Hello!
After a very long break I recently revisited "Landmark" to see where "Everquest Next" is heading.
First, sure, it was fun to explore the new stuff, and see things that have changed. The voxel engine is great, sea looks awesome, props are well done.
But there is a sharp contrast with things that still are horrible, as if made by hobbyists: the UI, the controls, the lack of configuration. The tools and handling are very bad.
I don't wanna review the thing, just want to point out that I've got the feeling, first, that I didn't feel like I was a paying customer in a closed beta. It felt more like being a paid QA tester, but in a work relationship where devs don't care much for my job.
Second, that there are many areas totally not acceptable in a professional product. Mouse handling in first person for example is very bad and you can't change the mouse settings. The graphics look extremely washed out, and there is no gamma setting. The list goes on and on. Things that could be addressed easily.
So I wondered: What is going wrong?
I was shocked when I found out that SOE lost $60,000,000 in 2014!
Because I have no clue where all this money could have gone! What I saw in Landmark was the same state as was shown at SOE Live 2013.
Some quick online research showed me some even more shocking insider leaks. They depict a very grim situation of SOE. Lack of funds, expertise, know-how. But read for yourself.
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Sony-Online-Entertainment-RVW3200788.htm
Quotes from reports ranging from 4th of November 2014 to 4th of November 2013. Red markings made by me.
Nov 4, 2014
“Get out as soon as you get on a development team. ”
- Impossible to get fired.
It doesn't matter if you don't actually do anything, you can keep your job indefinitely, especially if you're a programmer. See: Cons
- There are several brewery tasting rooms nearby.
They're within walking distance so you can drown your sorrows before, during, or after work."
CONS
- Complete incompetence of management.
The people steering the ship have no idea what they're doing. Nobody in charge has made a successful game this century. They also refuse to listen to the few experienced individuals who they have managed to hire.
- Inexperienced staff.
Since there is such a prevalence of individuals that have been promoted out of QA/CS/the street, the vast majority of people have only ever worked in game development at SOE. In several areas (particularly production) it's a case of the blind leading the blind. Nobody receives the training necessary to KNOW how to do their job properly.
- Low turnover.
The ratio of useful employees to useless ones skews heavily toward the latter. In addition to being plagued with inexperienced staff, most development teams have staff that either doesn't actually work, or are just straight up bad at their job. There is no personal responsibility or discipline taken against employees who continually fail to deliver. Bad employees are never let go as Smedley (and therefor all of upper management) sees the company not as a business, but as a family. Having a family is great, but this one is full of siblings you wish you could disown.
- Too much value placed on programmers.
In reality, they're the easiest to replace as most positions in this discipline can be recruited from outside the games industry. In every round of layoffs that the company has had, the programming department is always the least affected (often not at all affected), leading to an abundance of programmers who have no reason to fear losing their jobs and continue to underperform.
- Unclear pipelines & muddy communication.
The flow of information between disciplines is terrible. This is mostly due to inexperienced production staff, but is also affected by middle management never having been exposed to a functional work environment.
- Poor games.
It should go without saying, but all of the above is what contributes to the overall fact that the quality of games being created by SOE is terrible. The budgets are AAA, but the results are worse than most dedicated hobbyists could pull off. The structure that supports SOE allows it to create MMOs, which is the only thing that makes this company unique. This genre is dying and in need of some large changes to revitalize it, unfortunately I don't think the current incarnation of SOE is capable of doing that.
- Complete any projects that have direction and achievable goals with positive outlook
- Planetside on PS4
- DCUO expansion
- EQ & EQ2 expansions
- Cancel everything else
- EQ Next
- Landmark
- H1Z1
- Remove C-level staff
- Remove Franchise Directors
- Lay off vast majority of programming staff
- Ask senior programmers who is worth keeping
- Ask remaining programmers, artists, designers and producers who actually WANTS to stay
- The number is so low it may shock you
- Change the name of the company
- Recruit competent C-level employees
- Restaff back up to 25% or less of the original headcount
- Being far more selective and only hiring quality employees
- During this restructuring time period, use the talent on hand to enter preproduction
- A hand full of small (MMO/non-MMO & mobile) titles
- Evaluate all projects and only enter production on few
- Ensure reasonable scope, given this simple formula
- cost = time * headcount"
"Management has absolutely no clue who's good and who's bad"
“An overly complacent culture satisfied with mediocrity detached from the rest of the game development community. ”
There seems to be a prevailing culture that is content with relative mediocrity. Mediocre visual presentation quality, long loading times, poor frame rates, and frequent seconds long hitches and stalls are the norm here. There are technical reasons for these issues that are lost on the majority of the engineers who work there. Those engineers that bring invaluable experience from other game studios that produce far superior titles face an uphill battle as they attempt to explain how things can and should work better to technical leads. Some tech leads in particular are highly intelligent software engineers, but would be better suited to lead work on non gaming applications while they have little to no experience working at other game studios, and on top of it all, don't seem to even enjoy playing games very much, especially the competition."
Effective developer tools are largely non-existent here. Other engineers have an air or arrogance when it comes to realizing the importance of good tools as they seem to think that they are the ones that make the games and fail to support the real hands-on developers: designers and artists. There's a real failure to realize that good tools means faster development time, and faster development time also means superior quality of output since motivation can remain high.
Negative cash flow year after year with routine mass layoffs make company longevity outlook pessimistic. SOE employs hundreds of people, and despite working there for years, I have no idea who most of them are, and always wondered why despite there being so many people getting paid, the quality of work is abysmally low overall.
Start completely over. Throw all the current crappy in-house developer tools away and make new ones. There are employees that are highly motivated to make great things happen. Find them and offer more incentive to succeed."
"No one in upper management had a prior job where they learned first hand how to build and run a great organization."
“Reactionary circle jerk while looking to recapture faded glory ”
- They make games that are just not fun, with no long-term sustainability other than a very small niche group.
- Weak marketing campaigns, and very low budget to do it on. Recycled ideas that show little originality. But are probably stuck there by low budgets for poorly performing games.
- Sweep under the rug or spin poor results of promotions, campaigns, game launches, etc... without ever holding anyone accountable.
- Finally starting to pay attention to analytics that other companies have recognized for years.
- Struggling to find a hit game caused them to reach to purchase some truly awful games (Bullet Run, Wizardry, Dragons Prophet) which are a waste of everyone's time.
- Way behind on technology for making and supporting games. A few key people in love with stuff they dreamed up as a "standard" that all games must use, but in reality is a poor excuse for what a modern tool or language or open-source standard could do for them.
- Cut QA teams so much that we can't do our job to the level we all want. Very little investment in tools or processes to make this aspect of the company better.
- All teams are on a shoe-string budget, so very little hiring to bring in help, reserves, or fresh blood. (Not sure but there seemed to only be one System Administrator in the whole company due to people leaving or getting layed off). Requests for work took a long time to get completed as the tech folks were always waiting on getting a server or support to work through legacy processes.
- Working with teams that say they are using "Agile" processes is frustrating. Compared to what other companies do to adhere to Agile, SOE just uses a term that allows management, Smed, or marketing, or seemingly anyone to throw more tasks (with very little requirements) into the "sprint". This caused delays, or frustrations. Sometimes a key part of the system being built would be completely dropped, but not because of priorities, but because necessary requirements were changed so many times that no one knew what they were trying to build. By the time it reached QA no one was able to tell us what it was we were supposed to test in detail.
- Bonuses are always a small fraction of what was promised as the games are not making the money they need to support the company.
- Rarely seem to finish strategic initiatives to allow future advances on game support or underlying technology.
- People that have innovative ideas that embrace new technologies, and who stand up to the "SOE lifers" that are protecting their archaic ways are often marginalized, let go, or back-stabbed to the point they become ineffective.
My comment:
Some reports read like troll attempts after getting laid off, but there is some truth behind all those statements, and even I as a customer can experience the issues, especially if I "have" to take part in testing an alpha version of their game. Again, I have no clue where the sixty million dollars have gone. Of course it went into the development of "H1Z1" and "Everquest Next", but where are the results? Why is "Landmark" still on the level they have been a year ago?
Is this a sinking ship where the crew has lost faith or even worse, is sabotaging the ship so they can jump off it sooner?
In any case, there is a lot to be done at SOE and this doesn't exclude a big internal restructuring process that separates the good apples from the bad ones...
Amylion
Others just shoot the zombies which are chasing us. Whereas I try to talk to them.
If the brainless realized that it is dead, maybe, just maybe, it would lay itself down to rest...
Amylion
Member Posts: 38
Comments
i stopped reading after this ...
You have NO clue whatsoever what your talking about !!!
You see, here's the thing ...
Just because disgruntled employees have a chance to vent on a public site, doesn't mean they are correct.
"yes" these very well can be valid and true statements. Or, as per the bit above, there could have been some "know-it-all" who was always right, everyone was always wrong, no one listened to him or her and now that they are no longer with the organization they decided to "tell it like it is".
Heck, I have a friend who is very smart, worked for our company but always felt management was wrong and she was always right. In vacuum she WAS right. But when you have to take into account that there are other people who work there and that one's department has other goals other than what one might think those goals "should be", she was wrong.
There's always going to be someone who thinks they know how it really is and there are always going to be people who are so angry that they are willing to badmouth anyone, especially since there is no real chance of rebuttal.
So yeah, this stuff could be true and it could also be just another set of rants by yet another set of disgruntled people.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
"The operating income for the quarter included a 6.2 billion yen ($59 million) write-off of "certain PC titles sold by Sony Online Entertainment." SOE announced last month that development on four of its MMOs will cease: Free Realms, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Wizardry Online."
It looks like this might actually be a write off assets relating to the games closing for the year. Much of this is 'unearned value' that they had expected to make, but did not.
Props to OP for the time you took at this. But alas a lot of fanbois are going to jump all over you for putting forth the truth with SOE. Some of us already knew SOE has been on a downhill spike for a long time. Personally I think it happened when they destroyed SWG. Smed needed to go a long long time ago. His time has clearly been over in gaming for a while. Too bad he and others just can't see it.
Maybe when it comes to SOE people need something massive to happen to finally open their eyes. Who knows maybe it will happen with Landmark and EQ Next. For me any faith I had with SOE was gone when SWG was shot down the toilet.
Star Citizen – The Extinction Level Event
4/13/15 > ELE has been updated look for 16-04-13.
http://www.dereksmart.org/2016/04/star-citizen-the-ele/
Enjoy and know the truth always comes to light!
Most of this was discussed back when EQ Next/Landmark were first announced (all the reviews on glassdoor). SOE has been in trouble for a while. Its no secret that they had to lay off a ton of people back in fall 2013 to "focus on EQ Next", and all of their IPs have suffered for it (those that didn't stop development altogether - rip Vanguard). Many of their games like Planetside 2 that were still relatively new were stripped of staff and new content was pushed back for over a year. Its no surprise to me there still nothing new concerning EQ Next, and yes I know Landmark is essentially EQ Next alpha testing (I was the guy trying to explain that a year ago while everyone else claimed otherwise).
Wouldn't be surprised if EQ Next ended up being vaporware. Even if it launches at some point, I'd bet the farm that it will be no where close to as grand as they promised at SOE live 2013. I'm expecting the actual game to be about as close to what they promised as Darkfall was to their dev journals from circa 2003 (ie. not even close).
While some might point the obvious that disgruntle workers may or may not be spewing lies,i don't even need to hear it,i pay attention to the entire industry and have been playing SOE games for a VERY long time.
There are two and only two positives i have seen from SOE well sorry 3,but after what 15 or so years thta is not many.
1 EQ1 was a great introduction to the genre.
2 EQ2 was an even better introduction to 3d and better graphics.
3 Customer support is perhaps the best i have ever encountered.
Now without getting into a mile long post,EVERYTHING else disappoints me with SOE game design/direction.Bah i should not have said everything,their premise behind Voxels and allowing players to build in the game is actually a solid idea on paper but it is SOE,their implementation has only one purpose>>cash shop ideas.Oh look what you can do,you can sell your ideas to other player...for a cost.Oh look you can make a profit from your designs...for a cost to us.Oh look what our game can do....streamlined down to a very simple implementation because it is easier and cheaper to do.We have this wonderful Storybricks in our new game...hmmm sounds like a nice little gimmick,all it does is allow less employees,just insert trigger into field xyz if x then y if Z then x simple,but we will spin it as something amazing .
It is also easy for outsiders to sort of make vague comments IF you don't actually play SOE games or never have for any length of time,but to anyone that has played a LOT and supported with a lot of money AND pays attention to their EVERY move,you can EASILY see they have been struggling badly for quite some time.
My lat point is on profit /losses : This is an area that sure it makes the people in charge look bad but does not mean a single thing to me.You see a dev liek Blizzard could sell absolute rubbish and make a profit,that is how easy their fanbase are,i have seen it and heard it in many chat and Twitch venues,Blizzard has a fanbase that buys anything and everything Blizzard sells while not even looking anywhere else.
My last point is that you could simply flip flop all of SOE's portfolio and Blizzard's and Blizzard would still be making millions while SOE would still be losing money.The real reason behind that is SOE has garnered a lot of hate and imo they deserve it big time.NM the huge SWG fan base that hates them,the last straw for me was EQ2 xpacks and their TCG to which they really shafted their supporters out of tons of money with no care for us what so ever.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Smed especially fell to the Peter Principle http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle years ago if you ask me, and I wouldn't be surpriced if that were a general problem in SoE, as the Peter Principle often inflict entire organizations.
Disgruntled know-it-all however are everywhere, so those are not proof of anything. If you have been following SOE since the haydays of early eq, it is obvious that something is not working optimally within SOE. Bad decisions upon bad decisions, and then a sudden stroke of genious once inawhile. EqNext as a concept is one such stroke of genious, and the idea and basicconcepts are no doubt the future of mmorpg.. The question is, will their incompetence destroy the idea just like theyslowly killed all their other games... Or can they pull it off, follow the exciting story over the next 3 years.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
I don't see anything out of the ordinary. Companies have write-offs. Employees sometimes feel spurned and hate their bosses. Every company has some frustrated customers/ex-customers.
"How serious is the situation at SOE?"
I don't think there is a situation. Do you think Sony is going to sell off SOE? I'd be willing to bet real money corporations would give more than adequate bids. I genuinely don't feel SOE is in any danger.
They are right actually. Go back and look at the pre alpha hype video they put out.. The game just now is catching up to it and in some ways still far behind. The world is still really small , no in land water , really poor tools ..etc.
Funny thing in the OP is that they said the voxel engine is great , ocean looks great and props are great.. Ocean and props arent voxels. And we still cant sit use props so they are far from great.
After a year and the game is still just a shell with thrown together half done systems just so they can move on to something else. It was about 7 or 8 months ago when I realized that SOE really had no idea what they were doing. Now reading this it makes perfect sense.
I have done many Everquest beta and had quite close contact with developers.
Some points are true, like the fact that some developers have been at SoE way too long. They are used to a single type of tool, they have a lot of experience with those tools, but if you make them do a new project, they have no clue what they're doing.
I remember arguing with a developer about a zone issue, and he kept insisting that it was impossible to change the quest. He kept saying "this is what our tools can do"...I kept asking...why don't you use another tool then, why don't you make it work...and he insisted that they had no budget to make new tool, but it was also simply unwilllingness.
And when I sat tool, I mean the tools used to make content, like UnrealED, abstraction tool.
It was more than just money, it was like a "I am done with my job at 5 PM, don't ask me to talk to you to 5:01, because I'm not"...there was one developer who would sit there with me until 8PM fixing things, but most really couldn't care less.
The problem if you work at the same company for years is, that you kind of settle in, that you are no longer challenged, and each time SoE tries to make a new game...they neither have the people or budjet for it.
Glassdoor is complete crap. Everyone can leave comments, they don´t confirm if you actually work there.
Besides, that brewery part, if true.. sounds like a place I´d like to work
also quotes like
" quality a dedicate hobbyist could pull off" - come on this is just armchair developer BS with a hate agenda, completely idiotic
You would like Valve, they have a massive snackbar.
The "situation" at SOE is miles better than at any of their competitors, lol
At least SOE have a major new MMORPG in development, which is more than you can say for any of the other "big" western studios...
The development of Landmark may appear to be a bit slow, but how many of the armchair critics here have ever been part of the development process of a AAA MMO all the way from Alpha ? Especially an MMO that is implementing features never seen before in any other MMO ?
The whining on Glassdoor reads like the typical nerd with superiority issues. Is there any large company that does NOT get negative reviews on the internet ? Glassdoor is loved by those with an agenda who'd like to "prove" that their suspicions are true.
It's an alpha early access, just keep that in mind.
As for SOE, these kind of reports get posted here once in a while because they think games are magically made in a few months and companies should be all sunshine and rainbows. I have yet to find one company that doesn't have incompetent managers and lazy employees...and I'm talking company where I worked.
$OE are good at getting mugs to pay for Alpha testing so they can pay their staff wages and this is another reason they will be using steam they don't or seem not to have the ability to take control anymore imo. Also it's clever that they got so many people to buy pack for EQL and also got the players/testers to crerate most of the ideas which have sprung up for free using the carrot that you can sell your ideas in game...EPIC steal by $OE imo. It's time the AXE fell on Smed and I have to agree if they brought in new blood we might see some decent things happen in SOE. I get the impression the PS4 side of things keeps this company going not Smeds side of the company. EQI & EQII will die a death sooner or later they keep trying to reinvent them with new expansions when the truth is know they wasting resource.
I personally feel that working on H1Z1 has diverted resources they could of used to get EQN well on its way and have EQL near its final push, however making H1 does not make sense it appears that because Smed likes Zombie games he randomly got this idea off the ground. To many poor zombie games do the same old crap as will H1Z1 will do nothing new being brought to the table with it imo. They could of been more inventive else where, so whether the OP is right or not about what's going on in SOE they will never change while that idiot sit at the top. The industry needs to start policing its self and getting rid of promising stuff and not delivering and this is why crowd funding has boomed so much in the last few years. However the crowd funding is for another day as that's going to break a few hearts too.
Asbo
Well, many have said that ArcheAge was much better game in alpha
I just loved the parts where they talked about how stupid everyone at SOE was because they wouldn't scrap their PC games to focus entirely on mobile. I think I understand why a lot of these people got fired.
I was also shocked to learn Smed has a heart and hates to fire people, very confusing.
BUT...
SOE has no problem accepting awards and praise on games not even close to being a finished product.. For me, integrity would keep me from accepting something not rightfully earned.. Maybe if the EQN devs refused to accept awards saying, "We appreciate your enthusiasm however, we respectfully decline this award since we are so far away from having a product we are comfortable with.".. Since that never happen, SOE must feel OK with the status of their game.. Right?
I agree. This is how I see things......
Pretty much they d***ed around on EQNext for years....and accomplished next to nothing. A few years ago some of the sony brass finally knocked down the door and said "WTF have you guys been doing with all this time and money?" The Brass demanded some results within X time and SOE responded by slapping together the beginnings of landmark in a year. They were about to have the plug pulled when Smed and DG convinced the brass they could sell the unfinished crap they had come up with.......and sure enough.....people bought it. So now with the Brass off their back...they are back to d***ing around and EQNext is getting nowhere again.
Something is certainly wrong over there. They either don't produce as fast as they thought they could, or they ran into snags that stymied their progress in a big way. After Landmark was opened for 2013 SOE Live attendees it became obvious that the updates were not going to be coming fast and furious. I think some had hoped that Landmark was essentially pretty done and they were ready to move into production on EQNext shortly (judging from conversations with others at the event and after), while others had the right conclusion that the game was far far away.
I think that they had a collection of market targeted ideas that they had trouble converting into a workable synthesis. The combat is one example as it feels tacked on, and lacks a central nervous system. Nothing seems to mesh well in Landmark, and that is a problem. I feel like EQNext is essentially an "X-plane" MMO that could yield research but little else unless SOE gets its act together.