Tobold's Blog
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
 
Listen to me! Or rather not

There has been some discussion lately in the MMO blogosphere whether game developers should listen more to the proposals from players and bloggers on how to improve their games. Hey, I get 3,000 readers a day, I'm obviously qualified to improve a game with 9 million subscribers and annual revenues of over $1 billion. NOT. Everyone is an armchair game designer, but it is only easy because our ideas never get realized and thus don't have to prove they actually work. If you poll people about their intelligence, a majority of people will claim to have above average intelligence, and only very few people will say they have below average intelligence. As obviously only half of a population can have above average intelligence, with the other half being below, this just shows that people have a tendancy to overestimate their abilities. Most of us, me included, couldn't even design Vanguard, and certainly not World of Warcraft.

Listening to players and bloggers has the added problem that the players who write their opinion about a game are already just a small minority of the total population, and not necessarily representative. In fact it is often said that some developers listen *too much* to the opinions of a small vocal minority of hardcore players. You really don't want the devs to follow all the "nerf " cries from the official forums.

That doesn't mean that game forums or blogs couldn't be an important resource for game developers. They just have to be handled right. One approach is to take ideas from all of these player sources and use them in brainstorming sessions. I don't know if you ever did a real brainstorming, but the process there is to first collect a large number of ideas, even crazy ones, and then sort them out later. As a provider of crazy "out of the box" ideas, the internet can't be beat.

The other approach is to listen to player concerns and verify whether they are true. For example me and other people often state that too much development time is spent on creating content that ends up being seen by a too small percentage of the player base. But of course we have no data whatsoever what it did cost to develop the Black Temple, and our data via WoWJutsu on how many players visited it are at best incomplete. Blizzard obviously has much better data than we have. They should know how much it really did cost to create that raid dungeon. They should know how many people are visiting it. And they should know how many people quit the game after having reached level 70, not visited a raid dungeon, and wrote "nothing more to do" in their small exit interview form. There are hard facts that business managers at Blizzard should have access to, and where it is not only their right, but even their job, to challenge the developers to come up with a solution. Running a MMORPG is a business, and the churn rate is extremely important for the profitability of the game. World of Warcraft is very successful, and very profitable, but that doesn't mean that there is no way to improve it.
Comments:
What I would hope is that companies running or developing MMOs are gathering a boat load of good, empirical data about how their players play the game. Community management, while important, is not good enough, because as you say the proportion of people who play a game AND post on the game forums with any regularity is small and constitutes by definition a self-selecting sample.

I'd like to believe a company like Blizzard employs the kinds of information gathering strategies that Valve or Bungie do - that sort of rigorous, measured playtesting that identifies exactly where lies the best content bang for buck. Unfortunately, most MMO devs are probably just relying on their intuition.

I do believe that even a 'softcore' MMO like WoW is still too restrictive in how and who it chooses to reward at the endgame. It's easy for casual players to accuse Blizzard of focusing time and resources on the hardcore element, but that ignores that the major use of resources over a time period goes into the casual-friendly next expansion, rather than the intermittent current-game content addition.

Blizzard's problem is not that they are focusing on the hardcore, it's that their only-known mechanism for satisfying the casual (new levels and quest zones) is horrendously time consuming to make. I honestly thought WotLK would be out a year after TBC, the lengthy interim is a huge problem for them.
 
Nick touched a problem here. As a semi-casual player (play a lot but mostly casual content, very rarely raids and such) I think that the devs spend too much time and resources building content for the hardcore. I do however understand that it's probably much easier and cheaper to build content for the hardcore. I must admit that I will be generalizing a bit here.

The hardcore players can stand doing repetitive content. Raiding instances over and over again for loot to be able to do the next instance in line. Casuals however like to do content once, maybe a few times more after that and then it's enough. Of course it is cheaper to build content that can be used over and over again than content that is used once or twice per player (or character) and then never again.

I've personally thought about that a bit but I don't see any solution to it that holds. You can create random quests but those are rarely interesting enough. You can create instances where the layout is random (like City of Heroes/Villains) but that also becomes highly repetitive in the end. You end up recognizing the building blocks that makes the instances very quickly.

Regarding the general "Should devs listen to players?" thing. It's a fine line to balance on. Of course you can't listen to every nerf cry out there or you would be rebalancing the game every other minute. On the other hand the devs should logically listen to some opinions that the majority of the players support. Like for example the casual/hardcore content topic above. Why? Well if for nothing else then because it might in the long run be more economically viable. If you manage to keep that majority of players playing instead of the minority then it's a no-brainer that you will make more money. One of the problems with that though is that there's a very large part of that majority which are silent. They never (or very rarely) post on boards. When cancelling their subscription they don't enter a reason when asked, or just choose a random pre-entered one because it's fast. You have to more or less be a mind reader to know their opinion. :)
 
I agree with mr.T on this one, that the devs should gather the ideas for brainstorming and check if there is anythign worth the while to 'boost' the content with. As everyone has stated for so long in the comments in this and other blogs, Blizz is catering too much for the vocal minority.

Someone just posted a comment on this blog that Blizz could easily hire a group of devs to do dynamic content to the Old World. In a way this would be a brilliant step backwards, and would make at least WoW live again: they would be nothing more than GM run events in the worst case.

I would like to see Thunderaan wreck havoc in Orgrimmar or Naxx in Ironforge... In private servers this kind of events are a norm, and strangely they enliven the game a lot. Why not in the official? All it would require is for the GM to launch the assault and giggle on the side...

What is lacking from WoW -and most of the other MMORPG's at the time- is the dynamic and ever changing content: it was promised early on for WoW, but none has been seen yet. Well, if you want to count Draenai and Blood Elves as one, or the patch wich made Dustwallow 'whole', then maybe, but the same quests have been around almost from the beginning and nothing has changed in the world.

Also the forums, as stated above, they could be more linked to the game as itself, as well as the everliving concern of the social tools missing from the game. The lack of interest shown by the devs on these issues shows that they do not listen to the real issues... but cater to the vocal minority as long as they can.

Could it be that the devs are developing the game for themselves? As the old authors' proverb says: "write the story you would like to read"...

Copra
 
We all can be above average intelligence. All we need is a few VERY VERY stupid ones to lower the average enough to make us look like geni.
"Un"fortunately natural selection tends to rebalance that pretty fast
 
"Un"fortunately natural selection tends to rebalance that pretty fast

On that note, the Darwin Awards 2007 are out, which "commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it".
 
Listening to players:
One reason why Blizzard seems to listen to certain players more than others is that those players provide constructive criticism. It's easy to agree with someone's conclusion if it's backed by logic and proof in the form of solid math and statistics. For example, the new consumables system was a perfect example how conclusive proof persuaded Blizzard to do a major overhaul. Raiders complained that consumables made a too big of a difference, well over what a whole tier of new gear could make. That complaint was backed up by a comparison chart of stats gained from items vs stats gained from consumables. Although it did take a while, Blizzard did eventually respond with a huge overhaul of all consumables and all TBC raid encounters.

An another example was hunters in Arenas. PvPers complained that hunters were underdogs and backed it up with statistics of the popular and/or successful class/spec combinations. Blizzard responded with major revamps to the hunter class.

"Casual" content:
Actually, many of the content patches which opened new raid instances also included 5-man instances or other content that didn't require a contigious time investment. For example, the same patch which had the Battle for Mount Hyjal and the Black Temple also had the revamped Consortium and new factions like Ogri'la, Skyguard and the Netherwing. 2.4, which has the Sunwell Plateau also has a 5-man instance called the Magisters' Terrace, which provides Karazhan-level loot.

Tracking and statistics:
Blizzard probably doesn't do as rigorous tracking of players as Valve does, but they do monitor certain things, like mobs causing the most deaths or the most often looted items. I don't have the URL handy now, but it was hilarious to see that low-level mobs such as Defias Pillagers were as deadly as raid bosses such as Vaelastraz or Drek'thar.

Events:
The problem with dynamic content is that it scales badly with the amount of players. Each of the hundreds of realms out there would need a GM or two dedicated for the events. At the very least Blizzard would have to hire several hundreds of new GMs. In addition, if Blizzard allows the GMs to change the game world at a whim it opens a whole new can of worms: corruption. Strict rules about intervening avoid a lot of the potential problems.
 
The dynamic content wouldn't have to be more than -for example- a rotating quests available at different times at the questgivers. What I mean more about dynamic is that the world would feel more living and that the altaholics levelling their 17th toon would find something special in the midst, causing the old world to live at least a bit.

I couldn't care less about the Outlands at the moment, as I will see it earliest after WotLK is published. For me there is enough to explore in Azeroth, but too few companions to group with for the instances.

Copra
 

Could it be that the devs are developing the game for themselves? As the old authors' proverb says: "write the story you would like to read"...

Copra


Exactly
 
The new factions in 2.4 could barely be called content aimed at casuals. Mostly it was a large collection of daily quests aimed at stopping the need to buy gold. Also correct me if my logic is wrong but weren't the raiders the ones buying huge amounts of gold for repairs, pots, and reagents?
 
Of course it is cheaper to build content that can be used over and over again than content that is used once or twice per player (or character) and then never again

The problem with dynamic content is that it scales badly with the amount of players. Each of the hundreds of realms out there would need a GM or two dedicated for the events. At the very least Blizzard would have to hire several hundreds of new GMs. In addition, if Blizzard allows the GMs to change the game world at a whim it opens a whole new can of worms: corruption. Strict rules about intervening avoid a lot of the potential problems.


yes it scales badly. And if you do individual world events then yes the ROI would not be so good.

But why with the money coming in can't there be a small to medium sized Development team that does nothing but tweak and change the old content. These kinds of changes would be across all the servers. I think they'd find it would decrease churn because people usually leave because there is nothing new left that they want to do. If next week some new quest might pop up that would have some awesome reward. Or the king of stormwind might be found and start shaking things up, then I think a lot of people who'd leave now would hang around just because they could explore and be surprised regularly.
 
I'd like to point out this whole argument about above average, below average is really a red herring. I know I'm well above average but I've had people who were simply not as bright as me point out huge glaring holes in my plans because they had a different perspective or just more plain common sense. For this kind of MMO it really just takes a team with the right skills and talent and a wide perspective. Intelligence is important but there are a lot of unsuccessful Geniuses out there and a lot of really cool things have been invented by plain old average people
 
Tobold, I agree with some of your points and disagree with others. I went into a little detail on my blog.
http://www.karashur.net/mmorpg

It takes more than looking at the bottom-line to create an mmo that will be successful in the long run. Unfortunately, that is what most developers will continue to do...then wonder why the hell everyone jumped ship to the next shiny new mmo.
 
It takes more than looking at the bottom-line to create an mmo that will be successful in the long run. Unfortunately, that is what most developers will continue to do...then wonder why the hell everyone jumped ship to the next shiny new mmo.

I agree. And it drives me crazy when I read blue posts or interviews by kaplan talking about how they are so focused on the new stuff they just don't have time to do what they want with the old.

I't like painting the ship from the waterline up while ignoring the rust that is slowly compromising the hull integrity.
 
I think this is a good read titled Why Blizzard Keep Building Raids: http://www.zenofdesign.com/?p=1000
 
I know theres not much point in saying it here where Blizzard or any dev will ever care to read it but I can think of a way to make events run by GM's scale. Give better AI to individual groups of monsters and have the GM give commands that are obeyed by all the servers at once. Yes you lose some reactivity in doing this but at least the monsters are doign something interesting instead of mulling around watching their friends get killed. In this scenario you could even have one GM for each are of the game and the number would not get too high. Alternatively you could have an area where you queue upf or this experience yes, but that would be more of a dungeon keeper type deal, you adn your team/raid/whatever versus the dungeon.
 
What has always nagged at me is that there is supposedly a faction war going on, but the players never see much evidence of that war. The only real 'battle quest' I can think of on the Horde side is the Orc assault on a Night Elf outpost in Ashenvale. That's actually a pretty fun and challenging quest, so I wonder why the dominant quest type seems to be "kill 10 foozles" or "bring me 8 foozle hides".
 
I beg to differ... could we not create this game? I know I could... bold and foolish brag I hear you say.

Well think about it for a few minutes.

It isn't rocket science. It is about writing a story and then creating a vision for that story. All stories involve conflict... be it Romeo and Juliet or Star Wars. A conflict of people, ideas or relationships. If you can bring a thread of a story, and weave it with sub plots then it is all possible.

It is pen and paper till it gets into the hands of the devs.

I for one and am in the process of doing this right now, with a handful of folk. We are creating a world from scratch, biology, geography, races, plots, etc etc etc.

We will PDF the document with concept art and bundle it as the complete package. If a dev team or publishing company is interested... then all good.

No more secrets to be let out for now.

Consider how Jeff Kaplan for Bliz came into the spotlight. A gamer of all things... designing the game (IMHO) in shape he would like to play and not the community.

I could do better than JK. Yes I could. No, I could! A foolish brag again you may think.

These guys are stale at the moment, and for patch "too point less" we are getting more of the same stale content.

It begs the question... why is it a raid dev gets the high profile alone? Why doesn't Bliz champion and non raid content dev? A role to design a world more dynamic and shake things up on a monthly basis?

An idea... you log in... we have lost Iron Forge! Overnight the scurge invaded and actually took the capital city by force. You now find yourself in a refuge camp (in Dun Morough), all trainers etc present but traders are now selling goods at higher prices (supplies cut), and certain NPC's are being held captive.

So what do you do? You take it back, with daring instanced quests to free the NPCs, a type of BG where the Horde and Alliance team up to retake Iron Forge.

You get the city back when certain criteria are fulfilled, so making it a world event.

I don't think that's a bad idea, and mechanically easy to do. The game structures, rules and mechanics are already in place. They just need to export the materials to the right team.

It's cheap content.
 
A major problem I see with input from bloggers is the all-too-often Pundit blogger approach.

There's this heavy-handed "we know best" attitude that pervades the blogosphere. It seems even more common amongst gaming & tech bloggers than political ones. Hell, why do you think it's the secondary topic for Stephen Colbert to parody?

There's nothing wrong with stating your opinion as a gamer, but I recommend keeping your seat firmly in the player section. The press booth shouldn't have more attendance than the rest of the stands.
 
There's nothing wrong with stating your opinion as a gamer, but I recommend keeping your seat firmly in the player section. The press booth shouldn't have more attendance than the rest of the stands.


This is a blog where gamers post thier opinions. Step out of the forest and quit looking at the individual trees.

Sure we have lots of ideas and there are probably difficulties we wouldn't think of in implementing them. But I think what feeds all these ideas is that blizzard first of all made a great game. And secondly thier customer service and communication skill as a corporation suck.

But the fact is they'll keep doing thier thing. We'll keep doing ours and hopefully from time to time they poke around and see what people who are passionate enough about their game to actually talk about it publicly say.
 
Sam, that's sort of a mirror of what I was trying to say. Not enough players talk about games ~as~ players. Seems everyone wants to be an expert, hence my comment about pundits.

In the end, the player opinions matter more than the pundits, absolutely.
 
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