Ooh dear ...

He must have scrubbed the posts as well - my impression is he started locking them once Benito posted in the episode 3 thread.

Shocker, I know.

I read most of the first 2 transcriptions and skimmed the third pretty deeply. Maybe because I did all three at once and not once per week, but something feels off to me about them. And maybe it's just my interpretation of a written transcript of a verbal medium. I think Rhodris mentioned in the comments on how they felt there was a bit of a dismissive tone to player concerns, and I have to agree.

Big sticking points for me: The whole community council BS. WTF are the forums for, then? Are we supposed to believe you'll suddenly start listening to players on some sort of PR council when you've been ignoring reports and complaints in the forums for years? Next, trying to shift blame. If you have problems meeting milestones because of personnel issues that is first a management failure on the talent acquisition side, and second, a failure of the producer/creative director team. Turnover and churn are a fact of live in modern business, especially when programming talent is involved. If you didn't account for that and your product is a steaming pile of **** with polish in the cracks, that's about to catch fire on an island floating in a pool of gasoline - then don't release it! Especially don't release it, then go dark for the holidays and wait until after the New Year to communicate.

Ditto what others have said about flurry, stat bloat, etc. And you want to add class balance and a complete AA revamp as part of two game updates and an expac release this year? This isn't a plane landing with a wing on fire. This is a plane full of refugees that's on fire, crashing into a fuel refinery, as a train carrying chlorine, ammonia, and white phosphorous derails directly into the aircraft.

Call me quaran-cranky, but I can barely stand to visit the forums anymore. Too afraid if I start a post or reply, that I'm going to end up venting and get hit with Kander's ban-bat again. It's nice that Dreamweaver is making an effort for the players. But F*ck Kander, and f*ck his 'Marie-Antoinette-let-them-eat-cake' podcast.

IF they include some of the hard questions in the Q&A episode, I may revise that opinion. Until then it's like one of Jared Kushner's buddies is running a game studio and shoveling a pile of **** around to keep the masses happy.

 

This is their main problem and will remain so until they let devs focus on dev work and marketing/community managers focus player feedback AND have a voice that will be heard once they assess what the players want. What is really boils down to is a management problem.

 

I was on the EQ1 community council thimg. Class rep etc. They actually took a lot of our feedback. No idea why EQ2 is always so divided. This was years and years ago though so it might be the same now.

 

Really can't blame Dreamweaver for doing it.

Consider a plausible theory:

(1) Kander is going to keep being dishonest.
(2) People will expose it.
(3) Kander will claim people are being malicious and negative, and stop doing the podcasts.

Fact is, when he doesn't have to say anything, it makes it easier for him.

Regardless of whether it's that they don't want their work criticized or to be called out for misleading people, it's hard for me to accept that the idea of transparency is going to work.

 

I'm not blaming DW. It rests solely on Kander.

 

I've done transcribing, so I completely understand how difficult and time-consuming it is (1hr of speech = roughly 4hrs transcribing). I very much appreciate Mercy's labour of love in transcribing the podcasts for those who are hard of hearing. As I said in the post, the *laughter* does not transfer well to a transcription. Perhaps Mercy would be better to not include that in future transcriptions (she already edits out all the uhhs and umms).

One of the repliers to the thread said that if I'd listened to the podcast I'd get a better sense of context. While this is true, the reason for the transcription is for those who can't hear well....so their suggestion somewhat defeats the purpose, really.

My comment was in NO WAY a criticism of Mercychalice. I tried to be very gentle with it, but Kander is still full of shite and I wouldn't trust him further than I could throw him.

 

You really need an answer to this?
Well - here we go: Because Kander is so full of himself.

 

My stance is different as the worldwide economy has and will severely crippled. DPG will have to fight for every account / player and keep those as long as possible.
I don't think Kander has the option or choice to cancel the podcast if things don't go his way. I would think that he knew he would get the heat once those started. Company employees above him will also have a say in this.
After all he is the mainface now for all the design decisions after Holly left.

Devs can communicate all day long that they want to design many more expansions after Luclin. IF the players leave than the chances of this game surviving for long are slimmer than Trump holding a Coronavirus briefing without a faux pas.

My biggest concern for the Resource Community Roundtable is that player and Devs are running in circles. It is very much known for a longtime, and Kander admittet it in the Podcast, that crafting needs a designated Dev / person. How is this Roundtable going change this ?
Asking the "Voices" of crafting (Wilhelmina, Niami, Cyrrena & Co) to do the job of a dev without a job is unacceptable.
Niami for example has a family and also health problems so burden her with that task.......

What's next ? The Kander calls Feldon :" Hi Buddy, can you design casual content with Kaithell. We need more peeps for quest design. Just for the good old times"

People are religiously saying to put the class Balance to put on the Test Server atleast a week, better two weeks, before GU launch. A long with the Ideas behind it. They all know how much this will have an affect on the player base.

I reiterate what i said before - The next GU will be important for the game.

 

Past experience suggests that even if they put class balance changes on an open beta for a month it won't matter.
Not because the players can't/won't find bugs or problems, but because the devs don't use beta/test for feedback, once they put it there, in the past at least, they are neither looking for, nor interested in, player feedback beyond 'we love it' and something that is an actual bug in the code, as opposed to something that is broken by design.

 

Yup.

"We could care less what you think about our design decisions, but we're happy to let you de-bug our product for us."

 

Test is useless, because there is no way for people to remain relevant to anything remotely endgame.

Beta is useless because they don't run it, and there are no incentives for people to do it.

It's easier to throw the **** against the wall and see what sticks.

 

I am reminded of Dragon Age Inquisition where the barbarian cheiftan lobs goats at your castle with a catapult...


for those that may not have played Inquisition:

 

No mentioning Dragon Age!

Just makes it easier to miss Domino.

 

That's a nice way to put it.

 

Kander wears his sunglasses during streams, so he can, so he can -- keep track of game bugs in his eyes.

Developers love to forget how many of us have been actively modding games for years, not to mention playing them since long before they were ever employed by their company. I do understand the skepticism, since plenty of people (particularly the loudest ones) have absolutely horrible ideas. That being said, to brush something off like that when you're clearly doing a bad job, yourself, is just hubris.

 

That is really great and admirable. But that doesn't change the point i am trying to make.

Holly and Kander were telling us that they were actively hiring talent back in December /January. So they knew there were devs/personal missing for crafting and casual questing and yet those positions are not being filled.

Now Kander says in the podcast that the Resource Community round table should be a source of " Brainstorming" for crafting. He effectively asks the player to design content instead of recruiting devs. First creating very little content and asking sometimes for a premium and on top asking player to come up with more content......

Kander's Baby is the Overseer Mission system as i understand, it speaks volumes for the "Creative" Director to come up with that garbage.

The "understaffed" argument is no longer valid for me. They had time for the Mercenary Battalion Buff and Overseer Missions which are both pure P2W. The resources could have been put into actual content.

 

To paraphrase a dev I very much liked from another game in response to the majority of player feedback. "It's not that your ideas are bad, it's just that you don't know what you're talking about so they're useless".

I can tell you all day long about what I want in a car, an omelette, a song, etc. but if I don't actually know what goes into making a thing or what can be done with how the thing is made, how much value does my input have? The more voices the more potential to mess it up. "This Supra is super sweet, but he'd like more cargo space and she'd appreciate several more cup holders". "Ok, we can only do so much but here's an 89 Dodge Caravan that meets all of your needs". FUUUUUUUUU!...

I first got turned off on the focused player feedback thing with DAoC years ago, and I'm still not sure it's worth a crap. To me it comes off as more a way to pander than to get things done. More, 'always give them the impression that you care' type of b.s. Just my opinion, though.