Lol Apologies in Advance For Increased Cynicism

Title of thread is cryptic because my other title would have been too clickbaity and this one sounds usefully pretentious and can therefore be ignored.

I was reminded today that GAME DESIGNERS SUCK .

That bold caps part was my original title. Context below. You really don't need to understand much about the game, it's all covered in the video.



I don't know if Frontier is actively malicious or just terrible at their design goals, and I don't care, and this isn't really about them in the first place. But this is gonna hang on me. It's going to be part of the 'game related discussions' my group has. It's going to be one more 'time that a game made a design decision so vapid and stupid as to be incomprehensible'.

And it's going to almost certainly bias the way I interact with Intrepid no matter how hard I try. So I'm apologizing in advance for all my upcoming suspicious looks, my sarcastic bitter comments, and my 'lemme see how I can figure out how to spell this out as a terrible idea without getting banned'.

Because I'm 'reminded' that you just can't trust Game Devs to have any clue whatsoever about even the simplest aspects of player behaviour sometimes, and Intrepid hasn't gotten far enough to show that they have a clue YET.

End of rant.

And this, Azherae, is why I always say that I hope that Intrepid do what I think is best and why I'm never sure that they will. No matter how obvious some idea might seem to me, there's always a chance that somehow over a hundred professional devs either didn't think of that idea or just considered the idea utter trash even if it fit their design goals perfectly

We have not received permission from FuryBladeborne to share the quoted post.

Yes, thank you, I am aware.

But with all respect to Steven, this is exactly the sort of person I'm talking about, technically.

I don't find that it is the developers that ruin games, nor did I mean to imply that with my post. I should have made a certain distinction more accurately.

Game DEVELOPERS usually go along with whatever their lead Designer tells them. This happens in all forms of software Development, actually. It's not their job to think too hard about WHY this thing is a good or bad idea because design goals can sometimes be VERY WEIRD when all the bits are combined together.

But this means you can do well in the industry without understanding much about player motivations. The boss says 'reset the player's progress every week, it'll boost engagement' and the poor (sometimes clueless) Developer goes 'ok boss' and doesn't necessarily think 'wait that doesn't sound right...'

If the DESIGNER sucks at designing and the DEVELOPER is clueless and doesn't push back (or wouldn't manage to push back anyway even if they tried) I perceive that's how you get things like that.

I perceive that's how we got New World when it launched. That's what bothers me. It's relatively easy to have 'a game studio'. Programming games is getting easier and easier every day.

Designing them isn't.

But if you give one mediocre designer a hundred Developers, you'll get a mediocre game. Sure it will RUN well, sometimes perfectly. Aaaand it won't be any fun to play. Sometimes it dies, and the Designer's response is "I don't know why the modern era of gamers doesn't appreciate this style of game".

Anyways before anyone assumes I'm ragging on Intrepid... not even a LITTLE bit. I'm ragging on FRONTIER for sure, but so far, Intrepid hasn't shown enough to say one way or the other. I'm just sorry that yet another game I liked has somehow managed to take one of the worst routes possible for its content, in SIX STAGES.

So I'm likely to be a bit more 'hostile' to 'early signs' of Intrepid doing the same, even though that's not AT ALL FAIR to them. I hope they understand it for what it is. Being jaded with this genre.

We have not received permission from Percimes to share the quoted post.

I agree completely, actually.

I don't generally assume that poor decisions are made because people are 'just derping around and laughing and going with whatever they feel like'.

It's part of the reason I'm concerned for Ashes as well. Games VERY often 'paint themselves into a corner' and even the BEST designer or developer is in an uphill battle and the hill is mudsliding half the time.

But there's a limit, for me, one that Halae kinda points out, and is somewhat unique to Frontier and SLIGHTLY, so far, to Intrepid.

When the 'trap' you face is 'the need to appear like you are making progress or doing anything at all', and you don't have the resources to do it properly.

That's when you get the creation of systems that more or less only 'worsen the entire game when they are added'. So I agree with you, I can go into detail about why this SPECIFIC decision, in this SPECIFIC case, is one of those 'you chose literally the worst option, and to do nothing at all would have been better'. situations.

But that's not relevant to your point. One other thing is.

Some decisions don't make sense from the player's perspective, but we usually have a limited view. We usually don't even have enough info to get a better global view, the details for representative analytics. We're not privy to the financial details and how they impact some decisions. Most of us don't have the technical knowledge to grasp how difficult or easy some wanted changes are to implement.

This is the problem, the thing that makes 'Game Designers suck' to me. "Design by analytics" combined with the Designers themselves having poor feasibility checks/project managers. It's also the sort of thing that leads to wavering and bad reactions, because one of the very likely possible reasons for this outcome?

"This game is losing us money, figure out a way to drive away players and kill it or remove all their enthusiasm for updates so we don't have to update it anymore."

Is that the reason? Dunno. But it's the tier of decision that makes people suspect it. And not just the bitter ones with really low understanding.

We have not received permission from Voxtrium to share the quoted post.

Well, this isn't my experience in the related industry.

The 'goal' is usually to APPEAR blameless. That's why we get leaks and scandals about what development or higher-ups do/decide behind closed doors and in clandestine meetings.

They only have to LOOK like they're trying to make things better for a 'problem client'. In one case I literally lost a job because I refused to go along with it.

That probably ain't helping my cynicism.

We have not received permission from Dygz to share the quoted post.

I really wish I could offer you just about anything to help with YOUR increased cynicism, but I can't be sure it even increased, and I'm also probably not the sort of person you'd want to play an MMORPG on the same servers with.

I'm glad you're having fun with DragonFlight, and hope that you'll continue to be able to present your perspectives throughout Alpha-2. I, for one, have certainly improved my ability to account for your playstyle in designs somewhat, from your posts.

We have not received permission from maouw to share the quoted post.

I'd assume it was a good thing.

There's a LOT to unpack about Frontier's situation specifically that would make it a terrible thing after all the OTHER mismanagement they've managed over the last few years, but in general I think it'd be good for MMOs. They tend to have a 'natural ending point', people move on, so do devs.

Not everyone enjoys climactic story arcs though, and the default for them seems to be 'cataclysmic' instead of what I PERSONALLY think a lot of players would prefer. Victorious closure. In 'contested' games, you can't easily achieve that, but for many, it would be almost a no-brainer to do it if you had the resources and the love for your community.

Many studios are lacking at least ONE of those by the time they get to this point, though.

We have not received permission from NishUK to share the quoted post.

You are entirely wrong about this for both posters and projecting your own perspectives by oversimplifying things that people have said because you disagree with them.

That's all I'll say on that matter.

EDIT: I considered asking the two tagged posters to leave this be, since it would 'derail the thread', but I don't really think a ranty thread where people vent their unfounded cynicisms can be 'derailed', so it won't matter if it becomes the new offtopic 'clashing' thread.

This thread does not consistently ping/notify me when responded to, so have at it if so wished.

We have not received permission from Dygz to share the quoted post.

I think the worst part of this (which might also be why we didn't get Nodes 3, and I kinda agree with that) is simply that the sort of thing Steven wanted to use to be revolutionary isn't .

The level of skill with which things in Ashes are implemented is what really matters here in many cases, and of course I always praise their devotion to 'implementing all of those things together' for a fuller experience.

But things SIMILAR to Nodes are not 'hard', they've been around for 10 years. In fact, as of NOW, as you point out being 2 years past original release timing, I think everything Ashes is 'based on' has been around for a decade in some form, which means the only thing they could do to really 'stand out' is to be either 'The One Ring' of MMOs, doing it all, or 'be faster'.

Other than that we're 'imagining' that Ashes Nodes will definitely be better than ArcheAge 2's version.

What I'm getting at here is that the only thing Ashes was probably achieving was 'getting the industry to realize that things they were already considering implementing, might actually be desirable to the playerbases'. I don't think devs need to look at Ashes' design to implement anything they have in mind. Those things are already implemented in lots of games, as far as we know.

Hopefully that's only because we don't know what incredible secrets Intrepid is 'keeping close to the chest' about implementation.