Development Cycle Archive

"The road to hell is paved with GREAT EXPECTATIONS."

Lol, that is sig-worthy.

Seriously, an expansion should *NEVER* take precedence over a live game. That is a very poor management decision. Has it been decided that the current game is too broken to fix, and a new space mini-game must be added to attract new players at the cost of live development?

Word of mouth.....

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=917642&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=all&vc=1

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Kaessa wrote:

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Kylania wrote:

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Kaessa wrote:

Tell yourself... "It's a video game. I'm having a fit.. over a video game." See how silly that makes you feel?

I spend more in amonth on coffee than I do on this game, and I have 3 accounts. Honestly. It's not like I'm spending a fortune on the game.

And I certainly won't rant about it for months on end before I go.

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Ok Kaessa,

Lets assume for a moment that you love coffee, which you apparently do. You like to drink coffee every day. You hear about a great new coffee store with your FAVORITE type of coffee available. So you go and buy it and yum it's good. But.. there's some icky foam stuff in it that tastes bad. It's still good, and you still buy it but it's got this nasty foam in it.

So you sit there and sip your coffee with scum while the guy behind the counter says "Oh no problem, we'll have that scum taken care of next week." So you buy another week ofcoffee, your favoriate flavor, but it's still got scum in it? You ask and are told "oh, yeah we have a new machine coming in next week, have some more coffee, it'll be great!"

So you drink more coffee, still with this scum that seems to be getting worse. It's still the same scum from before when you started drinking your favorite flavor coffee, but now the cups are always dirty too. But still, you know they want to give you good coffee to you keep drinking coz you love coffee.

Eventually, a year later, you're drinking out of a crumbled paper cup since people who purchased the special Jeebee Cups get their coffee first. The scum is just as bad, but now there's a long line you have to wait in because the 3 people with Jeebee cups infront of you keep complaining that thier coffee isn't hot enough, or doesn't have enough cream in it yours is white (with scum..) why isn't their coffee whiter since they have Jeebee cups! During all this your scum keeps getting worse, your coffee keeps getting colder and the guy behind the counter keeps saying "Have more coffee, we have a NEW flavor coming with your favoriate topping soon, and we promise we'll get rid of the scum real soon now, why don't you buy a Jeebee cup! All our customers want Jeebee cups!"

Then the store mananger says they only have enough people to make one type of coffee, a flavor you don't like but those with Jeebee cups seem to like. You look down at your cold, hard, scummy, leakey paper cup, then up at the sign advertising the great new flavors in the special Jeebee cup and you wonder.. and you complain. You scream at the manager that you've been drinking coffee here for a year, but it's still scummy WHY! Them some cute little girl next to you says, "hey, if you don't like the coffee, go across the street and try some other brand" as she sips from her crusty mug of scum smiling at you. You really want this coffee though, not across the street but THIS coffee you've been drinking for a year and want more of, you just want it to taste better.

Would you still think there's no point in telling the manager what you want?

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Good points.. and I would agree with you if I had seen the game getting progressively worse over the past year. But it hasn't. It's gotten better. At least in my opinion, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who disagree with me. And will tell me, complete withinsults.

I think the point I was trying to make is that people are literally going insane over this. Not that it was "a good thing". I'm not defending what the devs are doing. I'm trying to point out that people are just taking it a *tad* too seriously. I've seen posts in this thread that are just mind-boggling in their fury. This is entertainment, folks.. if it ain't entertaining.. why are you doing it? It's certainly not something to burst a blood vessel over.

Sure, I'd love to see the combat revamp now. But I'd MORE like to see it done right. Everyone whines and complains that the game was rushed out too soon, and how they should havewaited until they got it right; but when the devs say "y'know, I think we're rushing this out too soon, so we're gonna wait until we got it right".. everyone wants to crucify them. People need to make up their minds what they want.

Again, just my 2 credits.

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You aren't related to Caella by any chance are you?

Regardless of the above I agree with you about the fact the game has gotten much better since launch (would have been hard to make it worse) however this is not about needing more time to do the CB right, it's about making as much money in a short as time as possible.

At the moment subscription numbers are in decline, the evidence is plain to see everywhere, player cities are the best example and even the devs last night in chat admitted they are losing player cities at the moment.

So with declining numbers they have to do something to bring in new people and the only way for that to happen is to get boxes on the shelf ie JTL.

The correct way to do this to satisfy the current populace is push back JTL launch, work on the GCW and CB balance and then work on JTL however that means a continued decline in subscription numbers (unless they can pull out a miracel and attract old subscribers).

So the answer is in the short run to upset a large number fo people and hope that the number of new people coming in with JTL will bemore then those leaving because of this.

Basically you have just told the community that the ground war and the key elements of this game we want to see change are not as imporant as the precious Jump to Lightspeed. While you claim that it is because you want it to be the best set of publishes to hit the game, the fact that you are unwilling to push Jump to Lightspeed back to satisfy your current player base was just a bad idea. I believe that is basically the "screw off" that everyone was so afraid of, and the one that will make many people leave.

Most of the people I know in the PvP community were basing everything on the Combat Balance and GCW patches - not only whether they were going to stay with the game, but also whether or not they were going to blow the money for buying JTL. Now you are not giving them that choice, and sadly many of them are chosing to quit rather than be forced into the situation you have presented.

It's already been said many times, but the Star Wars Galaxies Live Team should be focusing on fixing the current game before bringing out any new expansions. It's just common sense, and if this is stemming from LucasArts pushing for the current JTL release date, it's time to tell them to back off because they don't know squat about how to handle an MMORPG of this size.

While I'm not going to cancel my accounts just yet, I do have to say that I feel almost ashamed that I ever tried to stick up for the SWG Live Team based on my faith of the original Beta team, and the EverQuest Live team because it is another of SOE's video games. I've stopped doing so because at this point I have little to no faith in the current SWG Live Team - I've watched this industry for years, and have seen quite a few bad moves on a lot of MMOs but even though it is the most enjoyable MMO out there for an extended length of time, I have to say it's had some of the worse design decisions any video game on the market today has ever had.

I find it sad that SWG Live Team cannot even hold up to half the points made in one of Raph Coster's (the lead designer of SWG during the beta phases) brilliant works about how to run a live MMORPG. Perhaps things would have gone a lot better if the current team had not replaced the beta team.

Honestly, I don't think the current Live Team line up can fix their mistakes and save the game, it's time for new leadership that maybe is a bit more intellegent about their choices to take the reigns - the current ones cannot live up to the great expectations you speak of in the slightest.

lol un**edit**ing believable

Ok I'm gone too, ya'll just killed this for me as well. Waiting waiting waiting and now more waiting.

not with my money you don't.

I'm outta here.

Well I don't post much so me posting here shows I care about this game and what it can be.

I also have played this game since launch and have 2 other accounts for members of my house. I for one will be staying and playing because I do enjoy the game as it is now------BUT I do see it can be so much more and that is what gets to me about this delay.

Here is how this news will effect me. I agree that I have seen many posts of people on the edge waiting on the combat rebalance and that is all that was holding them here. I am even excited about it myself and have been looking forward to it. I will not cancel my accounts because of this but if my friends do because of this then that would be the reason I would leave. You have a double edge sword here in that people are going to leave because of the delay and then people who don't care about the combat but enjoy the friends in game will leave because most of their friends do. TH I hope that you will reconsider the Combat Rebalance and try and get it implemented ASAP so that we as a whole can enjoy the game a bit more and actually have people to enjoy it with and not just NPC's.

I think it's clear to say you might want to suggest a re-think of that gem you popped TH.