Stealing from another thread,
"Kipling said:
I don't want to watch a game I love pander to a whinging vocal minority and change the game to satisfy their desires. I also don't want to see the game sacrifice it's identity for the sake of making more money..."
Not trying to open this threads discussions, but more about trying to figure out, well, aren't we that group? Whats to say we aren't the minority that is most vocal, and if VR does something we don't agree with, do we want them to listen to us, or do we not want them to listen to us?
A game, we are all hoping will have hundreds of thousands of players, kinda makes those of us here on the fourms the vocal minority. This quote from Kipling is one that I've always heard said about so many games and it's understandable. Games need to evolve and change to maintain income, but where do we as a community, protect VR and their ideas against us and also force VR to listen to us if they are doing something we don't agree with?
What I'm about to say here, I know, not everyone can agree with or do, but my stance is, I've never complained. Not on a forum, not on a petition, not in any way about any game. I play games until I no longer like them. If the game changes to something I don't like, I stop paying and stop playing. I know it's hard to do when you put so much into games, I played EQ2 for 7 years, but eventually let go because it changed to somehting I no longer agreed with or enjoyed playing.
I think people are just salty about the current MMO landscape and have a lot of misplaced anger.
Pandering, to me, is when devs ignore their highly educated players and instead reference directionless noise that is spammed through various channels to make changes.
Example:
1. X is op, pls nerf.
2. X is unhealthy for the game because it invalidates or breaks Y and Z. This is demonstrable with this data we've collected. Here's a reasonable way this could be changed and how it would affect the game based on this data.
After the game launches it'd be nice if the devs would take notes from experienced players if something is seriously wrong with the game. Nothing is perfect though.
I can say that we have had a vision from the start that we are sticking too as the team has enough experience with playing and making MMORPGs to know what works and what doesn't and with the help of the community we have been able to make adjustments over the years with all of the feedback and suggestions to the point that we are now full to the brim and trying to finish implementing all of these systems, mechanics and features into the game to get it ready for testing, which is where we will start taking feedback again.
We will never listen to the minority or just aimlessly accept advice or feedback from a small portion of the community to then go ahead and make major changes, we will always use data, feedback from the majority and our own experience to make the best possible changes for Pantheon, even if that means nerfing things or taking them away, which no one likes but sometimes it is necessary if we get it wrong or can't fix something. We will do our best to get things right the first time, which is why we put so much emphasis on testing and it's importance but we are human and there are a lot of moving parts in an MMORPG so expect some mistakes and just know that we will be working hard to fix them as soon as humanly possible.
Our community is important to us and we will, of course, listen to you folks when issues pop up and need to be handled but hopefully they will be kept to a minimum and have a little impact on you all as possible :)
I think a useful approach for fans to take is to provide good feedback about problems we see and not get our feet dug in too much about the particular solutions we propose. The development team's vision has been clearly expressed at this point, so people here probably agree with their high level goals already. So now it's a question of how well the game's features align with that widely-shared vision, and it's the community's job to give positive and negative feedback about that.
The developers generally have far more context than we do and are balancing various tradeoffs against each other, so we shouldn't obsess over particular solutions, but instead argue for or against them as rationally as possible while thinking primarily about how well they align with the development team's vision for the game.
Kilsin summed it up perfectly and in one form or another it has been said several times before. This is a game and VR as an entity will do everything within their power to make it succeed. We have known their vision for some time and I would think that is why we are here as a community. The good news is that there is no "higher pressure" on them to conform so their vision is firm and I would imagine any investor knows that.
The game will evolve as it has with VR in the lead. When issues, if any, arrise they will decide who to go to for answers if any but like any business or corporation Im sure they will be the first to seek this advise when they deem it is necessary.
No matter what there will be decisions made that we as individuals do not agree with as the game evolves. It is an impossibility to think everyone will be happy all the time. I'm like you Kittik... when a game evolves to a point that it is no longer enjoyable to me I just walk away. Lets hope that day is a long way off for all of us and we all enjoy years of gameplay in Pantheon.
I think it's just important to seek feedback from the whole player-base and not just the forum lurkers. The bulk of of people will just play and enjoy the game and unless their views are actively sought out they are unlikely to share them. In all the years I have played MMO's I cannot recall being asked to share my opinion by the devs and it would be nice if as the game progresses feedback is sought from everyone through means other than the forums.
Sticking to what is in line with the vision of the game is the most important.
That is why so many have backed Pantheon.So that means the game has the right vision.
Playing your own game you can also learn a lot about what works,what doesn't and what needs improvement.
Maybe a stream schedule wouldn't be bad;sitting down once a week to play the game and sharing that experience with the community.
Often the community would not need to tell what needs improvements ;the team playing their own game would often discover what works and what needs improvement.
Nobody but you guys know what is in line with the vision.
Many of the MMO crowd have either given up on the genre by now or don't know completely what it is they long for themselves
Acknowledge the trend that has been going on for mmo's is important too I think.MMo hopping,those games of great promise falling into obscurity a few weeks/months after release
What is there to learn from that?
An ingame report/feedback tool might be useful.But even then it is always good to question the feedback you get & think about if you can improve things with the feedback you've gotten.
Kittik said:Stealing from another thread,
"Kipling said:
I don't want to watch a game I love pander to a whinging vocal minority and change the game to satisfy their desires. I also don't want to see the game sacrifice it's identity for the sake of making more money..."
Not trying to open this threads discussions, but more about trying to figure out, well, aren't we that group? Whats to say we aren't the minority that is most vocal, and if VR does something we don't agree with, do we want them to listen to us, or do we not want them to listen to us?
A game, we are all hoping will have hundreds of thousands of players, kinda makes those of us here on the fourms the vocal minority. This quote from Kipling is one that I've always heard said about so many games and it's understandable. Games need to evolve and change to maintain income, but where do we as a community, protect VR and their ideas against us and also force VR to listen to us if they are doing something we don't agree with?
What I'm about to say here, I know, not everyone can agree with or do, but my stance is, I've never complained. Not on a forum, not on a petition, not in any way about any game. I play games until I no longer like them. If the game changes to something I don't like, I stop paying and stop playing. I know it's hard to do when you put so much into games, I played EQ2 for 7 years, but eventually let go because it changed to somehting I no longer agreed with or enjoyed playing.
Welcome to self-realization. It is a rare trait among humans.
Kittik said:but where do we as a community, protect VR and their ideas against us
Modesty is good.If you can provide unbiased feedback during testing , thinking about the good of the game in general;that will be good feedback.Ofcourse we want this game to have hundreds of thousands of players
Acknowledge that the things you have previously enjoyed one moment in time in another game ,is not what necessarily will work for Pantheon now- Games have to evolve indeed
Accepting this change is not always easy;often people cling to what they think they know.
People often say 'if I hadn't done that, my life would be better'
'If I won the lottery ,all my worries would be over' you don't know such things.A year later you might suffer from terrible illness.
Often people complain and assume things ,even if they don't know anything for sure.
So they have to protect thier ideas against us
We need a game that is different from the "modern" MMO or what is the point? Trying for something better and failing is no worse - for us the player base - than emulating existing games and succeeding.
We need a game that is successful. Coming up with the best game in the history of MMOs and closing it down after 4 months is a disaster.
Most of us will agree in general with these statements (the Gods themselves couldn't come up with a statement that *all* of us would agree with).
The clear ramification is that VR cannot give up all of what makes Pantheon different and attractive but equally cannot keep all of it if, and I repeat *if*, they would significantly detract from its success. They need to compromise creative vision with marketing acumen. We need to compromise and accept that a Pantheon without a few of the things we really want is better than an ideologically pure game that fails. Not that we all want the same things by any means so any version of the game will have some disappointments for many of us anyway.
As pledgers and future players we need to focus on the many things that are good not the few things that we might prefer to have worked otherwise, unless the game morphs into another WoW or Rift, or EQ2 or FFXIV or .....and this is not going to happen.
Liav said:precedent
This is really the crux of the matter, and I feel it's healthy to be aware of this as a community: To understand why we're here, and why some people are skeptical, pessimistic, or afraid the rug is going to be pulled out from under them.
Many of us have 20 years of experience working with early-stage MMO's, beta testing, buying into the "dream" only to have them dashed for various reasons. When MMO A, B, and C have turned out like X, why would D not also = X? A precedent has been set in our minds. Think about it this way: If the first 5 restaurants you ate at gave you salmonella poisoning, how would you feel about walking into the 6th restaurant? This is very much a reality in our minds, but it's not fair to rely entirely on precedent to judge unrelated projects simply because the industry has a checkered history. Each company and MMO project should stand on it's own merits and be judged individually. Who are we to lay the albatross of every other MMO's failures around VR's neck?
Really, this comes down to faith. When history tells us this won't pan out the way we think, but we choose to support it anyways and give it a fair shake, that is nothing but pure faith in the vision and VR. Most of us are there already, which is why we're financial contributors and here on the forums commenting regularly.
It's good to have this context as others bring up this subject, or show pessimism or concern toward Pantheon.