Pot-Stirring Time

[Bolty]

Thanks to Slashdot, I got over to FiringSquad's article Reducing pesky fan noise. It's a summation of much of my beliefs about online gaming forums and why you occasionally see me pop up and complain about all the complainers. My efforts at establishing a base of "constructive criticism" are frought with explanations that can't even come close to such nuggets as:

You hardcore fans can be bad news...You don't know what's best for a game, because you rarely represent an accurate cross-section of the people buying the game. You don't understand that you rarely drive sales in any statistically significant sense. You’re just the guys with the loudest mouths. You might think the conventional wisdom is that your mouths drive the word of mouth. And they do. Among hardcore gamers. For everyone else, the word of mouth is driven by friends, the press, and the guys at EB who ask if you’d like the strategy guide for 30% off when you buy the game.

While I don't agree with 100% of what the author says (at one point he calls hardcore gamers "idiots"), and in no way do I ever imply that posters here are STUPID, just misguided. If you want to make a difference in your favorite games, you won't do it by being a jerk to the developers. They don't care to read it, and it only drives them away. They could tell every poster here at the Lounge to piss off and die, and it would affect the sales of their next game by 1/10th of 1 percent. Tops. This is something that to this day, various people I know online STILL haven't understood.

So when you want to see a bug fixed or disagree with a change made in a patch, could you do so less abrasively? And realize that it's not up to you. If you want a "perfect" game, go make your own!

Danke,

-Bolty

P.S. Comments welcome. Remember that you can be a jerk to me. :) Just lay off Blizzard a bit sometimes.

[DSTheHermit]

You're a jerk, Bolty. A complete kneebiter.

Five points if anyone names the paraphrased book, so sayeth The Hermit.

"Saturn comes back around." Tool - The Grudge

[Bolty]

You're a jerk, Bolty. A complete kneebiter.

That's so easy, I'll let 42 other people answer it.

-Bolty

[WarLocke]

I'll agree with the quoted text (no time to read the full article at the moment), but with the caveat that this particular site (or perhaps I should be more specific and say this crowd) is probably not the best place to state this.

When you consider how many posters associated with this site or the DSF that have compiled extensive information on the subject of this site (Code Myster, Crystalion, concre+e, Jarulf, and I'm sure many others I'm fogetting) as well as some who've outright fixed things in D1/2 that Blizzard couldn't/wouldn't (Zed, Varaya & Khan, FoxBat, etc.) I would consider Lurkers and DSFers as perfect "constructive criticism" examples.

Heck, is that huge bugfix list you organized for the 1.06 patch (I think, I could very well have the wrong version number in mind) still floating around somewhere? It was huge, and alot of the items on it had explanations of how to fix them included, because they had already been fixed by some of the aforementioned authors.

P.S. Jerk! B)

[Dozer]

They could tell every poster here at the Lounge to piss off and die, and it would affect the sales of their next game by 1/10th of 1 percent. Tops. This is something that to this day, various people I know online STILL haven't understood.

This is very true, and could happen at any time, hypothetically. Although there are two or three developers(Blizzard, of course, and Bioware comes to mind as well) that I hold on faith to never do this to any of their hardcore fans - that's what they used to be before they started making the games instead of playing them ;)


This quote you took, however, is flawed:

You hardcore fans can be bad news...You don't know what's best for a game, because you rarely represent an accurate cross-section of the people buying the game. You don't understand that you rarely drive sales in any statistically significant sense.

Okay, most of the sales of a game are made in the first year or so, I would guess. When a game is that new it doesn't have a very large hardcore fanbase. How long after Diablo's release did DSF start influencing Diablo patches (this isn't hypothetical, BTW, I am actually wondering)? Only when the mainstream gamer have moved on to the next game of the week/month/year do the hardcore fans really trying to affect what happens in the revisions of their games. And if the developer is still even supporting the game, then perhaps they should pay more attention to the group.












Jerk. :P

[Assur]

Hi BigBoss (Big B?)

Uhm, I'm always polite, unless they disagree with me!

Fans are stress, developers can be a pain in the ...!

good hunting

Assur

[Archon_Wing]

First off I'd like to say BLIZZAaRD SUXxors. ;)

That aside, I do think these "hardcore" gamers do make the diffrence, as they're most likely the ones waiting in front of the line for the next game said company would release. This leads to a desire to collect every version whatsoever, which of course is a good source of money. Then they make the sales grow and then normal people go and ask "What's this?"

Of course, even if they told said hardcore gamers to go away and die, there would still be an impact. In fact, this was already said- they are the loudest. They'll go tell their friends, relatives, and pets not to buy the game. Worse , many of these will even go make a website bashing the company. Why the heck would anyone care? Well, if I wanted to go out and buy a game, I might go google searching and looking at reviews. Surely not everyone does that, but with the internet becoming more of a part of life, more people will utilize the net for such info. Now, I type in some random game, and I get 50 pages bashing the game, and 95306 10 page negative reviews, I might as well think twice. :P

Of course 50,000 emails of BLIZzARD SUxxors won't be taken seriously, and thus only those who would bother voicing their opinion in an understanable way might make a diffrence.

Or we could live with the other view. "We already have your money! mwahahahaha!"

[Refrigerator]

I know the answer!

Now what was the question?

[LiquidDamage]

You're a jerk, Bolty. A complete kneebiter.

I was playing Star Wars Galaxies, before the developers pretty much told all their customers that played melee characters to piss off, and I ran into some guy named Arthur Dent.

I, of course, used that very quote as my contribution to my first and last conversation with him.

[goldfish]

In fact, the relative insignificance of the Lounge and its ilk is pretty obvious if you sit down and do some (very basic) math.

D2 has sold millions of copies. (I think the number 3 million is the one I see bandied about, but I'm not really sure).

Lounge membership is what, about 1000?

AB membership might be 2000-3000 more (though some will be dual citizens).

Other fora are less popular.

If no one from the LL or Basin (or any similar fora) had ever bought a D2 product, the statistical result from the game producers' end would be almost exactly the same.

Edit: Thai Pose

[TaMeOlta]

Point 1 : Whats wrong with the game ?! ;)
Point 2 : Bolty is cool ! :P

Add Plus 2 to Brownie Points .... ;)

On whiners : If they can only whine about a bug that bothers them , degrade others and not offer a solution to fix the problem , then they themselves present a target on their foreheads and are open to return criticism .

Each gamesite seems to come with its own atmosphere /attitude / posting style , and sometimes enjoy watching a poorly written complaint being dismantled ..... is this a bad thing ?! :blink: It's the "displaced" ones that I take this odd pleasure from ; IE a post complaining about PKing on a mostly PK site , a post complaining how their MH use should be considered legit on a non-hack site -- those kinds of posts ;) !

[TaMeOlta]

... Just wanted to say AB Membership total is huge , possibly 6000 plus if you include all the forums (D2 , DAoC , SWG , NWN , .....) and discount the non-posters and people who haved moved on .

[Occhidiangela]

during the great beta PK brouhaha, but like most opinionated hardcore gamers, legit or otherwise, he was in "transmit mode." He was not alone. The procilvity for being in "transmit only mode" is what makes for the extremely high noise to signal ratio.

To what gain, I ask? :) (Or would that be "negative gain"???)

In any case, it make Sturgeon look like an optimist.

[Occhidiangela]

Furthermore, few people online understand how to disagree without being disagreeable. Online interaction is so impersonal, so fraught with assurances of anonymity, and so littered with the maladjusted and juvenile, that there are no social repercussions for acting like a jackass.

No fooling, and not just on Blizz forums. Hardly news, but I suppose it felt good for him to say it. ;) As to italicized bit, we all fall into that trap now and again. *blush*

  I fully support requiring not only registration for participating in official forums, but also the use of your actual name and a visible email address. This is no guarantee that someone won't be a jerk, but it's a start. If you want to participate in discussions on an official forum, you don't get to role play. They're there as themselves, you should be there as yourself.

I disagree, but that is due to a personal bias: I have been nicknamed most of my life, and going by nicknames works just fine. I spent some years being referred to by a professional nom du guerre: Doktor Demento. (No, I was not that crazy DJ, but someone hung that handle on me and it stuck like Epoxy™). However, I do agree with the his general idea concerning accountability for one's interactions with folks on a discussion forum: keep it reasonably civil. It helps to pretend you are in a bar talking it over with the other poster, while a pint apiece being slowly drained to accompany the discussion.

They’re there because they have the decency to honor your eagerness for attention and interaction. The least you can do is drop your self-important sense of entitlement and conduct yourself with a modicum of courtesy.

Can I get an "Amen?" Can I get a "Halleluah?" Preach it, Brother Finch, preach it!!! :D

[--Pete]

Hi,

If you want to make a difference in your favorite games

Right. With the developers having a "we know what is right and you know #$%& attitude" our input really matters.

They could tell every poster here at the Lounge to piss off and die

And have done so, over and over again by their actions.

When hope is gone, all that is left is bitterness and style.

The commentary is not to influence the designers -- they aren't listening. We know, because they've said so. The commentary is to blow off steam against idiots who make games for the masses.

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

Though the bulk of course have been. I know this is not a very new discussion, but I do not set the "perfection standard" for a PC game, "Pretty Good" meets my standards if I have fun.

A few things like the Bow Bug, star shaped AoE bug, and a few other things have indeed been fixed, and I'd like to think that the fan feedback has been helpful in that regard.

The last four years worth of critiques, those well laid out with supporting logic or programming backup, that point to sloppy programming, indifference to bugs, and occasional "in your face" condescension are considered as I weigh them against how much fun I've had with the game.

On the balance, things worked out pretty well for my 39.95 twice spent on D II and LoD.

What is probably most frustrating to those who want to contribute to "the product improvement process" on their own dime, i.e. fans, is that when players care enough to make a constructive suggestion, particularly one backed up by sound logic, thorough understanding of the game, and the fine definition of the bugs in question, (dare we discuss the MS bug in Diablo) it is disappointing to see even a free fix ignored in the subsequent patch.

The decision process behind that gift horse being looked in the mouth and ignored mystifies me.

[NiteFox]

Say what you like about Interplay, at least their most famous division, Black Isle, decided to actually listen to the hardcore fans. When Fallout was released and Fallout 2 was announced, Black Isle took the time to read through and take to heart many of the "suggestions" and complaints of the posters on the Fallout boards. As such, many of the suggestions given (Improved party interface, removal of generally useless Perks, etc.) were included in the sequel, as was a special thanks credo to the forumers.

Now, as it turns out, and if anyone who has played through Fallout 2 in entirity will testify, this might not have been that good an idea. Interplay ripped eight months of production time off the title, and much of the alternative routes to the ending, as well as several quests and locations, remained unfinished. And Fallout 2 is possibly one of the most buggy games ever to go on commercial sale, much of which wasn't fixed in the patch. One might argue that if they hadn't had spent so much time listening to the fanbase and debating what suggestions were worth implementing into the game, then they might have actually completed the game.

None of this is Black Isle's fault, and none of it is the fault of the fans. They tried their best, and no one can count on having eight months ripped out of the tail-end of a project. Anyone who believes that the hardcore fans don't make a difference to the game obviously have never experienced a situation where it did, for better or worse.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I do not set the "perfection standard" for a PC game, "Pretty Good" meets my standards if I have fun.

Sure. However, when irritating items that would take a ten minute one line fix are ignored (e.g., the mana shield bugs in D1, the lying character screen in D2) but copious, pointless and unnecessary new content is introduced, I wonder about the maturity of the people who are doing the work. Instead of adults taking pleasure and pride in doing a job well, they seem like children who, just because they can, paint the sky orange and the trees pink.

Unlike the average person, the "hard core" player's requests are more likely to be "fix the bugs" and "balance the game" -- things that should not even have to be asked if the game designers had a clue and gave a crap. When the "average" player asks for dragons and ninjas in a medieval D&D game because he thinks they're "neat" (never mind that neither fit into that particular game universe) he's just displaying an immaturity that comes from either age or experience (or both). When a gaming company treats a request for a bug fix as they would the request for dragons, they are showing an immaturity that comes from pride and stupidity.

Yes, the game companies have the "right" to make the game any way they want to. They have the right to incorporate or ignore any feature they want to. But they don't have the right to *fail* to meet their own stated standards and then try to pass that off to their customers as "that's the way we want it."

So, after watching the software industry turn into a bunch of arrogant assholes, following the lead of Bill and bunch in Redmond, and having had it demonstrated time and again that these people don't give a crap for anything from their customers but money, explain why we should be polite to them when they are so rude to us?

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

Perhaps a "kill 'em with kindness" approach would be even more effective, in that it simply makes them look worse. Since in neither case does the software firm respond, why should the critics make themselves look any worse? I agree that it feels better to take a good hard shot when a polite approach is treated with condescension.

It is not illogical for a quid pro quo to result in "disdain for disdain," a very human response to respond to cavalier treatment with a counterattack.

In closing, I was once told by a wise old chief that:

"A bitching sailor is a happy sailor. When they are quit bitching, look out, being sullen means they are really mad and trouble is about to erupt."

Perhaps the gaming industry would do well to heed that sort of advice:

So long as the fans are bitching, all is as well as can be expected, but when the fans fall silent, game company better look out: being ignored means that sales will glide downwards like a beveled brick.

[Occhidiangela]

The real way to stop the Pesky Fan Noise is to:

Fix the Effing Bugs. :)