They should put actual MMO players on the development team.

[Jynx]

Just a quick note for people: If you continue to carry on the spelling wars the thread will.

1. Obviously be locked as soon as a moderator gets his hands on this thread.
2. All posters are liable to get slammed by the moderator backlash (I've felt the collatoral damage a few times before).


But seriously on the point of the subject I still don't see how playing a game is equal to designing a game. It's like saying a person who went to school for years to do a specific job is useless because he hasn't actually done it in his spare time. I bet a good chunk of video game makers don't play video games a whole lot themselves.

Coders
Artists
Designers
Composers

Don't really need much in the way of experience to create great video game assets. Sure experience using the object you live to create can help give perspective but in some cases that same perspective can be as harmfull to design as it can be helpfull.

[Sputnik]

lol fuckin OP, now this is entertainment!

[Tabula]

OP never said that they should put gamers in charge of designing the game lol. He said the dev team should put them on salary so they can give their advice about new content in the works to help make it better, or something along those lines.

[Chardrizard]

OP never said that they should put gamers in charge of designing the game lol. He said the dev team should put them on salary so they can give their advice about new content in the works to help make it better, or something along those lines.

That is what QA team are for.

[Tabula]

That is what QA team are for.

You mean the Community Reps? Having the Community Reps relay what information they see fit from the forums, which is an unreliable source anyway, to the developers isn't quite the same as having people with a strong sense of what a MMO should be like from a gamer's perspective on staff, but what ever I don't have time to get involved in this with all the trolls in here.

[Chardrizard]

You mean the Community Reps? Having the Community Reps relay what information they see fit from the forums, which is an unreliable source anyway, to the developers isn't quite the same as having people with a strong sense of what a MMO should be like from a gamer's perspective on staff, but what ever I don't have time to get involved in this with all the trolls in here.

Quality Assurance team.. the one that tests contents, the one that fight Garuda over and over again and readjust the balance accordingly... The one that actually plays the game repeatedly for the sake of us so we don't bitch when something is broke. Of course i am the troll and you are the starter one.

[Mijin]

What good is QA team if they're used to QAing for single player games? Even a more popular games quality assurance team would benefit from having people on their team that have done nothing the last 10+ years but play MMOs.

[Jynx]

What good is QA team if they're used to QAing for single player games?

Look at those massive unfounded assumptions people.

[cloverkitty]

It is clear that a large majority of the people here have never worked in a Dev/Test environment.

Developers are coders. The take the blue prints that is laid out by the leadership (Yoshi, and above) and are given individual sections to work on.
- Network function
- AI
- Collision
- Engine
- etc

Graphics designers will work on the graphics and animations (individual groups will work on different set of graphics)
- Towns
- Dark Mobs
- Players
- Etc.

After all of those are are put together it is all pulled together into a "Build". Which if passes a sanity check is passed to test (also known as QA (Quality Assurance). This team will take various segments (and may even be linked to the teams of the devs that created the components putting their testing on the individual assigned components

Dev,Design, and Test do not play or use the game as a whole in making it.

Then it goes to the play testers who look for bugs, or functionality of the area/section of the game they are required to repeatedly test (levels, collision, effects, etc)

After all this the bugs are gathered and determined what is fixed, what is not (postponed, won't fix, by design, etc)

After all of the cuts and fixes and the product has met the bar for GA (general audience, or beta (public/closed)). Then it is reviewed by the management that set the directives on how the game is designed. If that clears then the product it put out for public beta or released.

That is about the extent of it. The amount of time playing an MMO or not would make no difference.
An opinion panel is typically part of the final review before release (although now a days they just use Beta for that).

Just my observations.

[Mijin]

Look at those massive unfounded assumptions people.

I've already cited my evidence behind this is here like two or three times.
The team members were forced to play MMOs because they had no knowledge of them. If you can prove that this is untrue in anyway, I'll accept it. However, I'll still disagree and say that the game would be better if new concepts where run by a team of advanced players first.