Posted 07 May 2014 - 06:08 AM
What this says to me, unfortunately, is that if your statistics on how many drop solo vs in various group sizes is true, the overall population at any given time is too low. Why would it be low? Continuously promising too much and delivering too little, major design flaws/design mismanagement, and the "give us your money, we owe you nothing" attitude that was present back when you actually did have a decent population. This hasn't changed much, but at least now you're starting to communicate better... a year after people started bitching about the communication.
First, let me introduce you to the term used in the professional world an awful lot: setting customer expectations. Next, a few questions - why is it possible for a community member with half an hour of free time able to detail drastically improved UI flow for the UI that has been in development for months upon months? Why are community members able to very quickly identify things that went through a rigorous design phase followed by rigorous QA testing as flawed and post pages worth of improvements? Why are the community members with far better ideas than your own design team being ignored most of the time? Finally, ROI - I realize I am not actually an investor by spending money on this game, but it is an investment in my own free time and spending money does come with the expectation that promised goods/services will be delivered. Why is this expectation continuously not met? One could argue that spending in the overpriced nature and unbalanced economy is my own fault (it is), or that I did technically get those goods/services (indeed, I've never not received what I used MC to purchase), however the actual business model here is that goods/services are slightly more expensive than in a pay to play game due to its free to play nature where many players will choose not to pay for anything. This does in fact come with the expectation that promised timelines for new features and functionality are met. This has not historically been the case, and it is already starting to not look like the case in regards to the most anticipated feature of the game.
So, about that matchmaker bit... can your engineers fix it with the population in its current state, the meta game in its current state, and do so soon? Or should I just completely bow out now and wait to play again halfway through June with zero expectations of this being completed?