solo stuff scales to groups, all the better. Essentially we solo more because of poor design and dumb motherfuckers.

[Cheddar]

If the audience for the article were denizens of this site it would have read, ‘You can solo, ‘nuff said.’

Actually, a lot of people here group - often. It's just that we don't want to group with people not in the community for the most part. As such, soloing MUST be an option. But if the solo stuff scales to groups, all the better. Essentially we solo more because of poor design and dumb motherfuckers.

This is an extremely true statement.

[WindupAtheist]

DDO hit gold a few days ago, a few players are at the maximum level of 10 already.

Oh hell, I'm just kidding about the negativity. With the makers of the fantastically successful Asheron's Call producing an MMORPG based on a generic incarnation of a tabletop game most famous for drawing in the sex-deprived and inspiring that stupid Chick tract, I'm sure the folks at Blizzard are shitting in their moneyhats right about now.

Ten levels are more than enough, too. Everyone knows that the players of games like this care about immersion and roleplay, not racing up to the level cap as quickly as possible and then bitching about being bored. That's why it was a good idea to completely skip any semblance of crafting, housing, or PVP. It's not as if there'll be any catass endgame players to keep entertained.

Hat's off, Turbine. Only you could have figured out that what the MMO market really wants is a level-based game with no levels, and a feature list shorter than Diablo 2. Some people saw a demo trailer that made the combat look fun, therefore I'm completely sure that it'll be so much fun in reality that it'll keep people paying month after month.

I win.

[Arthur_Parker]

I win.

I'm hoping it's a long trip somewhere.

[Venkman]

One thing I do have to mention though is the concept of listening to players. I read a lot of posts from people (on these very forums sometimes) who say developers listen too much to players. At the same time, I see people (some of them the very same people who have made the previous comment in the past) talking to Raph on the SWG thread about how they believe the SWG players aren't being listened to enough. From my perspective, you can't have it both ways.

The arguments being made are that sometimes the devs listen too much to the wrong people (in some of our opinions). For example, I've long contended one of EQ2's early issues was tied directly to who they invited to be their initial Alpha testers. If you want to make a sequel for truly casual players, you don't invite your hardest-core players from the original title. Yet, this is what they did. They treated the EQ2 Alpha like any other marketing program, using it as a reward for the players who paid $39.99 to play on the uber EQ1 server. I personally think this contributed greatly to what ultimately made EQ2 far less casual than what casual needed to be at the time.

But there's a second issue here too.

Devs listen, of course. But the stuff they act on isn't intuitive to players, because they only see what's executed. Players aren't designers nor developers, and very few can grasp the broad matrix of an experience just from the outside looking in. Therefore, when players post something critical and then see the Devs act first on something else, they see a disconnect. They don't get that sometimes what the Dev acted on started weeks or months prior, and it just happened to reach the Live game at the time players were complaining about something else.

And then there's those cases where Devs listen to a few people complaining loudly and fix something that breaks things for the silent majority :)

That stuff was garbage

I'm not so much defending as I'm trying to see it from the perspective of the people who liked it, based on the replies in that forum. It wasn't for us here. I personally found it someone hard to read and ended up skipping through it for the salient points... as I'm sure some vpeople sometimes do with my overly wordy crap as well :)

[Arnold]

<butthead>Heh, words.</butthead>

[HRose]

We'll see if Callandryll still talks to us when LOTRO goes into beta. If he does, he'll get some constructive feedback.

Like if constructive feedback is of any use by when the game enters the beta.

One thing I do have to mention though is the concept of listening to players. I read a lot of posts from people (on these very forums sometimes) who say developers listen too much to players. At the same time, I see people (some of them the very same people who have made the previous comment in the past) talking to Raph on the SWG thread about how they believe the SWG players aren't being listened to enough. From my perspective, you can't have it both ways.

Communication isn't about listening. It is about giving feedback (imho). Discussing actively. Not passively.

You could be deaf and believe to be able to listen.

A few things I have learned though:

• polls are bad
• petitions are bad
• surveys are dangerous and are often bad (this is mostly because of poor survey design)
• the majority doesn't always rule
• the forums represent more people than one might realize - although it is self-selected
• sometimes its not as much about feedback as it is helping people understand

And I absolutely agree with these.

Give a look to this post I archived from Jessica Mulligan.

[HRose]

If the forums represent more than 2% of the actual player base, I'd be surprised. They are the same kind of minority as the raiders.

There's a difference between how many players do participate in a forum (the 2%) and how many they actually *represent* with their opinions.

[HRose]

Btw, I finished to read it all the dev post.

He doesn't explain the most important thing: Is there a space that is NOT instanced? Because between solo and group instances it seems that the whole game moves through them.

And in the case there are persistent spaces, how the two sides are connected? Which purposes they fit?

Perhaps a short explanation of how we are using instances will ease tension over the word. In LOTRO we are using instances in three distinct ways:

The first is as a highly sculpted solo experience.

To explain the highly sculpted solo experience further, I'll provide a hypothetical example. A denizen of Middle-earth may request assistance from a player on a very dangerous mission. Perhaps he requires escort through a stretch of land known to harbor Men of dubious persuasion. He entreats the player to lead him and his pony through this stretch of land. Along the way, the character reveals more information about himself and others within his hometown while under assault from bands of evil Men. Whatever the goal, the steps to assist him/her in finding their way through the encounter are clear to the player.

So even an escort solo mission through the wilderness is instanced? And how they explain the "portals"?

[JoeTF]

I have and always will advocate for the removal of any official game forums that are not designed for:

-Bug reports
-Technical issues
-Server boards (complete with guild recruitment sub-board)

Don't host general boards, dont host dev boards and certainly dont host class/race boards.

Let that shit happen on someone else's dime in someone else's playground.  Eventually fansites where the bullshit is pre-filtered will often rise up, because mods on fansites will not tolerate "DEV READ THIS" type shit for very long.

DO NOT EVER post on fansites.  Except f13, and then only in this general sort of way.  Don't ever address some online petition style bullshit, even if you think that the players are 100% right.  The second they get the idea you are listening and that if they petition something and put enough pages on it it deserves to be changed you are screwed.  Then the fucking MMO special interest groups go to work for their pet class/race/item/dungeon and your so swamped in useless BLUE READ THIS style shit that it makes my eyes bleed.

If the dev team isn't smart enough to be able to figure out what is fun and what isn't, then the game is going to suck.  Sure players can point you in the right direction or reveal flaws (ways to bug mob AI, spells with incorrect damage modifiers etc) that you may have missed.  But the players aren't going to tell you how to balance the game, and devs who try to get that sort of info from them just end up breaking the game even more.

If you read the SWG thread and dont see that those poor idiots (or as I have called them in the past diluted fools heh) who are wishing that the SWG devs had just listened to them, rolled the game back to build 12xyz and done blahblahblah are idiots.  Well I just dont know what to say.

Right. Except it doesn't work in real world.
Arena.net post only on fansite boards and their community is the best in 0.5+mln market (even though it's mainly composed of leet CS tards)
FLS have entire subforum dedicated to dev questions, where they post average of 10 posts/day. There is no flaming, trolling and fighting fanboism (maybe because no one feeds you sweeties), it's one of the best game communities I have ever seen.

[Soln]

EVE forums have been pretty civilized from what I've seen.  But then their CS don't pretend they're 14.

[Merusk]

EVE forums have been pretty civilized from what I've seen.  But then their CS don't pretend they're 14.

The community is also a lot more mature, and the game is a lot smaller.  The # of accounts is marginally inflated to the # of actual users, because it's a big advantage to have multiple accounts.  Hell, I play very, very casually (maybe 5 hours 'in game' per week) and I've felt the pressure to have a second account.  That's because you can only train one skill at a time PER ACCOUNT.  So if you want a manufacturing or mining char to suppliment ships for your combat char, you're going to have 2 accounts.

Plus, being forced to post with a character name, and knowing that if you piss off anyone you'll get podded is a good way of enforcing civility.  WoW's forums would have a chance of being MUCH more civil if you could swarm-kill Joe catass 60 with a few level 10 buddies and destroy all his purple gear. 

[Morfiend]

I win.

Quick, change its name back to WUN. Maybe it will leave again.

[Yegolev]

See every MMOG ever made. Hell is other people.

And we hang out with other people by our own choice, we must like hell.

It is true that "punishing people for grouping" isn't exclusive from "punishing people for soloing".  Some games are just punishing.

[regarding EVE forums]
Plus, being forced to post with a character name, and knowing that if you piss off anyone you'll get podded is a good way of enforcing civility.

I shouldn't need to type a lot about anonymity and social repercussions.  First you need a game where players can truly and deeply hurt other players, then you need to link those characters to the boards.  Since you can't just tack this mechanic on top of a Diku, the best option for most MOGs is to avoid the forums altogether.

[Ironwood]

Plus, being forced to post with a character name, and knowing that if you piss off anyone you'll get podded is a good way of enforcing civility.  WoW's forums would have a chance of being MUCH more civil if you could swarm-kill Joe catass 60 with a few level 10 buddies and destroy all his purple gear. 

2 things :
1 - I wish it was like this.
2 - I love the term 'podded'.  Yes, I fully understand what it means and where it comes from.  It's just great.

[sigil]

If the audience for the article were denizens of this site it would have read, ‘You can solo, ‘nuff said.’

Actually, a lot of people here group - often. It's just that we don't want to group with people not in the community for the most part. As such, soloing MUST be an option. But if the solo stuff scales to groups, all the better. Essentially we solo more because of poor design and dumb motherfuckers.

So:
Orion remarks about the original points writing style.

Schild replies about the deeper meaning the need for soloing, as  a result people in general being idiots.

While true, I don't follow how you get there.

Unless you think he's going to reply, and I don't think you gave him anything to work with.

[Yegolev]

I like "podded" too, but "CONCORDOKKEN" is so much better, in my opinion.

[cevik]

Plus, being forced to post with a character name, and knowing that if you piss off anyone you'll get podded is a good way of enforcing civility.  WoW's forums would have a chance of being MUCH more civil if you could swarm-kill Joe catass 60 with a few level 10 buddies and destroy all his purple gear. 

We burned down entire cities if someone made a stupid post on Shadowbane's boards.  We would destroy literally months of work because something pissed us off on the boards.

And those boards were 20 times worse than WoW's every tried to be..

[WayAbvPar]

Plus, being forced to post with a character name, and knowing that if you piss off anyone you'll get podded is a good way of enforcing civility.  WoW's forums would have a chance of being MUCH more civil if you could swarm-kill Joe catass 60 with a few level 10 buddies and destroy all his purple gear. 

We burned down entire cities if someone made a stupid post on Shadowbane's boards.  We would destroy literally months of work because something pissed us off on the boards.

And those boards were 20 times worse than WoW's every tried to be..

And those were our allies!

[Hoax]

I have and always will advocate for the removal of any official game forums that are not designed for:

-Bug reports
-Technical issues
-Server boards (complete with guild recruitment sub-board)

Don't host general boards, dont host dev boards and certainly dont host class/race boards.

Let that shit happen on someone else's dime in someone else's playground.  Eventually fansites where the bullshit is pre-filtered will often rise up, because mods on fansites will not tolerate "DEV READ THIS" type shit for very long.

DO NOT EVER post on fansites.  Except f13, and then only in this general sort of way.  Don't ever address some online petition style bullshit, even if you think that the players are 100% right.  The second they get the idea you are listening and that if they petition something and put enough pages on it it deserves to be changed you are screwed.  Then the fucking MMO special interest groups go to work for their pet class/race/item/dungeon and your so swamped in useless BLUE READ THIS style shit that it makes my eyes bleed.

If the dev team isn't smart enough to be able to figure out what is fun and what isn't, then the game is going to suck.  Sure players can point you in the right direction or reveal flaws (ways to bug mob AI, spells with incorrect damage modifiers etc) that you may have missed.  But the players aren't going to tell you how to balance the game, and devs who try to get that sort of info from them just end up breaking the game even more.

If you read the SWG thread and dont see that those poor idiots (or as I have called them in the past diluted fools heh) who are wishing that the SWG devs had just listened to them, rolled the game back to build 12xyz and done blahblahblah are idiots.  Well I just dont know what to say.

Right. Except it doesn't work in real world.
Arena.net post only on fansite boards and their community is the best in 0.5+mln market (even though it's mainly composed of leet CS tards)
FLS have entire subforum dedicated to dev questions, where they post average of 10 posts/day. There is no flaming, trolling and fighting fanboism (maybe because no one feeds you sweeties), it's one of the best game communities I have ever seen.

Ok I think you are more or less saying I'm right, except you do want the devs to post.  I dont mind devs posting but I'm telling them to keep it sparse and make it random.  Dont EVER respond to anything that has Dev in the title, instead respond to the threads where actual intelligent posters come up with some thing interesting not the fucking forum lobbyists that populate most boards.  God I hate those fuckers.

[HaemishM]

Plus, being forced to post with a character name, and knowing that if you piss off anyone you'll get podded is a good way of enforcing civility.  WoW's forums would have a chance of being MUCH more civil if you could swarm-kill Joe catass 60 with a few level 10 buddies and destroy all his purple gear. 

We burned down entire cities if someone made a stupid post on Shadowbane's boards.  We would destroy literally months of work because something pissed us off on the boards.

And those boards were 20 times worse than WoW's every tried to be..

And those were our allies!

City chat just got fucking painful after a while didn't it?

[Venkman]

We burned down entire cities if someone made a stupid post on Shadowbane's boards.  We would destroy literally months of work because something pissed us off on the boards.

And those boards were 20 times worse than WoW's every tried to be..

For the life of me I can't figure out why MMOGs are still considered niche...

Full PvP's a panacea for too few. And WoW is only "full" in that it prevents someone from getting a new PvE foozle periodically.

[WindupAtheist]

<butthead>Heh, words.</butthead>

This comment wins the thread.  So much that I made this for future use.

[Endie]

It sounds LotR flavored tofu.
If I was making LtoRO, I would make it a reenactment of the trilogy with very shallow advancement allowing vastly different timelines and ability for Sauron or the Fellowship to win.  Afterwards, I'd award participation points base how difficult of a charactor they choose, major accomplishments in game, and divided in tiers so causals only compete with other causal and catasses with other catasses.  The points are then spent in the next round to buy special chars and items and talents for that round.

I have been lurking through f13, waterthread and back to L:tM.  I'll be interested to see if my post count is any higher than one *after* posting this.  But I had to post to say that that is the worst idea for an MMO ever.  It's a non-MMO where someone gets bragging rights at the end.  EA would write that game, use a bastardised version of XBox live for the scores, and be pleased they'd reached their usual standards.

And you criticise the writing style of the OQP?  Yes, he's a bad writer, but speaking as a developer myself, there is not always - or even often - a great congruence between the set of good writers and the set of good devs.  So all you whiny types who say "we want more inside knowledge from the devs [we secretly worship]" and then get all Magnolia Fan when it turns out they write better code than English will get exactly what you deserve: disdain and less feedback.

[Arthur_Parker]

Who's being secretly worshiping devs?  I want names.

The MEO dev post is a bit wordy for the amount of information it provides, even accounting for a game based on a lengthy book.  I didn't think it was that badly written, but I'm fully aware I can barely string a sentence together.

[Venkman]

Welcome Endie! You sound just angry enough to fit right in :)

The MEO dev post is a bit wordy for the amount of information it provides

This is a problem with veteran hardcore MMOGers, and some general gamers, in my opinion. Being in the genre so long, some adopt this "I want my information now, and brief!" mindset that is at odds with one of the core tenets of the genre: immersion. It's also at odds with the realities of truly complex game design, but that's an aside.

As I tried to explain earlier, the post was wordy because he wasn't talking game mechanic. What he described could have been done in one sentence with no punctuation. My point is that the people most interested in LoTRO are not your raw gamer looking to min/max themselves to Level 60 plus upper tier gear through the manipulation of statistics. They want what LoTR is: a big freakin' story with crazy amount of history explained through an obscene amount of words.

Immersion is still sought by those who actually want some form of RP. RP is not fed by "+2 to Slashing". It's fed by "You are slightly more proficient at using a weapon in a slashing motion".

Now, this doesn't mean LoTRO is going to be more or less successful because one post from a locquacious dev was written as a story. Maybe the opposite in fact, since even RPers eventually need to understand how a system works in order to advance within it.

But for now, it just means that when they talk to their ardent fans, they aren't talking to a bunch of hardcore nuts who consume the entirety of an MMOG over the course of a weekend. Basically, they're talking to folks who actually read quest text and link the various stories together because they care :)