Criterion Games Forums are Closed

I wasn't aware of the posting going on over there today. But, now I am home I have had a look over at some of the other forums and would like to repost a few quotes.

It looks like this was one of the last posts from Alex (presumably it is from Alex anyway, the quoter doesn't specifically say)

"OK. It seems there are several members of the "community" who seem to enjoy messing things up for others rather than just enjoying the game.

Enough is enough. We're done with coming to our forum and seeing a small minority of "members" coming to post offensive and abusive posts.

And many of you seem to be participants of this behaviour.

(Yes we do read all of your other forums, and see how you enjoy causing trouble.)

So here's the deal - either this stuff stops TODAY or WE WILL STOP ALL INTERACTION going forward.

This means everything - no podcast, no forum, no blog, nothing.

It really is up to you guys. But we don't need this."

I think it is a real shame that some people behaved so badly on the forums. I really hope the podcasts do continue, as I have thoroughly enjoyed them! And have loved being able to see a bit more about the team that makes the Burnout Series.

I think it is a real shame that Criterion Games reached out to us, only to be treated with such disrespect.

I also want to post ZeroJays last comment as I think it sums up a lot.

"Paradise is what Criterion's about right now. They are about the social cooperative vibe instead of the competitive one that was in Revenge. That's who they are right now and that's the game they wanted to make. I'm sorry if you're one of those that disagree with their choices, but you've always got the disc to go back and play whenever you get the urge to do so.

The social vibe that they've been working on extends to the website and the forum here... and it's sad to see that the efforts would be ruined by a few, especially with Paradise being so very successful. Maybe you don't agree with their choices and decisions... and that's fine - just don't ruin it for the rest of us. Everything they've been doing... it's all something no developer has ever done before. They have showed how much they loved their fans repeatedly... and they just get hell for it, either from people who still want Revenge 2 or people abusing the forums and other people. (And believe me, if you think that doing this sort of stuff is going to get you a Revenge 2 any faster, you probably are going to be in for a surprise.)

And if this is really the end... well, I just want to say thank you to everyone I've met here, both from Criterion and PSN. We may not always have agreed on things, but it was still fun. Thank you to the team for being so open to us and for letting us in and being a part of everything. All the work and effort will never be forgotten."

And I would like to repeat that last point as I agree with it wholeheartedly. Thank you to the team for being so open to us and for letting us in and being a part of everything. All the work and effort will never be forgotten.

I would also like to thank the positive posters over at Criterion Games Forums, for sticking with it and really trying to make it a better place for all of us.

Comments

zerojay's picture

 Yes, what Fuzzy quoted on my forums was what Alex had posted on the Criterion forums and had stickied. It was titled "Will a few bad apples spoil the bunch?" or close enough.

I just want to clarify something quick. I'm not in any way against them putting out a Revenge 2 in any way, shape or form. I would love it just as much as the previous games, I'm sure. But complaining on their forums isn't going to get it done. It's just going to further annoy them into NOT doing it and that's what I was saying. Not sure if that came across properly or not so I felt like I had to clarify.

And now I await further hate messages.

 

 

Rofer's picture

The point is that some of the people like me do express their opinion on their forums and there should be nothing wrong with that at all like burnoutaholics everyone is allowed to make their point of view here so how is it different to do that in their forums? They try to live in a fantasy where they only accept perfect opinions from everybody but that is just impossible.

zerojay's picture

 It's not quite the same thing for one major reason. This site is a fansite for the series. There's nothing being sold here. There's no stake in how the games do for Xandu or Zombietron (aside from the fact that a successful game means more Burnout).

On an official company site, having tons of negative comments just means people might not buy your game... and let's face it, making games is a business. Criterion is no different in this respect from any other game company. Most of them remove negative threads as well.

They never had a problem with people expressing an opinion until it became disruptive. When you started jumping on the Paradise forums simply to troll or spam and call everyone assholes for liking the game... well, you can't tell me that you expected them to just leave that on there. :)

(And no, I don't blame you for the forums closing down, nor am I saying you're a reason for it or anything like that before anyone thinks that's what I'm saying.)

 

Rofer's picture

I admit i did write quite a bit of straight up negative comments, but that was after i wrote up my fair honest opnion and question to the criterion team. Of course they never did reply they let it stay up for a few months at least. Then the reason i continued to troll after that was infact because of criterions ignorance, since they were annoying me by not considering my kind of opinion, i decided to make an effort to annoy them back, and every last bit of it was worth it and i feel like a better person now.

PsychedelicBabe's picture

On an official company site, having tons of negative comments just means people might not buy your game... and let's face it, making games is a business. Criterion is no different in this respect from any other game company. Most of them remove negative threads as well.

this comment made me giggle....why be bothered by so many negative comments ? if they had produced a better game then maybe they wouldnt have got as many negative comments....you go on about it being a FANSITE what are we? were fans of burnout so why cant we air our opinion....were just not fans of paradise, so maybe if the burnout fans got what they wanted theyd have left paradise alone.....

 

Rofer's picture

That i was thinking of putting thanks psycadelic. Exactly why would so many people who USED to be burnout fans make these negative comments, and the brand new fans get more respect for their opinion? People who are very well aware of who these people are can tell exactly whats going on.

SUFFUR's picture

So I stayed in bed, and missed it all. LOL!

I think, the dog house forums needed a couple of moderators, 2 official and 2 from the fans side, and 2 or 3 apprentice's from the different communities already established, and spread across time zones, and not used as an advertizing 'gimic', so hence a real fan forum, with two way discussion, as and when it could be possible, sort of a live podcast, would have been cool, but I degress, lol, again.

They, the forums, were set up to cover all their games, then it just sort of disappeared,  to Paradise only, no feed back from the team except repremands and the odd 'yes, that fan is right?', and yes it was more, but normally damage control, but almost everyone that gave a parc to start with, was signed up, from all the games, but mostly from Play Station 3 fan side, because to them this was the first official Burnout game since Revenge, which did not have the the Revenge 'upgrade' of the 360. True they had Dominator but made by EA rather than Criterion persay, and on PS2, would have been nice to to have seen it on an XBox. These are young males, 3 to 60, some working, some studying, some,  just over teething, found a place to finally get a great new unusual game experience, made by Criterion, Burnout Paradise.

We all were waiting, for our next fix; social game play, mug shots, open world, nil loading, 8 players, and dicking about with your mates, a casual game play experience, a serious step back, from the adreniline fueled games of yore, and that was what the 'hardcore' fans were fighting for, from the previous games. Racing and crashing to a lot of people, was serious game play, to while away the late winter nights, and come online 'wreaked' in the cool summer evenings.

Paradise was different, to cause a flame war, but we stuck with our games, told to really, but with all this goodiness going to Paradise with DLC, now changed to GCC, some people though Revenge could have some of that, could we, please, Mr A. Ward, as it came across in the early days. LOL!

In the end it was the other Burnout games VS Paradise, people dropping the word Burnout, from Paradise, with people saying it does not have it's burnout flavor, of cool drifting, boosting, crazy eye bluring speeds(found by luck during the program test phase, so I was told or did I read it), crashing with style, with taking people out and it looking so cool, that you would crash, from wonder, looking at how cool it was. Competativness was also a strong factor, and this was sort of taken out of Paradise until the time challenges arrived.

Some said you could get that from racing, but due to connection issuses, over complicated, tight traffic partterns, none of the races flowed, they were disjointed, not like the 'older others'. But I think Pardise, a simple game of dicking around, is quite hard to master, if you wanna race, even with it's syncing problems, TD's issuses, odd bugs and lag, it can be done, put coming from the smoothness of the others, even with falling through the floor/road on occassion, the concrete car, the invisible bit in the wall on that right turn, that you learn to avoid, and network issuses. Paradise, is not the other games, it's a new, next generation of driving games, using new amazing technology, that was going to use the community to go somewhere else with driving games.

The fact that we are all still discussing this, all of us, the fans, the community, Criterion, must mean something? we all like Criterion, we like most of their games, but Paradise and Revenge are the two games, that seem to be at war with each other. Two very different games, and two very different points of veiw, to different communities from a game play point of view.

The other games did not have Game Developer feed back, Paradise does, yeah there was a web site around the later years of Revenge, but for the build up to Paradise. 

There are people that play Revenge that want more tracks, not going to happen, people that play Paradise from Revenge, that want a better race experience, via an arcade style, (Paradsie is a bit realistic with the traffic, some have said, including me, and the TD's fixed, syncing etc), people from Burnout 3 and hated Revenge, but enjoy the skill of avoiding traffic. There are people from Burnout 2, who did not like the competativeness of the online of the next 2 games, but liked to hang with a friend and have fun racing each other in a line around a track, though mostly crashing and swaping controllers, lol, there are the PS3 people happy to have a new game from Criterion, and people that have just come to burnout for the first time, and others that hated the other games but love Paradise? 

There are a lot more people, for numbers of reasons, tracks/cuircuits, crashing, split screen multi player, lap times,  over all times, rank, TD's, distance, air time, jump distance, insurance values, space, weather, day cycle, etc etc.

And everyone of them, had a say/pop/arguement/reason/excuse or whatever oh, and compliment too, and that can be over whelming, to see everyday, but then again, that is a very thin slice of life, of the owners of a game. Say 1 Million people buy it, 30% may not go online, so 70% are online, then only 10% join and go to a forum about it, true a larger number of unknown players, just browse the sites, never joining. How many members are there of the sites combined, maybe 10k of people? 2% for multi tags, lol. Criterion only get a sample of the news via the web. A hit count, would give a good sample of interested people, but most of the stuff they get data from is the telematry (sp) and sales.

And from 1 million people playing, only 1% are bytching, and it's all on the forums, thier forums, and they do need to take it with a pinch of salt, if the game is that successfull. Of course, all press is good, but if you only want people who love the game to come to the site, you need to make it a fan site, not a commercial site, which was the way Criterions was sort of set up like, whatever intention that could be said other wise. And like bees to honey they come, but when some shyte comes the flies follow. 

And since this was the only 'inlet' to ask, beg or demand, for all fans of all the games, most went there! And Criterion should have kept the site as a fan site, and kept it seperate from the business, and got fans to run it, and feed the fan runners the information, of what is coming, and when it gets flaming, let the flames die on their own, most people ignor idiots, and firestarters, are found out very soon, that the forum games is born to hunt them down with napalm, and can be fun to watch. And since it is sort official, the team could come on, etc, but as fans, rather than 'builders' and have an open rapour(sp) with the people of the site. And talk about stuff, not just Paradise, but because it was run by guys and gals still working their sessa off trying to build the game, they had no real time to be open etc. And control the tide. Anyone asking a Revenge question should have been moved to the Revenge part of the forum, and an answer given, fan or maker, but from a Revenge 'lover'/maker point of view not a Paradise 'lover'/maker, if you get me.

I still think Criterion could make a good buck off a Revenge update, but it will never happen, unless someone has a lot of cash, and convince the owner of the property to change their minds, and because Paradise seems more important due to size of crowd sales, and general talk that it is so last generation, why bother, move forward, rather than back.

Sorry, just writting for the sake of reading myself, do please carry on, one day I'll get a point across, so move along, as I try and practice. I know that Paradise, is not a racing game, and Revenge is an old game, and is it to late to ask for an online version of Burnout 2?

Do parties work with old Xbox back compate games?

If you do a network test on the 360, if it passes, you do not have a NAT problem! It will tell you, if you have a Moderate or Strict NAT and try to guide you where to go to sort it, I think, since mine is open, lol.

And I played Paradise last night with Kev, it was easy to get back into, but with no speedo, lol, i assume I was doing alright? Canz Iz haz Firez?

Patience is something I taught myself, so I never know when it's going to run out?

Patience is something I taught myself, so I never know when it's going to run out?

Jinno Angelo's picture

Just an Interesting one.....

How about this Suf... exactly where are you leaning towards to? Paradise or Revenge? Your words of wisdom overwhelmed me that I got lost in the translation...

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"I Have Loved. I Have Suffered. Now, I Hate."

"There's Jinno, One of the Twin Angels" - DjSubzero18 (Burnout Revenge Online, 3/20/ 2009).

Jinno Angelo's picture

Zero's response was actually his response to my question... The same quote, in the same question that I asked in that thread...

 

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"I Have Loved. I Have Suffered. Now, I Hate."

 

 

"There's Jinno, One of the Twin Angels" - DjSubzero18 (Burnout Revenge Online, 3/20/ 2009).

NIGHTMAR3xGTx's picture

I did think it was strange that I could not get in to the forums anymore. I did not go to the forums often, so what were some of the things people were posting that criterion felt they needed to close the forums ? I dont remember seeing many hateful post or anything like that. Oh and I like Revenge 100x more than like Pradise. Paradise was a fun game, but it got old really fast.

[gamercard:id]

SUFFUR's picture

Well were ever I put my feet, so sometimes in my mouth, lol.

I loved Burnout 2. Burnout 3 was where I met most people on this site, via the online play, Revenge was fun, but seemed broken with TD's so a racing crasher with friends and strangers. Then Paradise, a place to 'dick' about, a fun driving game.

They are all games, and I like them, but Paradise was just different, and did not give me the fix like the other games, but still play it because it does have some fun stuff to do, with no hassels, unless we race.

I always thought, other than the Criterion objectives, no loading, open game play etc, anything that anyone complained about in the past about any of the other games were removed, so complaints that they were too hard, people abused the system, I can't boost start, they are going above the speedo limit, takedowns are too hard, i get owned, the race tracks are too long, my mum says i can only play for more than an hour, etc, and stuff with people asking, wouldn't it be cool, to do barrels rolls, fly through the air etc, were put in, to create the 'physics' engine work, crashing is cool in slow-mo I wanna see more of that etc etc, but you get where i'm coming from.

The element of driving/ racing with your friends like nutters, has gone from Paradise, though still strong in the other games.

You can weave through traffic in the older games but there is no room to do so in Paradise, the gap is too small. Even the Euro fits between traffic on Burnout 3 and that car has a huge ssa. The only car that seems to me that fits through traffic well and does not bounce away with a scrape on any car is the W.Roadster, yes other smaller cars too, but you get me... . It can be done with others, but any touch, and loss of control (the kind that says power steering has lost power and same with power braking?), bounce to a death will occurr, unless your so jammy, which i have been, but it's just not the same.

Traffic should move away when glaced upon by your car, sort of like a mini checked traffic, not the hit that car for a home run, yeap thats out of the park, Revenge check! And yes it should mess up your opponant (sp), but they do need to be able to see it, to avoid it, which with the sync issuses most people see different traffic in Paradise, so avoid that car, what car? is a big issuse in Paradise, just like the homeless. See it is important!

Anyway I wrote most of this stuff before, go find it if you want.

I like all the games 'cept Burnout 1, due to the Hardcore difficulty, never complained about it, never will if you get me, I also thought the graphics were poor to compared to other driving games I was playing too.

You have to play the games the way they are presented, but considering, what the other games are about, Paradise is not any of those games, which was Criterions goal, I think, get rid of the Hardcore, 20-30 somethings, and find a new audience of, easy going game players and get them young, because that is where the money is, lol.

I though Revenge had big issuses when i first played it but they soon got fixed, Paradise has issuses which still have not been addresses as yet? And never will, because of the way it is built, but to see restarts put into the PC version, is very odd? Next they will have boost starts! And a speedo?

People, they are just games, we have revolved our lives around, something I don't think Criterion really realised, they may have their lives building it, but we are the ones that put out money and our time into. We all have some invested interest, more so for Criterion, but the experiment broke and to be honest stretched so far from the core of the other games, it was bound to break anyway.

For Paradise you have to take off the blickers to play it, but to get Hardcore racing, find another games, end of!

And it's 26 to 30 degrees in Asia and I'm here, why? Suffur with the weather, bye.

 

Patience is something I taught myself, so I never know when it's going to run out?

Patience is something I taught myself, so I never know when it's going to run out?

gravy666's picture

I really hope that the podcast doesn't end...

But in other news, this could be good for us.  Some of the better members might decide to join Burnoutaholics.

Sharpshooter's picture

I was on the forums since it basically started, it was a great community, the language was clean and the posts were entertaining. I haven't been going on the forums as much as before so it was a big shock to see that I couldn't log onto the forums to check out the news.

I know it sounds a little flat and superficial but I kind of missed when there was the elite status because it drove a lot of people to post with common sense. There were posts about "I WANT TO BE AN ELITORZ!!" but other than that everything seemed to be manageable. This is probably because there wasn't the influx of people as there were before. As said in a earlier comment, a lot of posts were people's opinions, however I believe they were said in the wrong way which only generated more sparks of flame posts.

I guess all we can really do for now is hope that eventually they will re-open there forums. If anything I hope they continue to make their podcast because I really wanted to see all the burrows and the final big surf island burrow.
 

Nothing shuts some up faster than a good vertical takedown

PsychedelicBabe's picture

nice to see your in top spirits rofer...but dont you think that was a little harsh saying that you hope they never reopen again.....lmao as for the first part of your sentence *psyche claps* i agree :p

 

Jinno Angelo's picture

Forums didnt need to be closed... Too bad tho, it could have been something better....

And yeah, I should rent this game Paradise.... Maybe, just maybe I may like it......... Maybe....

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"Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust. We Are All From The Dust, And To the Dust We Shall Return. Amen!" "Hellsing Ultimate Series I", Alexander Anderson.

"There's Jinno, One of the Twin Angels" - DjSubzero18 (Burnout Revenge Online, 3/20/ 2009).

Xandu's picture

Comments have been disabled on this blog due to flame wars. I also had to delete some comments. If you want to discuss this topic any further please do so in the appropriate forum.

-- The Creator --

-- The Creator --