lol I could be a dev for bethesda and you might not even realize it...

It is a bad policy for any gamedesigner to ignore what the community thinks about their game espacially for a franchise like TES where your customers will keep buying tge game and any expansions aslong the majority is happy with the game or the direction the devs are taking the game
Good example are MMO s where it is essential to know what your customers. Think and expects from the game

I've seen in other official forums for games with ongoing development that players can get pretty rude to devs.

I'm not sure why there seems to be a vocal minority of players who feel that they have the right to give input into a game. Sure, players should be able to discuss what they do and don't like, but when did players start thinking they have some kind of right to influence what form ongoing development should take?

Game designers and producers are the people who have the right to decide what their vision is, and whether or not they can achieve it.

I've seen devs step into social forums only to be swamped with questions and demands. And since they are usually only one person in a system where it takes dozens of people to get anything done, they aren't even in a position to answer lots of questions or make decisions about demands. I can see why they would be discouraged to take any more active part in a discussion other than observation - not to mention the NDAs.

I do sometimes... Have you seen the tree mod he made? He has got his own youtube channel as well.

Many games have little or no contact with the devs on the forums. I agree that it's bad policy because they become out of touch. Most often though, it's not the devs that call the shots, they just do what the management tell them to do and management will look for things that make money rather than a better game. The more that add, the more it costs so they skimp to save money while creating the "illusion" that it's been added - hence no skill levels or perk tree for cooking and the reason why cooking is therefore useless after level 30 or so. 15 points of health for stuffing your face is worthless compared to potions when you have 300+ health.

The obvious choice was to add a modding package so the players can add mods to do what the majority of players want and it costs the company nothing to add them whilst simultaneously boosting sales. Ultimately, there's no need to get the players views because other players will and then they will create a mod for it, saving the company money again.

Games designers are not interested in a better game, they are only interested in better sales figures at minimum cost.

i think it wunt hurt if they dropped by from time to time i know there not forced to. i just think it would be cool for them to get there points or just interact with the fans more... eitha way

They don't need to pop in for social chit-chat or to answer all the complaint threads. That would get out of hand very fast. I would just like to see the occasional acknowledgement of known issues. Look at the thread stickied in this sub-forum "Skyrim -- what we're working on". It was last updated in February. They have a thread with the same title in the PC issues sub-forum last updated in January.

Doesn't suprise me, they don't need the community imput anymore... Money talks for them now.

They don't give a rats behind about any of you. As long as you keep forking over the cash, they'll keeping doing what they do with total disregard.

agreed instead of being left in the dark speculating whats bein patched/added ect...

I think they read the topics but we won't see them.... Maybe it's some sort of self defense.

That is the main reason why Devs are not more active with the community. One seemingly innocent comment from a dev can reveal an entire story line or feature set to a competitor early enough for them to copy it or implement it themselves in a game. This is why that even when you do see a dev posting, it is usually a manager or senior team member, not the rank and file.

It is a bit harsh to say that the devs are nothing but mindless, money-scrounging zombies (with awesome programming skillz and/or artistic talent)

They are, after all, nothing but humans. Humans with awesome programming skillz and/or artistic talent, but humans nonetheless. Some of the devs may very well have the same feeling with some of you here, they just can't say anything without thinking, like, 1000 times. One bad post from an employee means 1000s of enraged "fans" demanding tribute as game-related websites all over the world says "Bethesda says 'screw you'", helpfully disregarding the fact that one programmer (or Todd Howard) does not represent the whole company. That's what PR team is for.

Perhaps they're here among us, just with inconspicuous usernames, ones that they use when they're back home, without anybody watching. Ranting about how the game could have been =D

Also, you need to remember that it's Todd Howard's job to say "okay guys, implement this feature here". He's the director, he calls the shot. The lower tiered guys may very well complain, but that's how the world works. There is no point in forcing a dev to implement a feature. Best thing they can do is either release it as a mod (like, say, JE Sawyer did) or tell the higher ups about it and hope for the best.

You DID pay for $60, but that entitles you only for license to install and play, not for feature request

Perhaps we should employ some detect life spells to reveal where the devs are

Tried that and put the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8E_zMLCRNg

Why, I certainly hope at least 1 of our wise and powerful devs checked my thread on Marriage.

I use the dates shown on the 'sticky' threads as a barometer - not just here in these forums but in forums in general. That isn't a perfect or complete way to measure visible developer participation, but it does give me a general indication.

It's all fine and good if developers lurk their own forums and gather data, nothing wrong with that. But there's something to be said about developers who find the time to visibly frequent their boards and personally address issues brought up by their customers - especially about games that have been released and are currently being played by the masses.

Developers who do a good job of this are usually the 'indie' developers as they are much smaller companies and everyone involved is closer to every bottom line there is.

Mainstream developers get a 'poor' rating from me in terms of direct interaction with their customers on message boards, with only an isolated few who may stand out marginally better or worse. But as an industry, two-way developer-driven customer interaction is lacking in this day and age of 'social media.'

On the flip side however, the gaming community (aka, us) could do a lot better at being more mature and measured with how we behave with our online personas - and I am no exception to this myself as I have at times had my own little fits that I regret and avoid going forward.

A great number of things that I hated about Oblivion and that I wished were added to Morrowind got put in Skyrim and it was a lot of things that people have been asking/complaining about for a while for both those games so I know they listen to the community. For me it seems like Skyrim was developed by people who really understand the fan base and love making fun games because it has so much stuff I wanted during morrowind that I feel like I need to apologize to the rest of the community. Apparently Skyrim was tailor made for me, sorry mad guys.

Really I have seen in numerous games developers say something on the boards/interviews/twitter that comes back to bite them in the ass later. If you implement anything period someone will have a problem with it and you can guarantee they will be trolling the boards with their pet issue often times being rude as hell about it. I can't see how interacting with those people helps them especially since people who do like it will rarely chime in about it so its hard to get real feedback. In addition because they can't really divulge any information without an official press release im sure the devs posting regularly but being vague as hell all the time would really piss people off in a different way.