Has anyone considered....

[crazylegsmurphy]

Designing a website that would allow users to "vote" on things they would like changed or added to the game?

 

I really think the problem is that there are about 400 forums all dealing with EAW, (and other games) and everyone seems to have an idea about what should change. I personally think the problem is that there is a gap between the players, and the developers.

 

What I mean is that it's almost impossible for the Devs to keep track of all the ideas and judge in any way how many people feel the same. I really think that there needs to be a site that deals with gathering this information and then presenting it to the Dev's in a clear and consise way.

 

I think if this was done, and the Dev's could physically see the issues broken down into percentages and such, they could see what was most important to the majority and then work on those issues. To me it seems more like a community based development instead of a few people guessing what will work with the masses.

 

I challenge you people with the skills to make this happen...it might actually have more of a positive effect than just complaining on a random forum.

[RogueCommander]

The thing is even if we add up all users on forums I doubt we would ge higher than 2000-5000. Considering the changes would be released world wide we would only represent a small percentage of the gamers. Then the bigger problem of idiotic ideas that would eventually flood the poll system.

[crazylegsmurphy]

Well, yes...but that is why you target all the forums and game sites. The idea is to pull in as many as you can and use that as a sample of what the players might want.

 

Sure stupid ideas would make it into the poll, but the nice thing is that these ideas would probably get a very small percentage of total votes thus not making it as high of a priority.

 

An example would be persistant damage. There seems to be a lot of people who would like to see that in the game, but right now who really knows how many that actually is. If the Dev's could see that a majority of the people wanted that feature, it would make it easier for them to focus energy on what the players want.

 

To add....This could also help modders as they would have knowledge of what mods people are looking for, instead of creating mods that do 4 great things, and 1 really dumb thing.

[RogueCommander]

Another problem that arrises is that petro soon(if they already havent) will begin working on their game for Sega.So the ones taksed with adding the new features would be very small. So that means the most we could do is ask for small things i.e. Add a way to choose what ships you use n the beginning of a battle. About persistant damage I don't really think it should be implemented. I would have to try it out myself to see if it works. The most that could probably be done is putting weakened fleets into a slot(similiar to steal credits,raid,etc) But then it would feel more like a chore(at least to me)

[crazylegsmurphy]

Fair enough, we all have opinons about what should and shouldn't be added...that is my point.

 

As far as how many resources the Devs will dedicate, thats not really my problem. If the Dev's want thier name, and thier game to have a good reputation then they won't just abandon it after a week.

[kingdark]

i agree but still i find it a realy good idea

[crazylegsmurphy]

I'm dumb, I forgot to add that I have server space if anyone wants to make a site. My server should allow ASP and PHP and all that....

[AsterXiphos]

Market research.  Honestly, I'm curious as to how often it is used in actual game development.  I'm not saying that it's obviously lacking - and certainly not in this game - it just seems like a lot of games have "features" in them that make me wonder, "where did THAT come from?"  I haven't yet played a game that felt completely "right" to me.  Maybe I'm just one weirdo out there, but I wonder sometimes if more research was involved in gaming development if a game would be made that could blow my socks off.

 

Anyways, this is a great idea.  You'd have to get some crazy response numbers to make it remotely statistically significant, but it's possible . . .