Xbox |OT|

[Angelus]

Ryuu96 said:

Angelus said:

Potentially detrimental effects are not as bad as guaranteed, real time detrimental effects of coming in and seeing a deteriorating studio. And it's not like devs don't talk to each other and between teams, friends they've made with various studios over the years, etc. That's a lot more meaningful "quiet" negativity and the "loud" buzz of some gaming journalist writing "HA! MS FAILS AGAIN!"

And yes, the best solution here may not have been to outright cancel the project, but I'm preeeetty sure that Harvey and Ricardo didn't wanna make the game as we've seen it launch. Cus it's not very good. So if you don't can it, you gotta reboot it and find a direction for the project that everyone can get on board with. The answer was, CLEARLY, not keep going as is. 

And yes, I'm aware that MS, due to the approach they took, were too out of the loop to actually be in a position to come in and see these things and take action, but the whole point is that they damn well SHOULD be in that position. You SHOULD be in the loop enough to be able to evaluate your studios and make these tough calls when necessary.

Course they didn't want to release a bad game, but the article straight says they wanted to make the game, multiplayer and all, and the multiplayer aspect is a reason why a lot of developers have left, so again, cancelling the project very likely just leaves you with a pissed off Harvey, Ricardo and a few other employees instead who remain and believe in the project. It's easy to say now with this information what Microsoft should have done but both scenarios can very easily end up with angry developers either way.

We don't have enough information on when those 70% left and thus it very well could be that the remaining employees believed in the Multiplayer project and wouldn't be onboard with rebooting the entire project back to a sim, I'm assuming they did hire multiplayer focused developers for a multiplayer focused title and thus they'd likely lose them too.

The project was too deep to do anything drastic to it without pissing off a group of developers no matter what, Imo. Best they could do and should have done is get in earlier, delay it a bit more for polishing (a year?), fix the technical aspects, add some more content, turn a 50 Meta title to a 60-70 Meta title. If they got in very early in development then by all means I would say cancel it or go back to the drawing board.

Great, they wanted to make a multiplayer game...but the multiplayer aspects of their game aren't good. The loot game isn't interesting enough. The abilities aren't interesting enough on their own, and there's no sense of build diversity or choice. The world isn't dense enough with activities or enemies to promote engaging gameplay for ONE person running around, nvm a GROUP of people, that require MORE engagement.

If you wanna make a multiplayer game, then you gotta bring in the personnel that has experience in making those types of games, so you can bring those elements to life. 

What they shipped, is a game that pleases nobody. It's not a good single player experience, and it's not a good multiplayer experience. So who's happy over there now? Nobody. If you come in and make a tough call, yes, SOMEBODY will be unhappy...but others will actually have to opportunity to be happy, and turn around and hopefully produce a better product. The perfect is the enemy of the good. There was clearly no perfect solution here. Yes, someone was gonna be bitter at the end of the day. But the whole point is that MS needs to get better about coming and realizing that sometimes you NEED to make a decision that's not gonna go over well with everyone, because it's better than the alternative.