A perspective we may have missed as gamers/community. ( long ass read bois)

[Thoron]

As a heads up this is a very long read,  and is from another game that also had a lot of hype behind it that let a lot of players down. I believe this to be a very intellegent and insightful post that applies to our game in a lot of aspects. Please give this a read. Full credits go to the original topic creator, "Lurinar" of the bdo forums.

 

Also keep in mind that on the Internet , ppl can claim to be whatever they like. This however does not change the fact that the post offers a perspective some players may not have been aware of. While reading this post you will notice that blade and soul and we as the players share these short comings . Enjoy !

 

( if you really want a TLDR, I guess you can read the bolded text, however it takes away from the post.)

 

 

 

"I personally work at a AAA studio Quebec, Canada. Now as you know, there's quite a few studios in the City of Quebec and in Montreal (Bethesda which came recently, but there's also Warner, Eidos Montreal, Ubisoft, Beenox, Gearbox, Larian and probably a few that I forgot about). When people say that everything in the industry comes around, it's not a lie. Everything, from design, company culture, employees and gameplay pillars goes around. So where do I want to go with this?

I want to give you a quick, self-explanatory theory that is applied every single day in the domain. It often seems like it goes over some people's head at times, so I want to make it extremely clear:

The industry does not care about your individual requests. You preferences as an individual player or a minority/divided community won't result in changes.

Now, I'm not speaking of technical issues. Companies do care about it - if anything, they often end-up hiring people in batch when their games are successful. What I'm speaking is about game design decisions. Let me take an example for you.

When a company decide to create a game, it analyse the market and then decide how long it'll take, how much money they're ready to invest and how many workers they're ready to employ. Once it is done, the employees have to create systems that are both fun and allow the company to make money. The most popular in the past years was the "Box" game, where you bought the box and you had the game forever.

Sadly, in the past years, a new generation came onto the market. This generation opened the possibilities marginally in terms of Gameplay, AI, Graphics and Overall Scope. However - and it's the part people can't seem to grasp - it means that a game that used to cost a regular amount (without big numbers, lets use our imagination and say that a game only cost a hundred dollars to make) is now exponentially more costly to produce. So if you've followed up to now, you probably realize that this game that cost 100$ now cost 1000$ to make. Here's the issue: The market is more competitive than ever and players ask constantly for lower prices. So to still create games, this mean that I, the enterprise developing a game, have to make bigger games with more content (which in turn, cost more) that will sell less than its predecessor for a fraction of its price.

Now of course, we all know games that ended outside the mold, but lets be honest here: it's a vast minority. Just go on metacritic and look at the reviews; you'll understand what I mean. We all know what happened right before the new generation was released: DLCs started to appear everywhere, with several DLCs being limited to skins and weapons. Then a huge outcry happened and DLCs became expansions. But soon enough, this too came too costly. Expansions takes time and resources and just help things to keep moving, not to make a profit.

At that point, Free to Play and Buy to Play appeared. Initially, it was great. But once again and faster than before, the market was oversaturated with Free to Play games of dubious quality. To this end, in-game stores started to appear in Buy to Play games. It's simple: People who want to spend 30+ bucks for a game certainly won't mind paying more in-game for cosmetic and small quality of life items. We're speaking of completely optional items that have very little impact on gameplay, but still just enough to give you an edge. The best example I can give you is the Guillie Suit in Black Desert. I can also give you the example of skins in CS:GO. Or the in-game transactions in Assassin's Creed. Or the mounts and character customization/faction change in World of Warcraft. Or any recent Shooter in history, from Destiny to Halo 5 going by Call of Duty before making a stop by Tom Clancy's games.

At this point, here's the thing you guys have to realize. The Guillie suit is here to stay. It's one of the main income for Daum and Pearl Abyss. Some might hate it; I'd argue that the fact that you paid only 30$ for the game makes it fair if you have to invest another 30$ for additionnal functionnality in a game. We don't live in a world of roses and singing birds - we live in a world where economy matters and if you want to keep the gaming industry alive, you'll have to realize that what Daum is doing with the Pearl Store is in the norm. The Guillie suit is not mandatory - in fact, if we were to make a poll, you'd realize that it's probably more split at 50/50. A 50/50 mean that no matter what they do, Daum will get part of the community angry. To this end, the only logical option is to keep it as is and let players get used to it. It's not Pay to Win. It's Pay to Keep The Game Online and Profitable.

***

Another thing I want to make clear is that gameplay requests are nice. However, when the community is divided or when the community ask for a change that would require a complete system and economy revamp, nothing will happen. The first example that comes to mind is the no-trading issue that a minority of you claim is a gamebreaker. What some people do not realize is that the whole game is based around the no-trading system. As soon as Daum would implement it, we'd see a crash in the auction house. We'd see a crash in the city buildings/foundry/gear houses/transport/horses and much, much more, because the whole system is developed around a fair income for everyone with pre-set prices that will require everyone to invest themselves in every sphere of the game.

The trading system would completely change this. A little like World of Warcraft, what we'd see is the death of professions because everything would become too easily available. When too many ores and gear would be put on the auction houses, we'd see a huge drop in profits - in other words, everything that can be gathered. On the other hand, everything that is extremely rare like blue gear would become overpriced. And that's the thing - that's exactly what the in-game system is against. All of this would simply happen by implementing a very harmless-looking functionality. Right now, we have a lot of items being set at the lowest price possible. But it still gives a worthwhile profit.

A lot of game design books speak of this particular issue. Economy systems in a game are extremely complex and the slightest things can break it completely and thoroughly. In the case of a trade system, it'd be as devastating as the Typhoon Katrina.

***

The last point I'm going to speak about is "if we're enough to complain about something, it'll change". As you've just read, it's not always possible. The thing is that if everyone starts to complain loudly, they'll create a hostile atmosphere. By experience, when the atmosphere is hostile, devs stop reading the forums and send a Human Resources team to gather feedback. This mean that the development team gets feedback through echo chambers by people that are not specialized in spotting core features. In the end, this mean that you, the player, won't be able to give important feedback through team members. Sure, the artistic director and gameplay design might go and read. Sure, THAT employee that does over like if there was no tomorrow and break his mental well being through overwork could care a lot about people's opinion. But ultimately, the chances that he's the one including new features is incredibly low. And we all know that directors don't actually touch the game and it becomes the task of the regular employees who won't bother with the negativity.

***

In conclusion, what you've just read might be infuriating. You might disagree and your personal experience could be completely different. What I know is that here in Quebec and in many studios around the world, this is how things happen. Daum is not a bad company and while they did do mistakes (some of which are completely stupid), the issues going out of proportions of the forum are completely stupid, useless and create a hostile environment.

At this point, you have two options. Shutting your mouth and enjoy the game as is and speak of your ideas in a mature way on the forum, or leave the game because it's not the type of game you're looking for. Stop trying to change it - if you want to play a completely different game, then maybe the problem is you and you're the one who should go and check another game.

Not sorry for long post.

tl;dr: Guillie suit is there to stay permanently because of the current market. Trading will never be implemented because the game was not designed with this as a possibility. Crying about something doesn't matter - doing so will just get you filtered through the RH filter before being handed out to the devs. Either you accept the game as it is, or you get out and play something else. Don't bother waiting for an answer if you didn't bother reading the whole thing."

[Lurkios]

Corrected TL;DR - Stop whining on the forums.

/thisthreadagain

 

I feel like you were going for an achievement based on the length there. Did it unlock a costume?

[Thoron]

Not at all. I am not the original poster of this post. I just read it and found it insightful. I wasn't aiming for anything and I even gave 2 warnings about it being very long...

 

@Lurkios ah , im sry i miss read a part of ur post

[Lurkios]

Just now, Thoron said:

Not at all. I am not the original poster of this post. I just read it and found it insightful. I wasn't aiming for anything and I even gave 2 warnings about it being very long...

In order:

 

Didn't say you were.

OK.

I got a swimming achievement for falling off a rock, if there was one for post length I'm sure a re-post would have counted.

[PenguinsFly]

This is one of the reason why the Indie Game Developing community is growing.

 

Triple A companies do not care about anything other than money. 

 

It's disgusting but it should be obvious already that nowadays, most humans are driven by money.

 

Learning game developing myself, I will never step into a Triple A studio unless they have the same mentality as Indie Game Developers.

[Purestic]

Interesting perspective and I know that it's not from you but I still have a question (to everyone), why don't game studios communicate this more openely?

 

For example, if NcWest just said "We're sorry if you dislike the game or many/some features of it, but since this game is already pretty old and we don't have the money to change it like you want, we can't do anything about it. We're trying our best, but X is just not going to work. The reason Y was made like this is Z. If we would change H then J would break since it's a complex system" it would answer many questions and put everything into perspective, reduce frustration and so on.

 

I never really understood why companies don't communicate so much with customers. I think that it's very important and can also be very helpful, but I might be wrong about that financially.

[Thoron]

3 minutes ago, PenguinsFly said:

This is one of the reason why the Indie Game Developing community is growing.

 

Triple A companies do not care about anything other than money. 

 

It's disgusting but it should be obvious already that nowadays, most humans are driven by money.

 

Learning game developing myself, I will never step into a Triple A studio unless they have the same mentality as Indie Game Developers.

I mean judging by the companies today (including NC soft ) I agree , but when it comes to indie you have to be careful too! Remember the Fill phish and the fez 2 drama ?

[Ra9eQuit]

I never understood why the people who complain about the game even complain. Like if you dont like the game then just go away and play something else, what is the point in only complaining, keep playing and complaining even more. Everyone on the *cricket*in internet thinks he would be a special individual, a special snowflake that is like the center of the universe. No one cares about you, face it. You are a no one and your voice aint worth a single care.

I love this post, but it is utterly wasted on these mentally retarded people on this forum. I am mad, but not in a way to spread hostility, but in a way that people who spread hostility arent even aware of what they are doing and what it effects. 90% of the humans on this forum are sub-human trash and I really would love if you just go away from an amazing game like this one. You arent even worth this game. This game is too good that scum like you is allowed to play this.

[Thoron]

7 minutes ago, Purestic said:

Interesting perspective and I know that it's not from you but I still have a question (to everyone), why don't game studios communicate this more openely?

 

For example, if NcWest just said "We're sorry if you dislike the game or many/some features of it, but since this game is already pretty old and we don't have the money to change it like you want, we can't do anything about it. We're trying our best, but X is just not going to work. The reason Y was made like this is Z. If we would change H then J would break since it's a complex system" it would answer many questions and put everything into perspective, reduce frustration and so on.

 

I never really understood why companies don't communicate so much with customers. I think that it's very important and can also be very helpful, but I might be wrong about that financially.

I think it's in the best intrest of share holders and investers. A lot of us playing this game are hopefullthat some issues will change when they very well might not.

 

If they knew things wouldnt get better, it would cause people to leave the game , hence theoretically showing a "weakness" resulting in less investors. Just my 2cents though

[Kure]

Agreeing with Purestic that it would be nice if developers were a bit more open about the way things work in the industry. Most of it is somewhat common sense (companies exist to make money, no one wants to deal directly with caustic forum goers), but better communication between publishers and players seems to be the main problem in most games I've played.

 

Also, I'm very much against complaining that doesn't have some degree of civility, but I can see the reason why people bring their problems with the game to forum instead of flat out leaving. Games grow on you. You see the potential and want to enjoy that particular game. For instance, I very much enjoy the combat in this game, the effort against being p2w, the oriental style, and the lyn race. Their are countless other games out there, but but only this gets closest to that specific combination I'm after. 

[Purestic]

4 minutes ago, Thoron said:

I think it's in the best intrest of share holders and investers. A lot of us playing this game are hopefullthat some issues will change when they very well might not.

 

If they knew things wouldnt get better, it would cause people to leave the game , hence theoretically showing a "weakness" resulting in less investors. Just my 2cents though

Hm, makes sense.

 

I don't blame the players to act like this then, though. If they don't really have the chance to put everything in perspective, of course they're going to be frustrated. Many of the reasons why players are angry are indeed a problem but I doubt that NcWest is capable of changing most of these things. This won't make the players who stick anyway leave, but a toxic community might. So in my point of view, it's either about losing many customers in a short period of time who mostly would've left anyway, or losing some/many of the customers who would've stayed in the long run. + I think that the customers who would've stayed are the ones that are spending money on it - the many customers who are leaving anyway are probably not. I don't know though.

[angelcots]

Nice post. I didn't expect to read the whole thing... but I'm an MBA with a love for how businesses work. I totally agree that this game is a very delicate system and small changes can have devastating effects. I also think it's interesting how games like this figure out how much to charge for additional minor content that makes enough money without taking away from players who are not willing to pay anything. I think BnS is doing a fine job. Sure it isn't perfect... but anyone that wants the game to change too much doesn't appreciate it for what it is and needs to just play something else.