Last week, Trembling Hand threw out an interesting and somewhat inflammatory post entitled “Why Roper Has To Go”. It was notable not just for his dismay over another (seemingly) botched patch, but for laying the blame squarely at Bill “Hellgate London” Roper’s doorstep. He begins with a direct accusation:
“With the release of last night’s patch, Bill Roper has unequivocally demonstrated himself to be incapable of managing an MMO, let alone during its critical and challenging launch period.”
Ouch. Of course, this is hardly the first time that Roper’s seen mud flung at him at Cryptic, as he seems to be the public whipping boy for any and all frustrations with Champions, to the point where some players even created him as their in-game nemesis. But it is fair to put the entire onus on him?
Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. I would heartily agree with anyone who said that Champions needed more time to bake in the beta oven, as the game is fairly content light and was still seeing massive balancing patches pushed through on the day of release — and beyond. These are not good signs. From my personal experience, I can testify that Champions certainly is a fun, vibrant game with a great potential future ahead of it, but it did not come fully to term before being born. We’re seeing patches that really belong squarely in the late beta period, but given to a post-launch crowd that is far less tolerant of whiplash-inducing changes when their subscription dollar is on the line. Cryptic has issued two full character respecs so far, as well as a couple other crowd-appeasing goodies, as a show of good faith for our patience. But in the case of Trembling Hand and others, patience is almost tapped out.
Now, to look at the upshot, not all is lost here. Cryptic has sold a ton of copies, made quite a bit of scratch from 6-month/lifetime subs, and netted a not-great-but-not-bad-at-all 74% score on GameRankings. People do like the title, and it’s not as if Cryptic is sitting on their laurels — they are pushing out a huge content patch in October, as well as working hard to right wrongs and add more content. We’ve also yet to see the expected launch of Champions on the XBox 360, as well as the expected synergy between this title and Cryptic’s other upcoming MMOs, such as Star Trek Online. In six months, I predict that this will be a solid title that will be perfect for people to return to for quick, enjoyable combat and entertainment. Even if the road appears to be rocky between now and then.
But we must return to the boogeyman of the hour, Mr. Roper, whose existence proves that one’s failures will always be remembered by an unforgiving gaming public more than one’s successes (also, see John Romero). Is all this entirely his fault and responsibility, as the Design Director/Executive Producer and de facto spokesperson of Champions Online? I’d be hesitant to take such an extreme. First of all, as much as we like putting one human face at the forefront of representing any MMO, these games are the result of an entire team of developers, and subject to the ruling of a gang of executives, of which Roper is just one — an influential one, to be sure. These things are always more complex and subtle than we make them out to be, but disgruntled gamers are not liable to extend the benefit of the doubt when a guy who had a spectacular and very public pseudo-MMO failure light up the news a couple years ago happens to be at the helm of their game.
Nevermind that Roper has a more impressive string of successes under his belt, y’know, like WarCraft and StarCraft and Diablo. Or that IGN named him as one of the top game creators of all time. Hellgate bombed, Champions seems rocky, and Bill Roper must pay, right?
Let’s let Roper have a moment to defend himself following the day one patch debacle:
“Jack [Cryptic's Lead Designer and CEO] did indeed hand the reigns of the game over to me when I started at Cryptic in November of 2008. The game has undergone a great many changes since then. All of you won’t like all of them – that’s impossible – but based on our beta feedback, the majority of you liked the majority of those changes. Moving forward, we’re going to keep working with you to make the game better and better. And yes, that means all of us here – but for those of you looking at where the buck stops with the game, I have the final call.
The Day 1 balance change patch was my call to make, and while we should have been much better about messaging it, it was something that had to be done. We had characters soloing 5-man content. This was never the intent, and sometimes when the game is just that broken, you have to do something drastic to address it. As we continue, we’ll not only be much better at messaging changes, but our mission is to not have them be so drastic. We want to smooth out problem areas such as difficulty curves, but with a surgical scalpel and not a hammer.
Also, we got out a full retcon for every player last night. We had to wait until the technology was there to do it, and the programmers did a great job of busting their asses to make it happen. I’m always blown away by how quickly the team responds to issues and how hard they work to get changes in fast.
All in all, I think that while Champions isn’t perfect – it’s really fun. I play every night and pass along both what I like and don’t like in the live game environment. We’re going through the forums, having dev chats, and constantly looking on how to make the game better. As with any MMO, it isn’t spot on perfect at the start. But with your continued feedback and support, we’ll get as close as we can.”
While I won’t be absolving him or Cryptic here of what’s become a tumultuous (but salvageable) launch for Champions, I do admire Roper for not ducking the issue, or trying to absolve himself of responsibility. I’ve found that Cryptic has been very open with the community as to what’s happening and what they have planned, even when they know that the news won’t be what everyone wants. But when it comes to Roper, Cryptic saw what so many closely-invested players cannot: a man with a wealth of game design experience, who has repeatedly (and humbly) shared about what he’s learned from the mistakes of Hellgate, as a person who would be a great resource for their game. Champions is not a “failure”, nor is it “dying”, as hysterical voices have proclaimed — with a bit of time, this too shall pass, and even Bill Roper might win folks back to his corner.
P.S. – As a wandering thought, can you imagine if game developers were as prone to hysterics as their playerbase? They really do not get enough credit for being steady, calm voices in the midst of the nerdstorm.
The question is why Roper made things like the “Day 1 Patch” at launch day, and not days before in beta. It had to be done is fine and dandy, and better late than never, but at launch day?
The question is whom to blame, if anyone is to blame, for them running out of time all the time.
Like you said, you can’t lay all of the blame for something not quite working on one person’s doorstep.
Cryptic does seem to be working hard and they are, if anything, erring on the side of action rather than inaction. I do think they are going to have a subscription retention problem after the first couple of months.
For me the biggest sin is launching the game with characters being so overpowered. “characters soloing 5-man content” isn’t something that they found out on launch day. All of these companies data mine now. I believe it was a calculated risk they took to let people feel insanely powerful, buy the game based on that experience, then dial it back. If they didn’t know about how overpowered some characters were, shame on them. Either way, this happened way too late in the process, no matter how it was communicated.
I wish them luck. I’ll probably resub at some point. I think I’ll wait until beta is over though.
Good post! Roper is probably not as bad as he seems, like you said. I don’t fully trust Roper after the HG: L and CO releases, but I don’t fully discredit him either. He seems like more of a representative and high level executive than anything. It seems as though his position would not affect the game’s look & feel all that much. The Age of Conan dev team is what disappoints me – all that hype and fun in the limited beta, followed by loads of disappointment. I felt tricked.
Roper seems like a good guy and a great rep for sure. The audience of the gaming industry is the problem; I feel sorry for the game devs having to deal with such an impatient, immature (not all, but many) crowd.
I can understand why people pin blame on Bill Roper, he’s the face of the company. With Hellgate he was the CEO too. He was the one doing all the interviews for both games, and telling everyone how good the game will be. So when Hellgate bombed they pointed at Roper and shouted “LIAR!”
I hate to bring a cliché into this, but there is no I in Team, Roper may be the mouthpiece, but he only says what the dev team feed him. He only takes ideas and if he thinks their good he says “impliment them” – if they’re implimented badly, or cast aside later, it’s not really his fault. He may have made the call, but some blame must also be put on the people who gave him those options to choose from.
So far the Cryptic team have responded quickly, been forthcoming with information and have been generally well behaved.
Yes, they may have dropped the ball and rushed the game out, but that’s neither the team, nor Bill Ropers fault, it’s the Infogr… erm, Atari’s fault for pushing them to release.
I must admit I posted my first Roper bashing post a week ago after his Warcry interview. I agree he is in a tough spot, but to come out saying there is “years of content” in the game, or that the retcon was a “here you go” instead of giving it to us only after the forums blew up, well thats PR speak plain and simple. (translation: painting a terd in pretty colors)
I love the game. I can feel it slowly grinding it’s way into maturity and I agree with you on the 6 month estimate.
I would have to disagree with you on the post script though. Yes it might be tough for him to read some of the hateful comments people make about, him. But if he or anyone else on that team was to post something saying anything bad about the playerbase, we would all leave. I would think they would be smarter than that, which is the lesson the NFL is learning giving their players twitter accounts
I’m going to revert to my nihilistic and desperate lack of faith in most MMO communities on this one.
Doesn’t matter how much potential a game has. MMO communities as a whole (at least, the vocal community) tend to be wholly ungrateful. Some people just love to strangle the wind of inspiration from creative developers, even if it means the end of the game they play, because it makes them appear authoritive and “wise”.
When ever you see an encouraging post on an official forum along the lines of “this game is great, blah blah blah, loads of potential, blah, we’re almost there! Keep up the good work”; it gets flamed to oblivion due to being ignorant of current affairs and displaying a childlike naivety.
I’ve said it before. They flame and bitch and moan and throw rotten tomatoes at devs because it’s always a win/win situation for them.
The game self destructs: they were right and can scream “I told you so” and weep tears of rapturous malice.
The game pulls through and delivers: they’ll play it anyway.
The devs have to listen to the vocal player base or be accused of being fascists (a bit of poetic license there), and people only get vocal when want to moan. The majority of the player base who are happy with the game and looking forward to future developments aren’t being listened to ’cause they are busy playing the game…
For Christmas, in my stocking I usually get some chocolate coins and a whole load of little tangents…
I’m with Tarisai on this one. Most MMO players are completely oblivious to the environment they create and how that influences exactly the issues they throw fits about. Creating large software products is incredibly challenging in a positive, supportive atmosphere. Trying to do it in an environment filled with people who are second, third, and fourth guessing your every move, dissecting every screen shot, watching every release date announcement or feature cut for signs of DOOOOOOM, and then eventually going “Meh” and heading back to WoW anyway (but not before spending another six months trolling your forums about how bad your game is) is nearly impossible.
I love developing software, and I love games… But I honestly believe anyone who subjects themselves to trying to create game software these days, especially MMOs, has more than one screw loose.
Great post as usualy Syp!
I’d say Mr. Roper isn’t fully responsible for all that was the Champions Launch but he is the public representative for the game and will therefore receive the brunt of the negative attention.
As for alot of the complaints about the game day patch and the retcon…perhaps those things were released as soon as they were ready. Knowing about something for awhile and having time to fix it aren’t necessarily one and the same and we simply don’t know how things were playing out on their end. You see, it wouldn’t have mattered what they did…had they extended the beta yet again just to balance the powers there would be equal(or not) muttering and blame slinging anyway and no revenue into Cryptic. At least this way they’re receiving some income to ensure they actually CAN continue working on the issues rather than having another project canned due to budget overruns.
I came to CO from Warhammer and just feel that the Cryptic team is addressing the issues better. I don’t want to say faster per se because both companies tried to fix what they could as fast as they could so I am using “better” because it feels like they are fixing the most nagging issues first (something I don’t believe Mythic was doing). I started getting the feeling that Mythic’s strategy to addressing bug complaints was, “Well, that bug is going to be difficult to fix so let’s release another live event to distract the players instead.” Bringing several new bugs along with the event. Where as those nagging bugs in CO actually just get fixed soon. (I don’t know how long the wonderful…Scenario ends with you holding the bauble…spawn back in the world dead bug lasted).
Eh, personal experiences I guess. I’ve been enjoying Champions Online anyway for the little bit of time I’ve actually had to play since launch but I still haven’t reached the higher content where most of the complaints seem to be so who knows.
I liked Hellgate:London more than Champions Online…
With any MMO, aren’t we always buying a late-beta product anyway (if you buy at launch)? I think in general we should be a little more tolerant of the first month’s baby steps. While a game is in beta it likely doesn’t get the same torture-testing that it gets once its open to the main player floodgates. I’ve never beta-tested though, so I can’t speak for certain. Its either accept this, or simply teach MMO developers to hold their product until it is absolutely sparkly and polished. To me the latter option seems tough since publishers have deadlines they want to meet. But then I also pose the question if whether developers are releasing earlier than they should in response to their publisher or to the rabid gamer base who wants everything now? I agree with most sentiments here that it is impossible to please everyone, especially such a vocal and critical demographic.
It is really bizarre to me that players will bash Bill Roper, essentially over business decisions in regards to
These same players absolutely worship Blizzard over Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft, etc.. and anticipate Diablo 3 so much, despite virtually none of the original developers of Diablo I / II working on III.
Do they have zero clue over who the core people were on those games?
It’s really just sad brandname worship.
Bill Roper is just a name to these people, that they’ve associated with his ill-fated attempt at running his own company.
* in regards to Hellgate London.
As someone who has been blamed for “ruining” a game, I can sympathize with Bill Roper. It’s not easy being the public face of a game, and you have to have pretty thick skin. I suspect after the shitstorm around Hellgate:London, he either has thick skin or cries himself to sleep every night.
The one thing in his defense is that he came on pretty late in the project. A lot of core issues were probably set by that point, and likely lead to the situation they’re in now. There’s also the business aspect controlled by the publisher/distributor, who often sets a hard deadline whether the game is ready to go or not, beyond the control of the person in charge.
That said, it sounds like there’s some problems with design. Balance patches shouldn’t swing quite so wildly, and powers shouldn’t go from overpowered to “crippled” too easily. From my complete outsiders perspective, it seems there needs to be a steadier hand for design, and the fear of needing to do something “ZOMG RIGHT NOW!” needs to be ignored. But, there could be some unknown pressure on them that makes this a viable plan.
i dislike that Roper has so much power in game decisions a lot, very much.
some changes made in early Champions start were OBVIOUS one man changes, it wasnt team decision, but a one person who has enough power to make it happen
thats ALWAYS bad for a game dev, always. every change should be worked out as a team to smooth out rough edges.
Roper should go, really. i liked Hellgate London, i loved Blizzard games he worked on, but lets face it – Blizzard since he left doing better and better, and he – yeah, Failgate London, and now questionable at best Champs start.
I don’t know Bill Roper, and I don’t work at Cryptic, so I won’t speculate on what should or should not happen, but it sure is entertaining watching the community screech like they’re a band of treed monkeys and Roper is a hungry predator.
Man, can you imagine how much it would suck to have your business decisions picked apart on the internet?