statistics > complaints -- DEV COMMENT
ea_jesse wrote this about the yoda event nerf in the community update - 5/13/2016: While player feedback is one of our most important resources, the changes to the Yoda Event were primarily driven b...
Forum Discussion
Surprisingly, the forums DO have a significant impact!
Data is simply a record of everything that happens. We have LOTS of data. But Data doesn't call you up, or send you an email, and say, "Hey Bro, some things are happening here you might want to know about. P.S. Your game sucks." Data is inert until acted upon by a Data Scientist (of which we have), but even still, you have to KNOW the questions you want to ask to get the answers you want.
While we have a lot of data dashboards in place to alert us to the big fires, it's actually the forums that highlight the things that are of VALUE TO THE PLAYER--something data can't do, because it is emotionless. You can have a PERFECT formula for gameplay in an Excel doc, but that doesn't mean it's perfect in-game. Data can tell us a lot of things, but it can't account for the art of games.
Without the forums, without the feedback, without the Dark Side, we would be doing what we did in the old days of game development, "Meh, we sold 1,000,000 copies, it's fine." All the while not realizing we could have sold 10 times as many had we just been able to correlate player sentiment with actual data.
So take heart, your feedback IS incredibly important! It's a huge indicator that there might be something amiss. Data is simply the opposite side of the coin: it helps us make rational decisions without overreacting.
Data is simply a record of everything that happens. We have LOTS of data. But Data doesn't call you up, or send you an email, and say, "Hey Bro, some things are happening here you might want to know about. P.S. Your game sucks." Data is inert until acted upon by a Data Scientist (of which we have), but even still, you have to KNOW the questions you want to ask to get the answers you want.
While we have a lot of data dashboards in place to alert us to the big fires, it's actually the forums that highlight the things that are of VALUE TO THE PLAYER--something data can't do, because it is emotionless. You can have a PERFECT formula for gameplay in an Excel doc, but that doesn't mean it's perfect in-game. Data can tell us a lot of things, but it can't account for the art of games.
Without the forums, without the feedback, without the Dark Side, we would be doing what we did in the old days of game development, "Meh, we sold 1,000,000 copies, it's fine." All the while not realizing we could have sold 10 times as many had we just been able to correlate player sentiment with actual data.
So take heart, your feedback IS incredibly important! It's a huge indicator that there might be something amiss. Data is simply the opposite side of the coin: it helps us make rational decisions without overreacting.
