I've seen glitches/accidental coding error, that players enjoyed and could've sparked an idea for the developers to incorporate in the game, get "fixed". I've seen so many games turn to dust due to over-simplification of the game. Games that begin to turn "r&tard proof" hurts its older players and benefits newer players. The irony is making something extremely easy to understand doesn't quite bring out skill or understanding to the new users, they must go through the hours of experience like everyone else did. If anything the game becomes more easier and "over powered" from my experience and levels/achievements are gained much easier & faster.
All it took was Burning Crusade (Second Expansion of WoW) to wreck the game for a lot of users. WOTLK was personally what was the last straw for me. The 2 games that disappointed me the most were, Maplestory & Gunz. With so many new jobs and monsters, what used to take beta/2005 users a year+ of grinding to get to level 170-ish not even 200. Now in 2013 a player can achieve level 200 in a week with NX Cash(Karma Coins)
Gunz 2 removed the ability to K-style and many other trick moves. This was what made the game unique in its own way. No other game came close to the combat system gunz had. You defied gravity and did it with style(armor and skills) The best part was you did not have to conform to learning K-style.The community created their own game style without aid of the Developers. Everyone knew their play style and joined rooms that complimented it. (People didn't get angry because you didn't go with the meta(K-style) there were i believe 4 other styles then sprayers)
TL;DR I fear Riot will fall into this way of thinking "We know what you want" I see it a little bit, but hopefully its nothing. I'm curious to see if anyone has felt this way about a game you used to play. I'd like to read the comments.
It's a tricky topic, because our job is to make decisions based on what players not only want, but need. Let me explain that a bit.
Determining what players want is actually pretty simple - your most invested users tend to be very vocal and will put effort into making sure they're heard (ie; most forumers!) This is a good metric of understanding what players want, at least for high-engagement folks.
What players need is where players don't proclaim a desire for something, but it helps provide something they say they want. Many times, this is more than a single solution - it requires several steps of implementation to reach a result, or takes time to bake in many cases. Let me provide two example of want vs need, and why want cannot be the only driver for developers;
At Riot, we nerf champions. Nerfs are rarely wanted (and many times, unwanted). But, players want to have a fair experience with a variety of options. Additionally, a game without power caps and heavy power creep (something still happening faster than I'd like...) can disrupt the core game design focused around choices, decision-making, and strategy. To accomplish this, we need to nerf champions, even if players don't explicitly want us to.
To use your example, in the pattern of Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, the changes to easier raid content and more accessibility is actually informed by a want that a lot of players expressed - IE, raids were content that was exclusive from them and they wanted a piece. I respect the guys who make WoW (and its success is a testament), but this is a good example of where the developers should have recognized the core need of exclusivity and the right tuning of that, and steered away from players said they wanted. Personally, I think Burning Crusade is a sweet spot.
The above is a fantastic example of why we have to make tough choices and not always just do what players ask us to do - it's not always the right course of action.
The problem you're speaking to, in my opinion, is when developers think they always have that answer and that being a developer gives you divination into what that is. In my mind, game development isn't about having answers - it's the ways in which you find them.
Our interaction on here isn't just lip-service, it's so we can better optimize decisions around player wants - and explain what players need when they don't want it. This informs us a lot, but we make decisions based on a number of factors - player desires and feedback being one of them.
I hope this helps explain how I feel about this, and how the developer/player interaction looks to me.
Usually when a champion topic is ignored, it's mostly because we aren't focused on this problem because we have a lot of other stuff prioritized currently. That's the case with Viktor right now.
One other thing to watch is "the game used to be good when the game was less mature, and it sucks now because of changes" thing. Many times, players just get tired of a game after 1000's of hours, and that's natural. I still think WoW is a cool game, I just can't wring any more enjoyment out of it.
instead of putting a bandaid on a problem, how about give players the tools to counter.
Instead of nerfing and simply paving the way for someone else to become indirectly more powerful and fotm. Instead of solving nothing, and causing a cyclic balance mess in where the community is herded around like sheep, not actually improving at the game but are so dependant on what fotm to jump to next because of patch notes
Introduce active items, encourage mechanics. In Dota, when Enigma and chaneled AOE ults was fotm, Icefrog rather than nerfing him, introduced force staff. The community learned to cope and Enigma was left untouched because the meta changed based on player actions. Force staff was not an immediate press X for win button counter, it required thinking, creativity, innovation and had many uses. You claim on your website that the game is driven by player choices, so far this has not been true at all, It's all based on whatever remains from the dust of every patch nerf bomb.
Encourage player interaction within the game and help them to learn how to counter by themselves. Instead of spoon feeding this community and encouraging bad behavior and stupidity. Perhaps then the community would in fact become better players, instead of better mathematicians.
You do not need to give us a new champion every week and cause power fluctuation. I would seriously not care if you spent the next 2-3 months developing new items, cleaning up bugs, and patching the game without a single release. Yes you would lose revenue, however I think it would be worth it in the long run for a popular, self-sustaining free to play competitive and casual game
You want to make money? Just release skins, my cheapest friends who normally pirate games will buy skins
And in this example, Force Staff causes its own slew of balance issues. DotA is a poor comparison for this argument because it's unconcerned with powercaps and has lots of hard-counters. That's an OK design direction, but it's not League's. "If everything's OP and there's hard counters, it's balanced" is a way to make a game. We don't think that game feels like you get a lot of type of counter-play we value.
World of Warcraft, nerfed it for exceptionally terrible players and ruined quality of the game in by doing so because players who were bad, refused to accept that and get better.
No, that's the lens of your personal values - you believe your values of game-playing (skill mastery) is the reason all players should play the game. Many people play the same games for different reasons.
I think that could be an issue with the use of the word 'mature' because having a sense of humor is way more mature than not having a sense of humor and just being all grit and grimdark the entire time.
LoL has lots of humorous champions but we haven't really had a silly champion since Lulu, so we should be due for one soon. Should be something to consider with your champion release rhythm I guess, it's all about variety.
Yeah I know I'm vocal and usually a pain but I appreciate that you guys, at the very least, pretend to listen; you could be like Bioware and berate forumgoers for raising valid points.
I meant in gameplay skill - game maturity being how mature the product is. Average player skill and game knowledge go up tons the longer a game is out.
In League, the example is "remember when the meta was so loose and open"? Well, yeah, when no one knows anything about what's optimal, people tend to do whatever they want
Or, sometimes, the changes are just bad. WoW was fun when you could have casual 25 man raids in WotLK. It stopped being fun in Cata when 25 man raids disappeared.
In SC2, the change to larger maps and ever increasing rush distances ruined it for me. I didn't like that a second Nexus/Hatchery/Command Center became the first building after supply structure/unit.
You could bury your head in the sand and insist that people left because they got bored or you could consider that your changes aren't universally loved.
Some changes are bad - and they can disengage players. I found Wrath of the Lich King less fun to raid than BC, but the reason I think it was a harmful direction was more what I think engages players overall - many of the things that do not engage me personally. "I quit WoW because there's not 40-man raids and now people other than me and my 39 friends can raid" is one of those things that would have low value, conversely.
The big difference in players get to think about their own experiences (and should!), where developers need to discover what groups of players need, what drives them, engages them and makes them feel rewarded.
This is a good point, but I would like to question the underlying assumption that the developer cannot do anything to make the player's experience better. While obviously reverting to a "less mature" state of play is not the answer, there are many things that developers can do to make a game less stagnant and resonate anew with the older gaming community.
For example, community in-game events are a great way of making a game fresh and exciting (see Valve's Halloween and Christmas events; or Blizzard's server-wide holiday events). New content is also a great method, but in this regard, new champions are not great examples of making the game and the experience feel new.
Apologies - not my intent with this post. It's that sometimes this occurs naturally and you'll get some of that no matter what (and determining where this happens is important), but changes and growth can additionally engage or disengage players. It's just one more factor to consider
I don't agree w/Yma Sumac's tone, but I do think he has some good points at the end. Why not focus on balance, item development, and updating old champions for a while and earn revenue more through skins for a period of time?
There are plenty of champions that need reworking, buffs, etc... that could make this game more enjoyable without releasing new champions for a while. I never cared about Annie in the least until her VU. Then I went out and bought her right away. I'll be getting the Panda Annie skin as well.
Also when I heard about Season 3 changes I was excited for new items, but disappointed when they removed items. Why not increase the item base and give players more options? Or does this create more potential for imbalance?
At times it feels like Riot is understaffed to do all the things they want to. It would be nice if they could cut back on some projects so they could clean up more of what we currently have.
Actually, you're kind of correct. The game and our scope has grown faster than we can keep up with everything we want to do - so we have to prioritize. We made a relaunches team recently, which is why Nidalee and Annie were able to be done so much more quickly than Kayle and Soraka.
Why do Game Developers think they know what the players want? What games failed you?
All it took was Burning Crusade (Second Expansion of WoW) to wreck the game for a lot of users. WOTLK was personally what was the last straw for me. The 2 games that disappointed me the most were, Maplestory & Gunz. With so many new jobs and monsters, what used to take beta/2005 users a year+ of grinding to get to level 170-ish not even 200. Now in 2013 a player can achieve level 200 in a week with NX Cash(Karma Coins)
Gunz 2 removed the ability to K-style and many other trick moves. This was what made the game unique in its own way. No other game came close to the combat system gunz had. You defied gravity and did it with style(armor and skills) The best part was you did not have to conform to learning K-style.The community created their own game style without aid of the Developers. Everyone knew their play style and joined rooms that complimented it. (People didn't get angry because you didn't go with the meta(K-style) there were i believe 4 other styles then sprayers)
TL;DR I fear Riot will fall into this way of thinking "We know what you want" I see it a little bit, but hopefully its nothing. I'm curious to see if anyone has felt this way about a game you used to play. I'd like to read the comments.
Determining what players want is actually pretty simple - your most invested users tend to be very vocal and will put effort into making sure they're heard (ie; most forumers!) This is a good metric of understanding what players want, at least for high-engagement folks.
What players need is where players don't proclaim a desire for something, but it helps provide something they say they want. Many times, this is more than a single solution - it requires several steps of implementation to reach a result, or takes time to bake in many cases. Let me provide two example of want vs need, and why want cannot be the only driver for developers;
At Riot, we nerf champions. Nerfs are rarely wanted (and many times, unwanted). But, players want to have a fair experience with a variety of options. Additionally, a game without power caps and heavy power creep (something still happening faster than I'd like...) can disrupt the core game design focused around choices, decision-making, and strategy. To accomplish this, we need to nerf champions, even if players don't explicitly want us to.
To use your example, in the pattern of Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, the changes to easier raid content and more accessibility is actually informed by a want that a lot of players expressed - IE, raids were content that was exclusive from them and they wanted a piece. I respect the guys who make WoW (and its success is a testament), but this is a good example of where the developers should have recognized the core need of exclusivity and the right tuning of that, and steered away from players said they wanted. Personally, I think Burning Crusade is a sweet spot.
The above is a fantastic example of why we have to make tough choices and not always just do what players ask us to do - it's not always the right course of action.
The problem you're speaking to, in my opinion, is when developers think they always have that answer and that being a developer gives you divination into what that is. In my mind, game development isn't about having answers - it's the ways in which you find them.
Our interaction on here isn't just lip-service, it's so we can better optimize decisions around player wants - and explain what players need when they don't want it. This informs us a lot, but we make decisions based on a number of factors - player desires and feedback being one of them.
I hope this helps explain how I feel about this, and how the developer/player interaction looks to me.
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instead of putting a bandaid on a problem, how about give players the tools to counter.
Instead of nerfing and simply paving the way for someone else to become indirectly more powerful and fotm. Instead of solving nothing, and causing a cyclic balance mess in where the community is herded around like sheep, not actually improving at the game but are so dependant on what fotm to jump to next because of patch notes
Introduce active items, encourage mechanics. In Dota, when Enigma and chaneled AOE ults was fotm, Icefrog rather than nerfing him, introduced force staff. The community learned to cope and Enigma was left untouched because the meta changed based on player actions. Force staff was not an immediate press X for win button counter, it required thinking, creativity, innovation and had many uses. You claim on your website that the game is driven by player choices, so far this has not been true at all, It's all based on whatever remains from the dust of every patch nerf bomb.
Encourage player interaction within the game and help them to learn how to counter by themselves. Instead of spoon feeding this community and encouraging bad behavior and stupidity. Perhaps then the community would in fact become better players, instead of better mathematicians.
You do not need to give us a new champion every week and cause power fluctuation. I would seriously not care if you spent the next 2-3 months developing new items, cleaning up bugs, and patching the game without a single release. Yes you would lose revenue, however I think it would be worth it in the long run for a popular, self-sustaining free to play competitive and casual game
You want to make money? Just release skins, my cheapest friends who normally pirate games will buy skins
LoL has lots of humorous champions but we haven't really had a silly champion since Lulu, so we should be due for one soon. Should be something to consider with your champion release rhythm I guess, it's all about variety.
Yeah I know I'm vocal and usually a pain but I appreciate that you guys, at the very least, pretend to listen; you could be like Bioware and berate forumgoers for raising valid points.
In League, the example is "remember when the meta was so loose and open"? Well, yeah, when no one knows anything about what's optimal, people tend to do whatever they want
In SC2, the change to larger maps and ever increasing rush distances ruined it for me. I didn't like that a second Nexus/Hatchery/Command Center became the first building after supply structure/unit.
You could bury your head in the sand and insist that people left because they got bored or you could consider that your changes aren't universally loved.
The big difference in players get to think about their own experiences (and should!), where developers need to discover what groups of players need, what drives them, engages them and makes them feel rewarded.
For example, community in-game events are a great way of making a game fresh and exciting (see Valve's Halloween and Christmas events; or Blizzard's server-wide holiday events). New content is also a great method, but in this regard, new champions are not great examples of making the game and the experience feel new.
There are plenty of champions that need reworking, buffs, etc... that could make this game more enjoyable without releasing new champions for a while. I never cared about Annie in the least until her VU. Then I went out and bought her right away. I'll be getting the Panda Annie skin as well.
Also when I heard about Season 3 changes I was excited for new items, but disappointed when they removed items. Why not increase the item base and give players more options? Or does this create more potential for imbalance?
At times it feels like Riot is understaffed to do all the things they want to. It would be nice if they could cut back on some projects so they could clean up more of what we currently have.