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Will They Respond to People Leaving?
dink
Member Posts: 438
The CoH/CoV boards cannot be entered unless you have a subscription, and people lose their posting privileges the moment they unsubscirbe - even if they have time remaining on their subscriptions. Does this mean that they aren't hearing lots and lots of complaints about the game that explain what they need to do to make the game better. . . The answer to that question is "Not at all." If you go to the CoH/CoV boards, you'll see dozens of posts that continuously inform Cryptic about what players dislike, and they are pretty much the same things we read here:
1. There needs to be more to do in the game besides just combat.
2. The xp grind after level 25 is really boring and slow - especially with the enhancement nerfs that make the enhancement level-ups somewhat of a boobie prize.
The question I have is:
Are they listening? Have they shared any plans to fix the game so that those of us who used to enjoy it a lot might return?
Comments
I used to be able to post After I unsubscribed.
I unsubscribe right after I subscribe everytime in everygame.
But yes complaint posts/critical appraisals are not appreciated in that forum. And even if they do you hear you they won't change anything.
I send email all mine to Kimtackjun@ncsoft.com
Best thing they could do, IMHO: roll all powers and powersets back to Issue 3 pre-travel suppression levels. They succeeded in severly curtailing power-levelling. Numbers dropped. They succeeded in making missions more difficult. Numbers dropped. They slowed levelling to a painful crawl and hacked in a virutally worthless PvP system that - as it turns out - only a very few hard-core people there really wanted. Numbers dropped again. And again.
Two things they don't understand:
1. a game about superheroes should feel like a superhero game, not a bunch of sissies dressed in tights. That what all the nerfs brought your avatar down to.
2. they obssessed about balance and forgot why people play games. We do it for FUN. We already have plenty of perfectly balanced games around: tic-tac-toe, checkers, Parcheesi. Know what? No one I know plays those games because perfectly balanced = perfectly boring.
This is why ever since Emmert posted his infamous "balance vision" statement, people - like me - could see the writing on the wall. The most perfectly balanced game would mean there would be one AT with one set of powers, one set of enhancemets and NO subscribers. People care about FUN, not balance.
Finally, read the editorial here posted about the SWG changes and why they were so disastrous to that franchise. Simply put: piss off your loyal, long-time customers in hopes of attracting new customers and pretty soon you have neither. Cryptic followed the SOE model - albeit to a lesser extent - and it's experiencing the same erosion of the loyal, long-time customer base that SOE has.
But none of this matters to the morons at Cryptic anyway. When you consider the fact that ED was being tested on their internal servers 7 months before they released it to howls of protest, all the while telling people that the best way to enhance their combat travel powers was to 6-slot them (to overcome suppression) knowing that this wouldn't work after ED was released, means that they aren't even playing the same game as the players are, and - apparently - don't care what the players want in a game they support with their subscription dollars.
Poor decisions, poor design, and poor customer service is why the game is failing.
May it rest in peace.
I've sort of given up trying to be reasonable on the COH/V forums. I participate in player debates with each other on occasion (for instance, the current debate over whether it is reasonable to tell someone else you think his build "sucks", which has been quite interesting and entertaining). But reasoning with the devs? Nah, I don't bother with that anymore. I know they won't listen.
They have some sort of vision about how the game should play and they are bound and determined to see it to fruition, no matter how many people tell them it isn't any fun. I've stopped trying to warn them that this is an unwise course. They won't see reason so... let 'em dela with the consequences.
Meanwhile, I am playing other games like Saga of Ryzom, and it probably won't be too long before I completely unsubscribe from COH yet again (I unsubbed in March of 2005 for about 8 months due to boredom, and came back for COV and bases and such -- and I can't really say it was bad for a while, but I'm getting bored again).
One thing Saga of Ryzom has driven home to me is -- I like compexity, and COH is simple; I like non-combat mixed in with fighting, and COH has nothing to do but fight. It will be a long time before I buy another MMORPG that has a subscription fee (ones with no subs I might still try) unless I'm sure it has non-combat stuff to do.
C
Now, we go to the last mission, clear the way to the end of the map(cool looking Clockwork map btw) and lo and behold there is Babbage again. Well, after the first time, we didn't expect to do much but tried anyways. We wailed on this one again for 10 minutes, then the temp powers started coming out. Someone summoned what's-her-name(the witch) then I summoned with my Warwolf Whistle, let out a Snowman and another what's-her-name(sorry, i'm drawing a blank all of a sudden). We saw his health budge a little bit, but the temp powers didn't last long enough. We had originally started with 5 and someone dropped after 2nd mission. That left us with a blaster, a scrapper, a tank(me) and dark defender.
Basically it came down to all of us petitioning Cust Serv to say, "what the hell?" That's when I got the standard sorry for the inconvenience response with the links to the forums about the problem. It came down to them saying they could not reward us based upon someting we could have done. What? So, they break part of the game, can't use the standard "working-as-intended" defense and still refuse to fix it.
Well, after a few more emails of "sorry for the inconvenience" and there is nothing we can do, I got the email that truly took the cake out of them all. They said they could not reward the badge because "I had not earned it." EXCUSE ME? Sure, technically I didn't complete every requiremnt but that was because the devs broke something. To word it that way like we didn't take over 30 minutes just to form a team, lose a member but decide to keep going, die a few times, work together like a real team to keep us going to the next mission, use valuable temp powers to try and overcome what strategy alone could not and basically put nearly 6 hours into this partcular task and you have the audacity to say I didn't earn it?????? I'm sorry, but I must have been sleep-walking and my dormant elite hacker skills surfaced to break the game.
I've been pissed in the past, but I've basically acquiesced to each response no matter how canned or lame or due to their lack of information about the game(like the Hamidon enhancement rewards), but this is it. I can't stand being treated so indifferently anymore. If they don't care, then why should I? Would it kill them to take action on about 1 out of 20 or 30 emails in order to satisfy a customer? One of the last emails was "I understand but your request is denied". Fine, well you are denied future revenue from me as well. No more CoX and no future purchase of Tabula Rasa as I had planned. Coming from Customer Service, there are times when you have to stop paying just lip service and back up your department's name with action(you know Customer.......SERVICE).
Ok, ranting done. Thanks for listening. Anybody have a good CS experience to offer(in any game)? I would like to know what to expect as obviously my expectations were wrong about this industry(compared to retail and insurance CS industry I have worked in and could not get away with such a non-chalant attitude).
The length of TFs is what kept me out of the majority of them. Who the hell has 4, 5, or 6 hours to spend on one freaking mission?!?!? And then if someone DCs or quits you have to start the whole damn thing over, because you may not have enough people (especially post ED) to beat it!!!
This is another area where the devs at Cryptic are woefully out of touch with real people in the real world. And I agree: CS at NCSoft pretty much sucks. Kind of explains why they're having to let people go (that and the fact that CoH/V - among others - is losing money).
I showed them the artifacts I had picked up clearly logged on my toon, one for for completing each of the TF's. But still no badges.
Then they said they couldn't fix it for me because it wasn't a bug that they had seen before, until many other people had the same bug and it could be verified, they wouldn't address it. So I linked them to umpteen forum posts and developers comments about it. Then they said they said they couldn't fix it for me because if they did they would have to fix it for everyone else. To which I was thinking, didn't everyone else pay for tech support too?
I got as far a getting them to admit that it was a simple matter of altering one integer in my savegame file. But they would rather spend hours arguing with me than actually do it.
Originally posted by tute
I've been pissed in the past, but I've basically acquiesced to each response no matter how canned or lame or due to their lack of information about the game(like the Hamidon enhancement rewards), but this is it. I can't stand being treated so indifferently anymore. If they don't care, then why should I? Would it kill them to take action on about 1 out of 20 or 30 emails in order to satisfy a customer? One of the last emails was "I understand but your request is denied". Fine, well you are denied future revenue from me as well. No more CoX and no future purchase of Tabula Rasa as I had planned. Coming from Customer Service, there are times when you have to stop paying just lip service and back up your department's name with action(you know Customer.......SERVICE).
I spoke to my credit card company and cancelled my payments for the previous 3 month subscriptions on two accounts. I paid in advance for tech support, they didn't deliver. I'm quite tempted to buy Guild Wars but I am having a lot of trouble getting over my NCSoft jyhad.
Statesman said once people come back. Tell you the truth I will never come back to COH. His vision is what killed the game. EVERY patch was a nerf.
If he focused on content, content and more content then he have a true winner. After ED, after all the nerfs. The game felt like City of Zeros than heroes.
I really enjoyed feeling like a super hero and feeling powerful. It's just a grid fest now which I can get from any other online game.
2 years, 7 updates? Nice track record. How many of them addressed lvl 50 content? How many of them addressed putting road blocks in and slowing down leveling curve?
They will prolly respond with "Game Balancing".
However, with a majority of peoples who doesn't care about game balancing or plainly hate it, they are extremely mistaken.
Peoples who care about balancing are killers. There are not many peoples playing CoH/CoV who are killers.
Achievers hate game balancing with a passion and I humbly believe that achiever make a HUGE part of the players in this game. (it is hard to achieve when you can't have strong foundations, rules and laws on which to relly, since these foundations keep shifting...achieving with non-stop game balancing is like trying to build a house on mud and sand...those who try end up extremely frustrated)
Socialisers will praise Game Balancing, but they don't really care. They have to take position, this is a social issue. But...whatever happen there is acceptable, as long as it leave room for more socialising. The fact achievers leave is something they will rationalise...but honestly, peoples leaving is hurting them far more than whatever game balancing can bring them...ever. They rather be complaining about the lack of "understanding" an achiever or a killer is showing them, they would be kinda enjoying the game, trying to see how they may reach or fail to reach their targets...all the game, the rules and everything else is secondary. Enforced grouping is good for them, as long as the peoples play...approaching someone who doesn't want to group them is better than been without that person in the game, no matter what they say.
Explorers...I am not even sure they even understand the concept of Game Balancing, they could understand it, if they care enough to try to understand it...but the point is they prolly prefer to check something else, like how the mobs are actually pathing in zone A, or where they can find mob Z, or just how they can run accross zone C faster...point is, they have prolly stop reading before reaching this point in the paragraph, just because, even if I talk about them, they honestly don't care.
There are soooo many things they could do...but they doesn't seem ready to do them, they think they play safely while they are compromising everything, all this because they couldn't adapt with been successfull, they start thinking they understand everything. They made a VERY good game, for achievers. They adapt it, ever since, for non-achievers mostly...which could have been great...as long as they don't compromise their basics.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I find it really disappointing that they have not responded to the customer and that their game is on it's way out because of it. . . so unfortunate becuase there are obviously a lot of people who worked really hard to try to make this game really fun and interesting, but the people who ultimately make these decisions have made the wrong ones and won't change them.
Originally posted by grape
Originally posted by Serling
The length of TFs is what kept me out of the majority of them. Who the hell has 4, 5, or 6 hours to spend on one freaking mission?!?!? And then if someone DCs or quits you have to start the whole damn thing over, because you may not have enough people (especially post ED) to beat it!!!
This is another area where the devs at Cryptic are woefully out of touch with real people in the real world. And I agree: CS at NCSoft pretty much sucks. Kind of explains why they're having to let people go (that and the fact that CoH/V - among others - is losing money).
Don't blame NCSOFT other products. I am very happy with Guildwars. NCSOFT is like a company with multiple personality disorder. Some products (GW for an example) are very well done and executed. TB I imagine will be too. Some like CoH.. eh.. It depends on the dev team/GM team of the product.
Well, I would go as far to say its not really their product so much as it is the developer. As I have said, I had fun with CoH in the past, it started to diminish as the issues went on and Customer Service helped finish it off. Again, as I pointed out, I acquiesced to many responses as I was trying to understand game mechanics, limitations of their systems, what the real issue was, etc. But when I have encountered some instances where I genuinely felt they were in the wrong, they still couldn't bring themselves to take action. In my original post, I was saying they didn't use the standard "working as intended" response as it was already admitted it was not, but even then they found some other excuse to just write emails and nothing else.
This isn't so much about the games but the lack of Customer Service. It is inaptly named. I never made petitions to give me a level, grant influence or ask for XP to cover debt incurred through a mapserver disconnect. There are MANY instances where I understand they can do nothing because its a business first. My problem is after 2 years of playing that NOT once have they gone beyond emails in any of my petitions(ok, they have helped me find the last foe in a mish). Yet, when the Devs break the game and I haven't visited the forums for a while, I do my normal thing, find a suprise(The AV in the TF) and they have the audacity to say that after nearly 6 hours committed to playing that TF, I didn't earn anything even though the very last obstacle was broken through no control/fault of mine.
Again, I feel they don't care or value me as a customer, so why should I care to put myself through that aggravation again in another of their products? No matter how good the game, there will always be something that gets broken and ruins the gameplay experience. How they treat the customer in those situations will have some effect in how that person views gameplay from then on. I would love to avoid CS, but when I encounter something in the game that doesn't fall within the normal gameplay(ie broken), they are the only recourse. In the case of NCSoft support though, I might as well have just been talking to the wall.
Anyways, everyone will have their own view on gameplay vs the whole package(gameplay, CS, content, forums, community) and its just sad that I have experienced one component that has managed to bring the rest down.
tute - Right. We get that you hate the customer service.
The thing is - that really isn't the big complaint that most people are leaving the game over. . . Most people left because they nerfed the game into the ground. It has become as big of an xp grind after level 25 as an Eastern MMO. Also, people hate that they don't build new content and instead spent so much time working on ways to balance the game. . . though ultimately they never did this as you really can't PvP in this game and have a chance unless you are playing one of a handful of builds. They actually made more builds NOT viable in PvP with the nerfs.
I thought maybe they were responding to these critiques (they certainly were given the feedback from customers when they were making these changes). . . But they aren't, and I'm not interested in coming back to a game as broken as this one is since Issue 6.
C
I can't even start or reply to threads on the web pages and I'm a subscriber.
I hope COV/COH don't stink as low as SOE has.
I think they are starting to learn. But it is a very slow process. Saddly I suppose that Auto-Assault slow launch help a lot, as they where believing a LOT in Auto-Assault and it is a very nice game, yet it does some of the same mistakes they do.
CoH was better at release than it is now, but I start having slight hope of it improving since a very long time. They are not bad folks. They have been listening to their desires and to the vocal minority, yet not to what type of players really play their game. Peoples who hardly surf online and care to talk, I am not in the majority of players. But I can say that listening to me couldn't have been worser than listening to the vocal minority. Yet, I hope they would do better than just listening to 1 person (like me) and actually progress a LOT, in the good direction.
See, even if I enjoy the accolades myself, the way they are done they are a mistake that annoy a LOT of their players. IoP and HOs are even worser. Maybe there is room for hope after all this time.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Having issues with the LENGTH of a TF is a far cry from saying no TFs and is not saying "I really don't want different content.". You can still have a shorter TF that plays differently. So, I see no discontinuity in the arguments.
Hammi-O farming was a lag-fest before they nerfed HOs into relative worthlessness. Don't think too many people even bother with it anymore. Bet it's real fun with ED.
Once upon a time, Kraken farming made that particular hydra mission worth going into the sewers. They nerfed Krakens into a virtually worthless exercise, too. Last time I was on, I stealthed my way into the sewers only to find the place completely empty. Too much risk. Too little reward. Again, simply not worth the debt to get in and out of there.
The devs have done more to destroy their own game than any of the players have.
There are Hami raids every night on Justice. Also, HO's are basically two SO's fused together. Yeah, nerfed into worthlessness, so people still do raids everynight. That makes sense.
Is this grudge getting to your head, Serling?
No, really. What exactly is the need for them? Most people do these raids as "endgame content" at level 50. At level 50, what does it matter? Your character can't level anymore. You already presumably had a full set of +3 SOs and a billion influence left over. At level 50 I, at least, could complete any mission solo, at the hardest setting, unless there was an AV in it. That requires a team, but it will with Hami-Os -- those aren't going to change that.
So what do you really need those Hami-Os for? PVP, I suppose... but that is only relevant for people who enjoy COH's unique brand of (crappy, IMO) PVP.... which as near as anyone can tell is about 5-10% of the audience, max.
So what exactly does one need Hami-Os for? I think a lot of it is pure psychology. Sure it seems great to have 3 acc SOs, 3 damage SOs, 3 end SOs, and 3 recharge SOs... but when you already hardly ever miss, are capped on damage, never need to rest to recover end, and have a "closed" attack chain as a normal, non-Hami 50, what the hell do you need all that for? I'm just not seeing why I'd ever need, or want, a set of Hami-Os.
C
Aaron is right.
This is also 1 of the main reason I keep quitting and coming to this game. The ending is not logical, nor fair.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I myself don't much like Hami raids. I've only done one, and since I'm a scrapper, don't have fly, and can only use Laser Beam Eyes on the mitochondria, it's not much fun.
I'm thinking people do it just because there's not really anything else to do at 50. Apparently there'll be 50 content in I8, though.
More than 2 years out of release and they're just getting to it???
BTW, the CoH boards are buzzing about I8's imminent release by fall of this year. Maybe the people at Cryptic should tell someone at NCSoft. NCSoft's release calendar is blank for Cities for at least the next two quarters.
But again, you can bet if they found something to "balance", the nerf patch would be out right away.