Game Guides Archive

Look for the geek with an attitude. The ones that just don't care.

---

Illuminatrix wrote:
I was at E3 two years ago and was speaking with the lead developer of Warhammer Online. He was telling me that they were ONLY releasing Warhammer in Europe simply because, as he said it, "Americans complain too much."

---

Yes, let's point to the Warhammer Online team as an example of how to do it right. News Flash: You're referring to a game that died before Beta. Maybe they were a bit too particular?

Americans may "complain too much" from a European perspective, but let's be honest: You can't expect an English-language game to be at all successful without an American release.

You'd have to enlighten me on games that would be exceptions to this... but then again, if they were that successful, one would expect that we'd hear about them, even if we weren't playing them.

---

Yogol wrote:

Yes, that's sooooo true.

- First people attack DEVs for not giving enough information fast.

- Then when they get information, they attack DEVs because they don't like what they hear.

- If the DEVs chance it, the posters attack them for giving wrong information in the first place.

Gee... If people would do that in my job (I work as a IT-consultant for a real-time application with about 2.000 customers), I'd quit right away.

It's ofcours inherent on online-gaming : people are anomymous and there are alot of children playing, so...

Now, besides that, I think this game has some fundamental issues that would already take away some grieving :

- Dedicated roles for DEVs. They try that, but it doesn't work currently. ONE person shold do the talking to the players. ONE. Specific posts could be given to others (like the Friday Feature or the Thuesday tips or the Events), but that's it.

- Strict follow-up on DEV-threads. Sometimes three out of four posts in a Thunderheart thread is off-topic. These posts should be deleted ASAP and the posters given a warning. He has to spend alot of time reading alot of non-sense to pick out the 10 posts worth reading. That's very time and energy consuming.

(and my favorite...)

- Too many professions. They need to provide content for ALL 32 professions. That's alot... If they would only have, say, 16 professions they could spend more time on each. Dancers ? Musicians ? Image designers ? Merchants ? Seven different crafters ? Seven different melee professions ? Seven different range professions ? That's too much to provide content for all.

If the time spend on the Chef revamp, ID revamp, Mind buffs and now the Merchant revamp would have gone to Combat rebalance, alot of issues would have been solved by now.

---

Well said.

---

Yogol wrote:

Yes, that's sooooo true.

-First people attack DEVs for not giving enough information fast.

-Then when they get information, they attack DEVs because they don't like what they hear.

- If theDEVs chance it,the posters attack them for giving wrong information inthe first place.

Gee... If people would do that in my job (I work as a IT-consultant for a real-time application with about 2.000 customers), I'd quit right away.

It's ofcours inherent on online-gaming : people are anomymous and there are alot of children playing, so...

Now, besides that, I think this game has some fundamental issues that would already take away some grieving :

- Dedicated roles for DEVs. They try that, but it doesn't work currently. ONE person shold do the talking to the players. ONE. Specific posts could be given to others (like the Friday Feature or the Thuesday tips or the Events), but that's it.

- Strictfollow-up onDEV-threads. Sometimes three out of four posts in a Thunderheart thread is off-topic. These posts should be deleted ASAP and the posters given a warning. He has to spend alot of time reading alot ofnon-sense to pick out the 10 posts worth reading. That's very time and energy consuming.

(and my favorite...)

- Too many professions. They need to provide content for ALL 32 professions. That's alot... If they would only have, say, 16 professions they could spend more time on each. Dancers ?Musicians ?Image designers ? Merchants ?Seven different crafters ? Seven different melee professions ? Seven different range professions ? That's too much to provide content for all.

If the time spend on the Chef revamp, ID revamp,Mind buffs and now the Merchant revamp would have gone to Combat rebalance, alot of issues would have been solved by now.

---

While true alot of the issues would be solved by now you don't want to forget that not everyone plays this game to be a killer. Some people don't want to fight but would rather help their fellow players. So I think they deserve some love too.

---

Korlan wrote:

but just try looking at it form "their" side of it... having all this negative feedback coming your way... and doing your best to fix it..

---

I understand what you are saying, but does anyone really think they are doing their best?
Where I work, I would be fired if this was my best.

I don't like thousands of complaints too much either, and I genuinely try to give the Devs the benefit of the doubt, but its been so long now, and its always the same old song and dance....

My 2 chief complaints:

• Lack of (worthwhile) communication to players


• Ignoring player feedback and pushing out updates with known, reported bugs.

Neither one of these thingsrequires anyone to be uber coders or super project managers.
Yet consistently, I see this in every update. Frustrating.

"Yes, let's point to the Warhammer Online team as an example of how to do it right. News Flash: You're referring to a game that died before Beta. Maybe they were a bit too particular?"

No, it didn't die, funding was dropped on it. It was a bit too complicated of a game. Fighting was entirely script driven and most people didn't even get it. It was a brilliant design but inevitably impractical for todays market.

"Americans may "complain too much" from a European perspective, but let's be honest: You can't expect an English-language game to be at all successful without an American release."
"You'd have to enlighten me on games that would be exceptions to this... but then again, if they were that successful, one would expect that we'd hear about them, even if we weren't playing them."

Name one MMO that's been successful and then define the standards in which you consider it to be successful. SWG for example, broke all the records but I consider the game a horrible disaster.

I'd say UO and EQ are the most successful MMO's, by far. They have a STRONG following after 5+ years and are still giving all the newer games a run for their money. Lineage is another example, it's never included on any MMO charts though because it absolutely dominates any MMO developed in either the states or Europe. Dominates. The other MMO's look flatline if you compare it side by side with any other games released worldwide. I'd consider it a success but most people hadn't even heard of it until the announcement of Lineage 2 which btw is going to be released in the US after an Asian based beta.

"- Then when they get information, they attack DEVs because they don't like what they hear."

That's more or less what I'm saying. I guess the people I'm referring to expect to receive something for their $15 a month. They complain because they don't feel they're receiving it. They don't want to concede to the fact that the game is what it is and that perhaps the devs don't want to make it better or actually might consider it to be perfect just the way it is.

When you pay your $15 a month for a game, most of that is simply going to pay for your customer service, bandwidth and the actual design and maintenence of the game. That isn't cheap. Let's see you setup a server farm capable of running an MMO like SWG.

This of course isn't to mention that the operating expenses for these games are simply getting higher and higher due to the consumers becoming more demanding although some would say discerning. Overall, it's really no shocker to consider that running an MMO is one of the least profitable ventures a company could ever consider. The development of an MMO alone is 10x the amount to develop and release a single player game let alone the ongoing expenses inherent in every MMO.

The end result of these increased costs and higher demands is the developers have had to cut corners just to keep their game afloat. Parent companies like SOE and Microsoft are dropping projects left and right simply because they aren't "popular" enough and inevitably will cost them more than it will make them. They are no longer interested in making a game that will be fun, they simply want their game to be profitable long enough to make a decent return on their investment. That's all you mean to these companies. I guess that's the difference I speak of.

This never used to be a concern and still, for most Asian or European based games, isn't a concern.

Inevitably, it's their game, not yours. Who says YOU should have a say in it's development direction? Your $15 a month? Don't you think their 15 MILLION dollar investment mildly outweighs your $180 a YEAR?

All I'm getting at is that if a gamer is not happy with the game or it's direction, they should just cancel their account and stop complaining. I'm not saying that in a mean or crude way, I'm saying that from a perspective most people around the world have. Consider this. If you buy a soda and take a drink from it, only to find out you don't like it, do you continue to drink it? Perhaps you would if there is nothing else to drink but the fact is, you have many options available to you. MMO's are the same way. http://www.onrpg.com/ <-- One trip to that site and you'll realize just how many are out there.

I will admit though that SWG is more of an emotional investment than most other games out there simply because it's something we all hold fairly close to our hearts... we should just consider other things before we go and berate the developers just because our pistol isn't doing so much damage anymore or our favorite profession was recently nerfed... sigh. Never mind heh.

---

Illuminatrix wrote:

Name one MMO that's been successful and then define the standards in which you consider it to be successful.

---

City of Heroes, because of one simple philosophy: One cannot be all things to all people. Since you can't please all of the people all of the time, trying to do so is a recipe for disaster. CoH does one thing and it does it well. They didn't release a lot of half-cooked systems and promise to fix them later, they released a game with a solid core that delivers as promised, and build upon that with the updates, rather than playing catch-up on the fixes.

---

Lineage is another example, it's never included on any MMO charts though because it absolutely dominates any MMO developed in either the states or Europe. Dominates. The other MMO's look flatline if you compare it side by side with any other games released worldwide. I'd consider it a success but most people hadn't even heard of it until the announcement of Lineage 2 which btw is going to be released in the US after an Asian based beta.

---

Lineage II was released in the US over four months ago.

---

When you pay your $15 a month for a game, most of that is simply going to pay for your customer service, bandwidth and the actual design and maintenence of the game. That isn't cheap. Let's see you setup a server farm capable of running an MMO like SWG.

---

Heck, I'd like to see SOE set one up, because the one they have now is insufficient. When people with high-end, well maintained and tweaked PCs suffer from lag in places like Theed, Coronet, Eisley and Dantooine, it's because those areas are overloaded.

Regardless, it's not my responsibility. That's what I'm paying them for. And all of the things you mentioned that $15 going to have not been sufficiently delivered. Customer Service varies between apathetic and incompetent (outsourcing will do that), bandwidth is insufficient for the load, and design and maintenance of the game includes fixing the bugs.

I understand that it's a difficult and ambitious venture - which is why I must reiterate that it's therefore more important to fix what they've got before adding on new features.

---

Inevitably, it's their game, not yours. Who says YOU should have a say in it's development direction? Your $15 a month? Don't you think their 15 MILLION dollar investment mildly outweighs your $180 a YEAR?

---

---

All I'm getting at is that if a gamer is not happy with the game or it's direction, they should just cancel their account and stop complaining.

---

So tell me then, when does a customer have a right to make his voice heard? We don't complain if we like it of course, now we're not supposed to complain if we don't? How on Earth can a company improve a product if they never get any negative feedback? Cancelling accomplishes nothing - SOEs mentality is clearly that customers can easily be replaced, and the fact that they are gambling their existing player base on the influx from JtL illustrates that.

I'd say that the people who complain clearly care more about the game than the project managers at SOE, who clearly only care about the dollars.

---

Marcalus wrote:

The thing is, they are doing what MANY folk wanted them to do

---

I think you've identified the main problem right there. People only want what they think will make their OWN game better. They rarely look beyond themselves to see the impact of everyone's game being "improved" in a similar fashion. Combine that with the fact that most players arn't metally equipped to handle what this game was supposed to be and you've got a bad situation.

So, really, blame for the sate of things rests partly on the players' shoulders and party on the Devs'. It's a team effort.

---

Vastar wrote:

---

Marcalus wrote:

The thing is, they are doing what MANY folk wanted them to do

---

I think you've identified the main problem right there. People only want what they think will make their OWN game better. They rarely look beyond themselves to see the impact of everyone's game being "improved" in a similar fashion. Combine that with the fact that most players arn't metally equipped to handle what this game was supposed to be and you've got a bad situation.

So, really, blame for the sate of things rests partly on the players' shoulders and party on the Devs'. It's a team effort.

---

Yes, it's a classic no-win situation. Players think they know what's best, but they are often selfish.

The best thing the dev team can do is to make the tough calls that are the best for the long term health of the game. But this particular team waffles...they want to be our pals but then when they stand their ground, they get flamed.

I can only hope that most of them don't spend much time in here, just because of the insanity factor.