Should Designers Listen to Negative Feedback? 

Hello! First things first: the GMTK Game Jam returns in July. Sign up here: itch.io/jam/gmtk-2020 Also, the huge number of links and sources for this video was waaaay too big for the description (there's a 5000 character limit) so I've put them all in this pinned comment. Enjoy! Doom Eternal is a masterful twitch shooter symphony with one sour note | Ars Technica arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/03/doom-eternal-review-a-welcome-return-to-hell-on-earth/ Why the 'Doom Eternal' Marauder Sucks So Bad | VICE www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgezzk/why-the-doom-eternal-marauder-sucks-so-bad Bring back minecraft's original combat system | Change.org www.change.org/p/microsoft-bring-back-minecraft-s-original-combat-system Final Fantasy 15’s worst chapter gets fixed next month | Polygon www.polygon.com/2017/2/2/14476278/final-fantasy-15-chapter-13-update-dlc-release-date Nintendo has FINALLY adjusted the Animal Crossing eggs drop rate | Nintendo Enthusiast www.nintendoenthusiast.com/nintendo-has-finally-adjusted-the-animal-crossing-eggs-drop-rate/ The Witcher 3 patch 1.07: Geralt's new movement mode analyzed | PC Gamer www.pcgamer.com/the-witcher-3-patch-107-geralts-new-movement-mode-analyzed/ Ubisoft to Change 'Assassin's Creed: Odyssey' DLC After Fan Outcry | VICE www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3bdp5/ubisoft-to-change-assassins-creed-odyssey-dlc-after-fan-outcry ‘Mass Effect 3’ ending will be changed after video-gamer backlash, Bioware announces | NY Daily News www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/mass-effect-3-ending-changed-video-gamer-backlash-bioware-announces-article-1.1048196 Deconstructeam Tweet | Twitter twitter.com/Deconstructeam/status/1253670726370037760 The Swords of Ditto has a massive free update that removes permadeath | PC Gamer www.pcgamer.com/uk/the-swords-of-ditto-has-a-massive-free-update-that-removes-permadeath/ Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair Update Will Make Game Easier | GameRant gamerant.com/yooka-laylee-and-the-impossible-lair-update-easier/ Ultra-tough dungeon-crawler Below adds easier “Explore” mode | Ars Technica arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/capy-adds-easier-explore-mode-for-freer-wandering-through-below/ A Russian Crucible: Pathologic 2 and the Problem of Video Game Difficulty | EGM Now egmnow.com/a-russian-crucible-pathologic-2-and-the-problem-of-video-game-difficulty/ A Thousand Voices: Open Game Development | GDC Vault (Free Access) www.gdcvault.com/play/1021755/A-Thousand-Voices-Open-Game Retrospective of Burnout Paradise | 4C Conference ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jYpbXhl-4h0.html Why Insomniac blew up the moon | GamesIndustry.biz www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-01-08-why-insomniac-blew-up-the-moon Peter Vesti Frendrup: Level Design in Battlefield 1 | Digital Dragons ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BwjU8okQWvc.html (Archived) Half-Life 2: Episode One Update Released | Steam News web.archive.org/web/20080306061112/steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=news&id=681 (Archived) Game Telemetry with Playtest DNA on Assassin’s Creed | Ubisoft Engine Room web.archive.org/web/20130310005326/engineroom.ubi.com/game-telemetry-with-playtest-dna-on-assassins-creed/ 'Slay the Spire': Metrics Driven Design and Balance | GDC Vault (Free Access) www.gdcvault.com/play/1025731/-Slay-the-Spire-Metrics Opinion: Indie Game Design Do-s and Don't-s: A Manifesto | Gamasutra www.gamasutra.com/view/news/117521/Opinion_Indie_Game_Design_Dos_and_Donts_A_Manifesto.php 'Nioh': Talking with Samurai | GDC Vault (Free Access) www.gdcvault.com/play/1024561/-Nioh-Talking-with Interview: Firaxis' Jake Solomon On What Went Right And Wrong With XCOM 2 | Rock Paper Shotgun www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/25/making-of-xcom-2/ How Rare keeps Sea of Thieves afloat in a sea of feedback | Microsoft Game Stack Blog developer.microsoft.com/en-us/games/blog/how-rare-keeps-sea-of-thieves-afloat-in-a-sea-of-feedback/ @Jollyrogers99 Thread | Twitter twitter.com/Jollyrogers99/status/1250296304690847745 This Resident Evil 2 Remake mod kills off Mr. X for good | PC Gamer www.pcgamer.com/this-resident-evil-2-remake-mod-kills-off-mr-x-for-good/ Id Software Talks Doom 3: BFG Edition on PS3 | PlayStation Blog blog.us.playstation.com/2012/06/22/id-software-talks-doom-3-bfg-edition-on-ps3/ @AmusedApricot Thread | Twitter twitter.com/AmusedApricot/status/1251283823762915331 Darkest Dungeon: A Design Postmortem | GDC Vault (Free Access) www.gdcvault.com/play/1023435/Darkest-Dungeon-A-Design Bioware writer laments "increasingly toxic" fan feedback | GamesIndustry.biz www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-01-10-bioware-writer-laments-increasingly-toxic-fan-feedback No Man’s Sky dev received death threats over lack of butterflies | Metro metro.co.uk/2018/07/23/no-mans-sky-dev-received-death-threats-lack-butterflies-7748931/ The hidden emotional toll that comes with a career in video games | Financial Post business.financialpost.com/technology/gaming/the-hidden-emotional-toll-that-comes-with-a-career-in-video-games Super Smash Bros. Fans Are Harassing Masahiro Sakurai Over Waluigi Snub | Nintendo Life www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/06/super_smash_bros_fans_are_harassing_masahiro_sakurai_over_waluigi_snub Kunai was review bombed by a single person in a 'state of anger,' claims developer | PC Gamer www.pcgamer.com/kunai-was-review-bombed-by-a-single-person-in-a-state-of-anger-claims-developer/ Circle in the Dark: The 'Darkest Dungeon' Community | GDC Vault (Free Access) www.gdcvault.com/play/1024247/Circle-in-the-Dark-The

Players are very good at knowing how they feel about things; they're very bad at knowing why they feel it.

Mark, this video is too easy to follow. Please patch this to up the difficulty.

As someone who is colour-blind, I just wish I could change the Marauder's eye flash colour so I can see it.

A while ago, in Killer Instinct (2013), people complained about the character Jago. Jago has this ability where if he hits you with a fireball, he heals himself. People in the community cried for nerfs on the healing to no end, almost like a rally cry. So Iron Galaxy (the devs) take a look at Jago. With months of testing, the answer they found was that Jago was effective at every single range - meaning there was no place on the screen that he was at a disadvantage. At long range he had good fireballs, and a short range he had strong tools. At a mid range, Jago should have been weak, but he had this move called Wind Kick. Wind Kick allowed Jago to close the distance from mid-range. And the devs didn’t like that, so they made it so he’d be weak there. Instead of nerfing the healing, they nerfed Wind Kick. Many in the community exploded because it wasn’t what they wanted. Jago fans were angry because they lost an amazing move that required little strategy. Jago haters were angry because they didn’t nerf the healing and felt ignored.They cursed the devs and called them unspeakable things. And yet, in a few months time, nobody was complaining about Jago anymore. Why? The problem wasn’t the healing. The devs needed to look at the problem intelligently and not react to outrage. And they did so very well, though it didn’t win them any popularity contests.

I am pretty sure Sonic's face gave adults nightmare too.

While in college, i came across either a book or article from a writer discussing creative feedback when creating stories, and what he said always stuck with me: "When someone tells you something isn't working, they're probably right. When they tell you how to fix it, they're probably wrong." Great video as usual!

Wholeheartedly agree with the "data informed, but not data driven" argument. Very well put. 👌

"I'd rather be 9 people's favorite thing, than 100 people's ninth favorite thing." - [Title of Show]

This reminds me of a certain person on twitter saying how most player critcism is genuine, but not always helpful

As a game developer, a common bit of wisdom in the industry is: "Players don't know what they want, but they know what they don't like." Basically, suggestions made by players are usually not the best solution, and will usually not even fix what it is they're having a problem with, but finding out what exactly players are having trouble with and WHY, can help the designers come up with good solutions to those problems.

"No Man's Sky dev received death threats over lack of butterflies"

8:35 this is the biggest brained move I have heard in my life. In fucking awe of this dev team that just casually took a well-established staple mechanic and inverted it to get the same result. Legendary.

Speaking as a player, I liked the notion of being open and honest about the intent of the designer when talking to the players, since I believe that the excessive secrecy surrounding game development is part of the problem. Players begin to believe that they know more about development than the devs themselves, and I think that's a big part of what drives the online harassment. Now, speaking as someone who is a creative worker (sorry, I don't know the correct term in English), I understand the struggle of dealing with customers (or, in my case, clients) feedback, even when I'm being honest. Author Neil Gaiman said that "if a reader doesn't like or understand a part of your story, they are 100% right. But then they will offer a suggestion to fix it, and they'll be 100% wrong. The writer must find the right solution for themself" (I'm paraphrasing here).

This seems to go hand-in-hand with not letting players "optimize the fun" out of a game, but on a more macro level.

In regards to Darkest Dungeon and the corpse feature: despite the initial outcry, the developers have later revealed that only about 1% of players actually turned off the corpses. Source: "Darkest Dungeon Documentary | Gameumentary" by The Escapist. Corpses at 42:37. 1% mention at 52:20.

What you've gotta remember is: a lot of people who PLAY games don't MAKE games and don't know why that feature they love or hate makes them feel that way.

I love how you changed the egg article to say “fewer” from “less”

9:05 Yasuda said it perfectly. Player feedback should be used to inspire the game designer, but never to do his job.

One of my favorite examples of devs handling the feedback is Hades: back when the game was in early access they would check which enemies the players would complain about the most and buff those who hadn't received any complaints - since they didn't want them to feel easy.

"Don't listen to a vocal minority" is generally a good advice, not just for game developers

Yep, this is what they taught us at DigiPen: "Listen to your players, but don't do as they say."

The reason games used to be so difficult ("Nintendo Hard," according to Satoru Iwata) is developers would be working on their games for years, playtesting over and over. They would get very good and know all the tricks. So something really easy for them is actually really difficult for a player, who doesn't have that level of insight or sheer playtime. If a game had a serious flaw, it was out the door and nothing could change. It's only recently change is made possible. I made a simple 10-question quiz game for a marine museum that has a game-over. It was to be installed as a museum exhibit, people would play for a few minutes or so, then move on. I wanted the game to be motivating, exciting, and challenging, but fair. You have 3 lifelines, there are no trick questions or answers, and most of the answers can be narrowed down through process of elimination. During playtesting a lot of people lost early on. People hated that there was even a game over at all! Some told me to get rid of the game over and just let everyone win, or allow the user to skip a question, or earn another lifeline. I didn't do that because it would undermine the whole purpose of the game. Rather, I allowed 2 guesses for the 4-question answers. At first I thought this would make it too easy, but it struck the right balance for a lot of people. Even after this, I dug into the stats one day and found the game was played 150 times with only 2 complete victories. Rather than giving the option for an easy playthrough, games should strive for low floor-high ceiling whenever possible. This is something Nintendo perfected with Mario: poorer players can walk through segments at their own pace, experienced players can run through the whole thing. Similar with Fortnite, you can choose to battle as many people as possible (taking their weapons), or you can open chests and farm materials, or you can just play stealthy and hide as much as possible. I've gotten first place with all three methods (combat, survival, stealth). High-floor games will have a smaller audience, perhaps one of the reasons Unreal Tournament isn't doing so well.

What I love most about these videos is how much everything applies to the design world across the board; not just game design. As someone who designs physical products, these principles apply equally as well to my practice. I feel like I've learned more about design methodology and research from this channel than from my Industrial Design education. It all begins and ends with users' emotional behavior and how to use the tools at our disposal to serve those emotions. I like to think that if someone can effectively master these methods, they can design anything.

This is the ultimate artist’s dilemma. The more power you have, the less freedom you have. I know what it’s like to feel attached to an idea but, ultimately, if you have an audience you might have to let go of it to keep others interested.

Speaking as a designer, it can be frustrating having "one way or the other" design compromises be hated by half the players and loved by the other half. Perhaps situations like this require more forethought to avoid or more afterthought to cleverly solve for, but on an emotional level it can certainly be very taxing to hear those echoes of your own choices and convictions day in and day out.

When Overkill was constantly updating Payday 2, there was always a debate of Loud vs Stealth, and the devs would almost always cater towards the Loud group. It had gotten so bad that, they caved, and gave us Stealthers a stealth only heist, which caused the Loud group to whine and complain, claiming they don't get Loud only heists, and that the Devs are only catering towards the Stealth group. Well guess what happened? The Devs catered towards *that* vocal minority, duped the Stealth Only heist, and turned it into a Loud only heist. Just a fine example of what not to do with your updates.

I think the discussion of "difficulty" gets in the way of real feedback. I remember discussing Dark Souls 2 on a forum and arguing that I found several bosses disappointing because two human opponents with weapons is always dealt with in the same way and that was boring and uninteresting. I got people pushing back from people thinking I was asking to make the game harder, but that couldn't be further from the truth. It was too easy to deal with on top of being a boring design. I wanted something more varied and interesting, not easier or harder. The Marauder thing reminds me a lot of this. I don't hate the Marauder, but I find it weird that it's the only enemy in the game that forces you to fight it in one way only and punishes you for trying anything else. I wouldn't necessarily want the Marauder made easier, but I would like alternate ways to take it on. Like with the Doom Hunter, you can use the plasma gun to take down the shield or attack the hover legs directly to force it into phase 2. It gave the player options for dealing with it rather than limiting them. There probably are other ways of dealing with the Marauder like using indirect blast damage, but the game's over-reliance on tool tips gives players the wrong impression. Resident Evil 3 is a weird case: they already solved the problem by adding a dodge button. With a dodge button it becomes easier and more exciting to handle a chasing enemy, versus the awkward dance you have to do with Mr X to either walk around a punch or just take the hit and keep going. People were also most frustrated at having to push the bookshelf with Mr X around, and they already fixed that in RE3 when you need to open the grate: there are multiple environmental hazards that can down Nemesis for long enough to complete the task. It's incorrect to draw the conclusion that the nerfing of Nemesis lead to the worse critical reception. The game isn't worse because they made Nemesis too easy, it's because he's underutilized due to the game being too short and missing a lot of content from the original.

This video is very comprehensive, and every time I thought "Yeah, that's great and all, but I wish he would mention the other sides of the argument X...", he always did! Sometimes feedback is entitled and ridiculous, sometimes it's hinting at real problems, sometimes it's a vocal minority, sometimes it isn't. Tough questions.

To me it's interesting, that: How you frame a mechanic towards the players makes a huge difference. Flipping a mechanic on it's head, where it was punishing before and now it's a reward for handling it well instead, as well as simply putting it in different terms for it to make more "logical" sense is nice

When it comes down to it, Devs talking about why they made a game this way makes me excited. I Love to hear why they do what they do and They inspire me to maybe try my hand at it someday. Darkest dungeon in particular because When there was the Corpse controversy I remember being really sad Red hook was getting so much Flak for what I still think is a cool Mechanic. How you use Player feedback and Data is Such an important part of a game's Support. Nice video as always GMT.

09:55 "...that can make encounters with him much, much easier." The "much, much" synching up with the punches was badass. Love this kind of attention to detail.

I think it's also interesting to note that sometimes the problem isn't the artistic vision at play, but whether or not it's accurately transmitted to the audience. So for example: You might be designing a character that's supposed to instill fear and horror, but if 90% of players look at it and laugh, that its not a good sign. But in this case the problem isn't the vision of creating something that's terrifying, it's that it wasn't perceived as such by the players.

“Instead of making a game that you hope many people will like, it's better to make a game you know a few people will love.” - Mark Brown “The idea of a game designer doggedly sticking to their creative vision without caring what players think is a myth.” - Mark Brown I’d love a video going in depth about the sweet spot of these two ideas.

I think feedback always needs to be considered but at the end of the day it's up to the creators if they want to do something about it. Not all feedback is good but if there is enough people mentioning the same thing it might be worth taking action.

The idea of listening to feedback about what needs work but not specific suggestions for how to fix it is interesting to me, because it defies what I always was taught about constructive criticism. I was always taught that when giving feedback, it's helpful to be specific and give suggestions of alternatives, rather than just responding with vague negativity. Saying "I don't think this is the best way to do this, what if you try this instead?" seems way more helpful than "your work is bad and I hate you." So generally whenever I comment about something I don't like in a game, I'll try my best to suggest a potential solution rather than just complaining about the problem. But I can see how that can be less helpful, especially if there are hundreds of other people doing the same thing. Maybe making suggestions is more applicable for practical problems, not creative ones. I still think it's important to be specific with criticism though. "I don't like this mechanic because X" is still a lot more useful that "this game sucks."

And then there's the simplest solution of them all: Make your game accessible to the modding community, so for every "I wish the game had X, or didn't have Y", the answer is: "There's a mod for that"

this is a very similar issue to the "optimizing the fun out of games"

The Marauder case also highlights another problem with player feedback: time. The feedback about the Marauder being unfair and annoying was so quick to emerge and boil over that by the time people had made 2-pages long lists of simple techniques to win the fight (which took less than a week) people were already firmly on one camp or the other. Feedback is more common at the beginning of the game's life, but in this case a LOT of things that could mitigate that frustration were already there, people just missed them (partly because of a poor tutorial) and became convinced that the enemy was unfair. People today have ways to defeat this enemy without taking any risks and without needing to use the "green eyes flash" mechanic. And some of these tactics are so simple everyone can learn and use them. But someone who was frustrated at the beginning won't care, because the turf war about this enemy was so strong that anyone trying to express an opinion on one side or the other is immediately labeled as a "whiner" or an "elitist" depending on the side, meaning actual feedback gets lost and players find it harder to find and understand strategies or express legitimate complaints.

Overwatch's infamously laggy balancing cycle is a great example of avoiding player suggestion too much The devs would change everything but what players suggest. And when these seemingly do nothing(since the root cause fits the player suggestion all along), they give up and fix the main cause, but forget to roll back those other "useless" changes, which now overcompensate the problem

This topic reminds me of how focus testing can ruin a game too. Look at the trailer for Overstrike and compare it to Fuse, the game it was reworked into.

Since there are no timestamps, here you go: 00:00 Intro 01:50 Disclaimer 05:29 One: Don't listen to a vocal minority 07:51 Two: Identify problems, not solutions 10:03 Three: Don't let changes ruin your game 12:23 Four: Create a conversation with your players 15:22 Closing thoughts 16:16 Outro

As an addendum everyone go watch Mark Rosewaters GDC talk "Magic: the Gathering: Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons Learned" where many ideas of this video are echoed

It's interesting, when I played through Doom Eternal the game itself was incredibly yet subtley different to Doom 2016. It was far more tactical, it promoted far more spatial awareness, for more planning on how you are going to tackle large hordes of enemies, multiple pieces of equipment to juggle all at once, and the learning curve from the 'smash 'em up' that was Doom was steep for me at least. I'd seen a lot of the fearmongering and discourse over the Marauder before playing the game and I think it primed me for a bad experience, but honestly the boss fight you encounter him in feels just as intense and rewarding as the rest of the game. The Marauder felt like the logical end point the game was trying to make. It wasn't blast the enemy how you please, it wanted you to think tactically and constantly re-evaluate and define your environment and the encounter priorities.

Mark, I cannot stress how important and necessary this video is on today's obsessive hypercynical culture of either contempt or, arguably worse, hypercriticism without a single consideration as to WHY something would be added to a game. Analytical discourse and feedback discourse benefits greatly from this greatly written, easy-to-follow video, JAM PACKED with a lot more of depth than I usually see in your videos (Which, bear in mind, is not a bad thing - Your channel is by far one of the most importants for aspiring and up-and-coming game designers) and amazing, diverse and extremely relevant examples - to the point I could easily talk about several others that you haven't cited, but easily gave room for. I know it feels like I'm just sucking up to you or just exxagerating, and maybe it really is just the thrill of finally seeing someone speak up in a well-directed and well-writen way what I've been having trouble telling everyone around me for the past 5 years as a game designer, but I just wanted to say... Thank you. As a long-time fan and patreon supporter, thank you very very much. You continue to prove yourself as one of my favourite RU-vidrs and a great educational resource for Game Design.

Yes, they should listen. Note that the word "listen" doesn't mean "agree with every single complaint, and then do exactly what the fans say they want". It just means listen to what they say, think about if it makes sense, and tweak some things. Basically be open to criticism and be self-reflective. I don't see how it could ever be good for a company to not listen to their customers. Again, this doesn't mean they have to then do exactly as players say. But at least take feedback into account.

I went to a developer conference held by a Georgia video game/movie/art school called SCAD, and one of the panels i went to was a PR team. The basic message they gave is that you can't just shrug off criticism, but sometimes what people are saying is the problem isn't actually the core issue, and you have to figure out what is actually the problem that is causing issues for players. I don't think I explained that correctly, but I think this is basically what you said in the second section

I think this video goes well with your "follow the fun" video. Devs really need to look at what makes their game unique and fun and focus on that. If youre getting feedback that says that the fun part of the game is being inhibited by a design choice, take it out

Loved the phrase at the end of the video. Darkest dungeon made me suffer, but when me and my friend actually beat the game it felt like we had defeated a monster. It’s tough and unforgiving, but if it wasn’t like that, it wouldn’t be rewarding. I truly enjoy your videos, BTW; you are definitely one of the best channels out there.

I'd like to give a special shout out to Nolla Games for their responsiveness regarding Noita. They are definitely aware of the opinions of the community and they take a lot of the criticism, comments and opinions on board when releasing patches and updates. They are active on Reddit, Discord and Twitter and they definitely watch Twitch streams and RU-vid videos. They manage to pull all of this off while still maintaining their own vision. Super impressed. Excellent game, excellent Developers!

As a writer, I often share story bits with my friends. Mostly, they just give me the typical response you'd expect from friends, general praise but that's it. One time, I shared one of the big twists with one of my friends who'd been taking a particular interest in the story. Until that twist. She clearly hated it, said it made her hate one of the characters, and she stopped asking me about the story after that. I have since completely gutted and rewritten that twist I was once so proud of.

One thing I noticed is that balance changes without explanation lead to a lot of turmoil, especially when they seem go against the grain of fan consensus (nerfing a weapon considered underpowered, buffing a character considered OP, removing a glitch that people had harmless fun with). There's a balance to be struck as if you go with the demands, you end up with a bland mess but if you stick too close to your guns, it can lead to the problem that George Lucas has, namely he has great ideas but other people need to add their input, or we get a different kind of mess. In fact each Trilogy of Star Wars shows the different levels of personal vision vs feedback when you think of it

Hey, I'm the guy whining about the marauders in doom eternal at the start of the video! Great video, thanks for using my tweet in it. It has inspired me to draft a video as well, because Doom Eternal is a game I feel so very mixed about and I think talking about it might be a good time. Hope you're staying safe in the world out there!

One of the best framings I've heard for point two was "When the player says that there is a problem, they are almost always right. When they propose a solution, they are almost always wrong."

I knew the darkest dungeon corpse thing was coming. Just knew it.

I remember a few years ago falling in love with a Game called Spacelords. It's a free to play co-op shooter/brawler hybrid where a team of 4 work together to complete various missions (with the possibility of a 5th player invading the game backing up the AI troops in an attempt to thwart the other players. The game had some very unusual mechanics, but somehow they work very well off of each other and provided a really unique experience. However, the community is really small (the game launched with very little fanfare, and there was little advertising. Maybe some of you got a youtube ad for it) which means that the vocal minority, who complained about mechanics that were perfectly fine by most people instead of learning them, had little opposition. Which has made MercurySteam (yes the guys who made the Castlevaia LoS games) make various changes to gameplay that seriously messed with the game's flow and even ruined the Antagonist mode (the 5th person invading) nowadays it feels like a very different game. I would like to go more in depth with the changes that made me quit playing the game, but I feel like no one would listen and I'll just be talking into the void. so if anyone is interested in me going into details about what changed, let me know.

Without having played Doom Eternal it sounds like the Marauder breaks the core fantasy of the game, being an unstoppable badass slaughtering enemies. It's like when an action game suddenly have a forced stealth section or an open world games forces you down a linear path. It gets a little muddy and hard to identify what the essence of your game is in modern game design where most feel like they are trying to be several different things at once. But a player feels it instantly when their reason for playing the game is being violated.

As a game developer who has sat on weekly streams and explained our design decisions, these guidelines are succinct and accurate. Player feedback is always valid, and player feedback is always wrong. Like data, it will inform you where there are problems, but will not tell you how to fix it. There is also one more aspect to this though; sometimes there can be a change that will absolutely be positive for the game, and absolutely is not the priority. Time is finite, and the team supporting the game is trying to evaluate how best to spend it to improve the game. Sometimes the smallest changes can be worse for being small, because there are fixed time costs to going through QA and patch release cycles. However, having frank and open conversations about Production decisions is as valuable as ones about Design.

A lot of the complaints about the Marauder seem to come from the less than stellar tutorial. The game tells you to stay at a medium distance, but the best way to deal with him is to get far away and make him rush you.

Mark Rosewater, Magic: The Gathering's head designer said this on his Drive to Work podcast on player feedback: "Players are great and finding problems, and terrible at fixing them."

Hey Xcom fixed the timer based missions in Xcom2, its called stealth. The timer doesnt count down until you have a unit revealed, so you can take as many turns as you like to setup the most elaborate ambushes and its great fun.

"The Culling" was one such game that fell victim to the trap of taking player feedback too seriously. They made their combat system easier but as a result it significantly decreased the game's skill ceiling and ended up making each encounter a shoving fight instead of an actual fight.

As I was releasing some of my first games, I got some good feedback with little changes I could make that did drastically improve my games. However, there's always at least one guy who thinks he can make your game better than you. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, it is never good enough

The feedback you should always show you listen to and either change or explain why you won't change it is bugs that hurt the game. For example, in The Binding of Isaac: Repentance, a bug was found where, if you play a certain character (Tainted Forgotten to be exact) and pick up an item that lets you respawn after dying, but as a different character (so not 1-Up, but things like Judas Shadow) and die (thus triggering the respawn) you will immediately die after respawning. If such a bug doesn't get fixed, it will hurt the experience your players will have, no matter how good the game is. And even if you don't patch it, players need to know why you decided that. No matter what game you make, the player deserves a game without bugs that make the experience worse

On some of the games mentioned: X-COM 2 is an example of sometimes it's not just the players but also the devs who don't understand what the change will due to their game. The reason people were so careful in X-COM remake was because of the other design choices made. Limited Squad size and RPG leveling mechanics made it so the loss of a squad member late game could make the game near unwinnable. Thus one bad move could cost you the entire campaign. So it's better not to risk your campaign in a single battle by charging in. The original X-COM had tons of disposable soldiers who's strength came from their gear, not a leveling system. Thus it was easy to play aggressively if you wanted. The Doom flash light was a STUPID mechanic because it breaks one of the most important things in gaming, suspension of disbelief. As so many memes pointed out it's easy to attach a flash light to a weapon or to simply hold them at the same time as is done in movies/tv shows all the time. If they wanted the break from genre horror theme instead of action then they should have figured out some other way raise tension. The not being able to see where you are shooting because you can't have light and gun at the same time is annoying. Instead most of the area should have been dark, they put lots of dark spots of enemies to hide it which kinda highlights where they will come from. Instead do a tight focused light with mostly dark rooms, light mostly be emergancy systems or ambient light from monitors and other displays. Play games with shadows like in one game there was a shadow casing object behind the player so at some times they would see the shadow of a monster on the wall but turn around to find nothing there because it was always behind them. I could go on with more ideas but they relied too heavily on the dumb mechanic to try and make horror feel.

I actually had a different theory on Nemesis' criticisms that's kind of the opposite. I have no proof for this, but part of me wonders if one of the biggest issues with Nemesis is that they made him TOO strong... Like, he has all these amazing abilities, is super fast, and has access to all these weapons. Because of this, the devs had to program in a lot of unnatural pauses to make him escapable and I've noticed that one of the most common complaints about him has been "WHY WON'T YOU JUST KILL HER ALREADY?!?!" Mr X on the other hand was powerful and undefeatable, but also really slow, so you COULD outrun or outmaneuver him. I feel like this made him scarier because every time you escaped Mr X it felt like it was you pushing your skills to the limit to outwit him, while with Nemesis you feel like the Devs have just nerfed him so you can survive. Again, I'm not 100% certain on this theory, so I'd be interested in your take on it. I know in writing, one of the classic mistakes starting writers make is to focus too much on the character strengths and not enough on character weaknesses. It feels like a similar thing here. Great video as always!

Player feedback has lead many games, particularly in the indie scene, to becoming greater. The issue is that sadly sometimes people go past feedback and enter harassment.

I really appreciate that you actually put in the time to do the research and field interviews for this topic. (And that it was real and open minded research; and not just looking for data to backup a pre-existing opinion). Thank you for this and for being awesome. :)

I come to this problem often when I'm playtesting my games. Especially because I tend to do this with friends or older people. It's important to see how other people experience and feel while feeling your game, but it's also important to remember that *you* are the game designer. The intricacies of game design aren't something the players will necessarily understand just because they are playing a game. Also also, "the player shouldn't feel like they're entitled to design your game." Nice :D

no more appropriate quote than "I've read all my 1 star reviews on amazon, and now I'm a better author - said no-one ever" - Seth Godin.

I feel like the best solution is to always give the players options to customize parts of their own experience. It's understandable that developers might want you to experience their game in certain way, but every player is different and even the smallest option could turn a game from "ok" to "great" to some people. The biggest example of this are games with good difficulty settings. I've gone from thinking a game is alright to very good after trying a higher difficulty.

“Community Manager” at a game development studio is an interesting job title that I had no idea was a thing, but am very glad to hear that it is. I wonder if they hired someone with a background in psychology for that position.

Being a game dev and a doctor have a similarity. Trust people when they say something is wrong, don't trust what they say the solution is.

One thing I'd like to chime in on is that sometimes the player just isn't the target audience. There are few out there that can admit "This is a good game but it's not my type of game". Instead, they will pose complaints about the type of game as if they were criticizing the game itself.

My least favorite thing about player feedback is when people take every opportunity to give feedback. It happens a lot with the Apex Community where people talk about gameplay changes when what is being discussed isn't gameplay. A bad example is when a developer is congratulating fan art, but then someone takes the opportunity to talk to the developer about gameplay. A lot of people go into making a game, but not everyone is involved in gameplay. In the last example, the developer was a narrative lead and had no expertise or context in gameplay.

Oh man, I remember that Gods Will Be Watching thing. The absurd difficulty and rng was designed to force you to play sections several, maybe even tens of times until you made it through, which was tied in as part of the game's narrative. Problem was, you didn't know it was part of the narrative until the very end, and even if you did know it, it didn't make it any more fun to play. Very glad the devs listened to feedback on how they way overshot the balance there, even letting players change how that difficulty would be toned down (make RNG checks easier, remove RNG checks but compensate with harder management, or remove RNG checks without making management harder)

I never thought I'd see myself in a GMTK video, but I found myself and my team in the PAX East shop around 2:15

The Marauder is an amazing rival-type enemy that is very fun to play against, but I say this as someone who has beaten Doom Eternal several times. Fixing the initial tooltip tutorial about the enemy could help reduce frustration greatly. For instance, there isn't actually any benefit to being at "mid-range" nor is there any clear definition for what "mid-range" even is. Instead, the tool should tell you: 1: The Marauder is a defensive powerhouse that will block ALL direct attacks when he is not vulnerable. At close range, he will blast you with his shotgun, and from afar you will need to evade his energy projectiles. 2: The Marauder's shield cannot be overloaded or destroyed. 3: Shooting the Marauder's shield will cause him to spawn a spectral wolf to chase you down. Destroy the wolf quickly to avoid being overwhelmed. 4: Gain distance from the Marauder to bait him into a charging axe attack. When his eyes flash green, he is vulnerable to being attacked and staggered. Try different weapons to increase damage. 5: Explosions above or behind the Marauder won't be blocked. Try indirect attacks using different equipment or weapon mods to gain an advantage. Most people that claim this enemy is antithetical to Doom Eternal's gameplay design are the ones that haven't figured out how to efficiently deal with them. Once you realize that you need to understand spacing, evasion, timing and precision, you'll understand that he's actually an enemy designed to test your proficiency of the gameplay.

I love how much pokemon sword and shield gameplay there is without mention of it. We know , we know.

I was going to write a comment about something I felt needed work in this video, but then I thought, really, I should preface the comment by stating how incredibly polished your work is - to critique anything is just me hoping to improve something I already love immensely haha. so, instead, I will just leave it as that; thank you so much for the incredible amount of care and thought that goes into crafting such an artful essay

Great video and communicating change and the reasoning behind is always nice. Not just in games. It's not easy as the developer. One thing that I often see is that people complain about a certain feature and immediatly people come in and talk about whining, entitlement and derail the possibility of a discussion. I often thought about how it is possible to streamline these discussions or make it a discussion if someone is just angry. And how to filter out just noise of people who don't want to add to a discussion.

As Thor from Pirate Software says: "all feedback is useful, not all feedback is correct"

A lot of good examples of feedback done horribly can be found in shows as well. Take the currently popular "My Hero Academia" as an example. Bakugou Katsuki, the main rival to the main character, Midoriya Izuku, was intended to be hated by the creator. In prototyping he was meant to be the equivalent of that one asshole that's also your most reliable friend, but found that his lines tended to be more douchey than anything and made him into a side antagonist, even going as far as to tell Midoriya to jump off a building in episode 1 just because Midoriya didn't have a superpower. However, a little into the series a few popularity polls were made and Bakugou's popularity was way higher than expected, so the entire plotline revolving around his past treatment of Midoriya was dropped. In the manga, a good 60% of his lines towards Midoriya can be boiled down to "even though you have the most OP superpowers, you're still beneath me and I'll still be number 1!" He's never apologized, he's never been through a redemption arc, and if he does the fans will riot. I personally think that, artistically, it's a bad idea to conform to the fans like that. Everyone knew that Bakugou was a trainwreck waiting to happen, but all the teen girls that just saw "A hot bad boy" skewed the popularity polls enough to influence the show when the in-universe characters have said his personality is "the equivalent of flaming crap mixed with garbage"

Great video! As always. Really love your themes and analyzes 🤓👍🧡

I guess people get so pent up about this kinda thing cause they cant wish their own perfect game into existence and everybody has a different dream of a perfect game but not many have the ability and resources to realize it

"...and pretty much every Ubisoft game"

Another consideration to player's feedback is allowing players to mod the game In this way they can add or remove things as they like and then the developers can see if said changes affect the game positively or not A great example of this idea is The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth, where quite a lot of modded content already got into the official game

Man, these videos are gold. This one is just what I needed to hear. I often doubt my own decision when I get negative feedback, even though my inner voice says the feedback sounds like something I completely dis-agree with.

Hey Mark Brown! Your videos are the highlight of RU-vid for me. They are so well written with a great flow of information. The editing is on point and it is clear how much effort and dedication goes into these. It's inspiring. Thank you for being yourself and doing what you do!

The last part about gamer outrage is why I never label myself as a "gamer" - just someone who plays video games. The gamer subculture and community is shockingly toxic, filled with manbabies and whiners who will go to extreme lengths to express their displeasure - often harassing the developers themselves. It seems extremely petty and immature.

At first I hated the marauder, then I beat him for the first two times, found a great strategy and from then on out it became actually my favorite enemy. I played on PC on Ultra Violence difficulty. Doom Eternal has a bit of a learning curve but once you have your brain rewired to think like the game wamts you to it becomes a great experience.

Once you figure out to fight the Marauder he is easily one of the most fun enemies to fight. They switch up the gameplay by forcing the player to wait for the enemy to come them instead of charging to be the most effective. It makes them incredibly unique while not straying away from Doom Eternal's chaotic battle management gameplay. Also props to ID software for doubling down on the marauders in the DLC by putting them into new interesting situations. It definitely teaches you to love them.

Very nice breakdown, I think you really get to the heart of the issues at hand and I'm going to need to keep this in mind whenever people start getting uppity in some of the communities I'm a part of. Point two is a bit touchy for me as a would-be game designer, as my reflexive feedback format tends to be "Here's what I think the problem is, and here's what I think a good solution would be," but practically speaking I'm probably only marginally more qualified to make design suggestions than the average player. I just hope that even if my suggestions aren't helpful, my identification of the issue is.

"The idea of a game designer [...] not caring what players think is a myth" THANK you for that! I'm getting so tired of reading about evil corporations, that only want to steal money from us players. People are so quick to demonize sometimes. But game developers do that job, because they love games. Sure there are some black sheep, but I refuse to believe, they are in the majority or even as common as some might claim

Game developers have to know what sort of experience they are aiming to create. Then ask themselves: is the part of the game that players are complaining essential/contribute to that experience. Finally, can the part be altered to create said experience without causing major frustration? And if theres nothing that you can do, maybe those players that complained are just not your target audience.

The thing is game devs are really weird about listening to feedback. Something can be objectively too strong for months if not years and despite players consistently making devs aware no changes are made.I believe with World of Warcraft the devs only read the US forums and other regions cannot access the US forum. So that's nice. In other situations the same squeaky wheel gets the grease even though the feedback was misguided. Situations like an ability or character is perceived as overpowered despite having clear counters It generally just makes me think wtf is the point in giving feedback when it seems so inconsistent when devs decide to listen(especially with Blizzard) and when they DO listen it's quite often feedback from people that don't know what they are talking about which results in bad changes.

Hey Mark! You should really do a video on juicy feedback in games, especially feedback that keeps the player wanting more. I don't think I speak for myself when I say it would be really interesting to watch and to hear how certain developers achieve this, lol

Developer here. Yes, if a certain piece of "negative" feedback is repeated by many players, it should be listened to. Which doesn't mean that it actually should lead to change, but at least should push the devs into investigating why players feel a certain way about an aspect of the game. In the end the developers have final say obviously whether the thing that the negative feedback was about needs to be changed or not, but if it doesn't get changed, the developers should at least explain why. So many disagreements create friction due to not knowing the why. Opposite views that are just trying to one up one another to push their views through. Explain the why, and the majority will at least have an understanding. They may not agree for sure, but it's the best way to create an honest platform between game devs and their playerbase.

Me being an aspiring developer, it is very important to realize when you are or are not wrong. It is as important to realize when your players are wrong as well. Defense of something can be as wrong as the criticism of something. As said @ ~12:08, sometimes you have to stand your ground and be confident in your own opinion of what you find fun in the game. After all, you are making the game as much for yourself as you are for your playerbase, right? So with this in mind on the topic of the Marauder, what is _actually_ wrong with it? Its bumpy start did it no favors, that's for sure. If there was no problems with the Marauder, it would have a better reception. This is, in my own experience, exactly what happened with the DOOM Hunter. It too has a bit of a rocky and bumpy start trying to learn how to fight it and it is a bit frustrating. After you learn to fight the DOOM Hunter though it becomes a much more manageable enemy. The Marauder never exactly has this arc, because the Marauder has fundamental flaws in its design. Why is this the case, though? This starts to get into my own opinionative territory. The Marauder's interaction with the rest of the game is problematic. This is due to many special-case rules for the Marauder that are not very polished. One major example of this problem is how it deals with infighting. The Marauder and its wolf only focus you. So when defensive behaviors, such as the shield or the wolf, become triggered, it ends up punishing you. This is the exact-opposite behavior you would expect from infighting mechanics. The entire point of infighting is to benefit you in some way. As a result, this leads to the appearance of inconsistent behavior that is hard to track down and learn as a player. The Marauder's defenders waive this off as if it is no problem at all. The Marauder's critics rarely note this at all. Instead, in your words, they "provide solutions instead of identifying problems." This has lead to the waters becoming very muddy of who and why people dislike the Marauder. The defenders cocky attitude claiming all critics of the Marauder are of a lower skill level. The critics having a lack of understanding of the problem in the first place. The lack of a knowledgeable foundation on both sides of the problem. The community being so split and critical of each other. It means no one is any closer to having a real conversation about the Marauder.

I always thought of the Marauder like Sans from Undertale, they both make combat that is contradictory or not made for the game style of playing and I always wondered why he was better received, I realised that the Sans fight was sort of optional and was served as more of a punishment towards the player to get out of their way and kill every single enemy in each area and grinding them all, and the Marauder is just a boss fight that breaks the entire concept of the game.