Nathan's recent Blog post got me to thinking about a post I made on the Rift forums back in 2010...
Should the devs listen to the players? Of course. Should the devs abdicate their responsibility for overall game design and put in all the changes some players want? NO, no, & NO!
Here's the link to my thread on the Rift forums:
http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...omed-fail.html
Richard Bartle got it right and years ago too. Many features that players think they like are bad for the game and many features that players think they don't like are good for the game. What's a designer to do? Well, how about building a GREAT game and convincing the players it has the feature set its supposed to have?
Here is the short form of RBs thoughts: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...orlds_are_.php
"Soapbox: Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies - No, Really!
by Richard Bartle "
"Virtual worlds are being designed by know-nothing newbies, and there's not a damned thing anyone can do about it. I don't mean newbie designers, I mean newbie players - first timers. They're dictating design through a twisted "survival of the not-quite-fittest" form of natural selection that will lead to a long-term decay in quality, guaranteed. If you think some of today's offerings are garbage, just you wait…"
for the long form read Richard's book.
More info on Richard:
Richard Bartle
Richard Bartle co-wrote the first virtual world, MUD ("Multi-User Dungeon") in 1978, and has thus been at the forefront of the online games industry from its very inception. A former lecturer in Artificial Intelligence and current Visiting Professor in Computer Game Design (both at the University of Essex, U.K.), he is an influential writer on all aspects of virtual world design, development, and management. As an independent consultant, he has worked with most of the major online game companies in the UK and the U.S. over the past 20 years. His 2003 book, Designing Virtual Worlds, has already established itself as a foundation text for researchers and developers of virtual worlds alike.
More about THE BOOK here: http://mud.co.uk/dvw/