This really made me smile
thing is though, as the only guys that have the talent to program and make gaming dreams a reality (or not, as more often seems to be the case) i'm not so sure my opinion as a customer in a sea of customers matters that much, i've expressed my displeasure with Civ 5 on these forums before but i don't feel it will make much difference, besides with steam there are no returns, the only way you can show you are unhappy once you've tried your luck and bought the game is to un-install.
Well, that's basically my point. The developers might lurk in forums such as these, and try to glean some overall sense of "What didn't folks like?" but aside from "big name" players like Sulla (who, I would guess, is a big name because he's well known here, well spoken, and also worked as part of Civ 4's development), the statements of individual players will probably be overlooked, unless you just happen to get lucky.
I think the problem tends to be that, unless you're a "big name" or something along those lines, you're "damned if you do, and damned if you don't" when it comes to forum posts.
- If your post is too short, it won't include any real detail about your complaint. It might be bite-sized enough for them to take back to the team as a blurb, but it won't really get into the nuances of the problems. These types of posts are better for "preference" issues, like, "I hate the new narrator's voice. Bring back Nimoy!" or "Man, the way roads look is AWFUL!" That kind of stuff is easily digested, easily quoted back to a development team, and easily addressed....but it doesn't really get at core design issues. It's all surface level stuff. the core design issues can't be addressed in a blurb of a post.
- If your post is too long...well hey, "TLDR." I write LONG posts. My short posts are as long as posts by other people where they apologize for the length of their post!
I do not expect a developer to read what I write, no matter how coherent a post it may be. They simply won't devote the time to it. I'm not a "big name," I don't play a high difficulty levels, I don't make mods for the community, I'm not a programmer. I'm just a long-winded guy posting on a message board. I'm cool with that, but I don't expect anything to come from it, outside of interesting discussions here, and maybe once in a while a bit of catharsis. What I definitely do NOT expect is for developers to take my posts and bring them back to the dev team to say "See what this guy said? This is important stuff. We should take it into account." While I'm at it, I might as well ask for a pony, world peace, and an evening with Christina Hendricks for Christmas next year, for all the good it'll do.
This is why the ONLY thing they'll listen to -- and they'll only listen to it en masse, for that matter -- is purchases. So, the only thing you as an individual can do to REALLY affect change is speak with your wallet and hope that others do too.
Edit* now i think about it, i don't know why Steam don't have a "like/dislike" button next to every game you bought, would give everyone a fair idea of how the customers feel about their purchases.
Now THAT is a good idea. I'd thought that Steam let you do that already, since games have "ratings" next to them, but apparently the game ratings are more of a "Metacritic" style rating -- an aggregate of various professional reviews, rather than player opinions. Steam could probably report to developers the average number of hours that players play the game, and perhaps whether they've kept the game installed or uninstalled it, but aside from that, I doubt there's any data that Steam could provide a developer about the reception of their game. It's again just a question of "how many sales?"
