This post is not about a guitar hero song, or the band Dragonforce, but the title does a great job of describing what it feels like to try to communicate with people on public forums about EQ2 issues.
Just so you understand where I'm coming from, I wanted to point out this post on our official forums.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=407979#4560059
I occasionally pop onto our forums when I'm compiling code or taking a quick break and check out the recent topics to see what people are discussing. If someone asks a question and I can answer it, I try to be as helpful as possible. Today, a friend of mine points out this response to a thread I participated in and it really made me angry.
First off its interesting how the flame turns into an issue about not prioritizing my work and doing my job when they don't even look at the date of my post to see that I responded at 5am on Sunday morning.
Secondly, people always assume that if you work at SOE, you have the authority to post on any topic you want. Like any other company out there in the world, we have specific jobs at SOE. Some of us are coders, some of us are game designers that populate the world, make quests, make spells or balance classes. Out of respect for our fellow employees, we only try to respond to topics related to what we're working on. The designers really wouldn't appreciate it if I started promising things that weren't part of my job. This doesn't mean that I don't care about the issues, its just not my place to respond to it.
I'd really love to post my opinions on class balance because I do think we have room for improvement, but the public forums are not a place for me to post my opinions.
On one hand, people complain that developers don't participate enough in the threads, but then they get flamed when they do. We're only human, I'm not sure what people really expect from us.
There are a lot of SOE haters out there, and it really kind of gets me down. I have been a huge fan of EQ1 and EQ2 since they were first released. I've only been an SOE employee for about 18 months now and really love my job. I started work here with tons of enthusiasm and a true desire to make the game better for everyone. I still play EQ2 almost every night and raid at least 14 hours a week. So when someone posts comments to the effect that devs don't care, it angers me because it couldn't be further from the truth.
I suppose as long as our game is played by so many different people, there will always be 'those' type of people out there. I just do my best to ignore them and move on. Their negativity will not affect my enthusiasm or discourage me from interacting with the community.
4 comments:
Good way to put it. It really kind of sums it up for all of us.
Greg, I feel your pain and you're absolutely right, but I'm afraid there's no getting away from it. That guy in particular was quite clueless and clearly doesn't understand how a game like EQ2 comes to be.
The whole "I'm a software developer (therefore I know that this guy is slacking off)" bit is completely absurd AND obtuse. I'm sorry, but if you've been in one dev job, you haven't seen them all. That's like saying a pastry chef at a small bakery could walk into a executive chef position at a fine italian restaurant because "come on, they're essentially the same thing". LOL! =)
This guy was just way out of line. Just try not to let it discourage you. Need a flameproof shield on those boards. =)
Cheers,
Nick
(( dont let it get ya down! We love you 8-) (the sane, normal people I mean)))
*ogre-hugs*
I think it's lucky for me that the game I worked on didn't have as big a following and didn't have online forums.
On the other hand, after years of reading these things, I've come to realize that the "hate" is essentially bullying; it's dominance behavior translated into a place where it really doesn't do much or mean much. Maybe it impresses a few other people on the way.
I've said so before, I'm impressed at the amount of stuff you guys get out to us.
Post a Comment