Remember Smedley's promise in '07? Nothing changed in 8 years

Once upon a time, John Smedley agreed to an interview with Warcry.com.
If you want to read the whole thing it's here -> http://www.warcry.com/articles/view...medley-Exclusive-Interview-with-the-SOE-CEO.2

There are two quotes that I want to point out:

Now it's 2015. PS2 has been out 2 1/2 years. Have we gotten anything we have asked for?

- only 1 continent (Hossin) released since launch
- resource revamp never happened
- player owned bases never happened
- flamethrower disappeared
- a plethora of new vehicles and weapons that were leaked over the years have never seen day light in game

Meanwhile we keep getting unwanted changes that no one asked for, like:

- giant sized name plates and icons in world. This lasted less then 24 hours
- the valkyrie
- a waterfall of NS weapons instead of diversified faction specific weapons
- and more

You lied to us Smedley. You're still not listening. PS2 isn't even half the game it could be.
1 continent in 2 years?

Here's my ultimate question:

where exactly did all the sub money go towards if not for new continents, vehicles, weapons, and game mechanics like resource gathering, naval combat, and outfit based things like owning/building bases?

Afaik sub money is to continue new development of the game, but seriously....what earth shattering things do we have now that wasn't there at launch?
The answer is nothing.

I still play because it's fun to play with friends, but I wish Smedley and co. had responsibly spent our money.
We have barely anything to show for it.

Nothing's changed with SoE since trials of obi-wan as far as im concerned (~15 years)

dont question teh great smedlonious!

Not following through on a few things is not the same level of disaster that was "New Game Enhancements".

It's not just "a few things".
Why are you defending him?

He said he would listen to his players after NGE, and he hasn't listened to half of the things we've been asking for since launch.

You call that credible?

I'm not. NGE was such a colossal failure I don't think smedley should have a job in the industry right now.

I have a simple question for you, while I'm not interested in defending Smed's ****-ups I do wonder about something here.

Do you remember the good things we have gained since this game launched, all the improvements and the fixes that were actually fixes?

Because I recall a few of these, and like for you to let me know what you remember of the POSITIVE stuff we have gained over the years.

Please do share.

Not defending Smedz but a lot of that money went into the black hole of "recouping years of development costs".

Im surprised he's still in the business.

Btw the op has a point: much of what players have been expecting for long time seems to be forgotten. Battle Islands? Resources Revamp? Why is the Valkyrie still a failure? Where are the domeshield? The Interlink Facility?
There's a lot of development hours and resources that have been thrown away.

I'm afraid the transition from SOE to DB is part of the problem. And they underestimated the porting to ps4.

Ahem! It was asked by players for many times.

Perhaps you've never worked for a big business before. If a big business were to have to stand on any 1 product(or physical location) where nobody knows its name it would fail. Ex. Saturn(car company) thought about painting (valve/rocker) covers green to appeal to eco-mentalists. They then tried several types of green and did trials to see which green consumers responded best to....they also worked hard figuring out the cost of this idea and tried to forecast the benefit before ultimately scrapping the idea. Big businesses do this crap all the time....the money goes to 1) shareholders and 2) piles of bureaucracy(which would kill a small business) and 3) new opportunities(H1Z1).

If they were a smaller company they would probably have said "holy crap this can be successful!" and they would have reinvested in the game....but this is a big company so their corporate ADHD makes them go "meh, we need something new!"

Getting rid of all the changes(diffirent alerts, interlink facilities, etc). Don't get me wrong the community helped with that too but slithery smed and hi-on-something-higby screwd this game BAD

To the coffee making machine that they so proudly showed us when they were making the downgrade Performance Update

Well theres you're problem, you're believing anything smedley ever said
He's kind of a on-running joke

Where did the money go? To H1Z1.

LOL, the All Access sub money that goes in to one big pot?

The problem with listening to the fans, is that the fans all want different, sometimes conflicting things. They shouldn't be listening to the fans, they should be trying to improve upon the core principles of the game without detracting from the experience.

Unfortunately, that doesn't happen either.

It's good to listen to the fans and try things they want. But there must be some consensus and play-test involved to get it correct. That why one must be well versed in a lot of ideas the community puts forth and the reason why the company does a lot of listening before doing. They have metrics in the back end to try and align some things as well.

As for funding and what it is used for to make changes/additions to PS2, I blame the free-to-play model and how it is being utilized throughout the company. But in the end, they know what they are trying to accomplish. Maybe they simply cut their loses for now and benched a lot of things due to the sell off of SOE. They know the books and what is making them money or will make them money in the end. They put that money in to what they will or what they think will make them money in the short and long terms and then position projects around it.

I'm sure the majority of their work is currently being done in H1Z1 and EQ:Next.

I don't know about following the general consensus. If history has taught us anything it's that the popular opinion isn't necessarily the right one. But I think maybe my beliefs about game design philosophy are irrelevant when we're talking about people who are continuing other people's work in order to earn a paycheck.

There was quite an uproar against the domeshields. I think those demons should never make it to planetside as well and correct me if im wrong, but the valkyrie was also highly requested.