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A letter regarding the current state of Neverwinter from a player's side.
thegreatmikey
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 122 Arc User
You know, Neverwinter is actually a pretty cool game. But it has it's problems. It started out pretty solid but became, as is common in games, more buggy the bigger it got. Any time an issue got big enough we would get some kind of communication via an ambassador (currently Strumslinger, who is doing a pretty good job).
However, when an issue is major and players get truly upset, a little empathy is needed. The standard tactic in dealing with an irate customer is to let them yell, rant, rage or whatever as long as it is directed at the company, not the person. Then apologize and demonstrate some understanding of their sufferring.
When mod 6 came out players were truly upset with the changes. The game gained major issues in various things. When the new devs came on board and Strumslinger introduced himself we hoped for change fixes. We were told this would happen over time, which we wanted to hear and want to believe. However, a step was skipped. The words "We are sorry," were nver used. We were told "Mistakes had been made," which demonstrates an attempt at acknowledgement, but is not quite strong enough. Clearly the first step in handling an irate customer was not done.
In us players' opinions (Can I speak for us on this? If I am out of line players, let me know) these issues are not mistakes. With the amount of feedback given mod 6 and mod 7 releases are both clearly not mistakes; Mistakes are unintentional or inadvertant, like forgetting to do something (eg, carrying the 1 in addition math) or doing something with good intent but not realizing an issue it creates. The amount of solid feedback during playtesting and information available precludes these from being mistakes. They are bad decisions.
It feels to many of us that we did not get empathy. We did not get understanding. What we got was an attempt at damage control via problem minimization.
What many of us want is an outright apology for knowingly making a bad decision for the release of Mod 6 and for Mod 7. We want to have communicated to us an understanding by Cryptic's management that a bad decision was made , that we are being actively listened to and that our concerns are going to be addressed in a timely manner.
Strumslinger, through many of your posts I get that you personally have a strong understanding of many issues in the game and can and do empathise with us. I get the impression, rightly or wrongly, that you are restricted somehow in what you can say by those who employ you. As an employee in retail myself I get that and can understand and empathise with this plight. I don't believe the gaming community holds you accountable. We are holding your bosses accountable.
So Cryptic bosses, please acknowledge our concerns, find some way to demonstrate that you are rightfully ashamed of the bad decisions and, I cannot stress this enough, sincerely use the words, "We are sorry. We will try to make this right." This is what we want to see just as much as we want the game to work.
Sincerely:
Mike.
However, when an issue is major and players get truly upset, a little empathy is needed. The standard tactic in dealing with an irate customer is to let them yell, rant, rage or whatever as long as it is directed at the company, not the person. Then apologize and demonstrate some understanding of their sufferring.
When mod 6 came out players were truly upset with the changes. The game gained major issues in various things. When the new devs came on board and Strumslinger introduced himself we hoped for change fixes. We were told this would happen over time, which we wanted to hear and want to believe. However, a step was skipped. The words "We are sorry," were nver used. We were told "Mistakes had been made," which demonstrates an attempt at acknowledgement, but is not quite strong enough. Clearly the first step in handling an irate customer was not done.
In us players' opinions (Can I speak for us on this? If I am out of line players, let me know) these issues are not mistakes. With the amount of feedback given mod 6 and mod 7 releases are both clearly not mistakes; Mistakes are unintentional or inadvertant, like forgetting to do something (eg, carrying the 1 in addition math) or doing something with good intent but not realizing an issue it creates. The amount of solid feedback during playtesting and information available precludes these from being mistakes. They are bad decisions.
It feels to many of us that we did not get empathy. We did not get understanding. What we got was an attempt at damage control via problem minimization.
What many of us want is an outright apology for knowingly making a bad decision for the release of Mod 6 and for Mod 7. We want to have communicated to us an understanding by Cryptic's management that a bad decision was made , that we are being actively listened to and that our concerns are going to be addressed in a timely manner.
Strumslinger, through many of your posts I get that you personally have a strong understanding of many issues in the game and can and do empathise with us. I get the impression, rightly or wrongly, that you are restricted somehow in what you can say by those who employ you. As an employee in retail myself I get that and can understand and empathise with this plight. I don't believe the gaming community holds you accountable. We are holding your bosses accountable.
So Cryptic bosses, please acknowledge our concerns, find some way to demonstrate that you are rightfully ashamed of the bad decisions and, I cannot stress this enough, sincerely use the words, "We are sorry. We will try to make this right." This is what we want to see just as much as we want the game to work.
Sincerely:
Mike.
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Comments
I slap you in the face, right here, right now, as hard as I can.
"I'm sorry". Does that really alleviate your pain at all? And wouldn't it be an insult to you if I said "yeah, yeah, right, sure: I'm sorry" in a sarcastic uncaring tone?
From my perspective:
I'm happy they admitted "some mistakes were made". And you know what? That's good enough for me. Because "I'm sorry" don;t do <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> for me, you, or anyone else. I couldn't care less about empathy from you or anyone else, especially Cryptic. (Indulge me, here - and obviously this is my own personal feeling on the subject).
Because I'm a realist. "Sorry" don't mean squat and does nothing for anyone other than to help the offender feel better. And to quote a line from the best movie ever made (Tombstone): "I ain't your son and you can take sorry and shove it right up your as......" - you het the picture.
So this begs the question: Are you sensitive enough that you feel slighted because there was no apology forthcoming from the company? Serious question, no insult or mockery intended. I know some people are sensitive that way, nothing wrong with that. But I do feel doting on such subjects is a waste of time when we could and should be demanding in a forceful way: "Fix the mistakes that you admitted were made".
No amount of apologizing by Cryptic to their playerbase can change the bind they or the players are in.
I detail how I came to my conclusions in this thread:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums#/discussion/1200220/why-is-every-module-launch-a-complete-trainwreck-and-catastrophe/p1
Thanks and I respect yours, also. Yes. Really.
For everyone else: See: we all really can respectfully agree to disagree!
@arandompanda : Absolutely spot-on.
i.e.
It's not what they say, it's what they do...
Never a more profound statement has ever been said, why it's almost biblical
Time and again we see industry leaders, politicians and bureaucrats utter the words, "I take full responsibility" (only after they get caught and derided), but then nothing happens, they go on business as usual. When is the last time you actually saw someone in Washington D.C. fired or demoted when they botched something up?
Part of being "responsible" is to take the consequences for your actions. Not just keep rolling on with a blanket statement. When a AA 12 stepper gets clean, part of the steps to sobriety are going back to the people you harmed during your alcoholism, acknowledge what you did or neglected to do, apologize to the person you offended against, then act to rectify what was wrong.
It is very clear that what was done was not a "OOPS" situation, deliberate actions were taken, with whatever motivations were present at the time. A "sorry" covers "oops". Measures to rectify what was deliberately done, fix what was unintended by that, and THEN say sorry is the order of the day.
Emphasis on sincerely. Sincerely does mean that they will act on what they say. =]
Now let me tell you how to play your class properly...
We need to talk.
(Okay, that was a good one!)
What now?!!
I took out the trash already didn't I?!!
Now when it comes to bugs, you have to understand and make peace with the fact that all MMO's will enevitably have bugs, often game breaking, very destructive bugs and this is normal. Apologizing for a game having bugs is like pulling your car over to apologize to someone for not using a blinker... its silly and really doesn't solve anything, its just an extra hoop to jump through that slows everyone down. Apologies are not nescessary, fixes are nescessary and as you pointed out, while it takes time and people are impatient, this company eventually addresses and solves problems.
We may not agree on how they prioritize the issues, we might not be happy with how long it takes and as is the case in every MMO forum, every person on it things they are some sort of technical expert and the people actually running the game are some sort of idiots when the truth is quite the oppossite. Any person who doesn't have 20 years experiance developing software should pretty much keep their mouth shut because they don't have a clue about how software development actually works. Hell in development unless your in the trenches for at least two decades no one even calls you a programer, your a noob.
So keep things in perspective, an MMO, especially one filled with this many features is obscenly complex, the fact that the servers start up is nothing short of a modern miracle created by brilliant people the average Joe on this forum wouldn't be able to hold a conversation with on a technical level.
So instead of asking for an apology, I recommend simply being impressed by the technical wonder they have created here.
When will they ever balance classes to make them all useful I've never seen such imbalance in an MMO before and this has been going on for 2 years.
This is cryptics message to their players: If you happen to like playing a class that that is far behind the others, just quit (or play one of the few that are wanted).
Whoever the game director is, they are driving it into the ground. I'd rather see no new module, but focus on giving all classes equal footing and improve the dungeons. The new modules don't bring new players, once you lose players its hard to get them back, work on the foundation before you build anymore.
But yea, as i said. I lost hope.
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Regarding your analogy with the car blinker, this is not a simple "oops" this is a total and complete royal charlie foxtrot of EPIC proportions. The correct analogy was expecting an apology from the moronic driver who was texting while drunk driving who just caused a 250 car pile up on major highway that resulted in 200 dead directly in the accident, and 100 people dead when the bridge that it occurred on collapsed and fell on a school playground in the middle of recess.
And by the way, you must be one of those technologically inept people you're accusing others of being. A server will boot up due to it's OS, be it Windows, Linux, Unix, or any other. The game itself is a process/program located on the server, usually (if someone has brains) hosted in a VDI/VM environment so if it does crash it should only take 30 seconds to reboot the damn thing. Also, speaking of which, most system/network admins who have a clue use an automated script located in the initial startup that will reboot the server even when no one is there, or when doing maintenance so all the servers reboot simultaneously, which wouldn't cause the problem, because the database is NOT located on the production servers, but usually a separate DB server.
So before you open your mouth, perhaps you should learn what you're talking about instead of trying to dazzle people with a polished up <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> that you've called a diamond.
There are 2 types of mmo's imo
F2P and Sub.
Sub games, (that don't fail, to my knowledge that is eve, wow, ff14arr, ff11 currently) tend to have budgets that allow more bug fixing and more content. It's usually a bigger budget game. They are better in many ways if you are willing to pay monthly. I would argue however that wow is no longer in this category btw but is instead in the f2p with paywalled content category.
Out of the f2p mmo's this is one of the better ones imo. You don't need to pay for content and while you'll not hit bis before a new patch hits without paying, content generally doesn't need bis either. In terms of bugs this category of mmos tends to have more. Even with Neverwinter's blunders (caterday, resonators, all the tech problems of people not being able to load in) I'd argue that Neverwinter does a better job. DDO when I left had experienced 2 six month exploits that the devs were aware of from before patch day. A bug that left bosses stuck in walls 75% of the time and quests incompletable that took months to fix. A bug where the client would crash the first time you loaded it unless you had it on an ssd because of poor optimization. High tier content that anyone who wanted to could solo easier than do in a group. (Imagine tiamat being doable and easier solo) And directly sold power and leveling. You could directly buy character power and character levels. This is in addition to every Neverwinter sells. I'm not really sure that rates as better. I threw my hands up in disgust with that game a couple years ago.
Remember most game review sites run characters up to cap if that then write the review. I wouldn't trust a single one of them.
Only thing the OP did was to comment on what is standard business practice, customer relations 101 stuff.
Why get angry at him? Also, does profanity improve delivery of your message?
Furthemore - more importantly - "We're sorry" might have kept quite some players in the game...
...sure, you stayed nonetheless, but others didn't. Or did by a hair's breadth, and some of the subsequent actions then did the last straw thing tho their camel back...
I'd rather put up the reverse view: Would it have cost anything to put that message out?
And the game review sites I looked at included comments from people who've played the games, sometimes for years.
Finally, regardless of budgetary concerns a coder who cares about what they do will make every effort to write clean code the first time. Game designers will make the best game flow, character types, balance, etc possible. Not purposefully destroy these things. Here's an example, game designers knew from the beginning TRs w/ perma stealth would be very disruptive to game balance...they put it in anyway, and have yet to fix it. In a straight up melee, a warrior will obliterate a mage type class, but not in Neverwinter. For some dumb reason all armor is pretty much the same, ac means little to nothing, trash mobs will 1 or 2 hit people still, and the list goes on and on.
I know and understand that you love the game, for whatever reason. However, that does not invalidate that this game is very poorly designed, the coders don't care, and that while it is f2p, it is most definitely a requirement that in order to be competitive you need to spend lots and lots of money, real money.
As someone who has 30 years designing, DMing and playing games there is no excuse for what was done here. Since mod 5 the coders have not only lost touch with the player base (and reality) and recycle old things, call them new, and just add more reason to spend money.
Regarding the OP's request for an actual sincere apology, let me give you an analogy. If you buy a car, take it in for a new alarm system to be installed and they turn around and screw up your engine and transmission, not only do you expect them to fix what they screwed up you expect a truly sincere apology. In Neverwinter, they do neither, say that your engine and transmission was already screwed up, and it's really not screwed up, it's just a new way for them to work. (No more purring motor, smooth gear shifting, it's great that it now coughs, chokes, stalls, breaks down, leaks oil and sounds like someone's torturing a cat every time it shifts). Oh, and by the way, the new alarm system works great, it won't even let you into your own car now, but isn't it great we just added an air freshener, and made it so if you ever can get back in your car you have to swipe your credit card and pay $50 for you to be able to start the car, turn on your wipers, put it in drive, put it in reverse, adjust your seat, put on your seatbelt, pop your trunk, turn on your headlights or blinker?
^^^ 100% true, by past actions (the fact some bugs still exist in this game for YEARS down the road, while new content is often hodge podged together and thrown on the burner for a second and called done (mod 6 new "recycled" zones).. and then often we get told "don't worry we are working on XZY" and then a month later told "we evaluated XYZ and it is ok, you players just need to learn to like it, the way we do!"
just sad, neverwinter(forgotten realms) is an IP i really like because there ahve been games in the past i enjoied, and books i also like, however cryptic have honestly made a horrible horrible mess of this IP, which could of been a great MMO at one time, and then a decent F2P at another, and now seems to have very little goal or direction, or even DESIRE to retain old players, and often seems to just focus on new ones, mod 6 seemed like they WANTED to keep old players (by expanding level cap) but then the devs seemed to alternate between welcoming them and <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> new players (increased pp cost <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> new players, and stupid difficulty of the campaign zones), and hitting them over the head and welcoming new players again (removal of leadership <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> some older players who used gateway a LOT to survive in the f2p game, and now FINALLY backing down on the insanity of the xp/difficulty in campaign zones)
and often the developer/producer letters talk a GREAT game, but seem to deliver a little thimble full of results even months down the road.. it feels like if there is a bug that is costing THEM money (leadership and or guaranteeing certain results from chests), it is quickly squashed/fixed/removed.. but anything that does not hurt income but hurts players is put on the backburner, often permanently while they work on the brand new "content" that comes out and normally prevents 30-50% of the player base from even PLAYING the game for DAYS at a time, and then within a week players figure out how to exploit certain items of it and that carrot is yanked back... yet at the same time class bugs that drive some players crazy and or push them to leave, are left alone because they are not ever prioritized due to there being no universal ability for everyone to exploit them (or suffer from them)
Lots of people are going conspiracy theory thinking pwe/cryptic are trying to get out from under the developer/publish agreement they have with hasbro, i dunno if that is true or not, but if that is the case perhaps it is best for everyone involved.. *shrug*
(waits for a certain mod to delete post with mocked up excuses of discussing exploits, or being an i quit thread, or discussing previous mod actions
Anyways I disagree with you about permas. I disagree with you that warriors should auto win vs mages if they get close for a second. These things work in pnp but don't work in an active mmo environment.
Neverwinter has it's problems. There are quite a few of them, but lets not act like other f2p titles aren't just as bad. And I honestly don't know how you can say that ddo has more communication with a straight face. They had one dev that would talk to players, and he was just a QA guy that was typically ignored by the higher ups. /salute MajMal
Finally stop bringing up pnp experience here. Pnp is great, it's fun, it's not an mmo. One is not the other. They don't translate well to each other. That's why there are always changes to the mechanics in both dnd based mmos that are on the market from their source materials.
Finally with the reuse thing. I'm not sold on the way Neverwinter did it, but something I've seen brought up over and over again over the years is how once you're done leveling thru a zone nothing ever happens to it again. You never see it in the story again, and it's pretty much dead unless you level an alt. What neverwinter did was put the zones back into the story again, without any phasing which is it's own nightmare. I'm not sold on it, but I won't call it a bad thing automatically. The one thing I will say is that it should have had more story, it's own dungeon, and less reliance on hourlies.
And saying sorry is all fine and well, but that doesn't mean <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> compared to fixing the game. We were told that things would be changed for the better, and we're still waiting. I myself have a lot of skepticism about the future of Neverwinter, but Strongholds isn't too bad and some of the press releases about coming changes (Difficulty, etc) are positives for the game. But there is still a loooong way to go before Neverwinter can live up to it's "AAA" rating as far as I am concerned.
Now, regarding DDO, maybe it began after you left, but the devs became more vocal, and when they screwed up, like maintenance taking a lot longer, etc they would not only apologize, but give the players something worthwhile.
Regarding the warrior vs mage. You're wrong. You're not even a little wrong. Warrior = big person w/ very sharp weapon. Mage = someone who has to usually concentrate to cast a spell which usually requires both a verbal and gesture. Warrior typically uses metal armor, mage has cloth. You're trying to tell me if a warrior comes running at a mage that there isn't a high likelihood of concentration being interrupted? Or that someone can cast a spell more quickly than a warrior can swing a sword? C'mon, really? That's simply not possible. Yes, a mage can be trained to concentrate even in the heat of battle, but still, by the time someone speaks more than 2 syllables a sword can easily puncture a piece of cloth, impaling the mage, or stab the mage in the throat, etc.
Yes, this is fantasy, but there are certain rules that even apply there. In almost every other game I've ever played factors like that are taken into account in the battle system. Just like a fighter vs a ranger, fighter wins. Fighter wears chain or scale or plate, a range will normally wear leather or studded leather. From far away there is a good chance, if the ranger can fire off an aimed shot, to take the warrior in a less protected area (like the neck or eye), but as the warrior runs to the ranger, the ranger will need to (at the very least) take multiple steps to prepare. Step 1: drop bow, Step 2: unsheathe secondary weapon (be it dagger, shortsword, longsword, whatever), ready stance (anyone who swings a weapon who is unbalanced is usually dead). That usually takes a few seconds. By then the warrior has gotten to the ranger and impaled or slashed the ranger.
And by the way, the main issue I have with perma stealth is that it doesn't make ANY sense. If you are stealthed, that means you are using the area around you to hide. Where in the hell can you hide in an open area? Also, if you hit me, I CAN see you, and you have lost stealth/invisibility. If I'm looking right at you, you cannot hide. It's impossible. You cannot hide while I'm chasing after your <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> either unless you somehow have eluded me. In D&D one of the rules of hiding and invisibility both are that once you do an offensive action you cannot become invisible or re-hide until you are no longer engaged in battle. While this may be a fantasy game, "you cannot change the laws of physics!".
That said, yeah, perma-stealth does kinda suck for everyone else beyond a reasonable level.
That would be horrible in any game that has pvp. This is why your idea is horrible. It doesn't work in an mmo. Your idea is that, GWF and CW see each other, GWF sprints and when close enough hits threatening rush. CW dies. Every time. That is what you are proposing. That is a horrible mechanic. This is why pnp and mud's are not mmo's. This is why experience with one equals nothing with the other. The TR functions more like a shadowdancer with hide in plain sight.
Next you're going to tell me that a magic-user tossing a flame at a plate wearing warrior wouldn't par-broil them in mere moments. Or that some other magic-user casting a freeze spell at that same steel wearing fighter wouldn't cause his bones and skin to shatter into teenie tiny shards when he is taken to 0 Kelvin in less than 3 sec..
Probably your going to tell me that having a 3ft. steel tipped, spelled shaft of wood driven through a melee classes eye and out the back of his skull is going to leave only a small scratch. Or that thick masses of thorns and vines grasping at the warriors legs and waist are just no more than a empty field of grass.
I'm confident your not telling me that a warrior wearing 2x-3x their body mass of hinged, stiff jointed armor and sight hindering head wear can't instantly track a target both in sight and sound and close the several intervening yards (or more) in a charge,under 3 sec. to unerringly thrust or swing a weapon weighing in excess of 15 pounds and without error always hit that target they never ever miss despite having turrets for eyes and clanking, squeeking armor.
I know that shield bearing fighters can not only move fluidly with 3x their weight on them with constrictive hinged slabs of metal, but will always swing that 15 lb. weapon unerringly whilst at the same time bearing a large slab of metal clad wood weighting in excess of 50 lb. for long stretches of time without ever getting overbalanced or out of breath.
Surely you aren't implying that someone can't be so light and quiet on their feet, and have such superb, non-constrictive, well designed camo, that they never are tripping or scuffing of their feet can slip up behind anyone and stick a foot or more of cold steel between their victims ribs or across their throat and instantly kill said victim? If they should fail to instantly kill surely they can remain hidden from that victim's line of sight by using contortional moves.
Now I just KNOW, that a chain mail wearing person should in reality be able to with a few muttered words and slight gestures cause both their, and nearby friends to instantly have bones and gaping wound to self knit and everyone to become hail and whole. I am confident that with some other pattern of gestures and sounds that person can cause both damaging light to strike their enemies and cause them to have marks appear on them that curse them to take increased damage from others or blessings to friends to ward them from ill effects.
All of this is to say....it's FANTASY. And yes there is no "physics" law of even mild suggestions to violate. There will NEVER be "balance" between different classes, they have differing damage/defense methods. The only possible "balance" that can be achieved in a PvP setting is a modicum of like dmg output and dmg resistance.
Well unless the "Sorry" came from the dude(s) who made the mess, it wouldn't be fair for those cleaning the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> that's left behind to apologize on their behalfs. Even then, a simple "Sorry" wouldn't be enough considering the scale of the mess up. It's an equivalent of a Fukushima incident in gaming history : a purely manmade disaster from bad designs, not intentions. You also don't expect Democrats to apologise for past bad Republicans' policies do you?
Yet, for having made such a mess, heads have to roll for accountability. Which is probably why we have a new Lead Designer.
I know many players get frustrated when playing this game because of the lag/bug and the older the game gets the more lag/bug it gets.if you dont feel happy to play this game ,just leave and look for a new game.
because the guyz here wont change s*** ,I came back too see if they change some things for better.and the the game is worst than ever.And I like this game but they have ruin it
Not that I don't agree, but it's probably best not to throw in politics!