Your argument is seriously flawed.


One of the gaming community's biggest criticism is that developers do not play their own games. Therefore, they are unaware of the mechanics. This turns into players knowing more about the inner workings than the developers.


That's a big problem.


And it also led to massive missteps and nerfs because developers took the word of someone who appeared to know the game, yet tilted the results to benefit themselves and their class.


The DAoC's Class Lead program is a classic example of this manipulation. A manipulation that could've been prevented if the developers were more aware of their own product.


Personally, I believe developers should play the game to experience their product. No amount of gathering, observation, or interpretation will ever come close to firsthand experience.

 

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There's truth to both sides. I agree that some people on the development team do need to be players and have that firsthand experience, but I think it does inevitably cause a bias. Therefore it's also good to have members of the team that can provide objective input.


I code specs and have written content for the dikuMUD I play. I don't know that it's possible to completely avoid personal bias if you're also a player. I've made choices on new items, mobs, bonuses, etc based on my own classes and experiences. Sometimes I hesitate to add content specifically for classes that I play, so that it doesn't look like I'm showing favoritism to myself... but then I kind of screw other players that play the same classes. The opposite happens too, some players only think about adding things for classes they know because they know what's lacking... leaving other players not getting anything for long periods of time. Those are just examples...


I have been away too long and don't pay enough attention to this Ghostcrawler fella to have an opinion on him... but I wanted to share my $0.02 on the whole developers as players paradigm.

 

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On the topic of devs playing their game, I think from the standpoint of managing a game company the following should be required:

a) devs play OTHER games from time to time - on the clock - to get perspective and to see what makes other games and gamers who love those games tick.

b) devs play their own game but play all factions and all classes - in the live game world - on the clock if needed - from time to time to get a feel for how things are really working. They should PLAY all classes in arena, in 5-mans, in raids, level/quest with them - just so they can get an actual feel for things. There is no substitute for this kind of experience.

Anything less from the dev. team and you're basically running a "garage" operation regardless of the actual revenue and size of your company.

 

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Well "many" might be an exaggeration, as most people would probably be just as much abject failures at understanding "how mmorpgs work" as he has been. So I amend that from "better than he can" to "not being any worse".

But beyond that... Ghostcrawler does not understand his game very well, and the three role boards are historically rife with examples of it. He lets gross imbalances fester for months, ignores some completely, and when he finally does act it's usually way out of proportion to the problem.

He isn't a gamer either. Not an RPG gamer at least. His hatred of randomness and his ideal of making everyone the same (or "interchangeable" are the most damning examples of that. He was also far too focused on that whole "professional gamer" thing for far too long, apparently in the hope that WoW would become another Starcraft. To be fair, THAT at least I don't know if it originated from him or from someone higher up the ladder.

Even the non-game related parts of his job, ie managing his dev team, seem rife with problems. There are numerous examples of protectionist activity in "class balance" patches - circumstantial evidence that the dev team is not as objective with issues as it should be.

IIRC you said before that you are self employed, Korrigan, or at least the boss who can make his own hours. I wonder if you really understand how things work at the middle management level (where Ghostcrawler would be), how the "committees" run things, and what kind of people are generally rewarded under the system. If you do, you'll understand how someone like Ghostcrawler can get to where he is despite having absolutely no real competence at all. There is no "Ivy League" of mmorpg development. The fancy technical side isn't where the issues are, and the rest is stuff that you only get to know through experience with the games and understanding the complexities of the various components and how they react to each other. It's no coincidence that Tigole got his job despite his background being nothing more than a creative writing grad.

In other words, Korrigan, there is nothing inherent about Ghostcrawler that makes him better at what he does than anyone else. Got a vision and some idea how game components interact? Able to manage people in a team? Congratulations, you are as qualified for his position as he is.

 

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The only thing I will say in disagreement with what I believe is a fairly accurate post BK is that we also have no idea what pressures GC is under from senior management. Granted it seems that he is the focal point for our ire, but that may be because the company pays him to be that more than they pay him to actually do any development work/guidance/etc. Your discussion about middle management is perhaps more appropos than you might realize because as such, he's likely not much of a decision maker and might be more of a decision communicator and a decision executor.

However, I do believe that if things were REALLY up to him entirely, the game would be in an even worse state lol - we can see his lack of aptitude for this genre of gaming, as you correctly note, in many aspects of his conduct.

 

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All your examples to prove your point are terrible and unrelated. I think that anyone who doesn't actually play an MMO is going to be far worse at developing it. That is when you get people who are so far removed from the real thing making decisions that are way off base.


Personally, I want my developers to be players as well. Too have a passion for the game they are trying to make fun. I see nothing paticulairy bias about what Ghostcrawler writes, he does have a strong opinion on how the game show flow, but I don't see that coming from bias created from being a player himself.

 

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That is about the most single-minded troll post I've seen in a week.

Where there's smoke, there's fire. I suspect most people just want to shoot GC for being the messenger but he does appear to have more pull in the direction department than you seem to give him credit for. And "millions" is a "yeah, whatever" statement in WoW terms. With 12+ million active subs, a few million isn't a majority.

QQ about QQ = QQ. Just my non-humble opinion of your opinion. You're welcome to not read/post in the thread if you disagree with everyone or so displeased with our topic choice.

 

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Hence why I no longer pay to play. I cancelled my Sub, and it will remain cancelled as long as GC is lead dev. I check back to see how badly the game is progressing and see hot fixes everyday, complaints about healers, things missing ingame and the rabid fanbois yelling how the game is balanced for level 80!!!

 

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1) A major expansion just launched. The hotfixes coming in are nothing game breaking.
2) The expansion sold great, the new PVE content is fantastic - what poor progression?
3) There is an entirely new dynamic to healing in PVE and it gets substantially easier with gear. This isn't any different than it was in Burning Crusade; there is just more splash damage.
4) What things are missing?
5) It is. If you don't understand why the game should be balanced around the cap and not the treadmill, I don't know what to tell you.

Like with any new major content launch, things will be tweaked. Nature of the MMO beast. This is not a result of GC being head dev. You sound like someone who got nerfed and took it personally.

Ghostcrawler = Ken Karl?