disregarding all the emotional outpouring and vilification of this experiment i still have to conclude it is still a very bad mess. Warning this is very very….very long and takes some dedicated reading as i {ahem attempt} to reason what’s happening.
Part 1 what and how’s things going wrong
Part 2 suggestions for how the forums should be organized
Part 3 a reflection on part one to emphasise the vitals of forum communicaton.
Part 1
Here’s an example of poor moderation and organisation. this thread in the training grounds, help a player subforum now on page 2
How Do I Go About Getting A Refund?
Response: lock and abandon.
Okay so the customer didn’t read the EULA properly, that is the most common incident over electronic documant transfers locked pdf’s downloads etc etc. the response was to lock the thread before it went on uselessly about another topic, that’s what was happening. How to get a refund turned to what qualifies a refund and then dissolved into meta-gameplay pros and cons chatter. A typical GD style thread. the staff obliged by giving a support link and maintained that the question was answered and further discussion would not address the matter at hand. That is lacking in tidying house and customer service, to lock the thread instead of merging the new argument with the appropriate thread happening somewhere else on the website. This response makes others feel they are to blame when in fact the conversation was civil. It had only gone from one topic to another. As for the OP and the staff response posts, these should’ve been added to the FAQs forum and have a detailed wording of policies to illustrate where the customer stands.
That is the logical approach for any purchasable item from a company to use real life examples for a FAQ and add the terms and conditions clearly in the rules and guidelines for anybody to explore before any MC is purchased. In fact I’d put a link to a merged guidelines and FAQs on your home page so when people click support they will know where the terms and conditions are for the product and can have their FAQs answered, not just clogging up your support email account as that’s all you’ve given them.
This existing style practice made the GD look awful when such a lock and abandon response is given and motivates people to spam their concerns/complaints for a greater response, {MGs anyone?} those threads should have all been merged into a feedback thread instead of clogging up the front page with a dozen locks scattered on it as we sadly remember.
Another problem with the forums is just how seriously is
any of the feedback threads taken, especially those threads started by admin for devs and bosses?
Here’s a quote from the locked topgun tournement feedback thread page 8 reply 154
Quote
Posted 08 March 2013 - 02:25 AM
this is very very important so please take note pgi...
NOTIFY US IN ADVANCE!
how long has this announcement been up? no one's talked about it on the forums so i guess it was made just a few hours ago or something? yeah we can all rearange a whole weekend on the fly to do a game tourney
please place amongest you new mech arrivals and such a banner that says next tourney in 2 weeks time the topgun event etc. some little sticky on a forum is no where near good enough!
edit: okay you have a banner on home page but i played the game a day or so ago and the main menu didn't have the announcment. 2 days or less is appaulling! so i'll opt in but i'll have next to no time to even qualify thatnks for telling us all about it so well that everyones talking about it and cramming to participate!
not.
Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 08 March 2013 - 02:37 AM.
I’ve noticed I’m not the only on commenting about a simillar issue,
Here’s a quote from a recent thread, The Problem With The Spring Clean 'em Up Leaderboard Event, page 1 reply 11
Quote
Posted 26 April 2013 - 07:00 PM
Im just waiting for the CW leaderboards. These are more like player events than actual tournaments.
The only issue I have with this one, is that they need to announce them sooner.
Again tournaments announcements are made only with a day or twos notice! The data Many people can miss out on vital points if they only visit the site once every couple of days or longer timespans. I’m sure plenty of you kick yourselves for missing a sale cause it was announced only a day before implemented and for the few days it was on you missed it.
PGI You need to accommodate your customers by acknowledging where they’re coming from and the goodwill spreads, remember your player base is mostly in the 20+ so they’ll have jobs and families to keep and therefore schedules for fun activities. With a weeks notice they can accommodate tournaments and such more easily and therefore your participation numbers go up, I know that’s something you’d like to publicise positively right? Even though trolls will say “pffft 2 examples lulz” is there really anything stopping pgi planning ahead for their tournaments and making earlier announcments to the benefit of the playerbase participation which is simply good buisness in pgi’s own interest? Remember this **** storm about “GD gone and therefore free speech” impression that you’ve given yourself now is thanks to this mismanagement practice!
Quote
Posted 23 April 2013 - 09:35 AM
The MechWarrior Online forums are a place full of passion and enthusiasm. As our community grows and development continues, the needs of our forum community are also evolving. We are happy to announce a major forum structure change happening later today, in preparation for Community Warfare (which is set to launch late Summer 2013).
We have received an abundance of feedback regarding our forums structure, and we agree that an efficient forum taxonomy allows for more constructive discussion. After careful consideration in combination with observation of the discussion habits of our members, we feel more specificity will help keep a focused dialogue conducive to productive conversations and valuable feedback.
Changelog:
The removal of the
General Discussion area is the most significant difference you'll notice with this change. Discussion in this section has typically been random, unorganized, and duplicate. There have also been cases of users posting inappropriately in this section for the purposes of drawing more attention to their post due to the chaotic nature of the General Discussion area.
In the past, General Discussion was the place users would go to discuss pretty much anything, without regard for the sections more suited to their topic. With growing levels of discussion, this has continued to prevent users from engaging in content that they would otherwise be seeking. In addition, the 'catch-all' of General Discussion created a sense that this area was the only one worth visiting. We hope to equalize the value of all the sub-forums by removing this section and having discussion take place in their proper subject-areas. We also hope that this will reduce the amount of off-topic discussion, and meta-discussions that stir up within threads, as people who aren't as interested on the subject will be less likely to pop-in with their unsolicited remarks. With your help and with assistance from our Community Moderators, we're going to do our best to ensure that topics remain on-topic
You will also notice that polls have been disabled for all sub-forums except for a dedicated polling sub-forum, and certain off-topic areas. We have decided to contain polls to this location, as they are often a catalyst for community disputes due to "biased poll questions."
Tons of new, more specific discussion areas, just to name a few!
Factions
Clan Wolf
Clan Jade Falcon
Clan Ghost Bear
Clan Smoke Jaguar
Periphery
(for the pirate clans and lone wolves)
MWO Universe
Gameplay Discussion
-Mechs
-Loadout
-Maps
-Game Modes
PvP Barracks
Training Grounds
Getting Started
Guides
-BattleMechs, Weapons & Loadout, Maps & Environment, Lance Tactics, General Guides
BattleTech Discussion
Novels & Lore
Table-Top Games
Video Games
Off-topic
Forum Fun
(where we welcome meme threads, pony games, and forum meta-games)
Deep Periphery
(off-topic area where ‘poking fun’ at each other is permitted/encouraged)
FAQs:
Q: I started a thread with the old forum structure, and now it's in the wrong place. Could you please move it to the proper section for me?
A: Yes! Please use the forum "Report" feature to flag your thread, and indicate where your thread should be placed. Our Moderators will be happy to move your thread if it has become miscategorized, but we kindly ask that you give us a day or two to process your request.
Q: Wait! Are you deleting everything in General Discussion?
A: Of course not! We will be moving threads that have continued discussion into their proper areas. The rest will be archived and available for your reference. No new posting will be allowed on threads in General Discussion (it will remain an archive). If you would like to continue a discussion, please use the process indicated above to flag your thread to be moved into a proper discussion area.
For suggestions on the subject of forum structure and changes, please join us in the dedicated thread for this purpose.
You see this re-organization was communicated to everyone… only a mere 24hours in advance so no one else had a clue what was going on in time! Hence the hostility and sense of disenfranchisement, when this went ahead without proper consultation with whom it effects most until long afterwards. Just look at yourselves and all the forumers then ask who knew and understood the popular GD format {as noted by other website examples} was to be broken down before it was actually implemented live? I didn’t! many people around the place remarked in shock about it… only after it happened, I doubt even the volunteer mods knew about. It’s these details in the lack of organisation and customer service that gives you such a bad rep. I tried to tell you {refer to first quote} in a serious feedback forum set up by pgi’s admin how bad it was to announce stuff almost after things have already happened but obviously I was ignored. My suggestion wasn’t deleted so I would consider it was delivered in the correct manner, flustered though it was the points were reasoned with clarity, so that’s why I was surprised to see when I checked the link back to this announcement {quoted above} when the announcement was made but not surprised at all by the results.
Poor announcements are still happening with every tournament since the topgun one *sigh* but now you can understand why I made the post in the thread
Updated Apr. 26 - General Discussion - Replaced With Specific Sub-Forums, {the post was deleted} that it seems pointless giving you suggestions as they don’t appear to be of any use to pgi. trolls will say just because your advice was ignored you think you should be obeyed all the time? I’m not suggesting that at all! this isn’t about the game in anyway nor is this even about the website as such. It’s 101, the obvious, in customer service and feedback. Acknowledgement and logical reasons why announcements can not be made any earlier would be very usefull for all of us to understand, though as I’ve explained it does you an enormous disservice pgi.
Thinking about this we’ll move on into the subforums problems. A puzzling thing is why this feedback,
Updated Apr. 26 - General Discussion - Replaced With Specific Sub-Forums thread became discontinued and the discussion moved from
Support & Feedback sub forum, website and forum, to the comstar focus group subforum? I mean here already you have two very separate sub forums almost duplicating their job! This thread being purely about the website should be still on website and forum, not comstar focus group, the subforum about MWO the game, which is what you want threads here to be about right…right!? Discussion about website forums are now not in support and feedback!?!?! How confusing is that!? Same goes for
Spring Clean 'em Up Tournament pinned in comstar focus group and not in the GenDisc tournements subforum made specifically for such a thread!? Another example is this thread, All joystick users, a pin thread by head dev paul resides in the Mech Controls & UI Guides forum and leaving the Joysticks & Peripheral Guides empty!
That’s the kind of stupidity this re-organzing experiment plan has, the staff themselves can’t understand how it works or is too difficult to manage so many important threads of their own creation and pinned aren’t in the right place. Lord knows how moderating othe players threads is going to be like. Where such content should be and in what subforum? That’s proberbly why they ask us to do all the reporting for them…
Extract from the above quoted Forum Structure Changes - New Discussion Areas! In the announcements forum
Quote
FAQs:
Q: I started a thread with the old forum structure, and now it's in the wrong place. Could you please move it to the proper section for me?
A: Yes! Please use the forum "Report" feature to flag your thread, and indicate where your thread should be placed. Our Moderators will be happy to move your thread if it has become miscategorized, but we kindly ask that you give us a day or two to process your request.
You see it’s A bit difficult when the “lost” thread is started by your own college who’s too busy himself with life, like we all are, to report this out to mods that these things are in inappropriate places! It’s a system that needs a review and a more streamline mod friendly solution is a must. With regards to this issue Preferably get rid of Joysticks & Peripheral Guides as already the conversations on such things is happening in Mech Controls & UI Guides. Oh and I haven’t mentioned such possible duplication threads for this sort of thing happening in
Support & Feedback,
Hardware & Accessories subforum. Really we have 3 places which are appropriate for talking about configuring joysticks!? Seriously this hasn’t been thought out at all and it’s so obvious it’s nowonder people are murmuring this is all just smoke and mirrors for burying GD. I say this whilst looking at
Forum Community Changes - 4/26/2013 as opposed to
Community Forum Referendum - 26/04/2013. Does this site support the English or American date system??? Who knows!? Edit: 4/26/2013 now updated and confirming American date system. Another example is this thread.
Upcoming Content Tracker - Last Updated April 27
Did a dev start this? No. staff member? No. volunteer! No, it was left to a member of the playerbase to give us such an important cornerstone thread, something the staff should’ve done well before open beta and it’s through distribution in the GD that it found such wonderful usefulness. For the community by the community; though it’s embarrassing that the staff never thought of it.
Part 2
So time for some suggestions I suppose…
The first two main forums should be
1: Faqs and rules for first time players
This main forum should have within it the contents of the rules and guidelines, the FAQs and also help a player each as an subforum. Threads within this mainforum will be basic questions about will my such and such run this game etc etc, all of this is separate from the 2
nd main forum
2: Training grounds edit: guidlines now all merged appropriately.
3: dev corner, should also include the announcements merged with MWO news forum. perhaps the commandchair could become a subforum within announcements to provide the details of the announcements. That would free up more immediate item navigating space. And will make a glance at the top latest threads all within the one page, very usefull. Ask the devs and devblogs& interviews can remain separate as they are.
4: MWO universe
Gen disc needs to have the ability to add threads as a containment of don know which forum was best rage qq and should be heavily modded for birdfood and thread merging to the appropriate subforum within.
Comstar focus group – this is feedback to the devs decisions and as such should be incorporated into the dev corner. It shouldn’t be in gen disc.
Gameplay balance should be merged with metagame and renamed game balance, that’s what those two forums are about.
Maps and modes along with tournaments can remain.
Suggestions – just needs to be called game suggestions to differentiate it more from the support and feedback threads which focuses on the website-technical feedback.
barracks and tactics {edit: now just barracks} are attracting little relevance to their intial purpose and a lot is worthy of jet coms, with faction ready rooms {and hopefully a lobby for the game} doing the job better. with the guidelines and help a player forums to take the slack, barracks and it’s subforums pilot ready room and tactical debriefing room {edit: now merged to barracks but still why come here when training grounds has tactics and team work?} have no real purpose and create useless clutter. I would junk them altogether.
Factions IS, clan, merc corp are fine
5: Support and feedback are fine
6: community hyperpulse generator is fine but forum fun should be moved to it. Edit: merging battletech stuff is okay? Well let’s see some more merging of sameme subforums and deletion of duplicate duty subforums.
7: off topic should have it’s title changed to Jettison communication with the off topic threads in it merged with the jetcoms as a general sin bin. Then the ktown forum remains as a subforum merged with deep periphery and it’s abilities to create threads so the trolls can have more fun making their own threads ontop of the birdfeed ones.
8: international languages
Add an
Esperanto Pig Latin board, just for laughs. (I am, of course, joking. No actual changes needed).
Part 3
So with regards to GD, it was the containment vessel for QQs because with that attitude they wouldn't be sifting through the subforums to make their whine heard. now they have no choice they've either left to make themselves heard on other parts of the interwebz which gives them more attention than ever or they're starting to contaminate the better parts of this website such as suggestions boards or becoming more troll food amongst the skeletons in the compony closet ie K-town. that's really bad no subforum can be trusted now to have a good string of intelligent conversation feedback has backlash threads posted in them now and the mess carries on, more work for mods locating inappropriate material to address them as they’re told to. Even so I’m seeing far too many founders members on forums as opposed to the participation we had for GD, still that’s speculative I’m sure IGP-PGI will be gathering real figures of member participation and goodwill to see if this whole change was worth it.
To me anyways so much of these problems had obvious fixes, I shouldn’t have to go through this analisis with you nor should my valuable time with my family should be sacrificed for people who can’t organise their own work. For example you can spend an hour on your holidays to type an apology/explanation and send it to the office or co-worker to deleiver it the the site when you seriously need to appease customers/playerbase dissatisfaction when something goes seriously wrong. no you don’t need access to the website on your I-fail. Fax or phone some one up and recite what you want to say and let them type it down, anything to stop irritation from spreading out of hand. remember this…
Community Concerns Regarding Russ Bullock Interview
Quote
Started by
Viterbi, Mar 29 2013 06:29 PM
Posted 29 March 2013 - 06:29 PM
Hello MechWarriors,
Your Community Representatives are here to advocate on behalf of your concerns and suggestions. We've noticed a recent increase in discussion regarding an
article released that implies that users will have to "
Pay to play together." [Your words, not our's.]*
We want you to know that we sympathize with the variety of concerns generated by this article, and it we're doing our best as your Community Representatives to gather your feedback.
Long weekend: Please note that both our developers (PGI) and publisher (IGP) are located in Canada, where we are currently enjoying a longer weekend than normal (statutory holiday). Obviously we acknowledge that MechWarrior Online is enjoyed prominently in these off-hours, but we appreciate your patience in receiving a response from our developers until they have returned from their short break.
We would like to use this thread as a consolidated outlet for any concerns regarding the implementation of Community Warfare, as it is currently perceived by you.
April 8, 2013 Update: Bryan has provided a response to the main concern discussed in this thread. You can discuss this response and read more
in that thread. Here's the quote:
file:///C:\Users\Ashworth\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image002.gifBryan Ekman, on 08 April 2013 - 09:35 AM, said:
No, we will not require players to have a Premium Account to play in a Merc Unit.
Yes, we are considering monetizing aspects of Community Warfare.
- A small one-time MC and/or CB fee to create a Merc Corp*.
- Some aspects of CW will reward players with MC, we are considering a Premium Account requirement to participate in these rewards. This will not prevent non-paying customers to participate in all aspects of CW with their friends and teammates.
- If we decided to launch Private Matches, they will likely require a Premium Account to cover costs of hosting a match on our hardware.
* We are looking at ways to prevent/mitigate name reserving and parking. We may simply require players to have a minimum of 1 company or 12 active players to maintain a valid status.
At this time no final decisions have been made.
Due to the article coming out on a Friday and myself being on vacation, I was not in a position to write this response on the forums. Instead I used my Twitter account to try and alleviate some of the concerns. Please consider any communication via my Twitter account as an official response.
The Polygon article was correctly reported with one omission by the interviewer and one omission from myself:
- I made mention near the end of the conversation that no final decisions have been made. I also used soft language, like may, possibly, could, probably - these are far from definite. At no time did I make any statements of finality.
- I did not clarify that the requirement of premium time would be for the MC reward system and private matches. Both are part of the CW.
The response from the community and the timing of events were both unfortunate.
We cannot control when third-parties release their interviews with us and how they present the information we have provided them.
While we accept that the community is passionate and expects communication from us, and we always strive to provide the best answer we can:
Sometimes we are simply not available to answer right at that moment; Holidays do exist for developers.
It’s one thing to disagree politely and intelligently, even passionately, with the content as it had been initially presented.It’s a whole other issue when the community sends violent threats to PGI/IGP staff for any reason: whether it’s a misunderstanding or for not being available to respond in as timely a manner as expected.
However, we will hold firm that aggressive and threatening behaviour towards staff of fellow MechWarriors will never be acceptable and will result in banishment for those who do so.
I take solace in the fact that this behavior represents the minority, not the majority of our amazing players.
There are probably hundreds of other questions to be answered, however this was by far the most pressing. We are going to be rolling out a series of Command Chair posts over the next few weeks and months detailing all the aspects of CW. Since it's such a large feature, it will take time to reveal all the details.
straight afterwards
Quote
Posted 29 March 2013 - 06:58 PM
Beautiful non-answer.
Looks like we all get to remain at this emotional level for the next 4 days.
Ok, I'll start...
http://mwomercs.com/...-p2play2gether/
ALL OF THIS
Edited by Roadbeer, 29 March 2013 - 07:02 PM.
the first reply came from one of the self made king trolls/white knights of pgi not one you’d consider now to be the first to slam them. Digressing, These kinds of incidents aren’t forgettable and many people haven’t and they add all these things together, not good for business. An old doctrine, 1 customer gained is precisely that, 1 customer lost can be 100 lost with a bad rep spreading, customer service is that important. If I remember correctly this example issue wasn’t directly addressed for over a week!
Btw the website traffic graph, someone stated that: traffic is down 57.79% in last 30days. Does that not cover a patch day? Also I think 30 days is enough to start a trend analysis based on previous involvement averaging the peaks and falls between the patchday gaps. Essentially I shouldn’t be seing 60 posts a day being 2% of the day’s total data income for the website as you find on the counters at the bottom of the page, 200+ people online posting 1-3 posts a day = a small but established fanbase, it’s not terrible but it’s not an indicator of growth either. It’s just isn’t positive figures if that’s what people amount to success which I’m not entirely sure that it should be, I’m on the fence for that debate. Time will tell there.
That is why neglect, a hastily, badly thought out, poorly explained and represented website restructure has annoyed so many people it’s one of many problems and if you couldn’t guess the obvious results then just look what we see around the subforums. I’m seeing more founders participating on forums since the first month of open beta, regulars and newbies don’t outnumber them which makes the 6 months into open beta look bad. Though having said that the counter at the bottom of the website seems to indicate a couple of hundred new accounts being made for this week so perhaps people just want a free game and aren’t bothered with feedback and forums? Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t accommodate those who do. Another problem is the QQ hasn’t died down it’s just been dispersed and/or contaminated each serious suggestion/feedback sub forum with additional trolls derailing topics, the “what were we talking about” post turns up too often, some individuals with their own personal agenda are spamming their argument in many other threads and making their own in mulitiple subforums, nerf ppcs and get rid of DHS is something you see in a bunch of different forums now. So this segregation has spoilt what serious forums we had with dissolving GD into all of them from guidelines to barracks, serious conversations are muddled up with rage threads/ joke threads on many subforums and conveys the same unattractiveness as GD had except it’s in drabs everywhere and you’re given such a runabout for the sake of 5-10 people who may notice your comments.
Niko Snow, on 30 April 2013 - 10:29 AM, said:
Actually all of these, including the changes we made more immediately before the referendum and listed here:
http://mwomercs.com/...pdate-30042013/ came from Community feedback:
Forum replies, private messages, support e-mails and more.
I'm sorry if you are upset that they weren't exactly what you wanted personally, but as the forums are an official conduit for feedback they have to be also be set up in a manner that meets our needs of organizing that feedback. The votes on these changes are matters we felt it was better to ask the Community to decide.
This summarises the exact problem with this forum, it’s almost contradictory. You want feedback about the game, nothing else to be discussed about the game and yet expect there to be a
community? Made out of just feedback drones? A community encompasses more than just feedback about a game a community needs it meeting place, it’s town hall, it’s pub, it’s club for gossiping. I still see it’s all been cut to ribbons and many threads are being lost to the wrong subforum and wastes the time of posters as they get less than half the attention they used to, logical though order maybe there is just a cold feel like a Thatcher society about this website and the only names you’ll recognise from the forums in game are those with the greatest posts a day/ spamming trolls. If that’s what you want your “community” to be recognised for that’s up to you.
But I don’t want it that way and I’m sure many people {who are no longer visiting} would want something more to be proud of than a messed up filing office for a game website. So please just look at what data you’re getting through your website now {same arguments and/or bad behaviour from the same accounts yawn} and reconsider the subforums, they’re just making things unnecessarily broken, foolish and just plain user unfriendly, not a welcoming site to visit at all and if I first saw it I’d hesitate to think what complicated mess the game must be like…
Impressions and beliefs are everything!
Ps: hadn’t time to spring clean in MWO I’m doing it on this website! Correct mistakes when necessary cause this compilation knocked the socks off me.
TL;DR: tough you need to read the post, ciao.
Edited by GalaxyBluestar, 30 April 2013 - 06:50 PM.
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