cfb15f No.15530339
Games that were made, often sequels, not because the creators had a vision they wanted to bring to reality but because suits had them in a contract. Designed to make money and as such designed not to please consumers but appeal to the knuckle dragging boomercucks they use to gauge if an idea has 'mainstream appeal' or not.
Has a series you love ever been ruined by focus tested design?
9e5ee0 No.15530355
>Has a series you love ever been ruined by focus tested design?
all of them
12ef56 No.15530366
on the same topic, i swear playtesters are the most mentally inept people on the planet. every time valve discussed an interesting level design idea they had, their reasonings for not using it literally boil down to "our playtesters were failing to figure it out and got stuck for hours so we chose not to include it"
there's probably stories like that for other games too.
b55208 No.15530372
800c31 No.15530381
>>15530366
They intentionally grab the most incompetent people they can to justify axing any feature that would require actual effort and to instill more control on the developers.
cfb15f No.15530382
>>15530366
Cliffy B once said that he made the exploding barrels in bulletstorm green and at a point where you needed to shoot one to open a wall the testers all stopped because they were so hard wired to shoot red barrels for that effect they didnt even see the green ones were there.
b0ea40 No.15530398
>>15530382
>>15530366
Imagine someone like that playing a mod like They Hunger which has a shitton of non obvious paths to progress.
fb6fdd No.15530408
>>15530339
>Games that were made, often sequels, not because the creators had a vision they wanted to bring to reality but because suits had them in a contract
In the case of Destiny, it's all Bungie's fault. They've made the exact same mistakes for the second game.
>Designed to make money
Every product is created to make money.
cfb15f No.15530417
>>15530398
Why do you think plebcore games have glowing yellow shit on every ledge in those shit tier cover shooter movie games?
b84de4 No.15530419
DAWN OF WAR 3
I HATE THOSES FAGGOT WHO RUINED THE SERIES!
b0ea40 No.15530424
>>15530417
Stop reminding me
>>15530419
All people wanted was DoW2 with DoW1 scope or bigger.
Aka expanded Company of Heroes with a DoW skin.
Instead they got a mobified Starcaft clone.
b84de4 No.15530433
>>15530424
>Instead they got a mobified Starcaft clone.
ahah, no.
they even manage to fuck that up
000000 No.15530453
I don't know about focus-testing per se but all Blizzard games released since WoW have been designed with being fun to watch more in mind than being dun to play.
9e8faa No.15530461
>>15530366
Thank you for reminding me.
Playtesters in focus groups are not mentally equipped to handle fresh new unprecedented ideas. This should be Rule #1 for dealing with them. This should be completely obvious, and because of that focus group playtesters are incompatible with vidya. If we ever see anything new and exciting in vidya it is because it's in spite of focus group testing or because of the absence of them. Publishers or whoever in the development team who thinks they are needed are signaling how much they don't belong there.
Furthermore, focus group playtesters are followers, further emphasizing how they should not be used to test new ideas. Actual gamers who at least possess the ability to grasp new ideas are why any game mechanic or genre ever got anywhere. Focus group playtesters were there after those game mechanics became the norm and those norms were now the default playing style for any genre - they had no choice but to learn how to play through those at their own leisure. A focus group environment is not meant for testing new game mechanics or challenges because those are new to focus group playtesters; it reminds them how casual they are, and then they exercise their presence essentially being the final say on what's allowed.
For extreme emphasis. Imagine your favorite casual filter from any era. Now imagine a focus group playtesting it. Now imagine your favorite casual filter being casualized to meet focus group standards. Such is the fate of any game that undergoes focus group playtesting.
af7be2 No.15530462
>>15530339
>Destiny 2 made catering to focus groups
More like by committee
>>15530366
And their solution was "betas", early access, and rolling releases. I prefer the old method to reddit and friends shitting them up perpetually.
>>15530401
>C&C Rivals
No one on this planet was asking for that abortion of a game.
dc9147 No.15530488
>>15530339
So I heard you wanted a thread about how dumb focus testing is. Boy does this game have a story about that.
741242 No.15530494
The souls series has been milked dry
b0ea40 No.15530514
>>15530494
Fromsoftware does that will all of their popular IPs.
Soulsfags are braindamaged
e07909 No.15530534
Focus testing is cancer and the reason we got generic edgy shit instead of actually funny but slightly edgy game.
Nobody liked Fuse even though it was designed to please shit eaters, and honestly you can say the same about DMC2.
e07909 No.15530543
>>15530424
>All people wanted was DoW2 with DoW1 scope or bigger
Not really. I wanted DoW1 and DoW1 alone.
a221f6 No.15530549
>>15530366
That infamous playtester who ran around in a circle posted about it years later.
He said he was sat in a room with the Guardian Lair part loaded. The devs gave him no commentary and he spent most of his time just running around.
56c5b7 No.15530556
>>15530488
>>15530534
It's not to say the original would have necessarily been good, but the design changes certainly made sure it was trash. Even comparing the pre-test and post-test trailers show a big difference in tone.
e07909 No.15530568
>>15530556
So the gameplay remained but they changed how it looks.
>We were actually going for something on the level of Ratchet and Clank
But that sounds amazing. Jesus Christ…
c434a8 No.15530598
>>15530534
I'm pretty sure that's part of where all the pozzed SJW shit comes from, too. These focus groups are lazy as fuck and take data from social media. Twitter and facebook consists of nothing but virtue signaling and hysterical cunts, resulting in shit like Cuckenstien and Battlefail V.
d2c72c No.15530631
>>15530366
I remember there being a cap about how Dishonored playtesters couldn't finish a level because a guard told the that they couldn't enter a corridor.
7e2a56 No.15530642
>>15530488
>>15530534
This is not even the worse Insomniac has been hit by focus testers.
Listen to the developer commentary under the name uselesspodcasts. Every fucking level the devs keep mentioning how much work went into revisions because focus testers are retarded and have no idea what to do besides go up and hit it with a wrench.
cfb15f No.15530675
>>15530642
Reminder that Darkest Dungeon's devs just lurked streamers and altered the game to suit them.
c4f6ac No.15530692
>>15530408
>Every product is created to make money.
False. Back in the days passion, love and care still mattered while making a videogame. Sure people also wanted to make money, but for many devs the main focus was to make a fun game with their vision in mind. That kind of attitude is not completly lost, it still exists in the japanese doujin scene and to a degree in the western indie scene.
c434a8 No.15530744
>>15530692
Western indies are shallow knockoffs of better games with terrible pixel art. Any hint of passion was drowned in cheap booze and weed smoke.
e83c20 No.15530801
>>15530692
Not false, its all to make money, it is just that current bussiness model is diferent from older ones.
It is and always was to profit, it just happen that games made with love and care were the most profitable that time in that bussines model. But human creativity and skill turned to be a rare commodity, plus 2008 finace world crisis, made companys change bussines models, plus political changes in society.
0083d2 No.15530823
>>15530744 (checked)
I would disagree, "indie" is usually defined as a niche game made by a small self-publishing studio.
The problem is once that game isn't niche anymore it usually lose the "indie" title.
>Cuphead was Indie but it went big so it's not really Indie anymore.
>No Mans Sky was Indie, but it went big and got shat on.
>Hollow Knight was Indie, but it went big and /v/ picked it apart
>Minecraft was Indie, but went big and people became millionaires on Youtube with it
>Terraria was Indie, but it went big, though people still call it Indie because has pixel art.
>Gmod was Indie, but it went big and people associated it with valve games.
>Rust was Indie, but it went big and got microtransactions added.
>The souls games were originally Indie, But then they became big… Getting the idea?
So to call all Indie games pixelshit failures is not looking at the success stories.
800c31 No.15530837
>>15530823
A good half of what you listen was never indie by definition.
0083d2 No.15530868
>>15530837
What's the definition then smarty pants?
89d59e No.15530880
>>15530366
I'm starting to wonder if there was ever a case where focus testing actually improved something.
10b77d No.15530884
>>15530868
Indie means self-made and published outside of traditional publishing.
From Software already had existing publishing deals, so the Souls games weren't indie.
No Man's Sky was funded and marketed by Sony.
Not sure about the funding arrangements of the others, but Gmod at least was a mod, not a standalone product, so it doesn't count, because Valve, a publisher, then stepped in to make it official.
Minecraft was indie, because it was one guy (later more) who sold the thing solely through his website with no outside funding (until he sold out and I don't blame him).
Independent means not relying on others financially, and publishing the product yourself and not going through a third party (though on consoles and locked platforms and walled gardens you at least need first-party approval).
56c5b7 No.15530886
>>15530642
>Every fucking level the devs keep mentioning how much work went into revisions because focus testers are retarded and have no idea what to do besides go up and hit it with a wrench.
What, people were too stupid to figure out Ratchet and Clank?
7e2a56 No.15530891
Invidious embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>15530675
Never played DD, care to explain?
>>15530886
I mentioned this in the deadlocked thread, but apparently yeah.
0083d2 No.15530902
>>15530884
>From Software already had existing publishing deals, so the Souls games weren't indie.
>No Man's Sky was funded and marketed by Sony.
Damn i didn't know that.
But yeah, Indie = Indiependently published.
It bothers me that everyone calls it Pixelshit when it most definitely is not.
7e2a56 No.15530907
>>15530891
Talking about the part starting at 6:05.
56c5b7 No.15530933
>>15530880
Not exactly focusing testing (unless you count reception of a prior game as testing for future ones), but I know Sacnoth took local consumers whining about their game being "too dark", "too scary", the monsters "too grotesque" as fucking compliments to what they'd done, that they'd made something out of the ordinary. Their publisher on the other hand, was not happy about such reception and low sales, and forced them to repeatedly tone it down for subsequent games.
>>15530891
Fucking hell, I know publishers want to broaden audiences as much as possible for more shekels, but at the same time, there's a difference between those who are interested and smart enough to play vidya, and those either too young for that sort of game or too retarded in general, and catering to either of the latter in a case like such is a mistake Plus, in a game with continual use of particular items, shouldn't it be clear at such between context and what you can have access to at such a point as to how to progress? IE: glowing orange stuff already has a connection to the tractor beam from the second level of the game? I mean, I can understand maybe removing such context might make things harder to get to a new player, but a new player, especially in a game where save data isn't stored with the game data (unlike a cartridge), they have to start at the beginning of the game anyhow and would thus get the tutorial of sorts. I'd guess it's an issue of not having the same testers each time, but it's not an excuse to treat the actual intended player base as retarded, or not having the experience with such an item that they're going to have at that point of the game.
3fb99d No.15531006
>>15530339
The Battlefield series turned to shit long ago thanks to this crap. Dead Space was killed by it.
>>15530424
> DoW2 with DoW1 scope or bigger.
That would have been nice, but nope. You get an e-sports attempted trash fire instead.
5f6b45 No.15531115
>>15530366
When I was young, video game playtesters' job was to try to break the game. Get out of levels, fuck around trying to trigger weird shit, looking for every opportunity to make the game misbehave, and where applicable (ie, RPGs) come up with broken builds. They'd play through it again and again until they were sick of it and all the while be watching it like a hawk for signs of misbehavior or opportunities to break the game. This would be for games in the 90s and early 00s.
Somewhere in the mid-late 00s the focus had shifted, playtesters were no longer about testing the game for bugs or design issues but instead to see how easily a very stupid person could complete the game. Naturally, games became a lot more buggy over time. That's not to say old games didn't have bugs, but they were rare, and the games also tended to be optimized as much as possible. Now having bugs all over the place is routine, with games often coming out terribly broken at release because there were no playtesters trying to break the games and they were only seen in a carefully controlled environment.
I guess they realized that with the mass immigration of 80 IQ shitskins, it'd be more profitable to make games for non-thinking morons than for ordinary thinking people (whites).
56c5b7 No.15531160
>>15531115
>Now having bugs all over the place is routine, with games often coming out terribly broken at release because there were no playtesters trying to break the games and they were only seen in a carefully controlled environment.
Internet in consoles, along with a "but we can just patch it, maybe, if we feel like it" mindset certainly don't help matters either, compared to either a pricy recall or a buggy game being shit forever (and admittedly even some newer games have been and remain shit due to refusal to fix things).
211ce7 No.15531165
>>15530339
isnt every large publisher game from 02 onward ran through shitty focus groups?
12fe2b No.15531189
Every bioware game from 2009 onward.
800c31 No.15531193
>>15530868
Are you serious?
a5448a No.15531201
>>15531115
It's probably a lot cheaper to have focus testing groups come in every now and then than it is to hire fulltime competent employees. Gotta cut costs, man!
9d2a9e No.15531264
>>15530631
A lot of this is the devs having no idea how to adjust things properly. The main character thinking/muttering "We'll see about that" or the like once is all that's needed to set the tone for the rest of the game.
a468ee No.15531355
>>15530880
>I'm starting to wonder if there was ever a case where focus testing actually improved something.
Go read several Q&A by Nintendo about focus testing. They at least stay on their own ideas and refine it for new players instead unlike the west devs.
120e14 No.15532019
>>15530339
>Has a series you love ever been ruined by focus tested design?
<Destiny was a good game
dffe2b No.15532036
>>15530366
Polack here. A SHITTON of playtesting is outsourced to Poland these days, I used to work at one of these in my college break and they'll literally take anyone there as long as they speak quarter-coherent English.
Though there are also cases where the fault lies on the devs who literally ignore everything that was sent to them. The company I was in playtested Ride To Hell Retribution which did have an extensive playtest and list of problems that was thrown in the trash by the developers.
27fdfa No.15532080
>>15531264
Dishonored had a silent protagonist though.
Really your playtester not being able to figure out that they have no obligation to obey the law when they're there to assassinate the hostess is a sign that you might be trying the dumb the game down to unreasonable levels.
77680a No.15532094
I'm going to be bitter about Halo fucking forever.
2a53cf No.15532133
>>15530339
>DMC2
>focus testing
was that really the case? Everything I know about DMC2 makes it sound like a case of an absolute lack of developer focus whatsoever
54bbb4 No.15532179
>>15530339
The entirety of Fuse had been ruined by playtesters because the devs showcased it to children not teenagers who were their target audience.
>>15530366
You mean this?
2c7dcf No.15534187
>>15530598
>pozzing is accidental
It's a conscious effort by (((those))) in control, and don't you ever forget it.
18a712 No.15534234
18a712 No.15534269
>>15532133
Retards complained about guns in dmc1 doing no damage so capcom turned them into most op and viable weapon in the game.
Also, shadow the hedgehog included guns because 11 year old deviantart edgelords asked for them.
cb0278 No.15537540
>>15532179
>image
That is just sad.
bca143 No.15537829
>>15530417
that also has to do with developers being too lazy to make a proper movement system, so they give specific ledges a scripted climbing animation or whatever
e5954c No.15538050
>>15537540
I remember reading some of the developer diaries for Portal 2 and one of them talked about an odd moment with one of the playtesters and one of the really fast movement areas. I can't recall if it was with the paint or one of those 'fling yourself with a portal' moments, but one of the playtesters literally got a nosebleed from it. I was never sure quite what to make of that.
cb0278 No.15538064
>>15538050
>play video games
>receive physical injury
What? aside from carpal tunnel or something like VR, I find that hard to believe. Did they get so worked up that they fell out of their chair?
4af6b3 No.15538066
>>15530424
>All people wanted was DoW2 with DoW1 scope or bigger.
Friendly reminder that Chaos Rising is the best expansion because it has missions that have multiple objectives you can complete in any order and the missions are not literally just fucking hallways. If it wasn't for the good (mostly non SM) voice acting and such, I wouldn't have been able to play DoW2 at all. CR has decent missions that were a breath of fresh air.
e5954c No.15538075
>>15538064
I dug a bit, and I can't find the original article about it. I was partially incorrect, as it seemed the nosebleed occured with multiple playtesters, and it involved an object 'hitting' the character in the face. In a first person game that probably draws in a lot of non-gamers, I can imagine a few of them not being used to it.
109116 No.15538077
Rest in Peace, Shin Megami Tensei.
Rest in Peace, Etrian Odyssey.
4af6b3 No.15538079
>>15532179
>one of our playtesters….
>compelling argument
>single fucking anecdote
This pisses me off the most. They can't even make a decision based on an aggregate of their players, it has to be the dumbest motherfucker in the room, who likely wouldn't even buy the fucking game to begin with.
109116 No.15538081
Rest in Peace, Monster Hunter.
e40edd No.15538103
>>15532179
>fuse aka overstrike
fuck you for reminding me about the fact I actually got hyped for that game back in the day
Who the fuck thought that they should use a focus group younger than what the game was going to rated anyways
They should have thrown those kids in the trash with their opinions
000000 No.15538327
>>15530339
>muh boomer
Fuck off, cuckchanner.
>>15530408
>>15530801
Thus, every product is shit.
Fun is always free.
dbf6a7 No.15538413
>>15530891
Like, none of the things the devs just explained that were so hard for the focus groups aren't really hard to accomplish and it follows a logical progression from one thing to another until you basically use all the skills that you learnt not 10 minutes ago dropping bombs on those hover things. Other than the adding feet to the place you use the robo technician, I don't see how any not half-braindead faggot COULDN'T do this.
dbf6a7 No.15538418
>>15538413
*adding feet to the place where you toss the robo technician onto the higher platform.
But even then, you see where to put the robot and you'll eventually find out that thing acts as a slingshot, so how confused can you be not to see that?
cfb15f No.15538442
>>15538327
>000000
>commie scum
go back to your antifa containment starcuck
a4fced No.15542618
>>15530891
>>15538418
>and you'll eventually find out that thing acts as a slingshot,
Interesting video.
I'm never played R&C and one thing I'll say about that sci-fi slingshot's design, it doesn't look much like a typical sling shot, as in the standard "Y" shape (or even just the top of the "Y" with an stretchy strand to pull back). With that in mind I can understand how young playtesters could have been confused by it by not recognizing it. I keep thinking of Nintendo's "form follows function" design and that Mark Brown video mentioning it.
With the inspectorbot button segment, maybe it should just been something like a giant red, pressable button switch that when stood on opens the door and when you step off the door closes immediately, leading to a player having to place the robot on the switch to open and pass through the door (though in this case, the robot would be left behind so that would have to fixed so the door is open permanently when the robot is placed on it).
a799be No.15543966
>>15530462
>No one on this planet was asking for that abortion of a game.
Except for the suits. You can't forget about the suits.
56c5b7 No.15543972
>>15542618
The robot has the same yellow/orange symbol on its chest that other tractorable objects have, which is something to be noticed in the first level the Tractor Beam is available in. The only thing that takes learning at that level is how to manipulate the strength of the slingshot via distance from the centerpoint.