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, enough that I know there’s at least a few out there who feel the same way, here’s a more constructive follow up.So, how is PGI killing this game? Let’s list a quick outline of what seem to be the biggest issues at hand:
BETA vs PGI Being Unprofessional
This must be by far, the most problematic issue.
Its hard to pin down exactly why this issue causes distaste and disgruntlement. However, after a long while, I think I finally have a suitable answer.
PGI want to have their cake, and eat it as well.
Now, pleading for time and understanding is one thing. The game being buggy because its in Beta, that’s fine as well.
Why there’s so much unhappiness?
PGI, its frustrating how you seem perfectly okay with making money out of people with a Beta, but when problems arise, the Beta excuse is wheeled out.
I think most people can forgive genuine mistakes. Unfortunately, so many of the mistakes PGI are making seem more like careless and slipshod work than anything else.
Patches that introduce more bugs than they fix, or even bring back old bugs. Your internal testing team need a kick up the behind.
Lazy, lack of, or even misleading information concerning game features and patches, leading to a situation so bad people have to come up with their own ‘unofficial’ patch notes.
I don’t know if PGI just can’t be bothered, or if they have no internal communication and their dev team is completely clueless and segregated from their coding/engineering team, but seriously guys, this one is inexcusable for a professional company. When Minecraft has better patchnotes, you’ve got a serious problem.
Proposed Solution:
Fix the information gap first. Assign an engineer to handle private Q&A from the people who are interested like ohmwrecker and smurfy who do a fantastic job wading through game data and mechanics and help put it in a easy to digest format for the rest of us.
Do a better job with your patch notes. You don’t need to baby us. Put every detail in the patchnotes instead of worrying if we care or not. Because its far better than us not having a clue.
I’m not going to touch the internal testing team issue. Maybe you guys are doing your best, but when bugs like the ‘INESCAPABLE LRMS OF DEATH’ bug or the ‘DHS aren’t working’ bug manage to make it through Q&A, someone needs to admit they messed up somewhere along the line.
Where are we going? WTH is happening?
Okay. Let me be fair here.
PGI cannot be blamed for Beta testers suffering burnout. The guys who have been with me since CB will know where I'm coming from.
However, people will tend to continue playing, or at least say 'okay, I'll take a break, but I'll be back', if the developers are doing a good job keeping tabs on the pulse of the community, and are addressing the biggest concerns.
However, when the exact opposite happens, and people start getting the feeling of 'Do these guys even have a clue WTF they're doing?' that's when you have people saying 'You know what? F*** this, I play games to relax and have fun, this is not fun anymore.'
If I were to try and describe this more in detail, then I would say the biggest problem here is, I've never gotten the urge to ragequit Minecraft. I played that since Alpha, and buggy, crashes or not, I still kept playing and never really got that upset.
So its not the crashes or instability that really make people angry, although they may result in a fleeting moment of rage
What really pushes people over the edge, is when a crash happens, or when they spend an hour being griefed by all ECM DDC/Raven teams, then a patch/several patches come and go, and we get more MC items/announcements about third person view/devs talking about how ECM is fine, while key issues remain unresolved.
I'm just saying, I might feel less kindly about Minecraft if everytime I crashed out, I was met by an advert upon relogging in, saying 'BUY A UBER PLATINUM PICKAXE! ONLY USD5!'
Proposed Solution
PGI has made a great effort trying to keep us up to date with what's happening. That's much appreciated, the Dev's corner is a great read.
However, improvements can still be made.
Firstly, we get that unexpected things happen, and deadlines may not be met.
However, when this happens on a continual basis, you lose goodwill. That's all there is to it, no matter how sincere you are. Excuses, at the end of the day, are still excuses, and aren't good enough. All that marketing stuff those of you who are in a customer relations job or learn in management courses know, you should under promise, over deliver.
This is such a big thing, because with your model for F2P, people buy sparkly things when they're happy with the company. And right now, the community isn't exactly particularly happy.
Secondly, put more dates in.
Not having dates just gives us the impression you have no idea when its going to be done either.
Its true, some things are hard to pin down. But when push comes to shove, that's your job. You have to put yourself out there, bite the bullet, and make a committment. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT PERTAINS TO CRITICAL/GAMEBREAKING ISSUES. Then you have to pull out all the stops to try and meet that committment.
That's how things work. Not faffing about and being vague because you're worried people will use it as a stick to beat you when you miss a deadline. That's not solving a problem, that's avoiding it, which even further gives people the idea you have no clue what you're doing or where we're going. The solution to missing deadlines is to STOP MISSING DEADLINES, NOT AVOIDING MAKING COMMITTMENTS.
In some instances, such as them fixing the LRM DEATH FROM ABOVE bug, they did what they were supposed to. Colossal F-up, but they came and fixed it up quickly and without too much drama.
In others, like the whole DHS release fiasco, the reverse happened. Delays, confusion, bugs, denial, it was a giant train wreck for those who were here for that episode.
Conclusion
I'll leave it at two points for now. If PGI can address these two issues, then I think a large portion of very disillusioned people will feel much better.
I realise the inflammatory way some of us may put our points across brings out the white knights in hordes.
Admittedly, some of the complainers belong to the 'general *****' category, and can be safely ignored.
But there are those of us who have sunk a chunk of change into this game, and our disillusionment comes not because we're demanding, but because honestly at this point in time, we're not even sure with the way things are going whether PGI will make it to the end of the year. It is that bad. No we're not doom-mongering. Games that have been better handled have failed, to say PGI is safe is being naive.
Thanks for reading
EDIT: One of the better summations of the type of thing that has really raised questions about which way the game is going:
Rifter, on 06 January 2013 - 10:28 PM, said:
I honestly thought the game had a chance up untill about 3 weeks ago. Now im pretty sure its going to crash and not exsist in one years time.
The tipping point for me was CW and the way they started handling it. We go OB and they announce it will be in game in 90 days, all is well. we have a outline of it from the PC gamer article and most people are happy with the timeline. It gets to the 60 day mark when they should be done planning, done coding, and into testing of CW so people start to ask questions about it in the middle of dec, a perfectly reasonable thing to do when asking about a feature that should by this point be in testing so all info about it should be readily available.
They respond by locking all threads that mention CW, taking all post which referance the 90 day after OB timeline and deleting them and outright refusing to answer all CW related questons in the one official place we have to ask questions which is the ask the devs thread.
You dont handle something as major as CW by sweeping it under the rug and hoping we all forget what we were told. To me this was the tipping point between probable sucess and probable failure for the game.
The tipping point for me was CW and the way they started handling it. We go OB and they announce it will be in game in 90 days, all is well. we have a outline of it from the PC gamer article and most people are happy with the timeline. It gets to the 60 day mark when they should be done planning, done coding, and into testing of CW so people start to ask questions about it in the middle of dec, a perfectly reasonable thing to do when asking about a feature that should by this point be in testing so all info about it should be readily available.
They respond by locking all threads that mention CW, taking all post which referance the 90 day after OB timeline and deleting them and outright refusing to answer all CW related questons in the one official place we have to ask questions which is the ask the devs thread.
You dont handle something as major as CW by sweeping it under the rug and hoping we all forget what we were told. To me this was the tipping point between probable sucess and probable failure for the game.
Its kinda funny how people can still think we're complaining about gameplay or speculating needlessly. When there's the real likelihood something like this:
Lonestar1771, on 06 January 2013 - 10:38 PM, said:
This^^^^ and again I think this is mostly on IGP. Something tells me we will have clan mechs LONG before CW as that will be the big money maker and IF we do get CW it won't be until mid to late 2013.
will happen. Let me put it this way. As far as speculation goes, it looks far more likely things will turn out poorly than well at this juncture. Amazing people can't realise that.
Edited by Valore, 07 January 2013 - 06:30 AM.
