Apnu, on 11 February 2015 - 01:59 PM, said:
For me its not a break, just adjusting my view to a longer perspective like you. Like you, I'm a "whale" I'm an Elite Founder (I regret not spending the extra $60 for the top tier), I'm a Phoenix Overlord and Reinforcement buyer. I'm a Resistance Wrath level buyer and bought the Urbie $40 pack. I also skipped clans because I'm a IS purist and I own about half the heroes. Some just don't interest me.
I hate that term 'whale' it's more a misnomer that has been created for this sort of game. And most analysis I've read on it has not met the qualities of why people choose to put an extreme amount of money into a franchise or title.
Like you I've also heavily supported this title, From the Founders highest package to Top tier everything for each of the mech booster packs. I do so for the love of the franchise less-so than a love of this title. My personal opinion on this title is not quite so glamorous but as long as PGI has the license leased I'll attempt to help support it and hopefully it'll become something great over time. But patience only goes so far.
Apnu, on 11 February 2015 - 01:59 PM, said:
I'm never going to throw a tantrum like some and demand a product designed to my random and fevered specifications. That's just irrational hysterics. Life's better for me, when I'm rational and mellow, so I choose not to get worked up by PGI's design decisions if I disagree with them (and I do on the topic of 10v12, sharply). But I'm not going to give a stink about it.
There's a lot of fan entitlement going on around here. Players think because they play, they're entitled to something from PGI. They aren't. They are simply one mewling kitten in a box of kittens and it all sounds like line noise to PGI. PGI doesn't owe us anything. They make a product, we have the option to buy it or not, if we don't like what we bought, that's on us. Its like buying a candy bar and not liking it, then going back to the candy maker and harassing them about something that didn't taste good to one person. The simplest solution is to throw the candy bar in the trash and get on with their lives.
I think you're right that a lot of folks throw tantrums when they don't see the things they like. Personally I've tried to offer subjective feedback supported with evidence captured within the title as to the issues I see. I've met a lot of resistance through many different posts to the feedback provided from differing viewpoints that don't agree with the assessments I've provided. I think to some degree they need the tantrum backlash, but there is a greater need for supportive feedback being provided.
Take this with that I work in software, and with the products I've worked on I can say we watch the community closely and pay attention to criticisms. Responses though always have very specific channels they need to go through.
And while correlating this product to a physical object, we're not in that age anymore. This is true for games moreso than other industries as you see entire games getting retooled down to core mechanics and the environment the player interacts with, World of Warcraft has done some of the larger overhauls recently as an example. But even so in 2002 Everquest redid its entire graphics system within the same engine. Including the ability to selectively use higher quality models/textures depending on the users hardware configuration. That's an exceptionally large overhaul and adding systems and support systems to allow that to occur.
So this sort of expectation is seen as part of the precedent set by the industry to have the capability to make those large sweeping changes.
Apnu, on 11 February 2015 - 01:59 PM, said:
But no... not gamers. Not on the Internet. Everything has to be the most of something. The most epically awesome mech mashing mayhem with unicorns crapping rainbows, or the worst game ever that scars them forever and they can only exercise that demon by giving devs cancer. Seriously, that's how players are.
In short this is still true over 10 years later:
This rule is fairly true. Its tough to find communities that actually don't have an abundance of vulgar malcontents.
Apnu, on 11 February 2015 - 01:59 PM, said:
What's strange to me is we now live in an era of perpetual development and customer feedback influencing that endless development cycle. At first I thought that was a novelty for small shops, but now that Microsoft is doing it for Win10, this must be the new normal. Given the hysterics of people on the Internet this blows my mind any organization would do this, but here we are.
I'd like to point at Adobe, being the first big company, doing this first by turning their art and development tools software into a subscription service and doing effectively weekly updates. This is intended to make it so they have a higher level of support for their user base and quickly respond to their
'needs' despite a lot of it really not being a requirement to have functionality.