Stringing on the Kickstarter customer, or Why this game needs to die

Well besides the fact that a true investment will come with a contract to agree on terms. While the agreement we got was we give $X and they give us what's entailed in the package we purchased. You're entitled nothing more and nothing less. They could have literally just copied D3's game and moved it over here (...ignoring copyright and all that) and we would have no recourse.

Exactly, Moose, exactly. An investor has his interests protected by law and a supporter has no rights or entitlements. So, leading a supporter along would be viewed as a jerkbag move in parts where honor and obligation is regarded highly, and letting an investor down is just bad business.

Now, regardless of dry, legal aspect of the whole affair, some supporters can rightly claim that GGG accumulated toh towards them. Whether that holds any significance at all depends on where you're coming from.

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raics wrote:

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tackle70 wrote:

This. So much this.

You better not go there. I mean, what's the difference between an investor and a supporter? An investor is basically a conditional supporter that says "I'll give you money to do your stuff IF you do this with your project or it brings me that later". The creator can accept the condition and money or refuse it if it's too unreasonable or doesn't fit his vision and the investor can sue him later if his demands aren't met.

On the other hand, a supporter gives the money based on trust. So, you can't really betray the trust of an investor, because there wasn't any in the first place, it's ridiculous.

the difference is the supporter does not get any returns on his "donation", and has no stake in the company, but an investor gets returns and can sell his stake in the company. also a supporter has no say so in how something is run or develops, but an investor has say so if they own enough shares.

If GGG is to blame for something it's for setting expectations too high. Once you've started the game (which is a time cost, and realistically some stash tabs, so a money cost also), there's no additional cost for any of the stuff that comes after that point. GGG continually outputs new, free content. Even if you paid along the way, the content is still free, even for you.

My first point is free things are judged differently:
-It's hard to measure the value of something that's free.
-Free things are in a different category of respect from paid things.
Here's an anecdote which illustrates these two aspects nicely:
An acquaintance does extensive consulting for charities. Initially he did it for free because he didn't need the money; however, they didn't respect his time and they would try to enlarge the scope of his duties to include more work than he signed on to do. He got tired of it; his solution was to charge his normal rate and apply a 90% discount. He never had any problem since, simply by increasing what they pay. Same person, same work, different respect. I can totally understand why that worked-- people tend to take free things for granted, even free things that they want and value.

My second point is that people like to form cliques-- an exclusive group to define an "us." Once we have an "us," people that think differently become "them." Since the game is free, it's not a very exclusive clique, "us" could be literally anyone. Of course, people that care enough can innovate around that. So there is a back-defined exclusive clique consisting of closed beta supporters. That's a sufficiently exclusive "us." It's a quick step to "them" corrupted GGG's priorities and are responsible for the ills of POE that didn't turn out as "us" wanted.

Now combining points 1 & 2, GGG sets expectations high because they keep making stuff for free. With a "them" to dump all the problems upon, that's a recipe for limitless, uncontained expectations. It was just a matter of time until POE would fail to meet those expectations, that of a continuously updated free thing whose exclusivity was subsequently lost. Step back and look at it, though. What game is better than POE within its own genre?

POE is free. Don't take free for granted.

I haven't run across a single definition of stakeholder which doesn't include customers in the group. Not one.

If your point is that I don't own a share of GGG, then no shit. If your point is that, just because I helped sponsor a project doesn't mean I have some kind of stake in it, then not only are you missing the concept of the term stakeholder, but also this forum.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I haven't run across a single definition of stakeholder which doesn't include customers in the group. Not one.

If your point is that I don't own a share of GGG, then no shit. If your point is that, just because I helped sponsor a project doesn't mean I have some kind of stake in it, then not only are you missing the concept of the term stakeholder, but also this forum.

I'm saying you have 0 nil nadda rights. You can put a long tear filled letter into the suggestion box, and that's all you can do. They don't even have to read it. The "stake" you say you have has 0 meaning to anyone but yourself.

Of course you know this already. That is why you are calling for people to boycott the game to the extant that it gets shut down.

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raics wrote:

Exactly, Moose, exactly. An investor has his interests protected by law and a supporter has no rights or entitlements. So, leading a supporter along would be viewed as a jerkbag move in parts where honor and obligation is regarded highly, and letting an investor down is just bad business.

Now, regardless of dry, legal aspect of the whole affair, some supporters can rightly claim that GGG accumulated toh towards them. Whether that holds any significance at all depends on where you're coming from.

...but that's a matter of subjectivity as I feel I wasn't strung along, lied to or given false expectation.

So maybe you or whoever feels wronged but I don't.

I also still have yet to be pointed in the direction of these promises not fulfilled. This thread is a bunch of people upset that GGG didn't share their vision. This thread drips of entitlement and I'm still confused by it. I feel like there was a list of things GGG said they would and wouldn't do and I missed it.

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raics wrote:

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tackle70 wrote:

This. So much this.

You better not go there.

I already went there wayyyyyyy back earlier in this thread. I do not think it is smart or sound reasoning to give your money to a developer with the idea that you are trusting them to fulfill unmade and unspecified promises that exist only in YOUR head. Remember, the only thing GGG promises you for your support is access to microtransactions and whatever other perks were part of your supporter package.

I've already made the argument that the mentality behind support should be thankfulness for the game already given to you, perhaps with hope for more content/updates in the future, but support should NEVER be given in hope for anything specific in the future. That's not how this funding model works.

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If your point is that, just because I helped sponsor a project doesn't mean I have some kind of stake in it, then not only are you missing the concept of the term stakeholder, but also this forum.

If you (or anyone else) thinks that your money buys you any sort of direct influence into PoE's game design, it is YOU who has missed the concept.

I can bet my head that every single "old-timer" had different view of potential game they want to see; sure, idea could be similar, but if you'd dig deeper - we'd quickly find how distinct these views are/can be from each other.
It's nothing but your personal projection, and if it wasn't met - well, blame the GGG.

The entitlement is real in some people.

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Moosifer wrote:

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raics wrote:

Exactly, Moose, exactly. An investor has his interests protected by law and a supporter has no rights or entitlements. So, leading a supporter along would be viewed as a jerkbag move in parts where honor and obligation is regarded highly, and letting an investor down is just bad business.

Now, regardless of dry, legal aspect of the whole affair, some supporters can rightly claim that GGG accumulated toh towards them. Whether that holds any significance at all depends on where you're coming from.

...but that's a matter of subjectivity as I feel I wasn't strung along, lied to or given false expectation.

So maybe you or whoever feels wronged but I don't.

I also still have yet to be pointed in the direction of these promises not fulfilled. This thread is a bunch of people upset that GGG didn't share their vision. This thread drips of entitlement and I'm still confused by it. I feel like there was a list of things GGG said they would and wouldn't do and I missed it.

Like I said, that subjectivity is exactly my point, no man is perfectly objective. Take an insult, for example, if someone feels insulted it's rude telling him he actually isn't, he feels that way and there's no helping it.

So, if somebody supported GGG in false assumption they will continue doing what they are and the game will get better while at the same time preserving the original flavor, well, that's entirely his own problem. However, in my opinion he has the right to feel wronged on his side but GGG isn't obliged to feel bad about it, if that makes any sense to you. From their side they did nothing wrong.

For me, I'll just say it again, I'm not feeling wronged or disappointed in any way, if GGG made the game according to my vision I'd be happy, but the opposite doesn't really make me sad or stopping me from enjoying what I have. I never expected it, and, truth be told, if they made PoE fully fit my vision I'd have to question their business sense.

I also said that devs were very, very careful about promising things so you'd be hard pressed to compose such a list. Even if they made some promises they were often very loosely defined. For instance, they never exactly promised to fully fix desync, they did promise small improvements and optimizations, and we did get some. On the other hand, they firmly promised competitive PvP, tournaments and such and we got them eventually. They also promised that your loot is perfectly safe in standard and HC leagues and they even went a step further with that by introducing legacy items. In my opinion that step went toes over the line and is the perfect example of a promise too lightly given, but no matter.

Now, I think that in early CB when same players asked for floating damage numbers devs said something like 'we don't see why not, there will most likely be an option at some point', and it later changed to 'no way'. I agree it's not really important either way, I don't think anyone loses sleep over lack of those.