Destination SkillQueue
Are We There Yet
4422
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Posted - 2013.02.03 10:22:00 -
[1] - Quote
CCP uses the forums all the time, but their decisions aren't determined solely by them nor are their priorities. This doesn't mean forums can't greatly influence that decision making or raise issues to urgent priorities. More often it's a case of CCP deciding to tackle some issue or feature and using the existing forum discussions as a tool to gauge peoples reaction, argument for and against, get feedback and get ideas. Forum discussion also lets us to spread ideas among ourselves, which can then influence CCP through outside channels. It's a powerful tool for spreading your ideas, but ignoring other information sources and relying solely on forum noise would be a pretty dumb thing for CCP to do.
For example the clone system, both medical and jump, will be reworked at some point. CCP will be the one to determine the goals of that change, but even that will be partly based on the discussions people have had about those system and the means to achieve them will certainly be influenced by forum discussions about them. It's just unrealistic to expect a forum discussion to immediately lead to drastic changes to the game even if every player and every devs reading it agreed on an issue. There are hundreds of good ideas and thousands of bad ones being suggested and CCP can maybe tackle a few dozen of them per expansion.
A lot of ideas do get to be implemented even if the method isn't exactly what was suggested. Just from the top of my head Wormhole space as it is in the game today was requested many years before it was implemented. The skillqueue was debated for years on a constant basis before the pressure mounted enough for CCP to get around to adding it. Getting CCP to nerf nanofags was also a glorious moment in forum drama. Changing the mission agents system from the old complex/random one to a system close the the current one was suggested by many. I'm sure large number of the changes made to the game have been influenced by the forums in one form or another.
I think it pretty clear, that the forums have a great influence on how this game is being developed. It just doesn't mean CCP relies only on the forums to make design decisions or that every stupid idea that gets spammed over and over again is ever going to be implemented. Genuinely good ideas tend to get integrated to the game in some form sooner or later though. |