Attention All Forum Users: Bringing Order to the PlanetSide 2 Forums

2 things here:

1. The freedom of speech is not the freedom from apprisal for what is said. The Freedom of Speech protects your right as a citizen, to say whatever you want, without government interference. So I can say whatever it is I want, and the police cannot arrest me for saying it. That said, if I said something that offended someone else, it is absolutely okay for them to come back and prevent me from saying something, as long as they do so without government interference. That is why Libel and Slander are a thing, if you Lie about someone, and they sue you for defamation of character, that is Them saying that your freedom of speech hurt them. You are not entitled to freedom without a justifiable response to what you say, just protection from government intervention. SOE isn't a representative of any government.
2. Also, what does the abolishment of private property and the redistribution of wealth, land, property, and essential services equally distributed by a governmental authority that controls all of the production facilities... sound like, monitoring the forums to keep people from making inflammatory posts?

Curiously enough, if you threaten to burn someone alive, rip their skulls out, and eat their children, you'll get arrested for threats. So yeah, even Freedom of Speech has limits. But, it is SOE's forums and they get to do whatever because it's their property. We're just renting typing space for free.

To be technical, I think you'd get arrested only if a complaint was lodged against you. I think. Things you by default will be arrested for, regardless of a complaint being lodged by an effected party, are like Murder.

But yeah, nail head and hammer +1

People conflate authoritarianism with communism. Not really a subject we can talk about on the forums however because it'll instantly trainwreck.

Oh yeah, been there done that.

My apologies -- I didn't mean to confuse you with my sarcasm; it was a hamhanded jibe on my part, poking derision at the fact that, regardless of your post, Reddit has been and looks like it will continue to be where we have to go if we want timely, complete PS2 information. Claims above notwithstanding, it would be great if SOE would in fact use the forums as the primary point of information dissemination; for now, most of us still regularly troll Reddit as part of our PS2 routine - and not necessarily because we want to.

Thanks for noting some of my recommendations. I feel Honored that you even read them... i understand how some things are technical in nature and cant be made available in the foreseeable future without a major patch or expansion of the game... My former experience working with Blizzard makes me sympathetic of how demanding such undertakings are, but i do think the Que could be the simplest addition to the forums that would alleviate workload on the SOE Staff and also encourage comradery between the community members as well as improving understanding and cooperation as a whole. i love reading Luperza's messages, even if she has to say no to an idea its done constructively. Wish i had such tact.

i have to agree with this... Replies or interaction between the Staff and the Community largely is focused on Reddit or Twitter even if they say they devote more time to the forums... its obvious their CEO cares more about those 3rd party sites than this forum. Also posts made on those sites often get dragged into Gamer Magazines so its clearly logical to invest more time for the publicity... it only makes sense that SOE would focus more time in a forum that costs less money to maintain but also grants cheap advertising access... Sure the people that actualy run and work in the game read the Forums the most... but it reflects poorly on the game as a whole when the CEO does something immature like comment on Reddit or Twitter rather then on his own forums...

To the community its the same as chatting on 4Chan... and it provides a viewpoint that the staff have less faith in their own Forum Assets then in a 3rd party app like Reddit. Ultimately, it would be unwise to stop Reddit or Twitter contact all together now that the genie is out of the bottle so to speak... but if im paying SOE money for a game i love, i think i deserve to be responded to on the forums First... and not a week later after Reddit and Twitter leak the messages to some gamer Magazine... Not to mention, such things can prove disastrous to the company if the wrong info is leaked over those 3rd party apps.

Truth is... I dont care one bit about either of those two places... i get upset when i go to the support page to post a ticket to an issue and see links there that direct me to twitter for customer service... i even created a Reddit and Twitter account to see if response times to my issues would improve... but all the spam, pop-up advertisements and useless childish conversations just made me more frustrated then the actual issue had in the first place.

Removed

1) There is no reasonable expectation of privacy on any network transported over a third party, or haven't you heard the latest news about the NSA? There is no privacy here. at all.

2) What you are saying and what you are asking is not the same thing. You want respect you have not earned, and that is not respect, it is fear. I do not respect you, and I do not fear you.

3) We are the market. You are not.

4) We will continue to meet outside any of your purview to decide the future of your efforts, and there is nothing you can do to stop us. see number 3. See it again, because corporations have a tendency to slide upper parts into lower parts and lose all perspective in their endless insular secularist internecine departmental warfare.

5) Don't make videos, Maggie, where you loudly proclaim that joysticks will be supported, and then fail utterly to support them. see #2

6) You want to start on fresh footing. This will only be amenable if you actually start on fresh footing, and instead of silence and a lack of feedback regarding the numerous issues present since ***CLOSED BETA*** : actual responses, such as "we are not going to support joysticks" - see number 3, for the same reason.

Yes, you might lose a few hundred people if you just flat out admit your not going to support them, but it would be better for your bottom line all the way around not to have seriously pissed off peeps badmouthing your efforts every chance they get.

have a great week.

I never "loudly proclaimed" that we would support joysticks fully. I simply stated that it's something we are looking into further supporting, so if you had feedback, to please supply us with said feedback in the appropriate thread(s).

In Game Development, there are priorities. Think about it this way, if you owned a business, would it be smarter for you to first work on the big ticket items that affect your whole customer base first or the polish items that affect sub groups of your consumer base? We want to provide you with joystick support, so provide us your feedback now so that when we get to that point, we are fully aware of all the things that you want supported.

Some people here are really in need of attention.

and SOE's priority is to make as much money off you fools as they can before PS2 utterly fails because of bugs, lack of balance ,and general boredom of the players waiting weeks and months for new content.

We've actually done a lot of patches over the past year. The only time we did not push out as many patches was for the months we were working on Operation Make Faster Game which was focused on Performance, and was fairly recently. We're now back to our weekly updates and our Roadmap is back on track and updated with the big ticket items we are working on.

We have been doing our best to communicate the things we are working on presently, in the future future, and during the OMFG time frame, we were very vocal about the content stop and why we were doing it.

and yet the engineer AV turret still kills outside of infantry render range with zero risk vs reward, there are still wildly imbalanced weapons, factions are still not balanced. every new patch brings new bugs or old bugs back with a vengeance... the only weapons worth using are tons of certs or cash. anything new is generally rediculously overpowered till the majority of the players have it then nerfed to hell. i'd rather see NO new content and bug fixes class balances.. than brand new broken crap to have to rebalance over again. its time the devs stopped thinking like devs and more like players again like you did in the beta. the game has devolved from a decent platnetside remake, to a really bad battlefield clone. 90% of the maps are wasted because of the lattice never allowing you to see them. the only tactics left in the game are which door to go in at the only base you can attack. not exactly thrilling gameplay to be stuck at one base with 200+ people and only half of them rendering.

^ See this comment is a bit of a rant which is not productive and against our Forum Guidelines. I get where you are coming from though. You are passionate and angry that the game does not work the way you want it to.

Bugs happen. We try our best to fix them. Sometimes things get broken in the process of fixing other things. All we can do is be vocal about it and do our best to fix all the things. We're focusing quite a bit of time to bug fixing, so you'll be seeing bug fixes each week as we move forward with our patches.

Balance is hard, especially when you have thousands of players on a map. It's another thing you'll constantly be seeing us tweak as we add more content into the game. You can help us by continuing to provide us with well thought out and constructive feedback.

Honestly the game is more balanced now than it has ever been. You will always hear people whining about balance this, balance that, just stick to your guns and examine the data, keep in mind that some things should be unbalanced here and there to add depth and give each empire a "flavor" or strong points, but as long as things work out in the aggregate it's fine. Please don't pursue balance too zealously -- I really enjoy the different weapons each empire has and how some are better than others in certain situations. Pleas don't alter that to appease the endless whiners, who will NEVER be happy.

All in all, good work, keep it up, and happy new year!

Oh for sure! We don't just balance for no reason. We are looking at data, patterns and testing changes before they go into game. Although, testing can be difficult as testing samples are usually skewed due to numbers and/or content on the PTS.

I agree with you though, we'll never make everyone happy, but we can try.

Thanks -- it is a fine line and you'll never make everyone happy, some of these forum users just thrive on being the victim.

I think there is a lack of appreciation for what having various empires bring to the game and how that factors into decision making. Other FPS are pretty standardized and you just assume the other guy has the same capabilities as you, which makes for boring gameplay in my opinion. PS2 is different. For example, if I'm in my Prowler and go 1v1 against a good Vanguard, I'm very likely going to lose head-to-head. Some people would say that's unbalanced, nerf the Vanguard, buff the Prowler, but I see it differently. The Prowler is way more maneuverable, much better at flanking and definitely the best MBT for infantry suppression while taking a base. They're different, totally unbalanced in certain situations, but excel in different aspects of the game. I like that.

I just want to put it out there that not everyone thinks it should be sterilized and dumbed down so everyone is equal and balanced. Some of us, I think the vast majority but have no data to back that up, like the differentation. I'm probably not doing a good job articulating that but thought I'd give it a shot, lest the whiners ruin the game

Hey, he's not that wrong. There were many things which obviously broken or OP since the very moment they were launched - like engineer AV turrets(still unfixed), VS ZOE (fixed after 6 months), SMGs which are more versatile and powerful then LMGs(esp vanu and nc), lattice system which very much killed the tactics in the game (old system was bad, but lattice is bad as well), or bad Indar design, or bas esamir design, or bad wg rotation(why not just make the rotation weekly? or bi-monthly? why use that semi random unfair scheme as is now). Not to mention other minor stuff. Or sometimes you just overnerf or change things which no one ever asked for and no one considered OP.
Bad thing about this is that we don't feel we are being heard, there are a lot of topics with suggestions or bug reports which are not being answered at all. Why not just put some words like "we don't think this will be implemented" or "we heard you and considering how to fix this" or "we like this idea, will consider for implementation". But the worst for sure are those unfixed obviously wrong things which exist for months and SOE like doesn't even know they exist(wg rotation is best example).
As for patches and new staff, I do realize you were doing a lot of changes there with the OpMFG, but you should agree that for the past 6 months there was almost no cool stuff even in the depot, 95% of the stuff was coming from player studio. _Personally_ I didn't like most of it. Last thing I liked was that cosmonaut helmet for TR max which is simply awesome and one vanu alien-insect-like helmet. Still waiting for cool things for lightning which has none of them since the launch or good exteriors for prowler and vanguard or cool new infantry armors.

PS keep doing more cool stuff, game feels much better as of late, once you started putting patches more often.