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<QR> This thread started out as mostly an offense against basic grammar and spelling rules, but then it rapidly degenerated into being mostly literate, cogent posts. Stop that!
Incidentally, the answer to the OP is 'yes, to varying degrees.'
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So I nailed it with the first response?
IMO, its NCSofts game, but they should be designing it and making changes with the customer's views in mind.
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<QR> This thread started out as mostly an offense against basic grammar and spelling rules, but then it rapidly degenerated into being mostly literate, cogent posts. Stop that!
Incidentally, the answer to the OP is 'yes, to varying degrees.'
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So I nailed it with the first response?
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Indeed.
Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
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<QR> This thread started out as mostly an offense against basic grammar and spelling rules, but then it rapidly degenerated into being mostly literate, cogent posts. Stop that!
Incidentally, the answer to the OP is 'yes, to varying degrees.'
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So I nailed it with the first response?
[/ QUOTE ]yes, but you should have worn protection, get ready for thread child support.
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they run the joint, but they need us to stick around.
there's no percentage in being dictator of an abandoned country.
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Well, you don't want to be unappealing to everyone, but you do need to think about who you DO want to be appealing to, and set your vision around those people, to target that market.
Being TOO focused, the way PotBS was in the beginning around tailoring the game to be, in the words of one dev over there, "the art of the gank" proved to be less than successful, and is a bad idea. Too focused means too small a target audience and your game goes poof
On the otherhand, trying to please everyone will ultimately mean you please no one, as there are too many competing interests to make everyone happy.
So you need to figure out who your target audience is and, providing their numbers are large enough (which is what marketing surveys are for), make the game as appealing as possible for those people. You may not make all of them happy, but you should aim for 80% of them.
For example, I'm thrilled the direction that Paragon Studios is taking this game. I lost interest in the game a year and a half ago and left for apparently greener pastures which turned out to have too much... erm... cow droppings in the pasture. Now, my interests are revitalized with MA, Going Rogue, Power Colorization, super boosters... yeah I'm digging the game again. Their "vision" jives totally with what I want in a game, and so in this case, whose game is it is an imaginary question, because it's obviously MY game, and they're designing it JUST FOR ME! I AM that target audience! 
Now if they could just ever figure out how to design for PVP, it'd be perfect :P
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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At this point, they could implement the best PvP system in the world and PvPers would still be whining and leaving. It won't bring new people in.
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for the dev vision of the game
or
for the players vision of the game
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It really needs to be a balance of the two.
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Not quite. This idea that "Player vision" and "Dev vision" are diametrically opposed points of view is a false dichotomy
What it needs to be is that the Devs have to have a vision that will make 80+% of their target market happy. Design doesn't occur in a vacuum. They're designing for SOMEONE. Not EVERYONE, mind, but SOMEONE. Who constitutes that Someone is very likely dictated by marketing surveys, demographic information, and all sorts of other boring business things.
Success depends on how many of the target audience enjoy the results of that design vision.
So the game belongs to the devs who are designing it with a particular audience in mind. If that audience is large enough and responds positively enough to that design vision, then the game is successful.
If someone finds the devs are making decisions that they actively dislike, that doesn't mean the devs are ivory tower arteests who are ignoring their customer base. It might just mean that person isn't the kind of player they're attempting to attract and retain.
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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Well said, Umbral. Agreed.
Global: @FuzzyOne
Find me playing these servers: Champion, Justice, Freedom, Virtue and Pinnacle
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The DEVs do need to be cognizant of players visions of the game.
The problem here is which players visions of the game. There are many more of us than there are of them and each of us has our own vision of what the game should be.
This imposes a daunting task balancing the DEVs "vision" (see above) while trying to incorporate ideas that are sought by a majority of players that help to achieve the DEVs "vision" goals.
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Exactly.
I believe the biggest problem a game developer can have is when a conflict between visions leads one party or the other to adopt an adversarial attitude towards the other. This, in my humble opinion, was the major issue with Jack Emmert. At times, he came off sounding adversarial to the player base.
Global: @FuzzyOne
Find me playing these servers: Champion, Justice, Freedom, Virtue and Pinnacle
The game is owned by some rouge angles of satin.
It's their world, we just play in it.
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This, in my humble opinion, was the major issue with Jack Emmert.
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The man didn't know what game balance was (and still doesn't from what I've seen of CO). That was the main problem. I don't think people really had a problem with his vision of the game world (which I think was actually quite interesting). People had a problem with his vision of how the game should be played (re: 1 hero, 3 minions) and how he tried to force this vision on the players.
Personally, I blame this on the fact that his only real game design credits were for White Wolf games, where balance generally takes several back seats to story and campaign world (which is why so many powers were so wonderfully borkedly over/underpowered back in the day). I'm honestly much more enthused that our current devs seem to be greater fans of more balance based PnP games than more story oriented ones. You can easily have a great story within a heavily balanced game, but it's hard to have a really fun game when every challenge is meaningless because the game is so unbalanced (unless you're there for the roleplaying rather than the gaming).
The game isn't really ours or theirs. It belongs to NCSoft. The Devs create the game for us to play, not themselves, so it's important for them to create something we like. So while we don't really have any control over what the devs do, it is beneficial for them to listen to us, because like any other business, this one needs to keep its customers happy, or they won't stick around.
Whoa, it IS another Emmert thread!