Is current developer criticism warranted or are we just demanding too much?

[Cynz.9437]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Rezzet.3614 said:I agree our playerbase has become spoiled brats. However some criticism is warranted the game's very poorly balanced some classes have had changes that made no sense and ruined build diversity etc.

That's the common complaint in any game community. Players seems to have trouble understanding how hard is balancing a game with a rich combat system. For the same reason you can (and do) have a lot of playable builds but very few optimal ones. There is no build variety if you choose to care about min-maxing. There never was, there never will be.

This is not about minmaxing. This is about blatant obvious class balancing based on marketing sales. They nerfed acro traitline to introduce acro v2.0= DD in HoT. They added scourge that basically shuts down about anything in game and makes reaper/necro obsolete for the sake of sales. They made pvp/wvw p2win basically.

This is not about tweaking some numbers here and there, this is obvious systematical nerfs to existing works builds and overtuning of new specs to create artifical demand (you don't buy xpac = you lose fights). I honestly don't understand how any player can be ok with that.

[Furious.2867]

Regarding non gated gem store items - The more you give people, the more entitled they become, the more they expect from you. Human nature. People suck. Go non-humans!

2000 gems for the skin is FAIR FAIR FAIR. If it's less, then people will just farm gold and convert to gems. How the heck can the developers pay for their overhead and expenses? And if it's too expensive, don't buy it. It's not like it's needed.

[LanfearShadowflame.3189]

Constructive criticism is a good, healthy thing. However, that's not usually what happens here. Many aren't remotely constructive in their responsive, or take it way too far, or both. I will leave it at that, because if I say much more, I'm going to get myself in trouble.

[Razor.6392]

Demanding too much for something entirely optional. Who cares about mount skins out of all things? 2 months ago there were not even mounts to begin with.

I would just ignore all of you if I was CEO lol. The entitlement is quite funny.

[Rauderi.8706]

I would almost judge the success of a game by the pettiness of its complaints on the forums. :p

If your biggest problem is "my daily fractal changed" and not "every boss fight is a hail of debilitating crowd control," I'd say you're doing great overall. :star:

Meanwhile, I suspect the loot box / mount price complaints come from good people who want to throw money at ANet, but don't want to throw that much money. I wish I had the data to comb through, but intuition tells me that anything beyond an 800 gem price point is going to be a harder sell, especially for cosmetics.

[sephiroth.4217]

I think some of it is warranted....

Personally I would like to see more things for sale in the gem store instead of mount skins, mount skins, higher priced mount skins and super expensive mount skins, after that we have more mount skins and this other mount skin you can buy over there and while you're at it, gamble for a few more mount skins..... (how long until we start forging mount skins for other mount skins?)

I'd like other things to be put in the gem store, such as level 80 boosters, 1 gift of completion to core tyria, hero points, bank tab upgrades to 14+, 40 slot bags or something (40 slot bags for 400 gems, I would buy a good 20-30 of them for my main toons alone).... So many QoL items that I know I would purchase 10, 20, 30, 40 times. I only want to equip 1 mount skin, once I got that mount skin, why would I bother buy anymore and if I had a 2000 gem skin for my mount, why would I ever buy or skin it with anything else? Sales end there.... With QoL upgrades, sales are never ending.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@Jacuzzi.1643 said:Lately there's been a real kitten brewing in OF and reddit with pitchforks and torches and I wanted your thoughts on the matter. I'm not sure whether this anti-dev sentiment is piggybacking from the EA drama or this is a genuine problem with our community. Like Christ, just look at General page 1 there's someone complaining that the new patch changed the daily fractal and another post complaining that items shouldn't take inspiration from real world objects. I don't even want to touch the posts about the 2000 gem mount/RNG lootbox COSMETIC SKINS that have been spammed the last couple days. I get that criticism is important to developer feedback but are we really criticizing or do we just want more things given to us easier?

There have been a lot of questionable decisions from the devs of late, which feeds into the frustration that is always somewhat present in game forums, etc.But here's a small list:

• PoF content is quite barren, a lot of people can't find reasons to play PoF after ~2 months of it's release.
• PvP and WvW are having several issues with balance and overall mechanics
• RNG mount boxes
• Overpriced mounts (at least compared to the baseline created by outfits and gliders)
• Weird behavior with PoF new stats
• Still waiting to see if there's a new source of Amalgamated Gemstones that justify the creation of a new PoF-centric Legendary Gift that still requires them
• The old question of why they always refuse to create meaningful rewards in-game, and always push those items to the gemstore (which feeds into the lack of reasons to play PoF)
• etcAfter people start getting bogged down by a couple of these issues, their good will towards future mistakes grows thin, and that's pretty much the reason for the constant outrages towards even the most minor of things. There's just too much stuff compounding that removes the enjoyability of the game, and in the long term, it's viability.

[Dreams.3128]

People are just being rude.

I can only imagine what people would do back in the day when forums are just coming.ing into fruition for mmos and people were learning how to turn on a dial box.

What did they do?Froth at the mouth?Complain to their spouse/grandma/parent that the grind was too much?Bang their keyboard everywhere

Christ. There is having an emotional response and then having emotions dictate rational thought. What I have seen here is the lack of rational thought and very rapid, impulsive, emotional responses.

It's a game. Live a little. Breathe. What the heck has gaming turn into? People's livelihoods? My God this only makes me even /more/ worried for the future.

[Carighan.6758]

My problem with GW2 at present is not that I think it's not an enjoyable game, but that it feels like one which has just released.

This does not feel like a game where the devs had >5 years of feedback and could work with that.

By and large, I attribute that feeling to the "development by accretion" style the devs have opted for. They don't go back and fix old systems, scrap them if they don't work, rework them if they kinda could, they instead add new systems which are built to soft-override the old ones and try to make those balanced. This extends into, and this is where it annoys me, class-design. Instead of reworking the plethora of useless skills, traits and skill/trait/stat/rune/sigil combinations we have, probably scrapping major parts of the entire system, we get elite specs which try to fix mechanical or design issues with classes by stapling extra elements on top of them.

This just feels... unprofessional. It feels like playing a student project in that specific regard. Someone helplessly throwing more and more things at a wall in a panic, hoping something, anything, might stick.

[Cuddy.6247]

@"Carlin Sanders.3587" said:a mix of both actually.paying 2,000 gems is quite pricey for people who don't have access to a solid income with room for pleasure spending, thus trying to grind for that many gems can be a daunting task even on the best of days. Even among those who do have that luxury, that same price usually comes from combo deals with multiple items versus the single item purchase of mount skins. The implementation of RNG based skin boxes was also ill done - had anet simply decided to implement a 'ticket' system - EG: 3 tickets for celestial griffon, 1 for tiger griffon, 2 for fire griffon - then that may have been fine as this left choice in the hands of the player. however putting hard earned gems into a gambling machine means you could very well spend well over 4,000 gems for just the two/one/three skins you wanted..on the other hand a lot of the fanaticism is in fact a spread over from the EA incident. moreover people on the forums generally tend to be saltier than the dead sea due to past grudges they have with the decisions anet has made - whether for good or ill - and not all of it is entirely logical or without favoritism, as we're only human. the people who are generally happy tend to play the game far more than surf the forums. Plus with the economy still not exactly in the best of conditions people are quite sensitive about how far they can stretch a buck, and thusly overreact when something that they desire is outside their budget range. On top of this you have fashion wars 2 as the meta endgame for a lot of people, and not everyone wants to get their hands dirty to look cool. And lastly remember that what you may be looking at may in fact be the vocal minority rather than the majority, as we have no precise way of validating exactly how many people share the same opinions on certain topics.just my two cents on the matter.

They're trying to fund the game with RMT. The 2000 gems is okay because it kind of pushes that, even if you only buy half the gems and grind the other half.

The problem with the price setting on ANet's end started at conception with the gold-gem transfer. There are several reasons why gold sellers are frowned upon, one reason is their impact on the in-game economy, and then ANet went and made themselves their own gold seller with gems.

Now there's a ton of gold in the game. So even if they "double" sales by reducing price, a lot of people will be able to acquire the gold to buy without RMT. It's a huge problem on their end.

I think the best fix ANet could possibly do is try to curb their losses as much as possible and cut gem-gold transfer from the game. It ruins the game in every conceivable way.

[Dreams.3128]

Another small note:

My biggest gripe with Anet right now is the bright animations.

Dear Christ, I am thankful for my current health because I would be in the ER if I wasn't. Those bright animations within the story should not be a thing, ever. In PvP or anywhere else I am a-okay, but in the newer story and fractals, that crap is a no go for me.

Anet, tell your animators to turn that crap down. Final Fantasy has bright animations too, but at least they are not stomach-turning or make me feel like I need to take off my glasses to play half blind so I don't need to deal with bright, eye-sores. And that is WITH low graphics.

[STIHL.2489]

It's kinda a catch 22.

Lets be real, when people don't have fun playing a game anymore, they leave.

Yes, people leave for insanely petty reasons, but it's a game, there is no deep moral or self discovery reasons to play it, it's frivolous time waste, something done for one own personal gratification, as such the reason to play and the reason to quit will also be frivolous.

If they say nothing when they quit, then the developer having no information, can't even try to correct the problem, because they don't know where to even start.This can lead to changes that do nothing but alienate more of their player base as opposed to retaining or bringing back those that left.

If they are vocal, and things change, they feel empowered to be more vocal to try and twist the game into what they want, be damned what anyone else wants, because their motives to play are purely self serving, which results whole other groups feeling left out and leaving.

How do they win this?

[thehipone.6812]

You're seeing the manifestation of an entire generation that grew up getting everything they wanted.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@STIHL.2489 said:It's kinda a catch 22.

Lets be real, when people don't have fun playing a game anymore, they leave.

Yes, people leave for insanely petty reasons, but it's a game, there is no deep moral or self discovery reasons to play it, it's frivolous time waste, something done for one own personal gratification, as such the reason to play and the reason to quit will also be frivolous.

If they say nothing when they quit, then the developer having no information, can't even try to correct the problem, because they don't know where to even start.This can lead to changes that do nothing but alienate more of their player base as opposed to retaining or bringing back those that left.

If they are vocal, and things change, they feel empowered to be more vocal to try and twist the game into what they want, be damned what anyone else wants, because their motives to play are purely self serving, which results whole other groups feeling left out and leaving.

How do they win this?

With the one thing they suck at most... Balance.

[Cynz.9437]

@thehipone.6812 said:You're seeing the manifestation of an entire generation that grew up getting everything they wanted.

Talk for yourself please. I have full time job, i earn my money and i used that money to buy the game and game related stuff. Then Anet decided that being creative is stupid and simply nerfed everything i enjoyed to the ground just to add improved version of that stuff with xpac that i have to buy if i want to stay competitive in pvp. Fine, i bought xpac. What happens next? Next xpac comes, they nerf things from previous xpac to force new xpac on me, yet again. I think i have every right to expect semi-balance among classes for the money i paid.

Also, with HoT they added raids, with PoF another wing. I paid for xpac, I STILL CAN'T RAID WITH MY MAIN CLASS BECAUSE ANET REFUSES TO MAKE THEM USEFUL FOR THE GROUP CONTENT IN PVE. DO I REALLY ASK TOO MUCH?????!!!

I paid money for this game and i get constantly lied to and experimented on like on lab rat. And then someone like you comes and tells me i am too spoiled? Really? More like gaming companies are too spoiled now and can do anything they want with players by the looks of it.

I work in IT company, if we added some regular patch that suddenly removed/reduced some features from software at customer side just so we can make them new offer to develop those features again, we would lose every single customer and go bankrupt. But this is EXACTLY what Anet has done with HoT and PoF. I don#t understand how can you even defend some foul marketing strategy.

[Greyraven.4258]

I think the complaints are mostly from those folks who live to rage on MMo forums, a good indicator of this was a I casually mentioned a few months ago on a sub reddit how nice the forum community was at GW2...I got about 30 replies of "Orily? We can fix that" Yeah it was probably sarcasm but there is truth in sarcasm.

[Naurgalen.2374]

We cant know if it is too much. (As we will probably never know what the cost in producing the game are)

But what you see now is the players/consumers beginning to comprehend what bad practices are thanks to EA. Things like generating problems and then selling you the solutions (you have limited time? just pay more and don't play the game at all!), how gambling can affect peoples purchase decisions (lootboxes and similar things ofc) or less progression/content in the core game/expansion that can be sold later at ridiculous prices. (as dlc, skins, recolors or whatever)

All free-to-play models in your buy-to-play games.

What is the problem of bad practices? They are designed with profit as the goal and not making the best (profitable) product possible.What do consumers want? The best (profitable) product possible.

Why (profitable)? Because both players and devs want the game and company to success and offer more good products in the future.

In any case, critisism with respect is allways a good thing, as we cant really understand others without communication.

[OriOri.8724]

Good Criticism is ALWAYS warranted, because good criticism helps the devs make the game better in the long run. However, recently I have seen an uptick in bad criticism. What I would call bad criticism is criticism which basically amounts to just being upset with Anet and either not giving any actionable feedback at all, or not giving feedback that is well thought out (prime example -> "Mounts need tobe sold for 400 gems cause that's all I want to pay!". Well, its literally been explained to us, twice now, that ANet can't make money by selling them that cheap. If they can't make money, they can't run this game for free. This is not well thought out criticism, not even remotely. On the contrary, suggestions where the poster is open to debate and/or compromise [like suggestion tiered pricing for mounts. Best one I've seen is 400-800 gems for the standard skins but with extra dye channels. Slightly more for a skin like the spooky set which is the same model but different skin, and significantly more for something like the new raptor which actually changes the model and animations]). And that is not warranted, nor is it helpful. All it does is make it harder for Anet to find criticism that they can actually act on.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

@Cuddy.6247 said:

@"Carlin Sanders.3587" said:a mix of both actually.

paying 2,000 gems is quite pricey for people who don't have access to a solid income with room for pleasure spending, thus trying to grind for that many gems can be a daunting task even on the best of days. Even among those who do have that luxury, that same price usually comes from combo deals with multiple items versus the single item purchase of mount skins. The implementation of RNG based skin boxes was also ill done - had anet simply decided to implement a 'ticket' system - EG: 3 tickets for celestial griffon, 1 for tiger griffon, 2 for fire griffon - then that may have been fine as this

left choice in the hands of the player.

however putting hard earned gems into a gambling machine means you could very well spend well over 4,000 gems for just the two/one/three skins you wanted..on the other hand a lot of the fanaticism is in fact a spread over from the EA incident. moreover people on the forums generally tend to be saltier than the dead sea due to past grudges they have with the decisions anet has made - whether for good or ill - and not all of it is entirely logical or without favoritism, as we're only human. the people who are generally happy tend to play the game far more than surf the forums. Plus with the economy still not exactly in the best of conditions people are quite sensitive about how far they can stretch a buck, and thusly overreact when something that they desire is outside their budget range. On top of this you have fashion wars 2 as the meta endgame for a lot of people, and not everyone wants to get their hands dirty to look cool. And lastly remember that what you may be looking at may in fact be the vocal minority rather than the majority, as we have no precise way of validating exactly how many people share the same opinions on certain topics.

just my two cents on the matter.

They're trying to fund the game with RMT. The 2000 gems is okay because it kind of pushes that, even if you only buy half the gems and grind the other half.

The problem with the price setting on ANet's end started at conception with the gold-gem transfer. There are several reasons why gold sellers are frowned upon, one reason is their impact on the in-game economy, and then ANet went and made themselves their own gold seller with gems.

Now there's a ton of gold in the game. So even if they "double" sales by reducing price, a lot of people will be able to acquire the gold to buy without RMT. It's a huge problem on their end.

I think the best fix ANet could possibly do is try to curb their losses as much as possible and cut gem-gold transfer from the game. It ruins the game in every conceivable way.

You might want to look at how the currency exchange works. Players purchase gems and put them into the exchange, getting gold in return. Other players put gold into the exchange, getting gems in return. ANet is selling the gems to players who want gold from the exchange. There may some opportunity cost losses from players paying for gold via cash for gems. That is, player A might budget $40 for gem purchases this month. He then would need to decide whether to get gold or store items. As long as ANet is getting money from such players, I doubt they care. Finally, there are certainly going to be players who want gold and are willing to spend extra money to get it.

ANet's declining revenue is a function of a lot of things, but gold for gems is not a "huge problem."

[IndigoSundown.5419]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I think most complaints have some merit to them. My issue is usually not complaints but how complaints are worded. There are ways to say what you want without being aggressive or attacking and I prefer posts like that personally. If the whole environment is in an uproar due to outside circumstances, then it causes a lot of over-reaction and hyperbole, which makes the game look worse than it is. To me that's the real problem here.

A new person goes to reddit, sees a bunch of complaints. Those complaints are from people who have played the game for hundreds if not thousands of hours. They clearly like the game enough to still be part of the community. But that doesn't necessarily come across in those posts. I've also seen posts on reddit asking is the game really that bad, and then, some of the same people complaining, have come into those threads and said, well know, I've just played the game for so long, I focus on minute things that over all don't mean that much, but they seem really important to me now.

At the end of the day, MMO communties are often their own worst enemies.

This. People react emotionally and post in a state of upset. Since one of the primary mechanisms of the human mind is the ego, people get invested in the things they posted, and vehemently defend their positions. It doesn't help that other posters attack, which tends to get peoples' backs up, resulting in back and forth arguments which can devolve into ad hominem attacks and worse.

There are real issues in a lot of cases. Sure, some of them are trivial (I won't single any out, but I'm sure anyone can pick one out with half a moment's thought). RNG sales techniques definitely favor the seller rather than the buyer. Pricing some of your customers out of the market for frou-frou items may be financially sound, but when an MMO's item pursuit is based more on frou-frou than anything else, then some of those customers are going to be unhappy.

The fact is that almost everything ANet could do to the game is going to rub some people the wrong way. ANet has done a lot of things in the past couple of months, so there is a lot of criticism.

Not really my point. I come from a publishing background and when you critique something you can be hard and that's fine. But that doesn't mean you have to be, or that it's okay to be rude. And yes, I know forums are not a profession environment, but I still believe in courtesy. You can critcize without attacking.

This isn't just to the benefit of the game or the company, it also benefits the person doing the critique.

I know for a fact that human nature will put people on the defensive if they're attacked. I used to run a business and if anyone attacked one of my employees, right or wrong, I'd defend the employee. They'd get more action from me being reasonable. They'd be more likely to get what they want.

People who engage in highly charged emotional posts or hyperbole leave behind people who are just as vested by more reasonable, just by using the tone. Because when you attack someone, there's going to be a percentage of people who feel sympathy.

Developers are human beings will feelings and emotions and they don't make decisions specifically to hurt us or the game. Sure they get things wrong, but there's a fine line between critique and abuse. And in any event, the more over the top your complaint, the less likely it will be taken seriously..

Man, are you OK? Not getting enough sleep? I basically agree with you and you tell me it's not really your point? Maybe I'm not getting enough sleep?

[thehipone.6812]

@Cynz.9437 said:

@thehipone.6812 said:You're seeing the manifestation of an entire generation that grew up getting everything they wanted.

Talk for yourself please. I have full time job, i earn my money and i used that money to buy the game and game related stuff. Then Anet decided that being creative is stupid and simply nerfed everything i enjoyed to the ground just to add improved version of that stuff with xpac that i have to buy if i want to stay competitive in pvp. Fine, i bought xpac. What happens next? Next xpac comes, they nerf things from previous xpac to force new xpac on me, yet again. I think i have every right to expect semi-balance among classes for the money i paid.

Also, with HoT they added raids, with PoF another wing. I paid for xpac, I STILL CAN'T RAID WITH MY MAIN CLASS BECAUSE ANET REFUSES TO MAKE THEM USEFUL FOR THE GROUP CONTENT IN PVE. DO I REALLY ASK TOO MUCH?????!!!

I paid money for this game and i get constantly lied to and experimented on like on lab rat. And then someone like you comes and tells me i am too spoiled? Really? More like gaming companies are too spoiled now and can do anything they want with players by the looks of it.

I work in IT company, if we added some regular patch that suddenly removed/reduced some features from software at customer side just so we can make them new offer to develop those features again, we would lose every single customer and go bankrupt. But this is EXACTLY what Anet has done with HoT and PoF. I don#t understand how can you even defend some foul marketing strategy.

"And then someone like you comes and tells me i am too spoiled? "...All of the I want I want I want in the rest of your reply isn't exactly helping your case.

Businesses exist to make money and if you don't like their practices you are free to stop giving them your business.

[Biff.5312]

What's the alternative?

If people didn't voice their complaints, then there'd be no reason for anyone to rectify them. The number of complaints needs to be significant for any action to be expected in response.

[Zaklex.6308]

@Leo G.4501 said:I wouldn't say it's a bad thing to criticize the devs, the harsher the better, but a critic should be prepared to be the target of further criticism.

You are so wrong and show what is wrong with the majority of people that complain. I can GUARANTEE you that the harsher you are the less the devs listen to you. Conversely, if you can manage to write your criticism in a constructive non-harsh manner you're most than likely going to have your criticism looked at and taken into consideration...that goes for any thing really, not just game dev.

Harshness is ignored across the board, constructive criticism done in an intelligent and even toned manner will be taken into consideration.

P.S. - For the person that is still complaining about the 30 mount SKIN bundle, people bought it, apparently a lot of people bought it(and the optional 10 mount skin license). There is not right way to go back and change that so that it satisfies those people that wanted some of those skins but not all of them. You had the option of buying the license or not...you chose not to, now you won't be able to get those skins(except maybe in the future when they offer the deal again at a discount).

[Cynz.9437]

@thehipone.6812 said:

@Cynz.9437 said:

@thehipone.6812 said:You're seeing the manifestation of an entire generation that grew up getting everything they wanted.

Talk for yourself please. I have full time job, i earn my money and i used that money to buy the game and game related stuff. Then Anet decided that being creative is stupid and simply nerfed everything i enjoyed to the ground just to add improved version of that stuff with xpac that i have to buy if i want to stay competitive in pvp. Fine, i bought xpac. What happens next? Next xpac comes, they nerf things from previous xpac to force new xpac on me, yet again. I think i have every right to expect semi-balance among classes for the money i paid.

Also, with HoT they added raids, with PoF another wing. I paid for xpac, I STILL CAN'T RAID WITH MY MAIN CLASS BECAUSE ANET REFUSES TO MAKE THEM USEFUL FOR THE GROUP CONTENT IN PVE. DO I REALLY ASK TOO MUCH?????!!!

I paid money for this game and i get constantly lied to and experimented on like on lab rat. And then someone like you comes and tells me i am too spoiled? Really? More like gaming companies are too spoiled now and can do anything they want with players by the looks of it.

I work in IT company, if we added some regular patch that suddenly removed/reduced some features from software at customer side just so we can make them new offer to develop those features again, we would lose every single customer and go bankrupt. But this is EXACTLY what Anet has done with HoT and PoF. I don#t understand how can you even defend some foul marketing strategy.

"And then someone like you comes and tells me i am too spoiled? "...All of the I want I want I want in the rest of your reply isn't exactly helping your case.

Businesses exist to make money and if you don't like their practices you are free to stop giving them your business.

Oh so you think it is ok to systematically to worsen bought products to enforce sales of new ones? And harass the buyers on top of it? Lovely.

And yes people stop playing this game because of direction this game took. 90% of my friendlist hasn't logged in for ages. I watched entire guilds die. But go ahead, whiteknight dirty company politics.

[ReaverKane.7598]

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@"Leo G.4501" said:I wouldn't say it's a bad thing to criticize the devs, the harsher the better, but a critic should be prepared to be the target of further criticism.

You are so wrong and show what is wrong with the majority of people that complain. I can GUARANTEE you that the harsher you are the less the devs listen to you. Conversely, if you can manage to write your criticism in a constructive non-harsh manner you're most than likely going to have your criticism looked at and taken into consideration...that goes for any thing really, not just game dev.

Harshness is ignored across the board, constructive criticism done in an intelligent and even toned manner will be taken into consideration.

P.S. - For the person that is still complaining about the 30 mount SKIN bundle, people bought it, apparently a lot of people bought it(and the optional 10 mount skin license). There is not right way to go back and change that so that it satisfies those people that wanted some of those skins but not all of them. You had the option of buying the license or not...you chose not to, now you won't be able to get those skins(except maybe in the future when they offer the deal again at a discount).

The fact that people bought it shouldn't be an excuse for the behaviour, nor, having recognized the error, remedy the error.The main problem is that in all instances, MO's response was always "you don't like what we did, but you're wrong, here's why". SO they didn't really acknowledge there's a problem with RNG just that the timing was wrong, then there's no reason for them to remedy it.Otherwise they can refund all the gems, and allow people to buy the skins again on whatever new system they implement.