115015-holiday-event-removal-not-a-big-deal-page-2

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Your basis is on their unrealistic goals that have been proven to be such.
 
They've never proven they could deliver monthly content, and now they even say they can't. There's no reason to believe it's possible.
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Perhaps I am just more optimistic about the companies abilities when they stop working on a years worth of content at once. They spread themselves too thin in the past, so we have yet to see what they can achieve when they work in their new set-up.
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Well, they've said they can't do it. I believe them.
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They said they are not planning on doing it.
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While I understand mistakes were made in the past, I worry that the new priority of so much focus on Drop 3 is not for the best either. There needs to be a balance between looking to the future and looking to the present and it is not clear if that has been reached.
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This. Instead of not doing Shade's Eve, don't do some stuff you are planning to do in Drop 3. Then you have time to test content you admit has already been developed and just needs testing.
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What do you think they can remove from drop 3 that is a lower priority than the holiday event?
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Well, I'm unable to find a nice, neat list of features and changes like I've seen for previous Drop PTR's, but from what I can find, I would name "all but the most urgent class changes" and "rune system changes" for starters.
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So drop the content (new zone, new solo dungeon) in favor of the holiday event?
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So... you ask me what features I would remove from drop 3. I name a couple of those features. Then you act as if I said to remove completely different features than what I actually said to remove.
 
If you were just going to completely change my answer anyway, why did you bother asking me the question? :D
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I think I misunderstood your answer. When you said "all but", I thought you meant the only changes you would keep in drop three were class changes and rune system changed. So my mistake.
 
Now that I'm re-reading it, were you suggesting they remove the rune system changes in favor of the holiday stuff?
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That, and all of the class changes except for the most urgent ones. In other words, if a class' spell is completely broken, fix it, but I am suggesting that they can hold off on tweaks and balancing if it means they have time to test Shade's Eve.
 
Sorry for the confusion.
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My my, another official voice popping in!
 
It struck me after I put up my last post that there is a very real sense that Holiday removal is, indeed, a very big deal: most of the things that have been shuffled around are not easy to understand or miss. Above someone mentions there is a solo dungeon (ship mission?) expected; I didn't know about that. And, more importantly, people that don't already play Wildstar wouldn't know how to process something like that.
 
However, what anyone, whether they have played an MMO or not, can understand is this conversation;
-"How is that Wildstar game doing?"
-"They cancelled Christmas, how do you think it is doing?"
-"Yikes..."
 
I've already started seeing versions of this "cancelled/killed Christmas" meme starting up on other sites that talk about Wildstar. This is not a good thing. 
 
FYI, to answer the question asked above: if I was choosing which piece of content to delay to avoid the appearance of incompetence, I think the solo instance would be it. My reasoning is that it is the content that should be easiest to QA and then patch in outside of the drop and it is not something that I have seen a lot of expectation of. A holiday event is something everyone expects and everyone understands, and it getting cancelled is universally understood to be bed juju.	
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It also should never be a choice between a holiday event or a dungeon. It should always be both. This is a company that thought it had the capacity to do monthly content drops. Yes their QA was spread too thin when looking at a years worth of drops but I do not think it is not unreasonable to expect them to be able to deliver one holiday event (which I fully accept will be scaled back from their original intentions) and then a dungeon a month later. 
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For the record, I'm not certain the solo dungeon was in drop 3- last I thought I heard it was.
 
And if it is, I think it's huge for the game because it will allow more casual players to experience a part of DS. If they pull it off right, it can be a big distinguishing feature for them.
 
For me it would certainly be more important than holiday content, but I realize mine is just one opinion.	
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For the record, I'm not certain the solo dungeon was in drop 3- last I thought I heard it was.
 
And if it is, I think it's huge for the game because it will allow more casual players to experience a part of DS. If they pull it off right, it can be a big distinguishing feature for them.
 
For me it would certainly be more important than holiday content, but I realize mine is just one opinion.
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			As I understand it, the new solo instance is set in DS and is basically meant to run alongside the events of DS.	
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This is actually a good example of what I mean: I don't off the top of my head know what you mean by "experience a part of DS", though I can think of a few things that it might be (my guess would be Drusera Story, but I dunno).
 
And that's my point: you don't have to play Wildstar to understand "they cancelled Christmas because they needed all their staff making sure the wheels didn't fall off". It's an intuitive and easily digested sign of crisis. 
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Info about Omnicore: http://www.mmogames.com/gamenews/34066/wildstar-introduces-first-solo-dungeon-experience
 
"The Omnicore runs parallel to Datascape and allows more casual players to see more of the game’s content without dumbing down actual raid difficulty."
 
If that works and expands the casual appeal of the game and lets them experience some of this high end content, that's a really big deal.	
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If you consider it a crisis, maybe?
 
They tried to do monthly content drops by using a cascading development and testing cycle.  That didn't work.  They're switching to quarterly because that's easier for testing purposes.  I'm not sure I'd call that a crisis as much as having to deal with objective reality.  If they can give us three months of content every three months with better testing than monthly testing every month, I don't see the issue.
 
We can't really judge it until we've got drop 3-4.
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Both of you have (it seems unintentionally) vindicated my point.
-Vic, you say "I'm not sure I'd call that a crisis as much as having to deal with objective reality." That's.. kinda a terrible thing to say about a company, basically 'it's not a crisis, they were just being amazingly unrealistic about their ability to do things'. That's not exculpatory, that's condemnatory.
 
Moreover, you are really clued into what is going on in the game, what about people thinking about just picking up the box: is what you said easier to understand, or "it's doing so well they had to cancel Christmas to fix bugs..."? Put aside that your point is still negative.
 
In a perfect 20-20 hindsight, we can say that it would have been a lot better if they had not promoted Shade's Eve. But they did. People have seen the videos and read the reports and posts. It's a matter of record that Halloween and Christmas were things Carbine wanted and tried to do, and fell down on the job. That's a really easy thing for people to understand: heck, just think about it in real life. If you knew a family that had to cancel their planned holidays, I don't think it's unfair to say your thoughts would almost certainly be "they must have really fallen on hard times."
 
-Jeff, your explanation makes my point about how familiar you must be with the game to be excited about a feature like that. I've played this game for some time, and when I had to guess what you meant, I guessed wrong. To the uninitiated, you really think a instance tied into an endgame raid is more meaningful then holiday events? Don't get me wrong, that sounds cool... but it's cool at max level. Holiday events are (from what we saw) cool for everyone in the community.
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To the uninitiated, you really think a instance tied into an endgame raid is more meaningful then holiday events?
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I personally wanted a halloween event, I was excited when a dev hinted there would be one previously.. this is disappointing I just know other MMOs that do holiday events get really good feedback from players for it, and it brings the game alive, with interesting and fun holiday event rewards too, it makes players extremely interested.
 
Wildstar does one thing wrong is they underestimate the power of Vanity
 
If they had implemented a costume sale (Any method whether it be gold, credd, or vanity cash shop) 
 
This game would be a hell lot more alive right now despite the amount of bugs or glitches it has	
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Is it condemnatory?  Not really, nobody else has ever been able to keep up with that schedule.  I'm not going to condemn them for trying and failing at doing something nobody else has ever successfully done.  WoW's been more than a YEAR without any new content.  It'd be a little bit snooty of me to turn up my nose because they had to extend their timeframes from one month to three.  Not their amounts of content, just the cycle.
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Depends on the uninitiated, I guess. For my fiance, this is her first MMO. She was somewhat bemused when I told her about holiday events. She plays solo a lot, so, though I haven't asked her, I'm guessing a solo instance sounds pretty cool. Especially if it's tied into end game raids, which she's only vaguely heard about. But she knows enough from hearing me talk that they are kind of a big deal that someone like her probably won't see (and I probably won't see DS either).
 
Now, if omnicore is just some silly instance you blow through in 15 minutes one time and then never go back, meh. But if it ends up being something really cool that people talk about, then I could certainly see how that could be a big attraction to casual players, a segment who has felt neglected by this game.
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Let me tell you why not having the Halloween an Xmas holiday events is ok for everyone (IMO). Donatelli the game Director explained that because there won't be any holiday events that instead they were able to implement a literal TON of new content, bug fixes and a lot of new positive changes in the next drop.
 
While everyone is missing the holiday content, the fact that we are getting a ton of fixes and badly needed content is a worthwhile trade-off. So many good things coming like:
 
- Mega Servers (Only reason mega servers are coming is because the game is dying, putting everyone together to mask this problem)
- The sorely needed and downright awesome Rune Changes (This could have and should have been done before release)
- A completely new zone of new content (Which will become the same boring daily's, just like Scorch>>Elyona>>Tree)
- A ton of new quests
- A new reputation with actual decent rewards (Decent gear, really your gear must suck)
- A sorely needed gear itemization update!
- pvp fixes and streamlining (Something else that should have been done before release)
- a new dungeon (low level)
- endgame dungeon accessibility changes for the better
- there a so many more incoming changes in this drop that I can't begin to list them all
 
In total it has been stated that after this incoming drop that it will change the game so much that it has been stated that Wildstar will finally be the game that it should have been on launch day- instead of what we actually got.
 
This drop is extremely important and will either make or break the game in my opinion.(too little, too late)
All of this in exchange for giving up the 30 day 'Holiday Content' - a worthwhile trade-off in most peoples opinions. (Should not have been any trade-off, end of story. A lot of people were looking forward to the holiday content)
 
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Ehh... I'll be honest, when I say uninitiated, I really don't mean your fiance. First of all, she... well, she plays already. Second she has a live-in conduit of information.
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Um, but they have decreased the amount of content. I don't mean to be cutesy, but the loss of expected content is kinda the entire point of the thread.
 
You are right though, condemnation was the wrong word, I should have simply said negative rather then positive. That's the crux of the matter: this whole state of affairs seems bad. 
 
People are quoting Caydiem's post in other places and they aren't saying "oh good, that'll get them back on track", people are saying "they killed Christmas? Whoa."
 
 
That's fine, I guess. I'm not sure it really contradicts my points, but... okay.
 
See, before I made the comparison of a car with features being drawn back, but I've realized that not the best analogy. What we're really looking at here is a patient in a hospital being treated for gangrene.
 
And like a patient with gangrene, sometimes you have to amputate a few toes to save more critical organs. Now, that's clearly the right thing to do... but it's still terrible. 
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I've been playing MMORPGs now for about 15 years. This is the first time that I've seen one cancel major holiday events, but that's not what worries me the most. It's the unintentional shift in my perception this has caused that has me most troubled.
 
How distant on the horizon all of the additions and fixes are leaves me feeling like my feedback is worthless. There are a billion quality of life updates, content additions, and small changes I'd love to suggest, but given how utterly screwed their content pipeline is, even if my idea is good I won't see it for a long, long time.
 
I've never felt less listened to, even if the Devs are listening, because I won't see anything practical happening for a long, long time...
 
It just feels hopeless.	
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I've been playing MMORPGs now for about 15 years. This is the first time that I've seen one cancel major holiday events, but that's not what worries me the most. It's the unintentional shift in my perception this has caused that has me most troubled.
 
How distant on the horizon all of the additions and fixes are leaves me feeling like my feedback is worthless. There are a billion quality of life updates, content additions, and small changes I'd love to suggest, but given how utterly screwed their content pipeline is, even if my idea is good I won't see it for a long, long time.
 
I've never felt less listened to, even if the Devs are listening, because I won't see anything practical happening for a long, long time...
 
It just feels hopeless.
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I'm not sure who you mean- but she kind of represents someone who doesn't know much about MMOs. When we started playing I mentioned holiday events before she got into it much and she thought it was kind of strange. And anyone who is into MMOs would get the significance of a solo dungeon tied to a raid.
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Well, take heart.  The entire reason this is happening is because the devs listened to us.  All those bug fixes and such are the ones we demanded, we demanded they stop releasing new content until they fixed the game, this is pretty much what the community was asking for.
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I would like to quote one of the best dev responses to a topic. Some may know who I am talking about
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Eh. I'll be honest and say that I think that you're engaging in a great deal of supposition, but the same accusation can be directed my way. So I'll just leave it at "agree to disagree"; I don't think your fiance is particularly representative of the people they need to be appealing to, while you do.
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Where I am going with this is that this (and where my personal quote pertains to), so many (seems like 90% of people on this forum past and present) have begged, screamed, raised a fit, cried, moaned and through tantrums for developers to please stop releasing content with bugs, and please listen to "us", and guess what? They have. Some say "little too late", but why? And how come? Seriously, the game has been live for 5 months...
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Where I am going with this is that this (and where my personal quote pertains to), so many (seems like 90% of people on this forum past and present) have begged, screamed, raised a fit, cried, moaned and through tantrums for developers to please stop releasing content with bugs, and please listen to "us", and guess what? They have. Some say "little too late", but why? And how come? Seriously, the game has been live for 5 months...
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This is where you and many of us completely disagree. We demanded and expected a AAA MMO in 2014 release without game breaking bugs. We also demanded that if, as Frost in many interviews with the press stated, you are going to correlate a subscription in the MMO market in 2014 that it is likened to having quality content such as HBO and monthly drops equals monthly content your sub is worth. (I'll link you the article if it will appease you). So in reality, most of us were not demanding they stop releasing new content. We were demanding both 1. fix your *cupcake* 2. release us new stuff as promised. They claim they can't do both right now, takes too much time.
 
A lot of people, myself included, highly doubt each new quarterly drop is going to have as 'much stuff' as the original 3 drops would have had and come out bug free. I just don't believe it, period. Why should I? Their track record doesn't inspire confidence.
 
June 1st ish - game releases (buggy as hell)
July 1st ish - 1st drop (still buggy as hell, but hey new content in Blighthaven with a seriously horrendous rep grind, which coincidentally is the only reason to stay in the zone)
August 1st ish - 2nd drop (the pvp patch that broke pvp)
September 1st - ..........
October 1st - ...........
November 1st (maybe drop 3?)
 
If the devs had truly listened as you claimed, they would have listened to their beta testers who warned them about the rune issues and item stat issues back in beta. Then they wouldn't be in a struggle for their lives right now.  
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Depends on the uninitiated, I guess. For my fiance, this is her first MMO. She was somewhat bemused when I told her about holiday events. She plays solo a lot, so, though I haven't asked her, I'm guessing a solo instance sounds pretty cool. Especially if it's tied into end game raids, which she's only vaguely heard about. But she knows enough from hearing me talk that they are kind of a big deal that someone like her probably won't see (and I probably won't see DS either).
 
Now, if omnicore is just some silly instance you blow through in 15 minutes one time and then never go back, meh. But if it ends up being something really cool that people talk about, then I could certainly see how that could be a big attraction to casual players, a segment who has felt neglected by this game.
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As much as you talked it up earlier I would have thought you at least played it on the PTR
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I'm not sure if you want me to go flipping back through the backlog to start reposting all those old posts telling Carbine that they didn't care about new content (apparently, they thought nobody did) and that they should fix the game before releasing any new content.
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If you won't, I will, because I was one of the people you were debating it with. And speaking of revisionism, you have a very revisionist memory of the subject. Here were some of my own personal posts on the matter.
 
 
 
I then went on to count every single response to the thread up until that point and found that less than 11% of people had cited content as their top concern.
 
Read these posts again and attempt to understand the context in which people are speaking instead of intentionally twisting what you are reading to fit your own goals. What people have been trying to express from the start is that new content must come, but that systemic changes must come SOONER. November for the Defile was fine. November for systemic changes was not. That Carbine put themselves into a position where they couldn't possibly deliver such a thing is irrelevant, and they do not need you to defend the crippling design and development mistakes they made.
 
But let's get to your real motives.
 
 
 
There is a pervasive "I told you so" element to all of your posts whereby you are basically rubbing the community's nose in the situation that "they" created, and in order to propagate this fallacy you are intentionally misunderstanding everything people are saying. It is unwarranted, it is disrespectful, and it is unhelpful. Nobody has asked for the cessation of new content, they have merely asked for competency, and if Carbine cannot deliver then that is on them, not the customers.
 
I mean no personal disrespect for Caydiem or any other Carbine dev that has posted here, because they are really in no way to blame for Carbine's management decisions. But the fact is that an event like Shade's Eve SHOULD have been done before the game ever launched. Yes, QA takes a while. That is why successful MMOs plan ahead instead of flying by the seat of their proverbial pants and trying to rush everything at the last minute. They prepare a certain amount of content that they feel is enough to keep players busy, and then hold FINISHED content back to release later and keep players busy; meanwhile they're working two content patches ahead.
 
It is already extremely clear that, although Carbine claimed this was the case with them as well, it was absolutely 100% not the case, and now they are suffering for it. The customer had nothing to do with this. Wildstar didn't even launch with implemented content finished; Datascape was still receiving emergency rebalances even as Enigma was poking their heads inside for the first time.
 
As for myself, it's all academic at this point. I don't log in anymore. There's no reason to.
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Well, no, because it's not like amputating toes, you never get those back.
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So THAT is where the grinch hides out all year long. We need to head over to your house and send some holiday cheer!
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I'm going to go out on a limb here (hah!) and say that at this point most people would expect toes to grow back before Carbine manages to get this content in-game. So... yeah, kinda a lot like gangrene.
 
 
Oi... I'm going to be blunt, but this is a terrible analogy. Not least of which for the simple fact that the tunic was something actually available, but which you could not take advantage of.  In fact, as you point out later in your post, you have the ability to get this tunic whenever you want. It's entirely in your hands.
 
That's the critical difference: you made a choice based on the best outcomes for you and what you wanted. Here we didn't, the choice was not laid out before us where we could choose to prioritize what got worked on and what didn't. 
 
Now, yes, I know what you are going to say: "the community..." Stop.
 
Stop saying that "the community" made any such decision. Not only was I not an active part of that conversation, I didn't even know that conversation was happening. 
 
Even if you're right (and there is growing evidence yo suggest you aren't), so what? So the "community" said stop development on X, Y and Z, the job of the developers is not to willful every whim of the forums' loudest posters, but to evaluate what is truly in the long-term interest of the game. Frankly, the idea that the dev's are so easily swayed by the forums is more frightening then reassuring: who hasn't seen inappropriate nerfs and biased thinking occurring on forums in other games, or the alternative of a cliche of gamers so convinced that everyone wants what they want that they drown out the actual majority of the players?
 
You can't stop the argument with "the community...", because the community is (one would hope) more then just the few voices on the forums. How many people are going to log in on October 31 and that will be the first time they find out that there isn't any of the content they were expecting? It'll be more then no one.
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  I can't blame them for not answering feedback they didn't have.  The devs are listening, for better or worse.
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I dunno...
To me it all comes down to this:
Carbine was ambitious had awesome goals and ideas to go with it. Along with that the communtiy was pumped as well because they loved Wildstar or at least saw great potential in it.
Unfortunately Carbines initial direction didn't pan out and it hurt them and the community to varying degrees, due to execution of some content not being up to par or expectations of players.
As time went on from Beta to now; Issues that were brought up to some degree or another in beta as well as issues that popped up post-launch became more noticeable to wider population.
Carbine and as well as some players see the bugs and design issues as being significant enough to warrant an internal revamp of resources, procedures, policies,etc...(primarily QA testing)
Hard cuts and decisions are made to delay and or cancel certain plans(like holidays) to accommodate the changes and stabilize the state of Wildstar for future development
Sadly while some players are willing to wait for Drop 3 the degree of patience for others range from "taking a break until Drop 3" or "I'm done...'
Drop 3, Megaservers, and Carbines general direction with Wildstar in turn become very important as a whole demanding clear objectives, focus, and goals  to solidify Wildstar
Players are in turn anxious, worried, upset, "on the fence", or having their own form of fun while they wait to see what the future holds!
That's just my view on it. Myself personally I'm still having a good time and will just see where megaservers and drop 3 takes us. I hope for the best, but if things go sorrow I at least don't feel like I personally wasted money or time while here. :)
 
In a sense though I feel like this just stresses the important of the next Drop further than it already was. Whether intended or not it's not hard to really see(least for me) why some see it as a "hail mary" as some are referring to it as.	
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Because by late September (when you posted), we already knew the content had been delayed.  By a long while.  That's why I said August.  Just, before I start quoting a ton of forum posts, I just wanted to point out that your stated posts were two weeks ago, when we'd already not had content for a while and the conversation had, as I stated, switched because then people realized how long bug fixing takes.
 
Did you post anything of that nature in June, July, or August when all these statements were made (and the content pushback was decided)?
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...t's not like you're to blame, but I hardly think Carbine is to blame for taking the feedback they got and doing what they could with it....
 
Just because you try to inb4 the answer doesn't make it any different.  Carbine listened to us, some people weren't talking or weren't even here to talk.  Few were defending the position of monthly drops over hitting the brakes until the pushback for Drop 3 was announced.  There's nothing Carbine could have done about that.  I can't blame them for not answering feedback they didn't have.  The devs are listening, for better or worse.
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Frankly, the argument that "The devs are listening, for better or worse" is not an argument in favor of sticking it out: that is an argument in favor of abandoning ship.
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Please, just because most of us are forum lurkers does not excuse the revisionist BS you are touting that they didn't have feedback. Lots of us sent in bug reports, lots of us complained in open and closed beta about gear stats, rune RNG and slot mishandling. Just because we weren't here on the forums till now doesn't mean we were not reading them or giving input in game via bug reports. If you see me in the last 2-3 weeks with a giant uptick in forum posting it is because I am irate that yet another game I am heavily invested into is about to utterly fail. I have a game box graveyard in my closet of similar stories of games that completely failed. The only games that kept me playing for years at a time with a consistent sub were EQ1 and WoW.
 
People become most vocal when they have just about had enough of _____ that put them over the edge to want to stop handing over cold hard cash to their entertainer. That is why there is a graveyard of "I quit because of X,Y,Z"  threads locked by the moderators as soon as they were posted and they all sound like the same broken record. You already said in another thread that this game going FTP would be your last straw. Well, for a lot of people the last straw already came with the breaking of promises to release quality (and by quality it is generally assumed mostly bug free) content every month so we feel our sub is worth it. That ship has sailed for what many think is 90% of the starting pop of this game. I don't care what entertainment industry you are in, when you see a 90% decline in revenue in 3-5 months your investors are going to panic. You seem oblivious to his fact and want us all to believe that if we all just sit it out that somehow magically all will be right with the world. Sorry to tell you, but in an entertainment market that is as saturated as ever keeping the dollars coming in isn't as easy as it used to be. You got to get it right early and often right out the gate or your doomed.
 
This game has a solid foundation. It is up to Carbine to turn the ship around and make it worth the sub for those that are left. If they can't even do that much what hope do they have to draw people back or garner totally new players?
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I'm trying to amuse myself by hunting down all the game's rare creatures.
 
I had been working the daily zones (for a second time, having shelved my first 50 as being a little too easy-mode. Class balance in this game is bizarre...) and when I cleared that 16k threshold and realized I had to do everything I'd done up to that point again it was just soul killing.
 
Combined this with my guild leader/friend from previous games allowing his account to lapse, hopefully only until Drop 3 and its been a rough week.
 
I'm still picking away at the game, but as a person who doesn't enjoy pugs and has seen two guilds dissolve out from under them, its been mighty slim pickings.	
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			You're an impossible apologist Vic. Not amount of logic is going to convince you that you are wrong. I guess it will take the bleeding from 90 to 95% to gates shuttered to prove you wrong..... or the game going FTP :lol:	
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This is why you are simply wrong. Please, next time you start writing something that starts with "the community", stop, and realize that everything after that is going to be met with an "I don't care what they think". The reason why that is the appropriate response is quite simple:
 
The Community Doesn't Make The Game.
 
Seriously: the devs are listening, they are not stenographers. Frankly, the argument that "The devs are listening, for better or worse" is not an argument in favor of sticking it out: that is an argument in favor of abandoning ship. Because what you are saying is that the devs have abdicated their responsibility to evaluate feedback in favor of simply blowing in the breeze that comes off the forums. When you say " if you like or want to keep something, you to say so, because anything you don't say is off limits is subject to change.  Because the people who aren't happy, they'll definitely be here and be very vocal", that's not an argument that the dev's are working well, that's an argument that the dev's are rudderless.
 
Moreover, that's not the game I am paying for: I didn't pick this game up because I wanted to play around on the forums all the time in a never ending battle of who can kvell the loudest. I bought in because I liked the vision I was presented with, and thought that the developers had a strong vision guiding their decisions. If your version of events is to be believed, that was just silly of me.
 
Again, if what you are saying is true, the game is doomed. Most people, in fact, the vast majority of people that play any game, never come onto the forums. I don't think there is any reason to doubt that the people that spend the most time on the forums are not a particularly good sampling of the people in the game as a whole. The idea that the forums then that the forums are a battleground where volume shapes the future of the game is... well, that's a totally different game then I want to play.
 
A little anecdote: earlier today my subscription renewed while I was at lunch. When I got back and saw the notice, before I consciously thought of anything I said "oh frak" (didn't say "frak"). That's not a good sign, when that is what my gut is telling me.
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You're an impossible apologist Vic. Not amount of logic is going to convince you that you are wrong. I guess it will take the bleeding from 90 to 95% to gates shuttered to prove you wrong..... or the game going FTP :lol:
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			For me not putting the holiday events out is a bummer.  I think it's the correct thing to do but a bummer.	
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Wrong about what?  You guys wanted quotes.  There's some quotes.  I told you I'd been here a long time and I saw what was going on.  I told you Carbine's giving us exactly what we were asking for.  I'm not sure, precisely, what you want me to say.  I'm sorry there weren't more people in August that were against a delay.
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I've been playing since the beta weekends.
Been haunting the forums since about that time as well.
Honestly, I would have to agree with you. It was bug fixes, stability issues, pvp, rune revamping, rng revamp, optimization, etc. This is what people asked for the loudest. There's no doubt about it, that every third post was someone screaming for rune slots to not suck, or for there to be a reason to do adventures/dungeons beyond the attunement process (read gear drops, because lets face it, crafted gear ruled.), or how broken pvp and pvp gear was... I mean you had to wade through a lot of posts on those issues.
 
And I understood why. I didn't disagree with them, that it seemed kind of.... backwards the way things were.
 
The truth is, though, you can't get the attention to bug fixes, a revamp of major game systems without taking resources from somewhere. So it was either going to be a potentially buggy defile/holiday drop (which would have sent the community into a frenzy. And lets be honest here, it doesn't take much to send them into a frenzy lately.) or we were going to be waiting while they worked like mad to try and address the vast majority of bugs while at the same time, releasing a relatively bug free content drop.
 
They're kind of damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
 
Like you, I don't really have a horse in this race. I want to see the game succeed, and that's about the extent of my desire. The problem that I have, is I know how emotionally, and mentally draining it is to work your butt off on something, only to have people tearing you apart before you have even managed to get whatever you are working on done.
 
I mean, Carbine got it. They did. If they hadn't, we would be shaking our heads, or discussing a buggy defile drop, and no major fixes incoming. They heard the thousands of voices crying out (yeah, its a little dramatic, but I have star wars on the brain today), and they altered the course of what they were doing.
 
I guess I don't get it. What the hell else do people want?
 
It feels like a lot is riding on this next drop to me. At least in terms of population. I want this drop to succeed, I think a lot of us do, and thus... as disappointed as we are, or at the very least, as disappointed as I am (Because I am sitting in my Halloween decorated house, wearing a protostar costume that I designed and sewed myself, while munching on bacon flavored granok burger... yes that's how much I love Halloween. And bacon.) I get why they had to cancel the holidays.
 
So I am desperately trying to locate, and put together a Halloween flavored housing plot. Ill get my Halloween dammit. If I have to drive to Carbine and force them to code some decorations for my house.... its happening.
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I guess I don't get it. What the hell else do people want?
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That "better or worse" thing isn't because I don't trust Carbine, it's because the community doesn't always know what it's asking for.  What would you like me to say?  That I would have liked monthly content with no bugs?  Sure.  We weren't getting that.  I was fine with the bugs we were getting because I didn't feel like I often dealt with them.  Do I mind them going quarterly?  Not especially, it depends on what we get out of it.  I'm not going to condemn a quarterly patch until I see what they've been doing for three months.
 
I'm just not at all surprised.  I'm sorry, I can't wring up any vitriol for Carbine because I saw and read exactly what they saw and read.
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They want it clearly understood that "Stop putting out buggy content!" was NOT a request to reassign all assets to bug fixing, it was a demand to do MORE. "If you are going to charge a premium rate, you need to deliver premium effort" The value just wasn't there for many.
 
Normally you get to pick 2 - fast, good, or cheap. When Carbines behavior became "its not cheap and we can only do Fast OR Good" a LOT of people pulled their support.
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And you are right about that. Spot on.
 
People have a really short memory. I remember people complaining at headstart because there was a queue time and asking for more servers. It was really funny to see the same folks coming back on the forums asking for some servers merge or free transfer because there is too much servers,
 
Now the same is happening with drops vs bug fixes. And after that people are saying that Carbine is not listening. 
 
In fact people are acting like spoiled children, they want everyhing now and reserve the right to change their mind everytime they see fit.
 
The funniest thing is those people are the same that will tell you that you are part of the toxic community when you confront them on what they said. 
Really ironic in fact.
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They want it clearly understood that "Stop putting out buggy content!" was NOT a request to reassign all assets to bug fixing, it was a demand to do MORE. "If you are going to charge a premium rate, you need to deliver premium effort" The value just wasn't there for many.
 
Normally you get to pick 2 - fast, good, or cheap. When Carbines behavior became "its not cheap and we can only do Fast OR Good" a LOT of people pulled their support.
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I believe I read somewhere that this next drop was 3-4 or what pre quarterly would have been 3 and 4. No, I'm not going to find the quote, but it makes some sense. One complaint I have seen has been that the drops don't contain enough content. Another has of course the bugs that come along with the new content. So I am hoping that they are spending more time on more content and at the same time making it more bug free. Honestly though, time is not on their side. Some things are going to need improvement quickly so that old and new players don't leave in frustration. Bugs are one thing, but many people are making noise about non raid endgame, as well as the leveling being too much "on rails".
 
I will miss the holiday stuff, but it's not game breaking.
 
Hey maybe instead of celebrating real life holidays we can invent some new Nexus holidays. The devs could even use it to create new settler lore for the game. Plus they could use the creation of the first or all the holidays as tools to created community involvement, including contests for back-story. This could take months giving them time to find a comfortable place in which to release the new holiday content. The first holiday could be with limited content, because how big would the first holidays be in the new frontier? Say a title and some gear, maybe something for the house. Year by year they do grow however and eventually maybe some big festival. But please no strain....	
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I was going to reply and point out where Vic was going wrong (again), but you've actaully done most of the heavy lifting for me here;
 
The problem with Vic's argument ultimately boils down to something we all know to be true: that the forums are a really poor way of gathering useful feedback and that discerning feedback from noise is really hard.
 
If one accepts that point, and I think it's pretty hard to dispute, then Vic's "defense" is much more like a bill of accusations. Seriously, his argument seems to be that there is no value in complaining about the lack of judgement of Carbine's decisions... because they have abrogated their ability to make judgments to the forums. That's terrible! That's a recipe for disaster, not a virtue!
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I was going to reply and point out where Vic was going wrong (again), but you've actaully done most of the heavy lifting for me here;
 
The problem with Vic's argument ultimately boils down to something we all know to be true: that the forums are a really poor way of gathering useful feedback and that discerning feedback from noise is really hard.
 
If one accepts that point, and I think it's pretty hard to dispute, then Vic's "defense" is much more like a bill of accusations. Seriously, his argument seems to be that there is no value in complaining about the lack of judgement of Carbine's decisions... because they have abrogated their ability to make judgments to the forums. That's terrible! That's a recipe for disaster, not a virtue!
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Soo... how exactly does that mesh then with the idea that they are falling flat on their face? I mean, I'm not the one making the argument that the dev's are slaves to the prevailing mood of the forums (that post is by Vic, last page). 
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They have an entire team of people responsible for filtering and communicating feedback from the community (like the forums) and other sources. They are called "Community Managers."
 
The forums aren't the only place, but one of the best.
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			This by it self is not a big deal, but at this point it is just another broken promise. Which there has been a lot of. My thing is that every time dev news comes out its bad news or delays, just once it would be nice to hear " Hey this is better than expected or this will be coming sooner than expected". Heck at this pointe in time I will settle for "Hey we actually got something out and it was only 2 weeks late". My sub automaticlly renewed this morning unfortunatly. I havn't logged on in 2 weeks and came to forums today to see what news is going on and I see it is more of the same. Shame really this game has so much potential. Oh well back to Smite for now I guess.	
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Soo... how exactly does that mesh then with the idea that they are falling flat on their face? I mean, I'm not the one making the argument that the dev's are slaves to the prevailing mood of the forums (that post is by Vic, last page). 
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Are you always turning things upside down like that?
 
Seriously when you leak customers where is the first place you will get feedback? Forums and all the other medias right? If you were playing other mmos you should have notice it. WoW is a pretty good exemple on how a 90 pages thread asking for nerf was coming live on the next patch.
Don't underestimate the community.
 
Think of it and come back to me with something that make more sens.
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You'll forgive my amusement when you go, in the space of like 3 posts, from;
 
 To "Don't underestimate the community."
 
They're simultaneously a valuable source of feedback... and spoiled children with a really short memory.
 
Which, is actually my entire point: the key to the developer's success is the ability to separate wheat from chaff, the valuable feedback from the petulant whine. 
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@Buzzsaw:
 
Your points about drop changes related to forum requests are very well written and I completely agree with you.  Carbine needs to take suggestions from the forums with a grain of salt instead of just implementing popular threads as game changes.  From here it looks as though Carbine has been designing drop content completely off of forum requests.	
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You can't really say that it is okay for everyone. People prioritise different things and you can't tell them how to feel and think. If your looking at things that way, then you should really consider this; we should already have had Drop 3 and with that in mind they should have had time for the holiday events.
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@Buzzsaw:
 
Your points about drop changes related to forum requests are very well written and I completely agree with you.  Carbine needs to take suggestions from the forums with a grain of salt instead of just implementing popular threads as game changes.  From here it looks as though Carbine has been designing drop content completely off of forum requests.
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This by it self is not a big deal, but at this point it is just another broken promise. Which there has been a lot of. My thing is that every time dev news comes out its bad news or delays, just once it would be nice to hear " Hey this is better than expected or this will be coming sooner than expected". Heck at this pointe in time I will settle for "Hey we actually got something out and it was only 2 weeks late". My sub automaticlly renewed this morning unfortunatly. I havn't logged on in 2 weeks and came to forums today to see what news is going on and I see it is more of the same. Shame really this game has so much potential. Oh well back to Smite for now I guess.
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