Bartlett's Quotable Game Developers: A Work in Progress

I love games. I even love game developers, on those occasions when they're not busy crapping out shovelware or packing beta software into a retail box and charging me full MSRP for it. But good god, what is it with this industry and foot-in-mouth disease?

CORPORATE DICKERY: THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

"The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."
-- Activision CEO Bobby 'Satan's Anus' Kotick explains why Activision is top of the heap.

"You know if it was left to me, I would raise the prices even further."
-- Yep, still Bobby Kotick.

"We're just trying to pretend that we do something beyond wallpapering our dens with your $10/month."
-- EverQuest's former community manager Gordon "Abashi" Wrinn elaborates on the EQ team's day-to-day activities.

"I think we definitely have been able to instill the culture, the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today."
-- Ever notice how Bobby Kotick's face kind of looks like a trout currently on probation for sex crimes involving minors? Or is that just me?

"[Consumers] just fuck us up. [...] We just want to know if they have a valid credit card."
-- EverQuest's Kelly Flock on fan input.

"Game Boy is for 10-year-olds."
-- Nokia's Ilkka Raiskinen, shortly before the N-Gage turned out to be the most embarrassing handheld failure since the Virtual Boy.

"Labor is incredibly cheap in China and Hong Kong."
-- American McGee, explaining exactly why he outsourced development of his career-killing turdfest Bad Day LA.

"Shut up and give me my ten bucks per month, little man. My Porsche needs some performance upgrades."
-- EverQuest artist Milo Cooper responds to a less-than-glowing reader comment in his Ask Milo column. SPOILER: Ask Milo was axed not too long afterward.

SPIN DOCTORS THEY AIN'T

"It was just intended to build atmosphere."
-- Final Fantasy XIV's Hiromichi Tanaka attempts to justify Square Enix's decision to rename Chocobos "Horse-Birds".

"Is it not nonsense to compare the charge for dinner at the company cafeteria with dinner at a fine restaurant?"
-- Sony's Ken Kutaragi rubbishes claims that the PS3 is too expensive.

"When we said 'full version' we didn't make what that meant clear enough."
-- Microsoft's John Porcaro, shortly after gamers discovered that the 15-dollar "full version" of Lumines Live contained a tiny fraction of the content available in other versions of the game and would be fleshed out by further pay-for-play add-ons.

"I believe we made the most beautiful thing in the world. Nobody would criticize a renowned architect's blueprint that the position of a gate is wrong."
-- Ken Kutaragi, after people started complaining about issues with the Playstation Portable's Square button.

"We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?"
-- Sony's Kaz Hirai explains why the PS3 is so difficult to work with. I guess?

"Rumble I think was the last generation feature."
-- Phil Harrison not-really-justifies Sony's decision to remove (and subsequently reinstate) force feedback in the PS3 controller.

FAILED PREDICTIONS

"Duke Nukem Forever is a 1999 game."
-- 3D Realms' George Broussard lays out his legacy in seven words.

"World of Warcraft is going to roll back to a million. I'm not predicting it's going to happen in three weeks; I'd guess it has a half-life of 6 months to a year."
-- Michael Pachter, making people wonder exactly why he's paid to analyze the gaming industry.

"The single-player game is a strange mutant monster which has only existed for 21 years and is about to go away because it is unnatural and abnormal."
-- Raph Koster, fresh off the, uh, massive success of Star Wars Galaxies.

"I don't think there are four million people in the world who really want to play online games every month."
-- Michael Pachter again. Fun fact: WoW alone claims 12 million subscribers at current.

"Imagine games which have no "loading..." screens and simply stream data from the drive without having discreet levels... Imagine games with real interactive music and true-to-life, non-repetitive commentary. Imagine levels 20x the size of a typical console game."
-- Microsoft's J. Allard, discussing the impact of the Xbox's hard drive in 2001. 10 years later, I'm *still* imagining it.

"Next generation games will combine unprecedented audio and visual experiences to create worlds that are beyond real and they'll deliver storylines and gameplay so compelling that it will feel like living a lucid dream. The result is a state where you achieve the perfect mind-body equilibrium as you forget your physical surroundings and you become completely immersed in the game itself; this controller becomes an extension of your body, it becomes the gateway to the Zen of gaming."
-- Microsoft's J. Allard, predicting the impact of the Xbox 360. You'd think he'd learn, wouldn't you?

"When Sony come to market they might discover that they've overrated the importance of polygon rendering."
-- Trip Hawkins underlines exactly why his 3DO console absolutely *crushed* the Playstation back in the '90s.

"We can win over the Halo audience with something like The Conduit, a multi-player, online, shooting experience, or Dead Space Extraction. And you know what? Once those people buy into Wii, they'll go buy Mario Kart or Wii Fit Plus.”
-- Nintendo's Reggie "Mr. Potato Head" Fils-Aime, who apparently thinks that MastaChief~TeaBagUrAzz491 is only one crappy FPS away from buying a hundred-dollar balance board.

"Customers do not want online games."
-- Nintendo's Satoru Iwata. In 2004. Yes, I know.

"You can communicate to a new cybercity. Did you see the movie The Matrix? Same interface. Same concept. Starting from next year, you can jack into The Matrix!"
-- Sony's Ken Kutaragi hypes the PS3, possibly after drugs.

MAN, WHAT?

"Customers are not interested in grand games with higher-quality graphics and sound and epic stories."
-- Nintendo's ex-head, Hiroshi Yamauchi, who apparently hasn't seen the sales figures for either Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy since, uh, 1990.

"The Japanese have for a very long time dumped pornography into this country in a fashion they would not tolerate in their own country. It is another version of Pearl Harbor."
-- Maverick lawyer Jack Thompson: international goodwill diplomat!

"[RPG fans] are depressed gamers who like to sit alone in their dark rooms and play slow games."
-- Hiroshi Yamauchi, continuing to win friends in the roleplaying community.

"We don't play games for social interaction."
-- Analyst Michael Pachter, apparently missing the whole 'MMO' thing.

“We’re not going to announce it. We’re not going to announce when we’re going to announce it. And we’re not going to announce the strategy about announcing it or about when we’re going to announce it either, or about the announcement strategy surrounding the announcement of the strategy. Any other questions?”
-- Take-2's Strauss Zelnick, after being hectored on a release date for the next GTA

"Full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia and pubic hair... much to the delight, one can be sure, of paedophiles around the globe who can rehearse, in virtual reality, for their abuse."
-- Lawyer's lawyer Jack Thompson lays out some of the features that made The Sims 2 such a sales smash.

"Unreal has a bald guy and a girl with a ponytail. Quake II has a bald guy and a girl with a ponytail."
-- Epic's Eliot "Myscha" Cannon, explaining precisely how id's Quake II ripped off Epic's Unreal.

"Keep your yaps where they belong, on this massive engorged jimmy..."
-- Alex "Furor Planedefiler" Afrasiabi, showing the tact and class responsible for his current World of Warcraft gig.

“The PS3 will instill discipline in our children and adults alike. Everyone will know discipline.”
-- Ken Kutaragi, confusing "Playstation 3" with "vigorous beatings".




Anybody else have any gems to share?

Can't believe "I disagree with what you said" isn't on here.

You don't appear to have Raph's "Never trust the client. The client is in the hands of the enemy."

A few personal favorites from the Turbine era. I'll see if there's anything suitable from the BioWare era later.

"...and there won't be any books, because no one likes to read."
- a former Turbine producer talking up the design for D&D Online, a game based on the best-selling series of RPG books in history

"The Live Team is where programmers go to design."
- Eric Heimberg, AC2, early 2003

"I don't know how this ever worked."
- Chris Dyl, AC2 Principle Architect, and what you don't want to hear when the dev server starts crashing at one in the morning before a content deadline

"Without getting into the complex psychology of the PK, dueling isn't really PK. It's practice. It's f-cking SCA is what it is."
- Jesse Kurlancheek

"The logs never lie, they just obscure the truth."
- Mike Kujawa

"Every day, you eat one elephant."
- Mike S, explaining crunch time

"MMGs ARE pain, princess. Anyone who says otherwise is looking for venture capital."
- Nik Davidson

"I was thinking we could just ship our customers a bunch of dlls. I mean, why not? They reverse-engineer everything else."
- Mike Raiter

From the "Spin Doctors They Ain't" department:

"I enjoy playing WOW, I enjoy playing Lord of the Rings Online. But you know... I'm going to be a bit cheeky now, but if you've been to McDonalds for four or five years, and had your burger and your coke, sometimes it's great to just have a great steak and a glass of good wine. I think that's what we're trying to do. It's more expensive, it's not for everyone and perhaps it's not as easily accessible as WOW is. But it could be more meaty."
-Gaute "Tartare" Godager, game director of Age of Conan.

And I would propose a new category, "Should Have Listened to Himself":

"The people who want to gank are waiting for the Next Big Failure to come along, to let them grief noobs for a few months before it shrivels up and dies. This is because every sane developer has learned this lesson: griefing and ganking doesn’t just lose you the $15/mo from the person who was griefed. It has a multiplicative effect, creating an environment in your game, and a reputation outside your game, and people tend to steer clear. ‘Play to Crush’ as a selling point and marketing slogan probably lost SB twice the players it ended up bringing them."
-Kevin "Isildur" Maginn, lead designer of Pirates of the Burning Sea, six months before his game opened to mass gankings and a company-endorsed (if never official) "No crying in the red circle" slogan.

And last, but not least:

"A lot of you seem to really like posting in the comments a LOT. Which is somewhat cool but after a certain point it really has all been said and around comment #50 most people tend to tune it out. I briefly considered putting up forums but then realized ARE YOU FRACKING INSANE????!!!????? and stopped considering it. So, um, use some self-control or something. Or just keep the web server humming while I go 2 weeks without posting anything!"
-Scott "Virtual Slum Lord" Jennings, November 2009.

To wit:
"You know the worst thing about the community job is? You can't say things like 'it's amazing that somebody with that much man-dick in his mouth is still able to say such stupid things'. Instead all you can say is 'I disagree with what you said'.

Hey Binky, I disagree with what you said."

Bob "G. Bob" Roland, Community Manager, NetDevil

No "working as intended" either?

Too many examples of that spread over multiple companies to pick just one. Ditto for any quotes on "The Vision".

I had this as a signature back in the Waterthread days:

"And, honestly, the world is in desperate need of more games where berry-picking is a valid occupation."
-- Ragnar Tørnquist, selling the raw, electric excitement of Midgard shortly before Funcom pulled the plug on it.

...and how could I forget this classic?

"No conventional game company would ever consider including you as a part of their marketing campaign. For this reason alone, we're excited to work with you. I firmly believe that we have the opportunity to make our own mistakes, while at the same time introducing the net to an entirely new breed of asshole..."
-- Shadowbane's Todd "Warden" Coleman makes marketing overtures to WTFMan.com and Dr. TwisTer.

I am told that "The client is in the hands of the enemy" was first said by Kelton Flinn long before I said it.

I actually think that time has vindicated me on single-player games, and that I was right. YMMV. :)

Aren't you ALWAYS right, oh clone-of-mine?

I'll be honest, Raph. That "mutant" quote has bothered me for years now. Maybe your original intention completely flew over my head, but it just comes across as condescending to anybody who actually enjoys single-player games. Not that multi-player games aren't fun in their own right, but...

In a single-player game, I don't have to put up with Drizzzt Do'UrMom calling me a homo in general chat. Hell, in a single-player game, I don't have to put up with characters *named* Drizzzt Do'UrMom. Or JayZRox. Or PimPtaculaR. Or AshinKusher.

In a single-player game, I don't have to worry about bored 13-year-old script kiddies crashing the server because school happened to let out early that day. In the same vein, I can play without having my blood pressure soar because some hacked-up ball-gargler knifed me to death about 3 milliseconds after I spawned.

In a single-player game, I dictate the schedule. Serious advancement doesn't require me to plan my entire social life around the online habits of 15 complete strangers.

In a single-player game, I might get things like "cinematic action" and "immersion" and "story". Even if it isn't a terribly well-written or coherent story, the dialogue consists of more than 'U LVL?????' and '55555'.

And if thinking that's a good thing also makes me some kind of freakish weirdo... well, then slap my ass and call me Glorx.

I'll grant you that multiplayer games are becoming more diverse, more technologically sophisticated, and definitely more ubiquitous. But at the same time, they still can't hit the same buttons as a single-player game. And as long as every major release is stuck trying to ape World of Warcraft - a game that's in and of itself just a marginally prettier EverQuest - they never will.

Look at your own work: did Ultima Online really replace the single-player Ultima experience? Were you honestly arguing that 'proper' RPGs are redundant now that there's a good dozen $15-a-month treadmills open for the choosing?

Back on topic:

DENIAL: NOT JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT

"Behind all the hate I think they really want to just kiss me."
-- Marc Ecko reacts to (damned near universally negative) reviews of his urban graffiti-'em-up Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure.

"The fact of the matter is, most of you are just jealous. Pure and simple. In the past when I would sink down to your levels, engage you in the pits, return insult for insult etc, some of you got this [false] impression that we were of the same calibre; let alone the same caste. I make no excuses for who I am or what I am. What I DO know - and that which is proven and consistent - is that I have progressed over the years, improved on that which I created etc. While, well, all of you are just the same crochety, stagnant, inconsequential people you always were. For always reduced to obscurity; with the only voice you have being that which you use to libel and assassinate someone like me. Someone who is, well, above it all. So, all you and your friends are doing is wasting your time."
-- Derek Smart puts the, uh, haters in their place.

“The average gamer is as finicky as a hummingbird on acid, with a very short attention span and a penchant for being largely unforgiving.”
-- And I can't even begin to imagine why, Dr. Smart.

"Once we run out of back-story in the lore, then we’re just to going start making up stuff. No, seriously, we are. Since David, Hue and Jason are gone now, we can do anything we want. We already have, uhm, battle hamsters. So we’re going to expand on those and take it from there."
-- Derek Smart discusses his plans for Alganon's setting.

"Yes, that’s the plan. That and the fact that we’re going to focus all our efforts on fleshing out the battle hamsters, since Elves — of any kind — are flat out banned from the game."
-- Derek Smart on Alganon, Part the Second. And yes, I'm unapologetically stealing content from Lum now.

"I'm a big fan of Aristotle's Poetics. No one has written a Poetics for the video-game industry yet, and we need one."
-- Silicon Knights' Dennis Dyack, waxing (ha) philosophical.

"When the game is released and everyone plays game all the speculation will be over. If I am wrong and gamers in general think the game is 'crap' then I am comfortable with getting tagged 'Owned by the GAF'." Every single other person who thinks or hopes the game will be an epic failure gets their own tag — "Owned by Too Human."
-- Dennis Dyack throws down the gauntlet after one too many "Too Human? More like Too Poo-man!" jokes.

Annnnd... more.

"You can’t be a floor wax and then decide that you’re going to become a dessert topping.”
-- Bobby "Albert Fish" Kotick derides EA's new, "Now With 100% Less Despotic Jackass!" direction.

“12 million [subscribers] doesn’t sound like a big number to me. There are a lot of people around the world not playing World of Warcraft.”
-- Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, all but begging for hate mail from Cornered Rat Studios.

“Nintendo’s back. Nintendo had an affair with everybody’s mum, and now they’ve come back to the marriage.”
-- Epic's Cliffy B narrates Nintendo's post-Wii resurgence.

"Back when I got started, which sounds like ancient history, back then the demographics of people who were into computer games, was totally different, in my opinion, then they are today. Back then, computers were more expensive, which made them more exclusive to people who were maybe at a certain income level, or education level. So the people that played computer games 15 years ago were that type of person. They probably didn't watch television as much, and the instant gratification era hadn't quite grown the way it has lately. I think in the last 5 or 6 years, the demographics have really changed, now this is my opinion, because computers are less expensive so more people can afford them. More "average" people now feel they should own one."
-- King's Quest creator Roberta Williams, lamenting how computer gaming has gone downhill ever since the unwashed masses took over.

“It’s a shame things haven’t turned out the way we had envisaged them, but then the beauty of online gaming is that we can address problems and keep on improving experiences.”
-- Realtime Worlds' Colin MacDonald downplays the crippling problems plaguing APB's release shortly before the game's untimely demise.

"Collecting giant coins feels unrealistic to me.”
-- An unnamed publisher turns down Hello Games' Joe Danger.

“Jason West is drinking. Also, no longer employed.”
-- Infinity Ward's Jason West breaks the news of his firing in the classiest way possible.

"When people are in a 3D world, they don't know what to do--they aren't so directed--and their strategic thinking is more muddled and more confused."
-- LucasArts' Simon Jeffrey attempts to explain why people didn't take to Star Wars-themed RTS shitfest Force Commander.

Here's one I just stole from a thread on Salem, a Permadeth game Paradox is developing. I'd file it under "Lessons Unlearned" or "History? What's that?"

"There are plenty of things in the game mechanics themselves that are relatively conducive to an extremely dark game. Players in this world are able to attack each other more or less unprovoked and they will be able to kill each other and maim each other and raze the buildings that other players have built with their sweat and hard labor.

I believe that the game has all the potentialities in the world to balance itself. I believe the players will be the first and foremost fount of justice in the game. And I think that's another beautiful aspect about it, because there's nothing as awesome as killing the guy who caused a lot of trouble on your farm. That's going to one of the greatest things about the game, I think, a sense of well-earned justice, finally."
- Bjorn Johannessen, Paradox

Dude, you are going to need an entire cathegory for Derek Smart alone. Speaking off:

"That all backfired because he severely underestimated me and the fact that I've done this for so long, I can see right through my eyelids. Blindfolded. In the dark."

Derek Smart. IN THE DARK.

"It's like eating a steak with a chocolate sundae piled on top of it..."
-- Dennis Dyack hypes up Too Human, a game perhaps better described as a dog turd with rat droppings piled on top of it.

"It's not a fighting game. It's way beyond that kind of thing. We haven't seen any games like it at all."
-- Except for every mediocre third-person action game ever, Dennis.

"If you think that the fashion industry is filled with divas, no, the worst divas are the guys who got wedgies in high school."
-- Marc Ecko continues to invent excuses for the critical shit-kicking administered to Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure.

"What I realise over time is that talking about a game before it's released is a dangerous game. You can just say a few things wrong and then it's like an avalanche."
-- Peter Molyneux, finally realizing the power of "Under-Promise and Over-Deliver".

“We want to make players open their minds because we believe that the new-gen isn’t just about better graphics. But the gaming has to step up and go into a new direction. If we don’t do that, we’ll go out of business.”
-- Ulf Andersson, shortly before his studio GRIN went, uh, out of business.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE EMMERT

Since Lum mentioned Jack Emmert a few days back, let's wheel out a few notable quotables from Cryptic's leading mouthpiece:

"If you don't have it at launch, you can never add it."
-- A fact that might surprise a lot of MMO developers.

"Microtransactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense. I like paying one fee and not worrying about it – like my cellphone. The world’s biggest MMO isn’t item based, even though the black market item GDP is bigger than Russia … microtransactions make me want to die.”
-- Yet two years later, microtransactions showed up in Star Trek Online and Champions Online...

"After the first month, you lose two-thirds of your players, but the people who remain, you can't get rid of them... it's absolutely impossible to do it because they're so used to the pain and agony of the gameplay that they love it."
-- Apparently, Champions Online is played exclusively by masochists these days.

"No nerf ever, ever caused a statistical drop in subscription base, ever. I tracked every single one, and never, in that particular day, week or month, did more people drop the game than in any other particular month. Fascinating."
-- Jack poo-poos player outrage over nerfs in a Gamasutra interview...

"There is one nerf that I did that we lost a couple thousand people on. It was called enhancement diversification... and that really did make people mad."
-- ...and promptly shoots holes in his own story just two paragraphs later.

"You're seeing an absolutely catastrophic evolution in the MMO industry, and as a fan, you should be terrified."
-- Trust me, Jack, I'm shaking in my boots already.

"When we talk about IP, we ask, 'Does the name evoke the meaning of the game?'"
-- Coming from Cryptic in 2011: Superpowers Grindfest Massively Online!

This doesn't irk me as much as some people, I guess. Maybe because I grew up with several Sierra games -- King's Quest, Space Quest, LSL, etc. Whatever flaws they might have had, they were handcrafted work, beautifully done. If I was in Roberta's shoes, I'd be slightly appalled as well with some of the directions the game industry has taken. From handcrafted work to 'let's make WoW clone #57!'. Feh.

God, I should dig up KQ3 and dosbox it. I loved that game :)

I'm quite ambivalent towards Williams' quote, myself. Because I agree with it, but also because I'm definitely part of the new demographic whose presence she laments, so by approving this I definitely feel like Groucho Marx saying he wouldn't join any club that would take him as a member. That quotation dates back to 1999, I think? Well, that was the year I had my first real computer for which I specifically bought games. In 1994-95, I was still typing away on my Smith-Corona.

Still, there is a certain aspect to her position that bothers me about in the same way as a hipster liking something until too many people start liking it.

Am I the only one who remembers Phantasmagoria?

I mean, really.

SPIN DOCTORS THEY AIN'T

"Too many went too far with their reviews...we are reviewing who gets games next time and who doesn't based on today's venom"
- The Redner Group threatens to pull future game access to those who criticised Duke Nukem Forever. 2K fired them as the PR company started its own disaster.

"If reviewers want to give us a hard time about it because they're misunderstanding the game we made, it's not for me to tell them that they're wrong, absolutely not. But I wish people would get it out of their head that we made a Mario competitor, because we didn't."
- Warren Spector on how reviewers weren't necessarily wrong about Epic Mickey, but just didn't get it and were wrong as a result

FAILED PREDICTIONS

"It leaves it in this band there where you're going to see a lot of 8s and 9s, and the number in that range doesn't matter. Even if some people start to skew in some 7s in there, it's not going to matter to the actual results in that band of outcomes. We know the game's great. Any journalist that decides to try to go... to lowball it is gonna be held accountable by the readers."
- Randy Pitchford on how Duke Nukem's reviews would be fantastic and that they didn't matter anyway

You know, it's been years, and I'm STILL angry about 'enhancement diversification'. What a load of shit that was.

Oh man, ED. I'm glad that brouhaha was pretty much a sunk cost before my time into City (I played primarily after Villains launched).

I still remain very fond of a nearly-out-of-beta official quote from Champions Online, even though it wasn't a developer quote but instead the poor bastard they had doing community relations on the official forums at the time, acting as the messenger to be shot:

The storm that followed was epic.

"Use Tactics."
Sanya Thomas

"You're playing it wrong."

--Every student ever while watching the first playtest of their first game.

Jack Emmert and his fucking vision. I haven't thought about CoH in ages but I'm still pissed at him for that.

God, no kidding. For some background, I should explain that Kalle and I have basically been a tag-team in CoH and CoV for the better part of a decade, playing whenever the fancy strikes us, so we've been there and had to endure every part of Jack's 'vision'.

"We talk[ed] about the tribulations of getting good stuff into commercial games...and [Ice-Pick Lodge developer] Nikolay's efforts to allow children to die in Pathologic by officially considering them midgets."

--Tom Jubert
Not a direct quote but pretty awesome nonetheless.

Thanks, Bill. That was great.

I'm a lazy paster, it's from my BLAWG

KQ3 was what got me into the series, and I completely agree.

SPIN DOCTORS THEY AIN'T

"I had 6 copies of Empire: Total War sat on my shelf intended for close gamer friends that I didn't send out because I was too embarrassed about the flaws."

-Mike Simpson, Director of Creative Assembly, more 6 months after the release of E:TW and numerous DLC releases.

Taxi to victory.

I disagree with what you said.

Could you explain what that was? I joined with City of Villains, so I missed that. I knew there was a stacking penalty on enhancements, but reading that quoted article about losing subscribers a few years ago was the first I'd heard of any problem with it.

The Paragon Wiki article does a good job explaining it but you have the basics right -- it introduced diminishing returns on the effectiveness of enhancements. Other than being a clunky solution to a power problem the devs should have seen before release, the optics were handled about as badly as possible, with it being 'secretly' rolled out during the CoV beta. I remember the beta forum exploding over the reveal of ED and despite the NDA, word got out and the devs had to fess up before they had planned to. It also didn't help that this was all coming more than a year after the game shipped, which seems like a long time to wait to address fundamental balance issues in core systems. That, I think, was the main source of complaints.

Many thought the game was fine, it had been rolling along for over a year and then Cryptic pulled its own equivalent to the NGE (though to be fair, it was nowhere near that drastic).

The Invention system has effectively removed most of the barriers that were imposed because of ED, so it's all ancient history, for the most part.

tl;dr version: The CoH devs waited too long to make fundamental gameplay changes and some players burned them for it.