Players wanted AAs, bloom and a progressive ranking system in Reach, and I'm pretty sure that all of those things contribute to Reach's low level of success (compared to halo 3).

I don't know enough about Reach and their developers to be able to have an opinion on that. But typically, something can be suggested by the players and then implemented by the developers, but that doesn't mean that it was those players who made them implement it. Developers also have a brain.

I mean, I suggested flying in Azeroth, Goblins, underwater realm and a ton of stuff in WoW and other games that has since been implemented. But was that because of my suggestions? I highly doubt it. Cataclysm was probably started on long before even WotLK was launched.

[quote name='DrMadolite' timestamp='1334409819' post='4931183']
Saying that I want the game to be different doesn't say anything about what specifically you want to see in the game.

I don't think players would "want" a game to be different without specifics. It is usually the case where they want something over another.

E.g. players who hate bloom in Halo wants the old system back. players who love bloom in Halo wants bloom and doesn't want the old system back.

Does anyone have an example of how "want" can be different from "don't want"?
[/quote]

My point is that gamers aren't as good at identifying the underlying issue. If they were, they sure as hell wouldn't be complaining about gear score in WoW, for instance. Because if you remove the gear score, you're still going to have the need for that level of gear, but now it's just gonna be even more players complaining because of how difficult it'll be to figure out the benchmarks.

In those cases I don't think that is the developers intentions, but instead just lazy developers that don't feel like coming up with consistent new content. There is a big difference between those two types

The grindfest is what's called the "treadmill" by devs, and it's something that the professionals take very seriously, because it directly affects game sales. Too much grinding, and players start quitting the game. That's why they try to mask it with interesting stuff, because the right amount of grinding in a game (that which occupies your time but doesn't feel grindy) can make it survive for a lot longer.

I'd be curious to see whether psychologists have studied, and given a name to, this particular phenomenon: the disparity between what individuals think they want and what they actually want. The phenomenon is certainly not unique to just games.

Edit: Introspection illusion, perhaps.
Further reading: http://uxmyths.com/p...-what-they-want

Edit again: I'd forgotten all about this -- Malcolm Gladwell has a great TED Talk on this very idea: http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

From what I've seen of newbie game designers' attempts at game design documents, I think designers often don't know what they want at the beginning of the process either. Half the fun of the design process is figuring out what you want, and half the challenge of the creative process is figuring out what to input into yourself to make useful ideas come out.

Edit: I decided I wanted to ramble more about the psychology of creativity, since it's such an interesting topic. First off, I think game designers aren't fundamentally different from players. Every designer has to _be_ a player, just like every writer has to be a reader, every musician has to be a music fan, etc. If you're not consuming it you could make random attempts at producing it but you're not going to have any feel for what's functional and enjoyable. Many run of the mill players come up with a stray design idea or two when playing a game. It may or may not be a good idea, but the same can be said for the ideas of an experienced designer. The difference between the player and the designer is just that the designer has put time into thinking about design, and with that time has probably acquired a broader experience and more developed conceptual framework of what a game is and how it functions. With that experience and theoretical foundation the designer has mental tools to test ideas (and how they fit with other ideas) that an ordinary player doesn't have, and the designer also has the habit and mental toolbox to produce more ideas faster. But designing, like all creative and artistic fields, is intensely personal. We all have different experiences, have chosen different bits of others' theory to incorporate into our own, and that's why it's so rare to find two designers who can agree on a game concept to start developing. So, since "developer skill" is not a consistent or objective thing, nor a discrete thing that players absolutely lack, I don't think it really makes sense to draw a line in the sand between players and designers, as far as whose ideas are valid or interesting. Even once an idea has been fully implemented it's difficult to say if it is a good idea because that can only be measured in whether the players are having fun, and one game design is different amounts of fun for different players because they have different tastes and abilities.