If you played since Argos you would know that AGS has no clue either, we get patchnotes a few hours before release lmao
It’s me. I’m shy.
Knew it!!
thats also probably smilegate.
smilegate is in charge of content pacing, including pacing for classes.
the only thing amazon is supposed to be in charge of is how much things cost (pricing), localization and pushing the patches they get from smilegate out to us.
they can ask for things but its up to smilegate to decide if it actually happens.
This is simply not true and I don’t know why would you spread misinformation like it’s a fact.
Mail. Ru is “only” a publisher as well, yet they NEVER did stuff like stagger class releases. Artist was released to Russian servers couple months after it was released in KR. Meaning, all release decisions are done by Amazon games, with their non existent MMO experience they decided that dragging out classes over the period of a year would bring in players over time. All those region tied decisions like selling gold in the cash shop, not adding Yoz’s etc is publishers choice.
There was no video game crisis, that’s a youtuber meme that vastly overstates the relevance of Atari as being more than a fad to a generation that has somehow still never heard of the C64 and isn’t aware that it’s when everyone was switching to PC gaming. You’ve seen something similar in modern times with the Wii where every household thought they needed one to be trendy even though they didn’t play it, leading to a boom & bust and shovelware flood which had no relevance to video games as a whole.
Mmmmkay
Incorrect. Or to be more precise, you don’t know this, nor do I.
Difference is since I don’t know confidential legal agreements between SMG and Amazon, i don’t pretend otherwise.
Amazon is the publisher. A publisher has as little or as many rights as they negotiate for.
They may have very little game roadmap control and just pure revenue share. This is possible. Also possible is they have veto rights on whatever line items they negotiated for.
Unless you are an insider and have knowledge of the specific deal terms, you can’t say Amazon is “just publishes the game” and has no control of what gets put in and when for their version.
SMG may have zero obligations or might contractually have to do certain coding work. Amazon might even have to pay for that, or not. Unless you’ve seen the publishing deal terms, all we forum goers can say is Amazon has whatever influence they negotiated for. Perhaps some, none, or all control.
It’s very unlikely AGS solely made that decision, it working differently on other regions isn’t really evidence of anything, Smilegate could very easily have decided to do this based on metrics from just mass releasing classes not being favourable in their eyes when done in regions like RU.
The most likely scenario is that AGS feed metrics to a combined AGS/SG team who decide a roadmap / what goes into a patch based on what content they feel will retain and re-interest players, AGS are probably more heavily involved in the market and community research (for instance when to release a patch) and SG are likely more heavily involved in decided and porting content for that patch.
Every statement that Smilegate and AGS have put out has said this is a collaborative relationship, we will never likely know for sure but it seems very unlikely that AGS are the ones solely responsible for the staggered class release strategy. I’m not trying to crap on Smilegate but this western view of them is pretty naive, it really wasn’t that long ago that they were considered a fairly bad company due to some historic practices and PR…hiccups. I think the mentality that AGS are just these awful late-stage capitalists holding back content that SG just wants to give us has no basis in evidence. If anything, the fact that both companies have frequently said they work and plan together heavily suggests the opposite.
Classes were not mass released no RU. They came out at the same speed they were coming out in Korea with KR being only couple months ahead. What they decided to do in our region was to cut the available classes in half and drip feed them to both maximize the revenue and get new potential and old players back in the game. I don’t see a problem with doing this with brand new classes like Aeromancer, but game should’ve definitely been launched with existing ones.
LMFAO never gets old
1 Like
They would never clarify any of that.
their last studio “head” had to “stepped down” no idea on the current one.
but who cares?
what they gonna do?
make an interview promising better communications and implementing things NA players want and don’t want like they did to remove yoz jars before it has even been implemented?
what do you want them to say?
the game has zero content and you do the same thing on 6 characters for “fun”
like wtf are they gonna introduce into the game that will change that?
nothing…
there’s no “critical” decision making to be done in the game outside publishing it and pushing your really bad suggestions to the developers who could care less about the tiny profits from NA compared to KR.
Frazzini was never involved in the gaming industry prior to being the AGS Head. If anything its a blessing hes gone.
This is actually a really good question. When I was first starting the game, a lot of my confidence came from Gold River and how he managed the game in KR. You may not agree with his decisions, but he was very passionate and wanted the best for the game. He was willing to address community concerns and admit when he was wrong.
In the western side, it’s almost like we’re talking to a wall
I’m also pretty confident that AGS/SMG does not play the western version much. I know several AGS employees play, but as far as I know, they are all pretty casual. There is nothing wrong with casual gaming, but they also need an insight from a more hardcore player. On top of that, it doesn’t matter if a random AGS employee plays a lot. Whoever is making decisions needs to have that insight whether it’s personal experience or from someone they respect and trust.
There are times when SMG/AGS does something and all the players are upset. It was super obvious everyone would be upset, but AGS does a surprised pikachu face. Or there’s a serious issue and players assume they’re working on a fix, but they find out that AGS/SMG didn’t realize it was a problem in the first place. But it’s something every invested player knew.
There’s a limit to taking community feedback because there’s so much misinformation. There’s a limit to using data because you may let something slip by because you weren’t paying attention to a certain angle/data. But an invested player would be able to tell you right away because it’s something they experience everyday. All three are needed and it feels like Western version is lacking on the latter.
I’m going off topic and I’m not saying, “lol AGS start playing 10 hours a day.” I think the best thing they can do is start finding a player that they can trust (Good insight, lots of LA playtime, as objective/unbiased as possible, rational character, etc) and start getting regular feedback from them.
The decision to release 1 class every 2-3 months came from Gold River/SG, he said it in one of his interviews
As mentioned multiple times in this topic, I believe for many (big) things, all AGS can do is to ask SG for changes and not deciding on their own
That was related to new classes not classes already released.
And you think AGS made the decision to hold back some classes because SG was going to rework them? (the previous balance patch)
I mean, it might be possible or maybe already said somewhere, I don’t know. But I think it could also have been SGs decision.
They could have discussed it and both parties came to an agreement.
Also I think the decision to release Sorceress was a good one, as one of the big 3 archetypes (Warrior, Archer, Mage).
In KR, many people started playing Summoner when the game released, because there were no Sorceresses and the Summoner was the next best class available for “Mage” lovers (Wizard)
I don’t think anyone ever argued that Amazon made exclusively bad decisions they had some good calls here and there. But regardless if Smilegate are the ones that make all the decisions for this game then why is there absolutely ZERO communication coming from their side?
They never really cared about this region, I sincerely doubt they are managing us here. They probably organize the patches but it’s Amazon who has the say of what they want in them and when to release them.
Somebody at Amazon has to make all this decisions yet we have not a single clue who it is. Who is it? Bogdanoff?
Because nobody wants to hear the chalkboard+fingernails type of cringe stuff class cadence complainers sound like