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My Opinionated Response to Chris Cao's Statement
Opinionated1
Member Posts: 22
I posted the following response in Chris Cao's thread on the official boards before Thunderheart locked it. I want it to be preserved so even though our voices on the matter have been officially silenced, at least one statement which I feel reflects the opinions of so many who have been affected by the CUNGE can be still be seen
Roughly 80% of the people who play SWG never read these boards. We know this from our own internal metrics and it poses an interesting question. Are we talking to people who play the game or posters who play the boards?
In many cases, probably the latter. However, since the NGE robbed many people of the playstyles they found fun and entertaining and left them with stuff that, for the most part, the preferred to avoid in the game, it has become more fun for them to "play the boards," as it were.
I don't mean to imply that the people who post here don't play the game. Far from it. There are thousands of well-constructed, thoughtful, and insightful posts from people who obviously know the game very well. Just read a few lines of these gems and you'll realize that, first and foremost, these people care about the game. Their focus is the game. I think the lion's share of the profession feedback in the last couple publishes is a fantastic example of these players who post.
How nice of you to recognize those who post feedback on the professions you've already revamped. But those who really need some recognition and attention are the ones who have been posting feedback on the professions that have, for all intents and purposes, been ignored since your precious NGE was dumnped on them and they were moved from marginalized to totaly useless as far as practical applications go. I am talking about the Crafters and Entertainers, whose only feedback from SOE of late has been the news that they must wait yet again for their concerns... no... their totally broken role in the game to be addressed. All the combat professions, even those which have not received much in the way of a revamp can DO what they are supposed to: Fight things and get somewhere doing it. Crafters can craft and Entertainers can entertain, but the are not able to really contribute to the player community as a whole the way that any given combat profession can. This is NOT a good thing. So do something about it.
But, at the same time, these boards are constantly cluttered by the reverse. Posters who play. They use these forums to lash out at others, criticize wantonly, and generally feed their own egos.
Yes, there are posters here who do that.
They regularly attack devs and moderators, clinging to past wrongs and imagined slights.
Uhm... They cling to past wrongs because no real effort has been made on SOE's part to right them. In fact, in most cases, there is little effort on SOE's part to even admit that they HAVE committed a wrong. The NGE pretty much wronged the entire subscriber base, and it took forever for your boss to admit that the way the NGE was implemented may have been a little too sudden. I guess half of an admission is about as good as we can hope for. But the fact that YOU have clearly acknowledged that a wrong has been committed deserves a nod and a thumbs-up. As to the imagined slights, there sure seem to be lot of people who share the same imagination.
You guys RUINED most of your pre-NGE customers' enjoyment of the game. Many tossed in the towel and left the ring, but some stayed. They are patient, but their frustration and anger are growing. The more you corporate suits marginalize them and ignore them, the more you are, in effect, slighting them. That is not imagination. It's reality.
They focus on themselves instead of the game. To them, the boards are the real game.
That is true. Because to them, the real game they once found in SWG is gone, and you guys take great delight in repeating that it is never coming back. Yet they hold out hope that someone at SOE or LEC will finally get a clue by actually examinging the customer base trend before the CU ran the first wave of players off and after the NGE ran the next wave off. The proof is in the pudding, Chris.
It has been said that even early on, there was a slow hemorhaging of the player population that was a sign of a major flaw. No. It was a sign that those who were playing SWG just to pass the time while waiting for some other "me too" MMO to come out were going where the belonged... ELSEWHERE. Those who truly enjoyed the game had no desire to leave. Until the CU kicked them in the left nut, and the NGE crushed the right one. Then they couldn't get away fast enough. Another contribution to the hemorhaging was those who had multiple accounts so they could play different styles on one server began to get into a primary character and many started to realize that they didn't NEED multiple accounts. Or at least, not as many.
What your beancounters saw as hemorhaging, I suspect was simply your subscriptions reaching equilibrium. Do you think that WoW will KEEP its 6 million subscribers? I give it about 9 more months and it will start falling off. WoW is a FANTASY game with swords and dragons and such. MMO fans tend to gravitate towards that type of game.
Even if you take ALL of WoW's gameplay approaches and systems and implement them into SWG, you will NEVER be able to achieve WoW's numbers. Six Million People WANTED a hack-and-slash fantasy MMO. Only a few hundred thousand (still nothing to sneeze at) wanted a STAR WARS MMO. But far fewer than that want the crap SOE has forced on us, because the visible evidence of players in-game (or rather the lack thereof) post-NGE as compared to the CU or Pre-CU days is quantifyable to those who play. Heck, there are occasional times when the Mos Eisley cantina is empty except for a few AFK macrotainers and a couple of AFK combatteers. Before the NGE, that NEVER happened, to my knowledge.
You may say, "That's because they are all out in the wild PLAYING." I call BS on that. Back in the pre-NGE days, I could be out doing a harvester run in the middle of freaking NOWHERE, and I would always run into players out hunting. But now, still sticking to my same playstyle I've had since day one, making the same types of runs, I'm lucky if I see another player at all. And Restus? That's not drawing the masses. I went there as a combat toon I very rarely play just to check it out. I see a few people playing there, but certainly not in the grand epic-scale numbers that by all rights WOULD have been there had the restus plotline found its way into the Pre-CU days. Now THAT would have been awesome! But I digress...
As devs, we aren’t here to play the board game. We’re here to play, and to make, SWG.
So make it. And play it. But let me remind you of a little fact that may have escaped your "superior" intellect: If a person is posting on these boards, be they "players who post" or "posters who play," they are doing so because they have paid their $15 to be able to. They represent a significant percentage of SOE's Star Wars Galaxies revenue. Some of them may well be immature teen-agers playing on daddy's computer (to the teen-aged players out there, I am honored to say that I have seen many mature posts from you). There are also som immature adults as well. But for the most part, the irate griping you so easily belittle is actually justifyable.
The upcoming chapters will see the remainder of the profession expertise systems implemented. We have a lot of work to do and the feedback from players who post is going to be invaluable. You aren’t going to like every decision we make and we understand that. We have a limited resources and time to accomplish all that needs to be done. But, as I’ve said before, we will be here (on the boards) and we will be listening. If you’re up for a focused discussion of ideas, we welcome you and you can bet you’ll have our attention.
Bravo.
If, however, you feel the need to throw another stone,
This would not happen if SOE would just stop doing things that ammount to putting a bullseye on their foreheads and then taunting people by essentially saying, this is how it is, and we're not changing no matter what you say or do!
indulge a rant, whine, pick apart another poster,
These things are justifyably ignored by SOE.
argue a dead point,
Maybe a point that is dead to SOE is in fact alive and suffering to your customers.
rules lawyer,
Well, considering that SOE won't enforce its own rules in some cases which require it, but overinterpret the rules in cases where it isn't really needed (like banning prople for telling the truth or removing their posts, so the truth is being suppressed), a few community "rules lawyers" can't hurt.
quote ancient history,
Not so ancient for some of us who refuse to swallow the slime we're being spoon-fed. We remember what the game USED to be. We want it to be that again. It's what we paid for. It's what we're paying for in the hope it will come again. It's what we, and many who have left, will gladly pay for when it does.
or engage in any of the other classic board game moves, don’t expect us to pay attention. We have better things to do.
In other words, we who are dis-satisfied are expected to stick our proverbial heads in proverbial sand, and wait for the inevitably proverbial kick in the butt. Does that about sum it up? Yeah. I thought so.
It is clear from your statement that what you want is a community of yes-people and brown-nosing soe-buttkissers, and you'll listen and grin (and salivate) to all the attention. But if anyone dares stand up and say what they truly feel, they are to be marginalized, ignored or kicked out. If that is the case, do your worst. Because I refuse to be a yes-man. I refuse to be a brown-nosing SOE-buttkisser. I have every intention of always speaking my mind. Because I want to be involved in the solution, not the problem. But part of the solution is for SOE to really and truly listen to both sides of the issue. And ever since the NGE that has not been happening, if it ever did happen before. Speaking my mind is the only way I see to be able to strive for that. I'm sure many others feel the same.
We have some SWG to make.
Then by all means, MAKE it. But please, don't break it again in the process. The glue that has been slapped on it since you demolished it last time has barely taken hold.
Well, that's it... Any thoughts from those on this board?
In Christ,
G. B. Jackson
The Opinionated One
G. B. Jackson
The Opinionated One
Comments
You were pretty close to spot on, but Chris and the other devs won't care. As far and he and Helios are concerened it's the players fault not theirs that the NGE wasn't welcomed and liked.