Once you no longer trust the developers, quit the game.
This realization took me a long while, and I see people struggling with it in comments and forums. If you do not trust the development team’s competence or good will, stop giving them time and money. (That used to be just “money,” but with the emergence of F2P, you see a lot of people playing things they would not pay to play. If you do not think the game is/will be worth your money, it is probably not worth your time.) Game companies are not the government. They cannot come to your house with guns and demand your money. You are free to go, and yes you may lose access to a game, but you are already on the downward spiral to where you quit the game angrily.
I can see sticking around a little longer for the community. This is where you start packing up your community or developing links to it outside the game. They are not serfs either. It is good to make friends with people overcoming the adversary within the game; if the game itself is an adversary, take your friends and find somewhere better to play. Happiness loves company more than misery does.
: Zubon
All good advice. Unfortunately some players seem to have an attitude of unbridled cynicism where they automatically assume that everything that happens is an attempt by the developers to screw them for their money or just ruin their game for laughs (some of the wilder conspiracy theories in the GW2 forums about bots and the Trading Post come to mind). If a player starts with a pre-judged attitude of not trusting the developers even before they see any evidence, then things can only go downhill.
It’s not cool to be a sheep and blindly believe all the marketing hype. On the other hand, adopting an adolescent “anti-everything” attitude of sneering cynicism as a knee-jerk reaction to any and every change you see in a game shows equally bad judgement.
Starting with trust is just as wrong as the opposite. Trust has to be earned – with actions, not words -, it is not something that is given just because one did not yet have the chance to judge a developer. Trust that is based on nothing is just as much a prejudice as mistrust without a base.
So just take an unprejudiced stance, neither trusting nor mistrusting a developer, take a look at the facts and the background, try to see the whole picture, and then judge the developer. And then you can decide if you want to trust him or not.
Yes, you have to take an unprejudiced stance – but you still have to decide what you think at first, absent evidence – assume devs are innocent until proven guilty, or are they to be treated as incompetent weasels until they somehow prove themselves in your eyes?
I tend to treat everyone as competent, professional and honest until they prove otherwise – admittedly, I’m very readily convinced of the otherwise in a lot of cases :) That doesn’t mean I would give a stranger the keys to my car, but I do assume that the developers of a game that has got as far as being published know what they’re doing and what they want the game to do. The existence of bugs/botters/game feature X of which I personally disapprove is more likely because some of these things are genuinely hard to solve (or the feature is designed to appeal to people who are not me and I have to suck it up and take the good with the bad).
Well said. While I readily accept that people have different opinions and different tastes to me, I’m sick and tired of seeing players in game forums saying that the devs of a game “obviously don’t know what they’re doing” or “know nothing about game design”.
^couldn’t have said it better, kiantremayn… 100% agree
I fully agree with Z’s post and with the comments.
That said, I think the industry in general (and some devs in particular, past and present) have a horrible track record in terms of communicating with the players and obfuscating or delaying information.
It becomes very hard to establish a trusting relation (any trusting relation, really) when things are unclear and answers are absent.
It became increasingly difficult to give Guild Wars 2 a chance after ArenaNet: 1) screwed up linking my GW1 and GW2 accounts, 2) cannot seem to send me a security email no matter how many times I push the button, and 3) had no desire to make either situation better.
I agree that no trust = no playing the game for me.
That is strange. My friends (stupid 5 human beeings) got their accounts hacked at some point. 2 of them get it back in GW1 times (no problem there) another 2 get their accounts restored after some bot-hacking more than a month ago (or even two now? Time flies by…). Fifth one (actually it’s not her fault, she wasn’t the one who compromised her account security) is in the middle of recovering process. Didn’t heard of any bigger issues yet – it is, if You can prove You have right to Your account. All the data from purchase and straight way to get on Your tracks.
I agree. It amazes me how people can talk about their complete lack of trust in a game company while continuing to shovel money at them as fast as they possibly can. There’s enough choice, and enough ways to maintain or move a community outside of a single game, that MMO players should always be able to stop playing a game where they no longer trust the devs.
GW2 being the popular example, I will stick around long after some because I do trust ArenaNet, I trust that their intentions are good and that they’ll come around on things that I don’t think work. That’s me though – if people don’t like decisions being made or don’t trust the motivations behind them, then I think those people should withdraw themselves from the game. As well as being an important sort of ethical thing, it’s basic consumer logic – less customers = less success = less people getting away with the things you don’t like.