Why do devs not want customer feedback?
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This is one of those issues that makes me truly angry, but I'll try not to rant - I do want to understand this phenomenon, not just complain about it.
Fact 1 - I use dozens of pieces of software every day. Many of them use an internet connection to announce when updates are available, others operate completely online, and still others require a working email to register and registration to use. The developers of any of these programs could easily send me a link to a survey about what features to add, change, or remove in the next version. Especially for a forum or MMO, it would be so damn easy for them to pop up a poll on log-in or PM a link to a poll. Yet those few sites which use polls use them as a game to ask pointless questions, there seems to be a general policy that poll options which would equate to 'I don't like feature X' are not allowed. I've never gotten a single survey asking what should be changed in the next version of a program I use, even a subscription-based one where logic would suggest they would have a big stake in keeping their subscribers happy. I've gotten dozens of similar surveys from restaurants, not to mention the comment cards they always have lurking around, and some from retail stores; they even give out prizes to induce people to give them feedback.
Fact 2 - Programs that provide online customer support usually go out of their way to not provide any avenue for people to make suggestions or complaints about the program's design. I was asked to be a playtester for a beta version of an MMO, but it turns out they only wanted us for load testing and more raw data for their diagnostic software, they did not provide any avenue to report bugs or make suggestions. Their attitude was: "If you see a bug, we already know about it; if we don't fix it, it's because we judge it a lower priority than whatever else we are doing. And we're not going to tell you what we're doing." [tears]
So, can anyone explain the psychology here? Am I making some kind of mistake when I assume software producers and developers are businessmen who could hake more money if their customers were more satisfied?
I think I'll bump the survey idea up higher on my list. I'd really like to hear from players, most of whom don't return after the first try.
What you report is quite common, in fact, most common. My best guesses are:
1: People are so busy, they simply cannot bring themselves to ask for more workload in any form.
2: Most of the feedback they get is so lame, they prefer to get none.
Now, why would this be?
One problem is, most people who respond to polls are 8 to 12 year olds, either chronologically or intellectually... OR... they have not become expert in the software yet and their complaints are actually requests for free consulting.
Another problem is, the people who filter the mountains of incoming mail are not familiar/expert enough with the software to know whether they are reading a legitimate (much less careful and insightful) report. If these people DID know that much about the software, they'd have a more productive job at the company (and in fact, that may be what happens to them).
I developed several hardware and software products in my time, and found that 90% of the suggestions had zero foundation, 99.9% of suggestions were useless (because we already knew what they were talking about), 99.99% were not worth the time and effort to filter, and 0.01% were from people I would pay to work with me!
Hope that helps. I do understand you, and in fact agree with you in principle, because I too have provided carefully prepared and highly valuable feedback to developers - and been ignored. At least I understand why. I think.
1: People are so busy, they simply cannot bring themselves to ask for more workload in any form.
2: Most of the feedback they get is so lame, they prefer to get none.
Now, why would this be?
One problem is, most people who respond to polls are 8 to 12 year olds, either chronologically or intellectually... OR... they have not become expert in the software yet and their complaints are actually requests for free consulting.
Another problem is, the people who filter the mountains of incoming mail are not familiar/expert enough with the software to know whether they are reading a legitimate (much less careful and insightful) report. If these people DID know that much about the software, they'd have a more productive job at the company (and in fact, that may be what happens to them).
I developed several hardware and software products in my time, and found that 90% of the suggestions had zero foundation, 99.9% of suggestions were useless (because we already knew what they were talking about), 99.99% were not worth the time and effort to filter, and 0.01% were from people I would pay to work with me!
Hope that helps. I do understand you, and in fact agree with you in principle, because I too have provided carefully prepared and highly valuable feedback to developers - and been ignored. At least I understand why. I think.
Quote:Original post by sunandshadow
So, can anyone explain the psychology here?
If were only talking about games I'm guessing its the result of the developers already getting about 5,000 suggestions a day, most of which read like the comments for a youtube video.
Its mainly because the dev's don't get to make the decision on the questions or on what to ask. So the questions that are asked are basically crappy ones which don't do any good.
I'm too sleepy to think about how much it relates to commercial projects, but I used to work on a Free software / Open Source game, and they are usually pretty open to feedback.
Being entusiast at first, we wanted all the feedback we could get. All the feedback was about known issues, but at least it showed us what people cared about the most. Still, we couldn't set the priorities simply by the desire of the players, but there were many other issues to take into account, so we implemented what we judged that we should work on next.
Eventually all the basic features were implemented, and from here on, the feedback we got was basically 'rip off X feature from <famous game>'. We did got some creative feedback, but these people had spent a while thiking, not just something they thought in a moment.
However, a short time afterwards, we had pretty much enough material to know what we should build into the game. From time to time we were unsure about small details, but it was unfrequent and we usually solved asking directly, not waiting people to give feedback. We had a page where everyone could put it's feedback; I was one of the lasts persons defending it's existance, but I realized it was a failure after a while.
When we needed to ask, it was usually on a mailing list, but it was almost never directed at players, but other developers.
I find that there are many reasons NOT to wish for feedback. You don't want to bug your users, you'll get a lot of feedback you don't care about, you probably have your own methods of getting the information that you could get from feedback( a change that you want is not necesarily something that the maker will think it's good for him / her ), maybe you have your own ideas already of what's next.
Now, it sounds so obvious that you would want to hear anything your users want to say, but in practice, you'll only want a few very specific details.
About the 'I don't like X feature' not being allowed, it seems unlikely anyone would do that. Most programs have the tendency to bloat because the makers are afraid of removing features, then having an user asking "where did feature X go?".
Then again, Free software / Open source projects usually have a bug tracker because development is open, but I don't recall seeing a bug tracker for commercial projects, probably since it will give them bad publicity, since no one else shows their bugs, unless they already have a solution and requires user intervention.
Also, if you payd for software, even if it comes with guaranteed support, unless there are chances you will renew support and pay them more money, the less support they have to give, the less money they have to spend. The maker would actually have to care about users more than money (i.e. be willing to risk losing money / earn less money ) in order to use more resources for this.
Being entusiast at first, we wanted all the feedback we could get. All the feedback was about known issues, but at least it showed us what people cared about the most. Still, we couldn't set the priorities simply by the desire of the players, but there were many other issues to take into account, so we implemented what we judged that we should work on next.
Eventually all the basic features were implemented, and from here on, the feedback we got was basically 'rip off X feature from <famous game>'. We did got some creative feedback, but these people had spent a while thiking, not just something they thought in a moment.
However, a short time afterwards, we had pretty much enough material to know what we should build into the game. From time to time we were unsure about small details, but it was unfrequent and we usually solved asking directly, not waiting people to give feedback. We had a page where everyone could put it's feedback; I was one of the lasts persons defending it's existance, but I realized it was a failure after a while.
When we needed to ask, it was usually on a mailing list, but it was almost never directed at players, but other developers.
I find that there are many reasons NOT to wish for feedback. You don't want to bug your users, you'll get a lot of feedback you don't care about, you probably have your own methods of getting the information that you could get from feedback( a change that you want is not necesarily something that the maker will think it's good for him / her ), maybe you have your own ideas already of what's next.
Now, it sounds so obvious that you would want to hear anything your users want to say, but in practice, you'll only want a few very specific details.
About the 'I don't like X feature' not being allowed, it seems unlikely anyone would do that. Most programs have the tendency to bloat because the makers are afraid of removing features, then having an user asking "where did feature X go?".
Then again, Free software / Open source projects usually have a bug tracker because development is open, but I don't recall seeing a bug tracker for commercial projects, probably since it will give them bad publicity, since no one else shows their bugs, unless they already have a solution and requires user intervention.
Also, if you payd for software, even if it comes with guaranteed support, unless there are chances you will renew support and pay them more money, the less support they have to give, the less money they have to spend. The maker would actually have to care about users more than money (i.e. be willing to risk losing money / earn less money ) in order to use more resources for this.
Author
It's true that 80% of people are stupid, but if 50% or more of users hate something in a piece of software it should be changed, and anyone paying for a commercial software should have a right to be heard. It can't be that difficult to find enough people who are experienced and intelligent users of a piece of software that you could promote them to 'moderators' or an equivalent rank and let them filter out the crap feedback and pass on the good ones.
Coz - was the game you worked on a single player game or a multiplayer one? I can understand a single player game becoming finished to the point where no more feedback is useful, but for something like an MMO that never happens. Also for an MMO I don't think it's possible to bug your users more than they already are. And if you have your own ideas on what's next, you should show them to the users to make sure they don't hate them.
Coz - was the game you worked on a single player game or a multiplayer one? I can understand a single player game becoming finished to the point where no more feedback is useful, but for something like an MMO that never happens. Also for an MMO I don't think it's possible to bug your users more than they already are. And if you have your own ideas on what's next, you should show them to the users to make sure they don't hate them.
Some ideas, just based on what Ive seen following various games on their forums, etc, during development:
a) For the most part, people dont always want what they think they want. Gamers, especially the ones most likely to give feedback, are very often idealists with a pet feature that they love and will boldly claim it should be in the game regardless of whether they would actually like that feature in combination with the rest of the game. eg, "GTA 5 would be awesome if you could build a farm and raise a family of young children!"
b) The consumers have very little idea of the effort involved in implementing a given feature, which makes it very hard to rate a given feature's popularity compared to what else it might cost in the game. eg, Feature A might be the most wanted feature by far - but the effort would mean B and C cant be implemented, and if you asked "Would you still like A if it meant you definitely dont get B and C?" feature A might no longer be popular.
When you have a whole raft of dozens and dozens of options people are recommending, it becomes very difficult to balance each against the others in terms of effort.
c) Self-selection bias. There are particular groups of people who are likely to respond to feedback requests. In many cases, for example, the real hardcore fanboys(/girls) are by far the most likely to offer their feedback because they are so excited about the game, and have thought about it so in-depth. But their desires can be contradictory to the rest of the market - for example, imagine if the World of Warcraft players who spend 40 hours a week playing were the ones answering the polls.
In general, I think the designers have a pretty good idea of what the audience wants. The job is to balance effort, different audience demographics, the cohesiveness of the game, and sometimes even other factors like IP holders' oversight, and come out with a good game.
I think theres a limit to how much benefit there is from direct customer feedback compared to what you get from a small sample like the game's forums. A poll with self-selected responses will still only offer a view of "people seem to want something kind of like X" which isnt much of an improvement over the small sample sizes, and that vague concept still needs to be balanced against all the other competing factors.
a) For the most part, people dont always want what they think they want. Gamers, especially the ones most likely to give feedback, are very often idealists with a pet feature that they love and will boldly claim it should be in the game regardless of whether they would actually like that feature in combination with the rest of the game. eg, "GTA 5 would be awesome if you could build a farm and raise a family of young children!"
b) The consumers have very little idea of the effort involved in implementing a given feature, which makes it very hard to rate a given feature's popularity compared to what else it might cost in the game. eg, Feature A might be the most wanted feature by far - but the effort would mean B and C cant be implemented, and if you asked "Would you still like A if it meant you definitely dont get B and C?" feature A might no longer be popular.
When you have a whole raft of dozens and dozens of options people are recommending, it becomes very difficult to balance each against the others in terms of effort.
c) Self-selection bias. There are particular groups of people who are likely to respond to feedback requests. In many cases, for example, the real hardcore fanboys(/girls) are by far the most likely to offer their feedback because they are so excited about the game, and have thought about it so in-depth. But their desires can be contradictory to the rest of the market - for example, imagine if the World of Warcraft players who spend 40 hours a week playing were the ones answering the polls.
In general, I think the designers have a pretty good idea of what the audience wants. The job is to balance effort, different audience demographics, the cohesiveness of the game, and sometimes even other factors like IP holders' oversight, and come out with a good game.
I think theres a limit to how much benefit there is from direct customer feedback compared to what you get from a small sample like the game's forums. A poll with self-selected responses will still only offer a view of "people seem to want something kind of like X" which isnt much of an improvement over the small sample sizes, and that vague concept still needs to be balanced against all the other competing factors.
Author
Quote:Original post by caffiene
b) The consumers have very little idea of the effort involved in implementing a given feature, which makes it very hard to rate a given feature's popularity compared to what else it might cost in the game. eg, Feature A might be the most wanted feature by far - but the effort would mean B and C cant be implemented, and if you asked "Would you still like A if it meant you definitely don't get B and C?" feature A might no longer be popular.
When you have a whole raft of dozens and dozens of options people are recommending, it becomes very difficult to balance each against the others in terms of effort.
This is true but not actually relevant. The developers need to have those dozens and dozens of options whether they are coming up with them themselves or getting them from customers or playtesters. The lead designer and/or producer always have the challenging task of deciding what seems good in theory but will be awful in practice, what would clash with something else, and what is impossible or too much work to implement. Customer input just widens the knowledge base the designers have to work with, and especially it can be helpful in identifying misfeatures, things that just aren't working as currently implemented and need to be removed or redesigned, which are exactly the kind of things devs are unlikely to notice themselves.
Quote:In general, I think the designers have a pretty good idea of what the audience wants.
Sorry but I laughed out loud at that. I have never played an MMO that hasn't had at least two elements that had been horribly broken for more than a year. To me that says devs do not have a finger on the pulse of their players' dissatisfaction.
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