27 replies to this topic

[RoboPatton]

**I am not suggesting that the money you spent goes directly to where you vote. I am suggesting a prompt for feedback on the game**
One thing I like about HumbleBundle is how they give you some sense of power in where you dollar goes. Same with the tiers in Kickstarter. Or when some devs ask for feedback from directly in-game.

Why not have a field for feedback in MWO, when you buy Mechs/MC/Game Time/Etc?

The idea is simple-- Upon completing a transaction with PGI, a prompt asks if you wish to suggest where development is focused. You can skip it or select "yes". You will have X "Tokens" to vote with, and open suggestion fields. You can spend them on one general area, or spread them out among several specific areas that concern you.

It would be along the lines of (General Idea)--

Spoiler

I Would Like PGI to Focus On--
or
I'd Like to see more--
(5) Credits remaining


1) Content *****
-Co-op/Single Player
[Explanation field]
-Community Warfare
[Explanation field]

2) Maps *****
-Balance to Existing Maps
[Explanation field]
-New Maps
[Explanation field]

3) Mechs *****
-New Mechs
[Explanation field]
-New Weapons
[Explanation field]

4) Combat Balance *****
-Weapon Balance
[Explanation field]
-Mech Balance/Scale
[Explanation field]

5) Mechanics *****
-New Mech Features (head lamps/Arms up and down/ducking)
[Explanation field]
-User Interface
[Explanation field]

5) Other *****
[Explanation field]

The idea here isn't that PGI is obligated to do these things, but rather a quantitative value is produced to show PGI where the community has concerns, at a glance. Thus PGI can definitively aggregate feedback from paying customers (who buy mech packs and keep the game going). The old adage "vote with your wallet" becomes literal.

PGI is a company, not a charity. They need to know what paying customers want. If you, like me, buy mechs more for the idea of keeping MWO going, than the mechs themselves, you may feel more inclined to part with some bucks, when you believe your opinions are weighed. (I would probably vote for more focus on old mechs that need a balance pass.)

I know some will say "This is a Free to Play game, why should the whales get the last say?" They don't. You still have Twitter (where Russ will actually see suggestions) and the forums, where every post is a battle, and little makes its way to PGI (^^likely this post too lol^^).

"The system is inherently skewed, to favor those who would vote for more mechs." That's why it is open to all transactions, not just when you buy a mech. Game time/Cosmetic items are a pretty good indication for PGI of how much a person who only wants to pilot Atlas's feels about the direction of the game.

It's a tool for customers to communicate with PGI, among the existing, less uniform sources.

So, what do you guys think? Could something like this work?

Edit- Clarification
Edit 2- Tried to clear up what I meant by the "humble bundle" example.
Edit 3- Bold and Underline some key ideas that were being skimmed past.

**I am not suggesting that the money you spent goes directly to where you vote. I am suggesting a prompt for feedback on the game**

Edited by RoboPatton, 23 October 2015 - 02:46 PM.

[Chaubin]

Honestly, that wouldn't really work. Like you said, they are already getting feedback through the forums/twitter/reddit/whathaveyou so adding one more location for this feedback won't really help. Aside from that, it would give some people the feeling that they have some actual say in what is developed and when, which will make them very upset when the devs inevitably don't do what they want. For example, someone drops $200 on mech collections and says "I want a single player campaign". This obviously isn't going to happen quickly, especially since the game is designed mainly to be PvP, so when they don't get what they want we start to get the "I spent money and I *deserve* this!" threads. No worth it.

[TWIAFU]

I cannot think of any business anywhere that a customer tells them how to spend their, the customers, money.

Funny thing, Humblebundle, you get to tell them where your money goes, to CHARITY.

FAR from the customer telling the business how and what to spend the customers money on.

[RoboPatton]

Chaubin, on 23 October 2015 - 12:04 PM, said:

Honestly, that wouldn't really work. Like you said, they are already getting feedback through the forums/twitter/reddit/whathaveyou so adding one more location for this feedback won't really help.
when they don't get what they want we start to get the "I spent money and I *deserve* this!" threads.

People already feel that way now. So that wouldn't change anything.

Do you really think PGI rakes through all of those sources? I doubt it. Rarely do they interact with the community on their own forums (compared to a few other games).

TWIAFU, on 23 October 2015 - 12:09 PM, said:

I cannot think of any business anywhere that a customer tells them how to spend their, the customers, money.

Funny thing, Humblebundle, you get to tell them where your money goes, to CHARITY.

FAR from the customer telling the business how and what to spend the customers money on.

I noticed them doing something similar to this in the Battlefront Beta, asking for some general feedback on balance and certain game mechanics. So...

With Humblebundle, you are given some cool sliders that say what percent of the money you want to go to where. Usually 3 places. Obviously that's not a carbon copy of what I'm suggesting. It's only an explanation of how doing that gives you a sense of direction for things.

EDIT- Changed post title to be more accurate.

Edited by RoboPatton, 23 October 2015 - 12:18 PM.

[Mirkk Defwode]

No, it's not realistic as to how development and businesses are run.

Asking for feedback is not saying you have 'X' budget to get the job done so says the users/consumers.

Sometimes you're working on a feature and there are no complications and the implementation just works. That is exceptionally rare in software development...ALL software development. In reality you prototype it, find a crap ton of bugs, scrap it or start hammering on bugs and modifying designs as you go based on that. Take in some feedback, break stuff in other areas with the changes, have to revert changes to make sure those don't degrade and find different means to make something work.

[RoboPatton]

Mirkk Defwode, on 23 October 2015 - 01:02 PM, said:

No, it's not realistic as to how development and businesses are run.

Asking for feedback is not saying you have 'X' budget to get the job done so says the users/consumers.

Sometimes you're working on a feature and there are no complications and the implementation just works. That is exceptionally rare in software development...ALL software development. In reality you prototype it, find a crap ton of bugs, scrap it or start hammering on bugs and modifying designs as you go based on that. Take in some feedback, break stuff in other areas with the changes, have to revert changes to make sure those don't degrade and find different means to make something work.

I see what you're saying. I think it's coming across as though Im suggesting that your money ONLY goes towards your area of concern. What I mean is you are just giving Feedback. In the process it will never say "Only spend my money on X". Rather just telling PGI where you want to see improvement.

Edit- I think I cleared that up on OP. Thanks.

Edited by RoboPatton, 23 October 2015 - 01:14 PM.

[Mirkk Defwode]

RoboPatton, on 23 October 2015 - 01:08 PM, said:

I see what you're saying. I think it's coming across as though Im suggesting that your money ONLY goes towards your area of concern. What I mean is you are just giving Feedback. In the process it will never say "Only spend my money on X". Rather just telling PGI where you want to see improvement.

This community is too fractured for more than the usual feedback loop. I think email blast surveys to the user base might provide more clinical results for what you're looking for. Everyone has a registered email address and the primary concerns brought up through the various social media outlets could be collated into a survey and sent to a global request for participation in the survey for where PGI could improve the most.

This is commonly done for large scale MMO beta time periods to suss out feedback in a quantitative way rather than qualitative. What we provide now is a lot of qualitative feedback, it's plenty of "I thinks..." and "In my experience..." but it doesn't give the numbers for what people are trending toward compared to the telemetry information from the title itself.

[Mister Blastman]

LOL

No. They aren't going to let that happen. Unless of course they lied to us to get their money... like Chris Roberts did with Star Citizen... but that's another topic for another thread.

However... We can tell them how we feel. And we do that by spending or not spending money.

Edited by Mister Blastman, 23 October 2015 - 01:20 PM.

[RoboPatton]

Mirkk Defwode, on 23 October 2015 - 01:17 PM, said:

This community is too fractured for more than the usual feedback loop. I think email blast surveys to the user base might provide more clinical results for what you're looking for.

I thought of that too. But, so many people have multiple accounts. Not to mention it would likely get trashed or ignored.

I thought, "what if there was just a general feedback option in the game?" But I think that would also get spammed by people who have multiple accounts. People actively throwing down cash for the game, I believe are more likely to give accurate feedback. I know that idea will piss off some people (paywall), but it would make it less likely to be abused or skewed.

I guess, when you boil it all down, that's all I really want PGI to have. An accurate assessment of what the community thinks of the game.

Mister Blastman, on 23 October 2015 - 01:20 PM, said:

LOL

No. They aren't going to let that happen. Unless of course they lied to us to get their money... like Chris Roberts did with Star Citizen... but that's another topic for another thread.

However... We can tell them how we feel. And we do that by spending or not spending money.

Well, unlike star citizen, PGI isn't promising anything with this. It's a source of feedback where they have solid numbers for players concerns with MWO.

As far as voting with the wallet, it just tells them is you do or don't like a mech. There's not enough specificity to draw solid data.

[FupDup]

No, because Paul needs money to fund the construction of core pillars for his island fortress.

[Screech]

No, it is their money. When I buy something from someone it does not make the individual my servant and subject to my whims.

[RoboPatton]

Screech, on 23 October 2015 - 01:34 PM, said:

No, it is their money. When I buy something from someone it does not make the individual my servant and subject to my whims.

It dictates nothing. It just tells PGI what you think of the state of the game, and areas that you'd like to see improved.

[Sjorpha]

Why?

First of all because some parts of development funds other parts, and they have to add up.

Second because there are different employees with different specialisations, and this limits the amount of redistribution of resources you can do without firing/hiring.

Third because the average gamer frankly knows little about game development and design by committees are a bad methodology in general. (believe me, I work with creativity coaching within the film industry and it's something i know, it is that for creative processes to have any measure of quality, it needs the artist/designer/developer to have the say over the vision and priorities.)

[HollowBassman]

I was considering starting a similar thread but decided against it when I couldn't find a way to word it that would avoid the inevitable flood of people misunderstanding and saying I'm not entitled to have a say in how PGI spends their money.

I would like a way to give them money that could go toward fixing some of the older mechs' scaling and dynamic geometry ugliness. I often hear that they need to focus on mech-packs because that is their main source of income and that they cannot divert resources to fix old mechs because there is no money in it, but if there were an option to somehow pay them to work on the old mechs I would. I don't want to give them money via mech-packs because that could give the impression that I want more mechs at the expense of everything else that needs fixed.

[RoboPatton]

Sjorpha, on 23 October 2015 - 01:37 PM, said:

Why?

First of all because some parts of development funds other parts, and they have to add up.

Second because there are different employees with different specialisations, and this limits the amount of redistribution of resources you can do without firing/hiring.

Exactly. My point is PGI is a small team, that has to decide how to best focus their efforts. I don't think they have an accurate source for feedback on their game. Best bet is that Russ sees your post on twitter.

[Y E O N N E]

How would you like it if your employer told you how you get to spend your money?

Same concept.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 23 October 2015 - 02:03 PM, said:

How would you like it if your employer told you how you get to spend your money?

Same concept.

This would imply that I get to boss around PGI...I think today I'll order Paul to buff LB-X.

[Y E O N N E]

FupDup, on 23 October 2015 - 02:04 PM, said:

This would imply that I get to boss around PGI...I think today I'll order Paul to buff LB-X.

Funny enough, we do get to boss PGI around, just not each of us individually. It has to be a collective, coordinated effort.

There have been very few of those. By nature, it's difficult. This is the same mechanism by which politicians get away with crap that should otherwise be considered criminal or, at the very least, get them voted out.

Also, can you also tell PGI to Raptor on Monday? thnx.

[FupDup]

Yeonne Greene, on 23 October 2015 - 02:09 PM, said:

Funny enough, we do get to boss PGI around, just not each of us individually. It has to be a collective, coordinated effort.

There have been very few of those. By nature, it's difficult. This is the same mechanism by which politicians get away with crap that should otherwise be considered criminal or, at the very least, get them voted out.

Also, can you also tell PGI to Raptor on Monday? thnx.

I remember the past forum flamewars to end all flamewars, where this forum practically burnt down to the ground with the sheer level of tears, rage, shitposts, and hurt buttholes. For example, the original announcement for coolant flush consumables was going to have the premium MC-only versions be directly superior to the C-Bill versions.

The forum practically exploded at that point. It was glorious. I think that might have even been around when PGI decided to outright kill the General Discussion section for a while, I forget exactly because it's been so many years...

[Y E O N N E]

Damn, I missed the show.