PCF is a terrible place for those who don't play the game, or have long since left, complaining about how awful it is.
I often liken it to if I started a new hobby, lets say golf. Invested in the gear, equipment, lessons, green fees and what not, then decided I don't like it. For whatever reason. I am not going to hang about golf forums telling people how terrible a game it is! Sell the clubs and move on.
Constructive feedback is of course always helpful, but in this thread here we have MA launching a new initiative to help advertising the game whilst supporting players in the process, and there's the same old " too little too late" " Why bother" " You messed this up before" BS that people spout on repeat.
Not aimed at you Arthur, just in general
I like your example about golf and it really gave me pause to rethink the situation and how it applies to my own relationship with EU and I figured I'd try to articulate it using the the same analogy.
So, what if you did what you said above but you loved the game of golf? What if you had a burning passion for it in fact and played it all the time and champion for it as well. But then, they started making changes to the game of golf (many that were never really asked for).
Suddenly, you couldn't just use the clubs you bought - you had to keep buying new ones every year or so that cost more and more because the changes in the courses they were making demanded new special "efficient" clubs that were required just to make par. Sure, you could still use your old clubs but it was going to cost you significantly more just to play using them and par was essentially impossible. Then they stopped maintaining the courses and greens as well as they once did. The updates to the layout of holes slowed and were less about new hazards and exploring new ways to play through the courses and were more about ways to require you to have to invest more just to play at the same level and for the same amount of time you once did and ways to make it easier (and more heavily encouraged) to just pay for another round. Then they implemented tools that essentially let you automatically hit the ball where you wanted just by pressing a single button on your club and made the whole concept of acquiring skills (chipping, putting...etc) trivial and essentially pointless to have. Then, instead of even having to play in tournaments at a chance for a cash prize you could just buy shares that paid out a percentage of all green fees collected. And not just that but you could buy shares in the canteen, pro shop, cart rentals and everything else to get a cut of those profits too without having to do anything but hand over your credit card. And on and on this goes where every new announcement of changes are made to sound like it's going to be a step in the right direction but they are either never followed through on or turn out to just be another continued step in the opposite direction disguised as an improvement.
So here you sit - while you still love the core of what the game essentially is and have a buried passion, you don't like all their "improvements" that you find ruin the game. You love the game, you don't want to just walk away from it - so you hold on to possible hope that if it was possible for the game to have changed to what it is now it's possible that the game could go back more towards what it was. Especially if you're not the only one that feels this way and you continue to vocalize it for the game creators to see and to show others that they too can voice their desire of the direction the game should be going in as many simply don't have the courage to be the first to speak up.
Anyways, the thing with using golf as an analogy is that it's static and doesn't really change. You try it, you don't like it you walk way. But, EU however is dynamic and is dramatically different than it was 15 years ago. Sure, the typical pew pew pew mechanic is the same but a lot of how the game operates in terms of overhead, loot structure, returns, content and just the general approach to the game has changed (and not all of it for the better). You liked it, they changed it to something you don't like (and could change it again to be better), so you walk away? I don't think it quite fits.
And that's where I am in this...
Yes, I may bitch about the stuff they're doing (or not doing) but it's because there's still a passion there and I haven't given up on the possibility of this game getting back on track and reaching its true potential (one day before it goes belly up).
But it's definitely frustrating to see when many of us are screaming about how simple changes could vastly improve the game (or the marketing for the game) and we're desperately telling the creators what we want to be sold as a product - we've all got credit cards in hand begging to be sold what we're asking for and they could easily provide. But instead, the creators have the "we know best" mentality with every move they make and continue to announce business moves that could be compared to "We recognize that we need to reach more players. So we changed the color of the ads for the business we've got hanging in the bathroom".
