33 replies to this topic

[Darian DelFord]

http://www.reddit.co..._on_pts_sunday/

I do not understand it. Between there Twitter and whatever else is out there, why do they not post that stuff on THEIR OWN Forums?

Please anyone know the answer to this, Niko, Why?

[FupDup]

Because we're the vocal minority™.

[CancersCincar]

Darian DelFord, on 14 June 2014 - 08:28 PM, said:

http://www.reddit.co..._on_pts_sunday/

I do not understand it. Between there Twitter and whatever else is out there, why do they not post that stuff on THEIR OWN Forums?

Please anyone know the answer to this, Niko, Why?

Could just be because this is a patch for the test servers, for not fully released content, that is all subject to change.

[Noth]

FupDup, on 14 June 2014 - 08:29 PM, said:

Because we're the vocal minority™.

This as sad as it is, is part of it. More people that play the game go to reddit and twitter than here.

[darkchylde]

I guess the forum has less then 1900 people...

Edited by darkchylde, 14 June 2014 - 08:36 PM.

[Koniving]

Darian DelFord, on 14 June 2014 - 08:28 PM, said:

http://www.reddit.co..._on_pts_sunday/

I do not understand it. Between there Twitter and whatever else is out there, why do they not post that stuff on THEIR OWN Forums?

Please anyone know the answer to this, Niko, Why?

One.
PGI chose NOT to deliver the information specifically because they wanted to see how players would "feel" the changes rather than give instant paper data that would lead to assumptions and "ZOMG THIS GOT NERFED THE WORLD IS DOOMED!"

Two.
Homeless Bill isn't PGI, but someone who hasn't been thrilled with PGI's approaches to balancing. He's one of many, but throwing the info out was kind of a news reporter-ish move that may have endangered not only an experiment but some decent balancing ideas. (Yes, some of the ideas are stupid as heck; linking SL and ML on ghost heat? Abundance of ghost heat additions? Ghost heat itself... But there's also some good ones.)

Three.
Niko himself said they were NOT going to post this information "for science."

o.O;
Reddit has information ripped from the game (because PGI is really stupid about security on the client side) or ripped from other 'secret' sources. Rarely is it ever posted directly by PGI. Heck; they have the weekend off.

[Serpieri]

Didn't PGI and Reddit have a falling out?

[Sephlock]

Serpieri, on 14 June 2014 - 08:50 PM, said:

Didn't PGI and Reddit have a falling out?

The goons took over /r/mwo and some of the users fled to /r/outreachhpg

There PGI posts in both.

[SirLANsalot]

Sephlock, on 14 June 2014 - 08:54 PM, said:

The goons took over /r/mwo and some of the users fled to /r/outreachhpg

There PGI posts in both.

Goons are the reason we can't have nice things

[Sephlock]

SirLANsalot, on 14 June 2014 - 08:58 PM, said:

Goons are the reason we can't have nice things

I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Elkfire]

SirLANsalot, on 14 June 2014 - 08:58 PM, said:

Goons are the reason we can't have nice things

They do take pride in being "le epic troles", that's for sure.

Edited by Elkfire, 14 June 2014 - 10:02 PM.

[Corwin Vickers]

There was a point where PGI banned anyone who disagreed with on these forums which is why people went to other outlets to criticize.

[GreyGriffin]

Do you know how much postage costs to the island?

[Abisha]

Sephlock, on 14 June 2014 - 09:01 PM, said:

I have no idea what you're talking about.

now it's clear why knockback have been removed

[Monkey Lover]

Kind of weird we have to watch twitter to find any information about this game.

[Jun Watarase]

PGI really hates to talk to their playerbase.

Especially the forum users.

I think at some point they got sick and tired of reading all the negative feedback on the forums they just stopped reading it altogether and told niko to just post the occasional announcement.

Even the ask me anything reddit thing was held on reddit instead of the official forums. Most of the answers were politically correct and carefully dodged all the important issues....when people asked about poptarting, we got a generic "we examine balance constantly blah blah blah" answer. When you know, the meta has remained unfixed for like a year. It really does not inspire confidence.

Imagine someone showing up late for work everyday for a year then telling you that he will work hard at arriving on time. Who believes something like that, without proof?

They used to have players submit questions for devs to be answered then stopped doing that after they realised that avoiding hundreds of questions to answer politically correct ones like "what is your favourite mech" instead of "why is there no community warfare after 1 year" was pointless. Then they gave NGNG exclusive rights to ask the devs questions, cutting everyone else off.

Lets not forget what happened when stuff like 3rd person view was announced as well.

The other day i saw a screenshot someone had posted of one of the Warhammer 40k : Black Crusade MMO devs. The dev was saying on their forums that they were letting players decide everything that was going into the game, that they would be doing polls and stuff to find out what players wanted exactly so they could do what the players wanted, and devs were free to post on the forums at their own time to answer questions, etc.

Meanwhile PGI is desperately doing their best to build a wall between their playerbase and themselves. I can't imagine that it would take Niko more than a few minutes to make a forum poll to see what we want in the next patch, letting it run for a week or two and then breaking it down into the top requested changes to present to the dev team. But i suspect hes under strict orders to not do anything like that.

IIRC PGI has also gone on record to say stuff like "we did X because this is our vision of the game", when really, they should be saying "we did X because we did polls on the forums and the overwhelming response from the players was that they wanted X, so we gave them exactly what they wanted". Which do you think gets people to spend more money on the game, the former or the latter?

I'm studying commerce now, and the professors keep emphasizing about customer relationships, social media, generating positive word of mouth, etc and PGI is doing exactly the opposite of everything that is being taught. Im really tempted to email one of them and ask why a company would deliberately avoid doing all that...

Edited by Jun Watarase, 15 June 2014 - 01:40 AM.

[MonkeyCheese]

FupDup, on 14 June 2014 - 08:29 PM, said:

Because we're the vocal minority™.

Yay we're special!

Jun Watarase, on 15 June 2014 - 01:23 AM, said:

PGI really hates to talk to their playerbase.

Especially the forum users.

I think at some point they got sick and tired of reading all the negative feedback on the forums they just stopped reading it altogether and told niko to just post the occasional announcement.

Even the ask me anything reddit thing was held on reddit instead of the official forums. Most of the answers were politically correct and carefully dodged all the important issues....when people asked about poptarting, we got a generic "we examine balance constantly blah blah blah" answer. When you know, the meta has remained unfixed for like a year. It really does not inspire confidence.

Imagine someone showing up late for work everyday for a year then telling you that he will work hard at arriving on time. Who believes something like that, without proof?

They used to have players submit questions for devs to be answered then stopped doing that after they realised that avoiding hundreds of questions to answer politically correct ones like "what is your favourite mech" instead of "why is there no community warfare after 1 year" was pointless. Then they gave NGNG exclusive rights to ask the devs questions, cutting everyone else off.

Lets not forget what happened when stuff like 3rd person view was announced as well.

The other day i saw a screenshot someone had posted of one of the Warhammer 40k : Black Crusade MMO devs. The dev was saying on their forums that they were letting players decide everything that was going into the game, that they would be doing polls and stuff to find out what players wanted exactly so they could do what the players wanted, and devs were free to post on the forums at their own time to answer questions, etc.

Meanwhile PGI is desperately doing their best to build a wall between their playerbase and themselves. I can't imagine that it would take Niko more than a few minutes to see what we want in the next patch, letting it run for a week or two and then breaking it down into the top requested changes to present to the dev team. But i suspect hes under strict orders to not do anything like that.

IIRC PGI has also gone on record to say stuff like "we did X because this is our vision of the game", when really, they should be saying "we did X because we did polls on the forums and the overwhelming response from the players was that they wanted X, so we gave them exactly what they wanted". Which do you think gets people to spend more money on the game, the former or the latter?

I'm studying commerce now, and the professors keep emphasizing about customer relationships, social media, generating positive word of mouth, etc and PGI is doing exactly the opposite of everything that is being taught. Im really tempted to email one of them and ask why a company would deliberately avoid doing all that...

I went on the MWO Facebook page the other day for the first time in months, it has way more negativity than these forms have had lately

Edited by MonkeyCheese, 15 June 2014 - 01:42 AM.

[AlexEss]

Jun Watarase, on 15 June 2014 - 01:23 AM, said:

I'm studying commerce now, and the professors keep emphasizing about customer relationships, social media, generating positive word of mouth, etc and PGI is doing exactly the opposite of everything that is being taught. Im really tempted to email one of them and ask why a company would deliberately avoid doing all that...

Not to be like that... But your professors are not always right... They have a agenda too and usually a very firm idea of what THEY think is the right answer.

As for customer relations... Seems to me that the entertainment industry have alwasy done it´s best to build walls between producers and consumers. Now that is no excuse and i agree that communication have been PGI´s weakest point from day one... Just pointing out that it is not uncommon.

[Ursh]

AlexEss, on 15 June 2014 - 02:35 AM, said:

Not to be like that... But your professors are not always right... They have a agenda too and usually a very firm idea of what THEY think is the right answer.

As for customer relations... Seems to me that the entertainment industry have alwasy done it´s best to build walls between producers and consumers. Now that is no excuse and i agree that communication have been PGI´s weakest point from day one... Just pointing out that it is not uncommon.

I can back Jun up on this one. My girlfriend is a community manager for the Russian publisher of Warface, and I'm a social media manager for my company. Customer relations and customer interaction are extremely important. There's a reason this game gets absolutely ripped in a lot of individual reviews, which is a dramatic turn from the overall positive enthusiasm that people had in 2012 and early 2013. They've squandered the goodwill and patience many players felt towards the game. *I'm still actively playing, by the way, not just a forum troll who comes here to vent*

When given the option to do something for positive PR and community interactions, and the option to do something that directly inflames the community, PGI usually does the second. They repeatedly tell us they're a small studio, which means that there should be very little miscommunication between devs and community relations people, which frequently happens at bigger studios.

• If you need to announce a negative event, it's very important to explain why you're doing it
  
• If players have repeatedly requested a feature, you have to explain to them why it's not possible for you to deliver the product they're asking for. Saying it doesn't fit your vision of the game is extremely foolish because it's telling the customers that you think their ideas are worthless. Only Apple gets away with that.
  
• You, the developers, are not always the smartest guys in the room, especially with this player demographic. When your demographic is 25-55 year old males with disposable income, you can't pawn them off with Father Knows Best kind of answers and dismissals. You also can't tell them you're working on something without giving any details on your progress when the community has been quite vocal about something being a problem.
  
• Any major or minor announcement should be done on the official forums. Social media platforms are there as supplementary communications channels, not primary ones. Your players shouldn't have to search for information on any platform other than the official forums.
  
• Don't give exclusive access to 3rd parties on a regular basis. Make your own official YouTube dev update once a month or so, and invite some player guests, or address questions.
  
• Always interact with the players. Own up to the problems that are real, and talk about the solutions. People get more than a little infuriated when you insist there's no problem, and then all of a sudden you make a big announcement about the adjustments you're making to address it. (Remember when ECM came out, for months we heard nothing but unicorns and butterflies, and then finally they gleefully announced hard counters to it)
  
• Talking to a 3rd party is not talking to the community. Doing an interview is one thing...but consistently utilizing a 3rd party such as ngng gives the distinct impression that you're not very interested in talking to a more diverse segment of the community. Having a professional agreement with them is actually pretty unprofessional, from a PR standpoint, unless you plan on hiring them as your community outreach guys...which would go over really well I bet.

Edited by Ursh, 15 June 2014 - 03:12 AM.

[Zerberus]

Darian DelFord, on 14 June 2014 - 08:28 PM, said:

http://www.reddit.co..._on_pts_sunday/

I do not understand it. Between there Twitter and whatever else is out there, why do they not post that stuff on THEIR OWN Forums?

Please anyone know the answer to this, Niko, Why?

Because this information isn`t from PGI, who specifically wanted to do a BLIND test.

Homeless Bill is a USER, not a Developer, and has no affiliation with PGI.

It is from a user who reverse engineered and compared the 2 test clients, and posted his findings here.

And it is why I think it was a bad idea to release the test client yesterday for DL, becaus we now we have people going in with "oh this will suck" preconceptions, which will bias their findings and essentially make their feedback worthless.

PGI has gotten much better in the way they communucate, but putting other people`s **** on their plate to eat will probably not garner you any laurels or improve it further

Edited by Zerberus, 15 June 2014 - 03:32 AM.