Turbine, give us some love :(

[Qzipoun]

I find the lack of activity in the DDO forum dev tracker quite disturbing. If you look at it now, you will see that all of the recent posts have been made by patience (now phax made a post which is what made me think of writing this). Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with Patience making posts and I appreciate her efforts to try to keep the forums moderated and "under control". The problem is, Patience's posts are not related to DDO but DDO's forums. Let us look at the DDO developer activity we've had recently.

The last post that appears on the Dev tracker (excluding Phax's recent post) was made by dev jwbarry on 08-31-2007. That was on a Friday, and we had to wait until today (Wednesday) to get another developer post. Now before I say anything further, yes, I understand that developer posts WILL occur less frequently on weekends (ie Saturday/Sunday) and this Monday was Labor day so there is a perfect explanation for why no Dev has posted during the weekend. I'll go ahead and be very nice and optimistic and say that is was just PURE LUCK that no post was made on Tuesday. It happens that, every once in a while, the devs have nothing to say and Tuesday could have been one of these days.

So from the looks of it, the absence of posts in the dev tracker this weekend is absolutely normal... until you start making comparison with... LOTRO.

Yes, I know lots of people hate DDO/LOTRO comparisons and the idea that no matter what, the grass will be greener on the LOTRO side but hear me out. These two games are becoming more and more related. From DDO's new UI look in Mod 5 to Turbine's staff working on both products at the same time. It is safe to assume Turbine has the same set of standards for it's employees both in DDO and LOTRO and that they would, overall, behave in very similar manners. Well this is where the problem occurs:

Whereas we had ZERO dev posts during the period I describe, the LOTRO forums had 35! Even if we count Patience's moderator posts during the weekend, that is 6 posts versus 35!

The obvious effect of this is that the player base is losing faith in Turbine's developer team. It seems to a lot of people that Turbine just doesn't care about DDO as much as it should.

What happened on the forums while the devs were away (ie why did Patience have to post so many times ). The two main threads that were active during the weekend were threads criticizing Turbine's conduct (or lack thereof). One of the threads died out as people moved to the other to continue the conversation (the DDO at Pax thread). I believe the thread was extremely healthy and people brought up very important points on both sides of the debate. As in any thread, there were some posts that were out of hand, some personal insults etc. KK ended up closing the thread for misconduct or whatnot and I personally do not believe that. I understand that KK can close/moderate forums at his discretion and I respect that but there is a problem with closing that thread. The thread was ABOUT Turbine's inactivity, it was ABOUT the lack of interaction between Turbine, it's customers and it's potential market.

I am not trying to argue that the thread should or should not have been closed. My point is, if the Devs are absent from the forums, and Turbine is absent from everything (Gencon,Pax,advertizing etc...) conversations like that WILL keep happening. It is not a good idea to just ignore your player-base and intervene when things get out of hand. There is a reason people are unhappy with Turbine and something must be done about it.

So, once again, thank you Phax for finally making a dev post. It wasn't anything extra-ordinary but it answered people's questions. It took how long, 30 seconds to post?

All I want to say is more dev input will result in a better interaction between the Dev team and the players, helping DDO develop into a better game. If Turbine keeps ignoring it's players, people will simply keep getting angy and you will continue to have posts a-la "No DDO at Pax" which will result in more anger -> more infraction points -> more bans -> less players -> DOOOOOOOOOOOM

Edit: Wow that was a long post

[Dingo123]

Actually, I'm kind of concerned about the lack of changes in the Monday Update.

[Qzipoun]

Actually, I'm kind of concerned about the lack of changes in the Monday Update.

Well I brought that up once and someone had a valid point. At this stage, they are probably not adding anything more to Mod 5, just trying to make everything they added work. I'm sure a lot of things in the WDA are still buggy and they're trying to fix them rather than add new things. So there is a valid reason for it, but yes, I'm not too happy to wait 2 weeks to find out tooltips got changed again

[Dariuss]

i beleive there were more DDO dev posts during the first part of it's life, as more things needed clarification.

LOTROs dev posts will likely follow the same pattern.

(i could be wrong of course)

Also, the lack of changes ot the WDA always happens close to update times.

[Aspenor]

Frankly, I have not seen very many issues that the devs should feel an urge to comment on recently. All that's incoming is a fairly large quest package and some UI updates, as well as AI and existing quest updates.

There are no major rules changes (except the raid loot issue, which has been acted upon by Turbine), and there aren't any major non-quest related things to comment on.

I imagine the devs are reading up on the feedback from the Risia forums, and that's about all.

[Mercules]

Actually, I'm kind of concerned about the lack of changes in the Monday Update.

I'm not. I'm encouraged by them. The company I work for has a Code Freeze date where they no longer alter the code for anything but show stopping bugs. At that point they are almost ready to send the product out the door, it just needs to pass some final tests in QA. This is much like that. Turbine USED to post "This is what is changing in Mod5 - This is what will be worked on in the future." but Quarion's posts are much less colorful and detailed than Samera's were so I suspect we will no longer be getting the additional info, just what is upcoming.

[dragnmoon]

Maybe they are all busy working on a Huge paid expansion!.... Yeah I know.. Wishful thinking

[Montrose]

I'm not. I'm encouraged by them. The company I work for has a Code Freeze date where they no longer alter the code for anything but show stopping bugs. At that point they are almost ready to send the product out the door, it just needs to pass some final tests in QA. This is much like that. Turbine USED to post "This is what is changing in Mod5 - This is what will be worked on in the future." but Quarion's posts are much less colorful and detailed than Samera's were so I suspect we will no longer be getting the additional info, just what is upcoming.

Show stopper bugs, or bugs that happen to annoy the GPM/VP/Random Person whose authority is beyond their knowledge.

Ok, maybe I'm a BIT jaded.

But, here's the thing. If they've hit ZBB, then theorhetically the devs should have more time to be posting in here, not less.

[dragnmoon]

Was going to make a Comment about 'Turbine giving us some love' but decided that it was not PG rated enough... So... decided against it . It was more PG-13 Rated

[ArkoHighStar]

Look at every WDA as they get closer to release date, there is less and less added, in fact the release notes will be very similiar to the last WDA. The reason is simple, before Risia, Turbine used to keep certain secrets until release, in fact they still do, we just notice them on Risia so they have to put it in there(/death as an example).
So the longer Risia is played on the less will be a surprise when it is released.

Developers I think have been very responsive as of late(with this week beingthe exception), much more so than the community team. Just go back fort he last 4 weeks, there have been many more dev posts than customer service posts. Yes they are not posting nearly as much as the LOTRO team, but I am imagine they are a much leaner team, so they do not have as much slack time

[blakbyrd]

Personally I have given up on the WDA. Back when the game came out, it wasnt long before people were complaining or calling for Turbine to talk to us, let us know what is going on. That went on for awhile, and then finally Turbine seemed to give in and started talking to us and letting us know some things. Shortly after it died off again. People started complaining again, and after a bit Turbine started talking again, and then seemed to stop a short while after. It happened again and more complaints...the same situation.

Now we are seeing it yet again. Apparently Turbine really doesn't feel the need to talk to us much or inform us much on things, or we wouldnt have to start getting vocal again and again, and apparently making them give in to talk to us. At which point they seem to simply do so only long enough to quiet people down and then start to disappear again.

However, as people have noticed, shortly before LotR launched, alot of DDO seemed to slow down, probably as Turbine prepared for a big LotR launch. OK, not a preference to DDO players but understandable in a way. However, as people have been pointing out over the past few months, LotR is staying relatively active with posts from Turbine, which DDO seems to keep getting fewer and fewer. It's a trend that seems pretty obvious...Turbine may very well be focusing more resources into LotR, as I had expected it was going to do along time ago (however I could be wrong and may still be, but it looks that way to me). I gave trying to help get Turbine to be more open with us, as in most cases they show themselves in a manner that seems to present the idea that they really don't want to be open with us. So be it. Instead I simply play while I can, and only visit the forums while at work.

Turbine will do what they want to do. They show more enthusiasm and desire in LotR right now...it's newer so I guess it is sort of understandable, but they took on the desire to try to tackle two big name games at once, so it isnt our fault if they are having a hard time doing it, but we do pay the price for it. Still, what can we do about that? Basically nothing. We can continue to play to fund the game we enjoy (and sadly also fund a form of service we are unhappy with) or we can stop playing and potentially threaten the very existence of the game we enjoy, all the while maintaining the same form of service either way. They seem to either not have the manpower to accomplish what the players would like to see, or they do not have the desire. Which is true, I don't know but they have been showing little effort to assume the desire is there. Regardless, I still play and don't really care anymore. Turbine's own actions will determine the success or failure with DDO. If it fails, then I will be looking for a new good...for now though it is still running and I play.

[Mercules]

Show stopper bugs, or bugs that happen to annoy the GPM/VP/Random Person whose authority is beyond their knowledge.

Ok, maybe I'm a BIT jaded.

But, here's the thing. If they've hit ZBB, then theorhetically the devs should have more time to be posting in here, not less.

Um... no... because at the point of Code Freeze the Developers are fixing the last few bugs. At the point of shipping the Developers are already hard at work on the next version putting in all the things that didn't make it in the previous version.

[In_Like_Flynn]

Success means partnering with your clients. Partnerships are built on communication.

Rule of Acquisition #57: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.

[Beherit_Baphomar]

The Devs cant say anything, coz you people just tear them apart.
The Devs cant say anything, coz you people wont give them a break.
The Devs cant say anything, coz you people take everything to heart.
The Devs cant say anything, coz they are working on the game.
The Devs cant say anything, coz its Atari's job.
The Devs cant say anything, coz they'll get sued by Atari.
The Devs cant say anything, coz they dont want to say something and be quoted on it.


Any other excuses Ive forgotten?

And if the Devs only comment when "its deemed necessary" then by gum LOTR:O must have some serious issues. 35 Dev posts in one weekend? Poor LOTR:O, buggy as all hell....apparently.

[Beherit_Baphomar]

Regardless, I still play and don't really care anymore. Turbine's own actions will determine the success or failure with DDO. If it fails, then I will be looking for a new good...for now though it is still running and I play.

Well said.

[Montrose]

Um... no... because at the point of Code Freeze the Developers are fixing the last few bugs. At the point of shipping the Developers are already hard at work on the next version putting in all the things that didn't make it in the previous version.

I suppose that depends on how much of a product backlog is being maintained and how much feature speccing is happening ahead of dev.

Quite often around the point of code fork it seems there is a bit of down time while the past release is reviewed and future releases are planned.

I could see where with a more proactive approach to planning this time could be minimized. Perhaps that is the way it works at Turbine.

[Mercules]

I could see where with a more proactive approach to planning this time could be minimized. Perhaps that is the way it works at Turbine.

Not sure how they work, but I know here 2.1 goes out in two weeks and they are doing the tech support hand-off(telling us what changed) and going through their TestTracks and seeing what goes in 2.2 and what ends up being pushed back to 2.3+. They solidified about a month ago most of 2.2 now the, "squeeze it in between this and that" decisions get made for the unneeded but nice to have things. Some parts of 2.2 were worked on a week or two ago. I would imagine an MMO trying to provide constant updates would work on much the same time crammed schedule, no matter how slow it seems to us.

[The_Ick]

First off, props to the OP. I think he/she did a very good job of outlining a general frustration that a lot people feel. I am sure that some people will see it as swaying to one side, but all posts have too.

Now onto my feelings. I have been a part of DDO since launch and have always tried to defend or atleast understand Turbine's decisions. BUT, it truly does seem that the flow of information and most importantly turbines perspective has been absent lately. There has been no RECENT talk of what they have planned, what they are working on, how they are progressing on old plans, really anything. The last 2 WDA posts have been sparse at best with little to no justification from Turbine. I understand that they could be working through problems, but we have see more deadline pushbacks and small updates recently then in the past. Something has obviously changed and i think Turbine's perspective would e welcome by the player base.

I can only assume that the DOOM bringers on the forums are making it sound much worse then it actually is (because that is what they do), but without an perspective from Turbine people will take their perspective because it is the only one. Yes, there are lots of people on the forums that will twist and find problems with whatever info Turbine puts out, but that doesn't mean there isn't a group of us that would appreciate it. I think most people would be excited to hear news, future plans, or just about anything from turbine as it relates to the future of DDO.

Please, give us info. We like it here and we want to stay, but people can only justify that for so long if they don't have the future to look towards.

Yes i am sticking around, but no i am not happy with how Turbine is handling the exchange of information.

Just my 2 cp....

[Krell]

I just don't get why if half a week goes by without a dev post, some people freak out. Am I the only one that doesn't equate the amout of dev posts with the perceived amount of development work done or how much the company cares about the game? Its nice they stop by once or twice a week to answer random questions. If some new system or change is rolling out then usually answer a number of questions. That works for me. Let them spend the rest of the time developing .

If people want someone to chat with customers about the direction of the game, possible future updates and changes, or the merits or detractions of peoples suggestions, it should be the game producer or director, not the worker bees. Maybe a weekly thread called questions for the producer should be posted and once a week they can post responses and general thoughts about the game or something. I just don't see that as the job of people producing content or code.

[TechNoFear]

Turbine can not even afford to maintain the main web portal to DDO.

The web page still advertises the 'Searing heights, comming in July'. Last update was over a month ago.

As much as I like this game, I do not think it has much of a future.

I plan enjoy it while it lasts, and try to never purchase a Turbine product again.