A critical view at SOE criticisms...

**Attis**

I thought I take a step back from the negativity against SOE and look at the facts for myself. I came to the conclusion that only in part is SOE's negative reputation is over played for a couple of reasons, but also valid in part too.

1) SOE, like most companies, fails to meet a passable CSR crew. This isn't new with SOE, this is almost a universal given, whether it's a game company or your local grocery store, people are people and those that maintain the machine of aiding customers in products and services will ultimately not be able to attain a quality that meets the standards of every individual customer. Also, what makes SOE's CSR crew's past poor results to proper light is that SOE is serving a new market, which the old assumptions of previously hard won knowledge in other industries that have their own CSR sub-industries, which has very few of these assumptions, and often such old assumptions may not even aide a CSR crew at all; thus making their job harder to meet customer expectations. Because of this, I think the another old customer service addige follows, "The negative experience for a customer is remembered longer than the positive experience..." [Side Comment: So, I always take a grain of salt with such claims that SOE actively attempts to insult customers. If that were so, I would ask myself as a stock holder, "How much longer until the bubble bursts on Sony proper?" Considering, some companies have died because of horrible CSR and great product. SOE doesn't seem to follow this assumption to any in-depth level of reasoning.]

2) SOE has a problem like most gaming companies; promising big and giving little. Hell, I don't know how many times I've seen it and it seems to almost always come to pass. A company promising an earth shaking gaming experience, either they deliver it after some delay, or they deliver it in part, or worse they never deliver it at all. It's no surprise SOE has done this with their other products such as EQ 1 and 2, but I think that has more to do with several factors usually beyond the control of a developer team;

   A) Public Relations often is often one area that Devs are never ever even allowed to interfere since, "When    does a code monkey know anything about their product?" [sarcasm mine]

   B) Sometimes developers are assigned to project directors with little or no experience with the given goal of the project. [Side Comment: I'm not sure who were the key 'producers' of the EQ 1 and 2 expansions, but I always felt they were probably not even versed in a cursory knowledge of computer science.]

   C) The given set goals by the project lead are either beyond the scope of the current technology or because it is based on concepts that are particular in their translation to a set of algorithms [then code]. Thus, to produce a viable product based on such concepts that either yield new methods to game design/code design, it's very possible such attempts to implement lead to failure(s).

   D) Developers left outside the 'loop' of communication between the project lead and/or other department heads. One thing I've learned in my life of working jobs in very different fields [from factory and farm to office and customer service] is that communication is the means to get the right thing done. When a development team is left outside of the communication channels, it's very easy for them to get lost. I've seen this happen, and it yields very bad results.

With just those four possible variable [not barring others] it's really easy to see why SOE seems to not deliver the perfect or best product. It's just the nature of the beast of business. It's very surprising how in principle something such as coding a particular project is easy, but to make sure the developers and the non-developers[business/support staff] get the right messages at the right times is in itself the biggest hurdle against the success of a given project.

Outside of the debate of whether Smedly is some Monty Burns or what-not, I think its indicative of a company such as SOE to have more failures than successes, and that the successes are more easily forgotten than than the failures. And since SOE is playing in a field that is yet to set up any concrete standards, it's bound to make more failures and mistakes along the way before it becomes a mature company within a field of defined goals, customer expectations, and what not. So, really, despite the weaknesses SOE is not the bad guy every one seems to make it out to be...

-- Bridget

Message Edited by Attis on 05-05-2006 10:11 PM
Message edited by Attis on 05/05/2006 21:11:26.

ThanatosXO

You forget one point:

Like every american company, SOE thinks that USA are the center of the world and every american system is the best availlable, and thats simply not true.

We dont need credit cards here, for example, cause our EC system is faster, safer and works all over europe on really every corner of the street. You can pay anything even taxis with it, get cash from every bank or cashmashine around, and so on. No need for creditcards at all, you only need one of you want to travel outside of europe. Why sould someone work with an unsafe system with big time delays in it, if you have a much safer and faster system availlable?

If you are a european customer, your not 2. class, your maybe 4. or 5. class customer. Support times, paying options, server downtimes, public relations, commercials, everything is set up for US.

The joke about this is, that the whole euopean market is much bigger than the US market. Europeans, germans especially, love to be online and love onlinegames. SOE fails to be a european player in all points. They dont advertise here, they needed years to implement direct debit systems, support for europeans is allmost not availlable cause of the time difference, and so on.

All of your points are generall MMO Company problems. But SOE especially failed on the european market ... one of the biggest MMO markets worldwide beside of asia. There is really not much positive to say about SOE from the european point of view. Its no wonder that WoW scored that much in europe ... they have a european HQ, servers in europe, european billing systems, CSR in all european languages, localisations in the most important languages ... they provide everything SOE is missing.

I hope you get my point, im not that good at writing english.

Thanatos

Jack's Wasted Life

Efficiency

Time is money

"Outside of the debate of whether Smedly is some Monty Burns or what-not, I think its indicative of a company such as SOE to have more failures than successes, and that the successes are more easily forgotten than than the failures. And since SOE is playing in a field that is yet to set up any concrete standards, it's bound to make more failures and mistakes along the way before it becomes a mature company within a field of defined goals, customer expectations, and what not. So, really, despite the weaknesses SOE is not the bad guy every one seems to make it out to be..."

The thing is tho, SoE does have a lot of online games and essentialy, they will be known as the building blocks for future games.

With online games its very much like Sci Fi movies. Take the best sci fi (special effects) movie of each year and you will notice the difference each time around. General issues amongst all games come fixed (even non soe games continue to move this way)

But with seeing SoE again and again, I myself can see through to the bones of each game and i see a dull framework.

The question you have to ask yourself is: "What is the difference between Dungeons & Dragons" than the Matrix Trilogy?"

Yes, i know SoE didnt make D&D, the point is that beyond the themes of the games, SoE hasnt grown out of their box. Theyve continued to market the same style of playing.

With MxO, i believe there was a good chance they could make use of the memory system, but instead they resorted to slowly ween players back to their settings.

1 : General Topic

2 : Casual vs High End Gaming

3 : Interacting Enviroments

4 :GM Events

5 : Keeping players into a game

6 : Tradeskills

7 : Archives

These are just a few things, Ive come up with.

Some things are generalized because they can work for all online games in the advancement of games.

Somethings are just focused on the matrix, but in theory can work for other games.

ISome of these things are already happening now, and my bickering here is highely focused on SoE, because in my opinion, out of all SoE games, this is not even on par with the rest of Station Access Games.

SoE hasnt risked creating a new style to fill their new games.

Delivering a product is one thing, but repeatedly staling content is another. Releasing content that has been purposely bugged (Bugged because it was never tested in beta) and thousands of players could not progress because of these purposeful bugs.

Im not asking for the world. Im just asking for a company to stay real to its word.

I was very impressed with Monolith giving players a schedule of events. They kept their word. Even their CSR was good.

No one escapes their past.

No one escapes judgement.

Advisary

The SOE free trial sure reminds me of the free trial that Monolith gave, hyper-jump beta and all.

Notice that while there is much criticism twoards SOE, very little attention is actually paid twoards listening to member's commentary on MxO anymore. Your criticism, commentary or wit fall on deaf ears. SOE simply gives you this place to discuss things among other people. If they actually wanted advice on what to do with their game they would consult their board of advisors, the people they pay a lot of money. They are the ones who decided to do the free trial, not the forum members.

Alas, this is indeed a vast desert where no one will answer you or hear you.

**ManicV**

Advisary wrote:

Notice that while there is much criticism twoards SOE, very little attention is actually paid twoards listening to member's commentary on MxO anymore. Your criticism, commentary or wit fall on deaf ears. SOE simply gives you this place to discuss things among other people. If they actually wanted advice on what to do with their game they would consult their board of advisors, the people they pay a lot of money.

Whether you love it or hate it, the majority of what you see in CR2.0 came from comments and suggestions made by players in the forums. The MxO team knows that this game exists because of the community, not for it.

That SOE "board of advisors" you talk about sounds like a pretty backward bunch. They pay game developers to come to them for advice? I don't think so. Nobody that rich is that stupid.

Jack's Wasted Life

SoE has in the past invited the guild leaders (the end guilds) to a meeting to resolve player issues.

Although i really do not think it will ever happen here, SoE knew that the Matrix name was a cashcow and they can milk it dry. Indeed, the community is the only thing holding this bucket together. And that is good enough for SoE to hold its grip. Promise nothing and then surprise surprise a little cookie for the faithful community members?

However you look at it. A Business, or superficial perspective. The layers of uncertainty grow and grow.

Advisary

manicvelocity wrote:

Advisary wrote:

Notice that while there is much criticism twoards SOE, very little attention is actually paid twoards listening to member's commentary on MxO anymore. Your criticism, commentary or wit fall on deaf ears. SOE simply gives you this place to discuss things among other people. If they actually wanted advice on what to do with their game they would consult their board of advisors, the people they pay a lot of money.

Whether you love it or hate it, the majority of what you see in CR2.0 came from comments and suggestions made by players in the forums. The MxO team knows that this game exists because of the community, not for it.

That SOE "board of advisors" you talk about sounds like a pretty backward bunch. They pay game developers to come to them for advice? I don't think so. Nobody that rich is that stupid.

Well every company has a board of sorts which gives them advice. The size of the board depends on the interest the company has in the product or service. For MxO if SOE doesn't care about it then it could just be one person but they are responsible for giving the ones in charge of decision making the information they need to make changes with the game. These changes dont come from dev team suggestions. The devs do what they are told because if they dont they will just get replaced.

If you look into management and corporate structure you'll understand.

Look how many people want swords in the matrix and we still dont have any. Look how many people wanted vehicles and still no. People wanted many different options for styles of martial arts but we have kung-fu, karate and aikido.

The only thing the forums are used for is to find a general idea of the mood of the players. The blue sky event sucked and everyone was upset. People left because of it. SOE responded by releasing trial memberships and trying to recruit a new fresh crowd of people who had not been a part of any of the live events. Who would witness the videos as part of their first experience. It was a good call and now there are about 3 times as many people on the servers as there were in the past 5 months.

Corporations make money, it's what they are good at. Sony happens to be very good at it.

**ManicV**

dev/null

Message Edited by manicvelocity on 05-12-2006 10:17 AM
Message edited by ManicV on 05/12/2006 08:17:31.

QforQ-MxO

Advisary wrote:

manicvelocity wrote:

Advisary wrote:

Notice that while there is much criticism twoards SOE, very little attention is actually paid twoards listening to member's commentary on MxO anymore. Your criticism, commentary or wit fall on deaf ears. SOE simply gives you this place to discuss things among other people. If they actually wanted advice on what to do with their game they would consult their board of advisors, the people they pay a lot of money.

Whether you love it or hate it, the majority of what you see in CR2.0 came from comments and suggestions made by players in the forums. The MxO team knows that this game exists because of the community, not for it.

That SOE "board of advisors" you talk about sounds like a pretty backward bunch. They pay game developers to come to them for advice? I don't think so. Nobody that rich is that stupid.

Well every company has a board of sorts which gives them advice. The size of the board depends on the interest the company has in the product or service. For MxO if SOE doesn't care about it then it could just be one person but they are responsible for giving the ones in charge of decision making the information they need to make changes with the game. These changes dont come from dev team suggestions. The devs do what they are told because if they dont they will just get replaced.

If you look into management and corporate structure you'll understand.

Look how many people want swords in the matrix and we still dont have any. Look how many people wanted vehicles and still no. People wanted many different options for styles of martial arts but we have kung-fu, karate and aikido.

The only thing the forums are used for is to find a general idea of the mood of the players. The blue sky event sucked and everyone was upset. People left because of it. SOE responded by releasing trial memberships and trying to recruit a new fresh crowd of people who had not been a part of any of the live events. Who would witness the videos as part of their first experience. It was a good call and now there are about 3 times as many people on the servers as there were in the past 5 months.

Corporations make money, it's what they are good at. Sony happens to be very good at it.

The MxO dev team has meetings every week where they decide what they do. Rarebit has answered many questions about why certain things are and aren't ingame...it usually files down to this:
1. Not something do able in the game due to it's system constraints/limitations
2. Not something that can be done due to money restrictions or the amount of time it would take to do so.

Walrus is probably the "consultant" that your referring to,seeing as he is the "boss" for the MxO dev team. Yes he has higher ups, but the dev team for a very large part has say in what and what does not go ingame.

The players also have a role in deciding how things are developed...good examples are Org Abilities/PvP based content and the already implemented CR2 system. Both have threads devoted to them and many many posts from Devs asking for input. We now have more of a role in the development of the game than we ever have since the game went live. The dev team now talks with us directly, not through a community relations member soley.

The acquisation that MxO is only doing this trial because the event failed is completely false. There have been talks for a trial for a long time, well before the event even started. It wasn't a response at all.

Again you seem to imply that offering a trial and getting new players is a bad thing. They have more players for a game that wasn't doing well and now it has a bit of a brighter future. Things are more alive for awhile now. Perhaps this could snowball in to something better on the development/SOE side of coin, but who knows. We'll just have to wait and see how SOE decides to react.

LestatLioncourt

Right on QforQ.

1 - I honestly don't believe that any player here thinks the trial is a bad idea!!!!

more players - more revenue - more SOE investment - more content - better game! i think this make sense!

2 - SOE didn't get MxO to make a bad product and lose money. They got it, because they saw a business oportunity, and I'm sure they want to increase the community.

I'm their client since august 2005 and I can't complain. Flaws? of course they are humans.

I do have a feeling that in a mid-long term this game will be a AAA MMO.

noVus

Walrus is probably the "consultant" that your referring to,seeing as he
is the "boss" for the MxO dev team. Yes he has higher ups, but the dev
team for a very large part has say in what and what does not go ingame

Wrong, wrong wrong.

I've worked development in the big corps (never again). Devs are
highly underpaid, highly
overworked, and they are told by management what to include, and what
not to. The dev has very, very little say (if any) as to what goes into a
game or product. Their job is to code and implement the
decisions. Or to make it work. That's it.

If I remember correctly, Walrus' job is more management for the
community relations. Could be more, but I'd need the D-man
himself to clarify on that one.

I could pull in a ton of other folks who've worked development that
will tell you the same thing. (Dapharmer still around?) As
well as KP. Not sure if CZ has worked in development. But
no dev makes the decisions as to what goes into a product. Not
even close.

Message Edited by noVus on 05-15-2006 06:44 AM
Message edited by noVus on 05/15/2006 05:44:10.

LestatLioncourt

wait wait wait? CZ? sorry for the highjack. are you talking about the CZ that worked for Funcom? :smileysurprised:

Negaflare

The Matrix Online could be better, I agree, and SOE probably could
focus more on it. But let's face it, MxO exists and is the way it is
because of the community. Unless everyone who plays MxO is threatning
to cease their accounts unless something is added, they won't really
pay much attention. But when you look at it, The Matrix Online isn't bad at all. And on another note, there are some of us who don't have access to credit cards, what happened to the game cards? D: I can't find em anymore at EB Games or Gamespot, and I live in the US.