58 replies to this topic

[Mcgral18]

It would be nice to see the Community Manager around more on the Forums.

Least they do that occasional Stream.

[Sandpit]

Mcgral18, on 08 February 2016 - 10:37 AM, said:

It would be nice to see the Community Manager around more on the Forums.

Least they do that occasional Stream.

Managing a community should equate to more than moderating threads (of which several community volunteers already help handle that) and streaming the game from time to time.

[Bonger Bob]

The wholesale use of twitter as a communication medium for a company with its customers speaks volumes for the problem.

PGI only want to converse if your comment is brief, lacking substance ( how may characters can you fit into a tweet ?? ) and has absolutely nothing that can even be perceived as negative or confrontational. If people will remember PGI did attempt to close general chat off at one point, and having failed at that we now have a highly moderated and censored channel of limited communication via a 3rd party app.......

That's it in a nutshell, PGI do not want critical comments or negative feedback about anything to be seen, and want an easy method of moderation that is separate to the game environment as to not damage their image further when things don't go their way.

There are many examples in the past where PGI representatives have been active and posted on the various pages of the forums with some limited frequency, niko snow is one who comes to mind. Most of the time it resulted in broken promises, misleading statements and is largely to blame for a large portion of the bitter vets that exist today.

That is why Russ uses twitter, and why it will never change....moderation and censorship while not attaching the negative aspects that it entails directly to the game / forums.

TL:DR - The forums are dead remains of repeated failures by PGI and Russ to engage with its customers on multiple levels over a sustained period, the bitter vets are bitter for a reason and PGI are NOT going to change in a hurry, they will ( as they have done ) adapt the situation to suit their own needs while attempting to limit any further criticism by any means available = Twitter is here to stay....

[Johnny Gorbachev]

They are too busy swimming in money with all their kodiak preorders. Do the robbers stop and chat to their victims after stealing from them? No.

[MrMadguy]

The reason, why all gamedevs gone to Twitter - it's easier to ignore questions, you don't want to answer. Somebody tweeted you - you ignored it. Others only see tweets, you have answered to. Nobody seen it - no problems.

Edited by MrMadguy, 09 February 2016 - 12:50 AM.

[5LeafClover]

IMO PGIs communication is reasonably good. Certainly the best among all the games i play.

Monthly roadmaps - good
Town halls - good
Customer support reqs - good

Twitter is just a bonus.

Seems to be too many players that think "PGI didnt do my suggestion or comment on it" is the same as bad comms. There are thousands of us and and handful of them. It's deluded to think they owe you a personal chat line.

[Bonger Bob]

MrMadguy, on 09 February 2016 - 12:33 AM, said:

The reason, why all gamedevs gone to Twitter - it's easier to ignore answers, you don't want to answer. Somebody tweeted you - you ignored it. Others only see tweets, you have answered to. Nobody seen it - no problems.

not ALL devs, just the ones who have taken a dump down the throats of their customers, who then get upset when they get vomited on in reply.

exactly why Twitter is being used by PGI as the primary comms channel for the community, and why I refuse to ever use it....

[Steinar Bergstol]

Render, on 05 February 2016 - 07:34 AM, said:

We as a community need to figure out how to agree on some topic to some percent of consensus... say 70%.
So lets say 70% of us agree there should be an ejection seat sequence when your mech is destroyed, and that references to "Kill" should be replaced with "Mech Destroyed".

We then present that request to PGI as an official player base request.

Excuse me while I laugh uncontrollably. Not at you or what could be a good idea under normal circumstances, but at the idea that a Mechwarrior/Battletech fanbase will ever agree on _anything_! Since I bought my first BT Box set back in the mid 80's the one thing I've learned is that this fanbase will not form a consensus on whether or not water is wet, nevermind anything related to the game.

[Luca M Pryde]

I have a twitter account. The reason why I don't use it is because it will probably distract PGI from doing their job and can cause damage to the company from other people who hijack a suggestion to push their own agenda. Also I prefer forums as more can be written and easily said.

Twitter is great for being a twit.

[MrMadguy]

Bonger Bob, on 09 February 2016 - 12:44 AM, said:

not ALL devs, just the ones who have taken a dump down the throats of their customers, who then get upset when they get vomited on in reply.

exactly why Twitter is being used by PGI as the primary comms channel for the community, and why I refuse to ever use it....

Blizzard have done it too. It's the small trick, that turns Q&A into interview. You answer only those questions, you wanted to say something about right from the start. You ignore those questions, you don't want to answer, due to having a fear, you will be involved into "arms race", cuz players most likely have strong counterarguments against what you are going to say and you will have to provide even stronger ones and you don't have them. So in most cases it turns into "I'm gamedev - I know it better". Results - most players see only "right" opinion, dictated by devs, and don't see other options, so they assume, that the "right" opinion - is the only viable one.

Also all, that you say on forums - are official announces and players treat them as promises. And you may say anything on non-official sources of info. This causes so called "hype abuse" via spreading rumors, cuz players usually assume, that some things are obvious, i.e. when devs saying "we are going to implement feature A" - it's feature A, as all players see it, not feature B, as it's seen by devs. Devs promise tons of things, they can't actually deliver, in order to convince players to pre-order or to "wait and see", which means continuing paying in P2P games. And at the end they simply say "It's gamedev - nothing is set in stone here. We haven't promised anything. You assumed it - it's your falut".

Edited by MrMadguy, 09 February 2016 - 01:12 AM.

[Ratpoison]

I don't use Twitter(hate it, personally), but I'm aware it's not a bad way for PGI to communicate with the players on a more casual, more immediate, less "official post" kind of way. You have to realize that forums for video games are never densely populated. The majority of players have never looked at the forums, and I wouldn't be surprised if over 85% of MWO accounts have no posts. Significantly more players have twitter accounts rather than forum posts, and its effectiveness at informing the masses has been shown.

Yes, the forum is their site, but that doesn't make it the most effective method of sharing news. It comes off as really entitled to demand that the minority on the forums be the first line of communication at all times, especially since this is where the community's most toxic players come to bash PGI and rant about idiotic "simple fix" ideas for the game. I don't blame them at all for avoiding this place.

[Bonger Bob]

5LeafClover, on 09 February 2016 - 12:44 AM, said:

IMO PGIs communication is reasonably good. Certainly the best among all the games i play.

Monthly roadmaps - good
Town halls - good
Customer support reqs - good

Twitter is just a bonus.

Seems to be too many players that think "PGI didnt do my suggestion or comment on it" is the same as bad comms. There are thousands of us and and handful of them. It's deluded to think they owe you a personal chat line.

No one is asking for a personal chat line, just communication of any sort, on topics that are popular and several pages long. PGI has spent years making it an art to avoid communication with large sections of its customers. Twitter only perpetuates and furthers this goal, as do people who believe everything is great here.

- the town hall is a love in with filtered questions, thus largely a publicity stun monthly.

- the roadmaps are nothing that any other company trying to sell a product doesn't do, in one form or another, its an advertising tool, nothing more.

- customer support is not the issue, and though it is OK here, like many other games it could be better.

Its not about 1 to 1 personal responses, its about the hundreds of pages of threads that often repeat topics getting zero input or reply from the dev's apart from a moderator nuking the odd post out of existence entirely. People often don't even get a message telling them the post was nuked, why it was nuked, or if there is any penalty to be applied for similar in future. This has been a long standing pattern and its no more normal than going to a store to by a product only to get a "fuc-k you" from the clerk after your purchase along with a "don't phone us for anything" attitude.

Russ has asked for input recently on several occasions from the community about upcoming ideas and its taken a community member to post on the forums to draw attention to it, which lets face it, is a pretty shite communication method.

[Ratpoison]

MrMadguy, on 09 February 2016 - 01:02 AM, said:

Blizzard have done it too. It's the small trick, that turns Q&A into interview. You answer only those questions, you wanted to say something about right from the start. You ignore those questions, you don't want to answer, due to having a fear, you will be involved into "arms race", cuz players most likely have strong counterarguments against what you are going to say and you will have to provide even stronger ones and you don't have them. So in most cases it turns into "I'm gamedev - I know it better". Results - most players see only "right" opinion, dictated by devs, and don't see other options, so they assume, that the "right" opinion - is the only viable one.

It's actually not a conspiracy. It's done, quite simply, because the vast majority of people who give suggestions on games they play, have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. They don't understand the limitations of what is possible and what is reasonable, but they THINK they do, and that makes them a problem. So smart game devs have stopped leaving questions open ended because there are too many idiotic questions that get brought up, and it's more effective to focus on questions that allow you to explain what you're doing.

[MrMadguy]

tortuousGoddess, on 09 February 2016 - 01:08 AM, said:

It's actually not a conspiracy. It's done, quite simply, because the vast majority of people who give suggestions on games they play, have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. They don't understand the limitations of what is possible and what is reasonable, but they THINK they do, and that makes them a problem. So smart game devs have stopped leaving questions open ended because there are too many idiotic questions that get brought up, and it's more effective to focus on questions that allow you to explain what you're doing.

I know, that you shouldn't answer to stupid requests, like "remove convergence". But there are valid questions too. Feedback for example. Devs usually don't want to hear negative feedback. This is so called "constructive feedback syndrome". "Constructive feedback" usually means, that devs don't want to hear "I don't like this feature" kind of feedback. They already made a decision, already invested resources into it and don't want to admit their fault - they will ignore your feedback, till it won't be way too late and even then they will convince you, that everything is fine - it's just you.

You must read Wow forums to understand, what am I talking about. Any Wow expansion is advertised "as best expansion ever made". All players, who provide negative feedback are immediately stigmatized as whiners by white knights. But all this hype train leasts only till actual release, when it's way too late and most players already spent about $100 on this game. And what then? "I hate to be always right" - that's the only thing, you can say, cuz "best expansion ever made" slowly turns into worst one, as it was predicted long time ago, when there still was enough time to fix things - devs simply refused to do it.

Edited by MrMadguy, 09 February 2016 - 01:36 AM.

[MrMadguy]

Yeah, that's how it works. Russ have blacklisted me for asking, why King Crabs still don't have all camos and for request to fix Mountain Line camo, that was screwed recently - on all old 'Mechs 1st color covers shoulders only, but on new ones every color - is 1/3 of 'Mech.

Me: And why King Crab still doesn't have any camos, except faction ones?
Russ: cause we're not don't making the others yet
Me: *Capitan Obvious picture*
Russ: well I don't have an ETA so it's the best I can do for
Me: And try not to screw Mountain Line camo this time, please. *Screenshots with explanations*
Russ: *Puts you into black list*

Edited by MrMadguy, 09 February 2016 - 02:03 AM.

[Ratpoison]

MrMadguy, on 09 February 2016 - 01:34 AM, said:

I know, that you shouldn't answer to stupid requests, like "remove convergence". But there are valid questions too. Feedback for example. Devs usually don't want to hear negative feedback. This is so called "constructive feedback syndrome". "Constructive feedback" usually means, that devs don't want to hear "I don't like this feature" kind of feedback. They already made a decision, already invested resources into it and don't want to admit their fault - they will ignore your feedback, till it won't be way too late and even then they will convince you, that everything is fine - it's just you.

You must read Wow forums to understand, what am I talking about. Any Wow expansion is advertised "as best expansion ever made". All players, who provide negative feedback are immediately stigmatized as whiners by white knights. But all this hype train leasts only till actual release, when it's way too late and most players already spent about $100 on this game. And what then? "I hate to be always right" - that's the only thing, you can say, cuz "best expansion ever made" slowly turns into worst one, as it was predicted long time ago, when there still was enough time to fix things - devs simply refused to do it.

Pressuring devs into answering on the spot negative criticism is not a reasonable expectation, nor is it an effective method of getting accurate, helpful information, especially since most of such feedback given to game developers is either loaded with an agenda, or constructed on ignorance. You need to let them answer the questions they're ready to answer, in order to get helpful information and comprehensive communication. Backing them into a corner doesn't work, as they don't owe you anything.

There are places for constructive feedback here that do get looked at, if you can be bothered to write your point in a comprehensive and respectful manner. Being snide, rude, demanding, or otherwise aggressive towards a game developer about their game is the surest way to get ignored, because posts of that content are virtually never constructive. They have no reason to waste their time on people who wont respect what they're trying to do, especially when there are plenty who will in a comprehensive, rational way.

[Karamarka]

Russ only answers the cash questions for packs or easy questions on twitter. Even hard quick questions he dodges.

[Ratpoison]

MrMadguy, on 09 February 2016 - 01:58 AM, said:

Yeah, that's how it works. Russ have blacklisted me for asking, why King Crabs still don't have all camos and for request to fix Mountain Line camo, that was screwed recently - on all old 'Mechs 1st color covers shoulders only, but on new ones every color - is 1/3 of 'Mech.

Me: And why King Crab still doesn't have any camos, except faction ones?
Russ: cause we're not don't making the others yet
Me: *Capitan Obvious picture*
Russ: well I don't have an ETA so it's the best I can do for
Me: And try not to screw Mountain Line this time, please. *Screenshots with explanations*
Russ: *Puts you into black list*

So, you were a snide little douche about a game issue and got blocked, exactly how I described in my explanation. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[MrMadguy]

tortuousGoddess, on 09 February 2016 - 02:04 AM, said:

So, you were a snide little douche about a game issue and got blocked, exactly how I described in my explanation. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I was blocked for providing valid feedback, exactly how I described in my explanation. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Yeah, I know, why I was blocked - I was asking this question about Mountain Line camo for several times (3 times, as I remember) and was ignored. All, Russ should have done - is to answer, why Mountain Line camo was changed - it's intended change (they wanted this camo to look more like a 3-color flag) or it's mistake, that should be fixed. As simple, as that. Why it's so hard? Camos aren't free. I pay money for them - and I though, that I'm entitled to ask this question. If even paying customer is ignored, then I don't know, what to say about this game and this company...

I was asking this question, when EBJ was released, but thought, that it was single case and forgotten about it. I remembered about it only when I bought Mauler and found out, that it had this problem too.

Edited by MrMadguy, 09 February 2016 - 02:25 AM.

[Ratpoison]

MrMadguy, on 09 February 2016 - 02:10 AM, said:

I was blocked for providing valid feedback, exactly how I described in my explanation. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Yeah, I know, why I was blocked - I was asking this question about Mountain Line camo for several times (3 times, as I remember) and was ignored. All, Russ should have done - is to answer, why Mountain Line camo was changed - it's intended change (they wanted this camo to look more like a 3-color flag) or it's mistake, that should be fixed. As simple, as that. Why it's so hard?

You can't be serious. You asked a question as a front to harass him with backhanded comments implying that he screwed up your game. Did you never learn how to be polite when you talk to strangers? It's no mystery why you were rightfully blocked, yet here you are pushing it as evidence that PGI doesn't listen to constructive feedback...

Maybe instead take that as a hint that you need to get some perspective on yourself.