[2020] They did it again! (PVE Thread)

It should be understood that my original discussion with all of you was that we would try to include PvE overall, not just Coop.

Though I will admit that our planners screwed up having Coop as an option. PvE was my main focus to ensure inclusivity, should we have NOT added both?

ONCE AGAIN, for some of you more colorful individuals, there isn't some evil dark plan to push you out of the game or something.

TBH, if every single time we don't add exactly what you're asking to the tee responses like this are not exactly constructive.

-Hapa

I was not chastising AT ALL. In fact, as I have always and will always tell the community, you ask a direct question, you will get a direct answer. I don't typically use a lot of marketing lingo or corporate language, because I don't like using that stuff. So sometimes what I say doesn't come across as the most diplomatic statement.

My point, I didn't know that this mission was going to pan out like it did, but you really think that responding in the fashion that I am seeing in this topic is constructive? Or helpful?

LITERALLY posting just asking the questions so I could look into it probably would have been better.

You say I was answering in a chastising fashion, I have always said that any interaction whether it is community to staff, staff to community, community to community should be respectful, forward and kind. Me stating that responses like I see in this post aren't exactly constructive IS NOT chastising, it's being honest.

Let me ask you this, if you had posted just tagging me and asking me what happened, how do you think my response would have been?

I didn't see these missions ahead of time, because it isn't my job to QA all that stuff, but it is to pass feedback up and down, which is what I have been doing since day one in this position.

It was not my intention to sound snarky at all. You had a title "They did it again!" like it was intentional and a slight against you. Which it was NOT. I'm sorry if my response was blunt and straight forward.

I have said it before and I will say it once again, this is NOT an easy process to get us to cover ALL GAME MODES, because our focus has been PvP for so long. So to think that it's instantly going to just "poof" be perfect right away is kind of much. Doing this requires our dev teams to literally rethink how they design our missions. Which is A LOT of work. Especially considering that this is mostly for the NA community specifically.

If I am being honest, I am VERY surprised that the changes that ARE occurring even occurred at all, because TBH, I can see the point of our dev team to not put as much energy, resources and development time towards PvE, not from a PERSONAL stand point, but a business stand point.

Now do I take it personal when I see attacks and anger at WG for making mistakes when they aren't intentional or over matters in general like this? Perhaps, because I DO see the work put forth that you do not see, the long conversations and calls about it etc.

And TBH, I have never and would never react in the fashion that some do towards a company in general for things like this. As if we would spend the time to purposefully attack or put down the community. This is not the intention, EVER, we can't please everyone and we won't always get things right. But we try our best, sometimes it is correct, sometimes it is not.

As soon as I saw this post after just waking up, I was immediately in a conversation with our devs about it and they admitted that they made a mistake and clarified that it is too late to change it right now, but thankfully because I asked them to focus PvE instead of Coop (and I guess that is my mistake, I am sorry) they mentioned that operations can accomplish this still.

-Hapa

The biggest problem you have with this (and I have dug into the data of this to see what the actual numbers are) the % of players on NA alone that are active on the forums are actually BELOW 1%. The % of players on the forums that come to just read the forums (that's it, no other interaction) is at the highest point barely 3%.

THIS is why, though I spend A LOT of time here, I surf social media, discord, talk to players in game, etc.

-Hapa

Please do not take what I said out of context.

We have publicly stated numerous times that the goal of our dev team is to focus PvP overall. Because globally over 95% of our player base is PvP driven and 90% of our revenue as well. THAT is what I am referencing, because most of what we will do, the direction we go with development etc will be driven by GLOBAL numbers.

ONLY on NA is it a higher percentage. The research that we did in the NA team to bring the importance, size and drive of our PvE (that's holistic not just Coop) community literally caused a shift in how we draw up those missions.

Adding PvE to more directive missions, adding PvE to Twitch missions, driving the do this OR that option, adding more PvE involvement to the random missions that are dropped. ALL of that is directly due to the feedback from the PvE community on NA specifically over the course of the last 6 months (at least this is all the visibility I have as that is as long as I have been with WG), which BTW is an AMAZING amount of time considering how development time usually works! After digging into the numbers and making it apparent that the numbers are a bit more significant for the NA community.

-Hapa

Oh I 100% where you're coming from.

The other issue I know I have is, I am blunt and honest and that doesn't always go across well.

-Hapa

TBH, the fact that our devs have to literally rework and rethink how they do any mission development and all the write ups and mechanics, this is actually a significantly bigger change than most realize.

And considering all these changes have been getting implemented in such a short time, mistakes are bound to have happened. But our devs rushed to institute as much as they could as quickly as they could so admittedly these mistakes are occurring as a result of that.

To be completely honest with you, I had ZERO expectation that any of these changes were even going to occur this year, the first ones occurred over 3 months ago. So yes, we keep making mistakes with this stuff, but credit where credit is due, our devs have done an amazing job rushing this out.

-Hapa

I wont go into specifics, but I was VERY deliberate and specific with the data I was asking for when I pulled all of this.

If there is one thing I got REALLY good at as a Chief in the Navy, is proving a point with data.

-Hapa