Boss: - Can we release the new battle mechanism?
Devs: - Sorry, we made some tests and it is so bugged. Release delayed... I would say 2 more weeks (yeah, boss will believe me, but in fact it will take over 2 months)
Boss: - Can we release that new character?
Devs: - Sorry, we have dozens of bugs to fix in the current available characters. The new character development is delayed...
Boss: - And about that new scoundrel event?
Devs: - Hmmm... delayed!
Boss: - So, what can we release as new content? We need more content asap!!!
Devs: - I have an idea! Let's make gears harder to farm to keep our players occupied and release another Yoda event.
Boss: - Can we release the new battle mechanism?
Devs: - Sorry, we made some tests and it is so bugged. Release delayed... I would say 2 more weeks (yeah, boss will believe me, but in fact it will take over 2 months)
Boss: - Can we release that new character?
Devs: - Sorry, we have dozens of bugs to fix in the current available characters. The new character development is delayed...
Boss: - And about that new scoundrel event?
Devs: - Hmmm... delayed!
Boss: - So, what can we release as new content? We need more content asap!!!
Devs: - I have an idea! Let's make gears harder to farm to keep our players occupied and release another Yoda event.
Boss: Great ideia! Make it happen.
We're all puppets being strung a long for a jerky ride!
Qui-Gon Jinn’s rank 8 leader ability has been changed to “Jedi allies have +25 Speed and gain Potency Up for 1 turn at the beginning of each encounter.”
Gonna be very helpful for old ben. Got to wait another level cap tho.
Can confirm that's an enormous lie..... I spend 200 a day and may pull 4 single gear pieces, you're on crack!
For the Mk 5 CEC Fusion Furnace: I already grinded the 50 hair dryers and 15 of the disks before the update note today so used the crystals to get 5 more of the disks.
For the Mk 5 Arakyd Droid Caller: I already 6 of the flashlight things so spent the crystals to get the remaining 15.
For the Mk 7 Nubian Security Scanner: just need energy to grind the materials.
Afte reading update note, makes m" wanna hit uninstall button and avoid any ea product for the rest of my....errr gaming career (just fyi almost typo ed as carrier lol)
I never farm the 50 gear pieces I prefer to just star toons and stuff I have always hated gearing toons up so once they're in purple I stop and let the gear stack its self up. So when I see the green + I just go oooooo I can gear him yay and thats that.
Im going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that all those 50 things are going to be in the challenges and that will make everything better. (Happy thought lets just prey)
I do much the same but I'm also know that the mark 4 purple keyboard is in the challenges and you only need 20 for the gear and I'm still short hundreds of them to gear up characters waiting for it. If you need 50 per and are waiting for challenges then good luck.
Devs. You see this thread? This is your players screaming at you to stop ruining the game. You should listen
Is it any different from before though?
The 'Do you want a level cap raise yet' thread was 90% didn't want a cap raise.
CG/EA has not once responded to the nerfing of the Credit events, it was supposed to be an improvement.
Everything EA does is not to satisfy the playerbase, but their wallets.
Devs. You see this thread? This is your players screaming at you to stop ruining the game. You should listen
Is it any different from before though?
The 'Do you want a level cap raise yet' thread was 90% didn't want a cap raise.
CG/EA has not once responded to the nerfing of the Credit events, it was supposed to be an improvement.
Everything EA does is not to satisfy the playerbase, but their wallets.
LESSONS UNLEARNED
What did EA do (or not do) that it managed to achieve what none of the previous WCIA champs — Comcast, AIG, BP, Halliburton, RIAA, Countrywide — have ever been able to?
Like many other competitors in the WCIA bracket, EA has repeatedly failed at three core requirements of running a consumer-friendly business:
1. Provide a Product People Want and Like
Yes, EA has games that sell in the millions, a number of which are well-reviewed and some of which are genuinely loved. But the company also has a history of pumping out products, or rushing games through development, in order to cash in on a brand name. Just in recent years, there have been several notable examples. Dragon Age 2, while it has its defenders, was seen by many as an inferior cash-in that would have benefited from a longer development schedule. Likewise, the sequels for Dead Space have been been similarly derided by some fans of the original.
The most obvious example was Mass Effect 3, which had the bad fortune of being released in the weeks leading up to the 2012 WCIA tournament. Fans of the first two games, who had invested large chunks of time and money, were left with an empty feeling after reaching the obviously rushed endgame. Detractors accused EA of pushing to game out too early and focusing too much of its energy on the new multiplayer side of the game, since that promised the company a revenue stream in the form of in-game microtransactions for users who want to acquire the many characters and upgrades. The reaction to ME 3 was so negative and so widely publicized, EA was compelled to release a slightly more satisfactory ending only a few months later.
Similarly, the recent release of SimCity 5 came with the news that users would need to be connected to the Internet in order to simply play by one’s self. The company claims it is not a form of anti-piracy digital rights management (though not many people believe that), but instead is about “realiz[ing] a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.” Translated, that means EA wants you to always be online so you’ll be encouraged to buy things from the in-game store.
This ballsy decision on EA’s part sets a precedent that the company will surely follow in future games, meaning that consumers will have to choose between the game they want to play and the company that requires them to always be online, whether it’s to monitor their use or sell them new outfits for characters.
“EA has become a company that releases mediocre products created by faceless teams,” wrote Penny Arcade’s Ben Kuchera in a story about the WCIA finals. “There is no real vision at work, no grand design. Just the idea that free-to-play games and microtransactions are the wave of the future, or at least they better be, because none of the company’s $60 boxed releases are finding much success with either critics or gamers.”
2. Sell Your Product at a Reasonable Price
Like movies, video games require a large amount of money and the efforts of many talented individuals. And so games are going to cost an amount of money that will allow the publisher to make a profit. But the largest video game publishers, including EA, have been accused of refusing to compete on pricing, meaning that consumers pay $60 for a new game because that’s what the studios tells us it will cost. By the same token, EA’s deals with sports leagues like the NFL mean that no other competitor is free to offer a competing game that either offers more content for the same price, or similar content for a lower price.
Then there are the free-to-play games that EA makes such noise about. They may be “free” to play, but EA openly admits that the goal of creating these games is to nickel-and-dime users into paying for in-game purchases. The company’s CFO recently stated that EA intends to include these microtransactions in all its free-to-play games.
Beyond any possible price-fixing or consumer chiseling, EA is making money by allowing advertisers into its games — even the ones that people pay a lot of money for. Most recently, people who purchased SimCity 5 were treated to their first piece of extra content — a de facto ad for the Nissan Leaf. So EA gets paid, while its customers get to download an interactive advertisement.
3. Support the Products You Sell
EA made a royal mess of the SimCity release by failing to foresee that the people who would buy the game — and who would, per the game’s design, be required to connect to the EA servers — might actually want to play at some point in the week after making their purchase. But that’s just the latest in EA’s long history of annoying its customer base with bad support.
Customers who paid full price for games, or who spent or saved huge piles of in-game cash in EA’s online products, would suddenly find a problem with their accounts, but attempts to rectify the problem — or even get a response from EA — would go unheeded.
In the wake of last year’s WCIA win, EA’s head of customer service told CNET that big changes were coming for the company and that it would be improving how it responds to customers and adding call centers to better handle things. And yet, just the other day a Consumerist reader in Europe sent us his chat transcript with an EA rep that shows the company still has a long way to go.
The customer had a simple question about linking an Origin account to his Xbox gamer tag, but the EA rep could only tell the customer that nothing could be done over chat and that he would need to call a customer support number to discuss the problem. Making matters worse, though the customer was in Europe, the EA rep provided him with a phone number for EA’s U.S. support office.
The support issue is only going to become an even bigger concern as EA includes more ways of making in-game purchases and requires Internet access just to play games. Each transaction is a chance for an error, and one server crash could mean millions of people left with useless games until someone slaps a shoe against the side of the server.
SEALING THE DEAL
Perhaps EA is secretly of the school of thought that there is no such thing as bad publicity. That’s the only way to explain the decision by Peter Moore, the company’s chief operating officer, to release one of the most defensive, deflective, non-apology apologies we’ve ever seen.
In his misguided, misinformed missive, Moore says things like “we can do better,” while at the same time attempting to put the blame for its WCIA success on a mysterious, unseen cabal of **** right-wing blog commenters and people who don’t like whichever football player(s) are on the cover of Madden NFL.
“I have a feeling that a rather pronounced enthusiasm for nickel-and-diming might have caused a slightly more elevated level of dissatisfaction with customers,” writes CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk.
Moore’s note also marked the second time EA has tried to deflect criticism by pointing to previous winners of the Worst Company tournament, as if to mock consumers who dared to express their discontent with a mere video game publisher.
Make no mistake: Video games are big business. A company like EA — and Activision, Ubisoft, Nintendo, and Sony, etc. — merits just as much scrutiny as any other business that plays a leading role in a multibillion-dollar industry. It’s only a fractured, antiquated public perception that video games are somehow frivolous holdovers from childhood that allows gamers to be abused and taken advantage of by the very people who supply them the games they play.
“Until EA stops sucking the blood out of games in order to make uninspiring sequels, or at least until they begin caring about how much gamers hate their lack of respect for our money and intelligence, this is going to continue,” writes Penny Arcade’s Kuchera. “We don’t hate them because we’re ****, we hate them because they destroy companies we love. We hate them because they release poor games. We hate them because they claim our hate doesn’t matter as long as we give them our money.”
Instead of deflecting, we ask the higher-ups at EA to reflect on the following question:
When we live in an era marked by massive oil spills, faulty foreclosures by bad banks, and rampant consolidation in the airline and telecom industry, what does it say about EA’s business practices that so many people have — for the second year in a row — come out to hand it the title of Worst Company In America?
The whole thing is like they are trying to alienate the player base. There is nothing to look forward to in this entire patch. They should have just held off on it till they had some actual content to go with it.
While I can't share exact details yet, know that there will be more ways to acquire gear in the near future.
This is common sense to 90% of the human race, but if you can't roll out the changes that make it possible to get gear then don't change the gear requirements.
DON'T ROLL OUT CHANGES THAT NEED OTHER CHANGES THAT ARN'T READY YET!
Big dilemma here. Should i use energy to grind gears which will require more after update or should i keep them so they will be used for xp increase? I had enough equipment to craft mk 6 nubian design tech until yesterday but i used them for ewok elder. What a bad timing
LESSONS UNLEARNED
What did EA do (or not do) that it managed to achieve what none of the previous WCIA champs — Comcast, AIG, BP, Halliburton, RIAA, Countrywide — have ever been able to?
Like many other competitors in the WCIA bracket, EA has repeatedly failed at three core requirements of running a consumer-friendly business:
1. Provide a Product People Want and Like
Yes, EA has games that sell in the millions, a number of which are well-reviewed and some of which are genuinely loved. But the company also has a history of pumping out products, or rushing games through development, in order to cash in on a brand name. Just in recent years, there have been several notable examples. Dragon Age 2, while it has its defenders, was seen by many as an inferior cash-in that would have benefited from a longer development schedule. Likewise, the sequels for Dead Space have been been similarly derided by some fans of the original.
The most obvious example was Mass Effect 3, which had the bad fortune of being released in the weeks leading up to the 2012 WCIA tournament. Fans of the first two games, who had invested large chunks of time and money, were left with an empty feeling after reaching the obviously rushed endgame. Detractors accused EA of pushing to game out too early and focusing too much of its energy on the new multiplayer side of the game, since that promised the company a revenue stream in the form of in-game microtransactions for users who want to acquire the many characters and upgrades. The reaction to ME 3 was so negative and so widely publicized, EA was compelled to release a slightly more satisfactory ending only a few months later.
Similarly, the recent release of SimCity 5 came with the news that users would need to be connected to the Internet in order to simply play by one’s self. The company claims it is not a form of anti-piracy digital rights management (though not many people believe that), but instead is about “realiz[ing] a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.” Translated, that means EA wants you to always be online so you’ll be encouraged to buy things from the in-game store.
This ballsy decision on EA’s part sets a precedent that the company will surely follow in future games, meaning that consumers will have to choose between the game they want to play and the company that requires them to always be online, whether it’s to monitor their use or sell them new outfits for characters.
“EA has become a company that releases mediocre products created by faceless teams,” wrote Penny Arcade’s Ben Kuchera in a story about the WCIA finals. “There is no real vision at work, no grand design. Just the idea that free-to-play games and microtransactions are the wave of the future, or at least they better be, because none of the company’s $60 boxed releases are finding much success with either critics or gamers.”
2. Sell Your Product at a Reasonable Price
Like movies, video games require a large amount of money and the efforts of many talented individuals. And so games are going to cost an amount of money that will allow the publisher to make a profit. But the largest video game publishers, including EA, have been accused of refusing to compete on pricing, meaning that consumers pay $60 for a new game because that’s what the studios tells us it will cost. By the same token, EA’s deals with sports leagues like the NFL mean that no other competitor is free to offer a competing game that either offers more content for the same price, or similar content for a lower price.
Then there are the free-to-play games that EA makes such noise about. They may be “free” to play, but EA openly admits that the goal of creating these games is to nickel-and-dime users into paying for in-game purchases. The company’s CFO recently stated that EA intends to include these microtransactions in all its free-to-play games.
Beyond any possible price-fixing or consumer chiseling, EA is making money by allowing advertisers into its games — even the ones that people pay a lot of money for. Most recently, people who purchased SimCity 5 were treated to their first piece of extra content — a de facto ad for the Nissan Leaf. So EA gets paid, while its customers get to download an interactive advertisement.
3. Support the Products You Sell
EA made a royal mess of the SimCity release by failing to foresee that the people who would buy the game — and who would, per the game’s design, be required to connect to the EA servers — might actually want to play at some point in the week after making their purchase. But that’s just the latest in EA’s long history of annoying its customer base with bad support.
Customers who paid full price for games, or who spent or saved huge piles of in-game cash in EA’s online products, would suddenly find a problem with their accounts, but attempts to rectify the problem — or even get a response from EA — would go unheeded.
In the wake of last year’s WCIA win, EA’s head of customer service told CNET that big changes were coming for the company and that it would be improving how it responds to customers and adding call centers to better handle things. And yet, just the other day a Consumerist reader in Europe sent us his chat transcript with an EA rep that shows the company still has a long way to go.
The customer had a simple question about linking an Origin account to his Xbox gamer tag, but the EA rep could only tell the customer that nothing could be done over chat and that he would need to call a customer support number to discuss the problem. Making matters worse, though the customer was in Europe, the EA rep provided him with a phone number for EA’s U.S. support office.
The support issue is only going to become an even bigger concern as EA includes more ways of making in-game purchases and requires Internet access just to play games. Each transaction is a chance for an error, and one server crash could mean millions of people left with useless games until someone slaps a shoe against the side of the server.
SEALING THE DEAL
Perhaps EA is secretly of the school of thought that there is no such thing as bad publicity. That’s the only way to explain the decision by Peter Moore, the company’s chief operating officer, to release one of the most defensive, deflective, non-apology apologies we’ve ever seen.
In his misguided, misinformed missive, Moore says things like “we can do better,” while at the same time attempting to put the blame for its WCIA success on a mysterious, unseen cabal of **** right-wing blog commenters and people who don’t like whichever football player(s) are on the cover of Madden NFL.
“I have a feeling that a rather pronounced enthusiasm for nickel-and-diming might have caused a slightly more elevated level of dissatisfaction with customers,” writes CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk.
Moore’s note also marked the second time EA has tried to deflect criticism by pointing to previous winners of the Worst Company tournament, as if to mock consumers who dared to express their discontent with a mere video game publisher.
Make no mistake: Video games are big business. A company like EA — and Activision, Ubisoft, Nintendo, and Sony, etc. — merits just as much scrutiny as any other business that plays a leading role in a multibillion-dollar industry. It’s only a fractured, antiquated public perception that video games are somehow frivolous holdovers from childhood that allows gamers to be abused and taken advantage of by the very people who supply them the games they play.
“Until EA stops sucking the blood out of games in order to make uninspiring sequels, or at least until they begin caring about how much gamers hate their lack of respect for our money and intelligence, this is going to continue,” writes Penny Arcade’s Kuchera. “We don’t hate them because we’re ****, we hate them because they destroy companies we love. We hate them because they release poor games. We hate them because they claim our hate doesn’t matter as long as we give them our money.”
Instead of deflecting, we ask the higher-ups at EA to reflect on the following question:
When we live in an era marked by massive oil spills, faulty foreclosures by bad banks, and rampant consolidation in the airline and telecom industry, what does it say about EA’s business practices that so many people have — for the second year in a row — come out to hand it the title of Worst Company In America?
What would honestly possess you to type/copy n paste something this long on a mobile game forum?
LESSONS UNLEARNED
What did EA do (or not do) that it managed to achieve what none of the previous WCIA champs — Comcast, AIG, BP, Halliburton, RIAA, Countrywide — have ever been able to?
Like many other competitors in the WCIA bracket, EA has repeatedly failed at three core requirements of running a consumer-friendly business:
1. Provide a Product People Want and Like
Yes, EA has games that sell in the millions, a number of which are well-reviewed and some of which are genuinely loved. But the company also has a history of pumping out products, or rushing games through development, in order to cash in on a brand name. Just in recent years, there have been several notable examples. Dragon Age 2, while it has its defenders, was seen by many as an inferior cash-in that would have benefited from a longer development schedule. Likewise, the sequels for Dead Space have been been similarly derided by some fans of the original.
The most obvious example was Mass Effect 3, which had the bad fortune of being released in the weeks leading up to the 2012 WCIA tournament. Fans of the first two games, who had invested large chunks of time and money, were left with an empty feeling after reaching the obviously rushed endgame. Detractors accused EA of pushing to game out too early and focusing too much of its energy on the new multiplayer side of the game, since that promised the company a revenue stream in the form of in-game microtransactions for users who want to acquire the many characters and upgrades. The reaction to ME 3 was so negative and so widely publicized, EA was compelled to release a slightly more satisfactory ending only a few months later.
Similarly, the recent release of SimCity 5 came with the news that users would need to be connected to the Internet in order to simply play by one’s self. The company claims it is not a form of anti-piracy digital rights management (though not many people believe that), but instead is about “realiz[ing] a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.” Translated, that means EA wants you to always be online so you’ll be encouraged to buy things from the in-game store.
This ballsy decision on EA’s part sets a precedent that the company will surely follow in future games, meaning that consumers will have to choose between the game they want to play and the company that requires them to always be online, whether it’s to monitor their use or sell them new outfits for characters.
“EA has become a company that releases mediocre products created by faceless teams,” wrote Penny Arcade’s Ben Kuchera in a story about the WCIA finals. “There is no real vision at work, no grand design. Just the idea that free-to-play games and microtransactions are the wave of the future, or at least they better be, because none of the company’s $60 boxed releases are finding much success with either critics or gamers.”
2. Sell Your Product at a Reasonable Price
Like movies, video games require a large amount of money and the efforts of many talented individuals. And so games are going to cost an amount of money that will allow the publisher to make a profit. But the largest video game publishers, including EA, have been accused of refusing to compete on pricing, meaning that consumers pay $60 for a new game because that’s what the studios tells us it will cost. By the same token, EA’s deals with sports leagues like the NFL mean that no other competitor is free to offer a competing game that either offers more content for the same price, or similar content for a lower price.
Then there are the free-to-play games that EA makes such noise about. They may be “free” to play, but EA openly admits that the goal of creating these games is to nickel-and-dime users into paying for in-game purchases. The company’s CFO recently stated that EA intends to include these microtransactions in all its free-to-play games.
Beyond any possible price-fixing or consumer chiseling, EA is making money by allowing advertisers into its games — even the ones that people pay a lot of money for. Most recently, people who purchased SimCity 5 were treated to their first piece of extra content — a de facto ad for the Nissan Leaf. So EA gets paid, while its customers get to download an interactive advertisement.
3. Support the Products You Sell
EA made a royal mess of the SimCity release by failing to foresee that the people who would buy the game — and who would, per the game’s design, be required to connect to the EA servers — might actually want to play at some point in the week after making their purchase. But that’s just the latest in EA’s long history of annoying its customer base with bad support.
Customers who paid full price for games, or who spent or saved huge piles of in-game cash in EA’s online products, would suddenly find a problem with their accounts, but attempts to rectify the problem — or even get a response from EA — would go unheeded.
In the wake of last year’s WCIA win, EA’s head of customer service told CNET that big changes were coming for the company and that it would be improving how it responds to customers and adding call centers to better handle things. And yet, just the other day a Consumerist reader in Europe sent us his chat transcript with an EA rep that shows the company still has a long way to go.
The customer had a simple question about linking an Origin account to his Xbox gamer tag, but the EA rep could only tell the customer that nothing could be done over chat and that he would need to call a customer support number to discuss the problem. Making matters worse, though the customer was in Europe, the EA rep provided him with a phone number for EA’s U.S. support office.
The support issue is only going to become an even bigger concern as EA includes more ways of making in-game purchases and requires Internet access just to play games. Each transaction is a chance for an error, and one server crash could mean millions of people left with useless games until someone slaps a shoe against the side of the server.
SEALING THE DEAL
Perhaps EA is secretly of the school of thought that there is no such thing as bad publicity. That’s the only way to explain the decision by Peter Moore, the company’s chief operating officer, to release one of the most defensive, deflective, non-apology apologies we’ve ever seen.
In his misguided, misinformed missive, Moore says things like “we can do better,” while at the same time attempting to put the blame for its WCIA success on a mysterious, unseen cabal of **** right-wing blog commenters and people who don’t like whichever football player(s) are on the cover of Madden NFL.
“I have a feeling that a rather pronounced enthusiasm for nickel-and-diming might have caused a slightly more elevated level of dissatisfaction with customers,” writes CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk.
Moore’s note also marked the second time EA has tried to deflect criticism by pointing to previous winners of the Worst Company tournament, as if to mock consumers who dared to express their discontent with a mere video game publisher.
Make no mistake: Video games are big business. A company like EA — and Activision, Ubisoft, Nintendo, and Sony, etc. — merits just as much scrutiny as any other business that plays a leading role in a multibillion-dollar industry. It’s only a fractured, antiquated public perception that video games are somehow frivolous holdovers from childhood that allows gamers to be abused and taken advantage of by the very people who supply them the games they play.
“Until EA stops sucking the blood out of games in order to make uninspiring sequels, or at least until they begin caring about how much gamers hate their lack of respect for our money and intelligence, this is going to continue,” writes Penny Arcade’s Kuchera. “We don’t hate them because we’re ****, we hate them because they destroy companies we love. We hate them because they release poor games. We hate them because they claim our hate doesn’t matter as long as we give them our money.”
Instead of deflecting, we ask the higher-ups at EA to reflect on the following question:
When we live in an era marked by massive oil spills, faulty foreclosures by bad banks, and rampant consolidation in the airline and telecom industry, what does it say about EA’s business practices that so many people have — for the second year in a row — come out to hand it the title of Worst Company In America?
What would honestly possess you to type/copy n paste something this long on a mobile game forum?
It's relevant. Don't read it if it's too long. Why did u quote it?
I can foresee some huge issues with making gear the bottleneck for players.
Take the Mk V CEC Furnace. It seems like half the toons in the game need this to get to gear 9. It means players will have to really think hard and prioritise who gets it first. Which isn't the worst thing ever.
The problem will come when toons inevitably get nerfed. Players will not be happy after devoting weeks to gear up a toon, to see that work get crushed by sloppy "balancing".
LESSONS UNLEARNED
What did EA do (or not do) that it managed to achieve what none of the previous WCIA champs — Comcast, AIG, BP, Halliburton, RIAA, Countrywide — have ever been able to?
Like many other competitors in the WCIA bracket, EA has repeatedly failed at three core requirements of running a consumer-friendly business:
1. Provide a Product People Want and Like
Yes, EA has games that sell in the millions, a number of which are well-reviewed and some of which are genuinely loved. But the company also has a history of pumping out products, or rushing games through development, in order to cash in on a brand name. Just in recent years, there have been several notable examples. Dragon Age 2, while it has its defenders, was seen by many as an inferior cash-in that would have benefited from a longer development schedule. Likewise, the sequels for Dead Space have been been similarly derided by some fans of the original.
The most obvious example was Mass Effect 3, which had the bad fortune of being released in the weeks leading up to the 2012 WCIA tournament. Fans of the first two games, who had invested large chunks of time and money, were left with an empty feeling after reaching the obviously rushed endgame. Detractors accused EA of pushing to game out too early and focusing too much of its energy on the new multiplayer side of the game, since that promised the company a revenue stream in the form of in-game microtransactions for users who want to acquire the many characters and upgrades. The reaction to ME 3 was so negative and so widely publicized, EA was compelled to release a slightly more satisfactory ending only a few months later.
Similarly, the recent release of SimCity 5 came with the news that users would need to be connected to the Internet in order to simply play by one’s self. The company claims it is not a form of anti-piracy digital rights management (though not many people believe that), but instead is about “realiz[ing] a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.” Translated, that means EA wants you to always be online so you’ll be encouraged to buy things from the in-game store.
This ballsy decision on EA’s part sets a precedent that the company will surely follow in future games, meaning that consumers will have to choose between the game they want to play and the company that requires them to always be online, whether it’s to monitor their use or sell them new outfits for characters.
“EA has become a company that releases mediocre products created by faceless teams,” wrote Penny Arcade’s Ben Kuchera in a story about the WCIA finals. “There is no real vision at work, no grand design. Just the idea that free-to-play games and microtransactions are the wave of the future, or at least they better be, because none of the company’s $60 boxed releases are finding much success with either critics or gamers.”
2. Sell Your Product at a Reasonable Price
Like movies, video games require a large amount of money and the efforts of many talented individuals. And so games are going to cost an amount of money that will allow the publisher to make a profit. But the largest video game publishers, including EA, have been accused of refusing to compete on pricing, meaning that consumers pay $60 for a new game because that’s what the studios tells us it will cost. By the same token, EA’s deals with sports leagues like the NFL mean that no other competitor is free to offer a competing game that either offers more content for the same price, or similar content for a lower price.
Then there are the free-to-play games that EA makes such noise about. They may be “free” to play, but EA openly admits that the goal of creating these games is to nickel-and-dime users into paying for in-game purchases. The company’s CFO recently stated that EA intends to include these microtransactions in all its free-to-play games.
Beyond any possible price-fixing or consumer chiseling, EA is making money by allowing advertisers into its games — even the ones that people pay a lot of money for. Most recently, people who purchased SimCity 5 were treated to their first piece of extra content — a de facto ad for the Nissan Leaf. So EA gets paid, while its customers get to download an interactive advertisement.
3. Support the Products You Sell
EA made a royal mess of the SimCity release by failing to foresee that the people who would buy the game — and who would, per the game’s design, be required to connect to the EA servers — might actually want to play at some point in the week after making their purchase. But that’s just the latest in EA’s long history of annoying its customer base with bad support.
Customers who paid full price for games, or who spent or saved huge piles of in-game cash in EA’s online products, would suddenly find a problem with their accounts, but attempts to rectify the problem — or even get a response from EA — would go unheeded.
In the wake of last year’s WCIA win, EA’s head of customer service told CNET that big changes were coming for the company and that it would be improving how it responds to customers and adding call centers to better handle things. And yet, just the other day a Consumerist reader in Europe sent us his chat transcript with an EA rep that shows the company still has a long way to go.
The customer had a simple question about linking an Origin account to his Xbox gamer tag, but the EA rep could only tell the customer that nothing could be done over chat and that he would need to call a customer support number to discuss the problem. Making matters worse, though the customer was in Europe, the EA rep provided him with a phone number for EA’s U.S. support office.
The support issue is only going to become an even bigger concern as EA includes more ways of making in-game purchases and requires Internet access just to play games. Each transaction is a chance for an error, and one server crash could mean millions of people left with useless games until someone slaps a shoe against the side of the server.
SEALING THE DEAL
Perhaps EA is secretly of the school of thought that there is no such thing as bad publicity. That’s the only way to explain the decision by Peter Moore, the company’s chief operating officer, to release one of the most defensive, deflective, non-apology apologies we’ve ever seen.
In his misguided, misinformed missive, Moore says things like “we can do better,” while at the same time attempting to put the blame for its WCIA success on a mysterious, unseen cabal of **** right-wing blog commenters and people who don’t like whichever football player(s) are on the cover of Madden NFL.
“I have a feeling that a rather pronounced enthusiasm for nickel-and-diming might have caused a slightly more elevated level of dissatisfaction with customers,” writes CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk.
Moore’s note also marked the second time EA has tried to deflect criticism by pointing to previous winners of the Worst Company tournament, as if to mock consumers who dared to express their discontent with a mere video game publisher.
Make no mistake: Video games are big business. A company like EA — and Activision, Ubisoft, Nintendo, and Sony, etc. — merits just as much scrutiny as any other business that plays a leading role in a multibillion-dollar industry. It’s only a fractured, antiquated public perception that video games are somehow frivolous holdovers from childhood that allows gamers to be abused and taken advantage of by the very people who supply them the games they play.
“Until EA stops sucking the blood out of games in order to make uninspiring sequels, or at least until they begin caring about how much gamers hate their lack of respect for our money and intelligence, this is going to continue,” writes Penny Arcade’s Kuchera. “We don’t hate them because we’re ****, we hate them because they destroy companies we love. We hate them because they release poor games. We hate them because they claim our hate doesn’t matter as long as we give them our money.”
Instead of deflecting, we ask the higher-ups at EA to reflect on the following question:
When we live in an era marked by massive oil spills, faulty foreclosures by bad banks, and rampant consolidation in the airline and telecom industry, what does it say about EA’s business practices that so many people have — for the second year in a row — come out to hand it the title of Worst Company In America?
Great read but this will be removed almost instantaneously if it has not already gotta love the monitoring! What the blank ever happened to freedom of speech!?
LESSONS UNLEARNED
What did EA do (or not do) that it managed to achieve what none of the previous WCIA champs — Comcast, AIG, BP, Halliburton, RIAA, Countrywide — have ever been able to?
Like many other competitors in the WCIA bracket, EA has repeatedly failed at three core requirements of running a consumer-friendly business:
1. Provide a Product People Want and Like
Yes, EA has games that sell in the millions, a number of which are well-reviewed and some of which are genuinely loved. But the company also has a history of pumping out products, or rushing games through development, in order to cash in on a brand name. Just in recent years, there have been several notable examples. Dragon Age 2, while it has its defenders, was seen by many as an inferior cash-in that would have benefited from a longer development schedule. Likewise, the sequels for Dead Space have been been similarly derided by some fans of the original.
The most obvious example was Mass Effect 3, which had the bad fortune of being released in the weeks leading up to the 2012 WCIA tournament. Fans of the first two games, who had invested large chunks of time and money, were left with an empty feeling after reaching the obviously rushed endgame. Detractors accused EA of pushing to game out too early and focusing too much of its energy on the new multiplayer side of the game, since that promised the company a revenue stream in the form of in-game microtransactions for users who want to acquire the many characters and upgrades. The reaction to ME 3 was so negative and so widely publicized, EA was compelled to release a slightly more satisfactory ending only a few months later.
Similarly, the recent release of SimCity 5 came with the news that users would need to be connected to the Internet in order to simply play by one’s self. The company claims it is not a form of anti-piracy digital rights management (though not many people believe that), but instead is about “realiz[ing] a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.” Translated, that means EA wants you to always be online so you’ll be encouraged to buy things from the in-game store.
This ballsy decision on EA’s part sets a precedent that the company will surely follow in future games, meaning that consumers will have to choose between the game they want to play and the company that requires them to always be online, whether it’s to monitor their use or sell them new outfits for characters.
“EA has become a company that releases mediocre products created by faceless teams,” wrote Penny Arcade’s Ben Kuchera in a story about the WCIA finals. “There is no real vision at work, no grand design. Just the idea that free-to-play games and microtransactions are the wave of the future, or at least they better be, because none of the company’s $60 boxed releases are finding much success with either critics or gamers.”
2. Sell Your Product at a Reasonable Price
Like movies, video games require a large amount of money and the efforts of many talented individuals. And so games are going to cost an amount of money that will allow the publisher to make a profit. But the largest video game publishers, including EA, have been accused of refusing to compete on pricing, meaning that consumers pay $60 for a new game because that’s what the studios tells us it will cost. By the same token, EA’s deals with sports leagues like the NFL mean that no other competitor is free to offer a competing game that either offers more content for the same price, or similar content for a lower price.
Then there are the free-to-play games that EA makes such noise about. They may be “free” to play, but EA openly admits that the goal of creating these games is to nickel-and-dime users into paying for in-game purchases. The company’s CFO recently stated that EA intends to include these microtransactions in all its free-to-play games.
Beyond any possible price-fixing or consumer chiseling, EA is making money by allowing advertisers into its games — even the ones that people pay a lot of money for. Most recently, people who purchased SimCity 5 were treated to their first piece of extra content — a de facto ad for the Nissan Leaf. So EA gets paid, while its customers get to download an interactive advertisement.
3. Support the Products You Sell
EA made a royal mess of the SimCity release by failing to foresee that the people who would buy the game — and who would, per the game’s design, be required to connect to the EA servers — might actually want to play at some point in the week after making their purchase. But that’s just the latest in EA’s long history of annoying its customer base with bad support.
Customers who paid full price for games, or who spent or saved huge piles of in-game cash in EA’s online products, would suddenly find a problem with their accounts, but attempts to rectify the problem — or even get a response from EA — would go unheeded.
In the wake of last year’s WCIA win, EA’s head of customer service told CNET that big changes were coming for the company and that it would be improving how it responds to customers and adding call centers to better handle things. And yet, just the other day a Consumerist reader in Europe sent us his chat transcript with an EA rep that shows the company still has a long way to go.
The customer had a simple question about linking an Origin account to his Xbox gamer tag, but the EA rep could only tell the customer that nothing could be done over chat and that he would need to call a customer support number to discuss the problem. Making matters worse, though the customer was in Europe, the EA rep provided him with a phone number for EA’s U.S. support office.
The support issue is only going to become an even bigger concern as EA includes more ways of making in-game purchases and requires Internet access just to play games. Each transaction is a chance for an error, and one server crash could mean millions of people left with useless games until someone slaps a shoe against the side of the server.
SEALING THE DEAL
Perhaps EA is secretly of the school of thought that there is no such thing as bad publicity. That’s the only way to explain the decision by Peter Moore, the company’s chief operating officer, to release one of the most defensive, deflective, non-apology apologies we’ve ever seen.
In his misguided, misinformed missive, Moore says things like “we can do better,” while at the same time attempting to put the blame for its WCIA success on a mysterious, unseen cabal of **** right-wing blog commenters and people who don’t like whichever football player(s) are on the cover of Madden NFL.
“I have a feeling that a rather pronounced enthusiasm for nickel-and-diming might have caused a slightly more elevated level of dissatisfaction with customers,” writes CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk.
Moore’s note also marked the second time EA has tried to deflect criticism by pointing to previous winners of the Worst Company tournament, as if to mock consumers who dared to express their discontent with a mere video game publisher.
Make no mistake: Video games are big business. A company like EA — and Activision, Ubisoft, Nintendo, and Sony, etc. — merits just as much scrutiny as any other business that plays a leading role in a multibillion-dollar industry. It’s only a fractured, antiquated public perception that video games are somehow frivolous holdovers from childhood that allows gamers to be abused and taken advantage of by the very people who supply them the games they play.
“Until EA stops sucking the blood out of games in order to make uninspiring sequels, or at least until they begin caring about how much gamers hate their lack of respect for our money and intelligence, this is going to continue,” writes Penny Arcade’s Kuchera. “We don’t hate them because we’re ****, we hate them because they destroy companies we love. We hate them because they release poor games. We hate them because they claim our hate doesn’t matter as long as we give them our money.”
Instead of deflecting, we ask the higher-ups at EA to reflect on the following question:
When we live in an era marked by massive oil spills, faulty foreclosures by bad banks, and rampant consolidation in the airline and telecom industry, what does it say about EA’s business practices that so many people have — for the second year in a row — come out to hand it the title of Worst Company In America?
THEY must not hear what WE are saying. Deaf ears. Jesse or Wookie you need to tell THEM. NO CONTENT??? I'm cool now with the cap raise but the added grind. Really??? I called my mom after I read the patch notes that almost made me physically ill. She said "Orange juice and refunds baby". I get it.
I think it's silly they didn't tell us if we can use the gears we made BEFORE the patch hits. Such a cluster. Communication is so bad...
The thing is, they might have this all figured out and it's going to be BETTER than what we have, but because they are so cryptic and horrible at communication we are left to guess and can only assume the worst based on the past.
Crazy that they think they can get away with this.
DON'T ROLL OUT CHANGES THAT NEED OTHER CHANGES THAT ARN'T READY YET!
But they need these changes so that we spend money on the game until they bridge the gap with the changes that aren't ready yet. Then they will say "Oh look! See! We fixed it! Aren't we great?!" And the forums will cheer, and everyone will feel good, until next time, which is in the same patch that fixed the other thing.
Here's the dirty little secret...
They are basically playing kick the can, and we, like chumps, are chasing the can. Sometimes, some companies, make that chase fun. Many MMOs fall into this category. Blizzard is probably the best at it, and they support their games for many years. EA, on the other hand, are experts at short term cash grabs.
Replies
Boss: - Can we release the new battle mechanism?
Devs: - Sorry, we made some tests and it is so bugged. Release delayed... I would say 2 more weeks (yeah, boss will believe me, but in fact it will take over 2 months)
Boss: - Can we release that new character?
Devs: - Sorry, we have dozens of bugs to fix in the current available characters. The new character development is delayed...
Boss: - And about that new scoundrel event?
Devs: - Hmmm... delayed!
Boss: - So, what can we release as new content? We need more content asap!!!
Devs: - I have an idea! Let's make gears harder to farm to keep our players occupied and release another Yoda event.
Boss: Great ideia! Make it happen.
We're all puppets being strung a long for a jerky ride!
Gonna be very helpful for old ben. Got to wait another level cap tho.
Mk 5 Arakyd Droid Caller
Mk 5 CEC Fusion Furnace
Mk 7 Nubian Security Scanner
You have to put an @ infront of the name.
Like @MoBlaq
See I just tagged you.
Can confirm that's an enormous lie..... I spend 200 a day and may pull 4 single gear pieces, you're on crack!
This is great!
Sounds like between 4pm and 9pm
thx
edit: i should learn how to read... lol it's indicated in original post lol
ughhh so it "may" go into April 1st...
What happens if I do my daily tasks, but don't
collect them and get into the next day?
Coming soon. Gear packs for the low low price of $59.99
Wow that's probably true!
For the Mk 5 CEC Fusion Furnace: I already grinded the 50 hair dryers and 15 of the disks before the update note today so used the crystals to get 5 more of the disks.
For the Mk 5 Arakyd Droid Caller: I already 6 of the flashlight things so spent the crystals to get the remaining 15.
For the Mk 7 Nubian Security Scanner: just need energy to grind the materials.
Is it any different from before though?
The 'Do you want a level cap raise yet' thread was 90% didn't want a cap raise.
CG/EA has not once responded to the nerfing of the Credit events, it was supposed to be an improvement.
Everything EA does is not to satisfy the playerbase, but their wallets.
I would like to incite @Qeltar 's signature here;
+1
LESSONS UNLEARNED
What did EA do (or not do) that it managed to achieve what none of the previous WCIA champs — Comcast, AIG, BP, Halliburton, RIAA, Countrywide — have ever been able to?
Like many other competitors in the WCIA bracket, EA has repeatedly failed at three core requirements of running a consumer-friendly business:
1. Provide a Product People Want and Like
Yes, EA has games that sell in the millions, a number of which are well-reviewed and some of which are genuinely loved. But the company also has a history of pumping out products, or rushing games through development, in order to cash in on a brand name. Just in recent years, there have been several notable examples. Dragon Age 2, while it has its defenders, was seen by many as an inferior cash-in that would have benefited from a longer development schedule. Likewise, the sequels for Dead Space have been been similarly derided by some fans of the original.
The most obvious example was Mass Effect 3, which had the bad fortune of being released in the weeks leading up to the 2012 WCIA tournament. Fans of the first two games, who had invested large chunks of time and money, were left with an empty feeling after reaching the obviously rushed endgame. Detractors accused EA of pushing to game out too early and focusing too much of its energy on the new multiplayer side of the game, since that promised the company a revenue stream in the form of in-game microtransactions for users who want to acquire the many characters and upgrades. The reaction to ME 3 was so negative and so widely publicized, EA was compelled to release a slightly more satisfactory ending only a few months later.
Similarly, the recent release of SimCity 5 came with the news that users would need to be connected to the Internet in order to simply play by one’s self. The company claims it is not a form of anti-piracy digital rights management (though not many people believe that), but instead is about “realiz[ing] a vision of players connected in regions to create a SimCity that captured the dynamism of the world we live in; a global, ever-changing, social world.” Translated, that means EA wants you to always be online so you’ll be encouraged to buy things from the in-game store.
This ballsy decision on EA’s part sets a precedent that the company will surely follow in future games, meaning that consumers will have to choose between the game they want to play and the company that requires them to always be online, whether it’s to monitor their use or sell them new outfits for characters.
“EA has become a company that releases mediocre products created by faceless teams,” wrote Penny Arcade’s Ben Kuchera in a story about the WCIA finals. “There is no real vision at work, no grand design. Just the idea that free-to-play games and microtransactions are the wave of the future, or at least they better be, because none of the company’s $60 boxed releases are finding much success with either critics or gamers.”
2. Sell Your Product at a Reasonable Price
Like movies, video games require a large amount of money and the efforts of many talented individuals. And so games are going to cost an amount of money that will allow the publisher to make a profit. But the largest video game publishers, including EA, have been accused of refusing to compete on pricing, meaning that consumers pay $60 for a new game because that’s what the studios tells us it will cost. By the same token, EA’s deals with sports leagues like the NFL mean that no other competitor is free to offer a competing game that either offers more content for the same price, or similar content for a lower price.
Then there are the free-to-play games that EA makes such noise about. They may be “free” to play, but EA openly admits that the goal of creating these games is to nickel-and-dime users into paying for in-game purchases. The company’s CFO recently stated that EA intends to include these microtransactions in all its free-to-play games.
Beyond any possible price-fixing or consumer chiseling, EA is making money by allowing advertisers into its games — even the ones that people pay a lot of money for. Most recently, people who purchased SimCity 5 were treated to their first piece of extra content — a de facto ad for the Nissan Leaf. So EA gets paid, while its customers get to download an interactive advertisement.
3. Support the Products You Sell
EA made a royal mess of the SimCity release by failing to foresee that the people who would buy the game — and who would, per the game’s design, be required to connect to the EA servers — might actually want to play at some point in the week after making their purchase. But that’s just the latest in EA’s long history of annoying its customer base with bad support.
Customers who paid full price for games, or who spent or saved huge piles of in-game cash in EA’s online products, would suddenly find a problem with their accounts, but attempts to rectify the problem — or even get a response from EA — would go unheeded.
In the wake of last year’s WCIA win, EA’s head of customer service told CNET that big changes were coming for the company and that it would be improving how it responds to customers and adding call centers to better handle things. And yet, just the other day a Consumerist reader in Europe sent us his chat transcript with an EA rep that shows the company still has a long way to go.
The customer had a simple question about linking an Origin account to his Xbox gamer tag, but the EA rep could only tell the customer that nothing could be done over chat and that he would need to call a customer support number to discuss the problem. Making matters worse, though the customer was in Europe, the EA rep provided him with a phone number for EA’s U.S. support office.
The support issue is only going to become an even bigger concern as EA includes more ways of making in-game purchases and requires Internet access just to play games. Each transaction is a chance for an error, and one server crash could mean millions of people left with useless games until someone slaps a shoe against the side of the server.
SEALING THE DEAL
Perhaps EA is secretly of the school of thought that there is no such thing as bad publicity. That’s the only way to explain the decision by Peter Moore, the company’s chief operating officer, to release one of the most defensive, deflective, non-apology apologies we’ve ever seen.
In his misguided, misinformed missive, Moore says things like “we can do better,” while at the same time attempting to put the blame for its WCIA success on a mysterious, unseen cabal of **** right-wing blog commenters and people who don’t like whichever football player(s) are on the cover of Madden NFL.
“I have a feeling that a rather pronounced enthusiasm for nickel-and-diming might have caused a slightly more elevated level of dissatisfaction with customers,” writes CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk.
Moore’s note also marked the second time EA has tried to deflect criticism by pointing to previous winners of the Worst Company tournament, as if to mock consumers who dared to express their discontent with a mere video game publisher.
Make no mistake: Video games are big business. A company like EA — and Activision, Ubisoft, Nintendo, and Sony, etc. — merits just as much scrutiny as any other business that plays a leading role in a multibillion-dollar industry. It’s only a fractured, antiquated public perception that video games are somehow frivolous holdovers from childhood that allows gamers to be abused and taken advantage of by the very people who supply them the games they play.
“Until EA stops sucking the blood out of games in order to make uninspiring sequels, or at least until they begin caring about how much gamers hate their lack of respect for our money and intelligence, this is going to continue,” writes Penny Arcade’s Kuchera. “We don’t hate them because we’re ****, we hate them because they destroy companies we love. We hate them because they release poor games. We hate them because they claim our hate doesn’t matter as long as we give them our money.”
Instead of deflecting, we ask the higher-ups at EA to reflect on the following question:
When we live in an era marked by massive oil spills, faulty foreclosures by bad banks, and rampant consolidation in the airline and telecom industry, what does it say about EA’s business practices that so many people have — for the second year in a row — come out to hand it the title of Worst Company In America?
The whole thing is like they are trying to alienate the player base. There is nothing to look forward to in this entire patch. They should have just held off on it till they had some actual content to go with it.
This is common sense to 90% of the human race, but if you can't roll out the changes that make it possible to get gear then don't change the gear requirements.
DON'T ROLL OUT CHANGES THAT NEED OTHER CHANGES THAT ARN'T READY YET!
What would honestly possess you to type/copy n paste something this long on a mobile game forum?
It's relevant. Don't read it if it's too long. Why did u quote it?
Take the Mk V CEC Furnace. It seems like half the toons in the game need this to get to gear 9. It means players will have to really think hard and prioritise who gets it first. Which isn't the worst thing ever.
The problem will come when toons inevitably get nerfed. Players will not be happy after devoting weeks to gear up a toon, to see that work get crushed by sloppy "balancing".
Great read but this will be removed almost instantaneously if it has not already
THEY must not hear what WE are saying. Deaf ears. Jesse or Wookie you need to tell THEM. NO CONTENT??? I'm cool now with the cap raise but the added grind. Really??? I called my mom after I read the patch notes that almost made me physically ill. She said "Orange juice and refunds baby". I get it.
The thing is, they might have this all figured out and it's going to be BETTER than what we have, but because they are so cryptic and horrible at communication we are left to guess and can only assume the worst based on the past.
Crazy that they think they can get away with this.
But they need these changes so that we spend money on the game until they bridge the gap with the changes that aren't ready yet. Then they will say "Oh look! See! We fixed it! Aren't we great?!" And the forums will cheer, and everyone will feel good, until next time, which is in the same patch that fixed the other thing.
Here's the dirty little secret...