GGG, Kripp, Beta, Botters, Oh, my!

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cgexile wrote:

The amount of time we log playing this game simply pales in comparison to some of the streamers, and yet I was scratching my head watching a ZD stream where he didn't know that VP kills life regen or ES regen if you have ZO.

I thought these guys know the game inside and out in order to get first dibs on beta and have their feedback heard? Another popular streamer only knows the marauder side of the tree and couldn't answrer questions on any other parts of the tree. This does not bother me personally but I can't help but comment on this point.

We certainly aren't learning anything from watching them stream. Simple things are overlooked like commenting on the fact that a fixed waypoint spawn position has changed. But I can't really fault them as they just want to play the game - like the rest of us. But if they are like the rest of us then why get special preference?

Yeah I know it's because hey have a huge audience glued to the streams so it's a marketing strategy.

Goddamnit that was beautiful

You have some great comments in here, and I'll respond to a few of them: (hopefully my quoting brackets are correctly placed and this post doesn't end up a mess)

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

From a business standpoint, you need to increase your ROI in areas that generate revenue and reduce your costs to the business.

You do want to minimize costs on the P&L sheet, but after a certain point, the extra effort, headaches and potential liabilities from cutting corners can make that counter productive. You might save $137.52 on expenses, only to have it haunt you and end up costing $11,000 in preventable losses later on. This is one of the hardest lessons for middle and upper management to learn, but when you show them how those thousands of dollars in losses become millions of dollars. Yesterday at work, we discussed how $5 million dollars in a category loss could have been avoided by not cutting costs of $500,000.

ROI and GMROI are nice numbers to work with, but if you are killing your gross margin to get better stats, than you are poisoning your business model. A steady, predictable revenue stream, with increasing revenue and controlled minimized costs is the long term goal for most companies. The Pizza model is an easy trap to fall into, and will gut your margin and your ROI very quickly/

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

Releasing beta keys to streamers, media outlets and selected partners that promote and extend your reach of the game is all an effort to drive revenue (supporter packs and MTX).

Yes, it is an effort to bring new customers to GGG's brand. Whether GGG would be better served by short bursts of a lot of people spending money versus a much smaller group giving steady support is tough to gauge from the outside.

Looking at the time it took for the team to develop Act IV, it seems to me that GGG would need a vast amount of brief supporters to make it to Act V. With a small business team, and the steady support of a good percentage of regular players, this would seem to be a much easier goal.

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

The beta program is broken for several reasons.

Whether it appears broken from our side, does not mean it is broken from GGG's side. That depends on what GGG's intent for the beta is. I would agree that the communication and publicizing of it would be more productive if it had been handled differently.

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

Missteps from GGG
Again, the answer is a combination of a simple marketing strategy and a poor execution.

The old adage of battle plans not surviving first contact with the enemy holds here. Take a look (where you can, most are confidential and proprietary) at most companies' SOP. If there were fail safe policies, they would end up being standard boiler plate amongst all companies and rarely need to be updated.

Things change, customers get more savvy, sneaky, abusive etc. Smaller companies don't have a vast backlog of experience or the personnel to immediately recognize or handle every problem when it crops up. Too many hats is a common problem, and the lack of sleep and rest goes along with it. This isn't unique to GGG, and will happen with all smaller newer companies. What GGG can do at this point, is learn from those mistakes, communicate to their customers what they are doing to improve the issues, and move on.

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

It would be similar to a car company putting a prototype on display at the auto show, and talking at length about all the innovations that will be revealed – except there are engineers working under the white sheet at that very moment.

They already do something similar and more. Many of those mockups don't run, and many are never intended for production at all. "Concept Cars" are a big part of automobile marketing strategy. A friend's wall is covered with photos of cars that he designed that he knew would make it to concept stage and he was thrilled that three of them made it into production. Some of the ones left behind were gorgeous and well engineered.


I'm going to address the next three as a group:

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

I think that there was a failure to address the community in a timely and appropriate manner.

Starting with the Bloodlines/Torment 1 Month league announcement, people inferred many things about the release schedule

But no, that is not what happened. We were all shocked with news that once the 1 Month race ended, we would be sent back to purgatory for 2 months.

I do think GGG and its potential supporters would have much happier with a clear statement of expectations delivered before promoting it. A lot of people made bad assumptions, which isn't necessarily GGG's fault. As a business, it is prudent to recognize when your customers aren't getting the message and change your message so that it is clear.

There's so many examples that I use in training people I wish I could cite, but they back up what you are saying. When you can show someone actual data (suppose three words cost them to lose $5,000 a day) they usually catch on pretty quickly. The ones that don't end up working somewhere else very soon.

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

The next Faux-pas was one that caused probably the most pain for all parties. The countdown timer showing blatantly the naming standards chosen by the email/account botters.


GGGs poor formed response to this violation has done more harm than good, as we see the botters are still getting keys and their names are surrounded with an artistic marquee on the front page of the official POE site.

The response is a communications piece that shows GGG does need to sit down and do some planning on communications policies. As Bex was only recently appointed as community manager, GGG is still in a fledgling state here. They do need a designated PR go to, and spend the money and time to either train someone properly for it, or hire someone with the right experience.

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

20/20 Hindsight
They really should have made the current 1M race into a full 3 months.

Regards,

ST

If they knew it was going to be a Beta of any real length, then it would have been much better to extend the race, or have another interim event planned. They could still extend the 1 month now for a couple weeks.

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

This brings me to the first segment that makes up the POE community. The casuals, the Hardcore, no-lifers, game addicts, the steamers and the multi-boxers, 8-year olds tired of Minecraft, 60 year olds who’s pensions can only support them playing POE on a potato.

I FOUND A TYPO SIR!!!

Excellent post btw :D! Good read, thank you.

Peace,

-Boem-

Meh. They are marketing act 4 to new players, pre-existing players, hardcore players. They all equally have a chance to get into the beta (with the beta signup allowing for people to create new accounts). If they did not do the marketing that they have done, I would understand maybe not having new players being able to sign up. At the same time, I would have expected NDA on the content. Giving beta out to kripp and other streamers of different games makes sense as you mention, trying to pull people into the game. All the POE streamers, those are watched by pre-existing players, however I do understand them getting it before the rest of us. Them having beta access makes the beta viewable by more then me having beta access (i wouldn't be streaming it). I think that is what they want in general.

I think it would have been cool if people who had put money towards the game had a better chance of getting into any forthcoming betas, however, I don't think it would have been fair to do so at this time without announcing this previously, or some warning. If they have new supporter packs, maybe they could put something like "Buy this pack and get instant beta access" or "buy this pack and get 1st week beta access." Something like that. But do that when packs are/were still available. People would buy it for that.

interesting view point, but I think GGG do care about the game and the community, and extending the race to a league would have just made people less interested in the beta early, causing them not to get the feedback they are looking for

Amazingly written, sir.
I DO hope GGG reads this.

No other comments but to hope for a beta key and wait for more temp leagues.

I hate races btw. Mostly cuz i suck at them.

i was one of the first thousand to get into closed beta. ive spent lots of money (not as much as some, but lots in my eyes) ive spent thousands (5k+) of hours into the game. been playing since december of 2011 (OB didn`t start until jan 2013). And i have yet to get a key. i don`t know why it bothers me that I didn`t get a key but it really does. especially when i see a bunch of random streamers getting in that ive never seen before. /endrant

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Wraithstar wrote:

i was one of the first thousand to get into closed beta. ive spent lots of money (not as much as some, but lots in my eyes) ive spent thousands (5k+) of hours into the game. been playing since december of 2011 (OB didn`t start until jan 2013). And i have yet to get a key. i don`t know why it bothers me that I didn`t get a key but it really does. especially when i see a bunch of random streamers getting in that ive never seen before. /endrant

/hug

Hope they acknowledge some of the guys that made Act 4 possible

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing"
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Not to sound negative or anything, but the statements from Chris did not sound like they have an actual plan for the time between now and act IV launch.

"Maybe cutthroat."
"Exiles everywhere sounds fun"
(said by Chris both on Kripp's stream and on reddit)

I do believe everyone at GGG is really stressed out atm.
Yet it would've been nice to have something to look forward to in the coming 1.5 months...