New MMORPG Age

[the_real_seebs]

I think Trion has started to do something which I imagine they will run with for quite some time: Gradually phasing in new kinds of content, so that eventually (by Storm Legion or so) you'll be able to play through the game for months without ever doing the "traditional" quests/dungeons/raids content. Or you can do that if it's what you like. And over time, I think that's the goal; develop new models that can coexist.

[Antigonos]

to understand what the players want. .

the problem is: The players themselve have ABSOLUTLY no clue what they want ...

[the_real_seebs]

the problem is: The players themselve have ABSOLUTLY no clue what they want ...

And they don't all want the same things.

But they want to play with other people who don't necessarily want the same things...

I don't like PvP; I do like dungeons (sometimes) and RP and fishing. Sometimes I like to hang out and chat with people while I fish. Sometimes those people are only playing the game because they like the PvP, or the raids. So my experience is improved by the game offering things I don't want.

[Samfortal]

I said little balance, like something not ridiculous ehhehe.

But the important is: Trion need to keep going to the right way...

[Goldenwing]

the problem is: The players themselve have ABSOLUTLY no clue what they want ...

If you had said the "average" player has no clue what they want, I might have agreed. However, I can't even get behind that statement.

There are players who know exactly what they want. And the problem is finding an MMO that provides it.


Rift has an excellent soul system. They have a decent game, small in size. It had developers that had transparency in dealing with its customers. The devs are obviously commited to quality. There are continued attempts at innovative game play within the business framework the devs have chosen.

The framework is a business decision. Usually those are based on marketing research, red teams, etcetera.

Currently Rift is apparently aimed at 2 market segments, with an attempt at a third (e.g. "casuals" who fish, instanced raiders and instanced PvP sans tournament ladders.)

It is predicated on a model that defines guilds as only those that are sized for 10 and 20 man instanced raiding.

It has abandoned some of the gameplay that provided diversity and is now concentrated on "fish", "raid" and "hang in there with us, we're working on PvP, really!"


There is a huge gap in the middle between "casual" and "raiding" that most MMORPGs flush along the way, not understanding that customers cannot be clumped into "average" player labels placed in simple boxes.
"Smearing the line between hardcore and casual" has yet to actually occur with the exception of one game in a player requested one-off server that the devs originally resisted for years. That smearing did not exclude players based on guild size, like most post-2003 games. I digress.

My guild and I know exactly what we want from MMORPG gameplay. And we know which games have provided which pieces over the last dozen years. Our job has been to find one that fits our needs/desires the best.. Sometimes we come close, and then the devs change business direction, usually without discernable marketing research.

------------

@OP: good job caring enough about the game and Trion to try and get a dialogue going. I could/would add to it, but sadly, my guild and I gave it our best shot months ago and are in the process of moving on.

Trion has, in the past, been open to experimenting with gameplay. They collect numbers and data based and adjust accordingly. All framed, now apparently, within the constraints of "fish, raid, instanced PvP".

Good luck. It's worth a try. Rift is a quality little game. I hope it and Trion continue to grow.

[the_real_seebs]

I think the point about "not knowing what they want" assertions is that often players are happier if they aren't getting what they "want" -- our expectations of what will make us happy are often pretty unreliable. There's a reason I have that "learn 2 play" link.

[Goldenwing]

I think the point about "not knowing what they want" assertions is that often players are happier if they aren't getting what they "want" -- our expectations of what will make us happy are often pretty unreliable. There's a reason I have that "learn 2 play" link.

Warning: long post. TL : DR version: proper marketing analysis demonstrates that most customers know exactly what they want.




I think I get what you’re doing here, and the reasoning behind this remark. I’m also very concerned that the logic presented above is both flawed and inappropriate for the situation.

To translate, I think you’re basically making two claims:

First, that “players” (which is an average and therefore by definition is flawed) are a capricious lot, and somehow derive masochistic satisfaction from not having what they desire in an enjoyable gaming context.

Second, I think you’re also claiming that more often in not in an MMO context the “players” are at fault for their unhappiness with a particular MMO because they don’t like the things that content producers provide.

Here’s the root of my concern with this logic.

First, both of these lines of thinking make two crucially flawed assumptions. One, that because the sum of all players may have conflicting perspectives, interests, desires, wants, and requirements, all of the constituent parts of that whole must also be equally conflicted. This dilemma is what market segmentation is for. Businesses that are interested in being relevant, much less competent, much less competitive, and still less successful need to understand their customer-base. Not the whole base, but each of the constituent parts, analyzed along many axes. This should be a time-consuming process that requires substantial time, energy, effort, and resources. This is also an business basic.

To illustrate this point: let’s say I live in a small town where I run a movie theater. Because it’s a small town, it’s also a small theater, and let’s say I only have one screening room in this theater. That means I have to decide which movies I’m going to show. This automatically means I’m not going to please everyone every time I show a movie. So, it is a given that not everyone can be satisfied with every decision that is made. It’s also not the issue at hand here.

The issue at hand is emphatically not that the movie theater manager has done his homework, understands what everyone wants to see, and is doing the best thing on some sound business and marketing principle, and that this is simply the best result that the nature of the problem and the system is capable of reasonably producing. In our example, here’s what that would look like:

In this small town, about 1000 people like going out to see movies on a regular basis. Some quick savvy polling of a group of 100 people deemed to be representative of that 1000 people concluded that about 40% of viewers like action flicks, 50% like romantic comedies, 40% like horror movies, 30% like screwball comedies, 10% like zombie apocalypse movies, and another 25% like watching animated kids’ movies. Further savvy analysis then concludes that there’s strong overlap between the romantic comedy audience and the screwball comedy audience. This analysis concluded that there’s also strong overlap between the horror movie audience and the zombie apocalypse audience. Given these second-order synergies found in the analysis, which involved objective data, facts, and proper analysis, it looks like the best coverage of the total population (measured as showing a movie that the greatest number of people will probably like) can be delivered by showing either romantic comedies or action flicks. At this point, there’s a business decision involved (since there’s only one theater available) about whether to try to focus exclusively on the larger market (that is, spam either romcoms or action flicks) or to try and deliver half-and-half, enough to reasonably satisfy both audiences with the amount of resources available (say, show half romcoms and half action flicks) or whether to expand that partial delivery to cover more types of films (say, showing a reasonably measured rotation of romcom, screwball, action, and horror flicks). Some more savvy polling about how often each kind of theater-goer goes to the theater per week and per month, and at what times they prefer, can help refine this. For example, this further study may find that the combined romcom and screwball audiences (with their overlap) go to the movies three times more often than the action and horror audiences (with their overlap). This would be really helpful information in deciding which mixture of films is going to be best both for the business and for everyone in the town who loves going to the theater. It might also show that the romcom audience and the screwball audience tend to go to the movies at different times or on different days, whereas the action and horror audiences tend to land on the same days. This would further help optimize the decision-making.

This is a painfully crude and brutally simplified example of how basic market segmentation should work to help create outcomes with limited resources that are the best possible for both customers (who are your bread, your butter, and the roof over your head) and for the business.

If the best outcome given this careful analysis and sophisticated marketing segmentation is to run a mixture of mostly action and horror flicks in the early evenings and romantic comedies late at night, with a handful of animated kids’ movies in the early afternoon, then the argument that sometimes it’s just not possible to do any better than the nature of the problem and the system allows is perfectly valid.

That is completely, utterly not what appears to be happening in Rift.

My concern is that in Rift, that movie theater is run much more like the manager (and his team) started out for roughly a year by analyzing the market and deciding to create a narrow niche theater that competes with the little theater down the street, plays roughly the same movies to a much smaller audience, but does it at a much higher quality with a much more pleasant experience. After that year, however, it began to appear that the manager was not even thinking, much less asking, much less surveying, much less systematically surveying, much less analyzing at a reasonably acceptable business level the preferences of his customer base. This is what the major discussion on this board back a few months ago was about: a failure of market segmentation by Trion.

When the manager of the theater has come out and selected that mixture of movies to the best of his ability given his resources after putting some sound thinking into it, then yes, customers coming back and arguing “Hey, you’re not showing the movie I want to see!” while they still have the right to remind the theater manager that they would like to be customers but who are not being catered to, okay, it’s reasonable to say that the theater manager is doing the best that they can.

But when the theater manager starts showing grade-B action flicks from several years ago nonstop, completely cuts out the entire romcom and screwball market, and seems to be randomly selecting an ad hoc mixture of Barney, Teletubbies, and Looney Tunes to show in the afternoons, it is completely unreasonable to attack customers who care about and have fond memories of that movie theater from pointing out the fact that the theater they love is clearly in trouble and is no longer successfully meeting the basic needs, much less innovating, the needs of any of their audiences.

This is what’s happening here.

The “average” player, like the “average” human being who is half male and half female, is obviously going to seem somewhat chaotic. But if you start breaking that comically false average down into its constituent parts—which is a business basic in 2012—it quickly becomes obvious that there are tradeoffs, that tradeoffs need to be made, and where it is in the best interest both of the greatest possible number of customers and the company to invest the most. To claim that the “average” customer cannot be pleased, and that therefore no player can be pleased is an utter fallacy. This is like saying “everyone” in the theater example wants to watch a mixture of romantic comedy, action, horror, screwball, or kids’ movies, nobody has any idea what they want to watch and therefore it’s a waste of time to try to show movies. It also has nothing to do with reality, and if acted on, will make the competition down the street who understands basic market segmentation a great deal of money.

But the real core issue here is this assumption that because a customer is putting their hand up and pointing out that the emperor has no clothes on, well, surely it’s the customer’s own failure for having poor fashion sense that revolves around someone actually wearing clothes.


Yes, there are some players who are impossible to please. There are some food critics who are perfectly content to walk into a five-star restaurant and claim that they find the Don Perignon too flat for their tastes, and the meal prepared at the Four Seasons bland. As a business person, you just need to write these people off.

But when moviegoers stop coming to your theater, and many try out of love for that theater on the way out to point out why (the action and horror flicks seem to be screened at the worst possible time for those audiences, the romcoms and screwball comedies are being screened at the worst possible times for them, the movie selection seems to be ad hoc and stale, they haven’t played a kids’ movie produced in the past five years, and all of these things can be easily fixed) then as a customer, there’s not much choice that you’re left with.


Pointing this out and never coming back (after multiple tries at adapting and warning), isn’t being unreasonable or impossible to please at all. It’s about having reasonable expectations that are not being met.

I’m just trying to figure out how in the world anyone can blame the customer for not wanting to watch the right movies for the theater manager’s whims with a straight face.



-Understands EXACTLY which movies (games) make me happy, which ones I want to see (play), and has absolutely RELIABLE expectations based on a pattern of previous experience.




Summary: proper marketing analysis demonstrates that most customers know exactly what they want.

[the_real_seebs]

No, no. I'm not talking about the set of all players.

I am talking about what actually happens when you ask people what they want and then provide them with it. Which is that, very often, they are unhappy.

Executive summary: Players complain that grind is too long and they want to get places faster. If you provide them with faster (say, just reduce XP totals needed, changing NOTHING mechanically), they are then bored. They are, amazingly, less happy than they were with the "too long" grind.

This happens across any number of things players say they want. And it's in no way limited to MMOs; the world is full of people who believe they want something, but getting it does not actually make them happy.

So, no. The entire premise that I am somehow talking about broad selections of players and how some players might be unhappy with things other players want is just plain wrong. I am talking about a problem that you would face if you had an infinitely large development budget and the best programmers in the world and only a single player. If you made the game the player asked for, granted every feature request and change request, the player would not be happy. The player would find that the game just plain sucked, and would eventually fall back on the theory that the concept was tired, or games like this just aren't good anymore.

This can even apply to taste. I know perfectly well that I really enjoy elves/dragons/magic fantasy settings, and will nearly always enjoy a game in such settings. I also know that I really dislike dark and gritty settings. So in theory, I should avoid games that have a non-magic setting which is dark or gloomy and such. And yet... Fallout. Wow. Fallout was an amazing game, that by all rights I should have utterly loathed. But I heard enough people say enough about it to try it, and it turned out to be a really amazing game that really worked for me.

And yes, a lot of this is a matter of taste. I personally really enjoy the mix of more-familiar and less-familiar game experiences Rift has, but I can easily see people being pretty sick of them. There is a lot of care and polish in here, but somewhere deep down, this is still That Fantasy Adventure. The basic combat mechanics are still very closely tied to the EQ heritage and basic conception of how games are structured. And if you don't like that gameplay, you're probably not going to suddenly start liking it, so it makes sense that you'd go looking elsewhere. (I am like *this* close to buying into TSW just because a lot of what I hear about them makes me feel like supporting them whether or not I have time to actually play their game. ... in fact, so close that thinking about it again convinced me.)

But the main point I'm getting at is: Even if you talk to a single well-educated, thoughtful, introspective player with substantial experience, if you just do everything they think they want they will be less happy than if you do a good job of game design while basically ignoring them. That's not to say you can't do better by paying attention to what they want, but "paying attention to" and "doing without question" are not the same thing.

[Goldenwing]

1) I agree that (as we say in the industry) you cannot have a committee design a camel (the outcome will not resemble anything anyone wanted leaving everyone unhappy.)

2) And I agree that a developer has to have a clear vision of what they wish their game to be. And they need to use discretion when adding content/modifications in order to preserve the integrity of that vision as well as their game.


I will continue to disagree about using generic statements regarding players, their happiness with a game and the correlation regarding providing them with things they want. It smacks too much of patronizing developers that view their customers as errant little toddlers that are not worthy of respect or consideration and therefore totally disposable. It begins to reek of an arrogant excuse for a sub-par experience with a condescendingly dismissive statement of "we know better than you, so you need to play the way we tell you to." Developers like that, particularly those that blatantly state that create attrition. And yes, there are plenty of news articles/interviews that demonstrate exactly that.

Do not conflate unreasonable customer expectations with an inferior product.


Now, I do absolutely agree that an unreasonable customer is something that just flat needs to be ignored.

However, there is a huge chasm between what appears to be an unreasonable customer and a developer who is suddenly delivering an inferior quality product (which may also coincidentally exclude said customer's prefered gameplay.)


Let me put this simply. I have been buying custom suits from the same tailor for years. I love the quality of the material, the cut, and they fit perfectly. One day, I walk back into the shop and the tailor has decided to sell me a suit that is made of inferior fabric and is only in 2 sizes, neither of which fits me.

The tailor tells me to lose weight and gain height in order to fit into the suit.

The tailor has changed his business model and blames me for being too short and too fat even though my weight/height has been reliably consistent for years!

I leave.

I am not an unreasonable customer.

The tailor may have done some marketing and may have decided that it is better business (for him) to provide cheap off-the-rack suits in only 2 sizes (fish or raid).

The tailor is ABSOLUTELY unreasonable in expecting me to change MY consisten expectations for a quality suit that fits in order to continue to provide him money.

[Bheale]

the problem is: The players themselve have ABSOLUTLY no clue what they want ...

I disagree. MMO customers, although diverse, are here for an entertainment/emotional experience. The technology, art, and game mechanics are simply tools for achieving that experience.

Something like a cross between going to a movie and going to a resort hotel. When I go to a movie, I want an immersive experience, with which I can engage or identify...and in my case with characters of depth, a non immersion breaking backdrop, and perhaps even a plot that reaches what feels to me like a conclusion.

How the director and actors achieve that is their job. Whether they use special effects, or talented actors, or talented writers...is their choice. Whether I get up and walk out is my choice.

A resort hotel is different...maybe. It's not just a room with four walls and a toilet. There is an experience walking onto the grounds. There is an experience walking into the lobby. The restaurants. The beach, pool, or whatever else it has. In the end it's how I feel about having been there, not the technical detail of marble here or how many steps from the lobby to the elevator.

In an MMO I am looking for an immersive experience, with challenging content, that I can experience over the course of years at my own pace and with the three other people i have gamed with for over a decade. Other players might perhaps put PvP or instanced raiding on their lists, but they're not on mine.

So do I know what I want? Yes. Can I turn this into a list of technical features? No, and I don't want to put that constraint on the developers either. I can say that the old Mythic "gladiators in space" PvE game that never got off the ground has a really stupid premise, but if they had brought it to market I would have judged it on game play, not on a feature checklist.

Think about it.

[the_real_seebs]

I am not talking about unreasonable customers, and I am not talking about the committee-design problem.

I am saying that, in every field, not just gaming, people consistently want things which actually make them less happy than other things which they feel they do not want. People are simply not all that reliable at evaluations, and in particular, they're very bad at figuring out how they would react to something else they are not currently reacting to.

In short, if you ask people what they think of their food, and how it might be improved, they will consistently make suggestions such that, if you followed a given person's suggestion and none of the others, and just gave them exactly what they suggested they'd like better, it is not at all certain that they will be happier with it. In fact, it's moderately likely that they will be less happy with it.

This has nothing to do with arrogance. It's not as though game designers are immune to this. Specialists in a field tend to do better in their field, sure; game designers might be more likely to correctly anticipate what would make them enjoy a game more... But they're still going to be unable to give useful advice to chefs. And chefs won't be able to tell you what they want from electronic gizmos. And so on.

People consistently hold false beliefs about what they like, about what they enjoy, about what makes them happy. The things they say are important to them in books and movies are not the things that make the experiences they are happiest about and most engaged by. The things they say are important to them in food are not the things that actually result in them having the best dining experiences. And so on.

And yes, it applies to video games too, just as it applies to basically everything else humans do.

I'm not saying you personally aren't good at identifying your preferences, and should listen to people who are better; I am saying that every single human being, ever is bad at identifying their own preferences. Not spectacularly bad (we are not worse at it than, say, random strangers, most of the time), but bad enough that it's pretty shocking if you are assuming that people are reliable in these matters. And in particular, bad enough that specialists in a field can frequently do a much better job by disregarding, filtering, or translating what their customers say they want.

This by no means leads to the conclusion that you are wrong to think Rift isn't working out for you; I'm not arguing about the specific case, but about the very general rule. And the very consistent rule among humans, throughout every field we've yet studied, is that they do not really know what they want. This is why so many people are frustrated and unhappy; because they are spending all their effort pursuing things that aren't actually important to them. People are easily confused on these issues; learning to be more self-aware is a major endeavor, and I know very few people who have gotten all that far in it.

[Bheale]

No, no. I'm not talking about the set of all players.

I am talking about what actually happens when you ask people what they want and then provide them with it. Which is that, very often, they are unhappy.

Executive summary: Players complain that grind is too long and they want to get places faster. If you provide them with faster (say, just reduce XP totals needed, changing NOTHING mechanically), they are then bored. They are, amazingly, less happy than they were with the "too long" grind.

This happens across any number of things players say they want. And it's in no way limited to MMOs; the world is full of people who believe they want something, but getting it does not actually make them happy.

So, no. The entire premise that I am somehow talking about broad selections of players and how some players might be unhappy with things other players want is just plain wrong. I am talking about a problem that you would face if you had an infinitely large development budget and the best programmers in the world and only a single player. If you made the game the player asked for, granted every feature request and change request, the player would not be happy. The player would find that the game just plain sucked, and would eventually fall back on the theory that the concept was tired, or games like this just aren't good anymore.

This can even apply to taste. I know perfectly well that I really enjoy elves/dragons/magic fantasy settings, and will nearly always enjoy a game in such settings. I also know that I really dislike dark and gritty settings. So in theory, I should avoid games that have a non-magic setting which is dark or gloomy and such. And yet... Fallout. Wow. Fallout was an amazing game, that by all rights I should have utterly loathed. But I heard enough people say enough about it to try it, and it turned out to be a really amazing game that really worked for me.

And yes, a lot of this is a matter of taste. I personally really enjoy the mix of more-familiar and less-familiar game experiences Rift has, but I can easily see people being pretty sick of them. There is a lot of care and polish in here, but somewhere deep down, this is still That Fantasy Adventure. The basic combat mechanics are still very closely tied to the EQ heritage and basic conception of how games are structured. And if you don't like that gameplay, you're probably not going to suddenly start liking it, so it makes sense that you'd go looking elsewhere. (I am like *this* close to buying into TSW just because a lot of what I hear about them makes me feel like supporting them whether or not I have time to actually play their game. ... in fact, so close that thinking about it again convinced me.)

But the main point I'm getting at is: Even if you talk to a single well-educated, thoughtful, introspective player with substantial experience, if you just do everything they think they want they will be less happy than if you do a good job of game design while basically ignoring them. That's not to say you can't do better by paying attention to what they want, but "paying attention to" and "doing without question" are not the same thing.

(see my post above)

I agree that in the history of MUDs -- and to an extent MMOs -- the death of a game is usually a vocal group of players demanding the dungeon master make a series of changes which in the end kill the game. In that sense it is the devs' job to have a clear vision of what the game is and is not, and to choose the input they respond to. Failing to carry out this role is game destroying.

However, it's also true that, starting with the blank canvas of a new game, each major assertion, step, or change the devs make removes a set of potential customers. I'd like to use the movie analogy again. Let's say that there is a movie which is basically a mushy romantic comedy, but the advertising and reviews are ambiguous and the audience which steps into the theater to watch it on opening day is very diverse. Now let's further say the director isn't clear on what customers he wants the film to appeal to, and the people funding the movie are not smart enough to withhold funding until he does. Back to opening day: the lights go down, music plays, opening scene is ten minutes of the most boring lecture by a university professor you have ever seen. Everyone under 25 gets up and walks out. Then there's a plot free come on by some barely clad female, and most of the adult women leave. Then there's ten minutes of really intense chase scene, a million dollars of automobilies smashed to bits, and most of the older folks leave. Then the leading man gets out of one of the car chase cars, the leading lady puts some clothes on, and they have a very nice "chick flick" romantic comedy. When it's over, the lights come on and there are 10 people left in what was a sold out opening day theater.

What happened?

The director didn't know what the experience he wanted to deliver was, and also didn't know who the customers were who would find the *overall entertainment experience* most compelling. Not knowing who the customers were he didn't know what *not* to have in the movie: didn't know what experiences to preserve. Didn't know instinctively what not to do. Didn't know what would be immersion breaking for the customers. Didn't know what would offend to the point of people walking out.

Now notice, I'm not talking about the detail mechanics. Per earlier post, not talking about the special effects, or the camera work, or the casting, or the writing, or the detail mechanics. Those are all the director's job. I can say "I like special effects" or "I like plots about spaceships" or "I like fantasy settings, particularly sword and sorcery". But in the end it's the overall experience that matters.

It's my job to decide if the director is delivering an interesting experience, even if it's not the one I thought I was coming for, and choose whether to see the movie through to the end, or to cut my losses and walk out.

Devs who completely ignore or belittle their customers will, no matter how strong the start, drive those customers away.

Devs who change direction repeatedly will serially drive off groups of customers until no one is left.

Devs who have a clear picture of who their customers are, and the discipline to stick to that picture and deliver a consistent world to their customers with a consistent experience, and who know which customers their target is and more importantly is not, and who align their marketing and messaging to customers who will enjoy the experience self select to buy/join the game, and customers who do not want that kind of experience will stay away, will be successful...if, and only if, they execute well.

I think we agree here, but don't agree. I think we agree that devs should have a clear vision of the world they are creating, and stick to it, and not eviscerate the game by caving to the vocal few. But I think we disagree over whether a player should constantly be evaluating the game and the devs for is this game an experience worthy of my time investment and can I trust the dev to keep it that way. I think the player should ask that question every day, and leave if the answer becomes and stays no. My sense is that you disagree. That's OK.

[Goldenwing]

I am not talking about unreasonable customers, and I am not talking about the committee-design problem.

I am saying that, in every field, not just gaming, people consistently want things which actually make them less happy than other things which they feel they do not want. People are simply not all that reliable at evaluations, and in particular, they're very bad at figuring out how they would react to something else they are not currently reacting to.

In short, if you ask people what they think of their food, and how it might be improved, they will consistently make suggestions such that, if you followed a given person's suggestion and none of the others, and just gave them exactly what they suggested they'd like better, it is not at all certain that they will be happier with it. In fact, it's moderately likely that they will be less happy with it.

This has nothing to do with arrogance. It's not as though game designers are immune to this. Specialists in a field tend to do better in their field, sure; game designers might be more likely to correctly anticipate what would make them enjoy a game more... But they're still going to be unable to give useful advice to chefs. And chefs won't be able to tell you what they want from electronic gizmos. And so on.

People consistently hold false beliefs about what they like, about what they enjoy, about what makes them happy. The things they say are important to them in books and movies are not the things that make the experiences they are happiest about and most engaged by. The things they say are important to them in food are not the things that actually result in them having the best dining experiences. And so on.

And yes, it applies to video games too, just as it applies to basically everything else humans do.

I'm not saying you personally aren't good at identifying your preferences, and should listen to people who are better; I am saying that every single human being, ever is bad at identifying their own preferences. Not spectacularly bad (we are not worse at it than, say, random strangers, most of the time), but bad enough that it's pretty shocking if you are assuming that people are reliable in these matters. And in particular, bad enough that specialists in a field can frequently do a much better job by disregarding, filtering, or translating what their customers say they want.

This by no means leads to the conclusion that you are wrong to think Rift isn't working out for you; I'm not arguing about the specific case, but about the very general rule. And the very consistent rule among humans, throughout every field we've yet studied, is that they do not really know what they want. This is why so many people are frustrated and unhappy; because they are spending all their effort pursuing things that aren't actually important to them. People are easily confused on these issues; learning to be more self-aware is a major endeavor, and I know very few people who have gotten all that far in it.

I acknowledge your opinion. I am sorry you have not run into enough people who fully understand who they are and what their desires are. My experience has been otherwise. Experience leads me to respectfully disagree. However, if you'd like to have a psychological or philosophical discussion we could do that in another thread.


PS: See my husband's post directly under mine. We are the same age. (However, I have driven a Chevy Trailblazer since the first one rolled off the assembly line. They got the features I wanted right. )

[Bheale]

I am not talking about unreasonable customers, and I am not talking about the committee-design problem.

I am saying that, in every field, not just gaming, people consistently want things which actually make them less happy than other things which they feel they do not want. People are simply not all that reliable at evaluations, and in particular, they're very bad at figuring out how they would react to something else they are not currently reacting to.

In short, if you ask people what they think of their food, and how it might be improved, they will consistently make suggestions such that, if you followed a given person's suggestion and none of the others, and just gave them exactly what they suggested they'd like better, it is not at all certain that they will be happier with it. In fact, it's moderately likely that they will be less happy with it.

This has nothing to do with arrogance. It's not as though game designers are immune to this. Specialists in a field tend to do better in their field, sure; game designers might be more likely to correctly anticipate what would make them enjoy a game more... But they're still going to be unable to give useful advice to chefs. And chefs won't be able to tell you what they want from electronic gizmos. And so on.

People consistently hold false beliefs about what they like, about what they enjoy, about what makes them happy. The things they say are important to them in books and movies are not the things that make the experiences they are happiest about and most engaged by. The things they say are important to them in food are not the things that actually result in them having the best dining experiences. And so on.

And yes, it applies to video games too, just as it applies to basically everything else humans do.

I'm not saying you personally aren't good at identifying your preferences, and should listen to people who are better; I am saying that every single human being, ever is bad at identifying their own preferences. Not spectacularly bad (we are not worse at it than, say, random strangers, most of the time), but bad enough that it's pretty shocking if you are assuming that people are reliable in these matters. And in particular, bad enough that specialists in a field can frequently do a much better job by disregarding, filtering, or translating what their customers say they want.

This by no means leads to the conclusion that you are wrong to think Rift isn't working out for you; I'm not arguing about the specific case, but about the very general rule. And the very consistent rule among humans, throughout every field we've yet studied, is that they do not really know what they want. This is why so many people are frustrated and unhappy; because they are spending all their effort pursuing things that aren't actually important to them. People are easily confused on these issues; learning to be more self-aware is a major endeavor, and I know very few people who have gotten all that far in it.

If you look at how Toyota overtook GM in the U.S. car market, it was because GM focused on designing the cars they wanted and Toyota had the analytic discipline to tie every feature they put in a car to specific customer needs. If you ever have a spare week and want to learn how, take the "Quality Function Deployment (QFD)" class some consultant out of Detroit still teaches.

I learned to drive while that fight was going on, almost 40 years ago, and I drive a Toyota.

[the_real_seebs]

I acknowledge your opinion.

Ahh, yes, "opinion". It's like my "opinion" that the Sun is larger than the Earth, which is round. And as long as we call it an "opinion", everyone's is equally valid, and it doesn't matter if one side is the subject of immense amounts of peer-reviewed scientific study, and the other has never once been demonstrated.

I am not talking about my personal experience. I'm talking about the entire body of research in the field, ever. Yes, there are some people who have a really good idea what their desires are. They're rare enough that most religions have words for them, because they are categorically unlike other people, and the transformation is pretty much obvious to everyone.

And interestingly, they mostly acknowledge that they don't know all that much, because they know enough to know there's more out there. The people who are certain are rarely the ones who are right; it's the Dunning-Kruger effect all over again.

Science: It works.