Why are my fellow avatars making the case for closed development?

I have been amazed this week at the number of statements I've read on these forums (and others) by people that are:

1. Tired of waiting for feature X. "I still don't have my custom NPC character!"
2. Asking silly questions like "where's the cloth map?!!!!!"
3. Falsely labeling the game as pay 2 win.
4. Not playing the game for the last 6 months yet still feeling qualified to tell people it's horrible.
5. Complaining that they were banned from the forums for "no reason". Read the forum rules hot shot, there's a reason.
6. Asking for the devs to "reach out to them" only to immediately attack them each and every time they do.
7. Creating conspiracy theories about everything said or done by the development team. "They hacked my computer as part of a plot to harass me!" No, I'm not kidding.
8. Threatening the development team with "I don't care if I'm banned. If they ban me I'll just drop the mother load of screen shots against them where they moderated me. That'll show them! But I don't care either way because I'm too cool for school. So like I'm not even really writing this message right now, because I care so little."
9. Treating the Kickstarter as some kind of individual mandate for Portalarium to custom make the game the way they individually interpret or imagine the game should be.
10. Assuming the worst, being negative by default, and then saying "oh but I really do want them to succeed."

Seriously, it's as if I was transported back in time to when I was in middle school and drama was the only currency.

Why are my fellow avatars making the case for closed development? Why is this very vocal group of unsatisfied people showing their displeasure in a way that is counterproductive to improving their situation? Why are they losing sight of the fact that making stuff up and screaming about things that are either completely made up or can't change overnight due to limited resources, time, and money is only hurting the game, not helping it?

 

11. Asking a question, not liking the answer, so asking it again and again while complaining the Devs never respond.

When you log in, are you already looking for something to criticize? Seems many have pre-conceived ideas and look for confirmation rather than judging with an open mind. Certainly not unique to SotA or to gaming in general. It's pretty easily spotted in another, but do you recognize it in yourself?
[Addressed to no one in particular]

 

There are yes man and there are devil's advocate.

 

Simplest answer is that, when taken on the whole, the feedback Port has incorporated into the game, and the process they have used to collect it, has done more harm than good to the game from the standpoint of a KS backer.

 

Certainly.

And perhaps open development lends itself well to both. I'm not a fan of yes men, but I am self aware.

There are people that call me a "white knight" at the same time that I'm criticizing the game for one reason or another, the facts be damned. It's funny because I had originally created a blog many years ago called evilgrief.com that was designed to bring attention to areas of improvement in the game under the assumption that if I didn't yell loud enough I wouldn't be heard. I assumed this because in all of the other game development I had followed, that was indeed the case. The developers rarely interacted with the fans, and when they did it was an attempt to put some grease on a squeaky wheel.

But what I quickly learned with my blog was that I didn't need to be a squeaky wheel to get attention. I only needed to engage the developers in a reasonable way. I learned this before I ever paid for than $20 for a "grief pledge", and it was shortly after Lord British had visited my website and commented on it that I no longer felt the need to use it. I no longer felt that it served the purpose for which I had originally intended, and so I removed it and increased my pledge.

Since then, I've been disappointed by some decisions, but I've never questioned the motivation of the development team or their desire to make the best game possible. This isn't done out of blind loyalty, it's done out of respect that has been earned overtime. Starting way back when I first joined, and continuing through the many ups and downs of the game development.

Playing devil's advocate is not without it's merits, and I would say that it's more likely to result in a positive action than being a yes man. However, when people play devil's advocate for their own sense of enjoyment and without the ability to be flexible or nuanced, that's called trolling and that's every bit was worthless as being a yes man.

 

Yet there are KS backers that don't feel the same way. So being a Kickstarter backer would not be a good qualifier. There must be something else that would determine who is and who is not unsatisfied with Portalarium.

I personally believe that Portalarium's communication is often very poor. Yet I don't believe they have ill motives or intend to do anything but make the best game possible.

 

And this post doesn't ADD to the drama.......

 

The Internet is a tool, nothing more.

Rule#1: The internet will allways correct a wrong info if used correctly.

Go into a forum (any), write something wrong...you can count the seconds until its corrected. Example: "The sky is green". It will take seconds until the first answers pop up saying "blue". You just have to blend out the human reaction "the yadayada" before and after the info.

Same rule applies here...example: "SotA has no planed release date, those devs are way better off managing an unfinished game and selling trinkets here and there to the die hard fans".

Noticed your first reaction? To even things out by giving correct infos (or the wish to hit me realy hard, but still...you get the meaning)? By that sentence alone, I would know the planed release date, what the devs are working on and maybe even a few infos on the item shop.

So...if someone logs in here for Infos, the fastest way to get those is to simply write simple bullsssssss.
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Besides...while I can understand your 10 points of forum degeration...this is not OUR fault as Players/Gamers/Users. You know...all we want is fun and to spend our free time immersed and entertained. I think that counts for everyone here. There are no bad but on the other side, no good people...we are just people...customers...and usually we go into a shop (really or virtualy) and by a game to have fun.

Its when you turn the same people into backers...that things go wrong. When you sell them something that is not existing, that is being made from a simple description out of someone mind alone cause we player we fill the missing infos with our Imagination. No one here is a game developer (well...exept that one dev that might actually read this), no one of us can really understand after a days job what and why something is not working as intended. We just see that door that wont open and causes our pc to crash...we dont understand the code or anything related to it.

This is why this forum is being used as it is....well...thats what I think.

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So to make it short: your right...but deal with it

 

Reading through the comments on the Kickstarter Website there doesn't seem to be alot of KS backers that are happy...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/portalarium/shroud-of-the-avatar-forsaken-virtues-0/comments

The best possible game for whom? MMORPG players? Single player fans? PvP fans? Housing fans? Story fans?

 

I believe that more people would consider Madden 2017 to be a better game than SotA than the reverse, but I doubt many of them backed the KS for SotA. Best game is subjective, subjectively SotA is far worse today than it was 6 months ago, back then I could actually enter 6 scenes without the game trying to take down my system.

 

That's a fair commentary. I did consider that before posting.

I felt that the counter argument I'm making in the OP is often muted though, and it's worth the conversation.

 

Perhaps. I mean it's certainly possible that a majority of kickstarter backers are unhappy, yet just looking at the comments on that site is not really a good way to judge that is it?

It does support some people's narrative, but it's not backed by science or even reasonable logic. There were A LOT of backers, and only a few of them commenting.

The best possible game for people that backed this game.

You do realize that the obligation of Portalarium is not to satisfy only the people that backed the Kickstarter but everyone that put money into the game, right?

 

Why are you asking us and not them?

What constructive thing are you anticipating will come out of you asking these questions here?

Unless you were in Ancient Greece in which case the answer might be bronze Though, of course, this is actually a good example of your point.

 

You're right that it's subjective and your example is perfect.

I hate Madden games even though I LOVE football video games in general. I also believe that this game has been improved exponentially in the last 6 months, and I've rarely had problems with stability in all the years I've been playing. But I have a very high end system with 32 GB of RAM and that probably isn't the case for most of the people trying to play. From your perspective, having stability issues, I can see why you'd be less excited about the progress we've made. But that doesn't change my experience or invalidate it anymore than my experience would do that for you. Still the difference is how we approach voicing that feedback and at what point it's acceptable (if ever) to simply go out into the world raging about how SOTA is a horrible game that never allows me to play it because I can't stay connected (for whatever reason, maybe you're on a Vic 20, or maybe the devs haven't been able to fix your issue yet). Either way, I think it would be questionable to flip out over that.

 

Sure but the KS backers should not be neglected. And somehow the development of SotA seems to suggest this.

 

There are unreasonable posts made by unreasonable people here all the time.

Plus, all the other people posting else where read this site like it was their religion.

 

And so you think this post will solve all their problems, perceived and actual?

 

I'm not in favor of neglecting anyone. But I'm not in favor of being told by a random group of people that we can't move the game forward because it's not what they "thought" it would be.

Do you agree with every person that is a fan of single player RPG's how the best way to make a game is? Of course you don't. Even if our community was made up of only people that wanted a fantastic single player experience there would be disagreements. Heated disagreements.

In the Kickstarter it was clear there would be a Single Player mode, a Friends Only mode, a Single Player Online mode, and a Multiplayer Online Mode. We have all those modes in this game now. It's just a matter of some people questioning how robust each mode is, and I don't see how one person's opinion would ever match up 100% with another person's. Even in the modes I care very deeply about, I rarely see eye to eye on everything with anyone.

 

Of course not.

I think this post will serve as a counter argument though. I think this post may make some people on the margins reconsider their overall stance and perhaps look at SOTA with more moderate eyes. Perhaps I'm wrong about that, but that's my overall intent.

 

The problem is that many of the folks around here say that the game is drastically improved without adding the caveat, which in my opinion is very important, that their game play experience is unlikely to be representive of average player's experience due to the large amount they have invested in the game. Kind of like saying that your traffic problems have remarkably disappeared lately withough mentioning you recently bought a private jet and built an airport next to you house.