Robert,
First, I want to thank you for being there. I do a Twitter search occasionally for "fourzerotwo" to see what people are saying to you (and what they're saying about #MW2). It makes you question your faith in humanity sometimes, doesn't it? At the very least, it reminds me of why Party Chat options are such a big deal on Xbox Live. XBL is the same, except screeched at you by children. Sigh.
Anyway, I wanted to shoot you some feedback about your Twitter tactics since you seemed a little frustrated in
a recent tweet. I think the reason you're seeing so many repeated questions (and why people claim you don't tweet) is because most of your tweets are replies. If you reply to @JoeBlowMW2 and I'm not following @JoeBlowMW2, I won't see that tweet- unless I specifically visit your profile and read your timeline. That's something I do, but I'm definitely not the average user. If I was someone who simply followed you and stared at the homepage waiting to see feedback or responses from you, I'd be fairly disappointed.
Another, related issue that arises is that Twitter is transient by nature. You might acknowledge matchmaking problems in one tweet, and then have that acknowledgment fall off the first page in your timeline in a day's worth of tweets. Once it falls off that first page, which people would have to be specifically visiting anyway, the knowledge is (for all practical intents and purposes) lost to the community. Twitter is good for a conversation, but terrible as an archive. Telling people to read earlier tweets doesn't really cut it- Why would I, as a frustrated gamer, scroll through your profile reading about Star Wars musicals and chili in order to find out whether or not IW is working on problem X?
The only solution I can think of here is utilizing the forums to acknowledge problems and provide status updates. Twitter will let you address people one-on-one, which is good. But there are a lot of #MW2 questions that need official answers in an official place that we, as users, can reference. Example: People are exploiting Tactical Insertion to boost in FFA. Fact. I see this happening, and it pisses me off. I remember that you're on Twitter, so I tweet at you- Hey, should I report these guys as cheaters? It's a question I ask because I don't want to file a bunch of "false" reports because the XBL or IW teams don't consider it technically cheating, and it's time consuming to do. But my question inevitably gets lost in people cursing you or repeatedly asking about nerfing 1887s, and I have no answer.
Creating a thread on the forum for each platform, and inserting known glitches, balance issues, and other problems
as soon as they're identified along with status indicators would go a long way to fixing this problem. Yes, it would be publicizing the issues your game has. But the community as a whole (and I speak as a member of this community) does not feel respected, or heard. Having a visible Hit List of issues, and an even more visible list of "These are things people are complaining about that we aren't going to fix. Akimbo is in here for good, etc" would confirm that we are actually being heard.
People aren't used to being listened to. And we need a lot of affirmation that you're not just patronizing us. And no, we can't take you on faith. We gave you faith to deliver a game that was free of glitches, that would be capable of placing a party of three people into a game, of not needlessly hindering our Xbox communications, for not throwing in obvious booster holes... do I need to go on? IW needs to be humble, here. The mental and emotional currency you gained from COD4 has been spent. We will be even less placid with a "try it, you'll get used to it and like it" attitude than when we started out, and people got pretty militant about certain points right from the start.
I love #MW2. When the game works, it works
good. But I've spent way too much of my own life trying to get my three-or-four-man, Open-NAT team into the same game lobby. And then lose that game due to a host migration failure, after being repeatedly owned at a distance by 1887s. And then the next search is spending half an hour getting dumped into private Rust matches. And as an end user, even one doing a lot of research and trying to find answers, I feel really frustrated at times. And one of the main reasons I feel frustrated is because there is no place I can go to see if this problem is noticed, and being worked on. I think you'd see a huge benefit from just a little more transparency, and a few sticky threads on the forum.
Anyway, just my two cents. I work in the corporate world (and someday want to have a job like yours!) and understand how you might be hampered by a
PHB or two. You seem like a nice enough guy. Don't let the screeching kids get you too down.
Regards,
Thomas
