RJ 17 said:
Good god, imagine what the industry would be like if even half the developers out there had this kind of mentality...
The only note of caution I would add to this is that you can't design or tweak a game based on the feedback of players alone. Generally, and I use that word carefully, the most vociferous complaints and demands for change come from a small minority of *very* vocal and persistent people; a much smaller percentage of players sign up for forums to leave comments like 'I love the way weapon X isn't overpowered, making it too easy.' The more likely response to a change is 'argh, fucksticks, now my over-looked and over-powered weapon/item/skill doesn't let me kill teh everythings by pressing spacebar.' This is not always the case (see ME3 ending, the latest AC for example) and there is no harm having a look, but sometimes you have to stick to your guns.
What there is *never* any harm in doing is trawling all available sources for feedback and having an active and visible online presence for your customers, even if it's just to say, "look, we've heard the feedback about X but we're not making any changes because of Y." People appreciate that instead of the usual round of silence or apparent lack of interest after the game has shipped and the money pile is being counted.
valium said:
Arenanet did this exact same thing for Guild Wars.
They did. They also collected metrics about gameplay/skill usage and, at any point they considered anything was overused or becoming stale, they changed it. Without warning. The ensuing pre-pubescent forum rage could have powered a mission to the edge of the solar system, but they stuck with their changes and eventually the fuss died down as people adapted. They did this repeatedly, sticking to their vision of the game. That they genuinely did care what people thought was never in doubt in my mind, but some people even complained about the devs giving some kind of *illusion* of player feedback driving change.
The thing is, unless your game exists in a quantum state of superposition where (from Vigormortis' example) the R101C carbine is both simultaneously nerfed and not-nerfed, and you can't let anyone play it in case their version's wavefunction collapses into the scenario they didn't want, you're always going to have someone telling you you're wrong.
The signal-to-noise ratio with game feedback is often very, very low. The trick is to pick out the important from the whining and that is a difficult skill to acquire indeed.
Good luck Respawn.. you'll need it, but kudos for doing it. Most don't.