Rebas Kradd, on 09 April 2014 - 11:05 AM, said:
I'm curious what you think they should have done instead.
Write, in 1,000 words or less, what you would have done in their place.
Given conditions: You've realized that Microsoft may not re-up the license and even if they do, you're 15 months away from UI repair/HSR work away from even getting time to work on CW. Also, you do not have 250 employees nor a snazzy, sparkly PR machine like Chris Roberts does to maintain goodwill.
You may begin...now.
Given your conditions, it's impossible, since you state that I'm not allowed to work on this at all for 15 months.
However, I don't think that's realistic at all. Every piece of CW so far except the UI and backend of the galaxy map and loyalty system has been doable from the start. For example: a HUGE piece of the missing CW pie is the attack and defend game mode. We've had two new game modes introduced since CW was first promised, neither of them the attack/defend mode that everyone wants.
Then, instead of spending eight months chasing bugs, let everyone know that, well, this IS a beta and there are going to be bugs. Spend those eight months getting CW content out the door. Again, they had over a year of beta time for this. Prototype the attack/defend game mode in one month by making the lower team on river city attack the upper city to capture the dropship. Something, anything. Find out if the existing maps can be made to work for attack/defend or if it needs new ones.
Let the bugs pile up. They're annoying, but the MO for the last year has been: Fix old bugs, add new features, new features bring back old bugs, refix old bugs, new features, ad nauseum. The reason that bugfixing doesn't tend to happen until the end of development is so that recurring bugs and bugs that are going to be fixed by new features anyway don't consume time.
Also, I can't think of much worse a plan than repeatedly telling bald-faced lies to the community about a feature you know isn't going to come out on time, or even only a year late. Assuming that they did nothing, not a single thing differently, don't lie to the community. Know why nobody trusts what we're told in the command chair here? It's because anytime we get official word, it's more than likely a falsehood, and that breeds frustration. You're better off either saying nothing, or saying, "It's going to take a long time, it'll be done when it's done." Great example from another free-to-play game: Spiral Knights. The end-game, an area called The Core, has been locked since the game's launch, teased at, but with no way for players to get in. Guess what? Years later, it's still not here. But instead of saying "It'll be done in 90 days" once every 120 days, we were just told to wait, and enjoy the game we had in the mean time. Lots of new content has come out for the game in the intervening time, though like this game, much of it amounts to new levels and equipment. But in SK, nobody feels lied to about the time it's taken to get the content, and the community is much better for it.
I'm also not buying your "Oh they don't have 250 employees" argument. Guess what? Neither do a lot of studios. But compared to, say, Unknown Worlds, with six employees, who released their game October 2012, around the same time as MWO, those six developers have released about the same number of levels as MWO, fixed the netcode, added a complete rebalance of the game to make it better for competitive play, added new classes, weapons, and content, added DX11 support and a new UI, and did all of this without a five million dollar founders program or $30 in-game "micro"transactions. All of this new content was free, from six people.
Might have been over 1k words, but I'm not going to count. Have fun!
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