Hope and Change is so 2008

gamehobo · April 2013

One thing is very apparent to me:

Players (at least those on the forums and I had known personally) are very dissatisfied with business decisions.

Lockboxes - Gambling for purchased items instead of being able to buy them outright
Communication - Lack of communication from the powers that be
Leadership - From Rob Overmeyer to Chris Matz to Brad Stokan.. none of the leadership of Champions Online have communicated a clear vision of the future
Player Feedback - PTS Feedback, Suggestions, etc go widely un-noticed

But my question is.. will they change?

I really do not see any future where rewards aren't locked behind Lockbox Keys or Drifter Salvage.
I have heard "we'll do better at communication" a million times
I dont even know who is helming the game at the moment
There has been a recent less than 24 hour turnover from PTS to Live

This is the reason I can't support Champions Online or ANY PWE Game. I quit CO in January. I am just waiting for the next custom superhero game to come out that does better.. So I guess there's "hope" of Champions Online 2.0 changing between now and then

crypticbuxom · April 2013

I wonder if anyone has attempted to get an interview with Brad Stokan about Champions Online. One without softball questions.

honestresearcher · April 2013

Like in all those interviews by brainwashed massively people, they seem satisfied with cryptics "maybe"s "no"s and "we'll think about it" like theyre saying yes to everything and you should get excited...

Heres what an average day is in cryptic studios:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETF9JXfZSXk

except for theres only 1 person.

sistersilicon · April 2013

honestresearcher wrote: »

Like in all those interviews by brainwashed massively people, they seem satisfied with cryptics "maybe"s "no"s and "we'll think about it" like theyre saying yes to everything and you should get excited...

To be fair to Eliot, he did pretty much heel-turn on Cryptic less than a week after his "interview" with Tom Edwards on Forum Malvanum. Since then, it's been all Dan Stahl and Andy Velasquez speaking specifically about STO and NW.

Oh, and the Jack Emmert "Oh, how I miss City of Heroes... I have another superhero game?" comments at PAX East, but that was a roundtable. Chances are, Jack is going to hide behind Neverwinter until The Gamblebox-Event Cycle is broken, one way or the other.

zahinder · April 2013

You know, I used to take some of these 'challengers of Cryptic's BS' a lot more seriously until they acted like complete sh*s during recent mourning.

Now, it's easy to see it as it is -- bitter people who have nothing in their hearts but venom for everyone and anyone trying to have fun.

Don't promote player feedback and communication when you keep proving the value of not listening.

atompenguin · April 2013

We're likely going to keep getting nothing and like it.

Because we're chumps and Cryptic knows it.

impervium · April 2013

When you're supporting or fighting for something that you feel is worth the effort, the value of hope and change isn't up to anyone but you. Like I said recently at the Titan Network forums, there's only one person fit to say "It's time to give up," [and his name isn't Eliot]. It's the last man or woman standing in the fight. That could be you or anyone.

I've seen games with far fewer chances come back and score big with their industry and customers. City of Heroes did it and went on to have several more years of success afterward. And of course anyone would be lying if they said that scores of angry customers were never figured into the decision-making process somewhere. But as usual I think there's an ideal sweet spot between the extremes in Zahinder's post above and in the OP. You can be a civil and angry customer at the same time. Realizing this can be extremely liberating for one's sense of character. And while it may not guarantee any more success for your particular suggestion or complaint than the prescribed vitriol among this community, it does increase the odds that your posts won't be tuned out at the mere sight of your avatar and forum handle.

I've been playing MMORPGs a long time and just like with most products and services, there's NEVER a guarantee that your feedback will be listened to. Spending effort on suggestions can seem like it yields worse return on investment than the lottery, and you never know if the whole dev team just didn't have time to look at the forums that day. But it's fully up to each and every customer whether their feedback is worth listening to. That's the part you have control over. You've got to give feedback if you want a shot at being a part of the solution, but every community I've been a part of for the past 15 years who speculated they might get more dev love by losing their temper and tact...turned out to be wrong.

I know that stinks and flies in the face of how you'd expect the world to work; but respectful communities always get more respect and as much as that sucks, much like the bullet points in the OP, that's never going to change.

There have been times since the close of City of Heroes and since subscribing to CO, when I felt very sympathetic toward the players who sound like they're at their wits end; there have been just as many times when I didn't want anything to do with those players because it's hard (when you're a normal human being) not to take it a bit personally when all someone does is log on, sit in chat and trash talk the game (literally for hours) that I'm enjoying and investing in. All I can think is, yeah, I see the game has problems, and right now you're the worst of them, Captain Buzzkill.

I see how great this game is too, and there are times that I want to find a dev and shake some sense into them, "Are you blind? Don't you see what you have here?! INVEST MORE HERE!" But if you think we have it hard trying to talk sense into devs, did you ever wonder how hard devs have it when they're looking for some support and investment from publishers? Or in some cases just even from their own team leads? If anyone here thinks there's not a developer on planet Earth who loves Champions Online, they've lost touch with the world.

I personally have a ton of suggestions and complaints for the team, but only one suggestion for the community: to separate your anger about the game's problems from hyperbolic assumptions about the motives or priorities of the people working on it. I've had the rare pleasure of seeing some of my suggestions for games used over the years, and in every case, owing to the development pipeline and limited resources, implementation took anywhere from several months to years. Good thing I wasn't being an asshat the entire time they were working on my suggestions, I guess.

thearkady · April 2013

The problem with Cryptic is they've long made clear they'll crap all over a respectful community, too. Here's my two most glaring examples:

1. Their handling of the "Suggestions Box" subforum, for example, has, by way of getting ignored, been little but a display of disrespect for the community from day one - and certainly, on day one, the community still was respecful and hoping for the best. (The one person at Cryptic who lent the thing the faintest hint of credibility by actually showing a presence there hasn't been involved with CO for a while now, and even in the good old days a "can we have official word on this suggestion that comes up like every three days" was far, farr too much to ask of Cryptic.)

2. The "German" version launched in 2009 was a blatant insult - if anyone who actually understands German had ever launched the costume creator and proof-read for five minutes, there would've been significantly fewer glaring translation flaws. (Which, despite being repeatedly brough up on the German forums and despite Cryptic employee claims to the contrary, persited until FFA thankfully put the localization out of it's misery.)

In both cases, the community definitely showed signs of losing its temper and composure over time, but there really ain't nobody to blame for that but Cryptic.

wethree1 · April 2013

For as long as I've been playing CO, at least one of the main threads on the forums, and often more than one, has been exasperated desperation at the state of the game and the wasted potential. From both newer and older players. And as far as I've seen, absolutely none of it has been dignified with a real response.

I'm honestly starting to think that Cryptic is up to their eyebrows in a poop pile of their own making to the point that how mad or respectful or whatever we are doesn't matter at this point. They'd have to dig themselves out at least to their knees to even think about giving us any attention even if they wanted to. An unfortunately, it's not just the guy who has been making the decisions who is paying the price, but everyone else associated with Cryptic and it's games to varying degrees. Probably us the worst.

Just in my short time in the game, I've gone through the whole grief cycle again (went through it with CoH, was an 8 year continuous vet). I started with excitement and hope, went to denial, then anger (kept it pretty civil in posts, though), then bargaining (till I realized no one was listening except for other players), and I'm now just about finished with depression and sliding into acceptance.

I'll play as much as I can stand to till the turn the lights off or back on. Here's hoping for back on...

pion01 · April 2013

crypticbuxom wrote: »

I wonder if anyone has attempted to get an interview with Brad Stokan about Champions Online. One without softball questions.

I think Brad Stokan is a pseudonym, like Alan Smithee for Champs.

cellarrat33 · April 2013

pion01 wrote: »

I think Brad Stokan is a pseudonym, like Alan Smithee for Champs.

ROFLMAO!

That's too spot on!

:biggrin:

Hope and Change is so 2008

Comments