mystafyi wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2015 at 8:18pm:



Didn't you hear? Severance has be performing brilliantly according to Ah Prick, whatever that means.

KilgoreTrout wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2015 at 1:19pm:


No.  not really.

DoRayEgon wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2015 at 2:14pm:


That kind of specific information would not normally be publicly released or discernible from a subsidiary inside WB.

If they were looking to justify closing down a product line or division, then maybe.

Some smaller orgns are transparent with their internal reporting to their workforce, but I think Turdbine is too big and too regressive to allow sensitive commercial info into the general workforce.

My suspicion is that the numbers are either made up (unlikely), or from someone with access to that info.  Given Tranq's previous posts - I think it more likely we have an insider who isn't part of the Sev_Pay fanclub?

gumba wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2015 at 10:36pm:

Yet another PERFECT example of the Peter Principle. Severlin trying to assuage the "masses" when he just plain sucks at anything social.

Well done Sev_pay.

Sev, learn a lesson from Dirty Harry and you'll do much better. That lesson is, "A man's got to know his limitations."

gumba wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2015 at 10:36pm:

I thought a little more about this and, honestly, Sev doesn't need to learn the latest new-age, dealing-with-people claptrap.

The best thing for anyone who sets out to communicate with the public, no matter how demanding they might be, is to treat them the way you'd want to be treated. Tell them the truth and, whatever you do, don't tell half-truths or, as I like to call them, "non-lies." Be straight with people and trust them, as a group, to understand what you're trying to do.

Do you think having some hottie doing the Twitch every week instead of tons o'fun would actually bring in that many more people?

Do you think the problem is acquiring new people rather than retaining them after they hit level 4, get all fucked up in the harbour, run with Bigs on a "know it!" quest, can't climb up a ladder, and can't hit anything because they have a dwaraxe in each hand and hop around like bunnies?


These are semi-serious questions.  If you want new people, post some fucking ads.  And make those ads target new people, not people already playing who then go on the forums and exclaim "I'm seeing ads on Facebook!" as if that's indicative of anything other than good AI (irony, thy name is Larry).

I won't argue against eyecandy, but look at the numbers when the default server changes - you can still notice a bump.  There *are* new people coming in, they just don't stay.  At all.  Ever.  Increasing that number tenfold would be great, but they're not going to stick around because some video for an hour a week features boobs.

Probably.  Don't hold me to that.  You guys are still here, after all...

Ah Pook wrote on Jun 4^th, 2015 at 12:31am:


It sure the hell wouldn't hurt. At this point in the game, if Turd-bin actually wanted to increase the layer base, the cost of hiring a big titted girl to bounce in her chair while fumbling through Durks would be negligible compared to a massive advertising campaign.

Hell, shit like that would get more hits on youtube then funny cat videos.

I can't fucking stand watching their weekly videos with fat Jerry's down syndromed face on the screen. 

Ah Pook wrote on Jun 4^th, 2015 at 12:31am:



Attracting new players isn't the primary problem as you identify.  If you have a leaking water storage tank, pouring in more water is not a sustainable solution.
Through word of mouth, they are still getting new players (or lots of us making mule accounts).   

There three prongs that need to be addressed.

1. Slow down the loss of existing customers - understand the reasons why (different groups have different reasons). Losing non-paying FTP accounts is lowest priority.  Losing VIP's and Premium is your biggest concern.

2. Enhance the Quality of game play - ie. QoL fixes - fix the serious and immersion breaking bugs.  Sure they don't make any direct sales, but they minimize people leaving the game and bad mouthing it.

3. Once you have those addressed, then find ways to bring new players in and keep them longer.  Fix the default class paths, make the first ten levels more new player friendly with more solo/small group friendly content, find ways to discourage inexperienced players from trying Elite content on 1st life - lots of things that need to be done to showcase the best of DDO to new players (before they experience the full buggy experience of DDO).

Having some celebs involved with the game would help to restore some coolness to the game and probably get people back.
Find a way to get Ed Greenwood for live stream chats, Vin Diesel, Felicia Day voicing some content - just make it an interesting enhancement without losing focus on the content and DnD experience.

DropBear wrote on Jun 4^th, 2015 at 12:49am:

Agreed on the rest; shit like this makes my neck veins throb.  It can't *possibly* be that hard, can it?  I'd redo that whole thing.

DDO's biggest strength (aside from the quickly-departing ties to pnp) is the build variability.  I'd hope most of us can agree on that.  The quests are ok, the loot blows, but that's the big advantage it has over the competition.

The problem with that is it's *really* easy to get to level 8 or 10 and start dying like a bitch all over the place.  Most of us can go down the feat list now pretty quickly and pick between two or three things, but when you start, it's overwhelming.  The pre-determined path is a great idea, but come on, it's so out of date it's probably just as bad as choosing random shit.

Find some serious builds - Cletus, Sestra, some pdk bard thing, a pure paladin, and just rip them off.  It's interesting when you get weaker in a game - I'm sure lots of us try and do some challenging things...  "Hmm, how about a dual-scimitar blah blah..."  When you first start though, you generally just want to smash shit.

- Destruktonat0r: TWF Barb, max str, whatever.
- Kill-proof: Paladin heavy armour easy-heal con/cha thing.
- Songstabber: Swash with some CC and decent heals.

We don't have to get them to 28, we just have to suck them in past 4 or 5.  Get them to 16, with "ZOMG EPIC" content on the horizon.

DropBear wrote on Jun 4^th, 2015 at 12:49am:


You're goddamn right

HairyO wrote on Jun 4^th, 2015 at 2:02am:


this lies squarely at the feet of the bravery bonus streak

the bravery bonus needs to be removed and that xp dispersed among the difficulty levels of each quest

or the bravery bonus needs to stop being an 'all or nothing' penalty to the streak

Ah Pook wrote on Jun 4^th, 2015 at 12:31am:


Simple fact is that effective spokespeople who are going to successfully promote and and entertain  need to be attractive or charismatic (preferably both), or at the very least they need to be presentable and likable.

As a rule gamers and coders don't need to be, but anyone who is going to be in the public eye has to make a effort.

Fat Jerry was originally brought in to moderate and run the community interface, his emergence as a public figure was never planned or managed. His experience in small market radio and as a fan make him suitable for pod-casts, and a possible bridge between Turbine and the fans. Yet even before he started showing up in videos that capacity to "connect" was all but gone in the wake of his moderation behavior, and how he allowed himself to be perceived. 

Like the larger population Jerry is not a aesthetically pleasing presence on video, at the risk of being cruel I will even go farther and say that Jerry's physical appearance and mannerisms in unguarded moments in recordings is a touch repulsive.

The world is not fair, attractive and charismatic people make better PR, and community relations personnel. It doesn't have to be a smoking hot young woman or even a woman at all, any male presenter that made a effort to represent Turbine in a professional way and convey a likable air would be a improvement over the current situation, Jerry Snook hurts Turbines bottom line.

And it goes beyond Jerry's physical appearance and mannerism issues, all his moderation mistakes, inadvertent insults, heavy handed tactics, blatant lies, failure to understand the game basics and legendary inconsistency of application make it impossible for people to separate Jerry from his moderation when he attempts to do PR.

The ideal situation for Turbine would be to have a competent community manager who is very knowledgeable about the game (or appears to be) that is a voice only heard in Text and known by their moderation and sense of humor rather than their face or voice.

Working in concert with that community manager would be a game-face, a active personality for the game who is attractive or charismatic and able to covey a sense of being a player or fan. Yes this is all rather calculated, but it has worked for a lot of games and it makes it easy for players to have a proxy investment in that face. For the Company, the face is a excellent buffer, the face-type provides updates, promotion, and entertainment. At the same time no one ever expects them to have on the spot answers to the type of tough questions that torpedo Fat Jerry and Sev_Pay on a regular basis because they "should know". Tough question? "oh wow! I don't know, I guess we will have to ask the team about that and let people know in next weeks twitch-stream.... yada yada yada... "

This isn't rocket science, games and cable channels, youtube channels have been running these types of personalities with great success for years to promote games, films, comics. G4 practically made it gospel for quite a while.

And talking heads that don't repulse? they come cheap, very cheap, bright-young things both male and female who need experience, exposure, and references are churned out by university media studies, and broadcasting programs, year after year. A smart company will keep a steady turn-over and year or two to maximize the effectiveness of that type of spokesperson.

Alex DeLarge wrote on Jun 4^th, 2015 at 2:30am:


This exactly Alex.
You cannot expect needs to be scroll casting Haste every 30 secs, Divine Might every 60 secs and activating half a dozen other action boosts and buffs every combat.

The build should be simple but effective.
Let them elect to have feats and enhancements selected for them, but explain it.
Allow them to override if they want.  Most won't.
The list of completely redundant feats and useless/broken enhancements is a major distraction.

Not that it is needed, but you could have gear drops at level 6 and 12 like Iconics get at 15.
This means newb players will at least have competitive gear, but can get better stuff from quests.  Call it a safety net for gear.

None of this is a lot of work, and as Ah Pook said, give them interesting names and it will add some flavour to the game as well.
The objective has to be to get them into the upper Heroics.
The casual difficulty is important for this as it allows new players to experience the content with little threat, then they can go back and play it on Normal or Hard. 
While Casual is scorned by vets, I recommend really new players to use it.  It really does ease the learning curve particularly as the difficulty steps up around lvls 8-12.

This stuff isn't brain surgery, nor is it new, why haven't they done any of this? There has been so many producers, yet none have sort to do anything different.   Are the internal update deadlines that mandatory that they can't see the forest for the trees?

Q:
DropBear wrote on Jun 4^th, 2015 at 4:29am:


A:
Incompetence.