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If Jay spent months building and testing trial mechs for PGI, only to have PGI make changes on him on the last minute, not just once but twice, which effectively wastes all his efforts for a quarter of an entire year by throwing the contents out the window and keeping the plastic wrapper for show, then I'd have to say this isn't really all that much different from how many other companies treat contributors and show little respect for their effort. This isn't a knock on any specific individual. Regardless of people's positions or views inside the company, the end result belongs to PGI as a company.
The same goes for the weapon changes. Again, people spent a long time putting these things together. Whether PGI agrees or disagrees with it isn't the issue. They could always compromise and explain in simple terms why the Gulag contribution was not accepted in part or in whole. Explaining why and correlating it to the actual balance update that PGI released would just be basic courtesy for the effort these players put in to help make the game better. Yes, regardless if they are bitter vets or heavy critics of PGI, they still put in the effort to help make the game better. Emotions aside, a more professional response to not accepting most if not all of their suggested changes would have been better than a "1-day ram these new things you didn't ask for down your throat" action.
So, based on the limited information I have from the various sources, I am here to criticize PGI's processes for community and contributor interaction. Yes, PGI can just let the client-facing employees like Daeron and Matt take the brunt of the community hate and shield the actual internal decision-makers that put the final stamp on these updates. We all know that some people are hired to be the fall guys sometimes, be it customer support or community managers. We're all stupidly old adults here who have worked in companies so this isn't some magical mystery cookie.
This makes it so that people should be wary of contributing their time and effort to PGI if it involves any higher level decisions like balance or trial mechs because clearly there is a high chance that your efforts will not be, at least, treated respectfully by the internal corporate machine. Regardless of the efforts and good intentions of the client-facing employees, it's not up to them to make the final decisions.
The main issue with hiring a level designer is that he is also probably going to stop at the 'You shall not pass' point of adjusting what is within the game same as with balance and trial mechs, so because of these issues, I have no confidence that this new hire will be allowed to properly fix the maps, even if he has the ability to do so.
I don't know how PGI (as a whole and not just Daeron being told to write more community posts to put out the fires) will adjust their processes to avoid such issues in the future, but until then, be wary about contributing your time to the company.
Edited by Elizander, 16 March 2021 - 06:46 PM.
