Why does this guy constantly talk smack about the game I like so much?

I am trying not to break any rules, so I wont mention any names of any competition who's name anacronym shares some letters with COH/V, but I was reading some articles about a certian past lead designer of City who uses this game and references it when it suits him, but then turns around and bashes it when it feels convienient....which is basicly in every article. I'll post a quote and let you all see what I mean. Really I just wanted to vent because this ticked me off. I am sure it is old news and if we were a football team this would be bullitin board material. To me, this is how NOT to handle yourself as a professional. I sure hope if the DEV's have read this garbage that they dont listen to him or take anything he has to say to heart.

"Coming out of City of Heroes we launched to great acclaim, we got a lot of publicity, everybody loved it, but we didn't have crafting and we didn't have PvP. All there was to do was fight. Over the years everybody pinged us on this. We added PvP and didn't really gain any subscribers. We added crafting and we gained roughly ten thousand subscribers for three months and then it went back down. So in the grand scheme of things, what I learned is, if you didn't have a feature at launch, you might as well never have it. Whatever you're going to have at launch defines you as a game."

there are other quotes and links and such. just google the name and read. anyhow, i completly disagree with this line of thinking. On another note, wasnt there a list somewhere of things that would never happen in city made by someone a while back?
how many of these things have happened over the years?

How was that "Talking smack"?

It sounded like a pretty realistic discussion of game design, based on past experiences. With pretty much truthful statements of number of subs gained/retained.

Jack has talked smack on other occasions, but I really don't see much in this particular quote to get your panties in a bunch over.

That quote would be more likely to get me to stop playing whatever game(s) he's currently working on than this one.

It sounds to me like he's saying, "What you get at launch is all you're ever going to get. I see no reason to waste time or money adding new features to a game."

He did the time as lead. He's earned the right to reference his experiences.

From a distance and through the filter of gaming media, I get the sense that though he's a businessman and in a microcosmic way a public figure, he's not a natural politician. I don't think he necessarily thinks through and plots every time he references his prior work experiences. Love or hate the projects he's helped midwife, I truly think the man is passionate about what he does and what entertains him. I think he truly does desire to put on a good show and please the masses. I also think he has rather unique tastes in gaming experiences, preferring austere rewards to monty haul for example, and is therefore not always in step with the unwashed masses.

But again, no matter what, I think the guy has earned the right to say what he wants about the years he spent working on CoX.

This thread will end well.

What fascinates me about him is how he, as the COO of a multi-million dollar company, completely managed to misread his market's niche; he was blind-sided by the revelation that MMO players are now demanding more from games than they were 6 freaking years ago. He was further blindsided by the revelation that most MMO players give games, and features within those games, 1 shot to impress them. If you don't impress them, they won't /ever/ come back. *cough*CoH PvP*cough*bases*cough*

It really does break my mind, especially considering that CoH was one of the games that helped raise the bar on players' expectations. But there are lessons from CoH he, seemingly, didn't bother to learn until he released two further ... troublesome ... games.

I especially like his "poor us" spiel, the one where he goes on about how the competition has so much more money to spend on shiney things than he does. But he can't be bothered to rise above mediocre at release for anything beyond character creation.

And, I mean, NOTHING.

The painfully hilarious thing is how his current pet project has made the same, if not worse, mistakes.

Now, I'm biased because I met the guy and found most peoples' negative attitudes based more on misreading or taking offense at one phrase/action instead of putting it in context, but here's my thoughts.


"That Guy" LOVES this game. It was his baby. It was a huge career leap for him and he poured his blood, sweat, and tears into it for over half a decade. It means more to him than it ever could to you or to me. Always did and always will.

He took a LOT of the flack from the players as the lead dev- and he assumed all that blame --the "buck stops here" for design decisions that were far from his alone. Many of the devs we have here today would have had design on some of the more reviled systems, but they were insulated from the hate and blame. That was OK with him, because both the change AND him taking the heat was good for the game.

Letting go of CoH to help fund other projects wasn't a decision made lightly-- and he's likely suffered more than a few moments akin to "empty nest syndrome" out of it. Ultimately, though, if Cryptic's other interests were going to make it, he had to let his first one leave home... but I'm positive he still keeps an eye on how it's doing, celebrates its victories, mourns its losses, and sometimes, like any parent, wonders WTF they're thinking with some decisions they make.

But, unlike parenting (more or less) Jack's gotta also look at what he's done and take lessons from it. What worked? What didn't? What were the strengths of the system? What were the barriers? WHAT WOULD I DO DIFFERENTLY IF I HAD TO DO IT AGAIN? He's an academic, as well, so sharing these questions and answers is part of the thought-forming process. This sometimes appears in an interview as trash talk to the uninitiated.

It isn't.

Most of Jack's wording is structured to stress that difference, but it's often ignored- the "root" message is taken out and framed in the context of a bitter rivalry that isn't there. He's saying that there are things that he'd do differently and barriers he need not worry about-- that there are market environment changes that mean that things have to change to succeed-- and he hopes his next project will be an improvement based on these lessons. That doesn't mean he doesn't love what he previously accomplished any less.





....But players tend to gather into little tribes and define each other as rivals whose hate and anger exceed extreme political rivalries. They read veiled insults where there was only meant respectful disagreement and see business changes as treasonous hatred. They assume that their devs are just as committed to the hostilities as they are, and not that they might maintain some sort of professional respect and perhaps even sometimes-strained friendship with people that they shared so much creative effort with. No matter what they say to clarify the issue, someone over at the CO boards will be cheerleading on the 'attacks' and piling on more of his own less veiled criticism... and over here in CoH-land, there will be people mired in bitterness over his betrayal.

More than any of the devs here now, or to my knowledge have ever been involved with this game, Jack Emmert seemed to have a passion that was unchecked. He loved this game and loved being a part of it. He's a good guy, and I wish him well over a Cryptic. I also will never play anything he has any responsibility for. Why?

Well, Jack got very, very lucky with City of Heroes and he still doesn't recognize how. CoH was successful IN SPITE of many of Jack's decisions, not because of them. Many of the design decisions he championed (no real numbers, loot, and others) have been changed in CoH. And in almost every case the game has been better for it.

I have no quarrel with Mr. Emmert. I just don't happen to agree with his philosophy of game design. I tried a few of his new design creations in open beta and found it unbearably dull. So while I admire his passion for his game and his willingness to engage with players, I just don't care for his design decisions.

There isn't much to get up-in-arms about over that quote. It's very benign and he may have a point.

But don't let it get to you. As far as I know, his game isn't doing so great... I tried it in the Beta and cancelled my preorder I disliked it so much.

I don't think he is saying that games shouldn't evolve and implement new features, but rather, whatever the game is viewed as when it first launches, that will, regretably, be the thing that most critics and gamers not already playing will see the game as.

And that makes sense. Y'know, with the rule of first impressions and all.

I think the biggest failure was trying to tie into the 360... twice. Microsoft is not working with anyone there, and after teh first time I would have stopped development for the 360 for the second one. They were counting on console support. They don't have it.

Another possibility that may in part be what he intended to get across is that certain features should be designed within the core of the game instead of added as features later on. That's not to say that new features should never be implemented.

Take his two examples of PvP and crafting. PvP can be a huge undertaking with many, many ramifications for a game, particularly an MMO that isn't designed around a FPS model. So, if something like that is going to be in your game, the game should be designed with that feature in mind from the beginning.

When CoH was first being developed, yes they had PvP in mind, as is mentioned in the first dev video. But it appears that was more of a talking point as the system was not live at launch, nor was the game designed with the the balance of PvP at its core. So when PvP as added (read shoe-horned) into the game, it was (is) horribly unbalanced and even after it went live with the arenas, players basically became extended Q&A beta testers of a broken system.

Then there were a bunch of changes for both the live game and pvp game. Still, the system remained horribly broken. Its no wonder that he says that they never gained many subs from adding pvp, as it was pretty much a disaster from the start. Those loyal to the pvp of this game learned to navigate the horrid system and essentially, make pvp work for them. It was (and still isn't) an inviting system to partake in.

Crafting is a different beast altogether. Within the context of this game, I'd say it was done well. However, I'd venture to guess that the reason those subs dropped from the game after time may not necessarily have to do with the crafting system altogether, but for a variety of other factors. After all, 10k lost subs isn't that much of a drop for a game that had been out as long as CoH was at the time, with the amount of MMO competition out there, considering the size it was at.

The only reason I could think of that if it was the same subs that came on board when crafting was implemented, were near the same subs that left later, is because crafting in CoH isn't much like crafting and loot for other games. In other games, loot becomes a necessity at one (or many) points to proceed within the game. So, if you want or character to proceed, it needs to (or its expected by the player base at large) for it to perform within a certain range of expectations. Obtaining loot, or crafting, and purchasing loot is a necessity.

CoH doesn't require that necessity, and even now, with talk of the Alpha slot, end game system, or what-have-you, the devs have mentioned there will be a more casual path to obtaining the same things that more hardcore (while not a termed used by the devs, the inclusion of a casual system gives way to the indication of such), players will be able to access, albeit, more slowly compared to the main hardcore system.