So, I was browsing some of my usual forums the other day when I noticed a debate was beginning to simmer about whether or not MMORPG developers actually listen to the suggestions their players give them. It may seem like a pointless debate, but, for what it’s worth, it actually brings up important issues about customer service and the goals of the developer as a whole. A lot of companies do put their own finances beyond their player-base, and, no matter your stance on the debate, putting money ahead of the community almost always yields negative results.
Personally, I have never been much of a suggestion-maker within any of my MMORPGs communities. I typically make my suggestions when writing blogs like these, which, believe it or not, probably yields higher results than simply posting in the game’s official forums. For those that do make suggestions direct in their game’s forums, does it actually work? Have you ever received any sort of feedback, or maybe even seen it come to life?
Do you feel that suggestions are ever paid any attention in your game?
Post-release, I’m sure changes happen every once in a while because of forum discussions, but there’s sooo much noise. Better to write your ideas in a blog and email the link to a developer then.
Pre-release? Definitely, forum posts by beta-testers are taken seriously. I noticed significant changes to both EQ2 and Hellgate as a direct result of forum posts. SOE and Flagship, at least, have proven to me that they really listen to their testers.
Hello, nice blog btw.
Regarding suggestions, I know Ultima Online’s devs from the begining listened to a lot of complaints and suggestions. The first few days, I noticed a lot of PKs were using the tactic of casting fire field spells to kill people without any notoriety penalty and reported it. A few days later, it got fixed. I don’t know if my complaint was alone or from a lot of players, but this action tells me that they do listen to us.
The second time, during the invasion of Trinsic storyline, we used Purple (exploding) potions against the invading mobs and we were killed by the NPC guards. We complained for hours that it was unfair. Two days later, they removed the guard flag on the whole city.
And not to mention a lot of individual Role Playing establishments that they “helped” in the game, from taverns to town councils to museums, the devs in that game were really great back then.
Most of the time, we noticed that they paid more attention to ingame petitions and email suggestions than forum posts. Which I guess answers the question what mode of communications the devs pay more attention to. Only a fraction of the game’s actual players visit the forums and a good majority use the ingame bug report and petition forms. I do believe that they listen to this more than forum trolls.