It's time to have a serious talk with the devs about incentivization and grind.

[Kylie Kinslayer]

Once a quarter does not equate to SEVERAL postings, sorry to say but get real.

I stand by my comment with facts..... http://stratics.com/community/search/64607/


What do you stand by your comment with?

 

[Rusko]

Error

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

Error

Bah, just go do a quick search for post by Mesanna and see how many times she has replied in the last month, let alone the last quarter.

*makes note to figure out how to make link to searches ran work*

 

[kelmo]

Look... If you folks think Bioware has my picture on the wall as Cheerleader of the month, you have no idea who I am and you certainly do not read my posts or private messages to Dev's etc. I am quite disgusted that some few of you make up figures and post them as fact. What is worse is some folks are in a hurry to believe these "fictions". Pfft. I am gonna go in stealth mode and mod silently for a while. I am just disgusted with this nonsense of throwing enough lies at the wall until some stick.

 

[Rusko]

Syrus, Kylie has given another example of the "Broken Link" problem I mentioned before. I am not starting anything, just another reference to the issue I described.

 

[Rusko]

Kelmo, How can we read these 'private messages to dev's' you mentioned? I'd like to be on that list so I am more informed.

 

[Picus at the office]

Look... If you folks think Bioware has my picture on the wall as Cheerleader of the month, you have no idea who I am and you certainly do not read my posts or private messages to Dev's etc. I am quite disgusted that some few of you make up figures and post them as fact. What is worse is some folks are in a hurry to believe these "fictions". Pfft. I am gonna go in stealth mode and mod silently for a while. I am just disgusted with this nonsense of throwing enough lies at the wall until some stick.

Unless you want to give me the option to read your PM's I can only imagine they say nothing and add the same to the content of the site. If you aren't going to bother to add to the threads they hold little value beyond slowing this site down, sorry. I don't want members to get thier secret missions of moving the player base to siege without the rest of us getting the same benifit of the Dev's ears.

As for the Mesanna postings, I was wrong. She has managed to destroy a few keyboards with an amazing average of 10 postings a month in the last 6 years.

 

[Cirno]

You can disagree without being disagreeable.

 

[Rusko]

You can disagree without being disagreeable.

Are you here to help this discussion or further piss off the users? Another high title shows up and utters nonsense... Thanks for proving our point

 

[Cirno]

Are you here to help this discussion or further piss off the users? Another high title shows up and utters nonsense... Thanks for proving our point

I'm sorry if it didn't make sense to you.
The point of it was that it's possible to disagree with something without being disagreeable about it. In other words to point out that the somewhat obnoxious attitude being demonstrated by some people is wholly unnecessary, and therefore more likely to attract the things they're opposed to (namely, the "cheerleading", which comes as a result of those in favour of supporting the community as more than a collective soapbox for malcontents disagreeing with said malcontents).

Certainly, most of the issues complained about deserve attention.
Certainly, most of the issues affect different players differently, so priorities vary.
But, communities are based on commonalities, and negative attitudes serve only to tear a community apart.

 

[Woodsman]

i applaud the dev's for all the attention they have given the game these past 2 years.

i do think that there is a grind factor however and some casual players can get frustrated as many things worth attaining take a really long time to obtain. the high seas booster really turned me off in this regard as i found you spent most of the time sailing the waters to bring the pirate in rather than the time it took to capture the pirate itself. i really think the dev's dropped the ball with that expansion. they should have made scalis a sea bourne champ that took the use of the new ships to complete. they so dropped the ball there in my opinion.

While they have done a lot the last year or two, High Seas is a really good example for this thread. Right now I'm not going to participate in ship battle because it's way too expensive if I buy everything and way to time intensive if I do it on my own. Believe me, I've been tempted to buy from the RMT scripts just to keep everything stocked, but if I have to do that, then I gotta question why am I even doing it in the first place.

I want to believe that all of this grinding that's been going on lately has a purpose, namely to free up designers/developers for something bigger, and is not just the result of UO moving one more step down the road to being a themepark MMO. I really do.

 

[Meatbread]

The current developers literally walked in and decided that after ten years the Virtue system needed to be vastly more of a grind... just because. No real statement on what gameplay issue they felt had been defective for the last decade, which this change would supposedly fix. Just... "Hey, is this a grind? No? Well it is now! Enjoy!" while the players sat there going "Wait WHAT?"

But if you think this is strange or disconcerting then obviously you're some kind of disgusting "want it all" kiddie and need to be told so by a totally coincidental procession of Stratics staff!

Then there's the current event storyline, where you can pick up a zillion piles of garbage (garbage picking points subject to decay, naturally) to earn the right to spend fifty million gold on a cosmetic title. One with no comma, so it looks like your name is just Bob Duke or whatever.

 

[Woodsman]

But, communities are based on commonalities, and negative attitudes serve only to tear a community apart.

Communities that love a game owe it to themselves and to the game to step up and ask the questions that need to be asked, or voice their disapproval of certain decisions. None of us here wants the grinding to become the standard for future stories, because that will contribute to UO's decline.

I know UO is not the sandbox it once was, but it still has a lot of that sandbox feel to it, moreso than other MMORPG. We owe it to the game and its history to say that we don't like this trend. If people who have never played UO can get past the 1990s graphics, they'll find a game unlike any other, but if this idea of more and more grinding becomes the norm, they won't find a game unlike any other, and they won't stick around.

 

[Rusko]

I'm sorry if it didn't make sense to you.
The point of it was that it's possible to disagree with something without being disagreeable about it. In other words to point out that the somewhat obnoxious attitude being demonstrated by some people is wholly unnecessary, and therefore more likely to attract the things they're opposed to (namely, the "cheerleading", which comes as a result of those in favour of supporting the community as more than a collective soapbox for malcontents disagreeing with said malcontents).

Certainly, most of the issues complained about deserve attention.
Certainly, most of the issues affect different players differently, so priorities vary.
But, communities are based on commonalities, and negative attitudes serve only to tear a community apart.

Anyone who disagrees, is therefore being disagreeable... So i just see it as a silly snooty post

 

[Faeryl]

Anyone who disagrees, is therefore being disagreeable... So i just see it as a silly snooty post

I don't believe that's true. One can disagree about something without having an attitude or being rude about it. And calling it a snooty post was kind of rude.

 

[Cirno]

Communities that love a game owe it to themselves and to the game to step up and ask the questions that need to be asked, or voice their disapproval of certain decisions. None of us here wants the grinding to become the standard for future stories, because that will contribute to UO's decline.

I wouldn't say that the players shouldn't speak up about it.
Negative feedback is just as (if not more) important than negative feedback on a game.
But as often needs to be stated; it's not what you say, but how you say it.

Anyone who disagrees, is therefore being disagreeable... So i just see it as a silly snooty post

That's not even remotely what I said.
Anyone who disagrees disagreeably is being disagreeable.
Disagreeable mightn't mean what you think it means.

 

[Rusko]

They just keep rolling in.... 1 after another... Let's stop Derailing this thread STAFF

 

[Sevin0oo0]

A Another high title shows up and utters nonsense... Thanks for proving our point

I ain't got no title, but if you really want to know how they feel, PM them, I have, and I think i know why they don't post their real thoughts more often, because they'd have to give themselves infractions or bans. They are a lot more directed in their concerns, and extremely opinionated, but also open for discussion.They can make trolls look like noobs, so don't bother. I'm not taking up for any of them, I just know the opinions some have shared.
And No, you can't see any of my pm's, I don't share squat.

 

[Woodsman]

I wish folks didn't pretend that they know everything staff members think.

I have a very good idea of what Jeff Skalski thinks about a lot of things based on a few minutes looking at his twitterer account.

I can tell you that Jeff Skalski wishes they would bring the Necromancer back to Diablo 3 in a future expansion. I can tell you that he was also excited when Diablo 3 was released and got his copy on the day of release or the day after.

I can tell you that Jeff bought blue cargo shorts at The Gap.

I can tell you that Jeff is a fan of private space exploration.

I can tell you that Jeff was excited about the release of Dragon's Dogma.

I can tell you that Jeff liked the Avengers movie.

I can tell you that he likes Nintendo.

I can tell you what he uses to take notes on his iPhone.

I can tell you he was excited about Nintendo announcing a new Mario game.

One thing I cannot tell you is what he plans for UO. You are correct in that aspect. His last producer's letter, and the interviews were far too generic to tell us a lot.

 

[Meatbread]

Oh Stratics hasn't seen a worthwhile troll in eons. A real troll can drive everyone insane without breaking any rules at all.

 

[Lady CaT]

Lately it seems like everything in UO is designed to be as tedious as possible while granting as little reward as they think they can get away with. They've added tons of content in the last year or two and yet I always seem to find myself banksitting because I don't feel like taking a beating and coming away poorer in the end, or because I don't want to be on the hook to keep whatever from decaying.

I guess compared to bank sitting, everything to you would be a grind or too tedious!

 

[Rusko]

Sevin? I have never referenced or replied to anything you've said on this thread...

The PM's that Pico and myself asked to see, were in reference to Kelmo
The part you quoted was about Cirno...

I don't see where you think I quoted you anywhere in my posts... Sorry if you think I was though. I wasnt.

 

[Rusko]

I agree that there is a huge problem here with the direction this game is going (being said that it's not a distraction from something bigger and better going on)...
But it's also clear that there is some as stated before, 'Cheerleading' going on with the staff ONLY... it's deff interesting...

 

[Picus at the office]

A PM servers nothing to the player base. A open thought, be it freindly or not serves far more to provoke discussion than any private chat two people have. Unless the mods are actually going to respond to the OP I fail to see what and why you are bothering to respond here but I would be more than happy to hear the reasoning. I guess that we will see the eventual lock as this thread is going off topic(hmm that must be the first time someone has posted something negative about the Dev team and a lock showed up) but you never know.

If we could get back to the topic of grinds, lack of follow through with stuff and important game play issues that would be lovely. And Mesanna could post here as that is a slightly more effective way of doing that communication thing we have all asked for...

 

[Lady CaT]

But it's also clear that there is some as stated before, 'Cheerleading' going on with the staff ONLY... it's deff interesting...

OMG! God forbid there are people who actually like the game! Are you serious?

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

They just keep rolling in.... 1 after another... Let's stop Derailing this thread STAFF

After scrolling back through the entire thread prior to the quoted comment I was unable to find a single post by you that is remotely on topic of the original post. Strange huh? Good thing I ain't a mod...... I have little patience for certain things.

 

[Rusko]

On both sides of the arguments on ALL threads really... you have your people complaining about something they don't like, and you have the people saying, 'all you want is an easy button, and everything given to you'

You have Those who bash tram, and those who bash fel...
You have those who argue over pvp and pvm....

But across the board... no one should ever think that paying a subscription fee for content that decays if you don't put Real-Life second to maintain the things you have worked hard for in a game....

This is when it stops becoming fun... (IMHO)

 

[hen]

Yes can we get back to the topic of grinds please.

 

[Cirno]

Yes can we get back to the topic of grinds please.

Wasn't it you that started this tangent?

 

[Rusko]

OMG! God forbid there are people who actually like the game! Are you serious?

Hmm, this might be hard to swallow Cat, but would we be trying to reach out to the DEV's to not further dismantle this game's fun level, if we DIDNT love it?

People like you that are quick to say, Shut up, nothing is wrong... is the problem here all together...

 

[Woodsman]

I agree that there is a huge problem here with the direction this game is going (being said that it's not a distraction from something bigger and better going on)...

That's the problem though, we don't know the direction, all we can do is speculate, because we're kept in the dark. Right now based on what we are seeing, the future is more and more grinding. I hope that it's not the case and that this has a very specific purpose, or that it's a distraction while they work on something bigger and better for UO, but we don't know that.

I also would have no problem putting in the time to keep up with the loyalty rating if I knew there was a major point and it was going to pay off the next publish or the publish after that (since we are only two publishes away from the anniversary). Well I might not worry about it now, but a few weeks before the publishes I would make some time for it. That's the best strategy I've heard about dealing with the decaying points.

 

[RuSini Neb]

Yes can we get back to the topic of grinds please.

The topic of this thread is "Diablo3 Vs UO" not "grinds" So yes lets continue comparing and contrasting how Diablo 3's developers are able to release a good product at a valid price point, where as the UO development team has had dismal failures in releasing anything beyond SA expansion, and biased on this claim we should get, either lower monthly subs, or.... a new development team ( from the top down ) that actually does what they are payed for. ( this post is not in anyway shape or form a troll on any select stratics members, it is however a post that calls out the UO development team, saying roughly for the money do better please...)

 

[hen]

Wasn't it you that started this tangent?

Yes it was.

 

[Rusko]

If majority is against whats being discussed here, and the small few who are for it, all work for this website in one form or another, is very upsetting to me...

 

[Woodsman]

The topic of this thread is "Diablo3 Vs UO" not "grinds" So yes lets continue comparing and contrasting how Diablo 3's developers are able to release a good product at a valid price point, where as the UO development team has had dismal failures in releasing anything beyond SA expansion, and biased on this claim we should get, either lower monthly subs, or.... a new development team ( from the top down ) that actually does what they are payed for. ( this post is not in anyway shape or form a troll on any select stratics members, it is however a post that calls out the UO development team, saying roughly for the money do better please...)

That's not a fair comparison. The Diablo 3 team is probably 15-20 times the size of the UO team, with many times that in budget, and with the full backing of Blizzard. The UO team does a helluva good job given that they are only a few dozen members and EA seems to care more about sports and first person shooters than RPGs and MMORPGs.

 

[hen]

The topic of this thread is "Diablo3 Vs UO" not "grinds" So yes lets continue comparing and contrasting how Diablo 3's developers are able to release a good product at a valid price point, where as the UO development team has had dismal failures in releasing anything beyond SA expansion, and biased on this claim we should get, either lower monthly subs, or.... a new development team ( from the top down ) that actually does what they are payed for. ( this post is not in anyway shape or form a troll on any select stratics members, it is however a post that calls out the UO development team, saying roughly for the money do better please...)

Wrong thread pal.

 

[RuSini Neb]

That's not a fair comparison. The Diablo 3 team is probably 15-20 times the size of the UO team, with many times that in budget, and with the full backing of Blizzard. The UO team does a helluva good job given that they are only a few dozen members and EA seems to care more about sports and first person shooters than RPGs and MMORPGs.

Not my fault that backing companies are parts of the failure.
and just fyi Blizzard is not 'Blizzard' and has not been for a while now.........

and actually its totaly fair under this guise:
Diablo 3 grind = fun ??
UO grind's' = not fun at all.... ??

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

If majority is against whats being discussed here, and the small few who are for it, all work for this website in one form or another, is very upsetting to me...

Sorry but you are incorrect there. The ones that are for it are ran off by the abrasive {even rude} nature of those opposed to it. People who are rude, obnixious, condescending etc discourage most everyone from even beginning in the conversation. Not everyone is thick skinned and likes an argument, but they will discuss with civility in detail and at great length.

 

[kelmo]

I call train wreck. If this topic is to be discussed it will be in a respectful and constructive manner. That is an "official moderator warning".

N. Not responding to or ignoring moderator warnings can lead to suspension.