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Oct 5, 2012 -- 7:43PM, Emerikol wrote:

Actually it's pretty plausible.  Most of the code whether it's web based or a download would be the same.  In fact almost all of it.  He might very well have been led to believe that the web thing was additive.  They may have decided at the last minute to drop the download option and he might have been completely in the dark about that.
 

It's very plausible. Designers and co-workers throw each other under the bus and leave each other holding the bag on a constant basis in every line of work. Game design shouldn't be an exception to that. The guy designing it won't publicly take the blame because "the bosses pulled the plug". The bosses won't take the blame publicly because "the designers dropped  the ball". What you end up with is a mess that no one wants to take responsibility for, so they try their best to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened. Sounds more reasonable than a company-wide conspiracy to fool the public into believing that they're not buying products from an evil corporation hell-bent on screwing over their fans. But...I've been wrong before. I have an ex-wife that is proof of that, and a current wife that will attest to it whole heartedly.

Oct 5, 2012 -- 7:35PM, lokiare wrote:

Oct 5, 2012 -- 9:03AM, Emerikol wrote:

Oct 4, 2012 -- 11:07PM, lokiare wrote:

There's a huge difference. They didn't say we aren't going to do that, all the while in the back room busily doing just that. Big difference...

If they say they are doing X and they are doing Y and X != Y then yes they are lying.  But you seem to assign that label a little too freely and without any real proof.  Also keep in mind that sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.  I've learned over the years that incompetence is more common than you think.

So you are saying the programming lead didn't know what they were working on for months when he came out and said he knew that we would like what they were working on and that it would complement, not replace what we already had? I mean you seriously think that? If that were the case he should have been fired immediately.

Regardless of the words you want to use to describe it, customers felt betrayed and were not satisfied, no amount of apologist discussion will change that. You can say I'm using the wrong word, but the sentiment is the same. People felt betrayed by WotC business practices. They are going to have to eat some crow to get back in those customers good graces. They lost trust. If they ask us to trust them many, many customers will walk away. That's why they need to come on the forums and start talking with people because that will build some of that lost trust...

I'm sorry, this is all just so overblown. The old CB and MB didn't cease to exist or become unusable when the new ones were released. So exactly how much of a 'lie' is it to say "this new thing complements this thing you already have"??? Now, maybe we can look at it and say, to ourselves "Yeah, there's a bit of PR spin here, 'complement' might as well mean 'replace' in the longer term" but this is a 'lie' on the order of what every advertiser on Earth does when they say "Our product is the bestest one ever on the whole Earth", which they do all the freegin time. Its a corporation. It does 'corporation things', like every other corporation. That includes spinning its product decisions. People need to grow up. Really, WotC is no worse than TSR (which also got its share of hate back in the day BTW, though that seems all forgotten now) which regularly advertised vapor products, sometimes backordered stuff for months, promised to do things they never did, withdrew products or fained to produce support for them, etc. Every retail software development company of any consequence whatsoever has produced vaporware, often tons of it, discontinued products, screwed people on support, etc etc etc.

Meanwhile it is a major issue if WotC decided to change strategy on a product where they had NEVER PROMISED there would be a standalone CB at any time, and instead delivered an online CB. The tragedy of it all. I'm sure you can come up with a whole long list of similar things, but please don't go to the trouble, they're equally picayune. 

Oct 5, 2012 -- 7:51PM, Hocus-Smokus wrote:

Oct 5, 2012 -- 7:43PM, Emerikol wrote:

Actually it's pretty plausible.  Most of the code whether it's web based or a download would be the same.  In fact almost all of it.  He might very well have been led to believe that the web thing was additive.  They may have decided at the last minute to drop the download option and he might have been completely in the dark about that.
 

It's very plausible. Designers and co-workers throw each other under the bus and leave each other holding the bag on a constant basis in every line of work. Game design shouldn't be an exception to that. The guy designing it won't publicly take the blame because "the bosses pulled the plug". The bosses won't take the blame publicly because "the designers dropped  the ball". What you end up with is a mess that no one wants to take responsibility for, so they try their best to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened. Sounds more reasonable than a company-wide conspiracy to fool the public into believing that they're not buying products from an evil corporation hell-bent on screwing over their fans. But...I've been wrong before. I have an ex-wife that is proof of that, and a current wife that will attest to it whole heartedly.

I don't find it terribly plausible. While some amount of code might well be reused in both products software development teams operate in an environment where a high degree of detailed communication is necessary. If you were talking about a HUGE shop, like MS or one that was VERY distributed and segmented like some defense/aerospace projects I've worked on then maybe. In a team of 5-10 people working on delivering a small product on a tight schedule it is beyond implausible IMHO.

It was just spin. It may also have represented some degree of changing plans that happened after that statement. They may have THOUGHT that it would be a marginal amount of work to provide support for both online and offline programs, at least for some period of time. Later they found out that even though the data formats and basic 'engine' are the same that supporting the UI updates for 2 versions of the program was simply infeasible and they had to terminate the offline software support. Remember, 4e was developed on a plan that assumed a HUGE increase in sales and a massive number of DDI users such that they were planning to make 10's of millions of $ off DDI. All these statements were made smack in the middle of the train wreck that was plan meeting reality. A lot of stuff was said, but DDI has like what, 75k users at say $8 each, which is maybe a million bucks a year right now (assuming the DDI group size means something, which is plausible). There's a HUGE difference between what you plan to do with say $25 million in cashflow and $1 million in cashflow. Frankly it is somewhat of a miracle there is any DDI at all given the magnitude of the misstep in basic planning that the whole adventure represents.