Design By Committee
I'm not really sure how to phrase this in an inoffensive way, but it still feels like it needs to be said.
People are praising the trickster preview and how yall are asking for feedback before it's even released. This feels really, really weird to me. It feels like design by committee. Like you're outsourcing game development to the community at large.
You're professional game developers with years of experience. You should know DBD better than anyone. Outsourcing the game to random people with Opinions feels like a bad decision that's gonna make your product worse in the long run. There's taking feedback and there's taking marching orders from your community. I think you know better than the community for the most part.
Comments
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I don't really see anything wrong with them doing this and if anything they should do it more often.
They still have the final decision as the designers and it gives them a better idea if players are going to like something or not. And I wouldn't really blame them for not wanting a repeat of what happened with the Twins rework either. If for example they had done this with the Twins rework we could've all immediately pointed out the problems with it instead of them having to waste time and resources implementing all the changes on a PTB only to revert it all when we all said it was terrible and stronger than Nurse. There's no point in wasting time on a concept or rework if it becomes immediately clear that it won't be well-received before it leaves the drawing board. Instead it took 3 years to test out a rework on the PTB that ultimately resulted in just number tweaks and QoL changes that could've been implemented much sooner.
(I'm not saying I don't like the proposed Trickster changes/revert btw, I think this is actually a step in the right direction, but my point stands regardless.)
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I think it's important for BHVR to ask for feedback around the Trickster changes, because it gives a much better perspective of what the majority of the playerbase actually wants.
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I mean, if it weren't for the fact that the community has to point out potentially gamebreaking stuff that the balance team had no idea of existing like.... idk, every few patches? Then yeah, this would be a concerning move.
But I think this could work quite well. As long as they don't bend over backwards to every single opinion expressed, it should be fine. Stopping obviously bad decisions asap is a good thing.
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Not at all, we all know how Reddit is a popularity contest, but it does not mean bHVR will do exactly as commanded by us.
They will scour the post ideas and perspectives, hear us out on a problem with have with the Killer and then make their decisions in order to make us as happy as possible. This is really no different from every day here on the forum, its just in a much much much more.Like take recent Trickster changes, the big elite trickster players mostly only show up here when they are unhappy, so this limits the Trickster related feedback quality. They were not here for the 10 thousand times we discussed Trickster before that PTB and that is bad really because everyone's perspective is valuable and its these perspectives and feedbacks which the Devs need.
Chances are bHVR unlocked gas cooking over firewood and this could be very good.
In short: bHVR usually don't do a thing because its popular, usually its about because its a good idea to do it and that's why.0 -
Game designers think in terms of how they want players to play their game. Ever write a paragraph and miss a bunch of spelling and grammar mistakes, and those same mistakes are glaringly obvious to other people? It's along the same lines. Players see the game from a different perspective.
Yes, it's kind of crazy to see Endurance get changed and in the PTB people were able to stack half a dozen Endurance procs on top of each other… but at least that didn't go live.
It's not uncommon for designers to ask for feedback. In the end, how much that feedback is taken into account is up to the designers. They still make the decisions in the end. If the game is actually designed by committee and by popular vote, then that would indeed be terrible, as outsiders can often pinpoint that something is a problem but not necessarily how to fix said problem.
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I agree with the other responses already posted. Crowdsourcing ideas is almost always helpful. That can give the devs ideas they might not come up with themselves and show them the variety and intensity of opinions across their player base. And as op said, BHVR knows the direction they want to take their game in. I think user feedback helps them do that in a way that also satisfies their playerbase (i.e. keeps them getting paid :)
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Years of experience developing games, not necessarily years of experience playing them.
10 years of just developing Solitaire doesn't necessarily mean you'd be able to come up with "fresh new ideas" if that's all you've done or played, as your experience was limited in scope.
Also, it's not like they're designing by committee: they're crowd-sourcing ideas/sentiments via a prompt that they can parse through themselves to find what fits or improves on their current design, or they might come across an idea that sparks inspiration for something new.
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