Coffee Talk Highlights, Jan 18: Crime Incarnate with Second "Redshirt" Measure and Bat-Aeon
By
Agent White,
Posted on: 2012-01-18 13:37 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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In this Tier 9 VIP's opinion, the exchange rate needs to be about 25 packs to the token, or it's not worth my time. When I can get all of Fire and Ice or Celestial for 3 tokens, that sets my expectation for the number of tokens a costume set is worth. If all I want are the costume bits, the rest of the 'cards' are just chaff.
| Tier 9 VIP's can use their Paragon Rewards tokens to get the packs. |
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I'm assuming going through and rewriting a number of missions and task forces (like the STF, LRSF, Mender Silos, etc) that have him appearing or mentioned. It's a fair amount of stuff, and in some cases would require some pretty substantial rewrites. Case in point: the Maria Jenkins arc.
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Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
Dumb question, perhaps, but have they said what "removing Statesman from the game" actually entails? Most notably, does that include AE? Or will he be left in as part of his "memorial"? (I'm guessing the latter, because I imagine the former would screw over a lot of arcs, but I haven't heard it said either way)
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Agreed.
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Originally Posted by GlassGoblin
In this Tier 9 VIP's opinion, the exchange rate needs to be about 25 packs to the token, or it's not worth my time. When I can get all of Fire and Ice or Celestial for 3 tokens, that sets my expectation for the number of tokens a costume set is worth. If all I want are the costume bits, the rest of the 'cards' are just chaff.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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They only care when its convenient and a easy fix. When it goes against their design goals they could care less and we just have to either deal with it, or unsub and leave. The power of the nerf bat has been strong for many issues both in the patch notes and undocumented nerfs, (ofcourse all dev teams do that.) |
Originally Posted by Snow Globe
Do you honestly think they could give a rat's behind about feedback these days?
I'm getting the impression that they are happier getting complaints about their content these days than getting compliments about it. |
I laughed recently when one of the devs was saying "we look forward to your positive feedback" at some convention. I think it was for pax. Yeah we want feedback but nothing negative... That positive feedback from the fanboys is so much louder and more pleasing to listen to and or read that the only time they ever listen to negative feedback is when the fanboys are also complaining such as the changes they were about to make to the baf and lambda e-merits.
It really does suck though because they seem like really nice people. Especially the community team. But this games true potential is being held back by the current people in charge.
I think this current powers guy has his head on straight with some of the upcoming buffs, but hes going to need to look at every powerset and address the mess that's been made over the years from powerset nerfs and npc buffs before patting on the back happens from me.
Friends don't let friends buy an ncsoft controlled project.
Okay so I just watched a part of the Ustream and must say that Aeon's "Bale Batman" voice is pretty close and I enjoyed it 
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Seriously? |
Originally Posted by Snow Globe
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Do you have Synapse on ignore? In Beta, his work on powersets seems particularly open to feedback. It may be the feedback he acts on isn't the way YOU wanted things to go, but the changes he's made to powersets based on both feedback & internal testing do make your absolutist statement about how the Devs don't care about feedback look absolutely ridiculous.
Additionally, the fact that they do datamines on aspects players give feedback on also demonstrates that they care about that information, but might not have been completely convinced by the arguements. They were however convinced enough to keep an eye on the situation. It's absolutely absurd that people take the postion that if the Devs don't do what they want, when they want that the Devs don't care. Feedback can be received & used, though not necessarily in a flashy obvious way, nor necessarily in the way a person desired.
Heck, if the Devs did not care about player feedback, they wouldn't bother with events like the Player Summit. Yeah... I know people aren't happy with where they run the event, but the event wouldn't be what it is without being run where it is. I've been to a couple of Meet & Greets now, and I've been to the HeroCons & to the Player Summit. I wouldn't fly anywhere to go to a Meet & Greet, but I'd consider flying out to HeroCon/Player Summit type events. I think they're THAT much better. In a case like this, the specific requests made in the feedback just cannot be accomodated unless circumstances change dramatically.
So please... give the Devs don't care about feedback lie a rest.
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I assume that Malaise isn't counting in MoM either.
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Originally Posted by Baryonyx
Hi everyone,
For: I just wanted to let you know that we're aware that MoM is not currently counting for Dimensional Warder, and we're working on a fix. We will let you know more when the fix is implemented. However, the Praetorian Invasion version of Mother Mayhem will not qualify for this badge. |
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--The Question, JLU
I'm going to say something which some of you may find unpopular, but there are times where it is my responsibility to stand up and be an advocate for our team. I apologize if my words cause you to be upset, but it is the right thing to say.
When you say we do not listen to feedback, it is disingenuous. You can accuse us of many things, but accusing this team, the team now, the developers who have been working on this game for over a year, of not taking player concerns into account it is something that is, quite frankly, hurtful.
For example, let's look at the Super Packs. Based on feedback we have implemented the following:
- ATO's available through in game means
- Enhancement Catalysts in game drops
- Price points for the packs set based on early feedback
- Offering discounts when purchasing in bulk based on early feedback both on the forums and at the Player Summit.
- Improvements made to the Inspirations found in the packs, over doubling their duration in some cases and making them persist through death (this change was done based on feedback that these items weren't originally very desirable, especially when found in Super Packs).
- Increased the rate at which costume pieces are discovered in packs
- Usability improvements based on feedback on the beta user start to finish experience.
- We're not launching with an alternate option to acquiring the costume pieces, but it is still something we're open to later on down the road.
I love you guys. I will walk through the fire for my Community and I will always, no matter what, represent your interests, regardless of my personal opinion. I have worked with developers who completely disregard player feedback, and I promise you, the Paragon Studios development team is not among them.
-Z
Andy Belford
Community Manager
Paragon Studios
Its very easy for people to slip from "they didn't do what I said" to "they don't listen to anyone." I don't think any rational objective observer believes the dev team doesn't listen or doesn't care about constructive feedback.
Sometimes the dev team can't do what an individual player asks. Sometimes they *won't* do what an individual player asks. Sometimes other players asked for something different. Saying the devs don't care when they don't do what you want is no different than saying every player who disagrees with you also doesn't care about the game or seeks its destruction.
The devs also aren't here to be robots with suggestion slots in the cracks of their *****. Sometimes, they will simply disagree with what some players want. People have to accept sometimes other players want something different, sometimes the devs want to do something different, and most importantly most playerbase consensus is illusiary. Its actually rare that I see consensus, far rarer than its presented as consensus. Its even rarer than the *devs* claim it exists, much less what the players do.
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Zwillinger -
I appreciate what you guys do. I've been one of those that understand that listening to feedback does not mean doing what it says (The mess this game would be in if that was true X.X )100% of the time.
In the super packs, we went from having several items in the packs only, with the rest being market goods and Rewards Merits, to having all but the costume set available (with the ATOs and the Catalysts available in game not the market!) elsewhere, and you guys open to opening up the costume set later.
Reminds me - be nice if there was a way to clear obtained account pieces on Beta to allow people to get a feel for drop rates.
You folks do a great job of balancing do what your players want (herding cats herding kittens, in other words) with what's good for the game.
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No reason to apologize or defend Z.
I just think some people are so passionate about this game that they sometimes turn a blind eye towards everything else but what's important to them at that particular moment.
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That's all I really needed to hear. I can guarentee there are a large number of people willing to slam money down in a blink for that, but not when it's only a chance. So long as you guys do get round to that eventually, then we're all cool.|
Originally Posted by Zwillinger
For example, let's look at the Super Packs. Based on feedback we have implemented the following:
-Z |
We love you too, Z-man, and your crazy hat collection
Stay Classy Paragon.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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And inaccurate. I've seen you guys react to feedback. Try not to let such nonsense raise your blood pressure too much.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
I'm going to say something which some of you may find unpopular, but there are times where it is my responsibility to stand up and be an advocate for our team. I apologize if my words cause you to be upset, but it is the right thing to say.
When you say we do not listen to feedback, it is disingenuous. You can accuse us of many things, but accusing this team, the team now, the developers who have been working on this game for over a year, of not taking player concerns into account it is something that is, quite frankly, hurtful. |
Arc #40529 : The Furies of the Earth
You guys are the best I have ever seen in terms of listening to feedback, overall, and I mean that in terms of any company, not just game developers.
I think the feeling some people have that you didn't listen to feedback here comes from a belief that the #1 complaint about the superpacks was the exclusivity of items to a randomized purchasing method. That complaint has been eliminated for ATIOs (woohoo!), but it has not been addressed for costume items/the black wolf beyond "maybe we'll let you buy them outright later, maybe we won't".
I wouldn't say you didn't listen to feedback here, you obviously did on several points (and I was really pleasantly surprised that ATIOs were made obtainable in-game). However, on what some would consider the most important point, I'd say that I think someone sees the revenue potential from exclusive items in the packs and thinks it's more valuable to Paragon Studios than how some of their customers feel about the business practice. I hope the "maybe we'll let you buy them later" isn't hinged on whether the packs do poorly, because I think they're going to do extremely well, and I think the exclusive items will have a lot to do with it.
I do hope you decide to let us buy them outright later. I'm not going to assume that you will, though, until you've told us.
Psychoti is right that you did sound just like Dr. Claw, by the way, Zwillinger. I think you and Dr. Aeon should hold a conversation between Batman and Dr. Claw on the next U-Stream.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
I'm going to say something which some of you may find unpopular, but there are times where it is my responsibility to stand up and be an advocate for our team. I apologize if my words cause you to be upset, but it is the right thing to say.
When you say we do not listen to feedback, it is disingenuous. You can accuse us of many things, but accusing this team, the team now, the developers who have been working on this game for over a year, of not taking player concerns into account it is something that is, quite frankly, hurtful. For example, let's look at the Super Packs. Based on feedback we have implemented the following:
I love you guys. I will walk through the fire for my Community and I will always, no matter what, represent your interests, regardless of my personal opinion. I have worked with developers who completely disregard player feedback, and I promise you, the Paragon Studios development team is not among them. -Z |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Its very easy for people to slip from "they didn't do what I said" to "they don't listen to anyone." I don't think any rational objective observer believes the dev team doesn't listen or doesn't care about constructive feedback.
Sometimes the dev team can't do what an individual player asks. Sometimes they *won't* do what an individual player asks. Sometimes other players asked for something different. Saying the devs don't care when they don't do what you want is no different than saying every player who disagrees with you also doesn't care about the game or seeks its destruction. The devs also aren't here to be robots with suggestion slots in the cracks of their *****. Sometimes, they will simply disagree with what some players want. People have to accept sometimes other players want something different, sometimes the devs want to do something different, and most importantly most playerbase consensus is illusiary. Its actually rare that I see consensus, far rarer than its presented as consensus. Its even rarer than the *devs* claim it exists, much less what the players do. |
Most importantly, the fact that just because the wants of any specific player (or group of players) doesn't happen does not mean that the developers don't care nor don't listen.
Many things may go by that you or I or anyone may not agree with (or may just simply dislike), but that's just reality. I'm here to play the game that they've created. I'm ecstatic that they sometimes take my opinions into account. I respect and understand that I'm not the head-honcho CEO and they are the creators and distributors and I'm just a recurring potential customer and a fan.
Anyway, well said Z. I'll offer my opinions and I'll criticize, but I'd never say that you guys over there don't listen. And I'm also happy to have Z there, listening and delivering both ways between us and the Devs.
That being said... tell them to ditch these Super Packs and get back to better ideas!
@Zethustra
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and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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:blushes:
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
I'm going to say something which some of you may find unpopular
I love you guys. -Z |
total kick to the gut
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Yes, but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
I'm going to say something which some of you may find unpopular, but there are times where it is my responsibility to stand up and be an advocate for our team. I apologize if my words cause you to be upset, but it is the right thing to say.
When you say we do not listen to feedback, it is disingenuous. You can accuse us of many things, but accusing this team, the team now, the developers who have been working on this game for over a year, of not taking player concerns into account it is something that is, quite frankly, hurtful. For example, let's look at the Super Packs. Based on feedback we have implemented the following:
I love you guys. I will walk through the fire for my Community and I will always, no matter what, represent your interests, regardless of my personal opinion. I have worked with developers who completely disregard player feedback, and I promise you, the Paragon Studios development team is not among them. -Z |
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Fixed it for you. ;3
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Originally Posted by KianaZero
what have the Romans ever done for us?
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Hello again Z, good to see things from your side of the coin. I would just like to point out that, for my part, I agree with you. Mostly. Where I disagree is this:|
Originally Posted by Zwillinger
I'm going to say something which some of you may find unpopular, but there are times where it is my responsibility to stand up and be an advocate for our team. I apologize if my words cause you to be upset, but it is the right thing to say.
When you say we do not listen to feedback, it is disingenuous. You can accuse us of many things, but accusing this team, the team now, the developers who have been working on this game for over a year, of not taking player concerns into account it is something that is, quite frankly, hurtful. For example, let's look at the Super Packs. Based on feedback we have implemented the following:
I love you guys. I will walk through the fire for my Community and I will always, no matter what, represent your interests, regardless of my personal opinion. I have worked with developers who completely disregard player feedback, and I promise you, the Paragon Studios development team is not among them. -Z |
It seems there has been a very noticeable trend towards release-on-time-at-all-costs that has us dealing with more bugs sailing through Beta unharmed than ever before. Also, it's been seeming like there is either not enough work being done to fix these bugs and other bugs from Pre-CoHF, or possibly even less de-bugging work is being done than pre-CoHF.
Either way we're stuck dealing with these problems and it seems that not only are more bugs coming out, but now, they're even being treated as 'working-as-intended'. To misquote Uncle Ben: "With greater amounts of released material, comes greater responsibility to make sure it WORKS."
When it comes to feedback, hell YEAH you guys are pretty good! What concerns me is this seeming decline in responsibility to keeping the game as error-free as it has the potential to be. No game is ever bug free, but this one's bugier than it used to be, and that's worrisome.
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I kind of like at least some aspects of the exclusivity properties of the packs. If they decide to make them non-exclusive, would that be a case of them deciding not to care about me, and care about someone else?|
Originally Posted by Liquid
I wouldn't say you didn't listen to feedback here, you obviously did on several points (and I was really pleasantly surprised that ATIOs were made obtainable in-game). However, on what some would consider the most important point, I'd say that I think someone sees the revenue potential from exclusive items in the packs and thinks it's more valuable to Paragon Studios than how some of their customers feel about the business practice.
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Its easy to portray this as the devs choosing between some arbitrary or calculated business decision and caring about their players, but as I said consensus is illusory (bah!). When the players don't all unanimously agree, either you choose to believe the devs pick who they care about and who they don't care about, or you choose to believe the devs do what they believe is the best all around, even if that's contradictory to what you believe is best all around.
That's a choice, and a choice I can't dictate, but I will say the devs do not decide *when* to care about the players and when not to; they don't decide *which* players to care about and which not to. They simply don't make decisions that way.
Its possible to advocate strongly for a change without having to portray the devs as either caring about, or not caring about that advocacy based solely upon whether they do what you demand. I've advocated for many changes, sometimes very strongly, without once saying that the fact the devs didn't do them at that moment proved they didn't care at all. I've called them illiterate, possessing the math skills of a gerbil, inarticulate, forgetful, stubborn, illogical, inconsistent, incompetent... err, what was I saying again? Oh yeah: they can sometimes be inexplicable, but I know for a fact they are not uncaring or deliberately uninformed about player preferences. They do the best they can with what they have, and they are neither capricious nor any more irrational than human beings tend to be. They don't always agree that what some of the players ask for is best for the game, but that is the prerogative of pretty much everyone including the other players.
Typos are evidence the devs aren't always precise. Clipping problems are evidence the devs aren't always complete in their testing. But not doing what I want is not evidence the devs don't know what I want, don't care what I want, or don't care about me at all.
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Sounds like the next UStream should be pretty entertaining.|
Originally Posted by Zwillinger
I will walk through the fire for my Community
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
I can say as a long-time software engineer that just because users provide "feedback" doesn't necessarily mean you have to slavishly bend to their every whim. You can basically always count on some users to want everything under the sun and oftentimes they don't have a reasonable clue that what they're asking for is either effectively impossible given the circumstances or would clearly have far more negative ramifications for the application than positive.
Sure as a player I can always wish the Devs would do everything I egotistically want them to do for me in this game. But I have enough respect for them to realize that they do their very best to listen to and implement our desires while at the same time balancing the needs of the game as a whole. Sadly some players just don't want to accept that when the Devs don't respond to their "wonderful" ideas it's not because the Devs are being generally mean or negligent - it could be that the "wonderful" idea in question is simply just a crap idea in the overall grand scheme of things. *shrugs*
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Exactly. It's just evidence that your mind control powers are not yet strong enough. |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
... But not doing what I want is not evidence the devs don't know what I want, don't care what I want, or don't care about me at all.
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If this makes all you wannabe-dev-masterminds out there unhappy... think harder!!
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
One of the biggest changes based on our feedback was the creation of Mender Ramiel's arc - during the GR beta, the Alpha slot could just be unlocked with merits, but a lot of players asked for an unlock that was more focused on the lore behind the Incarnates.
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Dumb question, perhaps, but have they said what "removing Statesman from the game" actually entails? Most notably, does that include AE? Or will he be left in as part of his "memorial"? (I'm guessing the latter, because I imagine the former would screw over a lot of arcs, but I haven't heard it said either way)