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PD -> Communal Feeling in ED (8/27/2011 12:43:11)
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Note: Posted with Permission from Lord Barrius
First, I'll start with a Parable...
A Powerful King once sat on a throne. The King before him, gave him his military knowledge and his knowledge of the basic sciences and politics. But he didn't teach him manners. This backfired in the end. When the new king took his rightful throne, he thought he was better than everyone else in the royal court. He dismissed his advisers, lawmen, and his even his own treasury minister. He thought he could do it all. He was a rich King after all. Because he ran the show all by himself, he quickly saw the workload he was given because he vowed to do it all himself. All the laws, all the financial papers, all the royal decrees. But he didn't care. He was the king.
He carelessly raised taxes to the people, made the wealthy tax exempt, conducted public terror displays to show his authority. He conducted military expeditions in an attempt to subdue more people into his realm. He even installed a Harem house in his own palace. He thought what he was doing was good.
But what was really happening was that the king was neglecting the kingdom. The peasants rioted. The Nobles gave threats of joining the enemy kings. The Army threatened to overthrow him in a bloody coup. But he didn't care. He was the king. And he had money, so he indulged on his birthrights and his lavish possessions, complaining if he has anything with a quality less than "Royalty". But as he continued to engage in his reckless and lavish lifestyle, his kingdom was on the verge of collapse. The neighboring warlords were conquering his territory acre by acre. The people started to get REALLY angry by that point. Soon, the people killed the king in his bed, but it was too late; The kingdom was in shambles, and everything was ruined.
How you think that is relevant to the topic I'm going to talk about today... You figure that out.
Either way, there are a lot of problems in Epicduel. I don't think that we can blame any single group of people out there. In fact, It's sort of like Racism (Except it applies to certain groups of players, or people who deride player classes other than their own class).
Now I don't know about you, but the way this system has been inculcated is inherently player-ist/class-ist. It is inherently made to cause inequality, therefore a mass amount of social problems.
You're probably going to deny this. But tell me...
Why DO we have the varium and non-varium gap? Unless the system created this deliberately, this should not exist. But it does. To deny this is to deny that Varium and its inherent advantages do not exist.
But... to every effect, there is an cause. I don't think that it was anything to do with the Greed of the developers. No. It was far from that. Rather, I'l going to shift my ground and focus to my admonishment not to the staff; But to the players.
When I mean player, I mean YOU. Yes YOU. The Player YOU. You whom are behind that computer/laptop monitor reading this sentence right now.
I'll be truthful and cogent about this: It's the player's fault. Not the Developer's fault.
It has to do with the belief of entitlements and rewards of status. I'll give an affluent example: Founders get Founder Armor, continual buffs, Beta Weapons, Badges, and more. We demand our benefits to the point where it stops actual and necessary reforms from taking place. We ask for more and more and more. It's just becoming mindless begging. Then after we get our entitlements, we still cry that we've gotten too little. The cycle does not stop. Our pride makes it so that it becomes harder and harder to admit we've been wrong the entire time.
Now understand that that was just an example. In fact, I myself an a Founder. However, I have never asked for an entitlement. I have superseded that stereotype. It's not anything to do with founders. In fact, it had nothing to do with just founders. They're just one part of the collective unit actually ruining the game. the burden of the actual problem lies not in one group. We try to make it that easy. It's not like that. We've made the problem that convoluted.
The problem rather lies with the entire community.
To have this be more understandable, let me talk about a little back-story.
A long time ago, Epicduel used to be a small student project by Jonathan Duran and Bernie Schmalzried (Alongside with Bigtuna) at Youngstown University. They Graduated together (They are now both 26-27 year old), and from there, Epicduel grew. At first they were a small time gaming company in something called Epic Inventions. They grew at a normal rate during Epicduel Alpha, which was in February 2009 to some time in Late 2009. Then, Artix Entertainment, quickly expanding, acquired Epicduel in December of that year. They grew REALLY fast that time. The rest is pretty much history.
But there is an important part that I mentioned. I said "small time". Now... back before Artix entertainment came into the picture, Epicduel was a small company with no fewer than 1000 active players. Because of this, the developers didn't receive high expectations from the players. Yes, they pushed themselves anyways. And yes, there were high expectations, but there's a difference between high and achievable, and high and unreasonable.
On the meanwhile, on the Artix Entertainment front, the developers are working in sweaty fashion to churn up regular releases every single week. This highly differs from the side of Epicduel, whose casual base does not require weekly updates to satisfy players. It doesn't. When AE acquired Epicduel, Titan had to adopt a much larger family of players with greater expectations. They had to adjust to the schedule - Regular releases with regular updates. It was fast paced for John and Bernie. They couldn't keep up with everyone's requests. There were just too many of us for them to handle.
People from Artix entertainment get MAD when they don't get what they want. I am admitting I have done this a few times in the past. We all have. To say you haven't... you're a liar. And a big fat one too.
We have to understand that the Player's expectations have doubled, but our developing staff has not. Neither have their resources to handle things.
A thing I do not get the most is that we the Players say that AE ruined Epicduel. Specifically the players. But... let me ask you this...
How many of us did not come from AE's playerbase? That's right. Almost nobody. And to those who fit into the exception clause... well.. You can't just complain in order to get things done. Do something to change stuff. I'm not sure how this works. We're players from Artix entertainment... but we also say that Players from Artix entertainment ruined Epicduel.
But at the same time, most (if not all by now) of the players are from Epicduel. And when we declare that "<insertspecialinterestsgrouphere> is the best", this is pretty confusing. The only logical non-obfusticated conclusion that I can think of from that is that we ARE the problem. But then this contradicts that thought that the certain interest group in question is the best. Unless... it had something to do with self-pride rather than legitimate claim....
But in all seriousness, I could probably go to the ED GD, and find a thread that had something to do with promoting a group, demoting a group, or even something about entitlements. It gives me great pain that things like this still happen even with Lord Barrius's potent reforms. It hurts me dearly.
A lot of this can be solved if many of the balance problems are solved. That side is getting minor progress, but this side is much more different. Let me say this...
There are NO "Gamma Player Problems", or "Founder Problems" or "Delta Player Problems" or "Varium Problems" or " Non-Varium Problems" or any other "Group Problems". They are HUMAN problem and BEHAVIOR problems, conditioned by your player environment.
In all reality, the reason people act as they do is because they were conditioned. They are not inherently responsible for their problems. And no, I'm not dodging their sense of responsibility. I'm not defending them either. The point is that they act as they do now because you made them that way.
A Delta player does not learn the Game vernacular unless they see someone from an earlier player generation do it. They don't learn "f4f" until they become aware of it either through seeing others do it, or by seeing the feature through surprise. They don't know about it until contacted through a specific medium. The Medium is the environment. They don't see what overpowered is until they see someone rambling about a self-perceived balance problem(s). They are not inherently bred to be the "Bane of us all". You made them that way, so it's really a reflection of what you were like in general. People don't rationally copy builds until they are conditioned to see how good it is.
There's a whole medium of things that happen because of their environment. And the Players... well... we ARE the environment. If you want to actually change the game for the better, start with the conditioned environment. I don't expect people to become more desirable until the environment itself is changed to foster all people on an equal social ground.
And another thing I'd like to start talking about it the fact of money. People really do not know how the process in a game works - The money you buy for AE is the money they use to further game development. It is NOT an inherent birthright to more power. In fact, they shouldn't even give people rewards. It's pretty selfish to demand something you do not deserve. Money itself has an arbitrary value, so no "But I paid for it it's worth $X dollars!". The items you use to buy special items is just symbolically a thing that shows you were actually crazy enough to invest in the game itself. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a fun game full of content rather than a one ran by profit motive, player embezzlement, and greed on an acceptable and systematic scale.
Additionally, I'd like to explain how Inflation in the game was created by players. When Frostbane came out, it was the ultimate weapon of which people wanted to have. Because it was the ultimate, if people found weapons any less powerful than it, then they wouldn't buy it. The result? It created a dangerous situation for ED. Understand that before this, no weapon before it was ever that powerful. Frostbane stepped up the game many times more. It made a point of no return.
If we don't recognize the selfish and stupid pride inculcated within groups of people... I do not know what to say. Essentially, after the point of which Frostbane was released into the game, all future rares were "blessed" with the "Birthright" of "All Rares Should be equally if not more powerful than the last series of rare weapons".
You see, it's not so much the developer's fault that the game's balance got ruined than it is the players whom are inevitably affected and reflect the environment they live upon. In fact, it's much more the player's fault that the balance got ruined. Because of these greedy players, ED is now the epitome of modern capitalism: Mindless, reckless spending, low quality products, poor productivity, Harmful competition, inherent Bigotry, and a dis-reflection of the well-being of the state of happiness within the community. If it really came to the point where Game Theory prevailed in the end... we are truly forsakened.
If we fail to recognize that the players are more at fault than the actual developers are... I wish to stop playing ED and take no part in it's ailing state. At all.
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