T-Ray Q&A with ISK (Addressing vet concerns)

[Nyctalgia]

Hey guys!

Last week I was streaming my merry way around when T-Ray popped into my streams chat. After listening to our members banter for some time he started answering questions in the chat and eventually hopped on TeamSpeak to discuss the game and its future.

He stayed for about 50 minutes and I thought you guys would like to hear what he said as he addressed a few concerns from a bunch of PS1 vets.

YouTube Link
Podcast (audio only)

T-Ray has also started popping in and playing with me while streaming, so if you take a peek while I'm streaming you might catch him.

Outfit is Immortal Serial Killers.

[RodenyC]

Lol he said Planetside 2 is gonna be about what the players think what's best for the game. Can't take the devs serious anymore.

[McFeeble]

Originally Posted by RodenyC

Lol he said Planetside 2 is gonna be about what the players think what's best for the game. Can't take the devs serious anymore.

Why? They listen, consider feed back and implement changes in areas we have concerns, they dont just blindly make changes based on whine from what I can see. I never seen a dev team interact so well and so far have avoided the mistakes ghostcrawler made with wasting time on the forums trolls - who is the closest comparison I know off.

[RodenyC]

Originally Posted by McFeeble

Why? They listen, consider feed back and implement changes in areas we have concerns, they dont just blindly make changes based on whine from what I can see. I never seen a dev team interact so well and so far have avoided the mistakes ghostcrawler made with wasting time on the forums trolls - who is the closest comparison I know off.

Lol no they don't.What have they listen to and changed?The metagame?Suppose to be in the game regardless.Have they fixed bases yet?Have they actually addressed the real issue of driver actually being a driver?Same with Sancs.All the reasons they've said are because of their own personal opinion.That's why I can't take them serious anymore.

[Sturmhardt]

Originally Posted by McFeeble

Why? They listen, consider feed back and implement changes in areas we have concerns, they dont just blindly make changes based on whine from what I can see. I never seen a dev team interact so well and so far have avoided the mistakes ghostcrawler made with wasting time on the forums trolls - who is the closest comparison I know off.

They are releasing the game in 3 weeks, that should suffice to prove that it's not about the game or the players. I have not seen anyone I have a good opinion of who says "Oh yes, the game is ready, release it!". Not once.

€: + What RodenyC says. They are not really responding to the community that much, usually they are just doing what they want, they often don't even explain why. That is something Smed is really good at. Someone has a good idea and he is like "I disagree. We do it my way." Not a single argument. That can be very frustrating.

[Bear]

Originally Posted by Sturmhardt

They are releasing the game in 3 weeks, that should suffice to prove that it's not about the game or the players. I have not seen anyone I have a good opinion of who says "Oh yes, the game is ready, release it!". Not once.

€: + What RodenyC says. They are not really responding to the community, they are just doing what they want, they often don't even explain why. That is something Smed is really good at. Someone has a good idea and he is like "I disagree. We do it my way." Not a single argument. That can be very frustrating.

If you're waiting for this game to be "finished" it never will be. MMO style games are NEVER actually finished. Yes there are still a number of bugs to be fixed and yes there's still things to be changed but this game will NEVER be finished. There are some days where there are 2 or 3 patches rolled out to fix bugs. There's a massive team of coders putting in some crazy hours right now. I think the game will be fine.

World of Warcraft is the most profitable and most played MMO ever. It was also a completely bug filled mess at launch. Many of the quests were broken, some of the game play mechanics didn't work and there was no endgame. Everyone seems to forget that when WoW launched Blizzard (who is famous for holding releases "until finished") had a hell of a time just keeping the servers up. You couldn't log in at times, when you did the lag made the game unplayable and there were times when the game was simply unplayable. When WoW launched the end game was Dire Maul. Year after year new content was added that was broken and patched. Over time, everything got fixed, the same thing will happen with PS2.

If you watch Higby's Amerish preview video there is no way you can say they're not listening to the community.

[Sturmhardt]

Well I really hope that they will dare to change big things after the release.. otherwise this is not gonna be my game for the next 2 years.

But let's not make this thread about the early release again, that was not my point of discussion. I still believe it is at least 3 months too early - but I will not go into detail why, because a) This was done 999999 times before and b) I just wanted to point out that nearly everyone thinks it is too early. Your opinion is pretty rare. If they listened to all the players saying it is too early, we would not have the release in 3 weeks. I just pulled that as an example that they maybe don't have the best player experience in mind.

Btw, I also never saw anyone write why it is a good idea to release so early. They just do it. Originally they had plans to release it in early 2013 if I remember correctly and they wanted to do an open beta. They never explained why they want release so early now, they just said they could do it and we should not worry. Well to be precise Smed said that... so we know there is only a 50% chance it is actually true

My point is, that I don't get the feeling that every action taken is in my best interest (as a player of this game).

[Bear]

Originally Posted by Sturmhardt

Btw, I also never saw anyone write why it is a good idea to release so early. They just do it. Originally they had plans to release it in early 2013 if I remember correctly and they wanted to do an open beta. They never explained why they want release so early now, they just said they could do it and we should not worry. Well to be precise Smed said that... so we know there is only a 50% chance it is actually true

My point is, that I don't get the feeling that every action taken is in my best interest (as a player of this game).

I don't think any ever said it was a good idea, it's being released on the 20th because that's 4th quarter. SOE is a business and they want some money on the books for this game in 2012. This game needed to be out for the 2012 holiday season and SOE wasn't going to do a 1st or 2nd quarter 2012 release.

Keep in mind, internal testers are also 2-3 builds ahead of where we are. I've heard that the build they're currently testing is virtually bug free.

[McFeeble]

Originally Posted by RodenyC

Lol no they don't.What have they listen to and changed?The metagame?Suppose to be in the game regardless.Have they fixed bases yet?Have they actually addressed the real issue of driver actually being a driver?Same with Sancs.All the reasons they've said are because of their own personal opinion.That's why I can't take them serious anymore.

Well off the top of my head they listened about S-AMS, spawns options for squads, shotgun balance, CR channel, optimization, araxium, night vision, lib HPs etc and are experimenting with esamir bases to see how it affects game play and again this will happen with Amerish, I havent even bothered looking at patch notes and these things are obvious to me, sorry you just seem to be hating.

They also acknowledge other things like meta game, what do you want we only will have 3 conts, you can only do so much in the very tight schedule they have, somethings will have to wait, as others take priority (hopefully FPS) over piffle such as driver = driver options.

As much as I dislike buzzcut he pretty much nailed it in a video response to these types of concerns in the general section on the PS2 forums.

[Sturmhardt]

Originally Posted by Bear

I don't think any ever said it was a good idea, it's being released on the 20th because that's 4th quarter. SOE is a business and they want some money on the books for this game in 2012. This game needed to be out for the 2012 holiday season and SOE wasn't going to do a 1st or 2nd quarter 2012 release.

Keep in mind, internal testers are also 2-3 builds ahead of where we are. I've heard that the build they're currently testing is virtually bug free.

Yup, it's a business decision. For the company, not the players. That's what I'm saying. I just hope they will keep the development up as is until the game is where it needs to be.... and not drag all the guys off to EQ Next as soon as PS2 is launched.

Btw: I don't believe in the magic build
Why would they have a really advanced build and not release it to the masses? As far as I understand the system, we are always one build behind the internal testing tops. They develop a new one, then they release it through beta and we can play it.... while they develop a new one and we get it 1 week later... that cycle goes on and on. As a developer you want to do as little redundant work as possible, so you will always try to keep all versions as close as possible. It does not make sense to release a very old version of a game to beta testing.

[Mox]

Oh god. TRay dont know what a llu run is. He think it is something like an ant run.

By the way the devs may listen but they do what they want. And mostly thats not what the players want.

[Dagron]

Originally Posted by Bear

If you're waiting for this game to be "finished" it never will be. MMO style games are NEVER actually finished.

The devs keep saying that over and over like a mantra... it seeps into people's minds and they start repeating it too, failing to see the difference between "the game will never be done" and "the game is good enough to be launched".

When we say that the game isn't done, we mean it isn't done enough to be released. The MMO norm may be to release a jumble of bugs and imbalances, but that doesn't make it a good move. It influences people's opinions on the game and spreads a reputation of "just another MMO done by amateurs".

WoW survived that and grew a lot, but that's not the norm. There are tons of MMOs that come out like that and only survive limping on with a much smaller population than they could have had. PS2 would suffer the most with that, because it needs a lot of people to work, it's not like the run of the mill MMORPG where you can quest for hours and only find 2 or 3 people without feeling there's something missing from the game.

Sorry for insisting on the release date whine, but it's just really frustrating to see people mindlessly repeat "relax, it'll be fine because they said it will be".

[RodenyC]

Originally Posted by McFeeble

Well off the top of my head they listened about S-AMS, spawns options for squads, shotgun balance, CR channel, optimization, araxium, night vision, lib HPs etc and are experimenting with esamir bases to see how it affects game play and again this will happen with Amerish, I havent even bothered looking at patch notes and these things are obvious to me, sorry you just seem to be hating.

They also acknowledge other things like meta game, what do you want we only will have 3 conts, you can only do so much in the very tight schedule they have, somethings will have to wait, as others take priority (hopefully FPS) over piffle such as driver = driver options.

As much as I dislike buzzcut he pretty much nailed it in a video response to these types of concerns in the general section on the PS2 forums.

You named things that are supposed to be done without a say so.Optimization and balancing?Out of that list the only one that I agree they did listen too is the S AMS.Everything else were things that should had been fixed regardless of what the community said because it was either a balance issued,a bug issue or a optimization issue.

Again the metagame is something that should had been there from the start.The community shouldn't have to say anything about meta game.And I agree that they are on a tight schedule(they wanted a november release I would had been cool with mid 2013 release) so yes there are things that should be priority.However it's the fact that they're are thing that the community want that the devs just flat out say no to because and I quote Smed" honestly it's better this way".

[Crator]

Originally Posted by RodenyC

Again the metagame is something that should had been there from the start.The community shouldn't have to say anything about meta game.

You don't know, resources are the meta-game. /sarcasmoff

[Fara]

Chat @ 32minutes T_Ray talks about BFR's & how they would possibly be manned by like 5 people.... first thing that comes to mind is Power Rangers & 2 tanks, 2 sunderes, 1 lib, 1 aircav coming together to create the greatest fighting BFR/Zord the galaxy has ever ..... etc.