Banedon wrote:Thing is, if you're willing to work super long hours now, why didn't you work hard and get the game shipshape before it's released? Unless you were already working 80-hour weeks before the game was released, in which case I shudder to even think what being a game developer is like.
For most people in the tech industry it's 120 hour workweeks before a product release, and 30 hour workweeks during the lull period. If you can't handle 120 hours (or some equally inhuman time) in the few weeks before product release date, you can't get product polished properly.
I'm guessing that human rights and European work habits being what they are, Limbic guys didn't work hard enough during that crucial time just before they went gold. I am not proud of the lesser protection being given to tech workers in the East Asian area, but at least Asian makers really do their best before a launch. Foxconn will never produce something so flawed that can be solved quickly by after sales patches and fixes.
Just launching Heroes 7 at patch 1.3 standard would have cut the complaints and negativity by at least 50%, and increased positive commentary by 200%. Instead of an 8:1 negative to positive ratio, we'd get equally balanced negative and positive comments. Which is perfectly healthy for a newly launched game.
Going forward the most important thing for me is that the Heroes community can come back as better patches are offered and game comes up to scratch. For that we need people who love the game enough to be mapmakers and enthusiasts discussing eagerly.
In another thread, Kalah was talking about doing walkthroughs. As much as he strives to maintain a balanced tone as a forum moderator, it was obvious that Kalah was not that eager to invest so much time doing walkthroughs. When the game 'isn't that great', reception is cool, and people aren't having that much fun that they want to write the walkthroughs. So I got the impression that Kalah was only going to 'do his job' because 'someone has to do it'.
Fortunately not all is lost. HeroesV wasn't that great at launch either, but built a following because Nival didn't give up and they really worked hard to learn and improve. It was Nival's hard work on Heroes V that rescued enough fan goodwill for Ubisoft to scam us all with Heroes VI, for instance. Limbic started out on very bad footing with us, but they've improved greatly so I don't think we need to wait for a second expansion before we can consider the game well done.
I could say that if games feel like I'm reading a book, interactive one, I'll be most pleased to try them. 
