So I have been reading the forums and trying to stay informed on the state of pox. However all I seem to find is the typical bashing, crying, and relics who think they know everything, or can win an argument with a condescending sarcastic reply. Whereas before I would liken this to trolling or people not having anything better to do it seems to be coming part of normal accepted behavior. What happen to all the post where people were actually trying to give positive feedback for the game and make a positive difference in the community. What happen to whiners being flamed instead of being fed. Have we truly degraded to a worst community than LoL? I don't believe so. DOG through design or misguided effort have managed to redirect the attention of the community. I support a player council to a degree. However all it has done is directed the blame for poor balance at players and members of the community. It has removed the bulls-eye from guys who design and develop the game and placed well meaning zealots (in most cases) in their place. If balance was truly the player councils main reason for existence shouldn't there not be a secret PC forum. It would in view of the public. So that ideas could be discussed. Oh wait...better yet the faction forums that already exist could used. Then said council member for each faction could post an idea and get feedback from the community and fellow faction supporters. This would give better clarity into decisions about factions AND allow faction supporters to help mold the direction of the faction. The game needs to get back to identities and retract all this faction bonus lending through spells, relics, etc. In addition shouldn't the final decision always come down to the guys getting paid to develop the game. They should have a baseline for balance and the direction they want to progress. Each decision should be leveraged against this and then decided upon. We had one revamp....I would say a total balance and faction revamp/review is in order. We all want pox to be successful. The community cares enough to continually support and show attention to the game. Lets get this ship course corrected and sailing back to the promise lands. C'MON MAN!
You've been gone a while. You missed all the well meaning threads from relics of this game. There were threads with a great deal of thought and effort put in, with substantial amounts of community input and discussion, with positive solutions oriented whatnot. Then nothing happened. For months. People become less inclined to offer up their time and effort when it gets completely ignored.
Well then how the firk did the game get to this point. Why are faction lines still blurred? Wth is AA doing running amok? How can all the "good" feedback be ignored and kf still exist in its current state. Am I missing something painfully obvious? Its not just KF...but they are the easiest to point out. Seriously.
The game got to this point by Gedden doing his own thing. He got the council to help with balance but most of what they say gets ignored, thats why many of the original council members left the council and stopped playing the game. So now the current council is basically the thrift shop equivalant (Not that that's a bad thing)who got brought in because the first choices quit and some of them have questionable change suggestions (However without knowing how many of the changes are actually theirs that goes through, it's hard to say if they are doing a good or bad job). I also feel that the Greens are not capable of coming up with appropriate nerfs or buffs due to their knowledge about the game being years out of date and they have a skill level similar to that of a brand new player (AA being the prime example of a terrible nerf decision).
Regarding the council, I think the idea of it is sound, however it takes time to get to the point where you can suggest good changes. I know a lot of my early suggestions were bad. With people quitting and being replaced, and with the low number of patches now, that process is slowed down a lot.
Gedden I know you dont normally respond to forum banter. However if you read this can you please give us a taste of the new direction of pox, balance, and factions. I dont need a complicated answer. I dont even need something incredibly indepth. Just a reassurance that you understand that the current state is unacceptable for balance and that we are going back to faction lines. I have stuck with you like a few others since the start of this game. Personally it was GD. I will remain loyal. All I ask is you bring pox back to glory. GO BACK TO BASICS. That's what made this game great. Give us faction lines! Give us a DoW that has meaning.
Do you review suggestions made by your fellow council members? Do you guys collectively discuss ideas. How did so much go unchecked?
I believe Senshu mentioned in a Q&A at one point that Gedden doesn't look at the forums at all. That Senshu passes along what he deems important, but ultimately that Senshu acts as a buffer between us and Gedden.
That's probably for the most part good. But I find it incredibly hard to believe that he never looks....ever......I mean cmon man!
Of course, and especially with overpowered stuff there will be a lot of opinions. With buffs to shoebox stuff it becomes more difficult to judge ideas since you are not used to seeing the rune in play, and how it looks on paper can be deceptive.
I will say, having seen things from a players point of and now internally from a staff point of view - the good will is all there, and sometimes people forget just how many very good things that have happened to pox since DoG took back over. until recently Pox had Gedden doing all the programming and design, cortices doing all the web and server stuff and Senshu is still doing the job of 2-3 people and it was simply too much to ask for a small team to focus on every aspect of the game. so DoG have focused mainly on improving the NUX and rune accessibility since they took back over as a long term strategy to help pox grow - because of this PvP players didn't get as much focus and feel a bit neglected, which is understandable. Now that DoG have hired two new programmers things are looking very positive, once we release the expansion, we will be back to having a regular expansion/mid term cycle which means tons of new content for you guys and bugs will surely be getting resolved again!
While that's all good and dandy, it hasn't really addressed the main problem for everyone which is balance and how regular balance patches have been. Can you say how often we will be seeing balance patches once the new content is released or how effective these patches will be?
Once we are back on a regular expansion cycle, you should see things run much more smoothly as you'd expect them to be.
