With all professional respect to Mr. Gaider, he's correct and incorrect at the same time. His viewpoint stems from having overseen a "failed" game, and he's taken quite a loss with it.
As far as Bioware not developing successful multiplayer, that's not accurate. They laid the groundwork for Neverwinter Nights, arguably one of the most powerful vehicles for multiplayer which existed in the early 2000's.
SW:TOR "failed" primarily due to EA's influence, less than Bioware's. Having done some QA work at the beginning of the project, and now working with another person who did work for EA during the release, I have no doubts about this. It was pushed to release before the project was finished (even though the basic "game experience" was finished), and it took until 1.2 to get in everything BW wished to accomplish by Gold. Additionally, the subscription-based MMO was fairly dead by the time it released, but the developer has no say on the pricing model for a game - that's publisher, and in this case, EA was years behind the times, hoping to make a WOW-killer.
But I digress; back to Mr Gaider's assessment of online communities. Strictly speaking, he's not talking about the development. He was a lead writer, and honestly, that side of development doesn't take direction from the player base. A lot less feedback is needed for his position than, say, the net programmer or someone coding how energy weapons works in this game.
So, it's really apples to oranges - he's speaking about online communities and their negative posting after seeing the story line for ME3 or DA2, where the story falls flat. When the story work is done, and the story (to put it plainly) is a re-hashed formula told with the same hooks and props and tricks used over and over. It's actually not just Bioware; very few games contain a refreshing or interesting story-line anymore. Just as in Hollywood, writers end up regurgitating the same trite formula, until something new comes along, and then it gets turned into a formula.
But let's say for a moment that, in the more general sense (game development), that he is correct. And there is truth to these words, to be sure. If you take very little feedback or do not answer your players during a beta, you've got a double-edged sword (especially as far as this game is concerned). Valid feedback can make or break a game as to performance, and general player experience, and this gets ignored to the peril of the developers. This goes for any software project, let alone a game.
A number of games actually went this route. Age of Conan during closed beta was a beautiful thing to behold. Combat was fluid, the general game experience and tutorial and play was really well done. Then came release day, and for some reason, the entire experience was changed. Combat was very different, spellcasting "chains" were never included, and the experience after tortuga just fell flat (which a majority of players had already voiced).
The same happened with CoH after enhancement changes; SWG after class generalization; the list goes on. Those developers didn't listen to their playerbase and just "did what they wanted" as well.
Was the community toxic for those games? Not that I recall, specifically. Granted, there were a fair share of negative posts and garbage feedback, but community moderators have a number of tools to flag posts for developer review and it's pretty easy to sort the dross from the wheat, so to speak. The only time a developer has to "wade through the muck" is if they want a general pulse of game viewpoint.
For the most part, though, they can just review the well-thought out ideas culled from the noise. If that's not happening, your community manager needs to be replaced or corrected.
I feel that the direction for the game here is going generally in the right direction, sans a rocky release. Basics such as net code really, really should have been ironed out before DHS and other features added, and certainly before open beta. The new player experience certainly should have been addressed; you want your game to be very friendly to new players straight out of the gate. As far as maps, etc. etc. go, I think they made the right call on those. Development happens over time, things get added, and so forth. But that's just my opinion, and rather moot - but I feel that if those issues were addressed, half of the noise which occurred since OB would have been far less.
However, my feeling on Mr. Gaider's post is that it specifically was addressed to the community issues with ME3's story end, and the general reception to DA2's story. I hate to say it, but while there was way more vitrol than deserved, they were not well done, or good works, compared to BW's early work for each of those IPs, in the writing department. I hope he comes to grips with that at some point and breaks the BW mold for storytelling for whichever project he works on next, or he'll have the same reception, be it a game or a novel.
Edited by Lanessar, 10 January 2013 - 01:58 PM.
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Kristov Kerensky, on 10 January 2013 - 01:06 PM, said:
