I chafe at the notion that the mechanics of a game are an art form at all. The world itself and what populates it have a visual language that you could definitely consider art, but character progression systems are not art. I say that as a student of technical arts.
If the argument comes down to ‘players say they like it, therefore it should remain unchanged’, then I don’t know where we can go from there. Players are terrible at articulating exactly what they want and if you took them only at their word you’d never get any innovation.
Even more telling is how players very rarely back up what they say with their habits and choices after the fact. Research suggested that despite outrage about lootboxes in Shadow of Mordor and Star Wars: Battlefront, players continued to consume products made by those companies (and in those very same games) despite professing anger something the company did.
You can certainly account for player feedback, but if you let players dictate too much, you’ll see how quickly a game will unravel. There’s a reason there’s a psychology behind player engagement.
This a is a fantastic and cynical talking point that I don’t think anyone can prove.
If there wasn’t art involved in game design, we’d already have the perfect MMO in WoW considering the developers have been iterating for 14 years on it. And yet, here we are with a very imperfect game. Mainly because too much game design science has been applied since the launch of Warlords, I would argue.
I know this is controversial with many, especially game developers, but I’d say that players know exactly what they want. They may not be perfect in articulating it, but I think getting an understanding of what players express falls overall on the feedback systems design companies employ, not necessarily the players. And these systems are often not utilized as they should be. Just look at WoW. Copious, detailed feedback is given in alpha and beta about the pitfalls of any expansion, sometimes almost overwhelmingly in one direction and the developers still implement a feature anyways.
Because those systems are designed to exploit human psychology, players know it, don’t like it, but many still fall to them anyways because of this underlying factor. This is why relying solely on data metrics for designing a game is an endeavor fraught with folly. So what does this tell us? That loot boxes are actually popular or just effective at manipulating players? This goes for any sort of game design system. If you put a really popular reward behind some form of content and lots of players engage in the content, does that mean the content is “fun” for the player or is it the reward that is popular?
No one is saying that players should dictate the game. But I think it’s just a convenient way out for developers to deflect any criticism by simply saying players don’t know what they want. I think players overall are more sophisticated about games than they were twenty years ago. Developers need to recognize this if they want more positive engagement with players.
That, and it also points out that players are generally unreliable when carrying out the threat of boycotts. Players are not perfect wells of insight and what they say they want or don’t want is not only not reflective of the entire player base but may or may not be true of themselves. It’s not at all controversial to claim that players have perfect knowledge of what they want. The controversial claim is what I said, and that they’re not as capable as articulating it as they want to believe they are.
That the reward is popular, I’d say. This actually proves a point that i have about how flying isn’t engaging. The claim is that it makes playing the game more fun, when in fact flying doesn’t change anything about the game at all. We’re also dealing with a controversy about players not being able to cap their EXP at 110 because it can be used to power level lower-level toons. Players claim they don’t find leveling fun, but they’re not arguing for changes, they’re arguing for short cuts.
I agree that it’s an easy card to pull out of the deck, but that doesn’t change the efficacy of the statement. When the Diablo developers asked players if they all had phones, he wasn’t wrong. Most people do have phones, even it showed the lack of foresight Blizzard had about the audience they were addressing. And I don’t think players are more sophisticated in their gaming tastes, I think they’re even less so than 20 years ago because of how willing players are to consume a game that’s barely any different than the game that came out just a year beforehand. EA Sports games and COD shooters still perform massively well despite how infrequently they actually innovate. That doesn’t speak to sophistication in consumers.
If all that was required for the perfect game was design theory and science, we’d already have it. But we clearly don’t. There is an art to game design that has to blend the science and theory with an appeal to the collective senses and emotions of an targeted audience. Since Blizzard seems to have gone full on with the primacy of overt retention mechanics, time-gating and content on rails since Warlords, I’d say they’ve lost some touch with the latter. They still show flashes of it, often brilliantly, but the game certainly feels on a different path since Warlords.
The common refrain we see here on these boards and others over just about any criticism of the game is that players don’t know what they want. I do believe they are articulate enough as a whole. Are players all perfect? No, of course not. Do they often not make sense? Sure, there’s lots of pure rants that should be ignored but there’s also often widespread agreement and well articulated feedback in the various sub forums. I believe there’s an entrenched, automatic predilection to discount feedback that corrupts the feedback loop based upon this idea that players themselves don’t know what they want.
But data metrics won’t be able to distinguish that for you. All it will show is lots of players engaging in the content. You need player feedback to make that distinction.
If it doesn’t change anything at all, then on what basis does Blizzard want to withhold it from the game? It must have some impact on play style and enjoyment. Flying both can’t be totally innocuous and also this game-destroying menace. If players are saying it makes game play more enjoyable, then there must be some truth to the matter. If I was designing Pathfinder, I’d just dial it back to less stringent requirements so that players got it before the natural tedium set in with the repetitive content offered at end-game. Right now, flight is no relief at the point it is offered mid-expansion because that over-saturation point with the content is already reached.
Different markets, different players, different games. Doesn’t mean players aren’t more sophisticated. They certainly are more aware of manipulation nowadays with game mechanics.
“Flying ruins your immersion into our game world” (Aka you think you want to fly but you don’t)
removes flying
adds Toy Flight Master’s Whistle into the game which instantaneously spawns a gryphon or bat at your location which then teleports you to the nearest flight master which you can then use to FLY to whatever location you need to go to
Then it shouldn’t be hard to get a source where Blizzard says it, not just players claiming it to be so.
Because they’ve discovered and acknowledged the player habit of helicopter questing. Because players are inherently lazy and will usually take the path of least resistance, they will utilize their flying mounts to bypass as much content as possible, which has and always has been an issue.
The claim is that Blizzard wants to make the game harder but that’s not how this works. When you have a baseline effort required to complete a task, and then you have a tool that makes it far easier, the removal of the tool does not make it harder because you’re returning to what was intended.
It actually can be. Innocuous in that it’s such a passive player experience in that it requires no thought and no decision making, and detrimental to the game that it trivializes a player’s effort in navigating the world.
I guess I really need to know what you mean by ‘sophisticated’ because from what I’m seeing gaming trends appeal to the lowest common denominator and I struggle to understand how that’s indicative of sophistication.
By “engaging” you really mean “inconvenient” (I’ve see the kinds of changes anti-flyers want made to flying).
Subjective opinion is subjective. I find flying very much fun.
Um… What are you talking about? Vashj’ir is my all time favorite zone ever.
When I play a game that has player housing, I have a lot of fun decorating my character’s home, and not one of these things plays a part in that activity. These are all elements that you personally enjoy. They are not required to make something worth having in game. Thus, these elements, themselves are subjective.
Basically, what you are saying here, is that what you really want is for ground mounts to be superior to flying mounts. Your arguments for changing how flying works are not intended to make it “fun” for you, but simply to make it as inconvenient as possible, so you can smugly continue to choose to use your ground mounts, secure in the belief that you have chosen the more efficient travel method.
I mean things like customization of gear, talents, and other character power systems and the actual gameplay involved of using your class toolkit to kill things. Do you find it inconvenient to actually play your class?
Customization is player decision-making, which is the very first principal I outlined. That includes cosmetic things like your transmog.
Not quite. I just don’t want flying mounts to make ground mounts obsolete, and I want the decision of flying or staying on the ground to be a strategic choice that has an impact, not an arbitrary one where I choose one based on a subjective preconception of ‘fun’.
Also not true. I want flying to consist of choices and challenges as rewarding as being good at my class. I want to be ‘good’ at flying the same way you can be ‘good’ at anything else-- playing within a series of constraints and rules and demonstrating mastery within them.
Consider the Mage Tower challenges. Those were generally tests about how well you knew your class and your mastery of how to play. That’s what makes the reward meaningful. The rewards wouldn’t mean anything if everyone got them just for participating.
Most people want flying without strings attached. Do you need challenges and lore to walk in the game? Do you get fatigued walking, have to stop to eat, drink, and rest? Stop with the stupid reasons flying shouldn’t just be what it was for years that people loved.
How’s the delayed fun working out for you Blizzard? How are the sub numbers you won’t publish? Are the random surveys you send out getting you the feedback you want to hear while ignoring the feedback on your own forums working? Is the price slashing and gimmicks in your store bringing in the lost revenue from people leaving?
Pull your head out of your butt and start listening to the feedback you’ve ignored for years. Make the game players want to play, not the game you think they wanted but have rejected over and over again.
Flying is fun. It’s just one of many fun things you’ve ruined but refuse to acknowledge.