Paladins: Champions of the Realm is currently available to play on PC via Steam Early Access and as a closed beta on PS4 and Xbox One, and we recently talked to Vox, a community content and esports specialist for Hi-Rez Studios, and he told us exactly how the community has helped shape the game.
"Community feedback has actually had a very big impact on the game," he responded. "If we run back to the beta expectations [...] before Paladins released, one of the important elements of that (I'm going to paraphrase because I don't have it right in front of me) [...] is that, get the community involved as early as possible, have them become an active part of development, and this has been so crucial to us because the community ultimately... we have our design direction which we're going to want to follow, but so much of that is influenced heavily and adapted to fit what the community wants best, because ultimately these are the players that spend, you know, up to 10, 12 hours a day in the game, if they're competitive players sometimes, and their feedback is invaluable to us as well. Community is core at Hi-Rez Studios, and we're always looking to make feedback channels accessible to everyone, we have very active forum and social media presences as well as regular feedback forms that go out to players as well, just offering the avenue for players to be able to deliver their feedback in the best way possible."
Do you think there can be a danger if developers don't balance design direction and community desires though?