Dear Developers, Stop Listening to Pros

on the off chance that any developers may be watching this video i put forth a simple proposition stop listening to competitive players quite so much stop designing your games around the experience of pro players i may get a variety of responses one i naturally anticipate is the classic skeletal much to which i say cope and seethe i can play doom eternal like complete crap all i want a nightmare and if i can still win why does my gameplay even matter for more serious actual answer i'll say that being good at a game does not make you a good game designer pro players often complain that the guys making decisions about halo suck at their own game it's true i'm nothing good to do i'm really not that good at sniping i'm not that good at anything in halo except driving the warhog and i'm not that good on purpose a good player is a good designer like a competitive eater is a good chef or a porn addict is good at sex all too often i see streamers and people who play a game for a living come up with the absolute worst ideas ever because ultimately their experience does not match the majority of the players just a heads up i may use terms like pro competitive and hardcore player interchangeably it basically just means those at higher skill levels the upper echelon for an example let me tell you a story i'm mostly going to talk about this through my own experience with halo but i think much of my points apply to gaming at large i want you to consider how this might be affecting your favorite game in a similar way for a period maybe after 2009 it seemed that developers were doing everything they could to attract new players casual players unskilled players everything seemed to be shifting towards being able to reward people even for sucking at the game for example halo 4. now halo 4 was greatly influenced by call of duty many of the features that borrowed over were ones that seemed intended to help people who suck for example random kill streak rewards randomness obviously takes away from the skill of a game taking power away from the player and putting it into the hands of an rng system serves to level the playing field and narrow the skill gap weapons like the bolt shot put power into the hands of people from the moment they spawn by giving them a shotgun in their pocket the kill streaks and loadout system kill the fundamental aspect and avenue for skill expression of halo seeking out weapons on the map this is something that i know noobs complain about they think it's unfair when they get killed by a rocket launcher even though they had an equal opportunity to pick it up themselves there was a ton of other [ __ ] like perks instant respawns grenade indicators that also serve to artificially boost those who simply aren't very good there's another push that we had with halo 4 which was to make halo a more accessible multiplayer experience historically halo's been very hardcore and it's had a very steep learning curve that has turned off a lot of players so we wanted to help new players find success we wanted to give them opportunities in modes like infinity slayer to earn power weapons that they might never have got a chance to use in multiplayer before halo 4's abandonment of much of the skill and creativity uniquely required in a halo game naturally saw its population drop off a cliff 343 had to figure out something to fix things the next game was halo 5. with the marketing they came out swinging with the multiplayer they hammered home how the game was returned to classic halo even starts were the talk of their marketing they had a real hard on for competitive gaming now besides the return of even starts they spoke about how they'd abandoned many of the casual features introduced in halo 4 such as loadouts and perks it wasn't quite a return to classic halo though the new thing for halo 5 was the advanced mobility nobody asked for it but they had to do something new what's relevant here is the fact that 343 had an internal pro team they had professional players tournament players consulting them in the development of the game and the sandbox now i think this isn't necessarily for the better just because they play a lot doesn't necessarily mean they know how to design a game better as i said before their experience doesn't reflect the average players i see so many bad opinions from people who play for hours a day highlighting issues that only really matter for people who play for hours a day supporting changes that would diminish the game for the average player this happens in virtually every game for example it's not uncommon to see pros who think either halo 5 or halo 2 especially halo 2 is the best halo for those who don't know halo 3 is the fan favorite game it achieved the peak population for both the casual and competitive player base it had the peak of halo sales by all accounts it is the example for a good halo game for halo 5 it'd be the advanced mobility and jumps that provided extra opportunities for skill expression that attracted some pros over but it was pretty far gone from classic halo i do want to stress the people who prefer halo 5 are minority but they do exist and it is typically for the competitive multiplayer the far more noteworthy group the pros who prefer halo 2. if you don't know halo 2 is just the less polished halo 3. halo 3 is basically a direct upgrade on halo 2. i think halo 2 fans are like the competitive players for super smash bros brawl although i admit i wouldn't exactly know i don't really play smash bros outside of parties just kidding i don't go to parties there is of course the nostalgia for halo 2. it was an innovative online game at a special time and i can certainly understand that i can also understand preferring the maps both halo 2 and 3 have excellent maps it's a close competition but the reasons given for preferring halo 2 to halo 3 typically boil down to it being easier to [ __ ] on new players for example button combos these are skillful combos you could execute to kill people quicker basically they were entirely unintentional they weren't added by the developers the battle rifle the weapon pros adore the most was basically the only useful non-power weapon in halo 2. they slightly weakened it in 3 slowing its projectile and many did consider it a downgrade don't get me wrong it was still extremely powerful it was still the utility weapon it was just slightly less overpowered simply put the crux of the argument you'll hear from pros is that halo 3 favored team play and halo 2 favored individual performance more you know games that allow greater individual performance and hero moments are more fun to watch and more fun to watch must therefore mean more fun to play that's how the argument goes there is also a notable aspect of time to kill that factors into this lower time to kills allow for greater individual performance some say a wider gap between average and optimal time to kill is better this is especially pertinent for the people who prefer halo combat evolved i'll get to the whole time to kill ordeal but first i need to understand why devs even do this i mean i can understand why developers listen to pros esports is huge now it's a phenomenon every developer wants their multiplayer game to be an esport it gives a perpetual feedback loop of interest more people hear about the game through pro events more people play the game pro events become bigger due to more players more people hear about the game through pro events more people play the game pro events become bigger due to more players more players here through pro events so on and so forth here's the issue you can't force a game to be an esport you can't make it a professionally played game there is one key ingredient that every professionally played game has popularity and i think people mistake the cause and effect here games are popular and people want to play them before they become esports it's a prerequisite to being an esport look at how many games lend themselves really poorly to competitive gaming in terms of say their balance and yet they've had tournaments with cash prizes people tried to make minecraft into an actual esport people play minecraft's awful pvp there are roblox mini games that people tried to make into an esport there have been many fortnite tournaments and this stuff gets viewed by millions of people on streams and in videos popularity begets competition having a pro team consult on the development of halo 5 is not going to make it more competitively viable i do want to note that the pro players working on halo 5 did complain that 343 weren't really taking their feedback into consideration or at least they'd forced their own opinions on them 343 was insisting on changes which the pros really didn't agree with things like placement of cover or weapons on the map things like that i mean that seems to be 343's motto honestly do it even if no one likes it so given this the point of this video isn't to pin the failings of developers onto pro players who consult them and give them feedback many poor choices are done against their wishes however many poor developer choices are still done with esports in mind even if the actual competitive players themselves hate those choices so i think designing for both new players and for pros is a poor way to do things bungie multiplayer lead max hoberman released his documentation for halo 3's online experience all public on his twitter earlier this year one thing i thought was interesting to note was how it builds a profile of the average player it seems everything was set up around this proverbial average player the ranking system was designed for the experience of the average player that's the middle of the bell curve the average player got a good mix of tough matches easy matches and decently challenging matches the skill-based matchmaking system was set up specifically for this purpose now obviously pros aren't very fond of modern skill based matchmaking you hear streamers constantly baby whining and bitching about it everywhere like complete mlg man children first of all skill based matchmaking is a misleading term because it implies the existence of non-skill based matchmaking there is no such thing ever since matchmaking was invented in halo 2 the point of it the whole point was to match people of similar skill levels now you see when i look at these skill based matchmaking complaints they just complain about the system altogether i don't expect call of duty fans to know much about game design but i don't know of a matchmaking system in a game that doesn't group people based on skill maybe match.com or tinder which matches you based on your bank account instead there is however a difference in how modern matchmaking systems are implemented going back to those hoberman docks halo 3 used a heavily modified version of the elo system named trueskill in halo 3 the goal wasn't to assign you a skill group as quickly as possible you had to climb up to your skill bracket that was the ranking and leveling system all in one what this meant is that you'd get more of a diversity of matches you'd be more likely to end up playing both with and against better and worse players there was however an issue it was harder for people in higher ranks to find matches this was because the population had a downward curve for rank distribution rather than a bell curve modern implementations of matchmaking are ultimately designed to fix this so even though many high-end and pro players hate modern implementations of sbmm they were at least in part designed for those people at the extremities for the people at the higher ends of play designing for the average player seems obvious and i'm not saying devs don't consider the average player but i believe priorities can get lost in the midst of development when people are in too deep and there isn't a strong guiding vision often times the obvious priorities can get obscured for example you can become so obsessed with accessibility that you forget to make a remotely challenging or interesting game for example making your own protagonist spoil every puzzle within 30 seconds of arriving same with the hyper focus on competitiveness or esports you end up removing the fun no randomness no physics stuff no getting splattered by witches cones this one halo infinite update shows me just how out of touch 343 still is hampering physics-based interactions for the sake of consistency in competitive modes is just missing the point so hard halo is literally about physics-based gameplay prepare for a tangent while i rant about this stuff okay the reduction of these dynamic random or unpredictable features is done for the sake of consistency consistency is an important thing in competitive games if there's one thing that pros hate it's rng unpredictability things out of their control taking agency from the players and placing it into say a random system like a random number generator things like that do hamper skill expression it can reduce the oft quoted skill gap but here's the thing there is more to a game than skill there must be there must be some hidden element out of the player's control some hidden variable element x if your average shooter game were perfectly consistent it'd be a multiplayer aim trainer some degree of variability is a necessity to enable depth even if it does occasionally feel unfair some weapons should be inaccurate some weapons should be more powerful than others some should be redundant some competitive players talk about removing things like weapon spread and reducing time to kill so there is a more pure skill expression which naturally must be more fun to watch low time to kill good right but like there's more to fun and depth in games than just skill there's more to skill and skill expression than just aim and movement in an fps i'll go back to the halo example briefly many hardcore players prefer the individual expression and low kill times allowed by halo 1 and 2 to halo 3 which it said focuses more on teamwork and reduces the individual emphasis i've never really heard an argument as to why this is bad or even not preferable it's simply personal taste which is fine but not every game should be just about pure aim and skill expression and it's not necessarily better for the average player as evidenced by the sales and the popularity it seems to me the game focused on teamwork should be the preferable direction basically what i'm saying is there should be more elements in play than raw movement and aim skill and i mean ones that will affect the average player i've seen this push in virtually every multiplayer first person shooter game people at the upper echelons of play want a more hardcore focused consistent experience where they have more agency that's a more pure test of skill i've got the perfect game for you folks who want a hardcore pure test of skill it's called rats instagib one shot kills no inaccuracy pure movement and pure skill i don't want to [ __ ] on it because it is fun but it could never really be an esport why is that it allows for awesome plays for cool movement that allows you to outplay other players and for a single person to completely dominate to show amazing feats of skill perhaps it's because people want more than just wanking about how good you are at clicking and i want to say the necessity of randomness and unpredictability doesn't just exist in first-person shooters in age of empires 2 the longest running still living rts each match is based around reacting to random spawns you need to find all the materials around your base as quickly as possible imagine if the gold and the bores spawn in the same spot every time the game would be a lot less interesting and obviously at this point in the video i'm aware that no pros complain about this like i said i went on a bit of a tangent i just feel like i had to go on that tangent about consistency and unpredictability in games i had to cover it at some point basically speaking games need to have some inconsistency and some imbalance cutting that stuff just for the sake of competitive play is a misstep i also need to mention that obviously the game should still be largely consistent you don't want unpredictability imbalance and inconsistency to dominate your game lester devolve into gambling there is obviously a balance to be had reticle bloom in halo reach was terrible and brought in far too much unpredictability into the average shooting engagement it's easy to see these [ __ ] ups and try to over correct i did bring up age of empires 2 for a moment there an rts it's relevant because i was actually inspired by another video i saw on real-time strategies why the next rts game will fail i wanted to share the video because unless you're an rts fan you probably didn't watch it but you should because it seems like almost every point he brought up applies to first person shooters as well i will say i even brought this up in a comment for example the devs listening to a small sample size of pro players and focusing on multiplayer especially competitive 1v1s in the video he showed that the majority of rts players in his sample size actually favor campaigns likewise about a third of halo players just play campaign another third play campaign and multiplayer the final third is people who play just one mode that is forge custom games big team battle competitive players only make up a fraction of that third if you watched the marketing for halo 5 you'd get the idea that competitive players are 95 of the player base there was an old piece of common knowledge that halo was played only for the multiplayer that that's what people got halo for but that just wasn't true at all it's the same with games like call of duty people actually do play those campaigns and people are actually disappointed when they suck or when they remove them they are a notable amount of the player base another point from that video was the removal of spectacle basically cool [ __ ] broken [ __ ] again this crosses over perfectly think about that whole consistency slash unpredictability spiel i just went on how many times do devs remove fun things for the sake of balance physics interactions getting splattered by cones besides that there was the section on user generated content dev tools and devs neglecting custom games i just gotta say 343 thought forge was so unimportant that they pushed it back nine months after launch and even then it's only going to be coming out in beta it seems like a lot of these issues are all systemic and microsoft wide at the very least just in the last year it's affected halo infinite and age of empires 4. so how do we solve this issue i'll list a few of my ideas how for one do not focus strongly on the competitive experience do not make their experience central to your design do not put them front and center on the contrary do not focus strongly on the new player experience it's of course a consideration but shouldn't dominate the design place your main attention on the average player people who log in regularly but not for hours a day try to make it so the game is most enjoyable for those people allow some degree of unpredictability especially if it's cool if it has some spectacle adhere to the rule of cool please within reason of course it shouldn't be complete chaos allow some more variability in skill for matchmaking do not make the skill grouping so tight that they feel suffocating please add tools for creating custom content you'd have to be a complete idiot to look at minecraft roblox skyrim and gmod and think that it's not worthwhile these are of course just my suggestions it's not like you should never listen to pros or never listen to the noobs the best advice would be to allow for variation provide a range of game modes ways to play design for the omnivores the people who play a range of different activities that's how destiny is designed to get you to play multiple different activities and it has one of the most dedicated fan bases out there who would eat up literally anything bungie produces so really you can listen to the pros sometimes but just don't let them have too much influence lest you should lose your way thank you so very much for watching i ask you to subscribe thank you and goodbye you

Channel: ShreddedNerd

Views: 2,213,813

Keywords: analysis, gaming commentary, video essay, Doom, Doom eternal, id software, doom gameplay, doom 2 years, 2 years later, years later, doom retrospective, doom review, doom eternal retrospective, doom eternal review, game review, game history, doom history, game design, doom analysis, doom fans, doom music, call of duty, cod, cod modern warfare, titanfall, apex legends, halo, halo 3, titanfall 2, payday 2, left for dead, fear, call of duty modern warfare, titanfall 2 features

Id: yFFpJW0j5z0

Length: 22min 27sec (1347 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 01 2022