I actually thought New Vegas and Skyrim were phenomenal, of course that doesn't mean the developers couldn't have gone a LOT deeper with gameplay AND story alike.

I'd say my main complaint with any game was that something wasn't deep enough/fleshed out enough. I'm a casual gamer, I like easy games most of the time, but hardcore gamers deserve a piece of a game they can call their own.

As to what games have failed me: Every resident evil after the gamecube REmake and RE Zero, those games were perfect, REmake creeped the **** out of me, better than Dead Space ever did. Assassin's Creed 3, lacked the depth and replayability of AC2, especially depth, considering it was based in revolutionary times.

the new DmC reboot actually impressed me, I feel like it's better than any of the previous titles, they all bored the **** out of me.

Final Fantasy XIII makes me want to cry.

I have played and enjoyed every single other Final Fantasy game (excluding XI) and, well, I simply wasn't prepared for this atrocity. You can play the entire game by mashing the X button and occasionally rotating paradigms with R. That's it. That's the ****ing game.

Mash x until bar fills up. Hit R. Mash x until bar goes down. Hit R. Mash x again... etc. etc. etc.

Probably the worst game I've ever sunk 40 hours into. Thank god it was shorter than all the other FF's, or I might not have actually finished that steaming pile of ****. I have no idea where Square Enix went wrong.

I'm not even going to begin criticizing the storyline or characters, because honestly none of that matters when the "gameplay" consists of hitting a single button over and over. I mean I really, really don't get how someone could even pretend to enjoy that game. It boggles my mind.

They do know though, there's more new players than old players lol.

Capcom is kind of letting me down lately with resident evil 6... 5 was ok... but its starting to feel like it's less about zombies /random mansion madness / puzzles and more into a third person shooter

square-enix is starting to slap the title of "final fantasy" on anything nowdays

It's a tricky topic, because our job is to make decisions based on what players not only want, but need. Let me explain that a bit.

Determining what players want is actually pretty simple - your most invested users tend to be very vocal and will put effort into making sure they're heard (ie; most forumers!) This is a good metric of understanding what players want, at least for high-engagement folks.

What players need is where players don't proclaim a desire for something, but it helps provide something they say they want. Many times, this is more than a single solution - it requires several steps of implementation to reach a result, or takes time to bake in many cases. Let me provide two example of want vs need, and why want cannot be the only driver for developers;

At Riot, we nerf champions. Nerfs are rarely wanted (and many times, unwanted). But, players want to have a fair experience with a variety of options. Additionally, a game without power caps and heavy power creep (something still happening faster than I'd like...) can disrupt the core game design focused around choices, decision-making, and strategy. To accomplish this, we need to nerf champions, even if players don't explicitly want us to.

To use your example, in the pattern of Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, the changes to easier raid content and more accessibility is actually informed by a want that a lot of players expressed - IE, raids were content that was exclusive from them and they wanted a piece. I respect the guys who make WoW (and its success is a testament), but this is a good example of where the developers should have recognized the core need of exclusivity and the right tuning of that, and steered away from players said they wanted. Personally, I think Burning Crusade is a sweet spot.

The above is a fantastic example of why we have to make tough choices and not always just do what players ask us to do - it's not always the right course of action.

The problem you're speaking to, in my opinion, is when developers think they always have that answer and that being a developer gives you divination into what that is. In my mind, game development isn't about having answers - it's the ways in which you find them.

Our interaction on here isn't just lip-service, it's so we can better optimize decisions around player wants - and explain what players need when they don't want it. This informs us a lot, but we make decisions based on a number of factors - player desires and feedback being one of them.

I hope this helps explain how I feel about this, and how the developer/player interaction looks to me.

question for you morello, do you think with the flow of constent nerfs, the champs are losing whats make them unique/good?

If a part of a champion's kit is too good you nerf it, by doing so you kill a part of the champion, just look at urgot, he had too much range on ult and E+Q, you nerfed it, now he just feels meh, what if you could nerf things people care less about like the slow % on his shield, or best just buff the others champs so they could all be unique enough to be counter to your balance problem, kinda like dota 2 but with less OPness.
Right now you focus on making all abilities balanced instead of having 1-2 great spells and 1-2 average ones that compliment the champion

example: blitzcrank grab is the best part of his kit, but its ok since his passive consumme his mana and his W slows him after the overdrive hes OP and UP at the same time making him unique and balanced

example #2: heimer can zone too easily with his 3 turrets, but its ok since hes squishy and cant rely on his others spells to protect himself.

example #3: malzahar have too much burst with his ult (back when it had 1.6 ap ratio) but it was ok because his ult range puts him at risk + QSS, now you nerfed it and hes subpar to aoe burst mages who can deal around the same ult damage as him but AOE