Excuses

[Thundorn]

This seemed like the most relevant place to make this thread. I have been gaming for a very long time, and since the internet became more then just a place to look up useless information about tits and dinosaurs, there have been thousands of "User Written reviews" a lot of which are great to read. My only problem is that some people seem to come across all diplomatic as though being kind and making excuses for the developers will in some way stand them in good stead. People are far too quick to say things like "They dont have the resources" or "its not the developers fault". Now it seems to me that it is not our place as users and reviewers to make the excuses for the developer, its our job, nay, our responsability to pick at every little niggle with a game that we can find, so that A) other users know what to expect, and B) the developers realise that its a problem and can do something about it, and also fire the beta testers who were too dumb to notice them.

This goes especially for MMO's who all have forums in which the players can voice their opinions about problems with games. (All except blizzard who finally banned me from usign their forums, because i got fed up of them deleting my posts complaining about game bugs, after i would get flamed, by forumite suck ups who refused to admit that not being able to complete a quest because of a game bug, was actually a problem. SO i got fed up with this blatant "Cover up" and got myself kicked)

My point is, dont make their lives any easier by sticking up for them, dont make excuses for poor quality, its your job to tell the absolute truth, so that if a developer is throwing out weak content, they will be chastised for it, and have to do better.

 

[MurderousToaster]

Sometimes, though, it isn't the developer's fault. Sometimes producer companies can really rush the development of a game if they want to make money off of it quick.

 

[Gxas]

(All except blizzard who finally banned me from usign their forums, because i got fed up of them deleting my posts complaining about game bugs, after i would get flamed, by forumite suck ups who refused to admit that not being able to complete a quest because of a game bug, was actually a problem. SO i got fed up with this blatant "Cover up" and got myself kicked)

I took everything you said seriously until this. Then, I just laughed and disregarded everything. It makes you come off, not as a critic, but as though you were just whining, didn't get your way, and then cried and ran away, while making yourself seem the victim.

I'm serious, you make valid points, but if they don't fix one bugged quest, it isn't because they are a bad company for letting it go unchanged, its that they have much bigger problems to deal with.

Lets say that you run a fast-food place. Today, you have a huge line that you con barely handle at full-staff. Suddenly, someone comes up to you complaining that the cheese on their burger isn't melted enough. Do you stop everything and take care of this small and miniscule problem while the huge line gets even bigger? No, you don't. You say, "I'm sorry sir, I'll take care of that as soon as I can."

You see, companies cannot cater to everyone's needs. They cater to the needs of the majority, with the most important problems. You, one person complaining about your broken quest, are not the majority. Nor will you ever be.

 

[TheNamlessGuy]

DELETED

 

[Thundorn]

Appreciated points. I didnt want to dwell too hard on my Experiences with blizz because they are kind of irrelevant to the point i was making. My problems with them were far beyond just one quest, that was merely an example.
My gripes with them were for mostly huge game breaking problems that a company who rakes in as much cash as them, should have no problems in rectifying. For example having an advertising campaign that says 9 million players, and then not having a server that can cope with the number of players and having to wait for an hour to even get online, and then having to wait again for another hour just to get into a dungeon instance because there are too many players currently running that dungeon, it was a common ocurence to have all 5 members of the team at different dungeons all waiting to get in, and just going to whichever dungeon we managed to get into first, which would normally still take the best part of an hour.

I understand that my previous comment about complaining about 1 mission would sound like i was just whining for the sake of shining, but i really could go on and list pages and pages of problems i had with Blizzard, and every single issue i highlighted, was at first flamed by fanboys, and then deleted by the forum mods who would literally remove anything bad about the game.

The rest of your thread goes on to do exactly what i stand against, and that is making excuses for game developers. Blizz are a very very rich organisation, who SHOULD be providing a quality service. If there is a problem with the game, a user should be able to highlight it and at least get a "We are looking into it" response rather then just being ignored and their complaints hidden from view. They should also have 24 hour customer support (which they do not). Money is deffinately not something they are short of, and as for time and resources, they still have the time and resources to throw out new expansions which people have to pay for (which still have the same bugs)

Simple put It isnt good enough. I singled Blizz out because they stand out both as one of the biggest game companies out there, and also because their customer support is one of the worst. That doesnt exclude other developers at all. Its our job as users to give them a kicking when they do bad

 

[DeadpanLunatic]

I have removed my words from this site.

 

[Thundorn]

Absolutely correct. It would be a bigger kick if people were to just stop playing. The issue is, that WoW isnt that bad a game as a whole, there are just a lot of bugs that could be fixed. I am just like any other gamer and will (most of the time) ignore the bad in favour of enjoying the good. Its Blizzards blatant disregard for customer satisfaction that bothers me. When Aion came out, I was overjoyed. A Fantasy MMO run by someone like NCS is ideal.

 

[TheScarecrow]

Well, every game has problems and if you spend too much time looking for them when reviewing a game then you might forget to tell the reviewer what they know:
Is the game fun?
Or
Worth the money.

 

[NeutralDrow]

I don't believe in nitpicking for anything but comedic value, and I'm very forgiving of minor flaws if the rest of the game is good.

I know this means I'm a bad critic, but I never pretended to be a critic. I'm just a reviewer. I suppose your advice is sound in some way (hilarious sour grapes against Blizzard disregarded), but I don't think I'll follow it.

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

It's the point of the reviewer to point out flaws in game in the hopes that the dev team will hear this and thus fix the problem. If the people behind said game don't fix it then it's their loss of a customer

 

[NeutralDrow]

It's the point of the reviewer to point out flaws in game in the hopes that the dev team will hear this and thus fix the problem. If the people behind said game don't fix it then it's their loss of a customer

If the problem is something like "the game freezes whenever I jump in this one area" or "using X item causes my stats to revert," then yes, but that wasn't the impression I got from the OP. If I understood the post right, the point was supposed to be "if something is bad, don't excuse it." If I weren't worried about hyperbole, I'd interpret that as "crucify anything less than perfection."

Frankly, on second thought, that's utterly pointless advice anyway. If you're making an excuse for something, you're already admitting its flaw. Hell, and if the excuse has any merit at all, the developers already realize it's a problem.