I’ve heard a few times now that ‘listening to the community is bad game design.’
Sense the last post was locked before I could comment on that, I will do that here.
Software design is the design of the tool for the user. Devs, when doing their job properly, live in service of the community that use their tools. If the devs feel that it’s their job to dictate to the community what the community should want, especially in a Free Software project, they really should stop being devs and go find something else to do.
This is a difficult enough mindset to fight in ‘proprietary land.’ But, as was noted in the previous post, at least there people can vote with their wallets and cause a project or company that ignores its community to go bankrupt if a critical mass doesn’t like the direction of the project.
Sadly, Free Software projects doesn’t give the users that ability to defend themselves from the whims of the devs.
The main saving grace that Free Software has that proprietary doesn’t is forking.
People faced a similar situation with GNOME 3. Everyone hated GNOME 3. They tried reasoning with the devs. They tried begging the devs. They tried bending GNOME 3 over backwards with community made extensions to try to add back in functionality that the wayward devs of GNOME 3 kept stripping out.
Finally, when the devs of GNOME 3 proved totally not open to reason, they forked the project into MATE. Major distros that used to use GNOME 3 eventually dropped it for other options because of how badly it sucks. It became the laughing stock of graphic desktops; all because it refused to fallow user design.
I had it out with them for some time in their forums before I eventually switched to KDE Plasma to finally get away from the insanity of a project that absolutely refused to listen to its users.
I really don’t see a game as any different than a tool or any other project in that regard.
I really don’t see a game as any different than a tool or any other project in that regard.
I’m sure you don’t, because you are establishing here the exact same false detail as if it was a universal fact, as you did before about the game. You can’t just declare that everyone is in agreement with you
edit
Good for you I guess, but for the rest of us getting useful accurate feedback is quite complex
I’ve heard a few times now that ‘listening to the community is bad game design.’
If you’re partly referring to my post, that’s not what I said. The contributors should definitely listen to the community for feedback. But I don’t think the majority of the player base are game designers and that should be accounted for when listening to their suggestions.
5 hours ago, EVIL_ED said:
Sadly, Free Software projects doesn’t give the users that ability to defend themselves from the whims of the devs.
You’re getting something someone else put labor into for the price of absolutely free. You make it sound like users are owed something from the contributors, who maliciously refuse to fulfill their commitment. The way this was written makes your post come across as extremely entitled.
Even if it was the case that the community is owed something, they can still “defend” themselves. They can create their own fork(s), catch the overflow of people who leave WizDen and point at the laughing stock of round-based multiplayer role playing games.
Not once has anyone said that listening to the community is bad game design. Feedback is always wanted (if it’s not childishly toxic) and play tests are to be bound.
The main point going across was adding everything that everyone wants or change or remove is not good and does not go anywhere. And yet apparently that’s generalized into “listening to the community is bad game design”
If we didn’t listen to the community at all 70% of the game would not exist. Some ideas and feedback were from new players that peaked the interest of a contributor (who you keep calling as a dev).
We’ve had many instances where things were added BY the community. Every contributor is part of the community. We’ve had bug fixes, changes, new additions from the community.
Discussions have been for the most part entitled as if you’re owed something.
Please do not try to continue this topic further, especially when you’re only resuming from a post that was locked.