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BioWare On Tracking Player Feedback
simoniker writes "BioWare's QA director Phillip DeRosa has written a piece called 'Tracking Player Feedback To Improve Game Design' over at Gamasutra, which deals with how game developers can use statistics, even before a game is released, to improve gameplay. DeRosa "...explains how the Mass Effect creator has set up and executed code-based monitoring of key metrics to test, analyze, and refine its projects through playtesting." Is this approach sensible, or could it be more like movie producers 'pandering' to test audiences?"
Neverwinter Nights was also a franchise that was well received and supported by an active community.
Neverwinter's community was generally die-hard tabletop RPG fans who wanted to recreate the experience online. They used the DM and builder tools to create single-and multi-player modules as well as persistant worlds that managaed to capture the pen-and-paper experience like no other computer game before or since. You could actually have a living, breathing DM generating custom content on the fly. You could create mini-MMORPGS like Arelith, Forgotten Realms:Cormyr and Layonara where a hundred players could adventure, craft and whatever else on their own and then go on custom and unique DM-driven adventures. Aside from certain MUDS (of course) there really hasn't been anything like it. And hell, it ran on Linux and Mac !
If Bioware was listening, and I mean really listening, they would realize that this was the reason the game was a success, not the lackluster single player campaign or modules (which were only playable for the "hey, I'm playing D&D!" factor, not the story themselves.) There's a real call for a new "online role playing game construction set", D&D or d20 rules or not, to replace it, and Bioware would be just the company to make it. They most likely won't, as they probably think it would hurt sales of their single player games or some future MMORPG, but there is a community and market of role players who are begging for a GM-created and driven experience instead of another linear 40-hour single player story or massive multiplayer grind and gank fest.
(And no, Neverwinter 2 just isn't cutting it as a replacement-- it's too bloated and only runs on high-end Windows systems, and the tools simply aren't there to create modules and worlds on the scale of the original.)