Pragmatism
So, we are day two of the latest meltdown. I wanted to comment on things from a different angle. I have seen a lot of posts where people talk about how the DEV have lost their "good will" or their "trust" and so on. Really? I don't have "good will" towards any company. I don't have warm fuzzy thoughts about Nabisco because I enjoy their cookies. And while I am a strong advocate for treating the Staff and DEV with courtesy, I'm not going to pretend they and I have this "connection" or I think about them all when I'm not doing some long-winded post. They are a vendor, and I am a consumer. That is it.
Let's be pragmatic here. We are all a bunch of entitled, unrealistic louts. None of us care about BEhavior. The people who play the game, enjoy the game. The ones that don't, find another game. We aren't really a community, nor do we really have any kind of relationship with the company. To put that in perspective, there are some types of toilet paper that I love. They really step things up and treat my rear right. Do they have a Forum? No. They have minimal interaction with their customers. If I suddenly found the quality of their butt-tissue dropping, I wouldn't be writing any angry letters. I wouldn't feel entitled to have a say. I'd find another type of toilet paper for my tushy.
The problem with Forums like these and customer outreach programs is they create misconceptions, mostly in regards to how we interact. It creates an expectation in us that "we get a say" when we really don't. You can vote with your wallet. All explosions of angst are ultimately counterproductive. Even when you get your way, and a company backpedals, they just resent you. They will smile and say they understand and all that jazz, but in the end you have truly turned yourself into "just a customer" in their eyes. I've seen this repeated over and over again over the years. The outcome is always the same.
Do I think we (as the Forum) should have expressed our displeasure? Yes. Do I think it was done well? No. Will there be ramifications, i.e. unintended consequences for us, the consumer? Absolutely. Let's be pragmatic about the situation. You either like the game or you don't. You vote with your wallet. Feedback can be done constructively. Pretty much every single post we have seen could be rewritten to convey the same concerns. Given the numbers of them, the result would have been the same. The benefit would have been not going out of the way to burn bridges we (as the customer) don't have to burn. There is this notion that as the customer that we are entitled. That has its limits, and behind the scenes there are bean counters and other games and other projects in the works. More to the point, if they decide they do not like us, they will only do the minimum to make sure the game retains profit. They will focus on other projects that don't make them feel bad. They are people too.
Comments
You talk about not having a connection to the devs, then proceed to ask people not to burn bridges with them and make them dislike us 'customers'. Well what if we apply the same logic but we swap the power roles, so to speak, I believe it is in BHVR's best interest to keep their players happy. No players, no game, no sweet sweet cosmetics revenue. So we do, in a way, get a say as you can see from them backpedaling after the backlash.
While I don't condone people targeting the devs with personal insults as they deserve respect just like anybody, people are entitled to their own opinions and some of them may be stronger than your composed, pragmatic demeanor. And even a blind man can see that they're not exactly the best at quality control or communicating with their players. Not to mention most people in this forum paid money for this game so the least they can expect is for it to function as intended. Imagine you are someone who bought the game when the twins came out (broken patch btw), and then this is what you get immediately after. Or imagine you've been playing this game for a while and really love the unique concept, the lore, or whatever, and just feel very passionate about it so you wish the devs could elevate it to its fullest potential but every time they just give you the bare minimum to keep it functioning. It turns out a lot of people have those feelings in common and that alone makes it a "community" whether you feel part of it or not.
What exactly are the ramifications you are afraid of? They have proved time and time again that they don't listen unless they're threatened (i.e. with bad press like in the color blind incident, or with a potential loss of players/revenue as it happened with this patch). The thing is, people aren't upset about the changes themselves, rather, they are upset at providing feedback to the devs after the PTB only for it to be ignored, then after pointing it out they're generally met with condescending replies from the devs. So the concerns were made politely and timely, but unfortunately the devs chose to ignore them.
The dev team has been notorious for their stubbornness over the years, so what bridges could people burn if they never existed to begin with?
So as a customer I don't expect them to like me. I understand they're just trying to sell a product and profit from it. And if they want more they better fix their ######### game.