1234 replies to this topic

[StreetPizza]

I like how you guys are asking for help. If you were on fire I wouldn't put you out with a rake.
I may not get my money back but it's nice watching you guys get a little bit of what you dish out.
Your own surveys tell you what the community want's from you and you ignore it. A PR tip, and this is an actual scholarly journal business rule....the absolute worst thing you can do to a group of people is ask their opinions, find out what the community wants.....then ignore those findings. I have never seen anything like your pathetic excuses and reckless behavior in regards to PR. The whole Reddit thing is just one more feather in your cap. Way to go....
I didn't even think you guys were stupid enough to get banned from a social media site. No joke, whoever rubber stamped this little venture needs to be fired. They are a liability to your company and have ZERO business in anything PR related.

Edited by StreetPizza, 10 September 2014 - 07:23 PM.

[Zeus X]

Bolow, on 10 September 2014 - 07:17 PM, said:

I can't even think of a punchline to this joke

Burn, baby burn! Transverse infernooooooooo.......

[ipox]

Dresner, on 10 September 2014 - 03:22 PM, said:

Aight I'm gonna chime in one more time, and say what several others have said but without the sarcasm.

I'm a goon. We're not malicious, we're just idiots. I'm confident, both in how many other goons I see with founders tags, and in my own stupid flag of shame, that goons aren't and haven't tried to destroy this game. Just seeing all these founders chime in and voice their disappointment and disgust should deter any of the impending whining about being flooded with spam. We are not spam. We are not trolls. We are paying customers. Just look at all these pissed-off Founders.

If you want this boat to float, you know exactly what the community wants. CW, Ghost Heat removal, communication without passive-aggressive snarkiness, and an apology. Unlike several others in the thread, I am optimistic.

Not for Transverse, that pile of garbage is going nowhere.

But for MWO. You know what needs to happen and you can make fat stacks if you drop your ego and listen and appreciate your fanbase.

(on comms) Jojoyojimbi, Sandpit, Roadbeer and I approve of this message.

[Kyriaeus]

His current profile description is "The Community Manager formerly known as Niko Snow".
Maybe soon it'll read "The former Community Manager"

[Bolow]

I am genuinely curious how much money PGI lit on fire when they bought the Wing Commander license.

[DivineCoffeeBinge]

While I have no genuine belief that this post is going to be read by any of the people to whom it might make any difference, I am an eternal optimist, so I'll try anyways.

Dear PGI. Your family is very concerned about your behavior, and we decided we needed to talk to you about it. This is an intervention.

You see, you had such potential. Mechwarrior Online! What a great idea! Back when I was actively playing - back in the hoary mists of time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth - the game was clunky in a few areas, but still quite a lot of fun. Expectations were high. Expectations - however realistic or unrealistic they might have been - were not met. That happens, sometimes. But then things went off the rails. The problem, I submit, is not that the game isn't yet everything the fanbase expected - development cycles are longer than many players realize, so that sort of thing is understandable. The problem, as I see it, is this - that you have done a terrible, terrible job in reaching out to said playerbase.

This latest fiasco is but the most recent of a long, long history of making the same single error, namely failing to realize the following:

Once you get people to drink the Kool-Aid, you have to remember that sometime down the line they might get thirsty again.

Every communication from PGI seems to, essentially, take the goodwill of their players for granted. We paid money, after all! We played the game! We talked up the game to our friends, we founded factions and message boards and came up with witty catchphrases! We SQUAWK'd - some of us did, at any rate - and we dueled and we posted articles and we formed a community. So, surely we were on board, right?

And, see, we were on board. We enjoyed the game. But nothing lasts forever.

So things didn't develop as quickly as we all might have hoped. Well, that happens. But when it happens, engagement with the community becomes the key factor in determining what happens next; transparency helps, as does treating your playerbase with respect, two areas in which I submit PGI has pretty well failed.

It is not unreasonable for a playerbase to make certain demands of a game once they have paid for that game - incidentally (and coincidentally, I'm sure), Kotaku published an article just now that addresses with regards to DayZ: http://kotaku.com/wh...me-f-1633279331 - however, the PGI response to playerbase concerns seems to have taken on a tenor of "stop complaining and be happy with what you have." That is to say, you've been treating your customers as though they had no stake in this ongoing enterprise, which is a pretty severe misreading, I submit, of the social contract.

This latest fiasco - overmoderation both here and on Reddit, a fairly transparent attempt to shift blame to EVIL GOONS GRR rather than accepting any responsibility... it's... it's disappointing. The tenor of your interactions has been entitled to a ridiculous degree - acting as though the opinions of people who don't like the way you do business is somehow inherently bad and wrong, while the ToS of Reddit is unimportant, nothing compared to making sure your message gets out your way... you seem to have this impression that your customer base isn't allowed to have negative opinions of you.

We all drank the Kool-Aid, guys. But one drink of Kool-Aid doesn't keep anyone sated for years at a time, you know?

Seriously, today has been a disaster. But it's a disaster you can get past, so long as you start talking to your players instead of at them.



...I wish I had any faith that that was going to happen, but hey, I might yet be surprised.

[PunyKaiju]

Well PGI has created a situation they cant "moderate" away here. If they ban founders or delete the thread then they begin shooting themselves in the foot for their new project as well. Good times.

[Tanki]

Bongfu, on 10 September 2014 - 07:11 PM, said:

Don't worry, mate. In a year we will all be playing Star Citizen and I will host a party on my capital ship to celebrating the end of my probation. All ex-MWO players will be invited.

I'm going to hold you to that.

[Ilvatu]

Hello Niko, another founder here. I use the SA forums and Reddit just about equally and I would like to get back to the topic of this post.

Many, if not all, PGI accounts have been "shadow-banned" from Reddit. This was due to your creation and heavy moderation of a new subreddit called /r/transverse to promote a kickstarter for PGI's new game. This was, in your words:

Quote

to pre-empt any possible recreation of the events which occurred leading to the creation of /r/Outreach HPG following the take-over of /r/mwo.

Most people who read /r/MWO regret the fallout that occurred there. This action you undertook to prevent this from happening in /r/transverse is a completely understandable prevention method from your perspective. However, if you had done your research, I think you would have found out that this actually goes against the neutrality and user moderation methods and policies of Reddit.

Reddit strongly frowns upon professionals, or owners of companies, running the respective subreddits of those entities. This is so that links shared on that website are created, shared, and upvoted/downvoted in a neutral environment. Positive or negative, its the community that decides on the content they want to see, not the moderators of that subreddit. This policy is in place to prevent people from doing exactly what you have done on Reddit. It is essentially this reason that you were banned, and your subreddit stripped away. You were attempting to circumvent the neutrality that Reddit prides itself on, and attempted to make /r/transverse a shout-box for PGI. Culling all content you disagree with, or shows the company in a bad light, and only promoting material that you agree with or approve of.

Reddit's policies are in place to prevent subreddits from becoming just this. People would stop using reddit if the respective subreddits for their favorite things were being moderated by the companies running those things. It represents a conflict of interest and of free speech for the users of Reddit, and goes against the very nature of Reddit itself.

Reddit is not a place you can go to and generate free advertising. It is a place where people can go to share their favorite links and discuss, without consequence, things they are interested in. Reddit is not like normal internet forums like these, or even SA, that you are familiar with. The community decides what content it sees, not the owners of the site or the subreddits.

You cannot just go to Reddit, create a subreddit, and moderate it how you do these forums. That's not how it works over there. You are obviously free to do things as you see fit here, but when you go to a 3rd party website you have to follow their policies. Just like we are not immune to yours here, you are not immune to theirs.

Furthermore, this thread represents an even worse situation. You have provided a link to where users of these forums can go and discuss the matter on Reddit. Users of Reddit would consider this to be "Brigading." Something you have, in your post, wrongfully accused members of SA doing to get your accounts banned on Reddit. "Brigading" itself has gotten a great many accounts on Reddit banned in the past, including SA members (/r/eve.) While the way you have linked to this thread on Reddit is very neutral, it is still a mass influx of users from this site to that one, and I doubt the mods of Reddit will view it in a good way. Asking users of this site to Brigade that thread for you is unlikely to change their actions.

For these reasons, I don't think that you should get the rights to /r/transverse back. Perhaps banning all your accounts was a bit extreme (especially in the cases of those who weren't really involved.) If you want to interact with Reddit, it is best to do it as a general user, not a moderator of the subreddit for your game.

Goons are not your enemy. They are not actively trying to sabotoge MWO. In fact, over the past couple weeks more and more goons have been flocking back to MWO. The ones who play aren't being as toxic as the ones in the SA thread, and many are defending the game (if not PGI employees). They want to be left alone to enjoy MWO, like everybody else. Many have spent money on the game in the last month, and are still actively playing and supporting your game. There aren't as many now as there used to be, but they are still a part of the community. It does nobody any favors calling them out like that.

Stop waging war over social media, Niko. If someone says something bad to you over Twitter, that doesn't mean you should ban their accounts here. If someone says something bad on Facebook, you shouldn't reference their name to their account info and ban them here. The same goes for Reddit and SA. You have no idea how many people are apprehensive to even talk about or post about MWO. They're afraid that no matter where they type you will ban them for the smallest slight. You want people talking more about the game. Thats how you generate more interest here and why your methods are actually impairing the MWO community, not improving it.

[FireSight]

I get the feeling that all PGI staff have been told to stay the hell away from this thread until Russ or someone else high up can figure out how they want to do damage control.

[CateranEnforcer]

Oh my, this got large fast. Looks like the founders are all coming out of the woodworks to watch the show. Kind of ashamed to have the founder's and phoenix tags next to my name. Someone pass me a coconut.

[Bongfu]

Tanki, on 10 September 2014 - 07:30 PM, said:

I'm going to hold you to that.

My name won't change from here to SC so please do. I will buy you a ship if you show up, mate.

[Jestunhi]

Bolow, on 10 September 2014 - 07:17 PM, said:

I can't even think of a punchline to this joke

I'll tell you what makes it even more amusing, comparing these totals to the price & number of packages sold.

The packages had a quantity of 20,000 each.

Assuming the figures in the store are up to date, as of right now they have sold:
25 $30 packages
21 $60 packages
3 $120 packages
3 $150 packages
8 $250 packages

By my math that's 60 packages totalling $4820

3 packages and $860 less than the figures provided on the funding page. There aren't even any packages which can make up that $860 with just 3 packages - 3 x $250 would be the highest and that's only $750.

Sources:
https://transversegame.com/store/
https://transversega...m/about/funding

:edit:

This comparison was based on 63 packages & $5680 - the current figures rather than the one in the image I quoted.

Edited by Jestunhi, 10 September 2014 - 07:36 PM.

[wanderer]

ThisMachineKillsFascists, on 10 September 2014 - 06:38 PM, said:

Thx wanderer. You ve spoken the truth earlier today aswell but some mods decided to destroy ya thread - oh sry "Clean"

I am but a fool who occasionally trips over wisdom and generally does silly pictures with text instead.
And already, I am seeing "Banned" pop up occasionally in the thread here in place of poster handles.

It is a Bad Idea. At this point, I'd avoid banning -anyone- posting in this thread short of them engaging in graphic "Dude, you ASKED FOR IT" moves.

It's like keeping your gun locked up until you can count to sixty in a calm, rational fashion. This way, you don't shoot someone you'll regret later. I fear, however that at least one such round has been fired in anger rather than rationality, and that can never result in positive effects.

[Spazzy Pete]

Hi there PGI, just another old founder checking in, just another angry former customer. Just another person who would honestly still love to see MWO thrive.

But who are we kidding. I'm pretty sure that despite everything that's happened, you still don't actualy get what you did wrong. Good luck with your spaceships.

[Magna Canus]

It's good to see people having fun again.

[DDDs]

Damn, 8 hours later and there are still hundreds of people viewing this topic? This thread is pure GOLD.

[Harabec Weathers]

Harabec Weathers, on 10 September 2014 - 02:44 PM, said:

Transverse crowdfunding has been out for at least 24 hours now. Total Amount raised: $5,560 - Number of Backers: 60
Assuming the numbers are even correct, which there has been some doubt.

Bolow, on 10 September 2014 - 07:17 PM, said:

I can't even think of a punchline to this joke

So in the 4.5 hours between these posts, Transverse has gained two backers and made another $90. In the last 4 hours, Star Citizen has made... several thousand dollars. I dunno, charts and math are complicated, as PGI's attempt at balancing has proven.



"lol"

[Bolow]

Jestunhi, on 10 September 2014 - 07:33 PM, said:

I'll tell you what makes it even more amusing, comparing these totals to the price & number of packages sold.

The packages had a quantity of 20,000 each.

Assuming the figures in the store are up to date, as of right now they have sold:
25 $30 packages
21 $60 packages
3 $120 packages
3 $150 packages
8 $250 packages

By my math that's 60 packages totalling $4820

3 packages and $860 less than the figures provided on the funding page. There aren't even any packages which can make up that $860 with just 3 packages - 3 x $250 would be the highest and that's only $750.

Sources:
https://transversegame.com/store/
https://transversega...m/about/funding

:edit:

This math was based on 63 packages & $5680 - the current figures rather than the one in the image I quoted.

This is a kickstarter balance feature known as Ghost Pledging

[Banned]

wanderer, on 10 September 2014 - 07:34 PM, said:

I am but a fool who occasionally trips over wisdom and generally does silly pictures with text instead.
And already, I am seeing "Banned" pop up occasionally in the thread here in place of poster handles.

I'm not banned, just Banned.

Edited by Banned, 10 September 2014 - 07:38 PM.