Topic: Listening to the fans - pro or contra?

[KDR_11k]

Since I saw a lot of articles (ok, two: GameSpy's S/CS and CubeEurpe's Roundtable) on the topic of whether fan input should be listened to or whether it should be ignored I felt the need to talk about that stuff a bit, if just to get my thoughts written down.

PRO
Fans are the people who will buy the game. That's pretty obvious. They usually have played the game (or its precedessor) to death and know every single weak point of the balancing. Unlike developers they aren't blinded by the development process (creating a piece makes you blind for its faults, only after taking a long break from it you can make somewhat objective decisions about it) and can see the flaws the devs might no longer be able to see.

CONTRA (my position)
Fans are often blinded as well. They love a certain part of a game and want to defend it against any change they don't think of as favourable. They don't play the development builds, they have no idea how the change influences the experience.
I can cite Trackmania as an example: The game (racing/puzzle) has no collision with other cars. While that seems like a major fault at first, the devs explained their decision to remove car collision: It was impossible to drive a perfect race and got really frustrating after 5 minutes. Would an outside person have known this? No. They'd complain loudly.
Not every obvious change would have been a change for the better.
Some (or maybe most) fans don't know that much about the balancing in the reference game and will want features that would seriously imbalance the game just because they seem logical (say, enabling walking on certain material or jumping at certain places).
Also, fans are contradicting and slightly conservative. Some want more powerful weapons, others want weaker weapons. Some want more realism, others don't. Who would you prefer over the other?
Imagine Sunshine had no waterpack. You think it'd be better? Be honest, wouldn't you have shouted at Nintendo for "rehashing" an older game? Sunshine has puzzles around the waterpack. Those wouldn't work with the SM64 gameplay.
In one article they said many people just want additional content for the first game to lengthen the good experience they had. But ask yourself, would that work? Every gameplay has its limits and those might have been reached by the first game. If they tried another game with the same mechanics they might run out of ideas for the levels. You'd shout at them for becoming repetitive. A game cannot be stretched to any length. Maybe they didn't have any ideas for more levels for Pikmin? Would you have liked them to just repeat the same levels over and over again (*cough*Halo*cough*)?

I guess that block could have been reduced to less than half while still saying the same. I'm too tired, though. Night.

[Bill Aurion]

Fan input should be absolutely minimal...Everyone has their own gaming tastes(or lack thereof) and input would just be contradictory...Just leave the pros to do the innovation, please...

[Hostile Creation]

Agreed, leave it to the experts.  There are a few fans who might understand the workings of the ideas behind the games (you seem pretty informed), but the people making the games are making the games for a reason.

One of the reasons why so many American games have an unusual aptitude for sucking is because they're all just a bunch of fanboys that want to be the real thing.  They don't actually have any ideas, they just think they can improve upon on old idea, and it does not work.

[Munky]

I think fan input should be kept to a simple "Do you like this idea? Why or why not?".

[Ian Sane]

"Imagine Sunshine had no waterpack. You think it'd be better?"

If they merely made the exact same game without the waterpack it would have been worse.  However if they never planned to use the waterpack period and thus didn't have the tropical island theme or the emphasis on water based puzzles it probably would have been better.  But that of course would have been a complete different game.

Anyway I think fan input is important to some extent provided that the fan requests are very generic.  If there is a high demand for a sequel for example I think it makes sense to make one.  If a game series goes in a completely new direction and the fans backlash against I think it would be smart to go back to the old format or at least release two formats like Nintendo has done with Metroid Prime and Fusion.  Listening to fan input becomes dangerous when the change is very specific.  If a group of fans suggested that the sword fighting in Zelda should be made super realistic it would be risky to implement that change because the desire for such a change isn't going to be so universal.

Actually I find the ideal source for feedback would be reviewers since they usually tend to have some idea what they're talking about.  If I'm complaining in a forum about how the bombs in Zelda are unrealistic and thus should be removed my opinion is less valid than if all three reviewers in EGM say that the game is too easy.

It's tricky.  Blatantly ignoring your fans is foolish yet at the same time you can't do everything they want.  I think if I was a game designer when making a sequel I would look at the general complaints made by most people and only listen to improvement suggestions (this menu is too cluttered) instead of outright changes (they should make it an FPS).

[Grey Ninja]

If you listen to the fans, you get no innovation.

If Nintendo had listened to the Zelda fans, what would Wind Waker have been like?

If Microsoft had a focus group decide what the Xbox controller should be like... wait... that did happen, and it sucked!

My point is that in order for something to change dramatically for the better, you MUST NOT listen to the fans.  That's the problem that PC Games have slipped into.  The fans demand the same game with better graphics, and they are given exactly that, time and time again.  Console gamers have traditionally been completely ignored by the developers, and it has done wonders for our games.

People are a big squabbling menace to themselves.  In Psychology, we were taught that to guage the intelligence of a group of people, you take the lowest IQ of the bunch, and divide it by the number of people present.

[Renny]

Listen to what the fans have to say about the game, but of course don't take suggestions at face value. Try to identify the problem they have with the game and interpret that to make the necessary changes. Carmack recently commended Nintendo for following through with their own ideas, saying that if you do what the fans want, you'll just continue to add things until it's too complicated and then lose focus of what the game is about.

[DrZoidberg]

i'm definatly super probotector the alien wars on the subject, look at any gaming forum anywhere and think, do you want these people to influence the games you play? i sure don't

remember morons can shout louder than sane people.

[mouse_clicker]

I definitely think that fan critique should at least be taken and kept in mind when creating a videogame, but there's a reason they're the developer and the fan isn't.

[KnowsNothing]

Everybody should listen to me.

[Ian Sane]

"If Nintendo had listened to the Zelda fans, what would Wind Waker have been like?"

Really awesome.  Sorry I just had to say it.

[KDR_11k]

How about: "Like OOT with more polygons"?

[oohhboy]

Hey if any suggestions are to be given by fans it should be this

Push the game to the limits. Make the game something to be proud of. A.I. GFX, control, gameplay, level design. Superise me.

I really couldn't ask for much else. As long as there are no fundamental problem(s) any game should atleast make a good game.

[Plugabugz]

I believe the aim is to take the negative points only.. BUT... then you decide how you rectify that issue.
If you take the suggested improvements from the fans, it becomes too liquidated.

Not knowing what you're receiving (in this instance) works out better than knowing what's forthcoming.

[Jale]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
"If Nintendo had listened to the Zelda fans, what would Wind Waker have been like?"

Really awesome.  Sorry I just had to say it.

Longer and less sailing. Or perhaps faster sailing.

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11K
How about: "Like OOT with more polygons"?

And how is that progress? That would bring nothing to the gameplay, it woul only be a cosmetic improvment. Besides, you cannot improve upon the perfection that is OoT. They had to create a new perfection. However WW was not perfect because it was too short. However WW2 will probably be longer, so they are learning from thier mistakes. People dont always know what they really want. A lot of people really wanted an OoT style game, but then found WW even better, apart from the longevity of it.

[Berny]

Quote
Originally posted by: Jale
However WW2 will probably be longer, so they are learning from thier mistakes.

I hope so. The problem I had with the last two games (I'm sorry to say that I had problems with a Zelda game, but I did. There is no perfect game.) was the length. Hopefully they have learned but I dunno. Ninty's been pushing release dates like Mordor trolls at the "seige engines." Oh and I badly want some WW2 screens but I'll bet we don't get them until one month before the game's release because they don't want to reveal some top secret classified new aspect of gameplay NEVER BEFORE SEEN ON EARTH!!!

[Jale]

Wow how many times has that been said. There cant be much more they can apply to the series that hasnt been done. Dragons flying: Done. Burrowing: Silly. A Sword that you wave in front of the TV to fight, heck even that has been done.

[Berny]

HA HA HA! Link the Burrower of Winds. Oh that would be great. New gameplay! OMG! Link is no longer restricted by that pesky ground! Throw some bait and watch him DIG DIG DIG!

[mouse_clicker]

I didn't have any problem with the actual length of Wind Waker, just in the method they used to attain that length, ie the Triforce chart/piece scavenger hunt. If they had replaced that whole thing with another dungeon or two, Wind Waker would have been almost perfect.

Quote
And how is that progress? That would bring nothing to the gameplay, it woul only be a cosmetic improvment. Besides, you cannot improve upon the perfection that is OoT. They had to create a new perfection. However WW was not perfect because it was too short. However WW2 will probably be longer, so they are learning from thier mistakes. People dont always know what they really want. A lot of people really wanted an OoT style game, but then found WW even better, apart from the longevity of it.

How is Wind Waker any different? It is one of the best games I've ever played, but really it played *exactly* like Ocarina of Time did, just while looking cartoony. Wind Waker was purely a cosmetic change over Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time. Hell, the Wand  in WW was controlled almost exactly like the Ocarina in OoT. Wind Waker offered no new gameplay at all, unless you count the wind changing, but every Zelda game revolves around some feature or another like that. So in that sense, "Ocarina of Time with more polygons" (which still wouldn't be that realistic) is no less progressive than Wind Waker was, just different.  

[Berny]

Ugh. Triforce Charts are just b!tch3$. That was seriously the most boring part of the game. And I LIKE sailing. It was just pointless. I don't know how they could have done it though. Maybe divide the Triforce of Courage into 3 pieces and make 3 temples? That would be a long game indeed.  

[Hostile Creation]

First time around I had no problem with the Triforce charts, since I did most of them during the progress of the game and not all at once.  Second time around I made the mistake of not doing that, but it wasn't that bad.

[Jale]

WW was different to OoT In the fact that the whole map was divided into islands. This meant that you had to go looking for the secrets which was a much more rewarding experience. I cant think of another Adventure game involving a sea.

Perhaps they should impliment the "light sword". It was used in this japanese game. You use the swordlike a real one in front of the TV and then holding it differently you can cast spells ect. Buttons on the cross-piece could be used as item buttons and you could actually conduct with it.

[manunited4eva22]

I still haven't beaten wind waker for that reason alone.  Triforce charts take way too much of my time.  I like doing sidequests, I don't like making a sidequest a vital part of the game.

[mouse_clicker]

I hardly consider changing the map changing the game- just about every Zelda game has featured a very different overworld. Actually, a few of my friends don't like Wind Waker because of the huge ocean- I loved exploring it, but they hated sailing for 10 minutes just to get anywhere.

[Jale]

I found it very strange that a forest boy who has only ever had the chance of swimming in the local pond is able to swim across a big lake or round and round for days and days, but a boy raised on an island can only swin about 100m. Nice one Nintendo.