Destination SkillQueue
Are We There Yet
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Posted - 2009.02.14 12:20:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Sheriff Jones
Edited by: Sheriff Jones on 14/02/2009 11:48:26
The one decicion i'd make to improve EVE is to stop listening to the players.
Now it sounds harsh at first, but the facts are these;
Any change will **** someone off.
Any change will make someone else "less".
People are never happy, not even with megakill3000 implants that pop the whole EVEverse at a whim.
So do what you want, change what you see fit, and most importantly let the players know that complaining is useless because "that's how EVE is".
I wouldn't expect a detective to listen to a barkeep on how to solve a murder, i don't expect professional game developers to listen to our "common man" on how to do their job.
Your analogue about the detective is pretty horrible(I know you fancy being a law enforcement officer, but you really aren't  ) and I think you know it. Players are not professionals, but they interact with the product constantly and have a pretty good idea when something is working and when it could use improvement. They are also the people CCP has to please to a degree, if they want to keep their own game alive. So it is not stupid to listen to the players. In fact it would be grossly stupid to ignore them.
However it would be stupid to allow players alone to dictate the how the game should be developed. Players are focused on their own little part of the game and their comments should and propably are treated as such. They offer ideas and suggestions, but it is the professional game designer, that manages the big picture and decides what ideas might fit and be feasible to implement.
So I guess in my view the game designer is the one in charge and the players act as an nearly limitless pool of ideas and suggestions, that you can take advantage of. Players know their own little area of specialisation very well and how those could be improved further. Players also actually play the game, so they can tell you how the mechanic that a designer implemented is actually used in the game. Players are pretty resourseful in finding ways to game the system and those loopholes might make the intended design irrelevant. |