User Feedback

When companies release new features for their products, the general idea is that they are improving on what they already have. It could be fixing a broken feature or adding some feature to complement the rest and make the lives of the user easier.  In the case of video games, this usually comes in the form of more content or bug fixes.  Most of the time, the new or fixed features are an improvement and everyone remains happy.  However, a large portion of new features are not accepted with grace by the community.  Sometimes new features over complicate things, or break some other features, or sometimes they remove functionality altogether.  My personal most hated change is gating content that was previously available to everyone, behind a paywall.  Naturally with changes that end up reducing the user experience in some way, users tend to complain to the company.  This is very prevalent in video games.  With this user feedback, at what point should companies cave to customer pressure? Where should the line be drawn?

In the past Facebook has rolled out changes to their website design that were not exactly popular with everyone.  However over time people have adapted to the changes and now people probably don't even remember the old layout.  When people complained about the new design, Facebook didn't go ahead and change the new layout to the old one or a different new one.  They stood their ground and people had to adapt.

Recently a video game company called Arena Net released an expansion for their game, Guild Wars 2.  The expansion has been met with fierce criticism from the playerbase.  People were angry with a great many new features the expansion brought with it.  Because of this, Arena Net have made some changes to the features they originally rolled out with the expansion.  However not all the criticism from the community has been addressed just yet.  Whether this is the company being non responsive or them holding their ground, nobody knows.  Communication between the company and the players is very limited, which has caused a lot of confusion between the community and the company.

Where should the line be drawn?  When should companies cave to user complaints and criticism, and when should they stand by their design choices?  If companies change everything that their users request, then they will not be able to effectively do their jobs.  They leave their original vision of the product they wanted to produce.  However, on the flip side, if companies completely stop communication with their users, this could lead to terrible design features and a reduced user experience.  Companies need to maintain a healthy communication channel between their community and themselves.  New features need to be communicated clearly with the users and feedback needs to be taken seriously and analyzed deeply.  If communication between the users and the company is strong, then the final product will be what the community wants as well as the company.