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[Column] General: We Must Stop Poisoning the Well
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
MMORPGs have come a long way from the time when choices were few and the announcement of a new game was something people generally got excited over. These days, it seems like the announcement of a game in development is opening the gates for an mass game of ‘let’s predict what will go wrong with this project before it even launches’. While there’s nothing wrong with discussion or debate, the rise in social media and various platforms granting voices to the community seems to have also led to a sour edge to it all.
Read more of Christina Gonzalez's The Social Hub: We Must Stop Poisoning the Well.
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Comments
to the Op it's great you enjoy the game. Your criticism of "everyone else" would be more valid if only yourself and those who currently find the game enjoyable were the only ones it was marketed towards. Note I'm not judging weather the game is good or bad in and of it self, but any title that receives this much drama pretty much defines mis-targeted marketing. Any product sent in to a market; rises or falls on how that market receives it. If one wishes to avoid "mean" people from that market, don't bloody go out of your way to target them, pretty simple concept.
Yes, Hype is a bad thing before a game comes out. However, defending poorly made products that have had literally millions thrown at them is even WORSE than "poisoning the well".
Stop defending and apologizing for horrible products like SWTOR, GW2, and ESO. They made horrible mistakes in their development process, and failed to actually "capture" their target audiences for a REASON.
It's also not impossible to get a good "feel" for how a game will play by looking at pre-launch media such as developer interviews and gameplay footage. If it looks like garbage before launch it'll most likely be garbage at launch. This is how it was for both SWTOR and ESO. We weren't "poisoning the well", we were pointing out blatant issues people were apologizing for on the developer's behalf like rabid fanboys.
I'd like the OP to re-write their article about how hype and misconceptions are ruining the MMO industry in favor of large companies making profit off of horribly designed products to begin with.
There is no proof whatsoever that is it the "most successful western MMORPG after WoW". EvE has proven it has more sub numbers per month paying $15 each than SWTOR has in F2P contributions.
EvE is currently the best "Western" MMORPG on the market currently according to actual subscriber numbers they released unlike SWTOR whom "fluff" their numbers with accounts that are no longer active.
Because SWTOR fired most of its staff, which they had planned on keeping, and went f2p, probably prematurely. Because of this, one of SWTOR's best features (class stories) had to be discontinued. if people had given SWTOR a little more patience it would be in much better shape today.
I'm willing to wait and give a new MMO time to implement features i love if, and only if, they get the basics correct. By that i mean a huge, scary, and dangerous world to explore as well as a solid group dynamic.
I really have no patience for a small world full of invisible walls or a 4-man group size with no class diversity. I really don't care what they add on top of that.
And thats just it. I cant speak for ESO because I loathe the combat so havent bothered with it, but neither GW2 or SWTOR was a bad product. People can't seem to understand the difference between 'bad' and 'not for them'. I am guilty of it myself sometimes.
I don't even have to read the article to say that it is all very true.
I have BearKnights previous two comments to back me up on that.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
"world as large as WoW’s, housing, content, open world PvP, a bounty system, enough quest content to last a lifetime, a completely robust endgame system that includes many dungeons, all original and procedurally generated, a whole bunch of unique raids, multiple gear tiers, crafted gear supremacy, sandbox gameplay, and content updates every couple of weeks, no cash shop, a cash shop selling only cosmetics and non-essential items, player battlegrounds, open world exploration, player bounties, PvE servers, RP servers, multi-class systems, death penalty"
Sounds like a perfect MMO
Hmm while i am sure there is some truth to this, developers need to stop releasing rotten carcasses.
By this i am talking about bug ridden, exploit-a-ganzas, with no team ready to deal with the obvious bot/gold seller problems. How after so many years of playing MMO's with AAA devs who have years of experience can we still be getting the same exact problems with every release.
I think of one game that even comes close to a decent release in the past 5 years and that was Guild Wars 2, with the exception of them be blinded by the goldseller issue. Even with all that they design a half assed idea with the living story 2 week update, grated they are trying to change the genre, but i dunno... it always seems to be half assed.
TESO they decide to bank on the megaserver idea, quite honestly the megaserver idea has been the single most problematic decision for TESO, you can trace back bugs and glitches and a lot of them are direct results of the megaserver.
Wildstar is releasing soon, but they want to stick with the tried and true, but the optimization of that game is horrid, i do not care if someone s getting great FPS, there are clearly areas of the game that tank even the mightest of systems.
Do i need to even explore the terrible decisions of SWTOR ?
So sure, as gamers we need to maybe pull back on the anger and vitriol, but, the devs need to do better when it comes to polish and release, just because the game is a live game with expected updates weekly/monthly/whatever, does not mean you can ignore those of us supporting your game and paying for a beta test. Seems like the devs need those pre-orders, if thats the case maybe they need to start making it worth our while again ?
Lolipops !
My tip would be to go to the Wildstar beta forums and post this exact message, the best place to ask for help is the actual forums for the game itself, or at minimum a fan site for the game, as those folks are going to have the most experience with said game and be able to give you faster, more efficient help.
The problem is simple and is not high expectations.Developers have not advanced the genre one bit,they have remained entirely stagnant.What has happened is that developers are using a lot more marketing and under handed gimmicks to lure money out of people's pockets.It used to be make a game and see if people like it.
Now developers are even making less than standard products meaning not a very good effort and telling us how great their game is.Well sorry Mr.Dev guys but your game is ONLY as good as we say it is,well unless you want to buy a million copies of your own game,problem is you won't make any profit that way.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Its simply not the communities fault. Many game companies have been repeating the same mistakes, time after time. Driven by greed they try the WoW model over and over, even when its clear they need to change direction. Or they go the other way and let a creative guy with great ideas but no management skills run the show alone, even when they try to pack every possible type of gameplay into one and fail at everything. Or they believe their own hype and decide they know best, even if 99.9% of their target audience hates what they are doing- its art damn it. If players reached a point where they expect failure, its only because we have been watching the same disasters repeat themselves for a decade.
Are players the ones poisoning the well, or game devs by continually making crap that people have been unhappy with? Players are demanding this quest hub crap stop. We are not playing these linear, shallow games.
There are more options now more than ever, and devs better step it up when you have games like DDO, Rift, EQ2, etc f2p. Because quite frankly they are a million times more fun than ESO or SWTOR or GW2. We don't want these boring games. We have more than enough options of quest hub garbage.
except its not clear.
This post is kind of proof that communities ARE at least partially to blame. Almost everyone thinks they speak for everyone else.
There is without question a market for themeparks.
If this is true, why does SWTOR have as many people playing it as the first group of games likely does combined? GW2 might as well.
An oversaturated market.
And it grows every year.
There is room for something else when 99% of all "MMORPGs" are themepark, quest grinders.
I have killed 10 rats and collected 400 woozles and been the hero too many times to count and cannot take it anymore. Running around from point A to point B doing the same linear "story" as the other 5 million "Heroes" of the world.
Options, my friend. You have yours, and I have mine. And fun is subjective. I just think a lot more people agree with me than you're willing to admit. Even so, doesn't matter a lick if I don't like the game.
It's like a shill, wrapped in an apologist, smothered in viral marketing sauce...and it still tastes like crap..
One more time, it's not the customers "fault" that a game isn't well received .
Fun is very subjective, of course. I fail to see the difference in the first group of games from the second group you listed except that ESO is still sub based. The others were all sub based at the beginning and switched to F2P either early in the game's life (Rift and SWTOR) or later (eq2). GW2 was B2P from the start.
I guess I'd like to know what the supposed "other" group of people like you enjoy that is different because all of those games are quest grinders and are all on similar pay scales with ESO being the exception for now.
Although I agree with op I think it's a bit hypocrite or naive post since we all know this is like the LOL of mmo forums, And they've been ok with that from the beggining and even almost encouraging this behavior.
So now they think their forum dwellers are toxic? well duh.....
MMORPGs came a long way, but gamers also. We were haunted with mediocre and outright bad games a lot. We learned the difference between hype/advertising and the actual gameplay. We learned that going live with a bug ridden piece of beta software is the new normal. We also learned that it is a new normal to have paid alpha tests instead of proper QA.
Then another dev/publisher comes along with a big and expensive IP, stuffs the media with hyped up trailers, interviews, previews and whatnot and delivers in the best case an okish game which is not even near the promises and not even near the possibilities of the budget.
And then another.
And the next.
Yep, one more.
And the player should keep quiet and just take it from the rear over and over again without voicing how majorly ripped off he feels from time to time?
Fat chance.
And one more time MMORPG.com attempts to defend a major advertiser...
...by blaming the customers for the poor quality of the product? Again?
I suspect most of us are less concerned about how feature rich a new MMORPG may be than we are concerned that the "promised" features actually work. Consider: Who sets up players' expectations?
--The developers.
--The marketers.
--Their advertisements (aka paid reviews).
--Their shils in the forums.
--Their promises of great and wonderful things that are new and unique so we should spend our money on their product and not on someone else's product.
Do the players force these "expectations" onto the developers? No. So, when the players experience something that doesn't meet expectations, whose fault is it?
MMORPG.com continues to lose what little credibility it has left with these repeated attempts to rationalize a bad product. ESO could have been a great game, but it isn't. ZOS didn't listen to its testers. ZOS didn't get a clue from the massive cancellation of pre-orders after the open Beta sessions. ZOS hasn't gotten a clue from the massive cancellation of subscriptions.
ZOS built up player expectations with a whole lot of marketing hype and then didn't deliver on the product they promised.
FACT: That is not their customers' fault.
I've learned that people will never take the advice that negativity is contagious. To them it's always being realistic. The dark cloud that always follows them around as they look upon the world is there because that's the way the world really is, not because of the years they've spent looking for it in everything. People who are positive or are enjoying things are just blind to the bigger picture that only they seem to see.
I'm not really surprised by the responses in this thread. It's more " I'm just being realistic "
Very solid post.