452 replies to this topic

[Abivard]

Livewyr, on 14 February 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

I see your personal experience- and raise my own!

World of Warcraft: I played vanilla, BC, WotLK, and Cata. I decided that MOP was going to be a waste of my time because of the features they put in (specifically the talent trees) and quietly cancelled my subscription a year ago.. have not been back.
World ot Tanks: Played it for a long time, had a presence in the forums including lots of "wtf" posts and when I got into the MWO closed beta.. I quietly left. (WoT still has the "Critical Hit- No damage" Mechanic supported by their ever present "Working as intended"­™)
DDO: Had a bigger presence in there.. spent some money had some fun, but as I got higher levels it started getting harder to get a group unless you were in a guild.. and that was pretty much nepotism. The game had no way of allowing you to continue in smaller groups. I quietly left.

There are more.. but I think I've made my point.

1441 posts total, this post alone 3 paragraphs, ..... leave silently with out complaint you say? why do I find that hard to believe?

[StalaggtIKE]

Abivard, on 14 February 2013 - 01:09 PM, said:

1441 posts total, this post alone 3 paragraphs, ..... leave silently with out complaint you say? why do I find that hard to believe?

Ooh, I think I know! Perhaps your clashing viewpoints??

Edited by StalaggtIKE, 14 February 2013 - 01:17 PM.

[Codejack]

Livewyr, on 14 February 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:

I was simply giving you another "Rule of thumb"

Communicative apathy is the norm.. to communicate with a business or seller about a product is rare comparatively.
(Or a forum of public opinion in this case.)

Which is why PGI should be treating the people who bother to reply at all with a little respect, don't you think ?

Livewyr, on 14 February 2013 - 12:40 PM, said:

(I would like to point out that there are many negative poll backfires out there...)

Don't I know it!

[Codejack]

And then I noticed something interesting:

Garth Erlam, on 14 February 2013 - 12:27 PM, said:

people don't leave the game to come on the forums to tell us they don't mind a feature.

There's an assumption there that I don't think is valid; people are not "leaving the game to come on the forums," they do it at work or in-between rounds

Garth Erlam, on 14 February 2013 - 12:27 PM, said:

Why would they?

They come to point out things that they think could be better. They come to get advice on how to play. They come to hear stories about other peoples' experiences.

What are those stories, right now? "ECM, ECM, ECM...."

Look, I'm sorry. I really am. I know I've lost my temper and I know I've been rude, but so have you in the way you have dealt with this issue, and the only reason that I get upset is that this has/had the potential to be a truly awesome game.... and you guys are just screwing it up.

Again, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but this was not a good idea, and it is tainting everything you else you are doing since the whole game is out of balance. Your proposed fixes do not address the actual problems introduced, and you don't even give the appearance of understanding what those problems are.

[Jello2142]

Abivard, on 14 February 2013 - 01:06 PM, said:

Complaint ratios about customer service compared to complaint ratios about beta game play do not correlate.

in Beta/games Almost all complainers will post, Praise for features are posted by less than 5% of players.

B-B-B-but it is beta!!!!!!!

Sorry but MWO officially lost me 2 craps about not being brutally honest once they officially released their micro transaction shop, at which point they can hardly hide behind the beta veil in my opinion.

I will give you that some posters could use more tact when voicing their opinions, I will tell you right now that is not going to happen be it here or in the line at Taco Bell when some worker fubars a nacho bell grande.

As a humble member of the IT service level community I will be the first to tell you that 65% of our complaints come in the form of pissed off rants. You know what though I take it in stride and don't take it to heart because that is what I get paid to do! So why should we get on one knee for Garth or any other member of PGI, Ford, Microsoft, or my personal favorite (sarcasm) team of support techs CISCO?

Should people go on rants on how PGI using obsenities every other word? No. But should those of us with concerns be scorned? No.

At the end of the week they get their pay check just like I do to deal with us even the tool bags so I don't feel sorry for anyone.

Codejack, on 14 February 2013 - 01:29 PM, said:

And then I noticed something interesting:



There's an assumption there that I don't think is valid; people are not "leaving the game to come on the forums," they do it at work or in-between rounds



They come to point out things that they think could be better. They come to get advice on how to play. They come to hear stories about other peoples' experiences.

What are those stories, right now? "ECM, ECM, ECM...."

Look, I'm sorry. I really am. I know I've lost my temper and I know I've been rude, but so have you in the way you have dealt with this issue, and the only reason that I get upset is that this has/had the potential to be a truly awesome game.... and you guys are just screwing it up.

Again, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but this was not a good idea, and it is tainting everything you else you are doing since the whole game is out of balance. Your proposed fixes do not address the actual problems introduced, and you don't even give the appearance of understanding what those problems are.

LOL

It was almost like we time our posts

[MischiefSC]

People go to forums for a lot of reasons.

Vanity and validation being the most common, which panders to negative responses far more than positive ones.

Your forum population will also skew considerably towards your most social players. Hence you go to the forums of games like CoD and it sounds like everyone who plays CoD does so in multiplayer but the reality is that only a tiny fraction of people who buy CoD ever even touch multiplayer at all.

Only a fraction of pugs will touch or even lurk on the forums, a larger relative percentage will be team players - these are people already on line reading data about the game on their team websites.

A poll of all possible players would probably skew towards 'don't care' though a lot of pugs would probably buff the 'don't like it a little' metric. Just because people are more likely to give a negative if they haven't had a strong positive. Most customer service 'neutral' experiences will skew towards slightly negative if they haven't had a strong positive from it in a while.

[Codejack]

Jello2142, on 14 February 2013 - 01:35 PM, said:

LOL

It was almost like we time our posts

Heh, it's that IT service background coming to the fore; you had better be able to walk a user through an Excel spreadsheet formula, reply to your bosses email about inappropriate use of the company credit card and reconfigure a down router over an out of band telnet session all at the same time!

MischiefSC, on 14 February 2013 - 01:40 PM, said:

Most customer service 'neutral' experiences will skew towards slightly negative if they haven't had a strong positive from it in a while.

We haven't had a positive in a while, is sort of the point, don't you think?

[Fitzbattleaxe]

Garth Erlam, on 14 February 2013 - 12:27 PM, said:

Notice what? Any negative poll will receive more votes - people don't leave the game to come on the forums to tell us they don't mind a feature. Why would they?

OK, sorry, but by that logic, you can literally dismiss any criticism of the game no matter how reasonable. "We're only seeing complaints about X because people who like it won't say anything, so let's just ignore everyone." There are decision makers at my company who do the same thing, and it annoys the heck out of a lot of the devs. I don't presume to know better than my users.

Now I enjoy MW:O in spite of ECM, and I'll probably keep playing for some time, but it is overpowered, and most of the community agrees.

Edited by Fitzbattleaxe, 14 February 2013 - 01:43 PM.

[Jello2142]

MischiefSC, on 14 February 2013 - 01:40 PM, said:

People go to forums for a lot of reasons.

Vanity and validation being the most common, which panders to negative responses far more than positive ones.

Your forum population will also skew considerably towards your most social players. Hence you go to the forums of games like CoD and it sounds like everyone who plays CoD does so in multiplayer but the reality is that only a tiny fraction of people who buy CoD ever even touch multiplayer at all.

Only a fraction of pugs will touch or even lurk on the forums, a larger relative percentage will be team players - these are people already on line reading data about the game on their team websites.

A poll of all possible players would probably skew towards 'don't care' though a lot of pugs would probably buff the 'don't like it a little' metric. Just because people are more likely to give a negative if they haven't had a strong positive. Most customer service 'neutral' experiences will skew towards slightly negative if they haven't had a strong positive from it in a while.

Which begs the question why I don't get a pop-up box when exiting MWO asking me questions about the game like every other beta I have ever participated in within the last 4 years or so.

Just dawned on me if you toss one of those bad boys up even the anti-social types would even give you their input. This is coming from my socially awkward best friend. Loves MMO's and MP games but hates communicating outside of his bubble said this

[Codejack]

Jello2142, on 14 February 2013 - 01:43 PM, said:

Which begs the question why I don't get a pop-up box when exiting MWO asking me questions about the game like every other beta I have ever participated in within the last 4 years or so.

That was a big clue.

[Splinters]

The discussion seems to be going towards a death spiral so I will say this for my own personal vote and no one else's.

I think the game would be more fun without ECM, even if StreakCats come back. I will stay and play the game regardless if ECM is removed or kept, but I would have more fun if ECM was toned down and player skill would correlate more directly to a team's win/loss than it does today.

-S

[Orzorn]

All I can say is that I can play around ECM, but that doesn't mean its okay. I don't like what it does to the metagame, I don't like what it does to small missile usage, I don't like it does to teamwork, and I'd be happier if ECM, LRMs, SSRMs, TAG, NARC, and BAP all worked in a more fair fashion for all the equipment involved. ECM dominates the field right now in terms of equipment presence.

I think its more than telling that so many light mechs since ECM's arrival have been DoA because of their inability to mount ECM in order to counteract the current light mech metagame. Player any non-ECM light mech for a few days and you'll see just how frustrating it can be. It isn't so much ECM as it is ECM + Streaks. Your speed is devalued heavily when you can not escape them, nor can you use SSRMs you combat them as effectively as they can combat you.

I just hope PGI, especially after all those drops with NGNG, have seen what ECM is capable of and what it does to the metagame.

Edited by Orzorn, 14 February 2013 - 01:58 PM.

[MischiefSC]

running customer feedback polls consumes a lot of time. Sorting thousands of them on a weekly basis eats a lot of zots - resources, be they billable hours or other expenses. Code it, test it, implement, maintain, support.... payroll is a huge source of red ink for any business. You need to make sure that spending that money is going to get you money back in some form or fashion or you're not much of a business.

Forums help, having your own testers helps a lot as well but the problem with both of these options are very inbred responses.

People on the forums feed misinformation back and forth like it's the only lollipop and they're a bunch of 6-year-olds in a trailer park. Postmodernism feeds into this, cognitive bias, forums are a pretty muddled lens to view your consumers experience though but it helps.

In house testing has its own pitfalls. Your opinions are skewed by your own bias of where you know the developer is taking it vs how it's performing. It's like an artist critiquing his own work.

Customer service feedback though.... most professional resources for it give the customer a bunch of metrics to rate on a 1 to 5 scale, with an additional +1 for 'was your issue resolved to your satisfaction' resulting in a 1 to 6 scale.

Almost all scores are either 1s or 6s. Sometimes a customer has a great experience but still rates all 1s because of something someone said to them 3 years ago. Sometimes they rate it all 1s because the 6 year old cell phone they have won't stream netflix or because they don't like the manual that came with the DVR they got for free.

Most of the drama on forums is performance art and not valid customer feedback. Sorting that out can make the most warm hearted, honest and open, thoughtful and considerate person in the world start looking for a clock tower and a rifle.

Whoever we are, our opinions are not facts. They might be some sort of personal truth but they are not fact. The opinions of your friends are not facts. As a given rule whatever your opinion is you're probably the minority not the majority. The only way to become the majority is to water your opinion down or your criteria of what constitutes 'we agree' down so much that it's virtually worthless save as aggregate data that can be skewed to support any position.

Balancing consumer experiences (for a game or otherwise) is hard, sucky and thankless work. It consists not of finding what makes people happy but what people hate the least. Everyone will assume that whatever they slightly dislike at the moment is, in fact, the worst thing. Ever. That ever happened to anyone. Ever. In the whole history of forever.

Until it gets changed.

Then it's even worse.

[xX_Nero_Xx]

roflmao this is why we need a true in game lobby so trolls can troll there

[Livewyr]

Abivard, on 14 February 2013 - 01:09 PM, said:

1441 posts total, this post alone 3 paragraphs, ..... leave silently with out complaint you say? why do I find that hard to believe?

Well.. mostly because I really do give a damn about MWO.

It is the perfect combination of my favorite things:
PvP (I spent most of my time in WoW doing BGs, DDO in the brawling sections of taverns.. and ofcourse WoT is the same thing with Mid 20th century armor.. only to be beaten by my next favorite thing.
Battletech: 'nuff said.
Development: It only gets better from here.
and
Developer Involvement: Devs actually peruse the forums and talk to players.. whereas if WoT devs said anything about the game flaws ever; it was "Working as intended."™

So yes- I have an avid interest in this game. (I've already spent more on it than I had on WoT.. and I played that game for almost 2 years..)
I left the other games quietly but this one has my undivided attention..

[Livewyr]

Codejack, on 14 February 2013 - 01:15 PM, said:

Which is why PGI should be treating the people who bother to reply at all with a little respect, don't you think ?

It would help if the people demanding a little respect- showed it themselves.

I miss closed beta, where the forums were cool enough that Paul could go on and say some ridiculous sh*t that would tease everyone before dashing their dreams in the same post.. because 99% of us were able to handle it. Now we just have serious Paul who is tired of all the stupid crap on the forums from disrespectful children.

[Asmudius Heng]

MischiefSC, on 14 February 2013 - 02:00 PM, said:

SNIP

I work in product development and market research in a different industry and I do agree with you somewhat.

However, smart surveying of your key drivers is very important.

As a business case who are the people they really need to satisfy? The new players is going to be my guess, followed closely by long term paying customers, followed by regular F2P customers. They need ALL of them to be viable because players are content.

They also need to convert non paying customers to paying customers DESPERTLY, this is what drives the entire F2P business model.

However - there is a catch, this is short term. IF you cannot engage new players and you cannot KEEP players long term you do not have sustainability.

So there are two metrics I would be looking at.

• New player experience
  
• Long term fun & goals

They have a terrible new player experience which might get half fixed with ELO - though a training grounds would be the final peice of the puzzle. I think they are on the way with this, but it could still run into some hitches.


Long term is the harder one because it requires competative balance and listening to a much wider variety of players. These people require balance and fun, but thwn things are unbalanced it takes a little bit of time to filter through, but eventually those unbalanced builds becomes the norm and fun goes downhill due tolack of variety.

There is no ay to really polland survey the wider community without a huge issue in time and money as you have said, but the forums are like the canary in the mine - if you ignore what people are saying on here you might walk into something that will kill you. It doesnt mean that forum posters are right, but dismissing them could have dire consequences.

Again I think a lot of this has to do with how PGI communicate. They are MUCH better now than before - but thier frustration with the forum ranting is showing. The responses form the devs and community people is getting shorter and more clipped in tone. It is wearing on them and it is causing even more angst here.

This is a community hungry for information in a beta that is actually a launch. Many people have lost faith in the developers communicating effectivly on major issues as no matter how hard they try to brush them off with promises of future features this just leaves everyone feeling disconnected and worried.

There is a certain hubris and ego to the tone when they talk about ECM in podcasts and on the forums which is VERY bad for their image. If this was addressed ad they just showed soem EMPATHY to the community members who are upset it would go a long way.

People who are empathised with calm down a great deal - but the combative or silent treatment by PGI to those who really are finding playing the game taxing with ECM is like a poison that is hurting everything,

For the record i do not like how ECM is implements. I adapt, i use it, i will find ways around it, i am not whinging i am gettig killed - I just believe it is less fnu and bad game design.

EDIT - wow i didnt even realise that was a wall of text.- Short version: PGI need to show a little empathy, forum posters need to calm down. Both have to happen

Edited by Asmudius Heng, 14 February 2013 - 02:37 PM.

[Eddrick]

Livewyr, on 14 February 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

World of Warcraft: I played vanilla, BC, WotLK, and Cata. I decided that MOP was going to be a waste of my time because of the features they put in (specifically the talent trees) and quietly cancelled my subscription a year ago.. have not been back.

This was me. It just happened earlier. I stopped near the end of WothLK. Because, the classes were becoming to much alike. I was very bothered by the reduction of choices in Cata and infuriated by the almost none existence of character customization. I have not even bothered looking back.

I have one game that I keep going back to. Ragnarok Online. Mostly, because you have complete controle over character growth. Simlar to, Diablo 2.

[Nightcrept]

It takes awhile for me to quit and I usually try to have my issues resolved first.

If I like a game I spend a lot of money so I prefer to give the game companies all the chances in the world before walking away from my investment. In this case I luckily haven't spent a ton as of yet.

Although If they bring out a hero atlas soon *hint hint* I would most likely drop some money just to see it.

As of now though I'm on the fence about buying anything like a subscription until I see were they are going to go with the game.

[Fate 6]

Elessar, on 01 February 2013 - 06:00 AM, said:

I dislike a bit that now light mechs can spring out of nowhere and Ambush us ....
but overall ECM definitely makes the game more interesting (especially if I jump into my AS-D DC and can surprise the enemy myself

I dislike a bit that now an assault mech can spring out of nowhere and ambush us...