Exactly I agree with you! I do think however that if their marketing team or whoever is responsible for the communication to us had been better and giving us a proper road map a lot of people would feel much better and on that part I agree.
However people need to stop attacking the developers because most of the time don’t have any say on this matter and they work constantly to fix the game and most of the times doesn’t get the respect they deserve. In particular a game like AoE4, the launch was super smooth and no crashes and even in the closed beta you could feel this, at least for me.
We cannot forget all the positive things when talking about things that needs fixing because then we make it sound like it’s a total disaster which it’s not, far from it.
It’s important to be critical about things that needs improvement but at the same time doing it in a professional manner without accusations and calling them lazy, unprofessional or idiots. I’ve seen quite a few unnecessary words describing the developers which saddens me to see that some of us take it that far for a game.
People need to understand that “developers” is often used colloquially to refer to whoever is responsible for the issue, it’s a mistake to point at the people who are lowest on the pyramid and assume that we are “attacking” them specifically.
Yes, “developers” is a collective term for the people who develop the software, it doesn’t mean just programmers. I don’t see how anyone can know specific reasons for the slow progress, so calling people lazy or unprofessional isn’t fair. Sometimes issues can be caused by decisions made years ago that set things off in a particular direction that is then hard to change, and the person who made the bad decision can have long since left the company.
Just to give some perspective:
The reception of the buggy EU4: Leviathan release was so poor that Paradox shifted team assignments so more people could focus on it.
When Managers have enough braincells and know their teams they might get the idea to assign more manpower to current issues; when everyone happily assures that there is no problem, there will be no action from the higher ups.
I working in the IT directed all customer complains during the corona outbreak directly to my higher ups, displaying that we need more manpower here. Without it, my managers would never have shifted priorities.
I mean, I don’t think anybody either believes this is currently happening, or is asking for this to happen.
There’s plenty of constructive criticism on here. It’s a shame some (not directed at anyone I’m replying to at the moment) insist on ruining it because they’d rather throw something low effort, or outright offensive, on the pile.
If that’s what it means “colloquially”, then the meaning is wrong. I’d disagree with it anyway because the Internet is not a homogenous “everyday” happenstance. Every community has its own nuances and history, in-jokes, (group) ideolect, etc. What might be colloquial to you, is very possibly not for the next person you meet online.
Besides, what’s wrong with being more specific? Who does it hurt, if you’re asked to be more accurate when you refer to “developers”? Would you approve of similarly-generalised “colloquialisms” of “gamers”? I’m going to make an assumption and presume you wouldn’t.
Sincere critics already dislike being lumped in with bad faith critics, yet you’re doing - and defending - the equivalent here (just directed at video game industry workers instead). No?
Nothing is wrong, but it leads to the same pointless rabbit hole that will end with you saying “you don’t know who is responsible and I don’t either” and around around you will keep on going.
The point is that 99 out of 100 people who use the term “developers” when they direct their ire at the current state of the game will gladly redirect it at whoever is more specifically responsible when presented with the evidence (in any gaming community), but that evidence will never be available publicly, so you will continue to pretend it must by directed at the most unfortunate and least responsible people since it suits you best.
Alright people no more waste of time on this. We have our new code of conduct regarding criticism:
You need to first praise the positives about this game with at least equal amount of text
You need to have masteries on the game engine and also know everything about the structure, organization and inner working of the developers, and the product managers, and the investors, and the shareholders, and William Henry G*tes III
You need to precisely identify who are responsible for the problems you are listing
I can only speak for myself: I try to sound as constructive as possbile while also expressing my frustration/disappointment about certain things.
In other cases like the mongol TC rush “fix” I will call out attempts to solve balance issues by inserting arbitrary restrictions as lazy and unprofessional, because from my perspective it really is. I know it may insult the balance team’s work, but when I am not noticing that I am doing a suboptimal fix at work, I also want to be called out to improve myself.
99 out of 100 people won’t, no. That’s a made-up figure that suits you best. But seen as you evidently know better yourself, to the extent that you accept the inaccuracy of the term, I’m quite on point by criticising your active choice to continue using it.
If someone doesn’t know better, maybe they’ll accept clarification, maybe they won’t. If someone knows better and is intentionally vague, but also refuses to accept that people are going to call out that vagueness, that’s a whole other thing entirely.
It’s the same song and dance I’ve seen for years online. Some things are simply unknown. If you can’t accept that, and insist on calling it a “pointless rabbit hole”, I can’t stop you. But “nobody knows” is a valid answer, as much as you want to pretend there has to be an answer, to the extent that you have to make one up.
Yeah, I do wonder how it would’ve been received had it simply managed to be released earlier (however possible or not). Some people are guessing, but I do wonder, if there is a more comprehensive fix (for the TC issue) on the way.
But your entire argument is that they don’t know any better and that neither do you, and it’s all speculation, so the less specific term of “developer” is the most appropriate one. Find me a single person here you have been arguing with who will not agree with my assessment that their use of “developer” is a catch-all for whoever it is on the (development) team that is responsible for the issues? Find me a single person here who would insist it certainly must be the overworked and underpaid coders who are responsible and that when he uses “developer” he refers specifically and exclusively to them, until you can find this person you are simply arguing against straw men.
An answer to what question? None of the criticism levelled at the product can be waved away by explaining that nobody knows who is the most directly responsible for the issues, neither should anyone with criticism be concerned with who is most directly responsible (especially considering it’s the best interest of the developers to make sure it’s impossible for them to know who is most directly responsible), all they should be doing is voice their concerns, the people with the actual information can then choose what to do with the criticism, if anything.
This describes it perfectly. Always down some rabbit hole that inevitably leads to a dead end. Never discussing the issue, always some strawman. I guess that is your own form of colloquially discussing things around here @GorbMort : avoiding the issue and just dancing around the fire. If that is what you have been doing for years around the forums, I understand how outlandish actual invested and pissed fans must seem to you.
Again in all this babbling in this thread: Not one word about the actual patch and it’s relation to the freakin’ game. All just relativisation after relativisation. Constantly undermining every angle anyone brings up, without having your own standpoint on the actual matter. It’s actually interesting to read just for that. Maybe I can learn a thing or two if I ever want to go into politics and sh** on people discreetly.
Easier to imagine than people in this community admitting their opinions aren’t facts.
Other than the performance issues when scrolling I haven’t had any problems playing the game the ways I’ve wanted to play.
It must suck to not be able to but I’m glad that I don’t have to wait forever to play the game because a subsection of the community isn’t happy with it.
Imagine I bought a keyboard from an online store. It took more days than expected to ship, with no tracking information.
— when I complained about it, someone who is not from the store jumped out and taught me “it’s probably something wrong with the tracking system or the local traffic. But I do not know either.”
When it finally got shipped, I found some of the keys do not work properly. So I tried to file a complaint.
—the that someone jumped out again and taught me “it’s probably some quality control problems with a manufactory in Asia or wherever. But I do not know either. BTW it’s fine since I do not use that key often anyway.”
Then I called the customer service, either with nobody responding, or a machine voice saying “thanks for calling. We’ll call you back later.”
— then that someone said “it’s probably because it is close to thanksgiving and they have a lot of customer calls. But I do not know either.”
Then after two weeks they called me back with very brief information about returning and repairing. And it took another week for them to send it back with one of the keys fixed while the others still not working, with a note saying “we are aware of the problem and we will fix it next month.”
—then that someone told me “maybe they have to prioritize more critical issues so you should understand that. But I do not know either. Oh BTW it’s fine because I do not use that key very often myself.”
Meanwhile when I had similar problems with my mouse from some other store, it got fixed very quickly. So I wrote a review “the service of that store is bad.”
—then that someone jumped out again lecturing “No first of all you should understand the difference between a mouse and a keyboard. The salespeople and workers and cleaners at their office are all hard at work. It is unfair to call them bad service. You should understand large companies like this have many departments in charge of different things. They just have no time to coordinate and fix your problem. And you know nothing about business or the electronics industry. But I don’t known either. It is very intricate and may give rise to newer problems. But I don’t know that either. So you should not call it a bad service. Have more patience.”
Nice.
It’s the privilege of the games industry that people don’t see it like just any other product (yet). Part of the problem is that I cannot just go get AOE from a different store x]
“gO plAy TOtAl wAR tHen!!!11”… Who let you out of your cage!?
