213 replies to this topic

[Kunae]

Heffay, on 15 November 2013 - 05:01 AM, said:

Maybe I should have said stubbornness, which is the word you used? Because lack of flexibility is the hallmark of a successful small company.

And yes, you are stating your theory (technically a hypothesis, but let's not quibble): MWO is failing, they don't know game design. Your observations are what are using to justify it. But witnesses are unreliable, and your interpretation of the events are suspect. You not liking the decisions they made doesn't mean they were the wrong decisions for the game.

No, again. Those are your words, not mine. I stated nothing about "failing". You really need to start actually reading things, rather then feeding them through your internal filters first.

I reject your premise that they are a "successful small company". Continued existence != successful.

This is also not about my personal like or dislike of decisions they choose to make. This is about the blatant stupidity of many decisions they make, which are obvious to anyone with a dab of common-sense, who doesn't interpret everything through their defensive filter.

Heffay, on 15 November 2013 - 05:01 AM, said:

So let's get back to your original 2 points:

They have admitted their version 1.0 and 1.5 UI can't support their vision, and have stated dozens of times that UI 2.0 is how they are going to fix that.

Their design decisions are apparently good enough to not roll back from the data they have internally (cash probably being a big data point on that), and their publisher agrees with them.

You are confusing game design decisions, for the longevity and quality of the game, with the "pie in the sky" short-term cash decisions, which tend to be all that bad executives and publishers care about.

Heffay, on 15 November 2013 - 05:01 AM, said:

You not agreeing with their decisions doesn't make them wrong.

Again, with the attempts to make things personal, and "all about Kunae".
Do you have that much difficulty separating your opinion from fact, that you are unable to look objectively at anything?

They continue to make objectively poor decisions, and are still extremely bad at engaging and communicating with their playerbase.

My personal opinion is that they need to get back on track quickly, or they need to fail quickly. The former so they can build this game into something that can retain and grow, or the latter so that some other company can pick up the IP and follow a better model.

[Riogar Daylighter]

For the nerd rage I think it has more to do with mass hysteria and that sort of thing. Get a couple of people to nay say and the whole room will go with the surge if they are forceful enough and in a forum enviroment you have all the outspoken and emotional people in one place.


Eventually most of the things you type online will be subject to some sort of legal thing anyways. It happened eventually in print and it will happen in cyberspace. The law just has a hard time catching up. Half the stuff posted can be legally actionable if said face to face or even a letter. Hell in my neck of the woods they are legislating making cyber bullying a criminal offense like uttering death threats. Only a matter of time and no it's not the end of free speech. You can still say whatever you want when you want but there will be consequences to everything you say be it good or bad.

[Heffay]

Kunae, on 15 November 2013 - 08:50 AM, said:

I reject your premise that they are a "successful small company". Continued existence != successful.

What is your definition of a successful small company then? Have they grown? Is revenue increasing? How do these factor into your definition of success?

[RG Notch]

Roadbeer, on 15 November 2013 - 08:03 AM, said:

@RG
C'mon man, that whole post is disingenuous. You can't honestly tell me that PGI has never interacted or worked with the community. Granted it's usually in response to 'nerdrage', but to say it's either always one way or the other...

Let's face it, sometimes the community is just plain over-reactive. Look at 3PV, they lost their minds over something that basically amounted to nothing. I *RARELY* see someone in 3PV, and when I do, they're usually either a new player, or someone who hasn't figured out how to turn it off by default yet. But by the reaction of the community, being a 1PV player, my life expectancy in combat was going to be 3 seconds.

Inversely, they DO listen. Look at the recent decision to remove FSWG. They OBVIOUSLY didn't think that one through, and when called on it, they said they'd put it back. Should they have communicated with the community first. YUP, that was an example of the continued failure of IMPORTANT communication, but after the fact, they have listened, I honestly believe that they thought it wasn't going to be that big of a deal, and were wrong. I'm reserving judgement on if they've learned anything about communicating with the community by how they respond when they return it in the patch notes, "Whoops, sorry guys, we didn't think that through" will show progress. "Programming is hard" will show that they haven't.

COULD they communicate better with the community? Obviously, and the 3 at the top, in the past, did more harm than good when they DID communicate with the community. But I actually see a change in the momentum/quality of interaction, and an apparent willingness to listen to input.

As I pointed out earlier, not all player ideas are good ones, should they listen to those too? Should they say "Guys, this isn't that big of a deal and you're overreacting"? should they just remain silent and let it play out? or should they say "Thanks for your input, we're considering the things you've said" and when they do what they were going to do anyway, listen to continued rage about how they don't listen to the community?

You seriously believe that is a good example of them listening to the community? I guess bug fixes count too. I see you're always going to blame the community so it was a nice discussion while it lasted but it seems pointless.
I never said they had to listen to everything, I never said they didn't listen to everything. I was trying to point out there is a middle ground. If you view all the toxicity here as the fault of fringe loonies, then oh well you will never please them. Same as you will never displease the fringe loony ( maybe there is more than one) who always defends PGI. If every thing you contend hinges on how the fringe will react, you are right, nothing will reach them. There are however people in the middle, in fact most of the players fall in the middle. Worrying about how the fringe will react is exactly what got PGI in trouble in the first place.
Sticking to your guns in the face of criticism is one thing, but you must defend your position, not just do what you think is right and let the chips fall. You don't need to go back and forth constantly discussing it, but you can't promise Command Chair posts and then just hope people forget. If you explain things instead of just do things you have a better community.
I have never been about them listening to the community in all cases. I have never even been about them having a conversation even. I just want them to explain why they did things. Why did they do ghost heat? Why couldn't they use other methods? Even if I didn't agree at least I would know why? I don't understand why they chose that method and I don't even see an articulation of why? Russ made some offhand comment on Twitter about not seeing 6 PPC Stalkers. Or he said something about massed pin point alphas, yet weapons without pinpoint ability are affected.
I just want explanations even if it's one sided communication. Then I can judge if they are really incompetent or just seem that way because we don't have all the reasoning. I don't care if the fringe loonies will use it to attack them, being afraid of the loonies isn't a good way to run things.
That's what I'm arguing against, that they can either do what ever the community demands or just do what they want and "wait it out". Some of us are reasonable folks if you give us a chance. The lesson they seemed to learn about negative feedback was simply to not give us anything to provide feedback on for fear it would be negative. That's the wrong attitude even if you ideas are all great and I think we can agree that not all their ideas are great.

[Roadbeer]

RG Notch, on 15 November 2013 - 02:22 PM, said:

{snip}

I'm starting to think that you and I are saying the exact same thing. Not that we're making the same points over and over, but that we are agreeing with each other, just going about it different ways.

PGI (for the most part) sucks at communication, the Players (for the most part) suck at communication. You and I are in complete agreement on both points, we're just looking at it from different sides of the fence.

[RG Notch]

Roadbeer, on 15 November 2013 - 02:35 PM, said:

I'm starting to think that you and I are saying the exact same thing. Not that we're making the same points over and over, but that we are agreeing with each other, just going about it different ways.

PGI (for the most part) sucks at communication, the Players (for the most part) suck at communication. You and I are in complete agreement on both points, we're just looking at it from different sides of the fence.

Yep, I just think I'm more peeved at PGI because they seem to be the ones who are in charge and its so frustrating to see this spin out of control. It feels like they treat the players like children (because a lot of them act like it) and just figure that people will get upset and eventually get over it. Well some people get over it by moving on to other games. The attitude that they just have to ride out these outbursts is leading to the decline in players, IMO. I can't see them having a healthy intake and retention. Look at the reviews by the pros. These are not fringe loonies. These are people with experience in the industry and they are saying the NPE is awful and there is no reason to play long term. Has PGI made any attempts to address these in the short term. You can argue that UI 2.0 the holy grail will solve these things, well we are still weeks away from it's public release at best. So it's months before they will be adding more tutorials and who in Blake's name knows when the hell we will see an inkling of CW. Can the game survive until then and will these things bring back people who will be moving on and perhaps found a new game to play?
I don't know, I just wish I knew where we are going and why we got here. All I know is PGI is scared of it's players and the players are short on patience. The important thing for both sides to remember is each needs the other. Without a dev team we've got no game, without players there's no money. The devs may feel it's their game and they know best, well if no one plays it's not much of a game. The players may think they know how to fix everything, but without all the info it's silly to think they could do it. The one thing that would help is if both sides could see it doesn't help to be afraid or angry at the other. Everyone (loonies aside) wants a stable fun game that makes enough money to stay around.

[Heffay]

Oh man, I've been reading up on that SC thread. It's the same 10 people that were here, with the same complaints over and over and over again. Rinse and repeat, 41 pages of it. A never ending circlejerk of people desperate for validation!

That, my dear friends, is the ultimate troll food. You don't even need to participate. Just feed!

[Roadbeer]

LOL,
Yeah, our own resident neckbeard MHW told me I have a nickname over there. I think it's amusing that I've pushed them to a "Laces Out" mentality.

[Heffay]

Roadbeer, on 15 November 2013 - 05:45 PM, said:

LOL,
Yeah, our own resident neckbeard MHW told me I have a nickname over there. I think it's amusing that I've pushed them to a "Laces Out" mentality.

Ooh, makes me wonder if I've been mentioned! I'll be quite sad if I haven't.

I post on that forum, but under a different handle. It's easy to figure out as I've mentioned it here before (maybe in this very thread!). If I'm being ignored over there though, I will be QUITE PUT OUT!!!

edit: Yay, I'm loved over there too! Sadly it's not by anyone new, just the same sad individuals who post here about how unhappy they are.

edit 2: https://forums.rober...Search=roadbeer

I'm very sorry, Roadbeer. You deserve far better.

Edited by Heffay, 15 November 2013 - 06:11 PM.

[Roadbeer]

Meh

[GalaxyBluestar]

Roadbeer, on 15 November 2013 - 08:03 AM, said:

Let's face it, sometimes the community is just plain over-reactive. Look at 3PV, they lost their minds over something that basically amounted to nothing. I *RARELY* see someone in 3PV, and when I do, they're usually either a new player, or someone who hasn't figured out how to turn it off by default yet. But by the reaction of the community, being a 1PV player, my life expectancy in combat was going to be 3 seconds.

it wasn't exactly "nothing" if it was then so many devs wouldn't have gone out of their way with 'it's not happening" and "seperate ques" lines. the device itself isn't the biggest factor what it is though is PR at it's worst, they had a dedicated group who brought in on a product in somecases soley on the 1PV sim gimmick. PGI knew that and so they were scared to say sorry we can't do it as the playerbase isn't big enough we're going to have to accommodate more people. if they said that last year it would've been much easier to put in 3PV. however being scared to communicate they kept putting it off with we're not doing 3PV and so on to keep them happy until it was no longer possible.

the community management here and lack of honesty is what has made the "exodus." crank consumers exsist for all products and they have to be dealt with appropriately mostly by means of accomodation, you don't have to do as they say but being more courtous and being honest with explainations get's people on side. trying to live out a story which won't happen {consumables, coolant, 3pv and some think CW doesn't exsist and it's understandable when 2012 is the CW article and 2013 is the powerpoint presentation of a lot in the same article} slaming general discusions {the right to vent} and creating kaetetoa which communicates "we don't like what you're saying get out."

are you really surprised this has happened at all?

for sure you want order and you can only do what you can and don't cave into rediculous ideas, but you can't say

we've got your stuff, we've got your stuff, we've got your stuff, we've got your stuff,

you asking where the stuff is and what i'm giving isn't what you thought i said i was giving you GET OUT!


otherwise you get badmouthed in the market so bad you'd end up alone fast.

as we've seen in somethreads there's just a few people enjoying a self pat on the back as they drive away more potential customers.

the game dev is slow and making plenty of mistakes. that's acceptable for first timers it's expected, but the PR-community management has been and it looks like it always will be disasterous.

[Roadbeer]

Depending on who you

talk to,

I have been blamed for

both: Single-handedly

bringing down the old

Gen Desc Forum, and

doing more to drive

away new players

than the whole

PGI/IGP staff

combined.

I think I still have the

message sent to me

back when Gen Desc

was split that was basically

a long rant about how

it was all my fault.

[GalaxyBluestar]

fighting fire with fire does not make a good relations policy in the market place... just sayin'

[Nasty McBadman]

Heffay, on 08 November 2013 - 02:48 PM, said:

The speaker of the community. It's like the Speaker for the Dead, but not as emo. I think that role would suit you better.

Want to borrow some black eyeliner?

Hey, I like wearing black "guy-liner"!