Enlighten me, I’m all ears.
We shouldve had a roadmap a week ago and ags and sg has fucked up these are facts. However, you are glossing over some pretty big differences in our launches NA/EU is the only region to release with T3. If we launched like the other regions we wouldnt even be able to do T3 content yet.
I’d order lost ark to be cancelled
If anyone i know had the productivity rate that ags employees seem to have, they’d be out of work that week…
no you would be fired in a day lol
“they tried to use business approach. They treated the games as a market and they marked players as “customers” .”
I see that a bit and i cant help but feel this is wrong…
If they really wanted to milk and make money, they would release good skins left and right. This is literally one of their biggest business opportunity and they’re completely ignoring it.
In the software development world we have a saying, “months of coding can save you weeks of planning.” I for one am happy they’re taking their time with the roadmap. Would I like to see one right now? Absolutely. Would I rather get a good one later? Of course.
2 Likes
Very bold of you to assume that they are sitting on a desk for 2 weeks now, brainstorming, trying to figure out a roadmap, let me give you my version.
They have a roadmap since the start, they gonna follow that no matter what we do or say and they dont give a fk what we think, they are just waiting the outrage to pass and the most hot headed vocal playerbase to calm down or quit to finally pass whatever they have planned out already.
If you can’t release a roadmap in a week then we will be getting new content on par with SWTOR. They have what 2 or 3 years of content not released yet and nobody knows how to release it? Youve already done this twice, once in SK and once in Russia. You dont know how to do it a 3rd time? Did you manage to break copy and paste?
Listen, if you need someone who can run this properly then hit me up. Just gonna let you know Ima get every red cent out of everything. And if someone is a problem in anyway they are getting fired.
So would you be focused on short term profit or long term returns? What’s your monetization scheme look like?
If I would work for AGS or SG, I would be mostly annoyed by all the dumpasses having no clue about things happening inside and just complain on the forums, reddit and whatever 24/7, because they can’t wait for shit or are just to stupid to realize that some things just happens unpredictable.
But yea … ofc the typical forumuser/complainer knows everything - specially how to organize a game, when it will die, what every player wants and so on.
Are you a Product Manager or Product Owner? I highly doubt so. Have you ever published a roadmap? Depending upon the stakeholders involved, it can be a pretty complicated process. Epspecially so, if the PM/PO doesn’t have the actual authority to determine the Roadmap and other decisions. In such cases the PM/PO usually have to go before a review board to get their things approved.
I am not defending anybody here, because the lack of communication is really bad on this. But as a PM/PO I felt the need to chime in on this. To make things worse, it most likely is a joint effort between two PM’s/PO’s along with all of their respective stakeholders.
Sometimes that means yes, as the PM/PO you don’t get to “own” the roadmap and you can only do things if approved by a committee. Usually the PM/PO knows best what their customers want and it is these committees that are only interested in the bottom line and dont take the customer into consideration because they aren’t on the front lines and they are looking at costs/P&L more than ROI.
Considering the massive amount of complaints seen on the forums regarding the skins, classes, honing system and loot drop rates, especially in t3, combined with the 1340 - 1370 gap there is most likely no easy solution for the PM/PO. I would rather see them take 30-45 days to come up with an actual roadmap that is going to be implemented.
This tells me you are not a PM/PO and you never will be. A roadmap is YOUR plan, its your guidepost by which you rally your team(s) to get their work done. Its the docyment you share with your customers and stakeholders alike to communicate when things are expected to be delivered. Yes, roadmaps can change and they should change based on market demands. The roadmap is in fact “content” for a PM/PO. Its their way of communicating what will be done when. As I said earlier, I would rather see a real roadmap in 30-45 days than some bs “plan” that somebody threw together, and the development teams don’t follow and everything is botched.
You seem to be upset that a roadmap hasn’t been released, but what if they released a roadmap and missed their deliverables? What if we got content 2 weeks later? What if it was a month later? I’m sure you would be complaining about that however based on your statement that should be acceptable since it’s not content.
5 Likes
It’s nice to have insights from an actual PM/PO. Thanks!
There will be no roadmap anytime soon. I expect a pr release for the April content in about a week and they will count their or releases about upcoming patches as roadmaps. Amazon does not believe in roadmaps or communication with its players. If you actually read what the cm’s say on the forums it’s literally just a bunch of I don’t knows and we will tell you later with no information.
I would love to know what Gold River thinks of AGS right now… Especially after their head was forced to resign mid turmoil following the launch of his passion project of a game…
I also don’t get how AGS just decided to round up some partnered twitch streamers and hire them as CMs and work remotely… piss poor planning leads to piss poor performance and when a chat window is your companies preferred method of communication how on earth do you expect to communicate with your playerbase effectively and transparent
With this whiny entitled community of children?
No. You better be sure you have the “roadmap” perfect and can do it relatively at the time mentioned. Otherwise the crying will be amplified 1000 fold.
well its clear what happened.
they HAD…<---- keyword here. had a plan BUT
their lead at AGS stepped down (you’re FIRED) last week hence the delay suddenly.
so now I suspect they are waiting for them to either replace or get the new one up to speed and come to a decision on the roadmap with smilegate that involves money making decisions. your welcome.
I really enjoyed reading your reply, it’s informative and I learned something.
I was not mad, the post was just a shower thought that interested me a bit to role play a little. I enjoyed the game a lot so I only came here because game was on maintenance lol. I don’t even care about their roadmaps because I am playing the game, there are still a ton of stuff to do, and I’m not looking forward to new classes, just waiting for some cool outfits that’s all.
A roadmap has different meanings depending on perspectives. For "PM"s, it is a product, but not to please the players per se, it is instead to please the “committee” you mentioned. Knowing what’s best for players is the “method” to create successful products aka plans to get them approved.
For players, it is really just a plan. And since this is not a grand new game, I’m afraid nothing much would excite neither western players nor KR/RU veterans, they will compare this roadmap to what KR/RU had before and unless AGS really went out of their ways to impress us, it is likely to be faced with doubts and critics. However, anyone with common sense would know that it’d be idiotic to release 3 years worth of contents in months, even when we are “supposed” to catch up with other regions.
Yes I am not THEIR product manager, what I said is simply based on where my butt sits. As a marketing person, to let situation get to what it is right now is going to be more than embarrassed, and actually frustrated to fix.
1 Like
Hi, uh I just realized we have a lot of game designers, developers, directors, community managers etc, here in this post… Now talking seriously and tbh, SG have their roadmap because they have been working more than 4 years in their game, they know how Koreans markets work, but AGS have been working for a couple of months, and they have to do a lot of changes for our version, because here we don’t like p2w, so is not just like to publish: “oh next week we’re gonna release destroyer and then arcana”, they have to ask for developers, how much time that will take, they have to take care about translations, p2w adjustments, is not like: " oh, tomorrow we will discuss about roadmap in our early morning coffee guys, do you agree? Oh yeah boss tomorrow we can discuss, I’m gonna think how much will take to modify arcana while I’m taking a shower" :), not like that guys, that’s a lot of work to do, and recently added changes I think was made it in a record time for a MMO, a Korean game, a platform, a code that u don’t know how the hell it works… Is not like AGS don’t want to release the road map, is about that u have to be carefully with that because u’re not a company with 100 users, u’re a company with more than 400k concurrent players a and lot of more casuals players, check how much time “the new war” from Warframe took to be released or many other expansions from Warframe took to be online, is not like there’s a magical word to do that, is a lot of work to do, (I’m programmer and technical leader, I know anyone care, but that’s why I’m saying this, because all users wants all changes, perfect games, for next week but don’t know how really this works inside, they’re humans not robots guys)
Regards, metalshen1.
1 Like
First, I would like to say thank you. I am glad I was able to shed some light onto the possible difficulties in making and releasing a roadmap.
I have worked as a PM where I have had the freedom to interact with the customer (player base in this case) and walk a mile in their shoes so to speak. That is when I was best able to make an effective roadmap for my product. I have also had to report to the “committee” before. The differences in the way those two products we managed and ended up are like night and day.
If this is being managed by committee, I feel bad for the PM(s), because that creates a lot of “plead your case” type situations and the ones who usually get screwed are the actual users while the PM(s) start to get burnt out very quickly.
I disagree, all of us players are the customer. Doesn’t matter if you are a founder, f2p, p2p, whale, or any combination of these. Each one deserves its own user persona for different reasons. Im only going to talk about the whale and the f2p, because yes the whale will spend the most money upfront which helps a company recover their investments faster and hit their required ROI. Whereas in most f2p games the f2p player is the larger representation of players.
As a whale, a person may or may not have a lot of free time to play the game. They are interested in hitting end-game content as fast as possible and are willing to spend large amounts of cash to achieve that. They may or may not be interested in cosmetics (skins, pets, etc.). A whale may have a very high paying job, and be willing to spend a few hours per day playing the game.
As a f2p, a person may or may not have a lot of free time to play the game. They are interested in getting to end-game while exploring the world of lost ark. They enjoy working as a team with their friends after a long day at work to help them unwind, and want to progress with them. They might spend some money on cosmetics, but it has to really draw their eye before they can rationalize spending the money on it.
Now, clearly these are not full user personas, but you get the idea. If these were provided by LA from the KR/RU regions, then yes as a good PM you would have to rebuild these personas, otherwise all of your assumptions will be off. That takes time to do. Also, based on what little I have read in the forums, there are other personas (cosmetics, honing, t3 players, etc.) That should be focused on the characters we all play. In a B2B model, you can sit down with your customers and have discussions, in a B2C model these personas are extremely critical because it is impossible to sit down with all players, just as it is difficult to gather the necessary information from the forums. Which is why the CM’s should be passing the overall feedback back to the PM which should then be generalized into categories and displayed in something like a pareto chart.
If, as a PM you only see the business side of things, your reference to a “product” I assume, then the PM needs to change their mindset. The PM should be the voice into the company for its customers (player base) as each on of us can help to sustain the product over time. Take for example the f2p I mentioned above. Let’s say they fall behind their friends in progress, would they then be willing to pay for more honing materials? Maybe. Would they make a very large purchase, no most likely not. But they would make a purchase. And let’s not forget f2p players can and do act as free marketing by talking to and convincing their friends to play the game who may or may not be f2p.
Right, but that is the point I was making in my previous post. You fall into the persona that cares about cosmetics. So what would happen if the roadmap that was haphazardly put together and released to us players said more cosmetics would be here in 2 weeks, and the team ended up shipping the new cosmetics in June? I would imagine you would be very upset, and honestly you would have every right to be. That is why I said I would rather see an accurate roadmap rather than a quick one that wasn’t adhered to.