Laurion's Song: Only 2 Missions and 8 Raids

It doesnt even take a huge boycott or anything either. One of the little discord groups of ~20 people I'm part of averages ~5 NoS expansions and 3 paid subs per person. None are planning to preorder this expansion, most are even waffling on buying one copy, and theres a bunch of subs going to lapse real soon. You only need a little bit of that for there to be a sizable impact.

I hope it doesn't reach the point where players feel compelled to remind Darkpaw about who it is that finances their present & future, while the studio has plenty of pies to keep their fingers warm in EQ is still a primary driver of their revenue & a large part of their sustainabily depends upon EQ players being as generous as they are.

She is the lead of an internal division of Daybreak Games regardless of the title on her door. If she controlled the revenue from EQ and set the deadlines you might have a point. She does not. She does not have an easy job since she has to work with what she is given to try and make the deadlines set for her. If she was not meeting the expectation of Daybreak she would have been fired.

If I had to guess, Absor probably let a cat out of a bag Daybreak would have preferred to stay closed.

You think they would rather not tell anyone and deal with a very excitable userbase realizing half the usual group missions and a third of the usual raid content just isnt going to exist?

That would be so much worse for them.

I will have to respectfully disagree with you, if she is not in charge of the dev team then who is?

You may be happy to let her off the hook, I'm not about to.

Agreed, whoever is in charge should be making a statement and explaining what they are going to do to make this right, I have not preordered my 3 expansions yet and I might not

She is in charge of the entire "studio." That has nothing to do with the amount of resources she receives to meet the deadlines set for her. If you were talking about design decisions like locking an entire expansion behind a set of missions, development of useless spells that nobody will use, and class balance she deserves criticism for it. The amount of content and when the expansion launches are decisions made above her.

I don't care why it happend, it is not my responsibility to care about why it happened, it is my place as a consumer to expect a better rationale than "reasons" and to demand something be done about it even if that is some token soundbite of "we will do better".

If making excuses for Jen Chan's lack of an offical statement makes you feel better, good for you, she either knew about the situation and said nothing which makes her a poor leader, or she didn't know about the situation which makes her a poorly informed one.

This is about the status of progress on an expansion for a major game she is supposed to have oversight on and responsibilty for.

Leadership has to deal with the hand that’s dealt, 100% responsibility falls on her. It’s a bit ridiculous to think her position is helpless.

The communication from darkpaw is messy.
The because of « things » reason, appears like it was intended to make people mad about it.
Which probably means there is a problem of alignment within.
There are many expansions that have been delivered in multiple releases.
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect for example t1 released first first then t2-t3 several months later.

Consumers do not have the right to "demand" anything but their contractually agreed upon due. Has Daybreak shorted you in that regard? If I thought JChan was responsible for the lack of communication that has been the hallmark of Daybreak for a decade you might have a point. As the studio head, she has responsibility to make sure the team works towards a common goal, not engage with the player base.

I normally do not waste my energy getting mad at people who have no control over what is going on. JChan is a manager at the end of the day and Darkpaw is just an office in a corporate building full offices.

This isn't 1980s East Germany. Customers have every right to demand explanations of why they are receiving less for their money.

Do you think that I have no right to question how a major change in the volume of content is being communicated?

Maybe you are a consumer who will accept any old line of BS from a company, thankfully not all of us are as credulous as you are.

I'm asking for a reasonable explanation, better communication about a major change to what the expansion offers and for the management of the game to take ownership of the issue and tell me what they intend to do about it.

You won't waste your energy getting mad at Jen Chan or Darkpaw, but you are happy to waste your energy getting mad at me for asking for better?

You should reflect on that stance.

If you think Jen Chan has no control over what is going on you are wildy uninformed and in complete denial over what her role within Darkpaw is.

well EQs only consistent ideal is to keep us all in the dark. Im amazed absor said anything at all

I agree with Skuz. DBG are asking for our money now on an expansion that isn't going to be released for a few weeks yet. There has been little to no real communication about what is in it other than a short video, a few bullet points and some art.

This whole discussion started because a player in Beta has explained that the content has been reduced, not DBG.

I believe Jen Chan has control over what is being developed, what is being released, and how that is communicated to the player-base.

It doesnt matter whether she is personally at fault. She IS the customer facing representative. Thus all complaints funnel through her.

I am not going to go back and like every post, but Skuz +1 from me for his explanation of thing. JChan is head of DPG, regardless of if you look at it as a stand-alone entity, or something much larger. In my organization, I report to a director, who reports to someone higher, then it's the top person. If something goes wrong in my department, it is up to my director to 1) fix the issue, 2) communicate with stakeholders the failure and the corrective action, and 3) report to their boss. But ultimately, the responsibility of success or failure of the department lies on my director. And I cannot stress enough that communication is key, both up and down the chain of command and with stakeholders in the project, be it internal or external.

We put out money into this game, that makes us stakeholders. There should be clear communication on the failure and what is to be done to correct the issue (later release in the year of 2 other missions and a raid, etc.).

^^^^^^^ This!

It would be interesting to see what baldurs gate 3 devs were working with as opposed to daybreak.

This ^^^^^^! And the sad thing is, they do it to themselves over and over because they absolutely refuse to communicate anything, other than throwaway comments on Discord.

For those with access to the Beta forums, what sort of reaction is this getting? Is there blowback on the devs...are people just shrugging their shoulders about less content for the same price...were there any other dev statements about this change?

The group missions are to group players what the raids are to raiders...cutting that content in HALF is a big deal. I can't believe that Absor just dropped this bomb and everyone, including JChan, is just gonna stay silent on the matter. This is an absolute failure of leadership on JChan's part.