Players with a sense of entitlement

1) The assassin/shaodow classes are not broken. They need some care and attention by the devs.. but they are far from broken. Unless you are declaring anything not top of the food chain to be broken. Good luck with that in MMOs..as classes are always being adjusted and moving around the pecking order with respect to one another. It's where FOTM as a meme came from.

2) the angst about what developers said was (L2P) with respect to the ranged caster variants of the base classes, not assassins/shadows. They have not comment on player questions yet for those classes, right?

So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that this game is a sinking ship in their eyes so why spend more money on it? Because when, in this business is it profitable to spend money outside of the initial investment? LOTR, a good comparison to SWTOR would argue otherwise. They continued to spend money on their product, listened to what the majority of their fan base was saying when the game initially collapsed and now it seems as they are doing rather well.

The other question is, how much is too much money to invest? When we as the customers don't even understand what the ballpark number is to create or fix content. How can you as a consumer say Bioware doesn't want to spend money on fixing assassins because its too expensive?

More likely the case is, BW saw its initial investment tank, they happened, by chance, to revive the product with free to play/cartel market. Now their view is to "ride it out with as little money expenditure as possible." Which is fine if you don't expect to keep your customers very long.

I LOVED LOVED LOVED this game when it first came out. I played on a server called Rwookrooro. It was one of the lightest servers in the game for at least 6 months. It took me a good long while to figure out that even though it was enjoyable to play single player.. it got very old not being able to have enough people on the server to pop a PvP or FP queue. So if they want to drive away all of the dedicated players, by all means, do so. You, Andryah will be playing this game by yourself and when you do, we'll talk about your stance on whether they are doing the right thing by listening to their customers or not.

While I think you are 100% correct, I also think the majority of forum posters are usually the more involved, the more passionate and the most dedicated to any game.

No matter how they post, the small number of forum posters are the ones doing massive amounts of gaming in any game. Most know the ins and outs of a particular class and some of the best minds for any particular game can be found on the forums.

We of course have seen the few that do not in any way fall into that category but for many, I think it's rather short sighted for any game company/developer to dismiss change requests (be it nerfs or buffs) simply cause its BW's game and they know best or they have information we don't.

Now, if they want to prove us wrong by giving us their detailed parse or metrics then thats fine - Prove us wrong but to simply say we know better cause we designed it is foolish.

The most common form of "entitlement" (which I'll agree is somewhat overused) I see here and in many, many other parts of everyday life is (for lack of an established term) the "Entitlement of Pesonal Value".

A large number of people have taken up the belief that the action of paying for goods or services comes with an implicit guarantee that the goods or services will be satisfying and meet expectations. One of the biggest problems with this is that, on first glance, it seems perfectly reasonable. However, critical analysis shows how its flawed and how it sets up impossible situations.

Applying this to the game: Some people have repeatedly expressed the opinion that since they are a subscriber, Bioware is obligated to address their concerns and make changes they request, or at least have them acknowledged and put into some transparent plan of action. Unfortunately, that level of service was never guaranteed. In fact, it was rather explicitly denied in the user agreement. However, people either don't care to listen to that, or actively oppose the idea. In this case the entitlement comes from the belief that they are owed services that were never agreed upon.

To give an easier example: I go to a movie. I pick the movie based on some shallow research. I pay my $10 for a ticket. I take my seat. I watch the movie. The movie is horrible. The theater is under no obligation to allow me to keep watching other movies until I find one that I enjoy. The ticket purchase was very clear: I pay $10, I watch a movie. No guarantee was made that I would enjoy it. No guarantee was made that the theater would be the temperature that I prefer or that my seat would provide the amount of back support that I like.

Services are no different. Check your agreement with you ISP. You pay a monthly fee. The ISP provides you with some level of service. In nearly all cases (with residential customers) there is no guarantee that the service will have low latency or that available bandwidth will meet the service maximum at all times of the day. Customers can complain about it, but the reality is that the service they bought never guaranteed those things.

There are plenty of these examples we commonly see with SWTOR (or loads of other games, but this is the on-topic example). Take the common complaint: "I'm a paying customer! You should compensate me for maintenance downtimes!" The user agreement says that maintenance will happen, the game will be unavailable, and no compensation is given. Or the more nebulous: "I'm a paying customer, they need to respond to my request for information!" Nowhere in the service agreement does it say that your subscription fee is paying for personal contact with developers. And it can't, because, quite simply, you're not paying enough for that.

I'm a developer. An hour of my time costs my employer $50. In the time it would take me to research and reply to a single person's concern, I'd have burnt through at least five months of profit on that user. And then consider the fact that many users are asking for conflicting things. Or impossible things. Everyone has a right to an opinion and the ability to express it, but its a rare thing to have a guarantee that someone will care about it.

Now, of course, it's a bit rigid and jerkish to follow a service agreement in a just-what-we-said and only-what-we-said sort of way. The whole customer service department is usually built on the idea of giving customers more than what they are strictly paying for. However, I think a lot of customers have been spoiled by this idea and the obviously wrong cliche of "The Customer is Always Right". Many people are convinced that they can ask for whatever they want and a retailer/service-provider should give it to them.

That, in my mind, is entitlement. The idea that you should be given more than what you paid for, more than what you agreed someone was going to give you, and that failing to meet your expectations is functionally equivalent to failing to meet the agreed upon service level.

But, you see, the "masses of customers" aren't saying that. They are happily playing the game and not providing numerical proof of anything. Only the elitists are saying that, and they are the minority, the ones who spend countless hours scrutinizing the game until the wee hours of the morning.

Indeed, even if you were to adopt the notion that you should provide everything any conceivable customer could want, you're playing into the law of diminishing returns. You simply do not have the resources to provide everything that could possibly be requested. If you're smart, you will provide what the majority of customers want and leave the specialty items for a boutique store to sell. It's the old "80/20 rule." You can provide 80% of what your customers want with 20% of the stock. It will take 80% of the stock to satisfy the last 20% of the customers. The further you deviate from 80/20 the more stock you will require. At some point providing that stock is going to cost you more than you are making.

What I see happening here is that the elitists, the true experts (and they are experts) are trying to claim that the "masses of customers" are behind them when in fact there is no truth to this. The masses of customers couldn't care less. When you say "the assassin class is broken" what you are really saying is that it doesn't play the way you think it ought to play. You're trying to substitute "I disagree" with "It's not fair!" with its little emotional tug to get what you want. So what if the assassin is not as powerful as a juggernaut? Life isn't fair.

It isn't a bug; it's a feature.

No. Its not.
You aren't entitled to anything except that which the TOS dictates you are. Usually that's a temporary game license to access the service and perhaps use of its forums (as provided).

That's it bub.
Its up the CONSUMER to decide if the service they get is appropriate for their level of expectation.

Examples:

If you continue to pay/play and don't complain much or don't participate in the forums = you are ok with the level of service as far as Bioware is concerned.

If you cancel your sub/delete char/stop playing = you are NOT ok with the level of service and have decided to move your money elsewhere. As far as Bioware is concerned, this means you are NOT ok with the level of service.

If you continue to pay/play but come to the forums to make suggestions, propose changes = you are ok with the level of service as far as Bioware is concerned.

HERE IS THE TRICKY ONE:

If you continue to pay/play but constantly make complaints/criticism on the forums, make idle threats, etc = you are OK with the level of service as far as Bioware is concerned.


Do you see how that works? Smart consumers spend their money where they want.

Dude.. how on earth did you extract that from what I said?

As a business.. any business... you invest in the customer base you believe your product is well suited for, and you continue to invest. You might.. might.. over time... make investments to expand your customer base.. if you thought the investment would pay off.

Now.. let's translate that to SWTOR. Hardcore PvP and hardcore sandbox playstyle IS NOT this MMOs customer center. In fact.. hardcore anything is not this MMOs core customer center. This is a broad appeal MMO.. and as such.. is unlikely to ever invest to the extreme in any single demographic. AND.. being a broad appeal product.. they shoot for their center..and pull in whatever is near the center that they can attract without additional investment.

In other words... hardcore PvP, Harcore PvE min/maxers are going to be in some state of constant disappointment with this game if that is the sole reason they play. It's a diversity of play product.. not a niche do one thing intensely product. But we do have players in the game and on this forum that are self-proclaimed intense niche players that feel entitled to have their preferred niche given preference over everything else. Not going to happen with this MMO.. no matter how self-entitled they feel.

None of us here are qualified to answer this question. That's up to Bioware in the context of SWTOR. But I'm certain it's not resource limits to making class adjustments.. it's thought, balance, and careful consideration... since at the end of the day.. any class adjustment is larger then just that class in an MMO.

Their initial investment resulted in nearly 3 million box sales.. which is good for a company like EA that loves box sales. Would they have liked more and longer and larger retention under a subscription model? Sure. Did they just pack it in and fold shop after they sold all the boxes they could? Not at all.

They did not just by chance revive the game with a business model change, they deliberately adapted to the market and made successful changes. And the game.... by most counts of players who actually enjoy the game...is getting better each new release now.

Of course the game cannont and will not appeal to every MMO player. It can't. Even WoW can't do that.. so that line of thinking is a false point of analysis. They have a demographic set dialed in, and they appear to be both profitable and growing from the last two quarterly announcements by EA.

Again, Andryah is right. I don't think the lot of you have spent 5 minute inside a real business.

QFT. Not the first time the tail has tried to wag the dog either.

Interestingly enough.. the tail always feels "self entitled" to wag the dog.. even though it is the dog that is actually biologically entitled to wag the tale.

Slight tangent to prove a point...

Why was Rwookrooro so empty?

Because the customers demanded that Bioware make more servers, despite the fact that it urged them to be patient and let populations stabilize. Customers whined and they flung insults and they threatened lawsuits.

And the customer is always right, right?

So Bioware did it. The customers wanted it and they got it. They're the customers and they're always right. And just a little while later, after the initial surge of first playthoughs --not even to the end of the free month-- it was clear that there were too many servers. Or at least, it appeared that way. Obviously there weren't because the customers said they needed more and customers are always right. A few months later and many servers were running fleet populations of 30 or so, while a few were routinely populated.

How much money was wasted putting up the extra servers? How many players were driven away by the low populations of the servers they were initially sent to? How many developer hours were wasted supporting a server buildout that appeared to be silly to professionals, but was obviously correct because the customers wanted it and the customers are always right.