Arma 3 - APEX - NEWS and SPECULATIONS

[dmarkwick 261]

Sigh.. where did I claim that YOU said the thing about marketing ?

Well, sorry if I mistook your comment as a reply, but you quoted me, referred directly to me on either side of that comment, I assumed it was all for me :)

[chortles 263]

I can't possibly comment on the idea that the campaign "disaster" could somehow be avoided by being more open, I never play campaigns so have no real idea what you could possibly mean.

Nailed it, and being open about the problems might have just resulted in people demanding that Apex be delayed until they were resolved -- never mind that Apex Protocol's perceived problems were much deeper (and would demand a bigger change) than mere bugginess. I was here three years ago for that with the base game...

 

Note: All of my talk about PR/communication-with-community hypotheticals assumes that both the release date and content/quality thereof were the same as in our timeline.

[froggyluv 2136]

 The point is "Clear information" not simply the amount of it. Had they Clearly stated they were making a heavy trajectory shift in the style of the "campaign" and that long time SP enthusiats need not apply -well I'd have very little to gripe with save the actual decision to go that route. In my experience on this earth,  rarely find less information being better. If it annoys you -simply ignore it while it may be worthwhile to others. If you have no stake in the campaign and never play them -why comment on them as it means nothing and smells contrarian.

 

 Give the audience some credit, we are big boys here and can handle delays and cancellations. I remember when full dynamic destruction was on the table and then scrapped for performance -sure  a few steady trolls cried out but most understood it was an over reach and understood this was a far future possibility. Seriously, all of this "we cant promise anything cause we may fail and they'll be mad' mixed with the need to please the casual smells of overSoy induced beta male anxiety. This is Arma, it's supposed to be hard what is all this talk of need for more Boot Camps and training scenarios?? The game is already too easy as it is and needs a steeper learning curve as far as im concerned  go play some Graviteam Operation Star if you really want to cry little girl lost -that shit is hard and utterly unexplained -in a nutshell, glorious.

[chortles 263]

All that tells me is "we never should have said that Apex Protocol was playable in single-player."

Give the audience some credit, we are big boys here and can handle delays and cancellations.

That's not what I remember from these boards!

[dmarkwick 261]

I mention campaign because it was mentioned directly to me as a reason for more openness. I felt it polite to at least acknowledge the point made even if I didn't see it.

[froggyluv 2136]

All that tells me is "we never should have said that Apex Protocol was playable in single-player."

That's not what I remember from these boards!

 

 There are a few people who will always whine, but the larger point is BI being so over sensitive as to "just remain silent" to avoid these trolling few rather than having open conversations despite them, such as it was with my dynamic destruction example and just the overall general feeling of the past.

[chortles 263]

As I've mentioned in the past, I really believe that Bohemia got burned by the time someone start up a thread specifically for 'axed features' and interpreted it as 'our own PR turned against us' (which not coincidentally is one way to view what happened with DayZ).

[graemeshute 218]

Okay, but just outsourcing things seems a bit far-fetched. For once it costs money as well. A lot. Then taking on contractors mid-project leads to high training costs and more organisational overhead, not to mention you'd have to specifically integrate and test all external work products. Corporate secrecy is an aspect as well. But even if enough budget was there and more tasks could have been outsourced, I'm not sure there are even companies who'd offer such services. Hiring a freelancer or web design start-up to do some work with HTML, JavaScript, PHP, what have you, or a  skilled modeller / texture artist - sure, there's plenty of them. But finding a contractor who's familiar enough with RV4 and the proprietary tools, scripting languages (SQF), etc. to perform low-level changes let alone create playable content - I'm not so sure. I'd guess there's a very small selection of very specialised sub-contractors, if any, who would be qualified for such task. And even then, adding manpower to a late software development project only makes it later.

 

Note that I'm not trying to defend BI here. Certainly, something went wrong and Apex Protocol turned out to be hideous. I just don't think outsourcing would have been the right tool to correct 'Hemias questionable management / design decisions.

I would like to reserve the right to debate this but not on a public page. I will inbox you.

[.kju 3245]

Two things I think worth to consider:

1) Most triple A titles do 90% of their sales in the first 2-4 weeks. Mainly based the huge promotion campaigns and expectations generated.

However BI does generate their sales over the long term, like other indies and smaller brands without insane budgets for promotion.

What are the ramifications from that?

These types of titles generate their sales based on word of mouth mainly (friends, streamers, youtube, less so reviews these days).

In other words if the game is actually good, enjoyable, actually meets people expectations and what people are looking for.

In regards to APEX at least in regards to this forums audience and vocal people it doesn't look good.

Feedback on reddit was mixed as far as I can tell, but also rather on the negative side.

In terms of the wider public, youtube audience, "casual" players, streamers and their audience its hard to tell at this point.

As for COOP expectations - in general I would suspect not great either though. Its normally about an interesting experience (story),

or enjoyable gameplay - not sure if Arma is up to that to the average player new to the series (or wants to take another look).

In other words would you see people getting APEX just for that based on the COOP experience its provides?

That said Tanoa has been mostly seen very favorable. However this should be mainly relevant to the active player base (which is good);

yet not so much to get inactive players back or attract new players. Anyone disagrees here?

2) Traditional game development is mainly based on a vision from the game developers (or from publishers/influenced by publishers).

In other words they come up with something they think would be great or "finally has to be done" and people will like it (hopefully).

Basically like traditional software development - little customer interaction and involvement, long project production time spans and so on.

In contrast to this is modding for the most part:

Very iterative, feedback based development, short development and update cycles - after all one has to compete in a very competitive

environment (among modders and vs game developers) to catch and keep the attention of the audience.

To their credit BI has over time largely moved more and more in this direction and it surely has paid off well in many regards.

At the same time if you take their approach to develop new products (games, expansions, DLCs, etc) they still follow the traditional model

pretty much. No communication with the player base what they want to see, what people think needs attention or has potential.

This reflects in their communication strategy, PR, interaction with the feedback tracker and various other elements.

To be clear this is without judgement - just describing my observations and impressions.

The extremely late putting the campaign on the dev branch to get people involved also reflects that.

I would suspect it has be done either with the expectation that the traditional fanbase won't react favorably, or its an indication

of problems of unknown sorts in its development (being ready late and thus unable to incorporate feedback of any sort basically).

In regards to APEX we have to see what their leadership analysis and decision making comes up with (try to improve and salvage the situation

vs move on/focus on other areas of A3).

The more interesting aspect seems to me what implications and explicit changes will happen for further development of A3 and future products

in regards to how the process of creation and involvement of potential buyers based on how APEX is received and ultimately how the sales go.

[pettka 694]

Food for thoughts:

 

One more point to the marketing communications, that is kind of different from industry standards (not that there aren't companies doing that, as it makes sense at least from our point of view) - we don't have much of a marketing staff but we rather prefer direct communication by developers. That comes with a prize however, as the developers usually don't have that much time in the last parts of development - we focus more on the actual development than marketing. That means we spend more time reading the feedback, adjusting the development accordingly where it is possible, but don't reply as much as we would like to. Realistically speaking, it seems like a no time to write down a post on forums, publish a screenshot, provide some description, but thanks to a passionate crowd, it is a huge deal of responsibility every single time. Anything we mention is analyzed to last detail, which shows a great dedication, and imposes a solid barrier to developers to just write a reply and forget :icon_twisted:

Yes, we know we kind of suck at communication on the forums, but it only gets better after the release, as you may see on several occasions in Dev-Branch part of forums. Our marketing and communications lads are working hard to improve this, but it takes time to make a solid connection between devs and marketing crew. Lets see in the near future, as we prepare the plans and intend to share them to see your feedback :icon_twisted:

[haleks 8212]

Yes, we know we kind of suck at communication on the forums

I've seen much worse, from non-existant communication to downright lies or condescension.

You guys do listen to feedback (most of the complaints players had since release have been adressed by now), provide regular updates & infos for both stable and dev branches - heck, one of the devs even got in touch with me to solve a small issue, wich I wasn't expecting.

I'd say you're doing pretty fine. ^^

[ineptaphid 6413]

 

Yes, we know we kind of suck at communication on the forums, but it only gets better after the release, as you may see on several occasions in Dev-Branch part of forums. Our marketing and communications lads are working hard to improve this, but it takes time to make a solid connection between devs and marketing crew. Lets see in the near future, as we prepare the plans and intend to share them to see your feedback :icon_twisted:

I would not say you suck at communicating at all. Look at Bioware-they are CLOSING their forums this week.Just shutting them down completely. Whereas here we have an incredible community and forum that you can spend hours on every day. 

 

BI release a changelog daily for Dev branch and are always willing to chime in on issues.I say-keep doing what you are doing guys.

[lexx 1387]

Yeah, the daily updates and sitreps and stuff are top of the line. But when I came to the apex campaign, everything communication related failed horribly.

[lex__1 422]

I have no issues for release, in the overview.
But I want to say the following:
-the Feedback of thousands of Tracker 3 Arma unresolved issues and problems. Most of them lie around or near have a common "structure".
Most of the questions repeated from year to year. In the example, the mass of tickets: "bipod", "flying heavy tanks", "the performance of the CPU/GPU and other matters.
With the release of the Apex, the issues are not resolved. The game was-prettier,  richer ... but all the problems in their places. Hence, there is growing resentment of the players. People paid multiple times for the same problem.

Almost all the problems of the game, in the Tanoa, have become more acute.

[Wiki 1558]

The communications problem IMO were not about the game but the upcoming content.

 

Apex was announced, but we barely had nothing to make us wait for a long time.

 

Of course your team was involved in the dev. of the expansion, I can perfectly understand that.

 

But 2 points:

 

-the lack of information about Apex Protocol was IMO a bad choice. It was advertised as a SP / COOP campaign up to 4 players. People imagined something like the COOP version of ArmA 2. You should have been clearer about it.

-the almost-nothing-to-keep-us-wait policy. I think, as we knew Apex was coming, a small screenshot from time to time in the SITREP could have been better. It's isn't much, but it always keeps the hype.

 

We almost had all the informations 1 month maximum before the release - which is a bad move.

 

But that's just my thoughts ;)

[OMAC 254]

I think that the paucity of pre-release info on Apex Protocol campaign was carefully planned and a smart move by BI, as the announced "1-4 player COOP campaign" was just enough info to hoodwink people expecting Harvest Red-like SP/COOP mechanics into pre-ordering Apex.  If they had been more truthful pre-release, stating that there will be no saves, just respawns, and no AI teammates, quite a few people wouldn't have pre-ordered it, and there would have been a mild "explosion" of disbelief and ire on the forums, which couldn't be good for marketing hype and sales.  They expected the angry/disappointed posts on the forums after release, but wanted to minimize such dissent pre-release.  Why lengthen their headache by being truthful early?  So, I think that the minimal pre-release info on Apex Protocol was part of a well-calibrated and successful plan to maximize pre-order sales.  Its late release on Dev branch served to virtually eliminate pre-release dissent outside of one thread in Dev branch forums.

[jone_kone 158]

.... but we rather prefer direct communication by developers...

 

 

Communicating with the masses is always tricky. There is always room for improvement, but I would hate to see some marketing team filter being implemented. There are some HC modders in the community and a disconnected "marketing guy" would probably be ripped to pieces pretty fast. :)

[froggyluv 2136]

There are some HC modders in the community and a disconnected "marketing guy" would probably be ripped to pieces pretty fast. :)

ok ill take the bait:

 

 Highly Contagious?

 Hugely Competent?

 Horridly Crass?

 Humidly Cool?

 Human Colonics?

[froggyluv 2136]

 They expected the angry/disappointed posts on the forums after release, but wanted to minimize such dissent pre-release.  Why lengthen their headache by being truthful early?  So, I think that the minimal pre-release info on Apex Protocol was part of a well-calibrated and successful plan to maximize pre-order sales.  Its late release on Dev branch served to virtually eliminate pre-release dissent outside of one thread in Dev branch forums.

 

 Yes but deep longstanding trust between community consumer and company/provider is a valued commodity and shouldnt be treated haphazardly as it doesnt come back quickly.If you make the intentional decision to in all essence 'fool' your diehard fanbase for the sake of initial sales before it is truly fully revealed, your selling of that invisible commodity for the sake of upfront dollars.

 

Edit: Wow, sorry thought these posts would auto-merge ;/

[IndeedPete 1038]

ok ill take the bait:

 

 Highly Contagious?

 Hugely Competent?

 Horridly Crass?

 Humidly Cool?

 Human Colonics?

 

Hard Core, maybe? :D

[das attorney 858]

Only if hardcore was two words  ;)

[IndeedPete 1038]

Only if hardcore was two words   ;)

 

Well, H Modders just sounds stupid.^^

[das attorney 858]

It does!

[lex__1 422]

In a workshop subscribe for the Island Nation company Apex - by Part 1-7. Maybe it will be interesting to someone.

http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=107410&searchtext=island+nations&browsesort=textsearch&section=home&actualsort=textsearch&p=1

[jmayr2000 2]

Can someone answer me this question. What abilities does the special purpose suite have and or what makes it special?