Can i at least post my thoughts on this since it's actually part of my post that got this ball rolling? yes? ok then.
Part of my original comment was mainly directed at the many, many people who will sit there, cross their arms and wonder "omg, why steam has so many negative reviews, why is it that people are the mad and teh butthurt?"
After posting two replies that summed up how a lot of people felt and explained where a lot of resentment came from someone made a comment about early access done right and people asking too much, which lead me to the reply you see on the steam post before Yoshiro's reply.
Part of what made me make this post lies in two problems im seeing with KF2 at the moment, not so great community interaction and acting like KF2 and it's development exists in vacuum.
For starters many, and i mean many, of the problems that people are bringing up could have be easily avoided if the community was involved from jump. Many of the ideas for micro transactions involved using something similar to the KF 1 store, instead we got the TF2 system down to the letter. I'm not bringing up hyperbole or making grand stand statements, this is exactly what it is to the letter.
Crates, random drops, keys, scrapping items and everything is just the same and since so many of those systems are in place and have good examples i and many others, especially considering how good tripwire is with coming up with concepts have no idea why this apparently needed to be tested since it is literally a page for page copy with very little alteration.
The same problem with with zerk, demo and the now leaked sharp tree, no community input from the look of it only internal ideas, no one else gets to look at it until it's done and changes would be difficult to be made, gets released, 80-90% of the community hates it, now needs a total rework which takes even more time and resources.
This model of development is a problem and needs to stop, it's not sustainable in the long run and having to completely redo something because most people hate it is not sustainable in the long run. There are a lot of post i see that seem to get no real input from devs such as the pretty good sharpshooter tree by Kothre and a lot of other neat ideas in the ideas and suggestion boards. Meanwhile whenever there is a criticism against tripwire or something perceived as an attack not only do the devs take notice but it seems many people who never post on anything else come out of the woodwork as well. Hate to be that guy but that is really how it looks, it looks like many of the ideas don't matter and instead what matters is damage control.
Now explaining the vacuum comment, i mentioned that in the same thread about part of the reason why MTs weren't received well and part of it is the fact that it was released at the same time as Payday 2's ones as well as when the EA lid was getting blown off for bad titles not keeping their promises. Even though both those things were happening at the same time it was released and the amount backlash was not taken into account to the proper degree. Part of this comment also comes down to player reaction and general comments about the development with a general sentiment of ignoring problems instead of accepting them and attempting to amend them which makes me restate this question.
If this was any other developer would you be ok with this?
That is something important to look at, KF2 doesn't exist in a world where this is the only game, there are many games in EA and people are going to compare the two and i think it's a majorly important thing to sit back and consider the outside perspective. Yes, we all know tripwire has a long standing history of good games, RO 1, 2, rising storm, KF1, and we know this history but really ask yourself a few questions and step back from that.
Would it not look sketchy if a EA game released microtransactions when the core content wasn't done considering the history of other EA games and what they have done?
Would you not question where things were going if new things were being released while other things previously released remain broken?
How long is acceptable in your eyes between each update for the average EA game?
How involved should the developer be with the community in relation to other EA titles?
Again, im not saying this to say KF2 is a bad game but it's a serious question to ask and i feel one that should be considered. Do you pass KF2 and tripwire on many things that you would bash another EA developer for?
I didn't make that post or make this post because i want to rant about the game, say i hate everything about it, turn people against the devs or make people upset, it's because im honestly concerned. I don't see where the path is going and it's going further and further away from the set goals and my travel partner, in this case tripwire, seems to be getting more and more quiet as the path becomes less defined. I love a lot of things about KF2 and want it to do well, i want it to thrive and a lot of other people, even those who can't word their responses as well, want it to do well as well because we are all in this boat together.
Trust me, if I or others really didn't care then we would just stop posting and write it off as another failure, trust me, not the first game i would have done it with and probably wouldn't have been the last. The thing is i made that post because i don't want it to get to that point and i don't want people to look at the steam community as just whiners and shun them until they eventually go away. I don't want KF2 to be one of those grand projects that eventually fails or stagnates that people look back on and go "hey, remember when we used to care about that game? Shame that everyone gave up on it"