Point well taken. As in all cases, the outcome will be determined by skill of management and the satisfaction of the client. Maybe I'm just more pleased than most.
Thead about development time
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Point well taken. As in all cases, the outcome will be determined by skill of management and the satisfaction of the client. Maybe I'm just more pleased than most.
So very true, it's the reason I don't fault TWI for not making the game I wished it was and wouldn't throw a hissy fit if it slid into more CODness. The market of guys like me and others here is small, very small. It's not the place to hang your hat if you need to pay salary, overhead and compete with the big guys for your next meal.
If they are placing their focus on RO3, whatever that might be, I'd love it if they stated that and then loosened the reins on RO2/RS and handed it off to the modders. Then maybe I'll finally get the game I wanted from the beginning.
I just don't think people should ever intentionally produce "heat"
Personally, it's against my whole belief system to ever produce "heat" :/
Great counter argument.
Too vague? It shows the total amount of players on at one time of the game while it is in the top 100 of the Steam played games.
That's what we're talking about..... Total amount of players at one time.
I don't hold to SteamGraph as being biblical on everything, but it does the job that is required in this discussion.
You're actually trying to tell me that the linked graph doesn't show the minimum players at any given time and only counts weekends?
If that's what you're trying to imply, then how come you can adjust the graph to show All Time, Past Month, Past Week and Past Day?
If that were true, today being a Tuesday here in Australia, the graph would either show up as Zero or the same amount as what was shown before Sunday ended.
So ok, I'll entertain your little guess and provide this as well:
http://steamcharts.com/app/35450
I'm at least showing some sort of source/reference to my claims, you're just tossing out baseless numbers and I'd sure like to see whatever you have to prove your case on the minimum numbers.
Regardless, it still doesn't change the fact that the average amount of players for RO2/RS has not changed since RS's release.
But believe what you want to believe.
If you want to go on about minimum players per day, then the above link shows that in the last hour, the minimum amount of players is only 784.... so even if your estimate of 600-800 players was true, then you're just confirming exactly what I was saying.
You talk about how there were so few players for RO2 prior to RS's launch unless there was a sale or special or an update and then the player counts would go up, but then go right back down again..... which is exactly what I have been saying this whole time. But you're ignoring the fact that RS ended up doing the exact same thing. Player counts went up but are right back to where they were beforehand.
Which means absolutely nothing..... the players could have been spread out through a number of servers with a number of settings they preferred. Now that RS has been launched, the amount of servers that suit their tastes would have diminished where certain servers now run only RO2 or only RS or a combination and therefore, those players could have hypothetically just been forced to concentrate to a smaller amount of servers that suit their tastes.
The reasons could be anything, but your above claim of more full servers now doesn't prove or disprove anything other than a shuffle in players to certain servers.
Well I have to keep explaining myself to you, so you can do the same for me
You feel the merge was a good thing.... I don't.
One of the other reasons why I don't think it was good, which I haven't even mentioned yet, was that there are still people to this very day who have no idea what they should do when purchasing the game.
Do they purchase RO2 and get RS or do they purchase RS and get all of RO2?
Nope, it's not that simple. You have to explain to them that purchasing RO2 only gets you the demo of RS while you get the RO2 SP Campaign, while purchasing RS gets you the RO2 MP but not the RO2 SP Campaign. And while some will say just get RS and forget about the RO2 SP Campaign, There are still players who want to play it and/or get the full experience of the game, so then they're forced to first buy RO2 and then buy RS, which ends up costing even more money, despite the discount existing RO2 owners get, which last I checked, was removed after the Steam Holiday sale, thus no discount anymore.
They couldn't have made the process anymore convoluted than it currently is.
And you constantly have people coming into the Steam Discussions asking why they didn't get the RO2 SP and wondering where the SP of the game is..... or you have others complaining that they bought the game but only have the demo of RS and complain that they've been ripped off.
What's worse is that if someone bought RS, there's no way to get the RO2 SP..... Case in point, these are within the last 24 hours:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/35450/discussions/0/540734423946736753/
and
http://steamcommunity.com/app/35450/discussions/0/540734424024348726/
Then players like myself or Moskeeto have to try and explain it to them over and over again..... I've pretty much grown tired of repeating myself to them and trying to help them out.
My only point is that all of these variables have not made it easy for new players and has turned off a number of players over a long list of reasons.
Why you want to keep going off on other tangents is beyond me. You keep taking what I was originally saying way out of context and creating arguments where none really existed.
But if you want to play that game, I can too, as I just did.
I'm not butthurt over anything, nor am I raging over anything. It's a game.
I merely expressed my position and my understanding of the position of other players. I don't buy into the "RS is more content for RO2" and I don't buy into the notion that RS somehow brought piles of more players into the game than what was originally in the community before it was launched.
You can go on and on with your baseless claims with no sources or statistics backing you up all you want, but you're not going to convince me or others with baseless claims, not are you going to magically change my position.
I think one of the biggest factors in this dialogue is that many simply cannot wrap their heads around a business model to any functional extent. I spent 37 years in Telecommunications working for fortune 500 companies. It was a brutally competitive industry, but compared to the structure and cash flow of a small entertainment studio, the Telecoms had it easy.
I don't expect TWI to open their books, but I'll tell you this. There isn't a person here that wouldn't be considerably sobered if they could go over in detail the quarterly financial spreadsheet of a company like TWI. Income, net income, obligations and overhead, salary, that must be satisfied before one dime goes into profit. I'll bet you whole quarters have gone by flat.
The business model of a company with this small of a footprint in an industry is BRUTAL. A company with a larger financial "critical mass" probably wouldn't bother with this kind of detail. Which is again why you get "fire and forget" games with a finite shelf life. RO2's very existence is a labor of passion, and a lot of personal sweat investment. I don't have to know the details to sense the tension.
I know people are going to dismiss my remarks as those of blind support. But I have a pretty good understanding of business logistics, if not the product.
Just because many of us have spent years playing games and watching companies and products go and come doesn't begin to reveal to us the backside of what running something like this is like.
I'm not suggesting criticism isn't healthy or needed. But if you like the product at all, be glad for it, and enjoy it. I suspect the glue holding it to the wall is a lot thinner than most of us would think.
Listen up everybody. The dude that has worked 37 years for Fortune 500 Telecom companies is telling y'all how it's done. Pay attention, cause you can all learn about real life right here in the RO 2 forums.
Man, you aren't the only person that is working. In fact, your little brownie nose comment just shows that you don't understand how hurting TWI's politics are for the company's future. If you are trying to make yourself a name in an industry that is highly competitive while you are in the challenger position, you better deliver above expectations in order to make yourself a name. ESPECIALLY when you were not shy at promising your 1st class delivery of a 1st class product to challenge the big players. You know, who tries to jump high, can fall deep.
Just another guy that has worked in smaller companies, in similar situations as TWI was in when entering/making a living in a market. Also, a guy that is currently working for a global operating company that is Top 20 in Germany. And last but not least, a guy that is not on TWI's payroll/list of benefitors wearing pink glasses like you, Mr. Sajer.
So like I already said earlier in this topic from a bizniz point of view. Its not logical for a small company like them to invest to much in a 2.5 years old game with 1000 players. It will take alot of resources which they better use in a new game or KF2. But what do I know I only worked for companies stupid enough to hire me.
And RO2's very existence today is mainly a labor of passion from that tiny group of community mappers,coders and modellers. Some of them lost their passion early others where stubborn and woke up later.
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Ok it's clear you don't understand how statistics work, I've explained in my post why your 'same number of people' is wrong and that you can't use a bracket which doesn't include all flesh and blood individuals, but you still stick to your flawed graph which shows nothing except peaks which doesn't show the increase or the overall player base which would be in the tens of thousands of people. The absurdity of thinking that a peak of 2000 people represents the entire player base means you also think each player spends nearly the entire day playing the game. In non-lala land each player on average most likely spends 30 minutes to an hour which explains the low peaks to player base ratio. I don't know why this is such a hard concept for you to grasp. This is also consistent with my argument that the game fails to hold players attentions for long.
No one cares if you don't like Rising Storm (RO2 in the pacific theatre), fact is to anyone who was actually playing RO2 a year or two ago can now see more full servers, isn't forced to buy Rising Storm to play with friends, a mapper can make maps for either theatre without having to favour either one likewise TWI can make more expansions without having to favour and segregate. It was obviously the best decision available. If you had your way RO2 would be in the corner somewhere rotting and you'd still be complaining.
I speak from experience, I was playing this game when there would be only 1 full 64 player server(the counter and steam graph say 600 players even with only 1 full server, not reliable), rest were bots or low player count. I thought it was going the same route as RO1, this changed slightly after the classic patch and slowly got better due to steam sales and contest maps, but still only a few full servers until RS and now it's managed to maintain a lot of full servers 24/7. Now I can open the game and there will always be many full servers no matter the time of day, unlike the situation in RO2. To deny an increase in full servers after Rising Storm is silly.
Some topics which back up what I'm saying since you don't remember:
1 2 3
5 4
(again, all these real players talking about 1-2 full servers, and at the same time when you look on Steam graph (2012-2014) you see constant 600-800 players which shows something off with the counter)
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And last but not least, a guy that is not on TWI's payroll/list of benefitors wearing pink glasses like you, Mr. Sajer.
I think you misunderstand the fundamentals of my position. It hardly suggests I'm wearing rose colored glasses. My point was that a company like TWI's position is always precarious. Which means that every step of product development has to be clearly thought out before limited resources are committed. If I was a blind optimist, I'd be suggesting they'd be around to duke it out in the industry forever. But I'm not. I'm trying to explain in a reasonable fashion why their product development may be at a slower pace than some are comfortable with. It's not that complicated.
Now you can call me a brown-nose, and that's fine. Guilty as charged. But the playing field and the company's environment is what it is.
I think you misunderstand the fundamentals of my position. It hardly suggests I'm wearing rose colored glasses. My point was that a company like TWI's position is always precarious. Which means that every step of product development has to be clearly thought out before limited resources are committed. If I was a blind optimist, I'd be suggesting they'd be around to duke it out in the industry forever. But I'm not. I'm trying to explain in a reasonable fashion why their product development may be at a slower pace than some are comfortable with. It's not that complicated.
Now you can call me a brown-nose, and that's fine. Guilty as charged. But the playing field and the company's environment is what it is.
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Yeah yeah, go on about how I know nothing, ignoring any of the sources I provided while you still provide absolutely nothing to back up your own baseless claims with numbers you hauled out of your arse.
Blah blah.... you speak from experience because you've played the game for a while way back when there was a couple of moments where there weren't full servers all the time..... so says you.
And I've been playing since the first day early beta access was available and not just speaking from my own personal experience, but from other factual sources.
See how easy one can do that?
I was always talking about player peaks, which you decided to attack, then when I provided sources for my claims, you moved your goal posts and started prancing on about minimum player counts while still providing nothing to back up your baseless claims..... even when asked.
You're more of a waste of time than swatting a fly mid-air with a single chop stick.
What I hate is the on-going theme that "They should be ready for the hate"
basicly what Kowalczyk said (no offense to you specifically, you put it nicer than most tend to)
I mean, it's true that they should be expecting hate since, after all, this is Earth, but I can't see why we, fully aware of this, should make efforts to apply this hatred.I guess what I mean is: do we do bad things and say "It's just what people do :0" Do we just do what we feel like people are supposed to do, or can we actually make choices for ourselves? I personally believe that we have a degree of free will.
And of course I'm not saying we can't disagree with TW. And there are certainly issues.
Of course the brown nose thing will always come up, and that's just a case of your average internet coolguy logical fallacy.
Oops didn't see that last post there. . .
basicly what Kowalczyk said (no offense to you specifically, you put it nicer than most tend to)
I mean, it's true that they should be expecting hate since, after all, this is Earth, but I can't see why we, fully aware of this, should make efforts to apply this hatred.I guess what I mean is: do we do bad things and say "It's just what people do :0" Do we just do what we feel like people are supposed to do, or can we actually make choices for ourselves? I personally believe that we have a degree of free will.
And of course I'm not saying we can't disagree with TW. And there are certainly issues.
Of course the brown nose thing will always come up, and that's just a case of your average internet coolguy logical fallacy.
Oops didn't see that last post there. . .
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And last but not least, a guy that is not on TWI's payroll/list of benefitors wearing pink glasses like you, Mr. Sajer.
I think you misunderstand the fundamentals of my position. It hardly suggests I'm wearing rose colored glasses. My point was that a company like TWI's position is always precarious. Which means that every step of product development has to be clearly thought out before limited resources are committed. If I was a blind optimist, I'd be suggesting they'd be around to duke it out in the industry forever. But I'm not. I'm trying to explain in a reasonable fashion why their product development may be at a slower pace than some are comfortable with. It's not that complicated.
Now you can call me a brown-nose, and that's fine. Guilty as charged. But the playing field and the company's environment is what it is.
Which is all completely understandable, but if they stuck to more simple solutions and work that the community originally expected, the player base and popularity of the game would have not been impacted as much.
More things could have easily been turned around into the game sooner to negate the problem of months between anything coming into the game and players losing interest in the already limited content the game had to offer.
They decided to go off into some very strange directions that didn't produce very effective results, which further delayed the things most of their "Customers" were expecting from their product.
I'm not, or never have, said anything towards "They promised this, they promised that", but regardless of whether or not you tell your customers that you are "planing" to work on this or "working" on having something new into the game, whether you promised it or not doesn't matter.... You mentioned it and provided a number of details about it..... your customers will grow to expect it to come eventually.
Is that the fault of the customers?
Not really, the company is getting their hopes up and then quietly lets them down. Getting their hopes up by even mentioning something like light tanks, transports, Co-Op Campaign, etc. It also doesn't help that you originally release official advertisement and information of what your product will contain and then remove those things at the last minute.
When you tell your customers one thing and then suddenly switch gears to work on something completely different (Classic / Action Mode & RS), you're jerking your customer's expectations around and it wears them out.
To be perfectly blunt, it eventually gets to the point where most of your customers just don't give a sh*t what you say, plan or do anymore because they can't rely on what you say..... and again, it doesn't matter if you promised something or just mentioned that you're thinking/planning something.
And to roll back a bit to the comments some have made like:
"Be grateful that TW works so much on the game"
"Most other Devs wouldn't put this much effort into the game"
"You already got your money's worth out of the game"
"TW doesn't have to do anything more with the game"
The problem is that they put themselves into this position, not the players. You don't say you're going to do something or are currently working on something..... unless you're actually going to DO IT.
The players didn't originally demand that the devs put all this work into the game and to add transports, co-op mode, MP Campaign, more vehicles & to continue to support their own game for years on end, etc..... they themselves set the bar for all of this. They originally threw all of this out there. They made gameplay videos, demos, reviews, interviews, screenshots, forum posts, etc.... all bragging and going on about all of these things.
In turn, the community began to expect these things due to saturation and hype. There were constant threads and posts over the T-70 and PzIII from much of the community right up until the announcement that TW was going to move full ahead with RS and the Community actually had to request clarification on those tanks they talked about before TW actually confirmed that they were now put on the backburner.
Since then.... still no talk of them.
Shortly after RO2's launch the devs mentioned that they had a half-track being worked on and yet the community made HT's are the ones coming into the game.
Whether they promised them or not doesn't matter, it affects the community in much the same way.
All of this affects the community and the company's overall image by the community and potential buyers.
This business is not some telecommunications business where you're just an IT guy or answering phones and taking orders where the customer only really cares that your service works for the value they pay for.
If the devs said "This is the game as we intended it to be, this is what will be in it, this is what won't be, we will be making some bug patches and performance fixes in 2-4 updates and that's it. The rest will be up to the community to do." ~ That would be one thing. People would accept it, either right away or eventually. But they didn't do this and their attempts to do most of what they said is severely lacking in most of the eyes of those they said these things to.
People can hate me for my position or for saying what I am saying, I don't honestly care.... I was never in here to make "Friends" in the first place. I'm just telling it as I see it personally without pulling any punches, which I feel is sometimes needed to be done.
Whether or not some agree with any of the above or feel none of it is "Factual" or "Justified" or there are Justified Excuses for many of the above reasons.... once again, that doesn't matter. I'm expressing the views that many players have/had whom either no longer play or hardly play at all. Whether they are wrong in their views is irrelevant, the bottom line is that it impacts TW in the end and affects their future sales. Telling these people they're wrong and trying to defend everything under the sun that TW has done isn't going to magically make these people think differently.
In my business, we can do everything we thought was right, we attempted to do everything that our customer wanted, and when they are not satisfied with the end result, we can try and meet them halfway and help them out as much as we can (even if the problem is their own fault and we did everything right), if they're totally p*ssed off, think everything is our fault and nothing we do can end up pleasing them, that's just what you have to deal with. Telling them they're ignorant idiots who don't know what they're talking about and their views are unjustified won't change their minds and only ends up making the situation even worse.
It might feel good to let them know what you think about them and tossing all the blame on them, even when clearly justified, but as a professional business, you simply don't do that because you no longer look professional, you won't win that client over anyways and you put off many other potential customers.
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God can we close this thread already?
Everything that could possibly be said has been said, now it's just personal attacks which is not good for the community. No one will change their minds about this.
Everything that could possibly be said has been said, now it's just personal attacks which is not good for the community. No one will change their minds about this.
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