Originally posted by LordDraekon

Damage control for Atari should include tying Emmert up and stuffing him in a closet or firing him (which would likely involve buying him off). His curious perspective has never really helped anything, and it amazes me that companies are still willing to hire him. He must pitch himself really well.

 Actually, he hasn't had to sell himself to any company yet; he help found Cryptic, and he's only worked for them so far. Still, as you point out, they should know by now that Jack isn't the guy you want doing PR for your company.

Originally posted by jaxsundane

 Exactly and that's why my new nickname for Jack is "doesn't get it".  He just doesn't get that while he thinks the way he enjoys his games may be fun it's only marginally so to the vast majority of the players he is trying to reach.  In the interview he makes mentions of "metrics" which is something that to my understanding he has always been against and has always had to fight a losing fight to keep his vision of it alive.  Many of COH players argued with him about the lack of numbers and he refused to use them I've heard since he left and they added them COH has been a much more stable game with a happier community, in STO there have been many calls for them to make the skills tab better at explaining what the powers do and that interview line seems like this is his "complaint" about that topic again.  He just doesn't get that many mmo players being a bit more into the numbers and such than console players want to figure these little things out.  He likes to design games with themes suited for an older male audience but he wants to use standards that only work for games designed for children, make sure the graphics look good and that there's stuff to do in it.  Jack is convinced that players like games with the depth of All Star Cheerleader for the Wii and refuses to believe that will just not cut it.

He is going to stick with his vision and ride Cryptic into the ground in the process, but don't worry after that he'll probably do some lame interview about how he's leaving the video game field all together and how we can kiss his ass on the way out the door.

To be fair is CORPGs easier to make and both GW1 and DDO have been doing fine (DDO did however horrible as long as it was P2P). GW sold 7 million copies and DDO is supposed to have over a million players (but the question is how many of those that are active). Still there is a market for those games, STO is a disguised CORPG that tries to be a MMO and that was a sure failure, NWN could do to Cryptic what GW did to ANET if they do it right and stop being so cheap that they sell anything in the cashshop and takes monthly fees besides that.

If they use GWs B2P method (with just fluff and character slots in the cash shop) and make an acceptable game they can actually get loads of money and sell well. But my guess is that they are too greedy and mess it up, creating another STO instead with little content, monthly fees and premium gear for sale.

There is the chance Jack finally have learned his lesson but it is not something I would bet money on.

Originally posted by Dinendae

 Actually, he hasn't had to sell himself to any company yet; he help found Cryptic, and he's only worked for them so far. Still, as you point out, they should know by now that Jack isn't the guy you want doing PR for your company.

Could be worse, Tasos, Barnett and Smedley to mention 3.

Originally posted by Loke666

To be fair is CORPGs easier to make and both GW1 and DDO have been doing fine (DDO did however horrible as long as it was P2P). GW sold 7 million copies and DDO is supposed to have over a million players (but the question is how many of those that are active). Still there is a market for those games, STO is a disguised CORPG that tries to be a MMO and that was a sure failure, NWN could do to Cryptic what GW did to ANET if they do it right and stop being so cheap that they sell anything in the cashshop and takes monthly fees besides that.

If they use GWs B2P method (with just fluff and character slots in the cash shop) and make an acceptable game they can actually get loads of money and sell well. But my guess is that they are too greedy and mess it up, creating another STO instead with little content, monthly fees and premium gear for sale.

There is the chance Jack finally have learned his lesson but it is not something I would bet money on.

 How likely do you think it is that they will drop the greed? After seeing what they did in STO, I'm guessing that it's not very likely.

   As to Jack having learned his lesson? These last two interviews he has done show that he hasn't: you cannot have both quality and get it done quickly, not with Atari's financial situation, and still have a game that will keep people playing past the first month.  Instead, since he has said they are wanting to focus on quality, expect to see even less content than STO had at launch. That is the only way they can currently keep to the 18 month development cycle, and still have everything in the game be even remotely good; they just don't have the money to massively expand their team so that they can have a lot of quality content in 18 months.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Dinendae

 Actually, he hasn't had to sell himself to any company yet; he help found Cryptic, and he's only worked for them so far. Still, as you point out, they should know by now that Jack isn't the guy you want doing PR for your company.

Could be worse, Tasos, Barnett and Smedley to mention 3.

 Actually, I rate them as all being equally as bad. Toss Bill Roper (who's a free angent now), Mark Jacobs (formerly of Mythic), and Brad Quaid (who ran Sigil into the ground) in that list as well.

Originally posted by Dinendae

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Dinendae

 Actually, he hasn't had to sell himself to any company yet; he help found Cryptic, and he's only worked for them so far. Still, as you point out, they should know by now that Jack isn't the guy you want doing PR for your company.

Could be worse, Tasos, Barnett and Smedley to mention 3.

 Actually, I rate them as all being equally as bad. Toss Bill Roper (who's a free angent now), Mark Jacobs (formerly of Mythic), and Brad Quaid (who ran Sigil into the ground) in that list as well.

+Gaute Godager we can't leave him out of the party.

Originally posted by mezlabor

Originally posted by Dinendae

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Dinendae

 Actually, he hasn't had to sell himself to any company yet; he help found Cryptic, and he's only worked for them so far. Still, as you point out, they should know by now that Jack isn't the guy you want doing PR for your company.

Could be worse, Tasos, Barnett and Smedley to mention 3.

 Actually, I rate them as all being equally as bad. Toss Bill Roper (who's a free angent now), Mark Jacobs (formerly of Mythic), and Brad Quaid (who ran Sigil into the ground) in that list as well.

+Gaute Godager we can't leave him out of the party.

Dont forget David Bowman

Originally posted by Dinendae

Originally posted by Loke666

To be fair is CORPGs easier to make and both GW1 and DDO have been doing fine (DDO did however horrible as long as it was P2P). GW sold 7 million copies and DDO is supposed to have over a million players (but the question is how many of those that are active). Still there is a market for those games, STO is a disguised CORPG that tries to be a MMO and that was a sure failure, NWN could do to Cryptic what GW did to ANET if they do it right and stop being so cheap that they sell anything in the cashshop and takes monthly fees besides that.

If they use GWs B2P method (with just fluff and character slots in the cash shop) and make an acceptable game they can actually get loads of money and sell well. But my guess is that they are too greedy and mess it up, creating another STO instead with little content, monthly fees and premium gear for sale.

There is the chance Jack finally have learned his lesson but it is not something I would bet money on.

 How likely do you think it is that they will drop the greed? After seeing what they did in STO, I'm guessing that it's not very likely.

   As to Jack having learned his lesson? These last two interviews he has done show that he hasn't: you cannot have both quality and get it done quickly, not with Atari's financial situation, and still have a game that will keep people playing past the first month.  Instead, since he has said they are wanting to focus on quality, expect to see even less content than STO had at launch. That is the only way they can currently keep to the 18 month development cycle, and still have everything in the game be even remotely good; they just don't have the money to massively expand their team so that they can have a lot of quality content in 18 months.

I think they're hoping that UGC will make it so people don't notice the lack of content. They're probably hoping the same after the third season of STO.

Originally posted by solarine

Originally posted by Xondar123

Originally posted by solarine

Originally posted by Dinendae

...

This is the part that gets me: "we had done MMOs in 18 months that have been successful" What successful, 18 months to develop MMO have they done? Certainly not CoH/CoV, which took longer than that to make (and it can be argued that it didn't get successful until after Jack and co. left). CO? Please; that game was bleeding players, and only recently started to regain some of them. STO? Absolutely not; unlike CO, STO shows no sign of turning things around yet.

 ...

 

In that interview he specifically states that making City of Heroes took them a year and a half.

I'm pretty sure that's bullshit, but then again most of what Jack says is bullshit.

 

Well, that's too bad, isn't it? If it had been pighsit, they could run Bartertown on it.

I got a friend of mine who posts on the City of Heroes forums to send a PM to War Witch asking what the CoH development time was. We'll see if she replies and what that reply will be, though we might have to wait until Monday.

Originally posted by jaxsundane

Originally posted by Dinendae

Originally posted by bstiff

Originally posted by Dinendae

 

*edit for additional thought* Also, Jack talks about how Fallout is a great game, but isn't being made an MMO because of resources. Perhaps someone should have told him that there is a Fallout MMO in the works. Considering his current position, you would think that he would like to keep tabs on the competition.

 I thought he was he was talking about fallout 3 at that point and claiming it wasn't a mmo because bethesda didn't have the resources which is odd since I don't ever remember bethesda claiming they wanted to make fallout 3 a mmo.

   While he was speaking of Fallout 3, there is a Fallout MMO in the works. Either way you read it, it's an odd statement; he was comparing Bioware making  SW:TOR because they have the budget and team for it, but Fallout 3 wasn't made as an online game because of resources. As I said though, there is a Fallout MMO being made now. 

   On another note, thanks to that interview, we know who comes up with Cryptic's insipid core philosophy for their games now:

"Neverwinter was, at least initially... I'll be honest, my initial version is far different. My initial version was a flat-out MMO that would essentially be different zones in Neverwinter, and there would be various entrances and critters scattered throughout. And my initial idea -- and again, we flushed this down the toilet because this was a while ago -- but it was essentially going to be a dungeon that would be instanced between you and your friends. Any real story, per se, was all about exploration."

Sounds just like CoH/CoV, CO, and  STO doesn't it?

 Exactly and that's why my new nickname for Jack is "doesn't get it".  He just doesn't get that while he thinks the way he enjoys his games may be fun it's only marginally so to the vast majority of the players he is trying to reach.  In the interview he makes mentions of "metrics" which is something that to my understanding he has always been against and has always had to fight a losing fight to keep his vision of it alive.  Many of COH players argued with him about the lack of numbers and he refused to use them I've heard since he left and they added them COH has been a much more stable game with a happier community, in STO there have been many calls for them to make the skills tab better at explaining what the powers do and that interview line seems like this is his "complaint" about that topic again.  He just doesn't get that many mmo players being a bit more into the numbers and such than console players want to figure these little things out.  He likes to design games with themes suited for an older male audience but he wants to use standards that only work for games designed for children, make sure the graphics look good and that there's stuff to do in it.  Jack is convinced that players like games with the depth of All Star Cheerleader for the Wii and refuses to believe that will just not cut it.

He is going to stick with his vision and ride Cryptic into the ground in the process, but don't worry after that he'll probably do some lame interview about how he's leaving the video game field all together and how we can kiss his ass on the way out the door.

I've actually seen players find bugs in the game using the "new" real numbers system Paragon Studios released after they got CoH, and devs post on the boards saying "that's a bug, we'll put a fix in the next patch!"

Originally posted by PyrateLV

Originally posted by mezlabor

Originally posted by Dinendae

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Dinendae

 Actually, he hasn't had to sell himself to any company yet; he help found Cryptic, and he's only worked for them so far. Still, as you point out, they should know by now that Jack isn't the guy you want doing PR for your company.

Could be worse, Tasos, Barnett and Smedley to mention 3.

 Actually, I rate them as all being equally as bad. Toss Bill Roper (who's a free angent now), Mark Jacobs (formerly of Mythic), and Brad Quaid (who ran Sigil into the ground) in that list as well.

+Gaute Godager we can't leave him out of the party.

Dont forget David Bowman

 I know  about (and forgot to list >_<) Godager, and isn't Bowman from Tulga Games?

Originally posted by Xondar123

I think they're hoping that UGC will make it so people don't notice the lack of content. They're probably hoping the same after the third season of STO.

     That is more than likely true. Wait until the STO players see how little they can actually do with the UCG. Alternately, watch the players do things with the UCG that the dvelopers can't/don't, and then watch how quickly any thread that takes the devs to task on the subject gets deleted.

Originally posted by Xondar123

I got a friend of mine who posts on the City of Heroes forums to send a PM to War Witch asking what the CoH development time was. We'll see if she replies and what that reply will be, though we might have to wait until Monday.

   Please ask your friend to specifically ask for the entire development time, not just when Cryptic decided to scrap the original system and go with archetypes. Of course we still may get 18 months as a reply, if there even is an answer; although Needham and Jack are no longer there, Paragon Studios still may not count the initial development time and only count from the change in direction.

It's just more of the same crap he's spewed since after CoH, and before CO and STO.

"We made mistakes, we've learned from our mistakes, we'll do better this time, etc etc etc."

Yet it's always exactly the same story when the game is released.  Very little content, buggy, ultra repetitive, overly simplistic, etc etc.

Cryptic is totally out of touch with the genre. They had a very mediocre success with CoH back when the genre was still young, before players evolved, and when there was very little competition. They're not savvy enough to recognize that their ideas about what is fun, how much content is needed, and their engine are all severely outdated now.

Originally posted by Hagonbok

It's just more of the same crap he's spewed since after CoH, and before CO and STO.

"We made mistakes, we've learned from our mistakes, we'll do better this time, etc etc etc."

Yet it's always exactly the same story when the game is released.  Very little content, buggy, ultra repetitive, overly simplistic, etc etc.

Cryptic is totally out of touch with the genre. They had a very mediocre success with CoH back when the genre was still young, before players evolved, and when there was very little competition. They're not savvy enough to recognize that their ideas about what is fun, how much content is needed, and their engine are all severely outdated now.

 i disagree. i think they know there ideas of what fun,content and there engine are sub-standard at best.  i do beleive they are either unwilling or incapable of improving in these ares to the point of making a "good" game.

i tend to lean towards unwilling. they have allready started a pr campaign for neverwinter without addressing the fundamental mistake they have made with sto and champions... time.

i think that they are more interested in pushing games out in 18 months than anything else. that quality and content will be sacrificed long before there precious release date. and this imo is what is going to make neverwinter a bad game.

imo they know whats wrong, they are just not willing to take the time (or money) to fix it.

cheap/fast/good............cryptic can only pick two, care to wager which two it will be?

Originally posted by raistalin69

 i disagree. i think they know there ideas of what fun,content and there engine are sub-standard at best.  i do beleive they are either unwilling or incapable of improving in these ares to the point of making a "good" game.

i tend to lean towards unwilling. they have allready started a pr campaign for neverwinter without addressing the fundamental mistake they have made with sto and champions... time.

i think that they are more interested in pushing games out in 18 months than anything else. that quality and content will be sacrificed long before there precious release date. and this imo is what is going to make neverwinter a bad game.

imo they know whats wrong, they are just not willing to take the time (or money) to fix it.

cheap/fast/good............cryptic can only pick two, care to wager which two it will be?

    Yeah, I'm going to have to go with unwilling as well; after all those features in CoH/CoV that they said they wanted to put in (such as switching factions), and then they said they couldn't do them. As soon as Needham and Jack left, those features started to appear. Now we have STO, and once again there was a list of features they wanted to do but now say they can't (such as player fleet starbases); anyone want to bet that if the Cryptic executive team moved on, we wouldn't see at least some of those features that can be done actually get done?

Originally posted by Dinendae

Originally posted by PyrateLV

Originally posted by mezlabor

Originally posted by Dinendae

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Dinendae

 Actually, he hasn't had to sell himself to any company yet; he help found Cryptic, and he's only worked for them so far. Still, as you point out, they should know by now that Jack isn't the guy you want doing PR for your company.

Could be worse, Tasos, Barnett and Smedley to mention 3.

 Actually, I rate them as all being equally as bad. Toss Bill Roper (who's a free angent now), Mark Jacobs (formerly of Mythic), and Brad Quaid (who ran Sigil into the ground) in that list as well.

+Gaute Godager we can't leave him out of the party.

Dont forget David Bowman

 I know  about (and forgot to list >_<) Godager, and isn't Bowman from Tulga Games?

yeah. hes the clown that failed with Horizons and fired all his employees in a parking lot.

Originally posted by raistalin69

Originally posted by Hagonbok

It's just more of the same crap he's spewed since after CoH, and before CO and STO.

"We made mistakes, we've learned from our mistakes, we'll do better this time, etc etc etc."

Yet it's always exactly the same story when the game is released.  Very little content, buggy, ultra repetitive, overly simplistic, etc etc.

Cryptic is totally out of touch with the genre. They had a very mediocre success with CoH back when the genre was still young, before players evolved, and when there was very little competition. They're not savvy enough to recognize that their ideas about what is fun, how much content is needed, and their engine are all severely outdated now.

 i disagree. i think they know there ideas of what fun,content and there engine are sub-standard at best.  i do beleive they are either unwilling or incapable of improving in these ares to the point of making a "good" game.

i tend to lean towards unwilling. they have allready started a pr campaign for neverwinter without addressing the fundamental mistake they have made with sto and champions... time.

i think that they are more interested in pushing games out in 18 months than anything else. that quality and content will be sacrificed long before there precious release date. and this imo is what is going to make neverwinter a bad game.

imo they know whats wrong, they are just not willing to take the time (or money) to fix it.

cheap/fast/good............cryptic can only pick two, care to wager which two it will be?

 Oh it tends more towards unwilling which is plainly obvious from looking at the history of Jack Emmert.  Just about everything different in COH from when he was there are largely the features he swore wouldn't even be possible unfortunately now though for Champion and STO to be saved they need to get rid of Jack or those ip's need to go to a different company much like COH did.

Jack Emmert has an idea of what he thinks of as fun and any amoount of work that he deems unnecassary are left out of the picture too bad for him though ninety percent of his potential player base just doesn't agree with his idea of fun.

Originally posted by PyrateLV

Originally posted by Dinendae

Originally posted by PyrateLV

Originally posted by mezlabor

Originally posted by Dinendae

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Dinendae

 Actually, he hasn't had to sell himself to any company yet; he help found Cryptic, and he's only worked for them so far. Still, as you point out, they should know by now that Jack isn't the guy you want doing PR for your company.

Could be worse, Tasos, Barnett and Smedley to mention 3.

 Actually, I rate them as all being equally as bad. Toss Bill Roper (who's a free angent now), Mark Jacobs (formerly of Mythic), and Brad Quaid (who ran Sigil into the ground) in that list as well.

+Gaute Godager we can't leave him out of the party.

Dont forget David Bowman

 I know  about (and forgot to list >_<) Godager, and isn't Bowman from Tulga Games?

yeah. hes the clown that failed with Horizons and fired all his employees in a parking lot.

 

Horizons another stellar atari mmo.

Originally posted by echose7en

Champions online and STOs bad reaction from gamers is down to WOW being the new benchmark (read: damn since wow has come out we cant get away with reskining crappy games).

Was shocked that chucking out reskined CoX games with lack of content got him bad reviews?

Looks like hes really thinking of putting a sub on a coop game? maybe even with cash shop like the other games?

 

Pretty good read though.

Actually STO is a reskinned version of CO, and CoX blows either of those games away. I still think Cryptic can make a better game under new management though. We can actually thank Cryptic for reskinning CO into STO. It had never been done before and the result could be seen by even the most casual observer. The huge amount of negative feedback from the community will basically ensure that no company will be able to get away with reskinning one average game into another. Now if some dev creates a hit fantasy MMO that gets positive reviews I'd be all for seeing it reskinned into another genre... sci-fi, steampunk, you name it.