Rena Senn
Resurrection Ventures
Un.Bound
108
   |
Posted - 2014.07.16 20:23:00 -
[1] - Quote
CCP Greyscale wrote:
- We don't want to have skills that are as in-practice mandatory as the old Material Efficiency skill in the Industry skillset
Problem is, the skill was mandatory. For all the people who already trained it, which is just about everyone who seriously devoted themselves to industry, having that skill forced upon them in its new form will still be mandatory.
CCP Greyscale wrote:
- skills are supposed to be about specialization, not about jumping through hoops
As above, people have already jumped through hoops. Not refunding the SP is only going to force industrialists and bazaar traders to keep jumping through more hoops by playing SP catchup and re-adjusting sale values for a now far less useful skill. Skills are also supposed to be about player choice, not retroactively enforcing unwanted specialization.
CCP Greyscale wrote:
- we dislike skillpoint reassignment as the act of reassignment incrementally devalues the perceived value of skillpoints accumulated over time
Repurposing skills into less worthy iterations also devalues the perceived value of skillpoints over time, especially when CCP is sending the message that any SP you already invested may suddenly change in operation and hence value with every new patch.
CCP Greyscale wrote:
- We are in any case too close to the release to implement a refund at this time, and that is a non-disputable statement of fact precluding us from doing so even if we wanted to (which we don't)
Even so, this still demonstrates a highly flawed development and release schedule that did not properly accommodate for testing and customer feedback. Saying "We've already spent too much effort accelerating this car to 160 mph and it's going crash in the next minute regardless of whether we wanted to slow down or not (which we don't)" still makes you a reckless driver.
In short, an iterative and incremental development model is not a carte blanche excuse to do less planning and be more callous towards preventable product faults. Regardless of how you've shaken up your content release schedule to make it 'more agile' or what have you, if the result is a loss of customer satisfaction, then you're doing it wrong. |
Rena Senn
Resurrection Ventures
Un.Bound
109
|
Posted - 2014.07.16 20:52:00 -
[2] - Quote
Querns wrote:Rena Senn wrote:CCP Greyscale wrote:
- we dislike skillpoint reassignment as the act of reassignment incrementally devalues the perceived value of skillpoints accumulated over time
Repurposing skills into less worthy iterations also devalues the perceived value of skillpoints over time, especially when CCP is sending the message that any SP you already invested may suddenly change in operation and hence value with every new patch. You speak of this as if it was a new thing. This has been the general contract between player and MMO designer since time immemorial. Things get nerfed. A line of acquisition or skill in which occurred heavy investment is suddenly for naught. There are precious few ways to make meaningful change in an MMO without this sort of potential.
Of course it's not new, but it is hypocritical when CCP is using this line of reasoning to justify doing the exact opposite. If you don't want to devalue the perceived value of skillpoints accumulated over time, then don't rework old spent skillpoints in a way that makes them completely devalued. |