If we do any skill/stat updates of significance we will make stat/skill resets available, as it is the fair thing to do.
Given the ablsoute loss of players due to an un announced change to the game, I highly reccommend making resets availible for ANY changes made.
If there is one thing MMO players hate is changes. Add-ons are good, but when you render everything senior players have done to be attainable by lvl 1 characters in a matter of minutes, you are begging to kill your own game.
I've seen this happen before under SOE's wing with star wars galaxies. The bait a switched thier entire community with NGE (new game enhancements) and hid from everyone what they were going to do to the game until the release day. It was not welcomed warmly and the fact that people had played for years to become jedi and now people could just start as one, cause the game to completely die within 1-3 years.
approximately 75% of their community dissapeared within a week. A large portion filed a class action law suit, due to a patch they purchased the same day of the update, and the game was never the same.
I haven't the slightest why online game developers think that changing the game entirely will breathe new life and bring in more people. You kill off the majority of your existing fan base and enough bad word of moth gets around and it never really comes back.
I understand this game may be under contract to submit to the wil of gravity, but honestly, inform the community well in advance of MAJOR changes. Let us review them, we'l give you feed back (as you well know). Then after looking over the general acceptance of the product, decided whether or not to release it. You can't tell me it hasn't be done before. Gravity pushed back renewal countless times for RO 1 because they knew the majority of the community was not supportive of the idea. It wasn't until the game was F2P (or P2W) that they felt the players couldn't complain.
Patch notes mere minutes before the patch? Totally telegraphed that the community would not be happy with what would be done, whats left of it anyway.
I highly doubt this game will last too much longer. To big a change on too small a community. I will stay unitl the end, but i hope they reassign the Ro2 employees to another game rather than fire the lot of ya.
Edited by AngryKitty, 02 January 2014 - 04:36 AM.