Armorsmith Archive
Thread: To the Angry AS Community
GARonin wrote:Zion, believe me I understand your frustrations...with everyone involved...but please remember: "...even if the customer is not always right, you better listen to him (her)"...Being responsive is goal #1 in ANY service/subscription oriented industry...That includes MMORPGs. It is much easier to keep existingcustomers satisifed and coming back to purchase your product than to win new customers (not to mention some good word of mouth PR!). Customer loyalty is what will make SOE flourish if they address this CU properly. Negative feedback and, even worse, 'shutting down' that negative feedback, can only hurt the corporation. Shutting out the existing player base's concerns (not just AS's but for many crafter profs) so close to CU going live is dreadful customer relations, especially since so few details have been posted. These are well-deserved gripes. Granted, many folks are hot under the collar, but they seem to have aright to be.I would recommend you just tone it down a bitwith berating the AS community for these reactions. LOL, give it a few days...They have been slighted and are venting...Unfortunately, SOE's recent lack of communications re: the upcoming core AS changes has everyone upset...rightfully so imo. To have 1-2years of hard work simply invalidated with the brush of a dev's keystroke and then not listening to (and in some cases actively silencing)the existing customer base's dissenting concernsis really what is at the heart of the current AS community's discontent.And with only about 3 weeks before the CU hits live, we ALL haveserious doubtsthatthese concerns will be addressed in any meaningful manner. We have each spent many, many months and millions of credits getting to the top of our game. To have AS'ing so 'equalized' to the point where anew MAS witha fewdaysin-game, 100 Mil Ebay creds (~$30 US) and a modicum of cognitive ability to be able to scrounge up resources off the new bazaar search vendor will be able to compete with established vets of 1-2+ yrs. is unbearable. That is a bitter pill to swallow, my friend...However, as always in SWG, like you cited with DE, some will stick with it and some won't. I suspect that those that can stomach these changes will do quite well in the long run.Okram may not have played his cards well here...but he did so presumably out of frustration; I think we all sensedthis over the past 48-72 hours in his forum posts. And I for one believe his heart was in the right place and just threw up his hands and told people to go directly to the devs rather than ask him. From what I saw, he represented us very well and provided many positive suggestions to the dev team. His final act(s) may have broken SOE/correspondent protocol, but this wascertainly not a major issue and one wouldn't think areason to oust a 7+ months volunteer, especially so close to the CU going live.
5* Absolutely Great Post.
CaileSathinor wrote:
Friends:
Before you read this, do me a favor, as a friend, a fellow Armorsmith and a fellow player.
Stop. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and relax.
I haven't been on the forums all day due to being out and about in class and taking tests, but the sight of the AS Forum when I checked in a few minutes ago disturbed me. I don't know what happened beyond Okram being removed as our correspondant. I considered him a good guy, and talked to him several times on TC. But what happened, happened. I'm not writing this to address him. It's about all of you.
I think highly of many of you. Skinny, Zion, all of you who post even more than I do on here. But take a step back and just look at our forum page. It's an utter wreck. We're angry and upset, I know. We want to be heard and our concerns addressed. I know. I screamed as loud as everyone else about our current issues with the CU. But this isn't the appropriate way to get that done guys.
*EDITED*Go look on our first page of the forum. We have support from other professions, but does that justify our behavior? We're acting out like a child does so we can get our attention. Well, we have it now. And it's the wrong kind. I read a joke about giving us something random (I think it was a whip) to craft to shut us up. If we keep behavior like this up, people will remember us not as a community that endured the changes of the CU and worked through it, but as the community that went berserk and fell apart. *END EDIT*
I'm not trying to be inspirational. I'm not trying to rally the troops. I just want people to calm down and start offering solutions, not finger pointing. Be professional. We are the Armorsmith profession. If we continue to self-destruct, the profession will die. Period.
If you're going to post in this thread, I ask this: Remain calm, don't flame, and most of all, support your community. This is OUR community. We make it what it is.
Sincerely,
Caile Sathinor
*waits*
Message Edited by CaileSathinor on 04-14-2005 09:20 PM
1. they dont care about us only money...its a business not a game
2. When the cu hits the profession is dead no matter how we treat it
3. Its not only AS we are angry about....the game wont be around in a few months because of all the people who are leaving....why change if the majority dont want it...its to attract new buyers to make more cash, they dont care who leaves who comes aslong as they cash in with the new movie coming up.
4. Im calm, not flaming and supporting everyone when i say we as a community care about each others thoughts but the developers who are not our community do not care about our feelings as it wont affect there pay-slip at the end of the month...they lose no sleep over it.
DarthGoofyBunny wrote:
ZionHalcyon wrote:
CaileSathinor wrote:
Friends:
Before you read this, do me a favor, as a friend, a fellow Armorsmith and a fellow player.
Stop. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and relax.
I haven't been on the forums all day due to being out and about in class and taking tests, but the sight of the AS Forum when I checked in a few minutes ago disturbed me. I don't know what happened beyond Okram being removed as our correspondant. I considered him a good guy, and talked to him several times on TC. But what happened, happened. I'm not writing this to address him. It's about all of you.
I think highly of many of you. Skinny, Zion, all of you who post even more than I do on here. But take a step back and just look at our forum page. It's an utter wreck. We're angry and upset, I know. We want to be heard and our concerns addressed. I know. I screamed as loud as everyone else about our current issues with the CU. But this isn't the appropriate way to get that done guys.
*EDITED*Go look on our first page of the forum. We have support from other professions, but does that justify our behavior? We're acting out like a child does so we can get our attention. Well, we have it now. And it's the wrong kind. I read a joke about giving us something random (I think it was a whip) to craft to shut us up. If we keep behavior like this up, people will remember us not as a community that endured the changes of the CU and worked through it, but as the community that went berserk and fell apart. *END EDIT*
I'm not trying to be inspirational. I'm not trying to rally the troops. I just want people to calm down and start offering solutions, not finger pointing. Be professional. We are the Armorsmith profession. If we continue to self-destruct, the profession will die. Period.
If you're going to post in this thread, I ask this: Remain calm, don't flame, and most of all, support your community. This is OUR community. We make it what it is.
Sincerely,
Caile Sathinor
*waits*
Message Edited by CaileSathinor on 04-14-2005 09:20 PM
I just reread this again. And let me tell you, I am so glad you are our new corrospondant. This community needs someone who will fight for them, but also someone to reign them in when they get cranky. You look like you balance that more than I ever could here. You have my full support.
Your act gets old really fast, Zion.
Armorsmiths had a legitimate reason for exploding over the past week. What is being implemented is the death of the profession as we know it and will erase much of the time and effort many people have put into the game over the past two years, especially in terms of resource collection. You can quibble over the forms of protest, but I daresay it wasn't a bad thing the explosion happened, when all is said and done. The paramount concern for many was helping SOE appreciate the havoc these changes are visiting upon the profession. When there was silence in response to the major complaints about the changes, it was hard to know that SOE was listening.
Now, I think we can say unequivocally that SOE heard the complaints--and will proceed more or less as planned because it thinks it knows better. The leveling system is here to stay, and the significance of armor crumbles in its wake. That was probably survivable. But the simplified crafting system is the final nail in the coffin. If you can't differentiate your product from others, there's no reason to buy your armor over someone else's, apart from price. This, more than anything else, kills the soul of what it is to be an armorsmith.
The new resource requirements are, frankly, the least of the armorsmith concerns. Even if you restored the old resource requirements, I think the profession is dead as we know it, in light of the two points mentioned previously. Indeed, I expect SOE to bend on the resource point and say it is listening to us, much as it has already done for docs. It will be an extremely hollow victory, even so. Even if SOE doesn't change these requirements, people will adapt them.
To the new armorsmith correspondent, good luck. You were the safe, obvious choice for SOE, not least for the sentiments expressed in the opening post of this thread. The game will carry on, and convention dictates that profession must have a correspondent. Tag, you're it. I have no doubt that SOE will get what it expects from a correspondent, in your case.
To the previous correspondent, thank you. You broke the rules and were fired for it, but I feel you did it in the best interests of your fellow armorsmiths, and a great many of us appreciate that you were willing to put your neck on the block to ensure, at a minimum, our concerns were heard.
To Zion, stand down from your soap box already. You've held the floor long enough, and you really aren't contributing anything.
/peace; /out;
I've been following the progress of this thread for a little while, mainly to see how the AS community on this board has been reacting to the upcoming changes.
It has been interesting to watch those who take the positions they do, and what the concerns actually are.
I don't really care about what side anyone is on, or who thinks they know what is good for this game. I also don't care to complain about the world we will have after the CU anymore.
This is a system purge of galactic proportions.
I have come to the conclusion that this game is being changed for the good of no playerwho is currently subscribed, but for those who will be joining after May 5th. You can't think of it as a screw over of the AS profession, or the Crafters, or any current profession, becauseall game mechanics we know are dead very soon. This is a complete and complexredesign of the game, much bigger than any previously promised combat upgrade,which is redesigned to simplify and dumb down a complex system that bred unfair advantages...unfair advantages that were deemed so because some dedicated people rose above the rest, and the whiners, well, they whined.
Was SWG not unique in the fact that AS and WS, and Crafters could build and create different, better or stronger items through different skill tape levels and resource qualities? A new player surely could not compete with an established player, so they can't play in a fair system.Well, it also isn't fair that a person who invests time, money and energyis now allowedNO differentiating advantage...but we all know that, don't we?
The changes in this game appear to me, at least, to be a broad establishment of uniformity and organization. In the future, we won't have an AS who makes armor with resources that spawned two years ago, of which a new player would never get. Instead, we will have a standardized system that couples with the Galaxy-wide vendor search, to enable a player to find what they want as close as they can get it.
Think of it from a business angle. Standardization means simplification means less resources allocated. With so many current game variables, you have a plethora of customer service issues.
This May 5th will either be good or bad, depending on who you are.
So, in summary, we can all scream from the mountain tops in protest, or we can all tear each other to shreds in a battle of SOE sympathizers vs. Disgruntled Veterans...but nothing in the world is going to stop this from happening....nothing at all.
||So, in summary, we can all scream from the mountain tops in protest, or we can all tear each other to shreds in a battle of SOE sympathizers vs. Disgruntled Veterans...but nothing in the world is going to stop this from happening....nothing at all.||
On this, we are in complete agreement. Nothing is going to stop this. That said, I didn't mind seeing people attempt to at least try to slow it down some and address top-level AS concerns.
I still think the crafting system devised for SWG, and for AS in particular, was utterly amazing. I'm not talking about 90 percent armors, but about the process itself. The fact you could make something different from everyone else made the profession extremely fun.
It is a true fact that it took some dedication to break into the market as a new armorsmith in the current system, but the truth is, it happened all the time, anyway. At this point, I don't believe my server has *any* first-day or even first three-month armorsmiths who sell armor to the public. Kino could be an exception, but I'm not sure he/she actually sells to the general public. The bigger armorsmiths I can think of on my server all broke into the profession more than a year into the game. It took planning, it took persistence, but markets were never closed off. There was always a market for non-elite armors at a reasonable price on my server, and it was fun to watch various smiths gradually improve what was possible for them.
To sum up: The system wasn't as broken as is often asserted. You are not equal when you first start up as an armorsmith, but you can be equal enough in a matter of 6 months to a year or so, and you can sell as you go. Is that situation so horrible that it must be abolished? Apparently so...
Kaejae wrote:
I am sorry you guys are getting the non skid fid. Everything about this new improved system is wrong. As a master ws I fear that we are next.
ZionHalcyon wrote:
FishDoc wrote:
By their very nature, all MMORPG's are always in a form of beta. You don't like it? Don't play MMORPG's.
pttf! disappear boy, you bug me.
The truth always bugs those not willing to accept it.
NiBorg wrote:
...there is a fundimental problem within the player/developer mixture. ...we simply wanted the ability to have our craft give meaning. combined with the state of "level based combat" there was simply no use for us and I too would have put my neck on the line for the greater good.Why even try being good or great at what you do if it has no meaning what so ever?
Hear hear, my good man.
What he said.
Blixtev, are you listening?
ZionHalcyon wrote:
CaileSathinor wrote:
Friends:
Before you read this, do me a favor, as a friend, a fellow Armorsmith and a fellow player.
Stop. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and relax.
I haven't been on the forums all day due to being out and about in class and taking tests, but the sight of the AS Forum when I checked in a few minutes ago disturbed me. I don't know what happened beyond Okram being removed as our correspondant. I considered him a good guy, and talked to him several times on TC. But what happened, happened. I'm not writing this to address him. It's about all of you.
I think highly of many of you. Skinny, Zion, all of you who post even more than I do on here. But take a step back and just look at our forum page. It's an utter wreck. We're angry and upset, I know. We want to be heard and our concerns addressed. I know. I screamed as loud as everyone else about our current issues with the CU. But this isn't the appropriate way to get that done guys.
*EDITED*Go look on our first page of the forum. We have support from other professions, but does that justify our behavior? We're acting out like a child does so we can get our attention. Well, we have it now. And it's the wrong kind. I read a joke about giving us something random (I think it was a whip) to craft to shut us up. If we keep behavior like this up, people will remember us not as a community that endured the changes of the CU and worked through it, but as the community that went berserk and fell apart. *END EDIT*
I'm not trying to be inspirational. I'm not trying to rally the troops. I just want people to calm down and start offering solutions, not finger pointing. Be professional. We are the Armorsmith profession. If we continue to self-destruct, the profession will die. Period.
If you're going to post in this thread, I ask this: Remain calm, don't flame, and most of all, support your community. This is OUR community. We make it what it is.
Sincerely,
Caile Sathinor
*waits*
Message Edited by CaileSathinor on 04-14-2005 09:20 PM
I just reread this again. And let me tell you, I am so glad you are our new corrospondant. This community needs someone who will fight for them, but also someone to reign them in when they get cranky. You look like you balance that more than I ever could here. You have my full support.
Only three words to describe you Zion: Boot licking tool
Caile:
Ireally feel sorry for you. You seem like your a very nice, sincereperson but you have stepped into the lions den. This is a really bad situation and I definitely wouldn't want to be you. On one hand your going to have people who blame you for taking the spot of a correspondant whom the devs have martyred in his removal and on the other hand your going to have people like zion who would have supported anyone just to lick more boots and in doing so furtherpolarizes the community. Its going to be quite a balancing act for anyone and I sincerely wish you the best of luck.
Some advice:
1. Remember who you serve and make that clear to the developers. If you serve our community then serve the community.
2. Get on the correspondants forum and let them know that the silent treatment is what caused all of this. Then ask them to fix the communication problem.
3. Be fair and don't respond to people who are outright attacking you like the guy earlier in the thread. You don't need to respondto these.
Only three words to describe you Zion: Boot licking tool
Caile:
Ireally feel sorry for you. You seem like your a very nice, sincereperson but you have stepped into the lions den. This is a really bad situation and I definitely wouldn't want to be you. On one hand your going to have people who blame you for taking the spot of a correspondant whom the devs have martyred in his removal and on the other hand your going to have people like zion who would have supported anyone just to lick more boots and in doing so furtherpolarizes the community. Its going to be quite a balancing act for anyone and I sincerely wish you the best of luck.
Some advice:
1. Remember who you serve and make that clear to the developers. If you serve our community then serve the community.
2. Get on the correspondants forum and let them know that the silent treatment is what caused all of this. Then ask them to fix the communication problem.
3. Be fair and don't respond to people who are outright attacking you like the guy earlier in the thread. You don't need to respondto these.