Are the Devs stubborn?

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Fear The Amish

Figment i don't disagree with what you are saying but how you are saying it. It honestly what ends up happening is that the way some other vet's like you come off is as entitled elitist whiners that want ps1.5 and most gamers don't want that.

What's a PS1.5?


I'll tell you what PS1.5 is, giving the original PS1 a texture overhaul like they initially planned.

A new game is a PS2. Modern Warfare 2 is not MW1.5 either, is it? Despite the lack of innovation, it's still simply a sequel within the same series and as such plays by certain rules that define the series.

Plain and simple PS1 failed and failed hard because of hardware limitations at the time and an attempt at mixing FPS and RPG elements way to heavily.

I'll give you the first (limitations), but the latter isn't true. That worked fine. Management was the problem from marketing to bad content management (poor expansions and revised development visions).

Personally i have made multiple posts critiquing and suggesting fixes to the game but in a way that isn't written purely to cause drama and hubbub. Also i know multiple vet's that refuse to come here because all it seems to be now a days is a group of angry bitter vets demanding things that A.) don't make any sense in a modern game, or B.) so doom and gloom about this game failing. They would much rather just play the game and report bugs in a constructive manner.

I don't post to cause drama and hubbub, I'm just extremely critical and straightforward in my critique and a lot of people don't have the self-confidence to handle that or are used to subtle postings or take critique WAAAAAY too personal. Especially when I completely trounce an idea (with arguments, of course!). :/

A often heard quote from other veterans about ideas suggested in threads on any PS related forum (not just PSU) is "How can people be so dense and why are you even trying to reason with them?". I try because I have a little higher expectations of people. Even those that post utterly stupid ideas at some point in time have the capacity to provide good feedback. If only they asked themselves some more questions.

The problem with the angry vet post is that what it does is poison the waters of this game friends of mine that never played PS1 come to the official forums and all they see is "PS1 Vet angry about PS2" or "i am done with this game", and multiple other posts of this nature. How do you think a new player takes that? seeing the supposedly passionate and driven individuals that stuck with a broken game for years and refuse to give a game in beta a chance.

If we didn't give it a chance, would we be here? Honestly, people that come to a forum should expect critique to be the number one thing one finds. Why? Because it provides reason for debate.

A thread that says:

"Oh wow, nice rock formation in game."

Creates this response:

"Yeah nice"

"k."

"it's the face of jesus!"

"+1"

While most people will look, say "nice" in their mind and click on.

And is therefore over after one page. People pick what they spend their time on writing and reading. News is the same way. We can talk all day about a disaster flooding, but we won't spend much time on a baby seal being born. There's just no point in the latter even if it would make the news such a happier thing to watch.

Personally i played the ps1 beta i remember it being MUCH MUCH worse then its current incarnation at this time. We all need to remember that for this game to succeed at launch it just needs to be optimized and the bugs at a minimum, and the metagame to be added within the first 1-2 months.

Of course, it was much worse in the early PS1 beta, but we've gone through the exact same whack-a-mole from PS1, just in PS2 on less continents and in a smaller area of the map at a time! That's exactly why it confuses so many PS1 vets that wheels are being reinvented as triangles or hexagons before the devs realise a circle works better after all! Sure, some circles made it in and some hubcaps could just as easily be done with other hubcaps. But why reinvent the wheel itself?

We're confused with why so much time has been wasting reinventing what obviously worked or needed some minor tweaking. Time which could have been put in further innovating, evolving the underdeveloped and developing new ambitions and creating previously non-existent stuff. :/

I'm not saying the devs do a horrible, horrible, horrible job. Of course not. But, given the knowledge of 9 years of playing the game, you just know there's more potential that could have been there now.





Btw, read the thread on "the reactions of non-PS1 players" and notice that things like tank spam and buildings not being defensive enough and being camped constantly are very recurring issues for all players. :/ I maintain that vets, including you, see what causes those things well before a newbee would. Which is why it is so important to be heard now and prevent that newbee from ever going "I hate getting camped all the time without being able to fight back", or going "I hate not being able to play alone as infantry a bit better", or "I want to play infantry, but I have to drive tanks to compete, I don't want that".

Those things, can, should and I'm sure they will be addressed. It's just a matter of time, which we may not have to prevent lots of release reviews about camped outposts everywhere and having no idea where to go and getting ganked from all directions. Bug fixing and performance are also extremely important, but ultimately, I'd rather CTD once a day than get camped without a means of fighting back 24/7.

[Fear The Amish]

Originally Posted by Figment

What's a PS1.5?


I'll tell you what PS1.5 is, giving the original PS1 a texture overhaul like they initially planned.

A new game is a PS2. Modern Warfare 2 is not MW1.5 either, is it? Despite the lack of innovation, it's still simply a sequel within the same series and as such plays by certain rules that define the series.



I'll give you the first (limitations), but the latter isn't true. That worked fine. Management was the problem from marketing to bad content management (poor expansions and revised development visions).



I don't post to cause drama and hubbub, I'm just extremely critical and straightforward in my critique and a lot of people don't have the self-confidence to handle that or are used to subtle postings or take critique WAAAAAY too personal. Especially when I completely trounce an idea (with arguments, of course!). :/

A often heard quote from other veterans about ideas suggested in threads on any PS related forum (not just PSU) is "How can people be so dense and why are you even trying to reason with them?". I try because I have a little higher expectations of people. Even those that post utterly stupid ideas at some point in time have the capacity to provide good feedback. If only they asked themselves some more questions.



If we didn't give it a chance, would we be here? Honestly, people that come to a forum should expect critique to be the number one thing one finds. Why? Because it provides reason for debate.

A thread that says:

"Oh wow, nice rock formation in game."

Creates this response:

"Yeah nice"

"k."

"it's the face of jesus!"

"+1"

While most people will look, say "nice" in their mind and click on.

And is therefore over after one page. People pick what they spend their time on writing and reading. News is the same way. We can talk all day about a disaster flooding, but we won't spend much time on a baby seal being born. There's just no point in the latter even if it would make the news such a happier thing to watch.



Of course, it was much worse in the early PS1 beta, but we've gone through the exact same whack-a-mole from PS1, just in PS2 on less continents and in a smaller area of the map at a time! That's exactly why it confuses so many PS1 vets that wheels are being reinvented as triangles or hexagons before the devs realise a circle works better after all! Sure, some circles made it in and some hubcaps could just as easily be done with other hubcaps. But why reinvent the wheel itself?

We're confused with why so much time has been wasting reinventing what obviously worked or needed some minor tweaking. Time which could have been put in further innovating, evolving the underdeveloped and developing new ambitions and creating previously non-existent stuff. :/

I'm not saying the devs do a horrible, horrible, horrible job. Of course not. But, given the knowledge of 9 years of playing the game, you just know there's more potential that could have been there now.





Btw, read the thread on "the reactions of non-PS1 players" and notice that things like tank spam and buildings not being defensive enough and being camped constantly are very recurring issues for all players. :/ I maintain that vets, including you, see what causes those things well before a newbee would. Which is why it is so important to be heard now and prevent that newbee from ever going "I hate getting camped all the time without being able to fight back", or going "I hate not being able to play alone as infantry a bit better", or "I want to play infantry, but I have to drive tanks to compete, I don't want that".

Those things, can, should and I'm sure they will be addressed. It's just a matter of time, which we may not have to prevent lots of release reviews about camped outposts everywhere and having no idea where to go and getting ganked from all directions. Bug fixing and performance are also extremely important, but ultimately, I'd rather CTD once a day than get camped without a means of fighting back 24/7.

First off MW1 and MW2 can do that because financially and critic wise they were successes PS1 was not. So they have to try other ways which leads to redeveloping the wheel currently seems they decided screw the wheel lets go with Caterpillar tracks instead while different also work.

Secondly on Tank spam that has mostly been resolved with the nerf/buff of aa/air. Also a re prioritizing of what weapons HA carry makes spaming tanks less and less of an option. Also the way that Amerish is designed makes those tank Spam's fall apart very quickly.

Also i agree that if its a good thing or quarky no one writes about it because they would rather do something else. Which would support the argument that most vets aren't bitter vets, Also using your steam group as a sample size is silly because being your steam friends they probably have similar views on the game. I know my Outfit has a lot of vets and most of them are in love with the game. They also realize that this beta release is doing well and when the development team promise the meta game aspects they trust them, and save criticism on that subject until there is something to criticize .

[Shenyen]

Originally Posted by Figment

As for the remainder, disagree heavily with that. A casual player is someone who plays something on and off for no other reason than wasting some time and not thinking too much about it (though it doesn't mean you don't think at all, you just don't think it's the end of the world if you don't get a top score and you won't continue playing to get that top score) nor playing super-competitive. If you spend money on something it doesn't mean you stop being a casual, it means that you think it's worth the money. Nothing else.

When Planetside was released, you were still laughed at when you said you paid monthly rates for a MMORPG or even worse MMOFPS in a games forum.

The Counter-Strike- and Battlefield crowd was very vocal and "I would never pay a monthly subscription fee for a game" was typed into a reply-textfield very often.

That changed only after the release of World of Wacraft.

Nobody with a casual approach to FPS games would have paid 15$ a month to play Planetside for one and a half hours on wednesday, 2 hours on saturday and then again some hours a week later.

If you paid - you PLAYED!

You wanted to get your moneys worth out of the game.

[Nolerhn]

I don't think the dev's are stubborn. They listen to the fanbase and have made changes specifically catered to the vocal crowd. On some issues they must stand their ground, while we have our own vision of what PS2 is, you must remember too that the devs have their own vision. I feel like they've met us in the middle.

They can't appease all requests, but I do feel their relationship with the fanbase is the strongest I've ever seen in the development process of a video game.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by Nolerhn

They listen to the fanbase and have made changes specifically catered to the vocal crowd.

Who else could they listen to? How would one be able to listen to someone else who says nothing or very little (needle in haystack)?

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Crator

Who else could they listen to? How would one be able to listen to someone else who says nothing or very little (needle in haystack)?

Telepathy?

[Tatwi]

Originally Posted by Figment

Telepathy?

Telemetry.

Loads of user generated data thrown into graphs and pattern recognition algorithms.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

Telemetry.

Loads of user generated data thrown into graphs and pattern recognition algorithms.

So we should not voice our opinions at all. That goes for everyone. Forums are useless to devs?

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

Telemetry.

Loads of user generated data thrown into graphs and pattern recognition algorithms.

Telemetry shows where players go and how long they do that. It doesn't say if it is considered good or bad, if players like that or not. For that, you're really going to have to ask the players directly. :/


Remember the one dev that said he had no data that suggested an AMS was needed?

Was this data based on telemetry? On the fact that players took territories with ease and bases flip flopped all over? What data does telemetry provide?

Forum feedback > all other feedback, period.

[Tatwi]

Originally Posted by Crator

So we should not voice our opinions at all. That goes for everyone. Forums are useless to devs?

My comment was more of a silly play on words than it was a statement about the validity of fan/player feedback. Beyond that, my reply to this thread's title was simply, "yes".

This is coming from a person with around 900 posts on the beta forum. I think our feedback is important.

[Crator]

^ Ah, I failed to detect your sarcasm. Nonetheless, good to get out that kind of ideal regardless I think...

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Gaalsien

In many cases it seems like the players know exactly what they want.

As someone that's been just following from the sidelines and not really posting here, the main forums, or on /r/planetside I have found that isn't the case. As with most issues people bring up there's two sides and arguing that there isn't is kind of arrogant.

I personally find a lot of proposed changes for vehicles and the metagame people rally behind here and on the main forums are flawed as much as some of the developer's views. I mean that's just how I view things and from what I can tell others view things way differently.

I wouldn't say they're stubborn as they're just focused on fixing map issues and trivial things at the moment. There's really nothing to say they aren't jotting down notes and waiting to discuss and think about changes for later.