that distinction sort of misses the point i was trying to make.
sometimes users want something. that something might be a feature request, or it might be a feature removal. it doesnt really matter for the sake of my point(s):
a) ignoring your users requests can sometimes be a bad choice.
b) you might not necessarily understand every underlying problem that every user has. worse, you might think you understand the problem when you dont.
expanding on b: blizzard thought they understood their player base and the underlying problems of retail WoW. on multiple occasions, ion explicitly said stuff like "you think you want this, but you dont". they kept making changes to retail WoW to try and stop the hemorrhaging of players.
eventually they said "fuck it, we dont know why you want this, but here" (not a verbatim quote). it ended up being very profitable.
Sid Meier has talked about something similar: he likes to tell designers at Firaxis that "feedback is fact". That is, no matter how strongly you (the designer) believe that something is a good design, if the player says "this isn't fun" then that needs to be taken as the gospel truth. The players might not be able to explain why it isn't fun, and you might be able to tweak the design to make it fun, but what you can't do is insist that the design is for the best while players are telling you "no, really, this isn't fun".
Unfortunately Blizzard has had a problem for a long time where they are too stubborn to listen to player feedback about WoW. They will put systems into the game that people hate, and for years they will insist that the system is fine and meets the team's design goals, despite all the people telling them that it sucks and isn't fun. Then, finally, in some future expansion they will go "yeah guys that really did kind of suck" and remove or overhaul the system. They really don't have a culture of listening to player feedback, and it drags their games down.
The biggest problem I remember from D3 release was that they listened too much to the "this is way too easy, not hard like D2 was" from the beta feedback. Inferno difficulty was absolutely ridiculous. I know people also were unhappy about the AH, alleging that the item drop rates were lowered to drive people to use the AH, but I don't know whether or not that was true.
What I’ve found is key to UI design is to take this a step farther. Users will often try to explain why it isn’t what they want and they will be wrong about the explanation.
Some phrase I heard a while back, I think it was from bill hader.
"People are ALWAYS right when telling you something doesn't work. They're rarely right when telling you how to fix it."
Exactly. Complaints are a Yes And situation. You have to improvise off of their cue but have fun with it or soon nobody will. Each loud user will try to pull the app in a different direction and it’ll end up being schizophrenic if you don’t stick to your own voice.
It’s really questions where I delight the users. They know something is wrong but they cannot articulate it so they assume it’s them and ask how to do something. Which tells you that the feature is missing or not discoverable. If four people ask you the same question it’s a bug not a feature and you should fix it.
sometimes users want something. that something might be a feature request, or it might be a feature removal. it doesnt really matter for the sake of my point(s):
a) ignoring your users requests can sometimes be a bad choice.
b) you might not necessarily understand every underlying problem that every user has. worse, you might think you understand the problem when you dont.
expanding on b: blizzard thought they understood their player base and the underlying problems of retail WoW. on multiple occasions, ion explicitly said stuff like "you think you want this, but you dont". they kept making changes to retail WoW to try and stop the hemorrhaging of players.
eventually they said "fuck it, we dont know why you want this, but here" (not a verbatim quote). it ended up being very profitable.