The problem of fanbois

I'm going to use another game as an example of what can happen when the devs spend a bit too much time listening to fanbois. The game in question was Star Wars Galaxies which was anticipated by many to become the biggest game of its era. I was in the beta. There were some of us who pointing out that, although the game was great as a simulation of life in the Star Wars universe, it just wasn't that fun when played as a traditional MMORPG which was likely to be what the average (as in not a Star Wars fanboi) player would be looking for. Well, the fanbois convinced the devs that everything was great. Admittedly, the game did have quite strong initial sales. However, subscriptions quickly dropped off since the game actually didn't appeal that much to people who wanted to play casually and just have fun in the Star Wars universe rather than take part in a hard core simulation.

Sadly, the game could have been great if the devs had included something for all types of players from the start. There was room to keep the sim elements for those who wanted them while adding more streamlined gameplay options for the more casual players. However, this didn't happen since the devs listened to the fanbois who were telling them what they wanted to hear rather than what they needed to hear. Thus the game was in a slow, but steady, death spiral essentially from its launch. Although the game did linger on for a few more years, the devs essentially finished the game off when they decided to implement the New Game Enhancement (NGE) changes in a misguided effort to try to fix things which ended up not really satisfying much of anyone.

So, why am I bringing up a game that shut down nearly a decade ago? It's because I'm worried that the devs of DAOC may be spending a bit to much time listening to the players who seem to somehow be convinced that everything with the game is going great even though the number of players clearly says otherwise. The DAOC fanbois probably do really like the game as it is. However, what's great for the fanbois (at least in the short term) really isn't great for the game as a whole and ultimately won't be good for them either if the game fails due to lack of revenue. In addition to maybe listening a bit less to the fanbois, I would also the encourage the devs to think about the current implementation of EC in light of what happened to SWG with the NGE.
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  • Just for the record, we do listen to everyone, positive and negative. Everything said on forums/discord, email feedback, fb/twitter comments, ingame chat, and other various methods of reaching us. And we even reach out to players ourselves.
    DAoC Community Lead
    Broadsword Online Games
  • But the decisions BS has made by adding in the solo bowtowns and EV ports was just a bad business. A lot of us complained and it fell on deaf ears. So we left to other games and took our money with us and yet BS staid the terrible business path and has not yet corrected it self. Interesting.

  • Oh boy do they listen.. its taken 8 months to undo the terrible changes after first caledonia event which to be honest I thought could be good but it was obvious after 2 weeks it was just IRC farming the same 8 mans and it wouldnt last. 8 months.

    They refuse to nerf Hib stun in sieges instead wanting people to gimp their chars by either not speccing MoC and/or go Stormlord over Convoker. They have shown they can change spells within range of keeps but Stun is all good it seems.

    If you want casual this aint the place. Thats the way they like it.
  • Hib stun has been a problem long before Broadsword took over the game. When Mythic was running it, and the Team Leads brought it up (even Hib TLs) it was 'duly noted'. There are other issues that plague the game that literally break class functionality, but Hib stun is the major contributing factor for the majority of players to dominate the game on a daily basis, because of the "I win" button the faction is given, and the class imbalances which allow it to flourish.
    The rebuttal was usually "Well, we'll take a look at it." then nothing would happen. We took it as "duly noted", as expected. These issues were in the monthly TL reports submitted by us directly to the developers. It was a good program, but the lack of insight of actually playing the game by development I think hindered our ability to be more effective.
  • God damn really takes an expert on the game to realize that it was hib stun causing all this imbalance for all this time.
  • Shoke wrote: »
    God damn really takes an expert on the game to realize that it was hib stun causing all this imbalance for all this time.

    It feels like Hib stun is more of an issue with the dwindling population. It didn't seem like much of an issue when there was enough population to offset it as far as being able to interrupt and such but with the low population it seems more of an issue when there are only a handful of people defending vs. a fg of casters ready to stun the first target they see. The power cost of group/speard heal also adds to the issue as the other realms can't just hide and heal, they need to be in LOS which puts them at a higher chance of getting attacked or interrupted.
    Dreamscape 12Lx Dark Lotus
  • Shoke wrote: »
    God damn really takes an expert on the game to realize that it was hib stun causing all this imbalance for all this time.

    It's been an issue for several groups of people the entirety of the game. Don't worry, your precious stunlock/mez combo classes aren't going to lose anything now. They haven't in 20 years.

    I'd subscribe just to watch Mid and Alb starve Hib to the point of no RPs though. The silence would be deafening.
  • edited November 2021 PM
    Ohhh, so what you are saying is that hibs are overpopulated in Euro prime and that makes it very strong to fight hibs in keeps and your conclusion is that hib is overpopulated because of the presence of baseline stun?

    And stun lock requires 2 abilities; a stun and a static tempest to reset stun immunity. Both of these are available on every realm, with Mid actually having the ae stun to make it worse.

    Mezz locking? I would think Alb has the advantage considering bolt range ae mezz with the extra radius? In the case of mid, they have the stun and the mezz on the same class? Wouldn't that make them better?

    By the way I'm not denying that baseline stun on dps classes is very strong and one of the reason hib performs so well in keeps (that and their pbae classes are strong). But to say that for 20 years it's broken OP?
    Post edited by Shoke on
  • IF the inner oil could be protected and if the peeps on the roof were out of sight of the walls/towers, the keeps could be better defended----

    assisting classes and hkey is another animal :)
  • edited November 2021 PM
    Oh boy do they listen.. its taken 8 months to undo the terrible changes after first caledonia event which to be honest I thought could be good but it was obvious after 2 weeks it was just IRC farming the same 8 mans and it wouldnt last. 8 months.

    They refuse to nerf Hib stun in sieges instead wanting people to gimp their chars by either not speccing MoC and/or go Stormlord over Convoker. They have shown they can change spells within range of keeps but Stun is all good it seems.

    If you want casual this aint the place. Thats the way they like it.

    Stun nuke is strong. Anyone who denies that is trolling.

    That being said, I don't know if you can say Broadsword hasn't tried to address it. The obelisks in keeps, the big ablative at the lord room level, etc. were all attempts to mitigate things like this. Maybe they weren't as effective as they could've been, but people can't say they haven't tried. Stun is kind of a complicated issue because 1) its value increases greatly with more players 2) its value is innately tied in the damage casters can do and how fast they can do it, which can go from low to high very easily (with debuff trains, comp pots, etc.) Frankly, I wouldn't care if they made stun spells unusable in keeps or put a debuff in keeps that reduced their duration. I don't think that's gonna fix all the issues with Hib, though... O_o

    I also saw (and submitted) lots of changes to Caledonia and lots of them were implemented either during the first event or in subsequent events.
    Post edited by Enkertons on
  • Just for the record, we do listen to everyone, positive and negative. Everything said on forums/discord, email feedback, fb/twitter comments, ingame chat, and other various methods of reaching us. And we even reach out to players ourselves.

    Beibhinn listens to all players via DM unless their names starts with the letters E-N-K
  • Enkertons wrote: »
    Just for the record, we do listen to everyone, positive and negative. Everything said on forums/discord, email feedback, fb/twitter comments, ingame chat, and other various methods of reaching us. And we even reach out to players ourselves.

    Beibhinn listens to all players via DM unless their names starts with the letters He who shall not be named

    Dreamscape 12Lx Dark Lotus
  • lol

    :D
    DAoC Community Lead
    Broadsword Online Games
  • If you say you listen to what people are saying then why since release are people still complaining about the same things. Base line stuns ,hacking and cross realming, simply put your not and it's been slowly killing the game every since. I left the game for years and a friend talked me into playing again. And personally i feel the game has gotten worse since i left with the cross relming and hacking. You can watch a hib group SoS away and be out of clip range with a member being mezz'ed ,rooted or even stunned, and yet when they are free they are still able to fly away as if there with there SoS'ed group. Dmg hacking has gotting so out of controll i don't even wat tot discuss it. People scripting right and left to keep from dying or just plain out to win in a fight. But when you appeal these conducts nothing is ever done about it. Your so affraid of loosen there sub. and yet thinking of all the sub's you loose over not fixing it and doing something about it. Realm timers have always been a joke with the hole 5 min. crap. If you attack anyone or earn any rp's at all i think there shuold be a 24 hour timer to it. PVE'ing keeps shouldn't earn you Rp's but yet Hero and his marry ban of hackers all do it daily and you can see the realm population drop as he logs in. Yet you want to nerf classes but the classes and skills that needed the nerfing form the being have never been nerfed. I would of hoped by now 20 years into the game you would of done something about it all ,yet here we stand 20 yrs later and it's even worse then release. All i can say is i did enjoy the game but i think it's time to say good bye to it for good.
  • As much crap as I like to give this dev team, the only time I've encountered someone "cheating" is a Shaman using a speedhack around Folley which was actioned. Every claim I've read about cheats/hacks have otherwise been unfounded and are born out of ignorance to modern DAoC. Your lack of understanding is not justification that someone cheats. "Scripts" (i.e. macros) are an inherent feature in MMOs. It helps min/max gameplay, but does not make a bad player good. Realm timers are objectively bad for a single server with a low population. However, the length of a realm timer does not dictate how populated a server may be (e.g. servers that shall not be named). Those who bandwagon with a short realm timer now would simply only log into the overpopulated realm with a long timer. These players have never and will never "balance" population. No one makes RPs taking empty keeps. An enemy player has to be killed in a keep for it to be worth anything and the RP pool potential for attackers is half that for those who defend successfully.

    The game did not evolve to appease fanbois, otherwise it would still be popular. It evolved to become competitive which is NOT popular in the MMO community. Nearly every aspect of "casual" gameplay has been gutted and trivialized outside of RvR, which isn't casual friendly unless you zerg. The irony here is that despite the direction of making the game competitive, the pool of talented players has only decreased over time. Why? Because this game lacks content. RvR hasn't changed in 20 years and has become increasingly stale as a result. Sure, they have shuffled abilities around, introduced some new toys and gear that mimics typical MMO power creep. However, the objectives remain the same. RvR boils down to simply killing other players. This would be sufficient if the barrier to entry wasn't high, but I digress. There's a lot to be upset about in DAoC and it doesn't need to stem from a position of ignorance.
  • edited November 2021 PM
    Dreamscape wrote: »

    Beibhinn listens to all players via DM unless their names starts with the letters He who shall not be named

    B) >:)
    Post edited by Enkertons on
  • edited December 2021 PM
    i have complained about Stun/Nuke for over 19 years of playing DAoC, and the answer that EVERYONE Gives is "Get over it, it's not that bad" or "QQ Noob" or "Get GOOD", etc......

    As Someone who solos over 95% of the time, Stun/Nuke and radar groups/players are the biggest problem facing the game even today! After closed and i came back here to my 60+ level 50's, the amount of things that make me want to quit again is stacked up so high that it's hard to stay playing Live. I Love the game, ALWAYS have, but logging on and getting 5k rps in 2 hours is hard to take! With all the roaming kill groups of RR 12 and 13 toons you can't hit ANYONE solo without the kill groups immediately (seemingly) porting in to just "HAPPEN to be there". This and all of the BS albatives and overpowered abilities just kill the fun completely.

    Hell the ONLY way i have gotten ANY rps at all is to kill dopplegangers!

    WTF happened to this GREAT game?

    Edit: And PLEASE don't get me started on that Autohotkey subject!
    Edit 2: there is a VERY easy way to handle the Stun Nuke problem, just change the Stun to a ROOT! See, easy fixed!
    Post edited by Carol_Broadsword on
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