Scimal wrote...
TonyTheBossDanza123 wrote...
To end this ramble, my point is this: When you start releasing info about future games, don't look down your nose at your forum goers. Don't tell them that since they haven't played the game, their critiques are unwarranted. Don't post charts and insist that people are overreacting.
BioWare does more than most studios to address the concerns and complaints of their fanbase. That said, there's no reason they should really listen to the people on these forums more than their internal employees who direct the game's direction. The niche for BW's brand of RPGs is small and generally growing smaller as consoles become more common and "innovation" is harshly reprimanded by the very community playing them.
The thing is, many of the loudest in this community on the forums would love things to stay mostly static with the way games play, the way stories are told, and the value they get for the money. Not everybody, of course, but many do. Just look at anyone crying out about a voiced protagonist, the "awesome button" (despite the actual mechanics of gameplay being almost identical to DA:O), and I even saw a thread rantinga bout the "Junk" tab (presumably because they enjoyed spending several hours sifting through their inventory).
A static genre cannot support itself. So, while gaming companies and their employees can probably phrase things better than they have (though, given the caveat that they are merely human makes it understandable most of the time), I would seriously not want to be in BioWare's position. If you do something different, even slightly different, someone is going to crucify you. If you don't do anything different, you receive "stale" reviews from the industry and you won't bring in new customers.
So while you may think BioWare is looking down their nose at forum goers, keep in mind that many forum goers are going to be upset regardless of what happens - and whether or not you consider BW's actions to be offensive may or may not depend on whether you're the part of the fanbase they changed some things for. This time, you weren't. In DA:O, you were. Not everybody thought DA:O was a great game, and I - personally speaking - don't see it as anything more than slightly above average. They simply weren't catering to me that time, and I can understand that (and accept it).
As for telling people their critiques aren't warranted until they've played the game...
Well, they're right. You haven't played the game. Your critiques are completely unwarranted, and you only feel vindicated in this particular instance because you perceive the changes made in DA2 that you "warned them about" to have caused its lesser success than DA:O. If DA2 had been an even more successful RPG than DA:O, then you wouldn't dare think about writing that sentence.
And to the last link...
People do overreact. All. The. Time. It's the internet - full of trolls and people who act tougher and louder than in reality. I can link you YouTube videos of people flipping out over raids in WoW, about very minor plot holes in games, and about dozens of other little things which have no bearing on reality.
Granted, people do overreact because they have invested some sort of time into the product or previous products, and they don't want to see that which gave them a feeling of contentment/joy/excitement change because they're afraid they won't achieve the same thing. This fear leads people to voice their opinions - often very loudly - with the medium they feel will have the most impact. This is part of being human and understandable.
The other part of being human is that when we're confronted with the stark reality of a situation which we dislike, generally the first intuition are to go through the stages of grief (which are more accurate than just about anything else in Psychology), and during the Denial, Anger, or Bargaining stages, people simply overreact before they hit Acceptance.
So, while some may think it rude that the chart was displayed or that Gaider did the whole "Stages of a BioWare Fan" thing... There's some veracity behind it.
I'm sure you disagree, though. :-)
I want to address two things in this post.
1. In regards to the "Stale" review comments, I don't see how this is an issue. Now, don't misunderstand, I am a huge proponent of innovation in the gaming genre, but DAO was anything but stale. In any other medium it would be called "Retro", a revitalization of old school. DAO came out at a time, which still exists, when the BG style of RPG is so old it's "new". I for one, and I'd wager many people agree, consider DA2 to be "Staler" than DAO.
It's also worth noting that the "Freshness" of games isn't so vast that it warrants the overhaul that DA2 recieved, especially not after one installment. We're many entries into the "Zelda" series, and reviewers are just now beginning to critique it for being "Stale", and even that is outweighed by it's polish. The key to avoding "Staleness" is to refine, not to reimagine. The second part of that is to balance your release schedule. Distance only makes the heart grow fonder, which is another reason why many companies spread their entries in series apart.
2. The second thing I want to address is your statement that critique is unwarranted unless you've played the game. That is not true. While I'd agree that the critique of someone who did play the game is more valid than that of someone who hasn't, you can't bank on that pre release of a product. The opinions formed prior to the games release are a large, if not the largest, influence on sales, and this shows with DA2.
In an entertainment medium, the opinions of your internals are unimporant when compared to the opinions of your consumers, if you want to succeed. I'm not so cynical as to think that Bioware was lying to us for the last year, that their testers gave them negative feedback and they ignored it, forcing the product out and betting it all on sales based on the names "Dragon Age" and "Bioware". I think it's much more likely that they're testers, and the developers, legitimately thought, and perhaps think, that DA2 is the better product, and the consumers and reviewers disagreed.
The issue at hand is that we, forumites, voiced our concerns to them before hand, months beforehand, and we were told that we were wrong. We were told on multiple occaisions that either "DA2 wasn't the game for us", that "We misconcieved the direction the game was heading", or that "It was better off this way, trust us (Bioware)". This was told to us in posts that reeked of arrogance, as if the developers at Bioware had grown fat on their fans fervor for previous products.
In the end, as we know, it backfired. Fears and complaints were realized when the game was released, and Bioware paid the price in lesser sales and a severe loss of respect among the gaming community.
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