New zone?!

I hardly think they're all that broken up over (well deserved) criticism today or any other day. Or that it will "impair their future performance." Then again, having seen past performance, I'd say present and future are already there (how's that Eden trial that's been designated WST? Oh, can't start with what?)

The resort of someone with a nonargument - pointing at post count like it means anything.

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That's only your opinion

Say they make an announcement:

"In celebration of this that or the other, we're releasing three new costume sets! By the way, to handle server load, only five people can be logged in to any one server at any time."

Yeah. Nobody should complain about that! Shinies, ooooh! Butterflies and puppies and rainbows out of your backside! If you can't handle people criticizing things, perhaps you should avoid forums, TV, radio, music - pretty much any contact with the outside world at all.

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You know, usually you're a civil poster. But for some reason, this thread's made you into one of those people who think they can be superior over the internet. Knock off the attitude, there's absolutely no reason for it.

That aside, can you explain what you're referring to when you talk about the 5-person-per-server? I assume that it must have something to do with a recent dev post, or an announced feature/change since that sort of analogy would be pretty ridiculous without a fair comparison.

I assume the developers have human emotions: Perhaps less so then the average person (they *are* programmers), but still enough that they can feel bad about not making a better game. Based on that assumption judging what emotional impact things will have on them is perfectly valid. Now if you assume they can't be emotionally moved, which you appear to be indicating here, then complaining is not an effective technique either because you won't make them feel bad and you are not directly impacting the bottom line (a likely requirement to alter the behavior of a non-emotional entity) because you are still subscribing to their service.

To put it another way: How long have and others been deploying the "heavy complaining technique" to achieve your goals of a superior game? How effective has that tactic been so far in achieving your goals? Based on those answers, do you feel it is a logical method to continue with? If not, maybe you should switch tactics. Or if you assume that all tactics are not effective, maybe your time engaged in this method would be better invested in another unrelated pursuit.

Insinuating as you did that I might lack perspective, without knowing me or my relative level of emotional investment in the game, is also not really a valid addition to the argument. I simply found it funny that the implication came from somebody who has over 50 times my post count, which could imply you care about the game (or at least the forum) 50 times more then I do. Or it could imply pickles. Either way I felt like making a joke about it.

So... Pickles.

Funny, seem to get attitude thrown at me, but hey, that's perfectly *fine.* Why? For *daring* to point out that, oh, there's a problem with all their "new shiny only" mindset, as pointed out numerous times, when there are old zones utterly devoid of, and fully worthy of, attention.

There's no "being superior" in that. Or for pointing out that, really, the devs *aren't* going to be broken up over criticism, or that comparing this to a *wedding* is a bit disingenuous.

That would be an "example of something to complain about bundled with an announcement of shinies." Thus the "Say they made an announcement" prefacing it.

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You really like making assumptions and setting up strawmen, don't you. Or is it that you can only see black and white?

I'd say the emotional impact of my complaining about things that need complaining about has only slightly more emotional impact on them than my choice to make this word red. So saying "Oh my gosh, you shouldn't complain TODAY, they'll be DEVASTATED by it and it'll impact their future performance!" is horse manure. Actually, horse manure can be useful as fertilizer, and that statement about them being in any way emotionally affected by what I say is worth far, far less.


Why don't you look at my post history and find out?

I've GENERALLY been rather nice - to the point of being labeled a "fanboi," until lately. As far as "How effective the technique has been?" When needed, I *have* been a pain in the devs backside on occasion, when needed. I fought (with a few others nearly continually, so no, I'm not taking sole credit here) to get the sonic shields changed due to the effect they were (physically) having on myself and other players.

You'll notice they're orange now, and don't tend to cause headaches in people.

So, no, I don't find that complaining and making my displeasure at various items and developer decisions in the game is "better spent on another pursuit."

I find the developer attitude toward "new shiny over revisiting old" to be harmful, given the absolutely DEAD zones we have and the lack of need in most instances to have *yet another* new zone. I find many things about the current dev team priorities problematic. And I will NOT be silent about it, whether you or anyone else like it or not.

Can't handle that, learn to use the tools the forum gives you to deal with it.

You mean after asking if you WERE taking things the way I was saying? Which if you weren't, means the part following the "If so" doesn't apply, and you could ignore it - instead of choosing to drag this out and pretend that post count means jack (post count, by the way, being something I've argued for having hidden or removed specifically BECAUSE of BS arguments like you're making now.)

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Now you are the one building a straw man. I initially said they probably regret things not done better, and that poking them about it on a day they likely take seriously (some of them have been working with this product for 7 or 8 years) could make them more bitter which could hurt their productivity. I hardly implied they would have a nervous breakdown (or whatever being "DEVASTATED" would entail). And I very rarely use the word "gosh" (note that last bit was a just joke, I'm still trying to keep a bemused smile over here).

That's fair: I'll accept that you are one of the nicer folks, just driven a wee bit past your breaking point by frustration with particular issues. That's understandable, I have a lot of frustrations as well that I've just given up on more or less. But does the complaining really help make a better game? Or does it just make you feel better in the release of it? That's probably a perfectly valid reason as well, but sometimes the negativity on the forums gets to me. And yes, I could use forum tools to ignore all sorts of people who bug me occasionally, but a lot of those people are responsible for very usefull and intelligent posts as well so I don't see missing those as an acceptable trade-off.

But if the devs don't care about negative statements much more then the color of a font as you indicate elsewhere, this could have absolutely nothing to do with anything on the forum and purely been an internal decision to avoid a possible lawsuit. If you on the other hand assume some complaints can have a positive impact then that could mean they potentially can have a negative impact as well: In which case the timing and approach could be very important for achieving desired goals and not making situations worse.

You'll have no disagreement with me there. Post count should have gone the way of the star ratings that users used to have (and were removed from posts for a while to if I recall). It was however a joke, with a smilie. And my response was still a joke: I brought up pickles. I was even tempted to bring up wookies... Wookies with pickles. Okay fine, it wasn't a good joke. And probably not in an appropriate venue. And it was probably also a bit of thin-skinned reaction because the fact that I'm arguing about the finer points of how to manipulate the devs of a game with you probably means we *both* need some perspective.

Quite a few, being re-highlighted of late with the focus on incarnates (not to mention the incarnate bit being a longstanding argument that got... let's leave it as "not very nice.")

Both. The balance of it tends to depend on the issue.
Note that was in response to you saying it would have some emotional impact on the devs and "impacting future performance." There's paying attention to what's being said, and there's taking complaints about a game as a personal attack.

Given that the word I had - oh, within a month of them being changed, I believe - from BAB was "too much work for too little cost" (and this, by the way, was after about a year and a half of fighting on this - yes, I do tend to grab things and not let go, and this was moreso than most for me thanks to it affecting close friends *very* badly) I don't think a potential lawsuit was involved. They would have lost a few subscriptions, at most. And I do mean "a few" - if it hit 200, I'd have been surprised.

I realize how this is going to sound - but I believe, in all cases (specifically referring to the COH forums) that the potential positive impact is *far* higher, regardless of timing, than the potential negative impact. Especially as you're talking about an "emotional milestone" and "emotional impact" - this hardly qualifies.

At most, they're going to say "There's a lot of negative about this" (and I'm sure they'll notice having the Eden trial as WST creeping up) and either ignore it, file it away or actually look at it. The fact it *happens* to be around the same time as the anniversary of the game makes no nevermind one way or the other.

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No reason for it?

I find it incredibly amusing, and since I'm not poking anyone into action I can't be blamed for it!

It's like an early Mother's day!

New zone means less people in other zones, revamp old zones or delete them.

I just think there is a higher chance of the latter during "anniversary" sort of events. Some of the developers have been there longer then a lot of friendships or marriages last, and its hard to imagine (to me) that after that length of time at a one job on one particular product they wouldn't start taking things a little personal. Not the general corporate entity mind you, it doesn't likely as a collective care, but the individuals behind it I would imagine have to care on some noticable level. Since even subtle, unconcious effects on mood can impact performance I think its worth considering this. I was perhaps to snarky in my tone about it earlier in this thread, but its my opinion. And I'm a snarky sort of guy.

Can you please clarify, did he say this after the color was fixed as to why it hadn't been fixed before, or during the period it wasn't getting fixed? I didn't follow the issue a lot (the only of my friends that would have had issues with the color and flash wasn't actually playing the game at that point) so I'm not really clear on the timeline.

Strange, personally, I'm seeing most MMO forums getting more negative.

I blame them all having gone to the americans.

So what I'm wondering is if they declared the Banished Pantheon had basically won in DA and just closed off the zone (perhaps moving the badges, monster, and fog effect to some lesser traveled district in another zone to reflect the Pantheon's next front of invasion): Would people actually consider that an acceptable situation or see that as a sign of decline / still to much investment in new stuff?

This is how it start's...
Thanks for the biggest smile I've had all day.

Personally, I think people just forget that 'dead zones' are the cost of any game that has progressive content. Especially true when you start introducing new content. You can rebalance the server load usually, resulting in the 'old dead zones' not taking as much resources any more, but really, it's not that big of a deal.

No it doesn't. Maybe there's a villain that wants to help out the "growing threat to the world" or maybe another villain wants both sides to finish each other off and take what's left for himself. It makes no sense at all why villains have to constantly be sub-heroes.

As for Faultline, the last time I was there was just a couple days ago. I go there on just about every hero I make.

The old zones are not going to be deleted, and they're not going to be revamped until the story requires it.

Timeline:
Beta: People getting headaches from barely visible, spinning rings. Color and I think 'spin rate' altered slightly.
Live: People getting headaches, migraines, etc. from same rings.
Year and a half of arguing for change. No word from developers.
PM from one of the devs (I believe BAB) at about that time: "Too much work."
Month later: New orange graphics on test.

That's pretty much the timeline.

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That would be a "This game is tanking, *cancel subs.*"

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However would we survive?

I don't recall 'throwing' anything at you. In fact, I didn't even have you in mind when I mentioned the doomsayers because frankly, you aren't one. I don't understand why any of what you said was directed at me, or at Serpine. My post is what it is. A lot of people have really stood out among the negative crowd, and it's not helped the overall forum attitude, and even when the devs acknowledge their concerns and even say they're going to make things right, they find something to ***** about. Seriously, they announce a new zone and a herd of whiners rises up and goes "IT'S GONNA BE PRAETORIAN CO-OP CRAP I JUST KNOW IT!" Enough is enough.

No, but you talking down to me as if I was ten years old was.

I would really like to see what people would complain about in the last letter from the devs. No co-op zone/praetorian zone stuff either. No power proliferation complaints. None of the same-old same-old because frankly it's... old.

I respect your opinions and acknowledge you've been a very civil poster in the past. I will still stand by my view that the posts you made towards me do not reflect your normal behavior and were really rather rude, intended or not.

Rather have him around than you and your smiley fetish, to be honest. He's snarky and seems really annoyed by some things lately. You're just rude while trying to hide it behind smileys, and I really have to stretch to think of more than one or two actually useful things you've ever posted.