I commend you on your efforts OP. To other posters, those actually contributing with well-reasoned, thoughtful posts, continue what you're doing as you are always needed in any community. To others, who continue to generalize a whole community, you are not only just as much of a problem as those you're trying to condemn, you're willfully derailing any attempt at meaningful communication in the process.
I already have
some posts regarding some of these issues, but since it's likely people won't go read them, I'll try to get at least the major points scrawled out here.
I am one of those people (an elite founder as it were) who left a few months after open beta when it became clear to me that the game wasn't really going to go anywhere in the foreseeable future (and nearly two years later, all we have are a few new maps, lots of new Mechs, and base turrets). That isn't a slight; I'm not mocking anyone or anything; that's simply a fact of what we have today, right now. Yet time and time again, PGI has promised CW is 'really soon' every time they want to sell a Mech Pack (Founders with open beta, Phoenix with loyalty points, Clan Mechs again this year, and again with the Clan Reinforcement pack just recently - which, as it turns out, they had done nothing with CW because they were waiting on a license extension anyway).
I am not oblivious to the obviousness of needing money/revenue/profits to not only continue daily operations, but to be able to plan ahead for the future. I would assume that goes without say, and as such, does not need to be brought up as a counterpoint to development (specifically CW in this instance). And, even if it were somehow a counterpoint, I do not understand why PGI is always talking about new features yet to be implemented when they want to sell Mechs, especially if they don't know about the long-term viability of such an endeavor.
I am also one of the people that left before Niko took over. I have seen posts that deserved to get moderated, and I have seen posts that should not have been moderated. People are human, of course; they have biases, shortcomings, and make mistakes. I doubt too many people would disagree with that. But there is a marked difference between making mistakes and enforcing gestapo style moderation on PGI's forums,
based on what people are saying on other websites (which, although I heavily disagree with it, it is their forums - although the practices of which can easily be debated, as should be evident). You can't censor the internet and trying to do so is foolhardy. 'Reap what you sow' and 'Poetic justice' come readily to my mind for those endeavors.
Perhaps, this would be a reflection point in which PGI could begin to make good on their new round of promises, especially if IGP has been the roadblock they've claimed. Instead,
in the 62 page thread referenced by the OP, where a whole ton of founders (and others) came back to a game they haven't been played or been a part of in a while, the large majority of which were civil, Niko closes the thread (halting any and all communication) while offering a non-apology.
I'm feeling particularly lazy at this point, so I'm just going to copy and paste what I have already written elsewhere now:
""Based on the reddiquette guidelines it seems possible we over moderated."
It 'seems possible'? He did it. That happened. And rather than acknowledging it and moving forward, it's 'well, we maybe possibly could have done something wrong, and if we did, well, we're sorry you may have taken offense to it'.
Honestly, I don't know if English is his first language or not (I don't know Niko at all), but regardless, as a company you want someone in PR that can clearly and cleanly communicate to your customers and fans."
"Firing him--sacrificing him, whatever terminology you wish you to employ--will not solve all the woes of PGI. While I personally don't think he should keep his job, if he can clean up his act and actually do a proper job, it doesn't bother me in the slightest if he retains his position. But I am of the mind, that if you have identifiable 'wrongs' or 'bad', and choosing not to get rid of some of that in order to correct the course, well, you reap what you sow in the end."
"While on the topic of PR and apologizing/moving on; someone brought up the Xbone and their initial announcements (Xbox 180 anyyone?). They took a lot of flak, rightfully so, but then fixed and changed what they had to and moved on. Does anyone even care that they did it now? Well, some might, but no one's talking about it, and I'm guessing it didn't impact their sales a whole lot after changing it to a product consumers wanted to buy."
"It's very hard to make improvements when you can't acknowledge fault or shortcomings. Despite everything the last ~2 years, I'm still a little surprised that even you/PGI could fail to capitalize on such an amazing opportunity that came at a rather large blunder."
Personally I'm not expecting this post to accomplish much in terms of opening a dialogue with PGI (a defeatist attitude, sure, with ~two years of evidence and experience though), but at the very least it won't be for a lack of trying. If anyone wants to get in touch/contact, I regularly frequent the Star Citizen forums and of course my group's forums.
Cheers, and good luck!
Edit: Didn't see that Russ posted. Others addressed it, but it's worth repeating. It's not so much that the developers themselves have to communicate with the community directly (it's certainly good when it can happen, but, presumably developers are busy developing), but that's almost the exact reason why you have someone whose job it is to do that (either PR or CM related, or, ideally, both - except that hasn't been working well for you yet so I can't in all good consciousness recommend that).
The overwhelming sentiment, which your post displays rather well there, is that you seem to be missing the point. Not willfully, but more likely than not ignorantly. And it's hard to have an open dialogue when at least one party starts the dialogue in a defensive stance (and I don't just mean that with you here, but with some of the community response to some of the things PGI has said too). It's really a matter of understanding, and until you and PGI reach that, and are then able to clearly and cleanly convey that to the community, things aren't really going to change much. It's also the community's responsibility to be able to do the same thing though, and not to be generalized by both its own members and by PGI itself. Newsflash: People are individuals with their own thoughts and feelings, but unfortunately businesses don't have the same courtesy, at least certainly not to the same degree.
Edited by TopDawg, 12 September 2014 - 09:12 AM.
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Russ Bullock, on 11 September 2014 - 08:00 PM, said:
