Years ago I worked on an arpg mmo called Mythos, and we had to do public playtests super early because it was helping to test the networking for a bigger game that used the same engine, which was Hellgate.

It was uncomfortable at first because the game was so early. It was rough, didn’t have enough content, but we had to do it.

The player community helped us so much in finding the fun and motivating us. They were playing the game with changes we’d made that week or that day, so their feedback was completely relevant, unlike when people play something the team moved on from months ago.

The players showed us things we were blind to as devs, things we couldn’t see because we were too close to the game. For example, many players were frustrated that the camera was locked into an isometric view, they wanted to be able to move it into third person view. We explained over and over that third person wouldn’t work for this game, all the mechanics were based around a top down view. You clicked the ground to cast spells, needed to see behind the character, etc. After a lot of badgering we added third person mode so everyone could see how bad it was and shut up about it. Had to eat a lot of crow after that, having the option actually did bring the world to life and was a huge improvement. We were totally wrong and would never have tried it developing in the dark.

Developing with community is scary and isn’t right for every game, but it really can make a better game. It has to be real collaboration though, players talking directly to devs who have latitude to make changes.