RS_117 announces the mod is coming Monday.
Tag: Community
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Community Concerns: The Importance of Reading Comprehension
Yea, we’re still talking about Blizzcon.
It’s been a while since I talked about the whole nontroversy surrounding Blizzard and the prize pool for World of Warcraft’s Blizzcon tournaments, so I will sum up for those who don’t feel like clicking the link in this paragraph. Blizzard sold digital toys with 25% proceeds going toward a prize pool with a guaranteed minimum of $500k, and some people interpreted this as Blizzard footing $500k and then the toy sale portion being on top of that. In fact, a lot of people with direct financial incentives to the prize pool being bigger happened to think that. Crazy.
One of those people is Shanna Roberts, general manager of the esports team Method. Roberts released a statement yesterday (November 10) to talk about a breakdown in trust between Blizzard and the community because a number of people didn’t correctly read the plain English of the promotion. Roberts claims that Blizzard announced that the $500k minimum would be supplemented by 25% sales from the toys (they didn’t). I’ll put up the plain language of the promotion for your perusal:
“For a limited time, every purchase of the Transmorpher Beacon or Lion’s Pride and Horde’s Might Fireworks, 25% of the proceeds will contribute toward the year’s finals LAN event prize pool for the Arena World Championship (AWC) and the Mythic Dungeon International (MDI) with a guaranteed minimum prize pool of $500,000 USD ($250,000 USD for each event.) Your support will help take the WoW esports prize pool to the next level.”
25% of proceeds contributed toward the year’s finals with a guaranteed minimum of $500k. The misinterpretation is then followed up by conspiracy-level speculation that Blizzard deliberately backtracked on something they never said they would do to ensure that Warcraft’s prize pool wasn’t bigger than any of the other big tournaments which has no logical conclusion and would have absolutely no benefit for Blizzard.
“It is my personal hypothesis that this is exactly what caused the backtracking: Blizzard couldn’t allow AWC or MDI to have bigger individual prize pools than Hearthstone Grandmasters, OW World Cup, or SC2.”
Roberts goes on to complain about how the practice facility was only open for one day and didn’t provide adequate snacks or comfortable chairs, and how the opening rounds were held offline thus preventing players from using the streams to make money because it turns out being a WoW pro player doesn’t pay like a full time job. Who would have thought?
I’m not going to fault Shanna Roberts for doing her job which is to get her team more money.
If she had hired MMO Fallout’s Master Gaming Consultancy since I read the announcement when it came out and could have fully explained it to her and any other esports folks who were confused, this matter might have been resolved pretty quickly and we wouldn’t be here today. I have eleven years experience writing about video games and my flat fee is two grand per month which is frankly a deal since I’m not going to torpedo your business like what happened with that Sunset game.
Otherwise I think I’m done talking about Blizzcon 2019.
Community Concerns: Sorry Fallout 76 Players, You’re On Your Own
I hit the breaking point with Bethesda and Fallout 76 so long ago that I couldn’t honestly tell you when I got sick and tired of hearing about this game. In fact, it’s hard to believe that Fallout 76 just hit its one year anniversary. It feels like this game has been a living parasite for roughly a third of my life. I don’t know how many times the public can say “Bethesda can’t get any more incompetent,” only for Bethesda to turn around and indignantly reply:
History should look upon this past week, that of October 20, 2019, the year of our Lord, as when Bethesda threw off the veil and admitted to the world that it just doesn’t care about its reputation, its integrity, or about the quality of its games. Bethesda is going to Bethesda, and Bethesda knows that when Bethesda launches a game, that its legion of sycophant fanboys are going to give them lods of emone. They don’t need to care about quality because their customers don’t expect quality.
Rewind the clock a bit and you have Bethesda admitting to what everyone already knew: That Pete Hines is a Peter Molyneux-tier liar and Bethesda had no intention of keeping to its promise that the atom shop would be cosmetic only. That much was obvious once they started adding in repair kits, but admitting that it has a problem is the first step in Bethesda’s ultimate corporate suicide.
But before I get into the latest heaping pile of trash that Bethesda has served as chicken kiev, I have to ask a simple question: Did anyone expect Fallout 1st to not be a bug-riddled dumpster fire? Anyone? Really? After all this time?
Fallout 1st is a subscription program for Fallout 76, a premium-priced substandard service to complement a substandard game. It’s like paying $13 for a cup of Nescafe instant coffee to complement your entree of a steel-toed boot to the crotch. Fallout 1st had already raised criticism over its blatant pay to win elements; an unlimited scrap stash, placeable fast travel camp, and being forced to pay monthly for non-permanent private servers. Oh and in case you missed the implication, modding is going to be tied behind a paywall if that ever comes to Fallout 76.
But not to worry, because if you thought Bethesda was going to let players pay a premium and reward them you are sorely mistaken. This is Fallout 76, a game that punishes you for showing faith in its improvement.
Keeping in line with Bethesda’s quality standards, Fallout 1st has launched as an absolute wreck. Those private servers you’re paying a premium for? They aren’t private. Players are logging into the worlds only to find themselves in recycled servers that other players have already gone through, complete with dead NPCs and looted zones. Unlimited scrap stash sound too much like pay to win? Bethesda is on it, since a major bug is causing scrap stashes to be completely and irreversibly wiped. Second portable fast travel point sound too powerful? Well you’ll be glad to hear that people are experiencing crashes to desktop when placing them. Evidently Bethesda is utilizing the Rian Johnson approach to subverting expectations.
And all for the low, low price of $99 annually.
I don’t know what to say anymore, folks. There are people who are still playing Fallout 76 and for some reason enjoying it (and more power to them if they are), but the players outraged over the quality of this launch have nothing to complain about. Bethesda threw your asses overboard before this game even launched, and for some reason you keep paying for another ticket to get back on the boat. You keep going back to Big Louie’s House of Turds and then complaining when the poopoo platter you ordered is covered in crap. You know, the same as it was the last time you came to this obviously named restaurant and pre-paid for the same damn order. Someone is smoking meth in this transaction and I’m pretty sure it’s not me.
Fallout 1st is a con, Pete Hines is a compulsive liar, and Bethesda is a racket squeezing whatever it can out of Fallout 76 players. MMO Fallout’s thoughts and prayers go out to those who bought the annual pass for Fallout 1st which will undoubtedly see some major price reduction as another gigantic middle finger to the community. I also have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, you gullible peons.
Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.
Diablo Backlash Isn’t Entitlement, It’s Passion Says Blizzard
The internet has had a few days to cool down from the announcement of Diablo Immortal, the mobile game announced and BlizzCon and rather negatively received by Blizzard’s community within and without the convention center. But while certain parties may be eager to paint the negative reaction as entitlement from spoiled gamers, Blizzard isn’t one of them.
In an interview with Kotaku, co-founder Allen Adham admitted that Blizzard expected a negative reaction to the mobile Diablo game, but perhaps not as vocal as the one following their announcement last week. Adham refused to call the reaction entitlement, instead noting the community’s passion.
“They love what they love and want what they want,” he said of the fans raging at BlizzCon and across the internet. “That passion, it’s actually what drives us, and we feel it too. It’s why we make games and why we’ve made games for almost three decades now—and why our community is so passionate about our franchises. I understand their feeling and wish we could share more about all the amazing things we’re doing, not just with the Diablo franchise but across the company as a whole.”
Diablo 3 recently launched on the Switch and while Diablo 4 is still on the horizon, the game is an inevitability.
(Source: Kotaku)
[Community] Live Events? In My Single Player Games?
How do you feel about live events in single player games? I’m genuinely curious because I’m not quite sure how I feel about it myself.
I’ve been playing a lot of Far Cry 5 and Assassin’s Creed Origins lately, and both games employ a growing trend in Ubisoft titles. I am of course referring to live events in a single player game, of which I have had mostly positive reactions to.
It is my opinion that live events should be something that the developer runs at the start both to bring in new players and to keep your current base playing in the long term. For Far Cry 5 this works to both bases, since Far Cry doesn’t have a traditional RPG system so you can pretty much go anywhere and do anything from the start. The rewards are so far things that the average player wouldn’t miss if they didn’t own the game at the time, and Ubisoft may or may not rotate them back in at a later date.
Assassin’s Creed Origins on the other hand is going to demand that you be around level 40 or above in order to complete its live event quests, making it more of a late to end game activity. Thankfully leveling isn’t going to take a massive amount of time, and the events are confirmed to rotate so you’re never going to miss out on cosmetics because you didn’t buy the game fast enough, nor should you feel that the game is demanding you no-life your way to level 40 as fast as possible.
How do you feel about live events in single player games?
[Community] The Sense of Accomplishment, or Buy Our Freakin Lockboxes
Electronic Arts may have won the award for most disliked and tone deaf comment on Reddit in the history of the platform. Those of you who follow Battlefront II are likely aware of the criticisms that the game has received in regards to its progression system, namely complaints that it shamelessly gates power behind random loot box drops that are also available for real money. The comment popped up in a thread titled “Seriously? I paid 80$ to have Vader locked?” The post took umbrage with the fact that Darth Vader, an iconic Battlefront character, is locked from use unless players do some extensive grinding to unlock him.
According to another Reddit thread using graphs and charts, it has been calculated that Battlefront 2 requires approximately 40 hours to unlock a single hero or villain, as the game doles out currency rewards based on time played rather than points earned. Alternately, of course, you can bypass this grind somewhat by plugging real money into the system and buying loot boxes.
In response to the complaint, a representative from EA’s customer support posted the following comment:
“The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.
As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.
We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets.
Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.”
You heard it here first, Battlefront wants to provide you with a sense of pride and accomplishment, not frustrate you with an intentionally crippled progression system designed to deeply encourage loot box purchases. The comment currently stands deep in the red at negative 274 thousand votes in just 19 hours.
And now, please enjoy some of the better angry and snarky responses in said thread.
“If the unlock took maybe 2-4 hours that would be fine, but this is essentially saying “You don’t need to pay but if you don’t good luck””
“Locking iconic characters behind credit walls that will take dozens of hours to get one is just insane, especially when I am willing to bet you have tons of heroes planned which will be behind similar paywalls?”
“If I had a credit for every downvote you’ve gotten I could finally unlock Darth Vader!”
“More so how much do they expect the average gamer to play this game? To unlock 3 hero’s I would have to play 120 hours, there are few games I have played 100 hours and that goes for a majority of people, people will get bored long before that and move on to another game once the grind becomes too much.”
“And Vader costs 60k, it’s bizzare.”
“Isn’t that also 40 hours for 1 hero assuming you buy nothing else at all. The opportunity cost for missing out on everything while saving up for a single big ticket item is tremendous.”
“That’s fucking rich. Just be honest. The truth is you know very few people are going to sink a full work week into this game and you’re hoping that somebody is desperate enough to buy credits to unlock the character. It has nothing to do with providing a “sense of pride and accomplishment.” This is a flat-out lie and you know it. How naive do you think your player base is?”
[Community] The Internet Dances on the Grave of Neogaf
Let’s be clear on one thing: The death of Neogaf was guaranteed a long time before this last week’s revelation, thanks to a closed door policy and a sycophantic owner/moderation team whose policy can essentially be summed up as “no dissenting opinions.”
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t spend a lot of time on Neogaf, a website that has repeatedly and personally turned me down for membership in part precisely because of my ownership and affiliation with this website. While the website maintained a reputation of an insulated hugbox where disagreeing with the higher ups was a quick way to a permanent ban, it’s hard to deny the sleuthing skills of many of the members within. A lot of leaks and early information was disseminated through Neogaf, and it honestly made for a good place to find lead stories. As hard as it is, you have to separate the overall community from its more well known and immature voices.
But we’re not here to praise Neogaf, this week’s Community is all about how a person who seems to enjoy exerting control and dominance, an individual with years of rumored sexual malfeasance, could surprisingly turn out to be a sexual predator. The latest allegation was posted over the past few days of Tyler Malka, AKA Evilore, prompting a number of moderators of the website to step down in protest and in solidarity of the alleged victim. The forums, as you might expect, burst into flames from users demanding an answer to said allegations or for Malka to step down. Attempts by moderators to lock and delete threads only fanned the flames further, and eventually the forums were shut down completely.
The internet, unsurprisingly, is taking this opportunity to dance on the grave of Neogaf, given Malka’s alleged predatory behavior towards women seems in stark opposition to his very public support for progressive causes including supporting victims of sexual abuse.
#GamerGate can’t be about desiring reforms in journalism *and* resenting women. The fundamental motivations are clear here.
— Tyler Malka (@NeoGAF) September 9, 2014
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Support apparently not extending to women interacting with Malka who, in 2012, posted a story on Neogaf involving him grabbing a woman’s backside at a bar after she asked him to buy her a drink, just to show that she wasn’t in control of the interaction. The latest allegation comes from a woman claiming that Malka made an unwanted entrance into her shower while she was both sick and intoxicated, posted as part of the growing #metoo campaign that has seen countless women speak out about sexual harassment.
The individual went on to have a relationship with Malka in the following months.
“At one point in a bar a girl who didn’t speak any English came up to me and started flirting heavily, then went straight into asking me to buy her a drink. . . I laughed because drinks here were all of two Euros, but consented and then grabbed her ass hard to show that I wasn’t being taken advantage of, and she thought better of treating me as a mark and left without taking her drink.”
The news of Malka’s misconduct comes just a few months after a Neogaf moderator was arrested. Christopher John Goldberg, posting under the name Amir0x, was arrested and charged with 63 counts of possession of child porn. According to various accounts, there was supposed to be a statement released by Neogaf on the situation this weekend, and as of Monday morning nothing has been released. When a statement is made, it will be added to this article front and center.
Note: Tyler Malka sexually assaulted a woman within 2 weeks of calling gamers basement-dwelling virgin terrorists who threaten women. pic.twitter.com/OQn7Qb7TFO
— Best Mom Eva (@mombot) October 23, 2017
[Community] The Rebel Developer: “I Just Want To Get Rid of This Sh**y Game”
For this week’s Community Monday, I want to dive into the latest indie developer meltdown currently in progress. The subject for the latest incident is The Rebel, a Unity asset flip that currently has a 75% positive (of four reviews) rating on Steam. There is one person online at the time of this writing.
The Rebel is developed and published by an independent developer Novukomp EEOD, an individual who refers to his game as “total s*** and [an] asset flip,” as shown here on the Unity forums.
An year ago I put my game on Greenlight steam. It was total S*** at the time and asset flip. You probably think the game did poorly and never got approved? Wrong! It was approved via greenlight and actually reached top 5th place in greenlight out of 1400+ games.
The thread, posted last Friday, complains about an inability to get the game on Steam despite Valve’s seeming approval. They were kind enough to leak the admin dashboard, as shown above. Justbrosingthanks, the creator’s username, is seemingly fed up with trying to submit a game he apparently didn’t care much for.
I just want to get rid off this sh**y game, don’t want to turn this into a never ending slavery to a project I don’t even enjoy working on. I want it to end.
The creator ends up butting heads with others pointing out over the game’s poor graphics, the low framerate trailer, etc.
Stop being salty about negative comments, your game looks bad and you decided to put it in Steam anyway so better get ready to get a lot of vitriol. The worst offense of your game is the framerate, if you can’t get at least 30fps in your damn trailer you should know that you have serious problems.
Naturally Jim Sterling gets brought up, although Justbrosing seems to think that James Romine is living in a Beverly Hills mansion rather than a house in Arizona.
^ Sterling is the reason The Slaughtering Grounds developers are now living in Beverly Hills mansion and have all the time in the world to develop better game. I am actually hoping to reach to the British far-right fatty who will call this “shait”.
As with every other shady independent developer on Steam, The Rebel has taken to intensely policing its forums and banning any criticism. The developer has actually gone as far as attempting to stifle criticism by having only two forums open: The first for requesting keys and the second for trading (only open to owners).
There is literally no venue for discussing the game at all, and the developer is actively banning anyone and everyone who posts otherwise.
Please only post here if your question is related to free keys and videos. Everything else will be considered off topic and the thread banned/locked.
I attempted to contact the developer to point out that Valve has penalized developers for similar conduct in the past. He responded by permanently banning me from the game’s forums. He was kind enough to offer me a free key, though.
Again and again: please abide by the rules off the forum. If you think the game sucks: well thank you for the opinion! Just please don’t spam. If you want opinion/key: info@novucomp.com
To end this, I’ll point out that the creator is friends with none other than Steam’s most notorious shovelware developer, James Romine from Digital Homicide. Make of that what you will.
ArcheAge Issues Warning Against Toxic Behavior
Stomping down toxic behavior is all the rage these days, between Riot Games putting the kibosh and permanently banning certain players for life, to Blizzard pledging to tackle racism after the latest Dreamhack conference, Jagex taking on streamer harassment and KKK cosplay (a phrase that shouldn’t exist), and now Trion Worlds with ArcheAge. The game has become a lot less friendly and Trion’s customer service isn’t happy.
In a news post published yesterday, Trion Worlds has committed to taking a more hands on approach with toxic behavior.
We are going to be much more conscious about what we allow to be said in public chat channels. We know that some will do their best to test boundaries and try to skirt our intent and then appeal the action with a technicality. Ultimately if our determination is that your chat is contributing nothing except grief to a player or community we will take actions to prevent that.
So what does this mean? Well, you can call a boss a bitch but you can’t call another player a bitch. Personal attacks, using alternate accounts to harass a player who has put you on ignore, spamming the chat channel, physical threats, and more will result in action taken against offenders. Trion also reminds players that this only extends to in-game chat, and that the company can’t extend its reach to outside platforms (Facebook, Twitter, etc).
(Source: ArcheAge)
MMO Fallout 