The Silence

Unknown

I for one am glad that prologue healing is no longer an option.
Because now I play less out of necessity which I'm happy about.

Unknown

Agreed, I can reach a decent placement with a 'normal' amount of effort now that there are less infinite grinders to contend with.

Unknown

fidsah wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

Well, it was their choice NOT TO develop a website dedicated to MPQ so they could announce news on it. It was their choice to use Facebook, as a cheap way to make announcements.

It was their choice to implement changes they knew would lead to a riot.

They could have announced True Healing some other way :

"We have found out players are oversusing some characters in the game because of their healing powers. We would like to make some changes to Healing and see how that can enrich player's experience with a more diverse use of one's roster. The change is temporary but could be definite if the experience is positive. Meanwhile, we decided to shift the power of characters so that 3* and 4* are more valueable for the money invested in them. Because the characters' life will be higher, and so as to avoid long waiting times for healing, we will speed up the healing time by X for 3* and Y for 4*. We hope these changes will bring more fun to the game. While we are making this experience Health Packs will be sold with a 50% discount. If the experience proves to be negative for you, we will think about a compensation."

Your other way of announcing it includes a lot of stuff that wasn't part of the decision that was made. Your proposal would have been them lying to us, which is worse.

I want to believe the reasons they put behind True Healing are legit and sincere. Hence the announcement I wrote above.

Whether you are sincere or not, you should never make the customer feel he has been betrayed.

Their poor communication (because they are not marketers) has led customers feel this way over the last weeks. They've reached a point where whatever they will say, they will be bashed.

They have been far in mistaken communication and marketing.

It must be a terrible situation for them also at the moment. I wouldn't like to be in their shoes.

Dayv

ZenBrillig wrote:

It brings up the question - why do people think that the devs should talk to us when their default position is that the devs are lying?

QFT.

"This soup is terrible! And the serving is too small!"

People who insist that they're being lied to and complain that they're not being lied to enough will probably never be happy.

Unknown

Well, communication implies 2 parties.

One party has failed to be considered as trustworthy unfortunately.

They may have considered that communicating here did not matter anymore, their strategy must be somewhere else now. Most probably linked to players who don't come here.

There is at least 100k active players. Very few are members of this forum.

90 % of the users must see MPQ just as a Match-3 and nothing else. D3P must try to think of a way of getting money from these 90%. Must be more profitable than hard core players who can grind 10k Iso a day.

Unknown

Hmm....I pretty much agree with you, but to be honest I was slightly disappointed. For some crazy reason, I thought it was a Doctor Who thread....

Unknown

FaerieMyst wrote:

Why don't the devs talk to us directly? It isn't their jobs. They are not customer service or public relations or social media. There job is to develop a game along the guidelines they are given.

The majority of customers for any consumer product is non-vocal. You can't assume the people here represent the average user. If they tell us something, it isn't believed - whether it is metrics or reasoning behind a change. Why would they want to keep beating a dead horse?

Interacting with a user base is at best a means to an end. At worst, it is a resource suck with no tangible yield.

Forums are a place to interact with people sharing an interest. It's a diversion. It isn't a way to communicate to developers or management. Thinking it should be doesn't make it so.

DP3 makes it clear that this is a user forum.

I'm not sure they make it clear enough based on a lot of the threads on here. I know on many occassions they have stated that they read all the threads, which is at least communication in one direction.

However, now that I think about it, they did not state if they read them to try and make the product better, if they read them whenver they feel like they need a good laugh, or if they have an over/under office pool on how many negative posts a game change can generate. (Here's a tip, always take the over )

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Well, communication implies 2 parties.

One party has failed to be considered as trustworthy unfortunately.

They may have considered that communicating here did not matter anymore, their strategy must be somewhere else now. Most probably linked to players who don't come here.

There is at least 100k active players. Very few are members of this forum.

90 % of the users must see MPQ just as a Match-3 and nothing else. D3P must try to think of a way of getting money from these 90%. Must be more profitable than hard core players who can grind 10k Iso a day.

Actually, in this conversation, both parties are untrustworthy.

The players also have an excellent track record of lying (for example, see "I quit" threads.)

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

Hmm....I pretty much agree with you, but to be honest I was slightly disappointed. For some crazy reason, I thought it was a Doctor Who thread....

Eddiemon

Cryptobrancus wrote:

I just reread my post except interpreting it as some hobo all alone using the royal we and ranting at a dead squirrel.
Just be quiet crazy hobo, he will never answer you...

I am now picturing you as Mr Garrison with a dead squirrel on a stick.

Unknown

ZenBrillig wrote:

Actually, in this conversation, both parties are untrustworthy.

The players also have an excellent track record of lying (for example, see "I quit" threads.)

They are not lying, they are desperately blackmailing.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

I'm not sure they make it clear enough based on a lot of the threads on here. I know on many occassions they have stated that they read all the threads, which is at least communication in one direction.

Probably not the case anymore. In early stages the feedback might have been used or at least considered. For months it is not the case. So why bother. Just as the other direction, IceIX was the only one inserting meaningful content but in the last few sessions he destroyed the remnants of his credibility. Big part of the public now looks at him like he was lawyer or politician.

If has a plan to turn up again probably needs to wait till the current generation leaves (what is happening right now and a mass exodus expected in few days as S3 finishes) and fresh sheep turn up.

DU started the game fit for a wide public -- probably by some lucky overlook -- ever since tries to refit it to low-IQ consumers only. It takes some time.

Unknown

ZenBrillig wrote:

Spoit wrote:

ZenBrillig wrote:

Well, so this seems serendipitous in so many ways.

Recently LOTRO's community manager made public some interesting facts about their player-base and the proportion of raiders and PvPers therein. What followed was a great deal of back-and-forth hostility and accusations of lying.

Massively: http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/10 ... tatements/
Original LOTRO thread: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthread ... the-future

It brings up the question - why do people think that the devs should talk to us when their default position is that the devs are lying?

(Also, an interesting side-point, raiders and pvpers together make up less than 10% of LOTRO players, and yet make up the overwhelming majority of their forum posters. Showing conclusively that the forum is not representative of the community as a whole. The same is true here.)

10% raiders? That seems ridiculously high for a MMO

No, raiders + pvpers < 10%, and raiders < pvpers. So less than 5%.

(Backstory: around the beginning of the year, they announced that there was no new raid content forthcoming for the foreseeable future and the raiders have been in a tizzy ever since.)

The biggest takeaway from the linked threads is that Sapience is an ****, and deserves his bad reputation. He keeps repeating "these are the facts; take them or leave them" but completely refuses to clarify terms so that actual communication can happen. His percentages might be totally accurate, but unless you know what the criteria are for determining "raiders" (this is a somewhat ambiguous term in an MMO context, since not everyone draws the line between "raiders" and "non-raiders" the same way) AND what the denominator of the fraction is as well (are we talking about a percentage of players, accounts, or characters here?) AND whether the resulting percentage is high/low/average compared to other MMOs, you have no basis for properly evaluating the decision to discontinue raid content.

Basically, the "Sapience is lying" crowd have probably jumped the gun in this instance, because his statement doesn't have enough information in it to evaluate. Some of his peripheral claims are surprising to me--I would not have expected the "raider" percentage of the population, however defined, to remain perfectly stable over 8 years--and I'd be interested in seeing more supporting data. However, his credibility takes a pretty big hit when he ignores perfectly civil requests for clarification/more information and only responds to the harsher comments/trolling with bluster.

Unknown

1. Most big companies don't have community managers, let alone smallish development houses / publishers
2. The big companies that do have such people don't tend to have them sat on low-activity forums
3. Big software publishers that do have community managers on forums (e.g. Blizzard) are very careful about the amount of interaction the CM's have
4. Full time CM's don't necessarily have a great time either. Eyonix, one of the WoW forum CM's actually had one forumite tell him that they wished he got "hit by a bus".

So, don't get your hopes up too much.

The other thing to bear in mind is that MPQ is out of it's "nurture" phase and into mid-life now. For FTP games the first few months are generous to players, giving out more 'stuff', engaging more with players, making improvements to general gaming quality. This is to create a group of invested players that feel like they are 'part of the game' and help spread the word to new players. Once you come out of this fast-growth phase (your player base growth flattens out) you're into 'monetisation' phase where you leverage as much money out of this group as possible during the time you have them because, barring a miracle, this is about as big as your active customer pool is likely to get.

The above is very cynical, but I've seen it happen on other similar games a few times now so fairly comfortable that it's the typical model. That said, I actually think that recent changes (true healing etc) have been for the games benefit far more than for monetization, although I'm sure there was an expectation that it would result in greater health pack use.

Unknown

DrUnpleasant wrote:

The other thing to bear in mind is that MPQ is out of it's "nurture" phase and into mid-life now. For FTP games the first few months are generous to players, giving out more 'stuff', engaging more with players, making improvements to general gaming quality. This is to create a group of invested players that feel like they are 'part of the game' and help spread the word to new players. Once you come out of this fast-growth phase (your player base growth flattens out) you're into 'monetisation' phase where you leverage as much money out of this group as possible during the time you have them because, barring a miracle, this is about as big as your active customer pool is likely to get.

Err, let me try to figure out the chicken and the egg. Do you state that this strip-mining course is mandatory in the F2P world or that it's just the usual happening for all the usual reasons?

It's certainly a self-fulfilling prophecy if you start the project for a short time and must exploit it to the maximum in that.

Anyone tried the traditional route to aim for a good game that evolves to a great one and actual respect of its users -- so stay along with good retention and expansion? One would think the running costs and updates are cheaper than the starting up and it would be feasible as business.

Moral

It's vacation season and IceIX hasn't been frequenting the boards yet this month.

The two might be related.

And Demiurge_Will might not feel like putting on the stuntman full-body immolation outfit to fill in. At least that's what I would wear as a developer visiting these boards.

Unknown

Moral wrote:

It's vacation season and IceIX hasn't been frequenting the boards yet this month.

The two might be related.

And Demiurge_Will might not feel like putting on the stuntman full-body immolation outfit to fill in. At least that's what I would wear as a developer visiting these boards.

Actually, he was here on Monday. He just didn't post anything.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

stephen43084 wrote:

I'm not sure they make it clear enough based on a lot of the threads on here. I know on many occassions they have stated that they read all the threads, which is at least communication in one direction.

Probably not the case anymore. In early stages the feedback might have been used or at least considered. For months it is not the case. So why bother. Just as the other direction, IceIX was the only one inserting meaningful content but in the last few sessions he destroyed the remnants of his credibility. Big part of the public now looks at him like he was lawyer or politician.

If has a plan to turn up again probably needs to wait till the current generation leaves (what is happening right now and a mass exodus expected in few days as S3 finishes) and fresh sheep turn up.

DU started the game fit for a wide public -- probably by some lucky overlook -- ever since tries to refit it to low-IQ consumers only. It takes some time.

I'm a bit confused. I'm pretty sure the backlash was related to the changes, not personal for most. He's pretty much the face of the company, so people directed their rage in the company's direction, he just happened to be standing in the wrong spot.

I have noticed people question the intent behind his statement. Personally, I find this laughable. We ask for communication, he gives it (in a lot more depth and explanation than is required of him) and then people tell him what he meant to say instead of listening to what he actually said.

It is curious why he is on here so less frequently. I do not believe it is because of player disgruntlement due to he had started coming on less frequently prior to that. It seems they tend to come on in here only when there are significant changes. I guess his visits might to be tied to the changes are less frequent now. I do not remember the last time we had this long of an uninterrupted period without server issues for one. I am too lazy (or busy, hmm...lets go with busy) to go back and research his posts, but I'm guessing it'll show in the beginning he was here very often while they were doing a lot of changes and fine tuning, while now there aren't many changes and at some point character releases were going to become routine, so he does not come as often.

I guess we'll know who has way more time on their hands if they make a chart.

Unknown

Moral wrote:

And Demiurge_Will might not feel like putting on the stuntman full-body immolation outfit to fill in. At least that's what I would wear as a developer visiting these boards.

D_W only jumps in to up that one-in-thousand post abut how great the game become due to changes.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Moral wrote:

And Demiurge_Will might not feel like putting on the stuntman full-body immolation outfit to fill in. At least that's what I would wear as a developer visiting these boards.

D_W only jumps in to up that one-in-thousand post abut how great the game become due to changes.

I think 90% of his posts are in the bug/technical forum.