fusedmassMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 252Bounty Hunter
edited June 2013
In my experience, this community has been the most patient, kindest, nicest, I have ever been in. When GG was delayed in some other MMOs, the same day, hundreds of people would complain all day about it. The thread would reach a hundred pages or more, simply complaining about it.
That thread only reached 11 pages, its four days without ANY type of communication or update. I think its not the player base trying to kill the game. Its pent up frustration. When you spend 200 dollars on a game. That price alone is triple the price of a game comes out of a box. You expect a certain level of communication. When the people behind the game, simply ignore or refuse to respond. It makes us feel under valued.
My point is, this community is great compared to others. Yet it centers around getting talk to the Devs about the current content. Don't we have a right to complain, if we paid good money or must we be quiet in the shadows just hoping things would get better.
Anyone here ever play EverQuest? Ultima Online? Dark Age of Camelot? Those names were nightmares. Horrifying, torturous, backbreaking nightmares of bugs, tedium, and grief, and yet somehow, they thrived. The attitude of the player was different in those days. Instead of hitting Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else on the Internet warning people away from the games, people were out there, singing its praises and trying to get their friends to play it with them.
Answer
The "Internet 2.0" (ie: forums, excuse the marketing speak, I hate it too) were not very popular back in 1999 to 2004. Now that forums and social media are king, more and more people use it to discuss and rant or rave about the prospective games. We didn't have "social media" back then. The best thing we had was newsgroups, with a sprinkling of forums. Those who used forums was a much smaller percentage of the playerbase. Facebook wasn't around until 2004, and wasn't available until the public at large until 2006. MySpace started in 2003 and wasn't popular until 2005. Twitter didn't even exist yet.
When you go out and bash and scream and cry and kick and whine and complain and basically make all the black noise you can everywhere you go, you turn new people away from your MMO. You deprive it of air. You choke it. If that happens for long enough, it dies.
Answer
Back then MMOs developer/publishers didn't try to hit you with $200 or $300 collector editions, special packs, etc. Back then MMOs were usually an up-front game purchase with a $15-20 monthly fee. You paid for a game, then paid for service access, updates, maintenance, etc.
Also, the Diablo series has a free Battle.net to connect to. People didn't complain as hard about Diablo, D2, and D2:LoD because they could just go offline and enjoy solo gameplay instead. With online games today there is no offline mode.
Exception are games like the Torchlight series. Very reasonable purchase price, ability to play online and offline, and free development tools to create your own content, mods, etc. Very few hardline complainers there. Gee, I wonder why?
People seem to have lost their grip on a very basic piece of knowledge: New players are the air that your MMO breathes. Your MMO, not just this one but *any* MMO you enjoy, cannot live without new players, just like you cannot live without air.
So I guess my question is, when did it become cool among the gaming community to try to kill its own games? I'm not talking about complaining about bugs and balance issues and so-forth, I'm talking about the outright attempts to make sure nobody you know comes through the door. The willful choking off of the game's air supply. When did that become okay?
Answer
Many don't really care about that. They look it as a service that a company provides and they're unhappy about something within or about that service. It's just like anything else in life. If you complain that you local automatic car wash does a crappy job, you don't really care if you're scaring off its customers. Even if you use the car wash and want it to keep on going, the average person doesn't think or care whether or not they're driving away its customers when they complain publicly.
That's life and the marketplace in general. It's not specific to online gaming.
I think the flip side of this question should be asked. When did it become ok to become a fanboy? I'm not saying you are one or not, and I also have my loves and hates of Neverwinter. But when did it become ok for one customer to berate another because they complain about a product or service? When did it become the moral high-ground? That's what I'd like to know.
In the end you either like something or you don't. It doesn't really matter why (the devs should be the ones caring about "why"), you just accept that some people are going to love, some are going to hate. Why try to berate either group on forums or social media?
I find that very hard to believe! EQ1 and UO gamers didn't fight with one another? Really??? Come on, admit it, there was lotsa flame wars in between fans, there had to be! Fanboy wars have existed since the SNES VS Genesis days! Even before EQ1 and UO, there was Windows VS Mac wars for computer games! How could there not of been a EQ1 VS UO fanboy wars? I don't believe that for a second!
Because the first MMORPG I ever played was Star Wars Galaxies, and there was A LOT of fanboy wars in between SWG and other MMOs, like EVE Online! OMG especially EVE Online! I dunno why EVE Fanboys kept bashing SWG, because I tried EVE and I was bored outta my mind. You could never land on a planet and run around killing stuff with a humanoid character! You were always in space. Not my kinda MMO. :P
Then WoW was released and it was a whole new war again. It was always WoW VS everyone else! But so what? WoW didn't start the fanboy war! So please don't make it sound like today's generation of forum and social network fanboy wars is a big deal. Don't write "There was a time when the players were loyal to their game." because there was no such thing as "a time". How could EQ1 VS UO be the only era where there was some kinda respect between fanboys? I don't buy it. I wish I did play EQ1 and UO during their prime to actually see it for myself, but judging from all the other games I've played, I'm 100% to 101% certain there was no difference. :P
Let me say this. I played EQ1 from about a week after release and for about 5 years after and i must say that EQ1s community was the absolute best MMO experience ive ever had. Were there flame wars? absolutely. Hell, Pandemonium(one of the top 5 guilds in all of EQ) is the reason the average person isnt allowed at E3 anymore. They went there and started a real life pvp session with Fires of Heaven. But with that said the community as a whole was very respectful and if you were a well known player even on the PvP servers you could sit there and have a full conversation with someone from the other team after youve just had a 30min long guild vs guild fight over a boss. There was always an etiquette to huge fights called loot and scoot, which basicly just meant that if your team lost you came and did your corpse run and left the zone peacefully. There were all kinds of unwritten rules that 90% of the server knew and abided by. Handling loot for instance, there was no rolling need or greed. There was typing /random 1 100 and whoever won got to right click that item off the corpse. Items werent put into limbo while being rolled on either, they just sat on the corpse and anyone in the group could just take it at anytime(or if someone wasnt in the group and the loot timer was up they could also run up and loot whatever was on it). So yes EQ had its fights and flame wars, but it also had the most respectable playerbase ive seen in an MMO ever.
Game breaking bugs/exploits go unresolved for week, months at a time.
The game hasn't been out for 2 months yet, how can issues go unresolved for months or hell, even weeks when they've barely got their foot out the door?
When something does go wrong there is no communication.
There is actually pretty good communication on bugs, exploits are an entire different barrel of fish and most of the time they can't comment on them because they need to keep knowledge of them as limited as possible.
The entire "customer relations" model they have is so appalling as to be a joke.
There are several threads on the customer service issues, if you'd actually worked in the customer service for something like this then you'd realise that peoples main complaints that aren't about the time to respond (Tinned replies, cancelling tickets after being in the queue too long) are pretty much a standard in the industry.
Tinned Responses - 99% of the time someones issue can be easily corrected at their end if they bothered to check up on the problem before complaining to CS.
Cancelling tickets after too long in the queue - Most bugs that require a CS assistance are fixed within two to three weeks of them occuring, other times people can fix the issues themselves and some issues just fix themselves anyway, cancelling the tickets after so long means that they clear up the queue allowing them to address more recent issues faster, and they do tell you that if the issue is ongoing to resubmit the ticket.
If they want players to be happy and to stay they need to start listening to players, not accountants.
If they want to get paid and continue having funding they need to listen to the accountants though. It's like being a child of divorced parents, your father oks you to do some things, your mother tells you too do others, but if you do the stuff your father says you can do in front of your mother she'll tell you off for it.
Imho the whole problem started with "casual" player asking to dumb down the game cause they paid to see the whole content. Eq, Uo, Daoc and early wow needed so much time to play all content you had to invest as much as a job.
Beware, a "real casual player" doesn't even go on the forums, they don't spend so much time in the game to know what they can't do in therms of skill/time investment.
Hardcore players demand, but generally don't leave istantly because of the time invested and often run around problems.
So it all started when people started to demand for easy win and payed win (it doesn't surprise that the latter is more than enough for a company). F2P games will never appeal hardcores (edit: in the sense that companies won't target hardcores) since the money come from those "casuals" I was talking about in the first sentence, the ones who are willing to pay to overcome their lack of ability to get what they want (be it either skill or time or whatever else). Social networks only boost game, they don't really take them down.
F2P games are sustained by free riders, or those "casuals" (the bad casuals) would have an empty game, no chance to do most easy content, no tricks explained on some website or videos on youtube. They are also the non-loyals, those who play this game a few, then jump to another one to blame that company instead of this one.
But they are many, and many of them are willing to pay to succeed. And they rotate. So there isn't much to discuss about this, companies are there to make moneys, not games, it just happens that game designers WORK making games:) I'm not sure there is even a single game company out there that focus on establishing an elite of players and focus on that. Every single one will focus on getting new players and appealing players who just started and aren't demanding for new content, but just new skins/mounts/(insert whatever) and requests to dumb down the content already existing so they can do it.
I generally don't demand for what I am not able to do.
/endofrant
p.s. I'm not saying casuals are bad, I'm a rather casual gamer now with a hardcore past. I'm just trying to underline that there is a toxic component in the mmos community which define itself casual, but it's just bad and unwilling to improve. Everyone starts as "bad", somebody may not improve past a certain point, but the "bads" I'm talking about are the ones who will never trade demanding for trying.
Well to many of us, at least myself. I feel as though weve been "tricked" into playing a falsely advertised game. I think the DnD pool struggles with this more then most due to basic ideologies weve come to expect over the last 20+ years from our games PnP/video games or otherwise. loyalty falters when you think you've been duped.
They only thrived because there was little competition and players didn't know better. After every MMORPG release players are seeing new and better features and when those features are not present in the latest game release they get frustrated. I don't blame players for being upset that a game doesn't meet their expectations because I've been there as well and often.
However what everyone needs to understand that Neverwinter is a game and if you are not having fun then stop playing it. Simple. If there is a game that is more enjoyable play that instead. Loyalty to a computer game is kind of silly...
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brutikusivMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian UsersPosts: 25Arc User
edited June 2013
There are no more honest and earnest productions in the making. Back when the games you mention existed game were being made by companies that wanted NOTHING more in all earnest to offer a TRUE rpg experience to it's fullest extent. Modern F2P/P2W releases are SOLELY released for quick neural stimulant addiction with nothing more in depth than seeking to turn your credit card into it's love slave. Depth and feel is PAID for not achieved. Clients are rewarded simply based on the highest spender and everyone else is broken down into freeloaders and slave chains with minimal existence within that gaming community begging for scraps. Gaming world is evolving ever more so into the chains of the modern greed machine from which it's CEO's solely focus and drive it to such. Content and actual communities within the game itself or an afterthought to it's highest degree. Older games had their base appeal that it's world and it's entirety were equally built for each and any person that so chose to buy and subscribe to it. Modern games are focused and designed around ONE philosophy: Obtain as much money from the client as quickly and without restriction as possible. Games no longer have the "Whole New World" feel to them. Their transparent and lacking. If you stare closely you will easily see right thru their skin thin membrane of illusion and appeal. It's all flash and splash with short term hypnosis solely meant to extract the highest toll from your wallet as feasibly possible in the shortest terms and phases. Character and community feel get about 1% of the development costs applied as they're truly the last if not totally forsaken thoughts to be implemented.
You're searching for something that sadly will possibly never exist again. Least not till the next true WoW2(or game of such caliber).
Not only that, but you're also willing damage upon real people when you behave this way. The Neverwinter team includes a pretty good number of programmers, artists, marketing people, sound guys, managers, producers, and support staff. I'm sure they have people in the accounts payable and the accounts receivable cubicle. If they had custodial staff that came in and cleaned the office every night I wouldn't be surprised.
Were the game to die, all of those people would be out on the street. We're talking unemployment, loss of house and property, possible divorce and child custody, the whole bit.
This may sound cold but they are not our friends, they are the providers of a service and/or a product. Our relationship is one of business and nothing more: Their existence and wellbeing is justified only by the quality and rarity of the product they provide.
If they want me to act like they are Bay12 they can begin by adopting their business model, communication skills, and uniqueness. Their mad game design skills wouldn't hurt, either. Until then they will continue to receive the McDonalds treatment.
There are several threads on the customer service issues, if you'd actually worked in the customer service for something like this then you'd realise that peoples main complaints that aren't about the time to respond (Tinned replies, cancelling tickets after being in the queue too long) are pretty much a standard in the industry.
ROFL. Where do you work that its considered "a standard in the industry" to close two week old tickets? And yes that is what those posting on the forums complaining about closed tickets had claimed. Before the mods started removing the info because posting it is against rules.
ROFL. Where do you work that its considered "a standard in the industry" to close two week old tickets? And yes that is what those posting on the forums complaining about closed tickets had claimed. Before the mods started removing the info because posting it is against rules.
I explained it further down the post, I'll post it here again for you
Cancelling tickets after too long in the queue - Most bugs that require a CS assistance are fixed within two to three weeks of them occuring, other times people can fix the issues themselves and some issues just fix themselves anyway, cancelling the tickets after so long means that they clear up the queue allowing them to address more recent issues faster, and they do tell you that if the issue is ongoing to resubmit the ticket.
I explained it further down the post, I'll post it here again for you
That doesn't explain anything. Two weeks is not acceptable for a ticket purge. A two week old problem is still recent. Cancelling a two week old ticket is not acceptable anywhere else. Even here if the agent responding to the ticket doesn't understand the problem or thinks its fixed already they give a notice. A period of time for you to update a ticket to stop it from being cancelled.
The only reason they cancelled tickets was because they didn't have enough people to answer them. They practically said so when they mentioned hiring more, then mentioned hiring more yet again.
There was also a time when Game Companies were loyal to their player-base.
Might I suggest that the problem is not a lack of either one of those two chains of loyalty, but that the chain is a "two way" link, and when game companies break faith with their players that it is only natural for players to break faith with the game.
All The Best
This.
The standard MMO model these days isnt to build a quality long lasting product that people can invest in, Its to build a cynical cash grab thats just good enough to lure people in to the cash store so the whales can spend their entire paycheck on telling themselves how much a better asupporter thay are of a game than the lazy, filthy, unwashed free2p masses.
Forums are nothing new. Complaining on forums is nothing new.
Blasting every social media outlet with negativity is new. Hopping on Facebook and telling your entire 600+ friends list to "omg stay away from neverwinter it sux" is new. That's what I take issue with.
How dare we try to keep our friends informed on games that arent worth wasting their valuable time on.
I mean, Its not like when I told friends ingame on STO that Marvel heroes wasnt worth playing that I did it out of spite so much as I didnt want them losing 60+ hours trying to extract fun out of a funless game.
How dare we try to keep our friends informed on games that arent worth wasting their valuable time on.
I mean, Its not like when I told friends ingame on STO that Marvel heroes wasnt worth playing that I did it out of spite so much as I didnt want them losing 60+ hours trying to extract fun out of a funless game.
There is that, but then there is also just being hateful. I remember D3's rocky launch. Some players had log in issues so they started an actual campaign against the game. Recruiting on various forums to get people to 1-star the game on all review websites. Just because they were having trouble logging in. From that point on when people started complaining about actual issues with the game... someone would suggest/start doing it again.
I think most just don't want to see anything that hateful started here.
OP, it's not that players arent loyal, its how they get treated after investing hugh sums of hard earned money, and then pretty much left as is... wondering why in hell they spent money on another "promise" of glory and greta gaming, when all they wind up with is a cookie cutter copy paste game that while "attempting" to "fix" the issues us players are wanting, they break a dozen others, and then weeks/months of waiting for those to be fixed, only to be handed another grab bag od rubbish that 1 day after installment... gets pulled down for broken, not working.... while the game it self sits and rots with all the same issues brought up previoulsy and neveraddressed, or addressed and bent in two, just the wrong way. Sorry, but its pretty bad when all you can do is sit in a zone watch chat and wait for a dd and hope you get in one that actually completes end boss for the goodie chest... All I can say is, if I ran my buisness like these people do... I'd have been unemployed months ago.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Sir, were now surrounded"!
Thats great news son, now we can attack from ALL sides"!
As someone here noted: loyalty works both ways. I haven't seen Cryptic/PWE do anything to earn mine.
I recommended the game to my friends and the entire WoW guild (while noting the flaws and highlighting the strong sides). I bought some Zen as a way of support towards the developers. I keep playing. I post on the forums to offer my thoughts. But there are many things that I still consider in need of attention, and there are business practices that greatly annoy me.
I feel like they are driving more people away with their outrageous Zen prices than they realize. With the fact that you cannot buy a permanent slot (or slots) for other specs, but have to go for a silly respec token every time. The fact that bank space is expensive and not even account-wide. That inventory bags are stupidly priced. That boss design is nothing but lazy. And so on.
If you give the impression that you care more about milking the players as much and for as long as possible rather than focusing on the important game issues, it's not going to be easy to get rid off it.
I often keep wondering why MMO games don't actually offer any proper loyalty bonuses for those who support them the most. Say, something like: for every 10k Zen bought you get a permanent 1% price drop on all products (stacking, can be capped at 10% or 20%). Or some sort of a gift. Even a proper communication with players would go a long way (like Blizzard is doing, even if it took them years to get there). There are so many potential options.
There is that, but then there is also just being hateful. I remember D3's rocky launch. Some players had log in issues so they started an actual campaign against the game. Recruiting on various forums to get people to 1-star the game on all review websites. Just because they were having trouble logging in.
It's true that some players can go too far in their hate, but I have yet to see a case where it was completely unjustified.
The Diablo 3 you mention was so much more than just issues with logging in. Poorly optimized graphics-wise (causing issues for various hardware sets), numerous errors abound, the servers being nowhere near stable, and to top it all off the players were denied an opportunity to play without having an Internet connection (which rightfully pissed off a lot of people). Unlike previous Diablos, the developers decided that you always had to stay online. Just because. They made that decision for you. I won't even mention how big of a disappointment the game itself was, not doing justice to its legacy. First time ever I regretted buying something from Blizzard.
Then there was the case with Mass Effect 3 and its horrible/laughable "endings", greatly undermining the value of the entire - otherwise incredible - trilogy. Plus greedy DLCs and an outrageously arrogant attitude towards the playerbase. And since we had already been treated with less-than-stellar Dragon Age 2, I felt that Bioware/EA deserved everything that was coming at them.
We players can certainly be a whiny bunch who like to exaggerate and blow things out of proportions, but it isn't all unprovoked. Many developers/producers have dropped the ball in the recent years, and without any sort of backlash they would just continue to do so.
Players are more demanding nowadays, and it's good. They have the right to be. They vote with their time and their wallets. We have projects like Kickstarter, which will hopefully bring a much needed breath of fresh air, changing some of these stale business practices. And force the companies to start caring again.
My first online (graphic) game was the original NWN long before UO and DAOC. The companies that develop & market these games have changed much since those times. I'm not loyal to any company and companies today are far from loyal to their employees.
"Were the game to die, all of those people would be out on the street. We're talking unemployment, loss of house and property, possible divorce and child custody, the whole bit." -- could you be anymore dramatic? /rolls eyes
Seriously? There was a time when everyone had an equal chance at everything in game for the same small $60 initial and $15 a month too. I will save my loyalty for a company who doesn't spend every second of my online time rooting around in my pockets.
I'd disagree on that. Let's use EQ as an example. To start getting end game gear required a guild and being able to be at a set spawn at a set time. Period. If your raid wasn't there, your guild missed their shot, and the next guild in the rotation stepped in. This is because there were no instances - that raid boss was the *only* spawn. Just one. Not one per group. One.
So, if you're me, with a young kid who might awaken at any particular moment in the night, you're unreliable in a group setting. So you don't group. And you certainly can't plan to spend a few hours raiding.
That loot, therefore, in unobtainable by me. I do not have an equal chance that some jobless teen spending 16 hours a day grinding has. Even if the time we put in is anywhere *near* the same at some point, I still will have no way to get gear that good.
Cut to NW. If I set up some alts, run leadership, invoke regularly, maybe even get lucky at the AH, I can build up the AD to buy end game gear. Will it take longer than running CN? Yeah, it will. But - and this is the important thing - I have the opportunity to get that gear somehow.
Best of all? I don't have to pay $60 for the game, or $15/month to get it. In fact, if I'm really good at the AH, or can get lucky enough to get a dungeon run in (and a drop to go my way), I may even end up with some nice stuff from the Zen shop without pulling out my wallet. EQ? "Here's our new expansion. $60 please. Unless you want to fall behind the gear curve and be 5-10 levels behind the rest of the players...". Every. 6. Months.
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azahronMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 2Arc User
Does anyone here seriously think these guys are there in their office, leaning back in their chair in a smoking jacket, twirling their curly black moustache, giggling maniacally to themselves, saying, "Muahaha! They will *never* survive with that Block bug in place!"
Nah, this is more how it went here:
A moderator walks in and tells the Devs there is this mob of people on their forums, apparently they are GF's or something - maybe that means girlfriends?
Eventually someone in the room catches on and goes "Oh yeah, Guardian Fighters! We have a class like that! ...I think"
"Anyway, what do they want, since you mentioned there's a bunch of them on our forums?" the dev looks a bit puzzled at the mod.
"They are all claiming that something called a "block" is broken" the mod hesitantly tries to explain. A lightbulb appears over a dev's head "Oh right, that's one of their powers - what do they mean broken? How on Earth can it be broken? Anyway, I'll handle it." The dev goes to the forums and returns a few moments later, looking completely baffled.
"Well? How'd it go?" the moderator asks.
"Well... I went on the forum and told them "Man, you guys are trippin' - your block ain't broken, it's working as intended."
"Oh? It is? So they were just making all that racket for nothing?"
"Pretty much, and they got real uppity with me when I told them it's friggin' WORKING! So I told them so long and thanks for all the fish, I'm not talking to you uncouth masses anymore!" A week later the devs acknowledge something might actually not be working as intended, and a week after it gets fixed.
Do you have experience with Cryptic games? With Cryptic's history of being much less than honest with the community? Of outright lying to them not once, but multiple times?
The loyalty you speak of is engineered through marketing nowdays, not through honest effort.
Anyone here ever play EverQuest? Ultima Online? Dark Age of Camelot? Those names were nightmares. Horrifying, torturous, backbreaking nightmares of bugs, tedium, and grief, and yet somehow, they thrived. The attitude of the player was different in those days. Instead of hitting Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else on the Internet warning people away from the games, people were out there, singing its praises and trying to get their friends to play it with them.
I'll tell you what the difference was. The market for those games was very, very small. People, with credit cards and lots of free time, who were technical, detail oriented, and socially isolated. It was a niche market. Back then it was UO, EO, DAoC, and AO. That was literally *it*. The Developers knew their playerbase was not only very small but once they were locked into one game it would be unlikely they'd have time or money for another.
Now? The market is HUGE. F2P games rely on bringing in as many people as possible hoping that some small percentage of them are willing to blow money on the cash store. Anyone who doesn't is a net loss until they do. They do not and cannot care much about their audience because 95% of the audience is static noise.
You are trying to equate two different eras of games , which is logically inconsistent.
Instead of condemning their game for its bugs, they glossed over them, or apologized for them, instead focusing on what was good about their game of choice, which in those days was not very much. There was a real sense of community, of hanging together through adversity.
No, there were no other options and no other games presented with more polish.
Compared to other launches, NW was abysmal. SWTOR, for all it's flaws, had a flawless launch.
Compared to other PVP types, this is sub-standard.
Compared to other amounts of bugs, this is sub-standard.
People are upset and complaining because of HYPE that has not been lived up to, HYPE pushed by the publishers and social media. Most of the upset people were once hopeful fans. How long are you supposed to maintain faith in a product before you realize you are being screwed out of your time and money?
When you go out and bash and scream and cry and kick and whine and complain and basically make all the black noise you can everywhere you go, you turn new people away from your MMO. You deprive it of air. You choke it. If that happens for long enough, it dies.
It is not and has never been the responsibility of the CUSTOMER to ensure the marketability of the COMPANY. If you think otherwise you are not even trying to look at this in an objective light.
So I guess my question is, when did it become cool among the gaming community to try to kill its own games?
I guess my question is, when did it become acceptable to imply that your own opinion should be held over that of thousands of others? People ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THE GAME. Cryptic has LIED. Cryptic has FAILED TO DO WHAT IT SAID IT WOULD. Thus, people are upset and UNHAPPY.
I'm supposed to give Cryptic the benefit of the doubt, when I've seen them screw over the STO and CO bases for YEARS?
People are supposed to put up with a myriad of issues that make the game unenjoyable, so you can bring in OTHER people who will be unhappy?
Not only that, but you're also willing damage upon real people when you behave this way. The Neverwinter team includes a pretty good number of programmers, artists, marketing people, sound guys, managers, producers, and support staff. I'm sure they have people in the accounts payable and the accounts receivable cubicle.
Who cares?
Do you think about that when you throw a temper tantrum when your cable service goes out during the game? Do you care when you stiff the waitress a tip? Do you care when you leave a nasty note for the manager at a restaurant because something was off in your dinner?
If Cryptic wants people to not bash them then they need to take stronger measures to reassure the community. They haven't, and they won't, because PWE does not care as long as the money comes in, and they've PUBLICALLY said so.
I'm not saying people shouldn't complain when there's a problem, I'm just saying that maybe they shouldn't complain in such a way as to threaten the livelihoods of hard working people, just because there was a bug in the auction house or some other piddly thing.
If I pay money for a given product I expect it to work, or I expect my money back. In this situation, people get neither, but we're supposed to feel sorry for the people who jilted us out of our money?
The only thing wrong with this community is that too many people are willing to be walked on just to feel like they're part of a community.
There are games i would go back to in a heart beat if the graphics were updated enough. Quality.not quantity.I thought for sure this would be a revisit to the DDO game with bad graphics..in the beginning i thought it was til I realized it was a well disguised money shop instead.
It's also to do with expectations. Back in the old UO / EQ days, there wasn't much to compare against so people tended to suck up a lot more in terms of bugs, downtimes etc. than they would now.
The expectations also works both ways though, we've seen the way in which games are publicised changed radically - with trailers, youtube viral videos, facebook, twitter etc. with almost all of the newer games suggesting they are the 'next big thing' (TM).
I think if we, as a playerbase, were a little more patient and developers were a little more honest then we may all just get along. But please don't tell me that my new car is going to be the best one ever only for me to find that the AC button doesn't work, nor do the electric windows (but I can use the handles). Oh, and that brakes are 'coming soon'.
All games have bugs. Cars can't really be issued with defects.
Nor can those defects be fixed as easily as software.
RE: features that are coming...
D&D always had more content coming at a later date.
Original D&D only had a handful of classes.
And Neverwinter is free.
You get what you pay for. Plus some extra stuff.
New content has been added already. And more content is on the way.
Sadly loyalty for a game went out when companies started caring more about the green back dollar and not the customers.
Now you hit end game withing a few days or weeks, the content is linear, it's the same thing over and over again.
I've played the original Ultima games, even though the graphics are not comparable to games today, the content and game play is actually better. I wish they would bring back some of those games with the current graphics of games today.
Customer service is also an issue when it comes to loyalty in MMOs, poor customer service = no loyalty. Sadly, there isn't any real laws that govern how online gaming companies deal with customer issues. (Meaning, they don't have to provide live support or provide customers with contact numbers in case of problems.)
All in all, the way gaming companies treat their customers, they shouldn't expect loyalty.
Yes, I have complained about the botters and something that changed with the graphics a few days ago that was making my computer overheat on max(recommended) settings, but I have been promoting this game on Facebook to the point I made it my profile picture and cover. Obviously not everyone is going to use this forum for the sole purpose of singing the game's praises but giving people a way to vent their concerns, problems and frustrations is ultimately feedback even if it's argumentative. Most of us argue with our family all the time and that doesn't make us any less loyal to our family. Flaming however, that's uncalled for in any forum and people who use social networking to flame have friends just as vitriolic as they are. Losing them as potential players isn't taking away anyone desirable to begin with. As that merchant NPC proclaims "Bah, a hundred kinds of exotic dung.", we lost a few jerks and their friends but was anything of value lost?
To PW im a potential customer, nothing more. They want me here and in the games they make, so they can get me to use money. They dont care who i am, where i am, what am doing nothing. All they wanna know is my credit card number.
Its up front and its fair game. But for them to get me to spend money they have to have something i wanna pay for. Its all about the money, so stop the nonsence about loyalty plz.
15 years ago, we have a few games to pick from, so we tolerated alot. Now a new one pops up all the time, so we have demands to the games we put our money in.
My experiance says, people want stable more or less finish games. New content always on the way. A fair for all game, meaning not P2W. Some respons on complains. Information of all kinds.
If you like PW did in this case ( if you ask me ), put out a new game that brings nothing new to the scene, they better score some good point when it comes to the stuff i just listed.
Comments
That thread only reached 11 pages, its four days without ANY type of communication or update. I think its not the player base trying to kill the game. Its pent up frustration. When you spend 200 dollars on a game. That price alone is triple the price of a game comes out of a box. You expect a certain level of communication. When the people behind the game, simply ignore or refuse to respond. It makes us feel under valued.
My point is, this community is great compared to others. Yet it centers around getting talk to the Devs about the current content. Don't we have a right to complain, if we paid good money or must we be quiet in the shadows just hoping things would get better.
Thought you didn't play this game anymore? :P
Answer
The "Internet 2.0" (ie: forums, excuse the marketing speak, I hate it too) were not very popular back in 1999 to 2004. Now that forums and social media are king, more and more people use it to discuss and rant or rave about the prospective games. We didn't have "social media" back then. The best thing we had was newsgroups, with a sprinkling of forums. Those who used forums was a much smaller percentage of the playerbase. Facebook wasn't around until 2004, and wasn't available until the public at large until 2006. MySpace started in 2003 and wasn't popular until 2005. Twitter didn't even exist yet.
Answer
Back then MMOs developer/publishers didn't try to hit you with $200 or $300 collector editions, special packs, etc. Back then MMOs were usually an up-front game purchase with a $15-20 monthly fee. You paid for a game, then paid for service access, updates, maintenance, etc.
Also, the Diablo series has a free Battle.net to connect to. People didn't complain as hard about Diablo, D2, and D2:LoD because they could just go offline and enjoy solo gameplay instead. With online games today there is no offline mode.
Exception are games like the Torchlight series. Very reasonable purchase price, ability to play online and offline, and free development tools to create your own content, mods, etc. Very few hardline complainers there. Gee, I wonder why?
Answer
Many don't really care about that. They look it as a service that a company provides and they're unhappy about something within or about that service. It's just like anything else in life. If you complain that you local automatic car wash does a crappy job, you don't really care if you're scaring off its customers. Even if you use the car wash and want it to keep on going, the average person doesn't think or care whether or not they're driving away its customers when they complain publicly.
That's life and the marketplace in general. It's not specific to online gaming.
I think the flip side of this question should be asked. When did it become ok to become a fanboy? I'm not saying you are one or not, and I also have my loves and hates of Neverwinter. But when did it become ok for one customer to berate another because they complain about a product or service? When did it become the moral high-ground? That's what I'd like to know.
In the end you either like something or you don't. It doesn't really matter why (the devs should be the ones caring about "why"), you just accept that some people are going to love, some are going to hate. Why try to berate either group on forums or social media?
Hammerfist Clan. Jump into the Night: NW-DMXWRYTAD
Let me say this. I played EQ1 from about a week after release and for about 5 years after and i must say that EQ1s community was the absolute best MMO experience ive ever had. Were there flame wars? absolutely. Hell, Pandemonium(one of the top 5 guilds in all of EQ) is the reason the average person isnt allowed at E3 anymore. They went there and started a real life pvp session with Fires of Heaven. But with that said the community as a whole was very respectful and if you were a well known player even on the PvP servers you could sit there and have a full conversation with someone from the other team after youve just had a 30min long guild vs guild fight over a boss. There was always an etiquette to huge fights called loot and scoot, which basicly just meant that if your team lost you came and did your corpse run and left the zone peacefully. There were all kinds of unwritten rules that 90% of the server knew and abided by. Handling loot for instance, there was no rolling need or greed. There was typing /random 1 100 and whoever won got to right click that item off the corpse. Items werent put into limbo while being rolled on either, they just sat on the corpse and anyone in the group could just take it at anytime(or if someone wasnt in the group and the loot timer was up they could also run up and loot whatever was on it). So yes EQ had its fights and flame wars, but it also had the most respectable playerbase ive seen in an MMO ever.
There is actually pretty good communication on bugs, exploits are an entire different barrel of fish and most of the time they can't comment on them because they need to keep knowledge of them as limited as possible.
There are several threads on the customer service issues, if you'd actually worked in the customer service for something like this then you'd realise that peoples main complaints that aren't about the time to respond (Tinned replies, cancelling tickets after being in the queue too long) are pretty much a standard in the industry.
If they want to get paid and continue having funding they need to listen to the accountants though. It's like being a child of divorced parents, your father oks you to do some things, your mother tells you too do others, but if you do the stuff your father says you can do in front of your mother she'll tell you off for it.
Beware, a "real casual player" doesn't even go on the forums, they don't spend so much time in the game to know what they can't do in therms of skill/time investment.
Hardcore players demand, but generally don't leave istantly because of the time invested and often run around problems.
So it all started when people started to demand for easy win and payed win (it doesn't surprise that the latter is more than enough for a company). F2P games will never appeal hardcores (edit: in the sense that companies won't target hardcores) since the money come from those "casuals" I was talking about in the first sentence, the ones who are willing to pay to overcome their lack of ability to get what they want (be it either skill or time or whatever else). Social networks only boost game, they don't really take them down.
F2P games are sustained by free riders, or those "casuals" (the bad casuals) would have an empty game, no chance to do most easy content, no tricks explained on some website or videos on youtube. They are also the non-loyals, those who play this game a few, then jump to another one to blame that company instead of this one.
But they are many, and many of them are willing to pay to succeed. And they rotate. So there isn't much to discuss about this, companies are there to make moneys, not games, it just happens that game designers WORK making games:) I'm not sure there is even a single game company out there that focus on establishing an elite of players and focus on that. Every single one will focus on getting new players and appealing players who just started and aren't demanding for new content, but just new skins/mounts/(insert whatever) and requests to dumb down the content already existing so they can do it.
I generally don't demand for what I am not able to do.
/endofrant
p.s. I'm not saying casuals are bad, I'm a rather casual gamer now with a hardcore past. I'm just trying to underline that there is a toxic component in the mmos community which define itself casual, but it's just bad and unwilling to improve. Everyone starts as "bad", somebody may not improve past a certain point, but the "bads" I'm talking about are the ones who will never trade demanding for trying.
read the p.s., you are a real casual, not a "bad" and fake one.
However what everyone needs to understand that Neverwinter is a game and if you are not having fun then stop playing it. Simple. If there is a game that is more enjoyable play that instead. Loyalty to a computer game is kind of silly...
You're searching for something that sadly will possibly never exist again. Least not till the next true WoW2(or game of such caliber).
This may sound cold but they are not our friends, they are the providers of a service and/or a product. Our relationship is one of business and nothing more: Their existence and wellbeing is justified only by the quality and rarity of the product they provide.
If they want me to act like they are Bay12 they can begin by adopting their business model, communication skills, and uniqueness. Their mad game design skills wouldn't hurt, either. Until then they will continue to receive the McDonalds treatment.
ROFL. Where do you work that its considered "a standard in the industry" to close two week old tickets? And yes that is what those posting on the forums complaining about closed tickets had claimed. Before the mods started removing the info because posting it is against rules.
I explained it further down the post, I'll post it here again for you
That doesn't explain anything. Two weeks is not acceptable for a ticket purge. A two week old problem is still recent. Cancelling a two week old ticket is not acceptable anywhere else. Even here if the agent responding to the ticket doesn't understand the problem or thinks its fixed already they give a notice. A period of time for you to update a ticket to stop it from being cancelled.
The only reason they cancelled tickets was because they didn't have enough people to answer them. They practically said so when they mentioned hiring more, then mentioned hiring more yet again.
This.
The standard MMO model these days isnt to build a quality long lasting product that people can invest in, Its to build a cynical cash grab thats just good enough to lure people in to the cash store so the whales can spend their entire paycheck on telling themselves how much a better asupporter thay are of a game than the lazy, filthy, unwashed free2p masses.
How dare we try to keep our friends informed on games that arent worth wasting their valuable time on.
I mean, Its not like when I told friends ingame on STO that Marvel heroes wasnt worth playing that I did it out of spite so much as I didnt want them losing 60+ hours trying to extract fun out of a funless game.
There is that, but then there is also just being hateful. I remember D3's rocky launch. Some players had log in issues so they started an actual campaign against the game. Recruiting on various forums to get people to 1-star the game on all review websites. Just because they were having trouble logging in. From that point on when people started complaining about actual issues with the game... someone would suggest/start doing it again.
I think most just don't want to see anything that hateful started here.
"Sir, were now surrounded"!
Thats great news son, now we can attack from ALL sides"!
I recommended the game to my friends and the entire WoW guild (while noting the flaws and highlighting the strong sides). I bought some Zen as a way of support towards the developers. I keep playing. I post on the forums to offer my thoughts. But there are many things that I still consider in need of attention, and there are business practices that greatly annoy me.
I feel like they are driving more people away with their outrageous Zen prices than they realize. With the fact that you cannot buy a permanent slot (or slots) for other specs, but have to go for a silly respec token every time. The fact that bank space is expensive and not even account-wide. That inventory bags are stupidly priced. That boss design is nothing but lazy. And so on.
If you give the impression that you care more about milking the players as much and for as long as possible rather than focusing on the important game issues, it's not going to be easy to get rid off it.
I often keep wondering why MMO games don't actually offer any proper loyalty bonuses for those who support them the most. Say, something like: for every 10k Zen bought you get a permanent 1% price drop on all products (stacking, can be capped at 10% or 20%). Or some sort of a gift. Even a proper communication with players would go a long way (like Blizzard is doing, even if it took them years to get there). There are so many potential options.
It's true that some players can go too far in their hate, but I have yet to see a case where it was completely unjustified.
The Diablo 3 you mention was so much more than just issues with logging in. Poorly optimized graphics-wise (causing issues for various hardware sets), numerous errors abound, the servers being nowhere near stable, and to top it all off the players were denied an opportunity to play without having an Internet connection (which rightfully pissed off a lot of people). Unlike previous Diablos, the developers decided that you always had to stay online. Just because. They made that decision for you. I won't even mention how big of a disappointment the game itself was, not doing justice to its legacy. First time ever I regretted buying something from Blizzard.
Then there was the case with Mass Effect 3 and its horrible/laughable "endings", greatly undermining the value of the entire - otherwise incredible - trilogy. Plus greedy DLCs and an outrageously arrogant attitude towards the playerbase. And since we had already been treated with less-than-stellar Dragon Age 2, I felt that Bioware/EA deserved everything that was coming at them.
We players can certainly be a whiny bunch who like to exaggerate and blow things out of proportions, but it isn't all unprovoked. Many developers/producers have dropped the ball in the recent years, and without any sort of backlash they would just continue to do so.
Players are more demanding nowadays, and it's good. They have the right to be. They vote with their time and their wallets. We have projects like Kickstarter, which will hopefully bring a much needed breath of fresh air, changing some of these stale business practices. And force the companies to start caring again.
"Were the game to die, all of those people would be out on the street. We're talking unemployment, loss of house and property, possible divorce and child custody, the whole bit." -- could you be anymore dramatic? /rolls eyes
I'd disagree on that. Let's use EQ as an example. To start getting end game gear required a guild and being able to be at a set spawn at a set time. Period. If your raid wasn't there, your guild missed their shot, and the next guild in the rotation stepped in. This is because there were no instances - that raid boss was the *only* spawn. Just one. Not one per group. One.
So, if you're me, with a young kid who might awaken at any particular moment in the night, you're unreliable in a group setting. So you don't group. And you certainly can't plan to spend a few hours raiding.
That loot, therefore, in unobtainable by me. I do not have an equal chance that some jobless teen spending 16 hours a day grinding has. Even if the time we put in is anywhere *near* the same at some point, I still will have no way to get gear that good.
Cut to NW. If I set up some alts, run leadership, invoke regularly, maybe even get lucky at the AH, I can build up the AD to buy end game gear. Will it take longer than running CN? Yeah, it will. But - and this is the important thing - I have the opportunity to get that gear somehow.
Best of all? I don't have to pay $60 for the game, or $15/month to get it. In fact, if I'm really good at the AH, or can get lucky enough to get a dungeon run in (and a drop to go my way), I may even end up with some nice stuff from the Zen shop without pulling out my wallet. EQ? "Here's our new expansion. $60 please. Unless you want to fall behind the gear curve and be 5-10 levels behind the rest of the players...". Every. 6. Months.
Nah, this is more how it went here:
A moderator walks in and tells the Devs there is this mob of people on their forums, apparently they are GF's or something - maybe that means girlfriends?
Eventually someone in the room catches on and goes "Oh yeah, Guardian Fighters! We have a class like that! ...I think"
"Anyway, what do they want, since you mentioned there's a bunch of them on our forums?" the dev looks a bit puzzled at the mod.
"They are all claiming that something called a "block" is broken" the mod hesitantly tries to explain.
A lightbulb appears over a dev's head "Oh right, that's one of their powers - what do they mean broken? How on Earth can it be broken? Anyway, I'll handle it." The dev goes to the forums and returns a few moments later, looking completely baffled.
"Well? How'd it go?" the moderator asks.
"Well... I went on the forum and told them "Man, you guys are trippin' - your block ain't broken, it's working as intended."
"Oh? It is? So they were just making all that racket for nothing?"
"Pretty much, and they got real uppity with me when I told them it's friggin' WORKING! So I told them so long and thanks for all the fish, I'm not talking to you uncouth masses anymore!"
A week later the devs acknowledge something might actually not be working as intended, and a week after it gets fixed.
Do you have experience with Cryptic games? With Cryptic's history of being much less than honest with the community? Of outright lying to them not once, but multiple times?
The loyalty you speak of is engineered through marketing nowdays, not through honest effort.
I'll tell you what the difference was. The market for those games was very, very small. People, with credit cards and lots of free time, who were technical, detail oriented, and socially isolated. It was a niche market. Back then it was UO, EO, DAoC, and AO. That was literally *it*. The Developers knew their playerbase was not only very small but once they were locked into one game it would be unlikely they'd have time or money for another.
Now? The market is HUGE. F2P games rely on bringing in as many people as possible hoping that some small percentage of them are willing to blow money on the cash store. Anyone who doesn't is a net loss until they do. They do not and cannot care much about their audience because 95% of the audience is static noise.
You are trying to equate two different eras of games , which is logically inconsistent.
No, there were no other options and no other games presented with more polish.
Compared to other launches, NW was abysmal. SWTOR, for all it's flaws, had a flawless launch.
Compared to other PVP types, this is sub-standard.
Compared to other amounts of bugs, this is sub-standard.
People are upset and complaining because of HYPE that has not been lived up to, HYPE pushed by the publishers and social media. Most of the upset people were once hopeful fans. How long are you supposed to maintain faith in a product before you realize you are being screwed out of your time and money?
It is not and has never been the responsibility of the CUSTOMER to ensure the marketability of the COMPANY. If you think otherwise you are not even trying to look at this in an objective light.
I guess my question is, when did it become acceptable to imply that your own opinion should be held over that of thousands of others? People ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THE GAME. Cryptic has LIED. Cryptic has FAILED TO DO WHAT IT SAID IT WOULD. Thus, people are upset and UNHAPPY.
I'm supposed to give Cryptic the benefit of the doubt, when I've seen them screw over the STO and CO bases for YEARS?
People are supposed to put up with a myriad of issues that make the game unenjoyable, so you can bring in OTHER people who will be unhappy?
I'm not sure you aren't a social media spinner.
Who cares?
Do you think about that when you throw a temper tantrum when your cable service goes out during the game? Do you care when you stiff the waitress a tip? Do you care when you leave a nasty note for the manager at a restaurant because something was off in your dinner?
If Cryptic wants people to not bash them then they need to take stronger measures to reassure the community. They haven't, and they won't, because PWE does not care as long as the money comes in, and they've PUBLICALLY said so.
If I pay money for a given product I expect it to work, or I expect my money back. In this situation, people get neither, but we're supposed to feel sorry for the people who jilted us out of our money?
The only thing wrong with this community is that too many people are willing to be walked on just to feel like they're part of a community.
Loyalty must be earned.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
Nor can those defects be fixed as easily as software.
RE: features that are coming...
D&D always had more content coming at a later date.
Original D&D only had a handful of classes.
And Neverwinter is free.
You get what you pay for. Plus some extra stuff.
New content has been added already. And more content is on the way.
Now you hit end game withing a few days or weeks, the content is linear, it's the same thing over and over again.
I've played the original Ultima games, even though the graphics are not comparable to games today, the content and game play is actually better. I wish they would bring back some of those games with the current graphics of games today.
Customer service is also an issue when it comes to loyalty in MMOs, poor customer service = no loyalty. Sadly, there isn't any real laws that govern how online gaming companies deal with customer issues. (Meaning, they don't have to provide live support or provide customers with contact numbers in case of problems.)
All in all, the way gaming companies treat their customers, they shouldn't expect loyalty.
To PW im a potential customer, nothing more. They want me here and in the games they make, so they can get me to use money. They dont care who i am, where i am, what am doing nothing. All they wanna know is my credit card number.
Its up front and its fair game. But for them to get me to spend money they have to have something i wanna pay for. Its all about the money, so stop the nonsence about loyalty plz.
15 years ago, we have a few games to pick from, so we tolerated alot. Now a new one pops up all the time, so we have demands to the games we put our money in.
My experiance says, people want stable more or less finish games. New content always on the way. A fair for all game, meaning not P2W. Some respons on complains. Information of all kinds.
If you like PW did in this case ( if you ask me ), put out a new game that brings nothing new to the scene, they better score some good point when it comes to the stuff i just listed.