No, I'm not willing to retract or apologize for the prerogative statement. I can understand your reasoning while also disagreeing with it. As I said, we're going to be addressing it.
As I said before, I don't want to engage in a debate about it, so I'm not going to.
No, I'm not willing to retract or apologize for the prerogative statement. I can understand your reasoning while also disagreeing with it. As I said, we're going to be addressing it.
As I said before, I don't want to engage in a debate about it, so I'm not going to.
You can disagree with it, but you have no right to dictate our feelings about it and dismiss those feelings as if they are entirely irrelevant to you. "Prerogative," indeed.
At some point here you're going to learn how to be more flexible as a customer relations face, if you're going to remain in that role. You do this dismissive statement thing very regularly. You could simply have said "We understand what you're feeling and we're working to address it," but instead you went out of your way to tack on this other stuff for no reason. I simply don't get it.
Not once have I dictated your feelings about this nor dismissed your feelings as irrelevant.
I don't know why this prerogative comment got you in such a fit, it's me saying they are entitled to do what they want with their commodities despite my feelings on the subject. If they don't feel like they have a choice, then that's their right to do so and it's not my place to tell them they're wrong for doing so, even if I disagree with the reasoning.
I have said numerous times that I understand the reasoning, agreed that we need to work on improving commodity input, and are working towards fixing it.
I didn't go out of my way to do anything, You have twisted an answer I gave to point out that scarcity wasn't a simple concept of numbers into something else entirely.
I don't know how you can honestly sit here and accuse me of 'dictating your feelings' when you straight up asked me to apologize for/retract my own opinion on current matters, an opinion that I've shared numerous times.
The "prerogative" statement is you saying that them telling you why they are doing what they want to with a scarce resource is entirely on them, when the situation was madeby you. You're saying that the responsibility is on the people who are trying to make the best of a bad situation, because they could "choose" to do something else. The players are the ones who have to deal with the issues while you tell us that it's our "prerogative" to deal with it, in the only way that makes any logical sense...
And you did, in fact, go out of your way. This entire edit here: "Edit: I did double-check that the numbers I see are the same numbers
that org leaders see, and they are. It's Serenwilde's prerogative to
choose how they want to deal with their commodities and research upkeep." is the proof of that, because you even asked how to go and check. The problem is, why did you even need to check? It doesn't matter what you see the numbers as. What you think has absolutely zero bearing on how players feel about the comm crunch. You can look at the raw numbers all you want, but it changes nothing. No matter how much you say that you think organizations have plenty of comms, the players clearly disagree, or we wouldn't even be in this mess.
Further, asking you to apologize for trying to pin the burden on your own players for a situation you created isn't "dictating your feelings," it's asking you to correct a statement that is, from a customer-support point of view, pretty awful. Which I still think you should do, by the way. It doesn't sound too unreasonable to me.
Why do you feel the need to tell us we're "wrong"?
-----
The long and short of it is:
"I have said numerous times that I understand the reasoning, agreed that
we need to work on improving commodity input, and are working towards
fixing it. "
This is good. I agree with this, and I like this. If your reply had simply been just this sentence, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. But you also had to tack on all the extra bits and that's the part that is boggling me here. From a customer relations standpoint all of that makes no sense. What you think players should think of something doesn't matter, it's what players actually think of it that matters.
You are right, I went out of my way to ensure that my opinion and feelings on the matter were based on the same information the players have. I wanted to ensure that there wasn't a disconnect or different information being displayed between us and that I wasn't seeing something the players were not seeing. I questioned my opinion on the matter so I wanted to verify and validate it again, which I did. I don't think this is a bad thing.
It reads to me that you want me to apologize for having a different opinion (which should be pretty clear at this point). I do think that's unreasonable and that's why I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to apologize because I disagree with you. Disagreeing shouldn't be something I have to apologize for, especially because I've been very clear in that I understand why players are doing what they're doing and that it is a problem we need to address (I've always agreed with needing to address it, I just disagreed that it was an immediate problem that needed to be addressed right then and there) and that we are addressing it. I haven't invalidated, said players were wrong or told them how they should think. I've only stated what -I- think and it happens to be different than what -you- think.
I don't have time to keep responding to you being upset that I have a different opinion here. Once again, I've acknowledged and understand the reasoning for how things are being handled currently. I haven't said they were wrong and I have not invalidated them. We will be addressing that issue and are working on it.
I'm not going to respond again, I just simply can't keep spending my time repeating the same information over and over because you want to condemn me for having a different opinion than you. This isn't shutting down the conversation, this is me just saying that I don't have time to continue to this same line of conversation that does not seem like it will resolve. We disagree on one aspect and agree on another. Let us focus on what we agree on because once we address that, the issues will ideally be fixed and this will just be something in the past.
To be sure, I didn't expect you to respond the last few times either, so not responding is fine. I'm just making it clear from my own end what I think of your wording/phrasing; I'd like to see you spend a little more time considering your words. I don't care that you have a different opinion, either; I do care that you're saying it's on us to figure out how to deal with a situation not of our own making in the interim (and I do think this goes back to Jolanthe's point where the "uncertainty/suspense" factor exacerbates the situation).
I mean, you could just give every org 100k minimum of every comm while you're working on it and say if the supply gets low before the changes are in place you'll top it off. Problem solved for the immediate term. Backstop it so that players don't have to worry about it. Doing so would be your prerogative.
But in the end, "Let us focus on what we
agree on because once we address that, the issues will ideally be fixed
and this will just be something in the past." I absolutely do support this. Ideally the issues will be fixed, and things will be better!
More on the future implementation side, I think the ic drivers for this are why I lean more towards slightly more specific/atomised currencies/materials/comms/etc.
Fairly sure I've mentioned the idea already, but it just seems simpler overall if we had "org/guild comms" which we use for all org/guild level stuff like research and constructs because then it basically becomes a currency for dealing with that stuff and the impacts of any choices that need to be made on how to spend them are limited to that scope.
You'd also be able to balance generation and the like more closely, so scacity might mean that it's trivial for each org to get around enough to maintain their projects every year but you'd need a bit more engagement for every additional construct. Maybe there's even a point where if you've held three for a while it might put a strain on that resource that makes you consider if you need to drop it for a bit, maybe there's other optional recurring costs once you're through the progression phase of research such as patron requests.
Also, as it's within a more narrowly defined scope, none of those org level things would really impact players on the individual level of "I can't get equipment", "I can't decorate my manse", etc. There would likely still be things orgs are managing that do impact players on that level as well, of course, but those could then also be managed within their own scope of that stuff.
Anomalies are an example really. It's pretty easy to manage because you know how many you need each year, how many you'd want to build up (progression phase) or store (maintenance phase / "just in case we need to rebuild it"), and how many you need/want to expend for time wind or other buffs. They provide an incentive to participate in quakes and you can work around that or acquire more with refinement. Even the active powers, mostly, seem more effective when managed on an org level rather than by individuals (who can acquire noms for individual use through trading). But the impact of not having anomalies is also limited to their specific scope.
We're wasting our breath offering solution ideas when it's now clear that was never welcome.
For all the original producer's faults, she never would have treated her players/customers this way when they tried to help solve problems they didn't even create.
As everyone is aware - one of our upcoming
goals is to focus on the economy and re-working how it functions. The
first part of this is really on us, which is to dig deep and determine
how the mechanics of it function.
We're digging into the following:
- aethergoop generation and sinks
- commodities production and sinks
- gold generation and sinks
The
one thing that we still need to determine is what the eventual goals of
this should be. Obviously commodity production is one of the big player
concerns, but we wanted to open up this thread to give you, the
players, a chance to give your input,
What would you like to see when we begin to tackle the economy?
No, it wasn't. Give your input != want your solutions.
This thread was to gather player input on what our potential goals should be. Not how to fix it, not how to solve the problem, but what players want to see in our game economy so that when we come up with a proposal, we come up with something that hits on what players in general want.
Along with all the other dismissive things this guy has said here and on Discord when players try to give feedback. But yeah keep licking that boot, I'm sure that'll get things fixed.
As everyone is aware - one of our upcoming
goals is to focus on the economy and re-working how it functions. The
first part of this is really on us, which is to dig deep and determine
how the mechanics of it function.
We're digging into the following:
- aethergoop generation and sinks
- commodities production and sinks
- gold generation and sinks
The
one thing that we still need to determine is what the eventual goals of
this should be. Obviously commodity production is one of the big player
concerns, but we wanted to open up this thread to give you, the
players, a chance to give your input,
What would you like to see when we begin to tackle the economy?
No, it wasn't. Give your input != want your solutions.
Input is a broad term realistically, if the admin wanted only the issues they could have just said that but ideas are also input. Further, the bit you didn't bold about what players would "like to see" is similarly quite open and inclusive of ideas. And to really hit it on the head, countless times across the years players have been told to offer solutions to issues rather than just raising them which is at the least a cultural thing that tells players we are actually expected to give solutions.
The sense of entitlement, yeesh. Personally, the transparency our producers have is a world away from what we used to have and it's amazing. No more 'because that's how it is', we actually get numbers, we get explanations, we get to give input, they hear us when we say 'x is a problem because y' rather than turn a deliberate deaf ear as though it were personal criticism. Who let the Karens in here?? We as players and customers don't get to dictate outcomes, despite what we may think. That we even get to have input that is heard is amazing. We can't also cry that we don't get the solutions we hoped for, when no one -has- to ask for our input.
On another note i'm really curious to see what the admin come up with. This has become a multi-faceted and far-reaching problem where not even everyone agrees on the issues, except that there is a bunch of them. Very confident in the team to do awesome things.
The sense of entitlement, yeesh. Personally, the transparency our producers have is a world away from what we used to have and it's amazing. No more 'because that's how it is', we actually get numbers, we get explanations, we get to give input, they hear us when we say 'x is a problem because y' rather than turn a deliberate deaf ear as though it were personal criticism. Who let the Karens in here?? We as players and customers don't get to dictate outcomes, despite what we may think. That we even get to have input that is heard is amazing. We can't also cry that we don't get the solutions we hoped for, when no one -has- to ask for our input.
You have the bolded the wrong way around.
The fact that players are willing to come here and give their input about the game is a ridiculously valuable tool to the admin. Players doing so, regardless of how they phrase it, is literally guiding the admin on what's not working and ways that things could be made to work better. Without this the admin would have to guess and this is why there are companies with outreach mechanisms to try to get this information to improve their services.
Same thing with solutions really, specific solutions to address an issue might vary but if the admin don't meaningfully address the issues players have then players eventually leave and the game needs players. Also, even the admin have previously noted that their resources are ultimately quite limited so gathering player solutions creates an efficiency because you then have many more people looking at ways to resolve issues. (edit: Also, to note, the IREs are basically the only games in the world that I can think of where the devs can't active play them, while they were players, the admin can't exactly spin up a player character and experience the game as an actual player which makes them even more reliant on player input) The economy issues mostly exist because the admin didn't really do the things you're saying they don't have to do and by not really doing them it created a bigger mess without actually resolving the original issues.
Honestly, a growing concern reading over the posts is about how much of this rework is just going to fix the mess created vs actually hitting those long term issues.
Look - it's quite obvious that I'm not Capt Charisma here. I can be pointed, untactful and direct. I certainly have my opinions about how I think things should be and what makes a fun game, and I definitely get frustrated and snappy. But I can tell you straight up that I'm the first to realize that I'm not infallible and that I don't know everything. I've pushed/approved several things in this last reporting cycle that I didn't necessarily agree with, but you, the players, obviously felt strongly about so I went ahead with it anyway.
One thing I can promise you I am not is dismissive. If I was just going to dismiss what was being said, I simply wouldn't respond. I would just let you complain and whine and go off on whatever tangent you want to and go about my day and keep working on things within the game. However, I think it's important that I do respond and I do speak out. I think it's important that I do communicate and I do answer questions or tell you where my mind's at. My responses here are because I'm -not- dismissing you. I'm taking time to address you and your concerns, your thoughts etc. Disagreeing with something is not dismissing it. I don't know how many times I need to say that I'm acknowledging stated issues while at the same time being told I'm dismissing them as well.
I'll continue to work on my tact and how I phrase things. It's something I'm well aware I can improve, but I'm relatively sure you would rather me actually be willing to be transparent and discuss things, even if I come across negatively or dismissively, rather than just not communicating at all.
While the intention of this thread was more to gauge what players wanted to see in an economy (or what they really didn't want to see, like decay), I did read this entire thread- multiple times and I'm considering and using several of the ideas posted here, or some variation thereof. I'm taking into consideration what everyone has stated here and trying to come up with a plan that fits the wants and needs of as many people as I can manage. The goal is to make changes that are for the good of the game as a whole. I additionally consulted past economy threads as well, to look at what people said there too. Taking my comments that are specific answers to specific questions out of context and applying them to the thread overall does nobody any favors.
I have personally lost all hope that this Overhaul is about improving player experience and more about adding menial busywork to keep players chained to the game to give an illusion of activity.
I have personally lost all hope that this Overhaul is about improving player experience and more about adding menial busywork to keep players chained to the game to give an illusion of activity.
Seems like it just depends on individual perspective? The same phrasing can easily be applied to the demipowers/levels changes if you consider grinding to be menial busywork. Similarly, conflict stuff can be argued as creating the illusion of activity particularly given the prevalence of batsignalling to get people to turn up just for those activities. Many of the mechanics that could be employed here are also so prevalent across the MMO genre that they could be considered basic fundamentals of creating a functional economy in a multi-player game.
Making them engaging and the like is the real question, but if that's successful it potentially provides more reasons to play the game and to stay logged in, stuff to do when its quiet, or for non-comms to do when everyone is fighting. Stuff that could encourage people to be on prime, possibly less noisy than bashing/combat so they can easily chat with people, activities that might be in a "safe area" so you could be working on stuff and also open to roleplay or teaching newbies at the same time.
Some of the issues we have are seemingly mostly caused by low population and the mechanics being used to engage people also tend to make them unavailable for large periods of time. Seems really just an efficiency thing, you resolve the overt economical stuff like not being able to acquire resources in a way that can also help alleviate other concerns and encourage the behaviours that promote game health.
Comments
As I said before, I don't want to engage in a debate about it, so I'm not going to.
I don't know why this prerogative comment got you in such a fit, it's me saying they are entitled to do what they want with their commodities despite my feelings on the subject. If they don't feel like they have a choice, then that's their right to do so and it's not my place to tell them they're wrong for doing so, even if I disagree with the reasoning.
I have said numerous times that I understand the reasoning, agreed that we need to work on improving commodity input, and are working towards fixing it.
I didn't go out of my way to do anything, You have twisted an answer I gave to point out that scarcity wasn't a simple concept of numbers into something else entirely.
I don't know how you can honestly sit here and accuse me of 'dictating your feelings' when you straight up asked me to apologize for/retract my own opinion on current matters, an opinion that I've shared numerous times.
It reads to me that you want me to apologize for having a different opinion (which should be pretty clear at this point). I do think that's unreasonable and that's why I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to apologize because I disagree with you. Disagreeing shouldn't be something I have to apologize for, especially because I've been very clear in that I understand why players are doing what they're doing and that it is a problem we need to address (I've always agreed with needing to address it, I just disagreed that it was an immediate problem that needed to be addressed right then and there) and that we are addressing it. I haven't invalidated, said players were wrong or told them how they should think. I've only stated what -I- think and it happens to be different than what -you- think.
I don't have time to keep responding to you being upset that I have a different opinion here. Once again, I've acknowledged and understand the reasoning for how things are being handled currently. I haven't said they were wrong and I have not invalidated them. We will be addressing that issue and are working on it.
I'm not going to respond again, I just simply can't keep spending my time repeating the same information over and over because you want to condemn me for having a different opinion than you. This isn't shutting down the conversation, this is me just saying that I don't have time to continue to this same line of conversation that does not seem like it will resolve. We disagree on one aspect and agree on another. Let us focus on what we agree on because once we address that, the issues will ideally be fixed and this will just be something in the past.
Fairly sure I've mentioned the idea already, but it just seems simpler overall if we had "org/guild comms" which we use for all org/guild level stuff like research and constructs because then it basically becomes a currency for dealing with that stuff and the impacts of any choices that need to be made on how to spend them are limited to that scope.
You'd also be able to balance generation and the like more closely, so scacity might mean that it's trivial for each org to get around enough to maintain their projects every year but you'd need a bit more engagement for every additional construct. Maybe there's even a point where if you've held three for a while it might put a strain on that resource that makes you consider if you need to drop it for a bit, maybe there's other optional recurring costs once you're through the progression phase of research such as patron requests.
Also, as it's within a more narrowly defined scope, none of those org level things would really impact players on the individual level of "I can't get equipment", "I can't decorate my manse", etc. There would likely still be things orgs are managing that do impact players on that level as well, of course, but those could then also be managed within their own scope of that stuff.
Anomalies are an example really. It's pretty easy to manage because you know how many you need each year, how many you'd want to build up (progression phase) or store (maintenance phase / "just in case we need to rebuild it"), and how many you need/want to expend for time wind or other buffs. They provide an incentive to participate in quakes and you can work around that or acquire more with refinement. Even the active powers, mostly, seem more effective when managed on an org level rather than by individuals (who can acquire noms for individual use through trading). But the impact of not having anomalies is also limited to their specific scope.
For all the original producer's faults, she never would have treated her players/customers this way when they tried to help solve problems they didn't even create.
No, it wasn't. Give your input != want your solutions.
Along with all the other dismissive things this guy has said here and on Discord when players try to give feedback. But yeah keep licking that boot, I'm sure that'll get things fixed.
On another note i'm really curious to see what the admin come up with. This has become a multi-faceted and far-reaching problem where not even everyone agrees on the issues, except that there is a bunch of them. Very confident in the team to do awesome things.
The fact that players are willing to come here and give their input about the game is a ridiculously valuable tool to the admin. Players doing so, regardless of how they phrase it, is literally guiding the admin on what's not working and ways that things could be made to work better. Without this the admin would have to guess and this is why there are companies with outreach mechanisms to try to get this information to improve their services.
Same thing with solutions really, specific solutions to address an issue might vary but if the admin don't meaningfully address the issues players have then players eventually leave and the game needs players. Also, even the admin have previously noted that their resources are ultimately quite limited so gathering player solutions creates an efficiency because you then have many more people looking at ways to resolve issues. (edit: Also, to note, the IREs are basically the only games in the world that I can think of where the devs can't active play them, while they were players, the admin can't exactly spin up a player character and experience the game as an actual player which makes them even more reliant on player input)
The economy issues mostly exist because the admin didn't really do the things you're saying they don't have to do and by not really doing them it created a bigger mess without actually resolving the original issues.
Honestly, a growing concern reading over the posts is about how much of this rework is just going to fix the mess created vs actually hitting those long term issues.
One thing I can promise you I am not is dismissive. If I was just going to dismiss what was being said, I simply wouldn't respond. I would just let you complain and whine and go off on whatever tangent you want to and go about my day and keep working on things within the game. However, I think it's important that I do respond and I do speak out. I think it's important that I do communicate and I do answer questions or tell you where my mind's at. My responses here are because I'm -not- dismissing you. I'm taking time to address you and your concerns, your thoughts etc. Disagreeing with something is not dismissing it. I don't know how many times I need to say that I'm acknowledging stated issues while at the same time being told I'm dismissing them as well.
I'll continue to work on my tact and how I phrase things. It's something I'm well aware I can improve, but I'm relatively sure you would rather me actually be willing to be transparent and discuss things, even if I come across negatively or dismissively, rather than just not communicating at all.
While the intention of this thread was more to gauge what players wanted to see in an economy (or what they really didn't want to see, like decay), I did read this entire thread- multiple times and I'm considering and using several of the ideas posted here, or some variation thereof. I'm taking into consideration what everyone has stated here and trying to come up with a plan that fits the wants and needs of as many people as I can manage. The goal is to make changes that are for the good of the game as a whole. I additionally consulted past economy threads as well, to look at what people said there too. Taking my comments that are specific answers to specific questions out of context and applying them to the thread overall does nobody any favors.
Explorer (80%), Achiever (53%), Socializer (53%), Killer (13%)
Bartle Taxonomy
(test yourself)
The same phrasing can easily be applied to the demipowers/levels changes if you consider grinding to be menial busywork. Similarly, conflict stuff can be argued as creating the illusion of activity particularly given the prevalence of batsignalling to get people to turn up just for those activities.
Many of the mechanics that could be employed here are also so prevalent across the MMO genre that they could be considered basic fundamentals of creating a functional economy in a multi-player game.
Making them engaging and the like is the real question, but if that's successful it potentially provides more reasons to play the game and to stay logged in, stuff to do when its quiet, or for non-comms to do when everyone is fighting. Stuff that could encourage people to be on prime, possibly less noisy than bashing/combat so they can easily chat with people, activities that might be in a "safe area" so you could be working on stuff and also open to roleplay or teaching newbies at the same time.
Some of the issues we have are seemingly mostly caused by low population and the mechanics being used to engage people also tend to make them unavailable for large periods of time. Seems really just an efficiency thing, you resolve the overt economical stuff like not being able to acquire resources in a way that can also help alleviate other concerns and encourage the behaviours that promote game health.