Constructive Suggestion - Start With an Apology
TLDR: Sorry goes a long way. It really does. Not kidding.
Hello EA, Please relay to the appropriate parties. I offer some constructive feedback to ye. First of all. We've been bad too. Not all of us, but there's always bad eggs in a crowd. So on behalf of the more rambunctious customers, we apologize. No place for threats etc over a video game!
I now suggest you do the same. In all of your communications, updated roadmaps, plans, I carefully scanned for the word "apologize" or "sorry" or anything of that nature. Words like that can go a long way, and kindness can silence so many angry mouths and souls. I've not seen any of it. "The customer is always right" was a fun old addage that is clearly out of date, but it still rings true in extreme cases. 105k people on Steam 3 months ago, and now there's 1.5k. People can't find games ladies and gentleman. Where there's smoke there's fire.
I understand we get proud of our work as human beings, it makes it tough to say "yeah, what I just did wasnt great" or "yeah... you're right that shouldve been done differently". That's hard to say. But 102k people paid up to and over 100$ for this and decided it wasnt worth their time in a matter of three months. That's just one platform. The smoke is the players leaving, the fire is ________. The blank is that the game isnt great guys.
I could never EVER imagine selling someone, something for 100$ of this quality and not apologizing. Even when I sell mint condition items on Nextdoor, I apologize if they are a bit dusty. That's just dust. I'm not going to rehash all of the specific issues with the release in its current state, but a lot of people are still experiencing horrible bugs (revive, presistence, having to play the intro every few days, complete loadout resets), 4 months in, with no promise of fixes until... I think you said March or April but I'm not sure.
The decision to call certain items legacy, or decide they werent required on your own, was a poor choice. If the roles were reversed, and you were writing this and I were EA, I'd also be apologizing for presuming after all these years, I knew you wanted to lose so many features in the core game. Was there any survey work done around that, no I sense not. Did anny of the customers say "take away scores, voip, good squad commands"? I sense not! I sense this decision was made FOR us, BY you. All in the "love letter to fans".
I know its not easy to do but a "sorry, we messed up," can go a pretty long way. That hasnt been said once. Instead we've had a mix of bravado, sarcasm, downtrodden comments from community managers and developers. It went from upsetting to agitating at that point. In customer relations we are supposed to pick the good, true, constructive feedback from the crowd of angry customers or employees... we do not simply bash an entire audience or group, nor write them off entirely, because we are getting flustered at work. You've really gotta reiterate your social media policy with the employees or contractors or unpaid folks. As the end user/consumer we have no idea if said policy exists nor what it is, but it doesn't look great when you have these randos claiming to be associated with you making angry red faced tweet videos. Control that!!! Serious suggestion from me to you.
We all wish you would stop reacting to the Lowest Common Denominators, (the angry people that will hate you no matter what), and instead simply apologize, start working with real fans or "influencers" (I hate to say that and cringe too trust me, but it might work), and get this thing on the right track.
There is no sense in pretending the game is in a good state, there is no sense in pretending the customer is happy, and there is no sense in pretending you are happy with any of it. So lets fix it and start off right. Please forward this to the correct parties.
Sorry gives me hope, sorry gives me a light at the end of the tunnel. The first step is acknowledging it, only then can we take the next steps.
Thanks.
