Platinumoxicity on 31/1/2014 at 11:06
Thief is probably going to be on Steam. Thief is also probably going to be not so great. It will have frustrating moments and bad design.
But big developers are smart about things that influence profits. Mostly. Sometimes. Perhaps. Steam does a lot of tracking when it comes to consumer habits and gamer habits. Developers can see how much you play a game, and how you do it. They can see if you finish it or not, and they can view graphs about which parts of the game the player simply quit.
So since it's impossible for fans of franchises to actually give feedback on games, due to purchase translating to 100% approval of all features, and lack of purchase translating to 100% piracy, the only way for fans to tell the developer which parts of their game is bad is to quit. That is recorded, and it contributes to the graphs. For example, EM will end up looking at a compilation of data where thousands of players recieved the achievements "Ghost" "Silence" and "No trace" right before playing through an escape sequence that should not have happened at all, and then quit after. That data spells out one very clear thing. There is something terribly wrong with your game design in that section. Many players quit the game because they were inexplicably forced into an escape sequence as the conclusion of sneaking through a mission without leaving any evidence of their existence.
So if you have any strange hopes of there being a Thief 5 in the future, this is the way you can tell EM how not to make a Thief game. They might not listen when you and everyone else vocally repeat "Let us turn off the shroud." for six months straight on their official forums, -but they do observe as you flatout just give up in the face of terrible design decisions. The funny thing about this will end up being the data they have collected on the difficulty settings and common achievements. They will sit and wonder why almost no players at all took the violence-approach, and finally question their decision to have it as an equally valid option in the first place.
Sometimes I wish there was a questionnaire about your experience with the game, after the end credits. And maybe a second one after your next playthrough, and none after that.
Gaestle on 31/1/2014 at 12:20
Great Idea!
Buy the Game but don't play it!
The old-school-thief-fans are a small, very small, a literally tiny minority. Even if there will be graphs like you said (they are probably there) the total amount of drop-out of maybe 1.000 players will do or change nothing, when 2-3 million players don't drop out.
And probably they already know these graphs from other games (Splinter Cell, Dishonored and others) as well.
This could be one of several groundbreaking fragments of information the had in the beginning of development. "What do players like?". And "players" mean "enough players to bring the investment back". 1.000 Thief-die-hards is by far not enough.
demagogue on 31/1/2014 at 22:33
Don't forget that they have focus testing where they're watching over the shoulder of dozens of playtesters and seeing where they throw down the controller in frustration, and from postmortems we know devs take focus testing seriously & change the game because of it.
It's just ... the punchline of focus testing is usually more streamlining of the game to be more immediately entertaining than the opposite direction of making the design more hardcore. So in that respect, I think your observation works the opposite way than you're intending it to maybe.
Edit: For instance I bet the mandatory shroud was put in after focus testing, so that would be your counter-evidence right there. Canvassing more players would just make them, if anything, more convinced of its rightness.
henke on 1/2/2014 at 07:16
I'm not sure about "graphs", but it is possible to see how many % of players have gotten a certain achievement though. And since achievements are usually doled out over the course of the campaign (Completed level 5, Completed level 10, Beat the game, etc.) this is a handy way to keep track of how far people bothered playing. I don't think there'll be any achievement halfway through a level though, so quitting just before an escape sequence isn't likely to show up in any kind of data.
Platinumoxicity on 1/2/2014 at 13:19
Haha! That's pretty funny. I guess EM will be seeing me dying a lot in the dark corners that are not actually dark, as I'm trying to sneak in a stealth game, while the game is automatically updating the AI with my exact position during a forced escape sequence.
A civilian opens a door on the left, and the first thing to pop in my mind is to get into the building and lose the pursuing forces there. But instead I die because there is an invisible wall, and the dude opening the door was simply an aesthetic piece of cinematic decoration during the scene that has been scripted to give me zero control. Really I was supposed to continue straight forwards in wide open space, to maximize my chances of getting hit by arrows or mauled by the guard dogs right there in the only place I'm allowed to go. Because straight is where players should go in a linear action game.
...Or maybe EM won't be seeing me dying in that section. They'll see me restarting the mission over and over, trying desperately to figure out where I made that single tiny mistake, that allowed the guards to have any idea that I might possibly be in the area. They'll see me sneaking past everyone and even stealing nothing, to make sure there is no trace of my existence, and I just keep restarting because even that doesn't seem to work. Then they'll see me reporting it as a bug. To me there is no difference between this, and a bug where the AI can see me in the dark.
jtbalogh on 1/2/2014 at 15:08
Quote Posted by Platinumoxicity
Silent feedback in numbers
Quitting will be very limited. Too many people will want to see all the bad or good designs, so they can defend a position when harking back to the forums. Too many people will think steam offline mode is not convenient and just stay connected to complete the campaign. Personally, I won't be annoyed as much to quit since I can dissect the program and mod aberrant designs out of the game.
Getting the achievements for feedback can be helpful. However, the achievements for completing missions will give the wrong impression. When I can get "The Dawn's Light-Finished Chapter Eight" and "Predatory Drive-Finished the game in 15 hours or more" might only be because I dissected the program and modded aberrant designs out of the game to enjoy it.
The questionaire can be a great idea to also engage the people that are restrained or not on forums at all. Although the questions might be stacked in favor of bad designs more if limited to general topics and not specific features (e.g. "How was the pace of the game? Too fast." and EM correlates that to adding slow movement upgrades instead of removing no-brainer swoop and change cover.)
Quote Posted by Gaestle
Buy the Game but don't play it!
Buy the game, quit silent feedback and still play it. I will be testing the steam offline mode if the game is so bad that no amount of feedback can improve the game.
Quote Posted by henke
I don't think there'll be any achievement halfway through a level though, so quitting just before an escape sequence isn't likely to show up in any kind of data.
The data might be from players that quit and have no achievement to finish the next Chapter after the QTE.
(
http://www.exophase.com/game/thief-xbox/achievements/)
Lady Rowena on 1/2/2014 at 15:14
Quote Posted by Platinumoxicity
Thief is probably going to be on Steam. Thief is also probably going to be not so great. It will have frustrating moments and bad design.
But big developers are smart about things that influence profits. Mostly. Sometimes. Perhaps. Steam does a lot of tracking when it comes to consumer habits and gamer habits. Developers can see how much you play a game, and how you do it. They can see if you finish it or not, and they can view graphs about which parts of the game the player simply quit.
Are you serious here? I does mean that you not only must subscrive to Steam, and activate your legally puschased game, but that you must be connected to them in order to play? Is that the way it works? I just can't believe it. :(
Platinumoxicity on 1/2/2014 at 15:30
Quote Posted by jtbalogh
I will be testing the steam offline mode if the game is so bad that no amount of feedback can improve the game.
It isn't about improving the game. It's about telling dumb designers that their direction and decisions are wrong, and not wanted. With this automated feedback, the developers can see that the things they have added to try to appeal to certain groups, have only managed to water down the product as a whole, and made it appeal less to everyone. They can see how their compromises have compromised their product. You will play as a thief, but we don't want to force you to play as a thief. -Well why not, since everyone plays as a thief in the game called Thief anyway?
Someone needs to get it through their thick skulls that trying to make a game for everyone never works. All you'll end up making is a game for no-one. It isn't enough stealth for stealth players, not enough action for action players, and certainly not enough Thief for Thief-fans.
The feedback most likely won't have any effect on Thief 4, but it might prevent an equally bad or worse sequel from being made. Yeah, I didn't imply that it would help a better sequel to be made.
