Roll For Insight: Just Give Them What They Want

“Give them what they want.”

Most people would assume that to be the final line… the end all be all of any type of design.  After all, customers dictate if a product is successful… right?

While working in game design I’ve also had to work through this struggle.  Finding myself wading through the debris field of would-be actionable feedback, I would see our players often passionately upset about the direction things would be going in.

The temptation of course, would be to do exactly what the player base says you should do:

“This character is overpowered.”

“This item is overpowered.”

“Plz nerf, (insert bastardization of the company name) plz”

It seems quite easy to do exactly as our player base wants, but if we do, are we really doing our jobs as designers?

Through the experience of thousands of people constantly yelling at me everyday, I’ve learned that our job as game designers is to take that feedback and to understand the true meaning behind it.  We take that “cube” of feedback and glance at it underneath, to the side and within to find the real emotions behind it… then with that we make a change that is the most healthy.

Probably the best example I have to cite would be my experience on League of Legends.  Within the MOBA there were abilites called “Summoner Spells”, which allowed a player to customize their character by adding any combination of two of these spells.  One such ability which met much contention and still does so to this day is one known as “Flash.”

Flash can make for epic plays.

The Flash ability grants any character the ability to teleport a short distance instantly, a quite powerful ability in a world where a single kill can mean the difference of victory or defeat.  The game reached a point where it became a necessity… players always opting to take this “option” and the masses raged:

“Remove Flash.”

Back then I was in charge of balance, and this was something I would hear quite often.  The easy move would be to listen to them and do it.  However, our job as designers is to listen and most importantly-- to understand.

I asked myself a few questions at this point:  “What pros and cons did this ability have?”  “What exactly is the issue?”

Several of the cons also exhibited good behavior.

“Enemies always escape cause of flash!  It sucks!”

vs

“I could use flash to initiate and kill someone!  Awesomesauce!”

There were plenty of them… and enough pros to warrant not removing it.  I realized that the issue wasn’t the mechanics of the spell itself, but was the fact that it presented the strongest option.  Thats when it clicked to me-- the problem was with options!

Rather than remove the spell altogether, a much more elegant solution was to increase the viability of other spells by increasing the re-cast time of the spell… causing players to be much more careful when using it.  Now players could still achieve their moment of greatness when using it offensively, and could still cheat death at a higher price.

It wasn’t quite what people asked for, but it achieved the underlying issue that many had.

In the information age we live in, where feedback is only a click away… designers need to be able to learn to adapt and not drown themselves in the sea of feedback.  We need to learn to filter and understand, rather than take the raw edge of our customer’s immediate passions.

What we need isn’t always what we think we do… and to this day, flash still exists in that game I’ve loved for so long.