[Two weeks and one day.]

Like topic sais Two weeks and one day i waited for answer on my ticket! A R E Y O U kidding me?

And the ticket i made isn't some random "whine" ticket, it's that i have issues with swtor that are so bad that i can't play the game!

And i am still waiting for answer, forgot to type that....

 

Worst part is i am Subscriber to the game! are there no one who reads tickets anymore? not even the important one from people who support the game and keep trowing money for them?

I would also like to add i used A LOT money in the cartel market, A LOT! and i played this game since early beta!

 

I think i understand now all these negative post i read everyday on forum about game is doomed and what not, since i about had enough. Thinking of unsubscribe and never sub again.

"Thanks" for taking my hard earned money and giving nothing back... Thank you very very much!

 

I opened a ticket for the Datacron Master title and perks... I got a reply in about a week telling me to wait until a future patch to fix it. It's not even mentioned in the known issues, livestream or dev posts, so that future patch isn't even coming...

 

And you're worried about two weeks and one day? Eternity > 15 days

[I suppose this is it.]

I debated with myself pretty long and hard about posting one of 'those' posts. You know the kind I'm talking about. The "I'm quitting and this is why" dissertation posts. Thing is, I'm still pretty sure that it's a waste of time doing this as I'm not going to be changing anyone's mind and it'll just be dismissed out of hand by most of those who are happy with the state of the game right now.

 

I know this because until November 2015, I was one of those happy customers.

 

When Knights of the Fallen Empire was announced, I was blown away. A new return to story telling? New companions? New worlds, monthly content updates? Hell yeah, sign me up! I was so excited, in fact, that I barely noticed their thing about not having any Operations or Flash Points in FE.

 

I gave them a pass on that when it came up. Sure, FE stuff will take lots of time, story is paramount! Plus, I haven't done EV at level cap in ages. Surely, all those OPs and Flash Points at level cap will be entertaining for a while, surely it'll be okay until they can get a new Operation or two in place in 2016. I mean, come on! Story is back!

 

And the story 'was' good. It really was. Really 'is' good. It was somewhere around my second playthrough that it started sinking in. Despite playing a Lightside Sith Warrior, there was little to no difference between that story playthrough and my Darkside Sith Sorc. It was literally the same questions, the same dilemmas, the same outcomes. Then I heard that romances were messed up and I shelved my remaining alts because it's 'that' important to me.

 

I ground out my Alliance specialists to 20....and was appalled at the idea of doing it again another 5-8 times on my alts.

 

I found out why I hadn't bothered doing EV and KP and EC in the last few years. The story is outdated, the fights are still bugged, loot doesn't drop right and they're godddamned boring. Not bad, but I know them like the back of my hand. I can do them without focusing, without tension, without trying hard. I got more excitement out of trying to do Star Fortress achievements solo!

 

Flash Points were the same. Fighting fights we'd done 4 years ago with the same problematic bugs that were there 4 years ago. And again, fights that I know like the back of my hand and can do in my sleep. No excitement, no tension, no struggle to learn new mechanics, new strategies, new tricks. It's just...do the thing, kill the bosses, get loot and crystals. yay. woo.

 

And it's not just OPs and FPs. PVPers have been doing the same maps and warzones for years. And now FE engame is basically grinding out 1.0 Planetary Heroics that literally make NO SENSE in relation to the story. We're now working with the Jedi and the Alliance, so go kill lots of Jedi and the Alliance for war supplies.

 

Now, don't get me wrong. I get it. Lots of new and returning players haven't done most of this content. That's their point. But, the majority of your existing playerbase have done this stuff for the last 4 years and it's not okay to ask us to do it for another year.

 

This is how I see it: SWTOR as a bar. It's run down, lost money the last few years, but it's got a nice solid core of consistent steady reliable customers who show up and spend their money there. And they stick around through good times and bad, spending more than their fair share, even paying the door fee even after the management decide to let everyone in for free. They buy drinks and food and honestly give a damn about the bar's continued existence.

 

And then the bar's management decides to upgrade the bar. Things are changed, things are added and, most importantly, the bar's management is focused on getting in all new people without much consideration for the crowd that kept them going during lean times.

 

In short, the loyal customers are no longer as important to the bar's management as the influx of new customers. But, the bar's management clearly expects that old crowd to stick around even though they have little to no reason to do so.

 

But here's the thing: Loyalty only lasts so long when it's just a one-way thing. And telling us that there's nothing for us for the year 2016 is pretty much stating that our needs aren't a priority.

 

I think I got about a week left on my subscription. Something like that. But, this'll be my last post on these forums, barring a really good conversation in this thread I'm starting. I may be back when new Operations and Flash Points are made, but I honestly don't know if that's a guarantee now.

 

So yeah. It was fun while it lasted. And I'm not mad so much as disappointed and wistful about what the game might have been if they'd just spent a bit more time and effort and money on it. But, I guess that was never the plan. Either way, those of you that are still here from the earlier years....you know who you are...This is me, officially giving up.

 

Bioware, using the Star Wars brand, somehow managed to lose me, one of the biggest Star Wars geeks ever, as a customer because it forgot that an MMO should not be focused on single-player content at the expense of the group content.

 

So long and thanks for all the fish.

 

tl;dr -

 

I can haz ur gear?

 

Seriously though, I warned you clear back in November...you didn't listen because you had what you wanted in hand at the time. Funny what a difference 90 days makes.

[BioWare You Have It Right, Don't Listen to the Raiders]

Okay i may have exaggerated a bit on 24/7 but given how easy it is to get into a pvp match I don't think it's a stretch to say it's very popular.

 

Admits to falsifying information in an attempt to feed his preferred narrative. Credibility check on aisle 7!

[Learning to Be Nice]

I've got enough ******** going on in real life without having to put up with it in a game because I have been condemned for being gay by own family and my mother's my payee and I'm lucky to have been able to buy subscriptions for this game as well as Cartel Coins as it is.

 

*OHDEARGODSNIP*

 

On behalf of everyone on the intrawebz.... If your own family, friends and people in real life don't want to deal with you, what makes you think a bunch of strangers on the internet, who care EVEN LESS want to? No...just no. You are now condemned on the internet too. But thanks for playing.

[BioWare You Have It Right, Don't Listen to the Raiders]

Intentional or not, your research into the financials showed that focusing entirely on endgame for content in RotHC and still putting 2 raids into SoR despite the lack of performance provides a mountain of evidence, along with other evidence from other MMOs, that raiding is the culprit for the downward trend.

 

That's a blind assumption, you're pointing at financials and providing no specific insights, observations or correlations between the numbers and the results. You're BS'ing the financials argument so hard you may as well be selling back mortgages circa 2008.

 

I'm not going to change my mind on that.

 

That's because you're not open-minded and aren't interested in hearing anything except crap that agrees with your misguided conclusions. It's okay, just own up to it.

 

No, raiding is not required for an MMO be a AAA MMO. GW2 hasn't had raiding for years and now they put them in because they could afford to. They have a formula that works for the casual transients, as LA defined them.

 

Raiding is required and an expectation for MMO's. The question is what resource dedication is enough to make that representation of the player base happy. Here's the problem with your completely illogical statements thus far; for a game suffering declining subscriptions and revenue, pissing off 15%+ of your LOYAL player base by telling them to go pound sand (in the interest of your argument that story is better), is a guaranteed way to make sure this game dies a quick death.

 

Like it or not, hardcore LOYAL raiders bring in reliable revenue. F2P skunks don't, and as soon as there's another MMO the skunks will jump ship, leaving a hollowed out game with plenty of "story" that you so desperately want, but nothing for raiders, so they'll be forced to leave too. Unlike you, raiders want to stay for the long haul.

 

SWTOR needs that formula here.

 

Big evil suddenly appears, well-mannered and intelligent teenagers get special powers, evil comes to fight teenagers, teenagers beat evil, evil plots to take over the world next episode (where the EXACT same thing will happen). SWTOR needs *this* kind of formula, right? Think about what you're saying.

 

It's more important than raiding.

 

"Whatever I want is more important that anything you want." See, this is why what you post has no credibility.

 

A lot more important.

 

You're now in negative credibility.

 

BW needs to focus on the pluralities that actually matter and are cost-effective to create content for.

 

Ahhh, the coup de grace..... After your little tirade tearing on a whole slice of the player base, you call for peace and holding hands, declaring only those you approve of as those which "actually matter" and are "cost effective". This is hypocrisy of the highest quality, just MUAH. This is republican presidential quality commentary right here.

[BioWare You Have It Right, Don't Listen to the Raiders]

ok I casually raid, I enjoy it, but the facts are adding up, end game raiding is indeed on the decline, notice how every new MMO that comes out, dumbs down raiding more and more? when WOW first came out, you had 40 man raids, now, raids in WoW are considerably smaller, meanwhile SWTOR has 8 man raids, 8 people is closer to a single party for a lot of MMOs.

 

other MMOs are also moving away from raiding, the fact is raiding is bad busniess, I don't take 90% of my customers for granted so I can deliver new content exclusivly to 10%

 

Just because most parents in the United States have an IQ of butternut squash and believe in creationism over evolution, doesn't make them right. What we see in current MMO's is the equivalent of common core gameplay.... or as I call it, the No Sheep Left Behind program.

 

Raids are being dumbed down, the time investments shortened, gear requirements reduced, technical mechanics removed.... JMCA's idea of "inclusion" is a world where the shortbus stops at the entrance to Temple of Sacrifice and lets everyone in, no gear check required. And of course, everyone gets a participation trophy, even those who are completely useless in an op/HM/FP/group/etc. What bothers me most is that they don't just get participation trophies now, they're beginning to demand them (see JMCA's original post). Game makers are beginning to child proof our games.... ironically for the likes of this:

 

Raiding has been in decline for years. The obvious reality is that participation in ops in this game does not justify the cost, so by focusing on story chapters and more inclusive, smaller scale PvE, there is much greater potential than trying and failing to get people to play ops.

 

The issue isn't a decline in interest, it's a decline of resource investment. It's cheaper to feed the sheep recycled solo-content (level sync anyone) than to create new challenging and complex storylines and expansive areas with fresh graphics. Kids these days have shorter attention spans, they have iPhones by age 4 and iPads by 6. The technology is more intelligent than most of the new "gamers" coming online, and the games are reflecting this trend in a very bad way.

 

So while JMCA is entirely wrong about almost all the logic he's posted, the only true statement he's made is raid play is on a decline. There's plenty of gamers still willing to invest, but the quick and easy buck is again, cheap quick solo content that already exists. That's also why so much of our gear is reskinned crap, and why Alliance dialogs are choice clicks instead of voiced over content.

 

So make a choice, you can go Common Core MMO with JMCA over here or you can join the real gamers before the world went Ritalin-assisted A.D.D. and push back on the developers to actually build real content instead of feeding us lines every single announcement/twitter/livestream/bag of wind dev post. The problem isn't *just* the developers, it's just as much a problem of the sheep drinking their koolaid. Back in the day, we used these types for target practice...now they're considered a revenue stream. I liked it better when they had to be in bed by 7.

[BioWare You Have It Right, Don't Listen to the Raiders]

It doesn't matter if they do. Their bluff has been called and their pointless arguments disproven.

 

OP's second post in their own thread, dismissing any logical counterarguments and holes in his own logic that might be posted proactively. So even if he's flat wrong (which he is), by the very statement above he's sticking his fingers in his ears and ignoring relevant information that would disprove his claims.

 

Yeah, this poster really wants to have a legitimate conversation about the state of the game. Smells like another Casual-Story poser.

 

Someone give him the BW Austin Career links... Ignoring loyal players, disregarding logical arguments and whining on the forums with useless posts; he'll make a fine community manager.

[Releasing a new chapter every 4 weeks is WAY to long..]

It's going to take 6 months to get the entire story then.. That's WAY too long.. Please reconsider BW..

 

Yes, I do realize coding takes a long time, but I am hoping the chapters are not incomplete, if that was the case that's really terrible planning and design..

 

Silly rabbit.... you honestly think after the last year and a half that they will be able to produce content every 4 weeks? They can't even launch existing events like Gree or Rakghoul on time...and those require no new code.

[Hurray! The new... REGEARING!]

If i have to augment my gear all over again in my 8 toons, i will definitely unsub and take a long break

 

"GRAH GRAH GRAH!!!! And if Apple releases the iPhone 8 in 6 months I'll definitely unsub and take a long break."

[Blizzard does it better...]

Do you not know how departments are funded? You don't dump profits from one area into a less profitable game. EA may have made a lot of money. That doesnt mean TOR did. I'm not saying TOR is in great shape, I'm saying to manage expectations based off its clearly low priority in the EA totem pole.

 

So EA's refusal to take it's insane profits and to fully fund a game in dire need of additional resources (or the will to use them) is its own defense? So they have the motive, means and opportunity, do nothing, and you're making an excuse that those dollars are earmarked for something else?

 

Do you realize how unintelligent that would be? To let a F2P game surpass your most well-known and visible title and to stand by doing nothing? Rethink this argument then come back with something better.

[If you're on the fence, what do you need to hear tomorrow to keep your subcription?]

"We have a REALLY exciting livestream for you crazy kids this year. If you subscribe from now until August 2020, we'll give Lana Beniko a unique sparkling lightsaber crystal, and a jetpack with the initials LB on it. Oh and chapter 11 will be out some time in 2018."

[Blizzard does it better...]

The problem is, all that costs money, then he *****es about the way BW raises said money (Cartel market). It's like he expects them to pull a programming miracle out of the dev skeleton crew's ***. Well, that powerball drawing is tonight in Texas, maybe BW Austin will win.

 

BW raised money via subscription over a year before Cartel Market existed. Diablo3 has none of those funds and STILL does it better. Then BW has CM on top of subscription money and STILL can't manage to pull even half the quality of Blizzard.

 

So your argument is weak. If a true F2P company can manage such feats with a fraction of the team and resources BW has available to it, and WITHOUT making its customers pay for the privilege, there's no excuse. If BW has a skeleton crew and is STILL collecting our money, whereas Blizzard isn't, then BW is failing to hire and perform the work functions needed to maintain the game. Again, the fault of BW, not the players.

 

If you're done making weak excuses for BW, you can begin thinking through some of the comments you make, and seeing the flaws everyone else finds in them.

[Blizzard does it better...]

So patch 2.4 for Blizzard's Diablo 3 released last night. And with it came the option to purchase more storage tabs; the third storage expansion for a single-purchase non-subscription game since its launch with more unique items and graphics for gear than SWTOR has by far.

 

And with this "incredibly complex and challenging" release, it begs the question, when will SWTOR see its next storage expansion increase? The GTN on any given server now have 100+ pages of augments, and materials for augs as well as mk-8 kits (components specifically) are priced in the gutter as those are one-time purchase items which never require replacement and hardly ever require repair.

 

As a result there are pages of mats, prices WELL below their averages for the last 3 years (I'm sure a contributing factor is more token-60 noob crafters entering the economy with no effort and heading straight for high end schematics). The smart choice is to diversify as a crafter, which requires boatloads of materials, which requires.........................................wait for it...................................................S-T-O-R-A-G-E.

 

There's the question in a nutshell, why can a game without ongoing subscriber funding, a smaller support team, who is notorious for long release windows with little to no information (Blizzard is the poster-child for this) STILL able to manage superior, beneficial releases with a higher QoL increase than SWTOR that has greater resources?

 

Let's count:

 

1. Diablo has thousands if not tens of thousands of unique items, few of which are reskins; SWTOR reskins virtually everything. And when there is a unique release, it goes straight to Cartel Market for cash shop payments (instead of to crafters or RNG drops), and further are some of the ugliest POS sets known to humankind.

 

2. Diablo has increased storage and stack sizes three or four times since launch, SWTOR...does cross-server character transfers count as storage?

 

3. Diablo managed to go through an entire life of full support auction house; SWTOR just continues to release trash on CM regularly; and even got overconfident enough to drop box contents to 25% of their original volume because "reasons".

 

4. Diablo has balanced PvP nearly a dozen times since release. SWTOR *crickets*.

 

5. Diablo just released an entire new region, expanded two existing areas to create two new full zones, balanced all classes, redesigned high end gear, created multiple legendary sets, continues to expand jewel selection, added new gold sinks with player benefits (one of which was a 500k gold storage tab increase) and that's just in their last 6 months and ON TOP of their expansions to date (CONTENTZ). SWTOR.....level sync'd people who didn't want it?

 

6. Diablo has an endgame that permits ongoing growth in the form of experience increases, stat buffs, exponential levels and in doing so paired with their RNG, provides enough unique content to buy themselves time until their next batch of high end gear sets and seasonal legendaries are ready. SWTOR.......has alliance crates for 20 levels and then?

 

7. Blizzard tests their releases before they enter production, Bioware screwed up companions, then patched them to screw them more, and we're waiting for the next patch to finish screwing them entirely.

 

8. Diablo adds new abilities and options at least twice a year permitting new builds and options for its players. SWTOR makes any abilities, stats, options irrelevant in level sync as you don't have the stats to make the most of them, AND doesn't bother retooling existing classes outside of nerfs, let alone creating brand new ones.

 

9. When Diablo hit a hard wall with increasing stats and further customizing characters, they provided player-customization to add desirable affixes (Zultan Kul) sharply increasing what a player could do for damage outside of straight leveling, AND in doing so created a new economy for finding rare items and reverse-engineering them for their inherent powers. SWTOR........Hell, I don't even know.

 

10. Diablo allows that no matter how powerful your companions gets (even to the point of true-never-dying immortality) it will always be useful, without surpassing the potential damage the player themselves can deal out. In SWTOR, either your comp is OP, or it's useless. If it's not OP, it can't heal itself quickly enough to be useful, and if it isn't OP, then it doesn't even draw some aggro before it hits the floor. There is no middle ground, and since equipment can't be customized, it has no other utility aside from selling your trash grays.

 

 

So why can a little-supported single player game with hardly a fraction of the resources that SWTOR has as one of the world's most popular IP's do these things so much better than BW? Contemplate.

[Harrassment, childish behavior, and laziness]

Some people on MMOs seem to forget it's other people playing with them. They believe the anon nature of the internet allows them to be jerks.

 

That's not the problem, the problem is they're absolutely right... There's no penalty for being a jack*ss on the internet. If there were, it would curb a number of issues.

 

It's not about groups or solo, it's about accountability, and there is none these days

 

For accountability to exist, there must be consequences. What keeps people from walking into a bank, grabbing a handful of cash from the vault and going home with it? The potential hurt feelings of the bankers?

 

No, getting shot, jailed or both is why. Now if that could just apply to the intrawebz.

[Level Sync Solution]

I don't understand how this would work. The whole reason for level sync exists is to support the KOTFE alliance system, so if you removed level sync for certain servers, you'd also have to remove the level sync'ed rewards and return them to pre 4.0 levels. In other words, no extra experience, no armor lock boxes and no alliance crates. People on this server would have to get their alliance crates through comms only and the few alliance specific quests that offer them. This would be a pretty hefty change to the game, requiring that two alliance systems would be running concurrently, each one abiding by different rules.

 

I'm having trouble understanding what the issue is exactly though. Are you saying that being level sync'ed makes content too hard now? Because there's a thread just above this one saying that the game has become too easy. I'm blasting through content practically as fast as I was before. Honestly, I'm barely noticing a difference. I can run my speeder through mobs and rarely get knocked off. What is it that you are having trouble doing now with level sync in place?

 

That's an assumption. There's no reason to remove rewards on a non-LS server and the two were never tied together by any logic to begin with. The argument that LS is necessary to keep rewards "fair" for non-LS people versus those who would be sync'd is irrelevant if we're playing on different servers. We can both get the same rewards whether sync'd or not and it hurts NOTHING. Same goes for lock boxes and everything else.

 

We're not saying the game is harder, we're saying it's more annoying, LS is unnecessary and being able to play on a server without it is better. Quite frankly, anti-LS'ers have spent a long time now explaining why we don't like it, and those in favor of it aren't listening. So no, we're not going to rehash our reasons for the umpteenth time; if you really want to know, read through the 100+ pages already posted on the subject. BW just needs to give us a non-LS server and we can move forward.

[Level Sync Solution]

The community is too divided OP. It doesn't matter what you post or what ideas you have. We still be at each others throats using extreme polar arguments to make our cases until some compromise is reached. Just how it is.

 

That's irrelevant. The fact that OP suggested a perfectly workable solution that completely gets us away from the pro-LS sheep and that they STILL are against it, tells you something about people who are pro-LS. They aren't looking for solutions, they're looking to create problems.

 

Remember, they "aren't as good as L65's" if all the L65's jump ship and move to the non-LS servers OP suggests. Pro-LS'ers only want it so they can feel as valuable as the top dogs. If all the top dogs leave, they're just average and that idea doesn't appeal to them. Further proof the problem never was LS or anti-LS players, it's the Group 2 LS'ers.

 

See sig for details.

[Hey Musco!]

This would be true if communication was the problem.

 

There are quite a few people on this forum, and thread in particular who disagree with you on that point. I'm glad you've decided communication from BW is fine, but, you're wrong.

 

But it is not, actually. The product is the problem, and there is nothing Eric Musco can do about it. (And there is not much the devs can do about it either. You choose to believe they are an incompetent bunch. I believe they are understaffed. But who knows?)

 

The people who code that game can't fix the issues, and the Community Manager who speaks for and represents the community can do nothing about it to raise attention, push for resolution or escalate if issues are not getting attention? Your logic seems detached from reality, the purpose of a "job" and any kind of personal pride someone should take in theirs. I suppose there's some chance you're correct, but that would mean no one who actually works on the game, or represents the organization that runs it has any accountability for said game, or to the people who play it... Sounds like you're making excuses for them.

 

You say communication is bad. Seriously, what do you want him to do?

Would you feel better if he was answering every post with sentences like "We know there is a problem with this or that. I have no idea when or even if we will be able to solve it, but please note that we are aware of the issue, and we thank you for reporting it to us. And in the meantime, here is a cookie for you"? And repeat it 20 times a day, day after day, week after week?

Or would you prefer having him blatantly lie and give bs deadlines for the resolution of the bugs"?

 

Weekly or bi-weekly communication with detailed tentative patch notes, current projects, a priority list of known issues, their status and ETA's of resolution would be a good start. You know...all the things you do with a major project or program in the corporate world if you're paying the least bit attention. "We are aware of the issue" is far less effective than "Oh yes, GTN Search Not Working - Item #2624, defect 3A73E, date identified 1/1/2015, Status: Attempting to Confirm in Test Environment, Severity: Low, ETA for Update or Resolution - 1/15/2015"...

 

THAT is communication. Proper, professional, detailed and concise. It tells everyone exactly where it's at and what BW is doing, and how long it's been worked on. Most importantly, IT PROVIDES VISIBILITY. There's no assumption in what they're doing, where it's at on the priority list, the last time it was checked, etc.

 

But if you want to continue down the twisted rabbit hole you were going; no, I just want detailed information such as the example I show above for all known game issues and projects in play.

 

I do not know Eric Musco, but I believe he has a solid pair of balls (no sexism here, women can have a solid pair of balls too, and often do). He is not responsible for the problems, and yet he comes here, takes all the heat from vindicative, often ill-informed, rude, and almost always anonymous people, and has to keep what he really thinks to himself. Not the easiest job on the planet, in my opinion.

 

He's not responsible for the game he represents, or the lack of information concerning the laundry list of issues the community wants addressed, despite that being his formally assigned job role? Your logic is severely broken.

 

What heat has he taken? He ignores most every topic, doesn't change undesirable behaviors (the lack of communication I've detailed at length,) and he's forced to login to these forums (which he gets paid to do) and...let everyone know there will be a live stream in a week with a developer, and that stickies were removed for new year housekeeping...

 

You may be wrong on your last point. It's possible it's the easiest job on the planet. If it isn't, it might at least be in the same league. In any event, no one is taking guesses at whether the job is easy for him. We're just pointing out HE'S NOT DOING IT.

[Hey Musco!]

If you had his job you would do it the exact same way,mainly because it's what your boss told you to do. Don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise. It's always funny to see armchair devs,etc saying how bad they perceive someone is at their job.

Is there a need for more communication? YES.

Are there many improvements to be made? YES.

The past couple months have shown more than ever this game is far from perfect,whether you're a "white knight" defending the game or "troll" attacking the devs at every turn because you don't think the game is going in the direction it should be, in the end both at least in some respects, want the same thing don't they?

 

No, I wouldn't. As I've proven time and again, I'm more than willing to stand on my principles of doing the RIGHT thing versus doing the politically convenient thing. By all means, continue to make assumptions, but no, if I had his job, I'd do it and far better. Because the worst they can do is fire me. Better that than going to sleep at night knowing I did my job by far worse than I'm capable of.

 

Feel free to prove your creds then if you want to claim them then. If you actually had the same job, you'd know why a PR schlub comments on easy topics like where some crappy stickies went, and why they dont answer harder questions related to lack of content, market fixes, tradeskill balance etc.

 

I'm fully aware of his constraints, and I'm uninterested. You don't get to pick difficult versus easy consumer issues to address. You address them all or you have to deal with the fallout of having your business decisions, common sense and ROI logic questioned at every step. You make a similar point to the above post, you assume because it's "his job" he's a go with the flow type who has to bow down to his EA overlords. I assure you, he can grow a pair and tell them to stuff it. It will either bring about change, or get him axed. But let's be honest, he's not far from the axe at this point anyways. Unhappy consumers breed terminations.

[Hey Musco!]

You're just one cog in the wheel too, part of the small minority that actually post in the forums, compared to the thousands who don't. Just another person who thinks they can speak for everyone who plays the game. Sounds like there's plenty of ego to go around.

 

Here's a hanky; your heart is bleeding on my blouse.

 

Sure, why not, its the internet. I'll be a time traveling ninja. What do you want to pretend to be tomorrow?

 

The difference is I put my delusions on a resume, and when companies call and check references they clear verification. Shall we check your time traveling ninja and see how that works out?

 

Low grade (and I mean REALLY low) sarcasm as an attempt to out someone for putting up false credentials is fine and well... until the credentials check out. Then your remarks just look uninformed and poorly thought out. This is why I have degrees and certifications. They allow me to drown out white noise such as your comments...

[Hey Musco!]

Forum participation invariably skews more towards the hardcore players than the overall playerbase (if you care enough about a game to even log in to its website, then right there you care more than the average player), it skews towards the negative ("those who like the game, play the game; those who don't like the game, b**** about it on the internet" is an old truism), it skews towards players with more free time, etc..

 

That is an assumption, and has the same problematic factor of being supposition which can't be proved or disproved with evidence the player base has available to it. You may very well be wrong and the forums are in fact an accurate representation of the player base as a whole. You can't disprove the possibility any more than he can prove it...

 

Everything else is bandwagoning. You can't assume because the internet as a whole trends towards human depravity that one game's forums have the same tendency. Even within single city blocks there are different demographics.

[Hey Musco!]

That is not entirely true for all industries. If you head a research project or are a lead engineer for a project with a very specific specialty and you leave, it could setback the project several months. Especially in the research industry or projects that have never been attempted before. The loss of a principle researcher could grind the research to a halt. There some people who are inherently gifted with experience and can't be replaced so easily. I seen this happen. A person leaves and the lead is given to a person who is inadequate and very little to nothing gets done. I think it depends the type of business you are in.

 

Those are outliers, not the norm. Most of them think they are Steve Jobs reincarnated; nearly all of them are wrong.

 

Of the one to two left, collateral damage. At any rate; we're not talking about a highly specialized and technical skill set. Not unless Musco is configuring nuclear reactors in his off hours. He's a community manager. A high school newspaper reporter can do half his job; ironically at least the one half we know he's failing at.

[One upside/downside to level sync (regarding gear for alts)]

LS sucks, period.

 

 

....exclamation, exclamation.

[Hey Musco!]

You can be efficient, straight-to-the-point, direct and critical, while being respectful. It will actually make people want to listen to your remarks.

 

Here's an interesting thought to ponder... You're correct on this point, but when has it EVER produced results as efficiently and quickly as driving true sense of urgency with bluntness and criticality alone? I've been in business a long time; soothing people's egos gets things done, ramming issues through their boss, forcing them to do their job and calling them out when they fail to do what they should has almost always provided superior results much faster.

 

I had a manager once who said "then the next time you need them, they won't do anything for you". My reply was, "and in the future, they'll still have a manager they answer to that I can get what I want from".

 

No single cog in the wheel is important. Some people delude themselves when they go to work into feeling they in themselves are of extreme personal value. They pride themselves on it. That's ego and attempt at self-substantiation. The truth is businesses have many cogs in the machine, Eric is one. If Eric is broken, or isn't working right, somewhere there's another cog...

 

So concerning the "more flies with honey than vinegar" argument, I'm uninterested. There are other ways aside from brown-nosing and ego-stroking to get things done.

[Hey Musco!]

Being manager of a grocery store doesn't mean you get to tell Eric how to do his job, Chibi.

 

Try Fortune 500 enterprise. I like how you pulled grocery store out of thin air though.

[Hey Musco!]

Really? "Hey Musco!" is how you start to try to make a point to the guy?

 

Does that often work for you in other situations, because as far as it reads to me, it's just flat rude.

 

This fellows roll has been clarified several times on the forums. It might be useful for you to try to understand what Mr. Musco is and is not responsible for.

 

And do you honestly then expect someone to defend RESPONDING a thread? I mean, responding to the thread is a GOOD thing brother.

 

I get you think the priorities are out of whack, but it seems to be a point that could be made with some respect for another human being. I'm willing to bet this guy is not waking up every morning twirling his mustache and dreaming up ways to obfuscate and deceive. he's probably thinking of ways to do the best job he possibly can given the limited scope of his authority, more likely, and here he's probably trying to do WHAT HE CAN, and getting kicked in the teeth for THAT. ...the thoughtlessness and discourticy I see sometimes in here just burns me.

 

Speak to issues of course, but have some class man.

 

I've done his job for a major corporation. I'm quite familiar with it's demands and his *role* (proper word use here), so a morally-defunct scolding from someone who has not performed said position serves little purpose; worse yet, it's uninteresting. I address my correspondence as I see fit, which is why it is MY correspondence as opposed to your correspondence.

 

Next, I don't expect him to defend responding to a (non-issue) thread. I DO expect him to correct the offending behavior. Further, posting that stickies were removed due to forum cleaning isn't "doing what he can" absent authority; actually, he could have posted a definitive date on when he'd say something useful about the concerns I've raised and that would have been several orders of magnitude more useful (still annoying, but useful as at least that's a firm commitment). His current course is actually doing nothing at all (hence the "soon" observations being made by the community).

 

The first rule of any role is if you don't have the authority to do the job, then that's NOT YOUR JOB. So if the Community Manager isn't permitted to manage the community, then he isn't the community manager and is wasting our time in a charade pretending otherwise (it's the same principle as "managers" who refuse to make any decisions that may have consequences). If such is the case, can we have the name of the actual Community Manager to address our concerns to? If he *is* the Community Manager, with appropriate and adequate authority to sufficiently address the community's concerns, then we have a much, much larger issue with a lack of consistent, reliable, detailed, engaging and effective communication from the person tasked with doing so.

 

That's a "below expectations" performance review right there... As to your last point about him being a human being; I'm sure he is, but from 9-5 M-F he's also a cog in the machine that is supposed to be getting things done. He can be a human being before 9 and after 5, hell, if he fixes these problems I'll even send him a basket of cookies with my personal thanks. But as face of a business, I speak to him as the business. Businesses don't require class in being communicated to; they don't structure their decisions or actions based on being asked to do something nicely. If they did, there would never be angry calls to customer service.

 

Simple logic.