Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
MJ admits to ORvR contribution system being broken.
SpectralHunter
Member UncommonPosts: 455
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2898429#post2898429
For those who don't want to check the link or can't...
Folks,
Paul and Colin were trying to be funny. That's Paul's style and Colin is one of our most trusted, talented and valued guys. If they can poke a little fun at things...
And by the way, Paul also makes fun of himself and doesn't take himself too seriously (well, most of the time 
).
Bugs happen, design errors happen and nobody's perfect. Well, except for some folks on the Internet who never make mistakes at their jobs and neither should anybody according to their posts.
A sense of humor is a wonderful thing and necessary, especially nowadays.
Mark
BTW, MJ is referring to a youtube video:
It's nice to see MJ admit mistakes (even clearly obvious ones). But what kinda bugs me is this part...
"Bugs happen, design errors happen and nobody's perfect. Well, except for some folks on the Internet who never make mistakes at their jobs and neither should anybody according to their posts. "
He has this tendency to have to throw in a jab or two to his critics in all his posts. I understand how he can be frustrated, but for goodness sake, he's the lead dev of a major MMO and should be able to brush off angry posts and be a bit more professional. At any rate, it's a minor offense but at least they are owning to their mistakes, albeit a bit late for a broken system that was outed long ago.
Comments
better now that never
also in some way epic ...
BestSigEver :P
I especially like that part. Nice professional attitude as a leader taking jabs at customers. He has no idea whether the people posting play the games or troll or whatever, but he threw a nice big net to get them all. Some folks? Hell its most folks who have tried and left the game.
And yeah, some people DON'T make mistakes on their jobs to the magnitude he makes on his. Imagine a doctor pre-screening a patient, telling them the surgery would last 2 hours and should be ok after that. Then the surgeon operates but forgets to do half the stuff he said he was pre-Op. (four classes right MJ?.. 4) Thats major stuff missing/not ready. Or a cop who shoots 5 times at a perp, hits him once and hits two bystanders. Well, he got his man eventually, right MJ? Good enough for you by your standards, I guess. Or the bus driver who has 20 stops on his route but only stops at 10. No problem, its only a short walk between the missed ones! Yeah MJ, the REAL world is different.
Stop making excuses for stuff you failed to supervise properly as lead. Your game is fair. YOU touted intense and extreme. YOU overestimated server base. YOU put in a wonky reward system. YOU did not manage your team well enough to see that the content would be ready. YOU made Order the joke class by pumping up the Destro side way early on. Then YOU now glossover and poo-poo the stuff you did NOT do as minor and "Oh well, everyone makes mistakes on their jobs?" Stop passing the buck. You sound like George Bush Light. "I didn't know about the WMD not there.. I wish I had a do-over." Please grow a pair and step up and acknowledge it and stop letting people blame players for playing your game 'wrongly'.
I guess it is a good thing you help make online games all day, and don't have to get a real job in the real world. Don't think you'd get very far, my man.
Ultimate slap in the face to a working man.
"TO MICHAEL!"
I'm not saying WAR is a bad game (it's a decent game but doesn't meet the hype IMO) but I'm seeing a trend here...
McQuaid.
Garriott.
Jacobs.
These are three highly touted developers because of their past successes but the first two were complete flops in their second attempt at a MMO. Vanguard is on life support. TR will be dead in February. I believe that the old devs of those original games are out of touch with the gamers of today. I think they started believing in their own hype (Garriott especially) and never bothered to consider that the MMO field is much more competitive now.
I'm not saying WAR is like those two considering it is fairing well but I hardly think EA and Mythic believes the game is meeting all its potential right now. Jacobs didn't say it and won't admit it but I venture to guess that he really wanted to dent the WoW juggernaut with WAR. The fact that WAR isn't competing with WoW must irritate him.
And let's face it. Any person that reaches the level of a lead dev of a AAA MMO wants to dethrone WoW. To reach that level, the person has to be driven in some regard. No dev wants to settle for second place when they have a shot at first place. That's the difference between those who succeed and those who fail. So I'm pretty sure Jacobs is annoyed that WAR isn't meeting expectations, which is also probably why he threw in that jab against his critics.
Anyways, just a tangent thought.
One correction I would like to make to this video - the contribution system in PQ's is NOT working properly. That's laughable. They should take a look at their contribution systems across the board.
Im glad they are finally fessing up that they screwed up big time and that all the gamers have been getting screwed on contribution since day 1 of launch. Im still however puzzled why its taken them this long to realize that the game is running code that shouldnt even be there. Dont they document their shit? Didnt someone who you know, WROTE THE BLOODY THING go over the code and at some point go "hey wait a tic, that shit isnt supposed to be there!" and did something about it? Obviously not I guess. It took epic threads and endless proof on the forums for them to finally do something about it. Good job Mythic shooting yourself in the foot like that. I know of atleast one subscriber that quit over that nonsense...
You make an interesting note here. I wonder if I can add to it..
Noting the 3 you mentioned as successful in the past and their subsequent failures to repeat them made me think that this whole MMO world is not what it seems. We seem to think it is more like car-making. That if you make a good car that sells, you just have to improve on that car to eventually make it the best ever. A first year Lexus comes out, its good but not great. So they tweak, tweak, tweak. 4th year its fantastic. So all they really have to do after that is put some things in and it stays on top.
With a MMO, you can't do that. After your 'hit', you tweak once. But thats about it. Further tweaking to a MMO makes boring, repetitive and stale. People still see it as the same old game, same old (WoTLK, any EQ2 expansion, etc) and they start to belittle or get bored with it. A MMO only improves with time for a short while. They want a completely new animal.
So these successful guys take their reps and fortunes and can write any ticket they want with a huge company. They set out to make the game "theyve always wanted", but didn't have the budget. Now they have the budget but find the actual making is difficult. They cannot recapture the vision in their heads. Then the companies start to put pressure on them, they cut corners. A little here, some there. At release the product doesnt have their real flavor on it, but it has their rep. So they fight like this guy to blame this/that/the other for its shortcomings. I pity the WoW designers when its time for them to leave WoW and make something else. They are gonna have SO much pressure on them.
The whole MMO making looks like pot luck. They werent world famous before they made their big games, so nothing was expected.
There ought to be a rul: If you make a hugely successful game, you are NEVER allowed to make another for many, many moons. All financing after that should go to new developers, cause they are the ones with the freshest ideals. There is no way in hell a hit designer is gonna turn around and catch lightning in a bottle twice. I just don't see that happening, yet they get the big bankrolls based on that one lucky hit.
The new ideas that make the best MMOS in the future are gonna come from guys off the radar. Not from the whales in the industry today.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Awesome response. You make some good points.
So, are MMOs different from other video games? Take Blizzard. They have three very successful franchises. Valve and Bioware are two other companies with great reputations of producing great games. I admit, making different types of games instead of making a different MMO is not completely fair but I do think companies can produce multiple MMOs that are great.
Maybe that's the key. Company, not designer. That way, instead of depending upon one guy, you can collaborate and make a better MMO. So in Blizzard's case, I agree with you. Rob Pardo should not be in charge of their next MMO, nor should any of their current developers. I think if they start fresh with new people, with their resources, they can catch lightning in a bottle again.
It all comes down to arrogance. People like MJ are too arrogant to really admit their mistakes in time. Beta lasted a long time, the game has been out for 3 months, and they are finallly getting around to noticing that the basic mechanisms of the game are borked and badly designed. Keep trading, Contribution and the fact that endgame city seiging is 95% pve are things that killed the game already.
Yeah, they are being humbled NOW that the game is flopping, but if they weren't so arrogant, they would have listened to the beta testers back in July/August. The arrogant designers ( GG from funcom, MJ from Warhammer and RG from TR) all go into the process thinking that players are clueless and the 'professionals' know best.
It's one of the reasons WOW is thriving today rather than dying like it would have 4 years ago. The devs wanted to create a total 'raid2play' game, but they were humble enough to learn very early that that is not the game the majority of players wanted. The biggest raid-fan of them all is now the one posting that he wants 75% of all players to experience ALL the content in the game. Thats a big change from the way the game started ( 5% seeing the orginal Naxx).
I really don't see MJ changing though. Now that the game is flopped, he'll make some changes, but he still obviously has that 'players are clueless' mentality which you see in the quote above.
I've noticed that kind of combative snippiness in his posts for some time.
I think it results in a mixed bag, really. On the one hand, I think the community likes having the big man communicate with them. In some games, this pretty much never happens, and all communication is done through CSRs. But the problem with the big guy communicating directly is that with someone in a position like Jacobs, you get a lot of egos, arrogance and defensiveness almost as par for the course with a person who is as driven as he is. It's normal for someone like that to brush off critics -- which is why it's not always a great idea for people like that to be the front men in terms of communicating with the community. It *does* come off as snippy and unprofessional at times.
As for Blizzard and developers of new games, it's pretty unlikely that Pardo and Chilton will be designing Blizzard's next MMO. Likely they will be involved in some way, but I think Blizzard is smart enough to know that if they do ever release another MMO it will have to be quite different from WoW to be a great success.
WoW's next great product will have to be differentiated but consumer perceptions are almost impossible to change. Creating a completely different MMO could alienate their current consumer base and result in total failure. Creating similar product through line extension facilitated by the law of division is not always beneficial to a company. I will be curious to see if Blizzard has a free reign on creating any new type of MMORPG, or if they are so heavily perceived by consumers as theme park creators that they are forced to stay within their current game structure.
Will be an interesting few years...
Do the terms, "Raid or Die" or "Working as intended" come to mind, talk about arrogance. Blizzard is not the understanding company you portray. Four years for a mind change is a long time.
"The arrogant designers (GG from funcom, MJ from Warhammer and RG from TR) all go into the process of thinking that players are clueless and the professionals' know best" Boy, if this statement doesn't shout out the name Blizzard you have been either freeze dried or been doing hard time. Many of the changes in the game you've mentioned were asked for by the fan base many years ago. Except Arena, hardly anyone asked for that especially in its present form. Fighting your own faction is totally against the heart of the game. Last time I looked it was suppose to be Alliance vs Horde.
How about buying your way onto a high level arena team so you could get your epics and not have to fight, took them well over a year to fix that. That's only one major thing that comes to mind that defeated the mechanics of the arena. See even Blizzard is not perfect. Raiders can start getting the new PVP gear, but if you detest raiding as a PVP'er you have to wait for Arena.
Anyway, subs in the US and Europe have been fairly stagnant for a couple of years. If not for the Russian, South American servers coming onboard this year plus China and the new expansion that just came out, it is most probable the subscription base would have slipped this year.
Get off this sounding board of WOW being a utopia of a game, it isn't, and neither is WAR. They both have issues and they are both working on solving them.
So in essence, take you arrogant and condescending attitude elsewhere.
Rofl, if you played Daoc "Working as Intended" should *not* remind you of Blizzard. It used to be Mythic's catch phrase, especially for those of us who actually kept up with the Daoc TL reports.
You may have me on that one, but to be honest, I can't recall it coming from there. I do recall it in Everquest. But, then again that is where Tigole and Forur came from.
Most likely these phrases come from much further back than MMO's, the military comes to mind in this case for working as intended. Just to be curious I did Google it and most of the references go back to WOW.
How about "a creative use of game mechanics" for exploits.
The point remains, Wow and its team is no less arrogant than any other game company.
Who is this MJ person people seem to have trouble with?
Mark Jacobs "Grand Pooba" of WAR for Mythic. MJ has been up front but bad coding QC mistakes this far after launch are just plain nutts considering the contribution system is a major part of the whole freaking game.
Mark Jacobs "Grand Pooba" of WAR for Mythic. MJ has been up front but bad coding QC mistakes this far after launch are just plain nutts considering the contribution system is a major part of the whole freaking game.
But it's Mythic we're talking about here. Long on ideas, spotty on execution. It's *always* been this way with Mythic. *shrug*
Players are clueless, mostly because players (used in the general sense) do NOT agree. I'm a player, and I don't agree with 90% of what other players have written, just in this thread alone.
Most of the confusion (and, I believe, incompetence) that is boring huge holes in the game structure creation of modern MMOs is stemming from the belief that players all think alike. Players all want this, players all want that. The players of MMOs are extremely diverse and have very different expectations of what a MMO game is supposed to deliver. For some its a monetary game - he with the most gold wins. For others its a social status game - he with the best gear/stats/play-record wins. Still others think its about adventure and storyline, showing off and acting a part, strategy, teamwork, or even (imagine that) old-time fantasy roleplaying.
Mark Jacobs' problem (which applies to other developers as well) isn't that he thinks players are clueless, it's that he is a player himself (or at least acts like one), has his own narrowly focused biases, and thinks that players (once again, in the general sense) actually have a clue. MMOs, and games in general, are far better when they cater only to a particular brand of player to which a significant majority of the developers identify. Trying to appease other brands has just gotten everyone into trouble lately.
I read many posters saying that Warhammer is a mediocre game. I don't agree. I think that the half-hearted attempt to appease PvE-ers, PvP-ers, strategists, roleplayers, adventurers, art critics, story readers, and longtime Warhammer aficionados has made an extremely bad game that leaves a bad taste in almost everyone's mouth, sooner or later.
And for those that think Warhammer is doing well - it's not. Regardless of what gets spread around by fanbois or developers doing damage control, I was in a couple of different guilds that completely died (virtually no one had even logged in a month other than myself) and my last guild was dying. The game has cartloads of problems (like the contribution bug) and new ones are being created as fast as old ones are fixed (if not faster).
I believe it is all caused by a lack of focus combined with the greedy belief that a single game can appeal to everyone.
Heh, you make it sound like Mythic has a long list of games they've produced.
At any rate, it seems execution is far more important these days. Because the MMO market has matured a bit, there's less room and tolerance for critical mistakes.
Actually, Sanya and most of Mythic tended to have a very anti-saying "Working as intended" policy.
------------------------------
"Capitalism is currently working as intended."
I think the problem is, investors won't settle for niche games if they are putting a huge amount of money into development. You can have a niche MMO that caters to a specific group of players if it costs $10 million or so, like the old days. But that's not the case anymore. AAA MMOs have budgets that compete with major movies.
So if a MMO costs closer to $100 million than $10 million, then you better believe it better cater to most MMO players. Still, even with a large budget, WAR did try to cater to PvPers specifically. I think the major problem is, they just failed to execute the RvR well, which is ironic since of all companies, Mythic should understand RvR.
And a single game can appeal to most MMO players. Every developer is trying to the same because it already happened. Hate it or love it, WoW has successfully managed to appeal to a wide range of MMO gamers.
Actually, Sanya and most of Mythic tended to have a very anti-saying "Working as intended" policy.
Clearly you never read the TL reports then, whole reports used to come back with "Working as intended" behind every idea/fix in the reports, months of data and testing in many cases and just a simple wai response
WoW is primarily popular because of the wide range of gamers that call it home, and because of a hugely popular set of games that preceeded it. It's called human social networking, and it doesn't really have anything to do with game structure. You'll notice that trying to imitate the WoW game structure has produced nothing really successful, because the game structure wasn't really the major contribution to it's success. Knowing Blizzard (I'm a fan of Warcraft I & II, Starcraft, the Diablo series - never played WoW), however, I would imagine they came up with an interesting game structure at launch, and have refined it for several years now. Profit breeds more profit. Success breeds more success. Still, there seems to be a large quantity of WoW players that switch momentarily to a new MMO game when it comes out, due to boredom with grind and repetition in the game they call home. And, obviously, others loathe the game with a vengeance.
There are over 6 billion people on the planet, probably at least a billion of which are potential MMO subscribers. Only about 1% of those have World of Warcraft accounts. No one has any real idea how many people would be playing MMOs if they were being developed through more artistic channels and less financially-motivated ones. Saying anything about ranges or percentages of MMO players while ignoring the potential has fallacy built right into it. And, as I noted in the previous section, there is such a thing as core playerbases (those who are there for the actual game), and residual playerbases (those who are subscribing because of other players). I suspect that WoW's core playerbase is much smaller than it's residual one (from personal familial experience and being subjected to teenage networking during the early years of WoW's existence). As far as game structure is concerned, however, core players are usually the only ones that really matter.
My point is that saying "a game can appeal to most MMO subscribers, look at World of Warcraft" is a very misleading statement, so much so that I would call it flat out false. It isn't necessarily the game itself that draws so many subscribers, the total number of potential subscribers is not known, and core subscribers (the numbers of which are also not known) are the only ones for which a game development team has to be concerned.
And, personally, the only player opinion that matters to me in regards to an MMO game is my own. Since I have never played WoW, they have exactly 0.0% of players that I would categorize as "real" MMO players.
"Bugs happen, design errors happen and nobody's perfect. Well, except for some folks on the Internet who never make mistakes at their jobs and neither should anybody according to their posts. "
You mean,like those people who bought the box and paid a monthly sub? yeah,how dare they complain that the RvR system is broken! His 'give us feedback,but only if its positive' stance is really ridiculous when he now admits stuff like this.
The rumours of an official forum dont surprise me,I suppose him and all the bigwigs at EA want somewhere they can spin everything in a positive light, and block out all those 'trolls' complaining because the game they bought isnt finished.
Can you please provide a realible source for this?