Vague DDO podcast shows it's time for a change of the guard

signetring · April 2009

I'm an old player and I've watched DDO out of the corner of my eye since I stopped playing over a year ago. I can honestly say that interview was very poorly done. Kate Paiz is probably one of the worst producers in a video game I've ever seen.

She has what I call the "Obama" disease. She can say nothing at all, and make it sound excellent. She dodged every meaningful question, addressed none of the community outrage from missed modules, and gave little to no real insight on the game's direction. Everything with her is "we'll see" or "that'd be cool" or "we're currently looking into that". She should take lessons from other producers who often make the hard decision to communicate news (for better or for worse). Even when she does communicate bad news, it often leaves the community thinking "but there's still a chance, right"... this is not good for managing expectations.

A game designer should never fear their community the way DDO does theirs.

From the day she came on board and gave her first State of the Game address (the only one ever delivered) in 2007, only 1 out of the 5 major elements were delivered upon. To make matters worse, the one item they did accomplish was already completed at the time of the address. Rather than admit this epic fail in some meaningful way and take some well-deserved criticism, they shut the communication practically off. As a consequence, the community imploded on itself and Turbine took criticism anyways. Not a smart move and easily preventable by being upfront with their players (quickly I might add, not delaying bad news is crucial). Even the DDO community is in the dark when expecting updates. Even their test server only displays certain quests, preventing a thorough data-collection process on the new content. This almost ensures customer outrage when they discover absurd quests (Abbot raid is a good example of poor Q&A).

If Turbine was a single person looking for a date, it's classified ad should read as follows:

Hot and tempting super model looking for a nice man who obeys without question. Must open their wallet to me every month with no expectation of anything. Must enjoy communication on my terms only, don't sass me or I'll drop you. We may get some fun once or twice a year when I'm not out banging my other boyfriend. He's much bigger than you and gives me more money, you're just a side salad so get used to that idea. We might go out, if I'm not too busy going to other websites looking for a man. Send me a picture of you, but you won't get one from me, I prefer to keep things vast and mysterious, in case we ever go out.

Sarr · April 2009

Originally posted by signetring

I'm an old player and I've watched DDO out of the corner of my eye since I stopped playing over a year ago. I can honestly say that interview was very poorly done. Kate Paiz is probably one of the worst producers in a video game I've ever seen.

She has what I call the "Obama" disease. She can say nothing at all, and make it sound excellent. She dodged every meaningful question, addressed none of the community outrage from missed modules, and gave little to no real insight on the game's direction. Everything with her is "we'll see" or "that'd be cool" or "we're currently looking into that". She should take lessons from other producers who often make the hard decision to communicate news (for better or for worse). Even when she does communicate bad news, it often leaves the community thinking "but there's still a chance, right"... this is not good for managing expectations.

A game designer should never fear their community the way DDO does theirs.

From the day she came on board and gave her first State of the Game address (the only one ever delivered) in 2007, only 1 out of the 5 major elements were delivered upon. To make matters worse, the one item they did accomplish was already completed at the time of the address. Rather than admit this epic fail in some meaningful way and take some well-deserved criticism, they shut the communication practically off. As a consequence, the community imploded on itself and Turbine took criticism anyways. Not a smart move and easily preventable by being upfront with their players (quickly I might add, not delaying bad news is crucial). Even the DDO community is in the dark when expecting updates. Even their test server only displays certain quests, preventing a thorough data-collection process on the new content. This almost ensures customer outrage when they discover absurd quests (Abbot raid is a good example of poor Q&A).

If Turbine was a single person looking for a date, it's classified ad should read as follows:

Hot and tempting super model looking for a nice man who obeys without question. Must open their wallet to me every month with no expectation of anything. Must enjoy communication on my terms only, don't sass me or I'll drop you. We may get some fun once or twice a year when I'm not out banging my other boyfriend. He's much bigger than you and gives me more money, you're just a side salad so get used to that idea. We might go out, if I'm not too busy going to other websites looking for a man. Send me a picture of you, but you won't get one from me, I prefer to keep things vast and mysterious, in case we ever go out.

There is a thread I've created about this podcast. So I guess you wanted even more attention that first post in that topic. Ok, so be it.

I'll answer what you say from my perspective, as a player who plays this game regularly for over a year (I observerd the game for much longer, and took quite plenty of trials).

1. There's no lack of communication. In fact, Turbine is awesome at communication with players - the average number of posts from them on forums is probably larger than of any other developer.

You problem is that you don't get to know exact dates for content (while you should already know it's impossible to say exactly), and full transparency of "what Turbine's doing right now and what next 2 weeks, and how and why they change their plans". In fact, I have yet to see any MMO developer who explains purpose of every change, or even what they're working on until it's 100% sure and coming. The way you feel is probably becuase Turbine made mistake in the first place showing you WDA - Weekly Development Activities. No other developer does it, or if I'm wrong, let me know about it. That was just suicidal, because they tied their hands - only they have all statistics and budget info, and after players got hyped about some incoming "thing", Turbine suffered terrible criticism and arguments in community if they needed to change their plans. There is such thing as secrecy of every company, and it's crucial for maintaining customers - if every bad news was made public, company would lose with their competition ASAP. So don't hope for any change, as Turbine was just to generous - and it obviously wasn't paying off.

2. DDO is now in the best shape I've seen it, ever. In DDO EU number of players online and LFMs is absolutely stunning sometimes. It's common to see 2 instances of Markeplace at Thursday 1:00 AM. That's impressive, and means Turbine made very wise decisions in last Mods. Probably Mod 8 was turning point, because number of players grows steadily since then.

3. Kate Paiz is probably the ONLY posible "advertisment" of DDO. Atari washed their hands off DDO, but still they are the only company which can literally advertise DDO. Turbine has no right to do so. So while Kate Paiz is overhyping everything and makes very risky statements, it's the best possible way of catching the attention of press and potential players.

In other words, if you'll start to take Kate Paiz as living DDO advertisment reaching for people outside of the game, maybe it will be easier to accept whe she does. She isn't sure source of information for current DDO players, but potential players may be interested with DDO thanks to her.

That's all Turbine can do to advertise DDO without breaking the law. Atari holds the rights, they refuse to help, so only interviews and anything that press can catch is worthwile.

4. I agree this podcast was one of her worst. Seems she had a pretty bad day or something. Other than that, I wouldn't call it terrible. In fact, for some random person it could be interesting, I think. For us, players... we already know all that she said, right?

One tip for Kate - be SURE that you mic isn't too loud. You won't be louder this way, only distorted - exactly how guitar distortion works, but distorted voice sounds really bad. Good thing Ten Ton Hammer edited it for their regular podcast (lowered Kate's volume on their side), live it was just horrible to listen to.

5. You don't have the facts to show that Turbine makes bad moves at all. At least in DDO EU the player number is rising like I've never seen before. And no, Atari didn't advertise the game even a bit in years ; ). Turbine's work speaks for themselves. And speaks positively.

That's my opinion on subject. Many conversations and big deal of though + experience of topic behind it. I even upload free DDO client via p2p, so I can see how some portion of traffic looks. Feel free to disagree, but I disagree with you too, completely.

jaxsundane · April 2009

Originally posted by signetring

I'm an old player and I've watched DDO out of the corner of my eye since I stopped playing over a year ago. I can honestly say that interview was very poorly done. Kate Paiz is probably one of the worst producers in a video game I've ever seen.

She has what I call the "Obama" disease. She can say nothing at all, and make it sound excellent. She dodged every meaningful question, addressed none of the community outrage from missed modules, and gave little to no real insight on the game's direction. Everything with her is "we'll see" or "that'd be cool" or "we're currently looking into that". She should take lessons from other producers who often make the hard decision to communicate news (for better or for worse). Even when she does communicate bad news, it often leaves the community thinking "but there's still a chance, right"... this is not good for managing expectations.

A game designer should never fear their community the way DDO does theirs.

From the day she came on board and gave her first State of the Game address (the only one ever delivered) in 2007, only 1 out of the 5 major elements were delivered upon. To make matters worse, the one item they did accomplish was already completed at the time of the address. Rather than admit this epic fail in some meaningful way and take some well-deserved criticism, they shut the communication practically off. As a consequence, the community imploded on itself and Turbine took criticism anyways. Not a smart move and easily preventable by being upfront with their players (quickly I might add, not delaying bad news is crucial). Even the DDO community is in the dark when expecting updates. Even their test server only displays certain quests, preventing a thorough data-collection process on the new content. This almost ensures customer outrage when they discover absurd quests (Abbot raid is a good example of poor Q&A).

If Turbine was a single person looking for a date, it's classified ad should read as follows:

Hot and tempting super model looking for a nice man who obeys without question. Must open their wallet to me every month with no expectation of anything. Must enjoy communication on my terms only, don't sass me or I'll drop you. We may get some fun once or twice a year when I'm not out banging my other boyfriend. He's much bigger than you and gives me more money, you're just a side salad so get used to that idea. We might go out, if I'm not too busy going to other websites looking for a man. Send me a picture of you, but you won't get one from me, I prefer to keep things vast and mysterious, in case we ever go out.

Yeah and I'm sure adding the political poison pill you started with is really going to get your point across.Turbine is an excellent company as a matter of fact I challenge you to tell us of someone with better CS.I just had an issue in lotro that required gm assistance(the first time I have needed so in 2 years I might add) and it took them 20 minutes during a free weekend no less.

If you've got a problem with Turbine you have a problem with mmos and should probably quit them all.

signetring · April 2009

Originally posted by Sarr

1. There's no lack of communication. In fact, Turbine is awesome at communication with players - the average number of posts from them on forums is probably larger than of any other developer.

Perhaps it is you that do not play very many MMO's. "Probably larger" compared to what? This isn't even remotely believable. We get monthly updates from the Senior Producer over at Warhammer. He addresses the community specifically with CONCRETE and SPECIFIC information that we can bank on. Hell even Tabula Rasa had a weekly development schedule and that game is defunct. It's pretty sad that brand new games and games that aren't even around any more get more communication than DDO ever had.

2. DDO is now in the best shape I've seen it, ever. In DDO EU number of players online and LFMs is absolutely stunning sometimes. It's common to see 2 instances of Markeplace at Thursday 1:00 AM. That's impressive, and means Turbine made very wise decisions in last Mods. Probably Mod 8 was turning point, because number of players grows steadily since then.

Stunning numbers? You call 1 or 2 servers a stunning feat? Wow it must be easy to please you. Well over in Warhammer Online, we have 20+ servers to choose from, with hundreds of people in open-field RvR combat every single night in any given tier. You do not know stunning until you charge into a group of 150 opposing players. Even if you don't like pvp, you call grouping with six people a stunning accomplishment? That's absurd.

3. Kate Paiz is probably the ONLY posible "advertisment" of DDO. Atari washed their hands off DDO, but still they are the only company which can literally advertise DDO. Turbine has no right to do so. So while Kate Paiz is overhyping everything and makes very risky statements, it's the best possible way of catching the attention of press and potential players.

Of course Atari washed their hands of DDO. It made nothing. No accomplishments were achieved, not even a mediocre amount of players to support it. It's not Atari's fault, it's Turbine's fault for driving the players away. I have no doubt Atari would have been supportive of marketing if DDO was a game worth marketing. The numbers speak for themselves.

In other words, if you'll start to take Kate Paiz as living DDO advertisment reaching for people outside of the game, maybe it will be easier to accept whe she does. She isn't sure source of information for current DDO players, but potential players may be interested with DDO thanks to her.

That's all Turbine can do to advertise DDO without breaking the law. Atari holds the rights, they refuse to help, so only interviews and anything that press can catch is worthwile.

You do not know the law, for one. If you are in Europe don't pretend to know American law. Since I am an attorney let me inform you of the broken parts of your theory. Whenever two parties engage in an agreement they are both entitled to fairness, regardless of what the actual verbage of the contract is. You cannot waive your right to succeed in business just because you found the wrong business partner. When a company (in this case Atari) changes the terms of the agreement to the detriment of the other party (such as refusing to market said product, DDO) you have what is called 'promissory estoppel' and also what is known as 'detrimental reliance' where the actions of one party have a detrimental impact on the other party. It is easy to prove and a well-established principal in civil litigation. It is MORE likely, in fact, that Turbine was in AGREEMENT with Atari that no further marketing should be done. This is a more plausible theory than yours that Turbine's hands are tied by the big, bad, Atari. You wouldn't expect your aunt or uncle to continue investing their life savings in your poor attempt at starting a business, would you?

5. You don't have the facts to show that Turbine makes bad moves at all. At least in DDO EU the player number is rising like I've never seen before. And no, Atari didn't advertise the game even a bit in years ; ). Turbine's work speaks for themselves. And speaks positively.

How many servers have they added to accomodate this explosive new growth? You cannot possibly pretend that the server hardware upgrades were purely to upgrade capacity would you? Everyone knows you cannot have production server farms in the field greater than 3 years (which would have been approximately the time they were replaced). So the question is again, how many servers have they ADDED to accommodate this explosive growth? None. That's right, none. Not in the US, not in Europe, none. So unless you disagree with this FACT, your point is effectively refuted. Even if the new servers could accommodate more players, compare the new level of players with the baseline from release. If you have not gained more than there were at release, then that is not "growth" its simply a reduction of a deficit. Where is your head, man?

Many bad moves by Turbine, all have been well documented on the user forums. Here's just a few to name them:

1. Continuous, undocumented nerfs and changes despite initial acceptance

a. Evasion

b. Wounding of Puncturing

c. Action point system (repeated re-works of this terrible system)

d. Tomes

e. Raid mechanics

2. Poor end-game raid design

3. Outright refusal to change dynamics in the game that reduce wasteful time-sinks. (reflagging mechanic, which by the way they originally refused before they finally agreed (years later)).

4. Absolute silence in all forms of media for months at a time while proposed deadlines go un-met.

Are you serious?

Rokurgepta · April 2009

Originally posted by jaxsundane

Originally posted by signetring

I'm an old player and I've watched DDO out of the corner of my eye since I stopped playing over a year ago. I can honestly say that interview was very poorly done. Kate Paiz is probably one of the worst producers in a video game I've ever seen.

She has what I call the "Obama" disease. She can say nothing at all, and make it sound excellent. She dodged every meaningful question, addressed none of the community outrage from missed modules, and gave little to no real insight on the game's direction. Everything with her is "we'll see" or "that'd be cool" or "we're currently looking into that". She should take lessons from other producers who often make the hard decision to communicate news (for better or for worse). Even when she does communicate bad news, it often leaves the community thinking "but there's still a chance, right"... this is not good for managing expectations.

A game designer should never fear their community the way DDO does theirs.

From the day she came on board and gave her first State of the Game address (the only one ever delivered) in 2007, only 1 out of the 5 major elements were delivered upon. To make matters worse, the one item they did accomplish was already completed at the time of the address. Rather than admit this epic fail in some meaningful way and take some well-deserved criticism, they shut the communication practically off. As a consequence, the community imploded on itself and Turbine took criticism anyways. Not a smart move and easily preventable by being upfront with their players (quickly I might add, not delaying bad news is crucial). Even the DDO community is in the dark when expecting updates. Even their test server only displays certain quests, preventing a thorough data-collection process on the new content. This almost ensures customer outrage when they discover absurd quests (Abbot raid is a good example of poor Q&A).

If Turbine was a single person looking for a date, it's classified ad should read as follows:

Hot and tempting super model looking for a nice man who obeys without question. Must open their wallet to me every month with no expectation of anything. Must enjoy communication on my terms only, don't sass me or I'll drop you. We may get some fun once or twice a year when I'm not out banging my other boyfriend. He's much bigger than you and gives me more money, you're just a side salad so get used to that idea. We might go out, if I'm not too busy going to other websites looking for a man. Send me a picture of you, but you won't get one from me, I prefer to keep things vast and mysterious, in case we ever go out.

Yeah and I'm sure adding the political poison pill you started with is really going to get your point across.Turbine is an excellent company as a matter of fact I challenge you to tell us of someone with better CS.I just had an issue in lotro that required gm assistance(the first time I have needed so in 2 years I might add) and it took them 20 minutes during a free weekend no less.

If you've got a problem with Turbine you have a problem with mmos and should probably quit them all.

LOTRO is not DDO. Everyone knows LOTRO gets the love because it is the more popular and profitable game. Telling someone Turbine is great because they treat their better game well with no comment about the game you must not play is simply useless.

Dr.Rock · April 2009

Ignore him Sarr he just trolls DDO from time to time. I assume someone at Turbine shot his dog.

Rokurgepta · April 2009

Originally posted by Sarr

Originally posted by signetring

I'm an old player and I've watched DDO out of the corner of my eye since I stopped playing over a year ago. I can honestly say that interview was very poorly done. Kate Paiz is probably one of the worst producers in a video game I've ever seen.

She has what I call the "Obama" disease. She can say nothing at all, and make it sound excellent. She dodged every meaningful question, addressed none of the community outrage from missed modules, and gave little to no real insight on the game's direction. Everything with her is "we'll see" or "that'd be cool" or "we're currently looking into that". She should take lessons from other producers who often make the hard decision to communicate news (for better or for worse). Even when she does communicate bad news, it often leaves the community thinking "but there's still a chance, right"... this is not good for managing expectations.

A game designer should never fear their community the way DDO does theirs.

From the day she came on board and gave her first State of the Game address (the only one ever delivered) in 2007, only 1 out of the 5 major elements were delivered upon. To make matters worse, the one item they did accomplish was already completed at the time of the address. Rather than admit this epic fail in some meaningful way and take some well-deserved criticism, they shut the communication practically off. As a consequence, the community imploded on itself and Turbine took criticism anyways. Not a smart move and easily preventable by being upfront with their players (quickly I might add, not delaying bad news is crucial). Even the DDO community is in the dark when expecting updates. Even their test server only displays certain quests, preventing a thorough data-collection process on the new content. This almost ensures customer outrage when they discover absurd quests (Abbot raid is a good example of poor Q&A).

If Turbine was a single person looking for a date, it's classified ad should read as follows:

Hot and tempting super model looking for a nice man who obeys without question. Must open their wallet to me every month with no expectation of anything. Must enjoy communication on my terms only, don't sass me or I'll drop you. We may get some fun once or twice a year when I'm not out banging my other boyfriend. He's much bigger than you and gives me more money, you're just a side salad so get used to that idea. We might go out, if I'm not too busy going to other websites looking for a man. Send me a picture of you, but you won't get one from me, I prefer to keep things vast and mysterious, in case we ever go out.