291 replies to this topic

[yashmack]

this is exactly the kind of post that ruins feedback to developers
try being constructive instead of negative, makes a huge difference

[Lynette Steffeld]

Vassago Rain, on 16 January 2013 - 03:06 AM, said:

Can I please be told we're getting a 2x XP weekend on the game's own forum? Can I be told about the new hero mech before it's posted on 4chan by people who are connected? Would it be too much to ask for a weekly update that has actual information in it?

Regrettably something like this actually happened in the past - Facebook was informed of us having no patch before the actual forums.

While I largely don't do much on the forums other than seeking entertainment I do have to (sadly) agree on the fact that comms could use general improvements.

Maybe they could use a Forum Sensor Range module.

Just sayin'.

[Pok Gai]

icey, on 16 January 2013 - 03:08 AM, said:

as if any more than like 5% of the trolls on these boards would ever actually put their real name and faces to the crap they post. good luck getting them to bring the PGI intifada to facebook.

I agree, I believe if you have a strong opinion about something, you should put your face to it and be accountable if you want to be taken seriously.

[Vassago Rain]

yashmack, on 16 January 2013 - 03:09 AM, said:

this is exactly the kind of post that ruins feedback to developers
try being constructive instead of negative, makes a huge difference

What reason do we have to be positive? More importantly, how are we supposed to be constructive when they don't tell us anything, and when they do, we already found out from reddit or 4chan?

I want to know how you people think. I spent 14 years managing an etremely large number of players in Utopia. I was also a politician. Yet now I see paid professionals who can't do their job, and would rather make personal attacks on me for 'being negative?' Well, maybe I wouldn't be so negative if you gave me a reason to be positive, yes?

Too hard a concept? It shouldn't be.

We want, and we deserve, consistency. Tell us this, this, and this. Put it here. Do weekly events. Stop posting on reddit, and update your threads on your own board. Help new users.

Jesus, I do more helping of new users ON MY OWN, then every mod and dev combined. I'm the forum troll. This is bizarro land.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Flit Asuno, on 16 January 2013 - 03:01 AM, said:

Then you have to ask yourself why do the devs seem to not care about their good fans enough to ignore, moderate, or put up with the people who talk **** or otherwise are a detriment? If they really care about their true fans, why not actually go after the people who make insults and attacks with bans? If they really do care about the fanbase and the game they should be willing to either ignore the insults or have those edited out/checked by their moderators while responding to any valid input the person may have had.

Just because a customer is being insulting doesn't mean I get to walk away from the situation at my job. And being insulted and belittled in person is -much- more emotionally strenuous. I can assure you.

If they went after people with ban hammers, there would not be many people left, sometimes you let things slide because people have a right to be angry, that does not mean you have to engage with that customer if they become abusive or violent.

We teach children at a young age, stomping your feet gets you nothing, the same applies to adults...somewhere along the line we forget those lessons.

We also seem quick to forget that designers and developers actually engaging on community forums is pretty rare in the gaming world, aside from blue post Q&A's do you ever see blizzards internal coders and designers going on their forums and discussing why wow is what it is? Do you ever see Bioware do it? EA?

Quote

Just because a customer is being insulting doesn't mean I get to walk away from the situation at my job. And being insulted and belittled in person is -much- more emotionally strenuous. I can assure you.

You need assure me of nothing, in my job that's a daily occurrence, people don't like authorities .even then there have been occasions where walking away is the best option, some people are only looking for the fight.

Don't get me wrong, im disappointed in many of PGI's decisions, and lack of visible work progress, but i can certainly understand why most of the dev team read very little here, we certainly don't see as much of Bryan or Paul as we used too..likely because they god fed up of everything they said, being wrong, misunderstood, wilfully exaggerated and being told the air chair coders knew more than they did *insert random TT based reference here*

Edited by DV McKenna, 16 January 2013 - 03:17 AM.

[Apoc1138]

Vassago Rain, on 16 January 2013 - 03:06 AM, said:

Yes, as a matter of fact, that's exactly what we have the right to do, and it's what we should be doing. That they have their whole PR army employed still, but we remain the last to find out news about the game, even after places such as reddit, speaks volumes about their two companies.

Can I please be told we're getting a 2x XP weekend on the game's own forum? Can I be told about the new hero mech before it's posted on 4chan by people who are connected? Would it be too much to ask for a weekly update that has actual information in it?

the problem is, here you are, being reasonable, and deserving a reasonable response... however the devs will never get through this thread far enough to read it as they will see the title and possibly read the first post and write the thread off as more pointless vitriol

the mods etc. tend to only read things that are reported as being in contravention of the terms

from what I've seen, the staff are quite happy to have a reasonable discussion with people who are being reasonable, but once the 3 year old tantrum stuff starts in a thread they stop posting... and if the OP starts off that way in the first place then the chances of getting any response at all rapidly falls to near 0

[o0Marduk0o]

And yet again a stupid thread...

[yashmack]

im not even going to reply to your reply of my post
its pointless and I dont want to argue

stop whining, remember its a beta
the devs arent lazy and they work their ***** off
I also disapprove of your personal attack on the Devs for calling them lazy and saying they dont do their jobs...

This type of post is exactly why I avoid the forums only rarely venturing out to find more negative crap like this
when I talk to people in game, I dont hear most of the negative stuff like I do on this forum
it baffles my mind to try and figure out how YOU think...

Edited by yashmack, 16 January 2013 - 03:22 AM.

[Vassago Rain]

Apoc1138, on 16 January 2013 - 03:16 AM, said:

the problem is, here you are, being reasonable, and deserving a reasonable response... however the devs will never get through this thread far enough to read it as they will see the title and possibly read the first post and write the thread off as more pointless vitriol

the mods etc. tend to only read things that are reported as being in contravention of the terms

from what I've seen, the staff are quite happy to have a reasonable discussion with people who are being reasonable, but once the 3 year old tantrum stuff starts in a thread they stop posting... and if the OP starts off that way in the first place then the chances of getting any response at all rapidly falls to near 0

I've learned over the past couple months that there's no point in trying to be reasonable with the staff, at all, and that most of the good community mods are long gone.

When I manage people, I manage people. It doesn't matter how mad or disappointed they are. You can defuse any situation if you don't get personal, and maintain a sort of consistency. This isn't complicated stuff.

I've been here since the start, even though my account isn't that old. Right now, you're much better served going to reddit for dev interaction, and 4chan's /vg/ group if you want to know numbers or have new player help. That's not a good sign, and brings into question why we need a forum.

More importantly, why do we need to sink so much money into keeping a worthless army of mods and PR people employed, when we could boot those and put more money into the game itself? These are all my thoughts, and why I think the problem behind it all's bad management.

[Flit Asuno]

Apoc1138, on 16 January 2013 - 03:16 AM, said:

the problem is, here you are, being reasonable, and deserving a reasonable response... however the devs will never get through this thread far enough to read it as they will see the title and possibly read the first post and write the thread off as more pointless vitriol

the mods etc. tend to only read things that are reported as being in contravention of the terms

from what I've seen, the staff are quite happy to have a reasonable discussion with people who are being reasonable, but once the 3 year old tantrum stuff starts in a thread they stop posting... and if the OP starts off that way in the first place then the chances of getting any response at all rapidly falls to near 0

And this is where my problem with PGI, especially their PR staff, comes in. I can understand entirely devs not having the chops to put up with **** flinging from their fanbase. They're devs, their jobs are to work on the game, not take community abuse. However, when you subject yourself to meet and greet kind of things or interactions with your fanbase in ask the dev threads you're making a commitment to be there for the fans who provide good feedback and to abandon them because your mod staff aren't on the ball or you have Forum PTSD is a problem.

DV McKenna, on 16 January 2013 - 03:15 AM, said:

If they went after people with ban hammers, there would not be many people left, sometimes you let things slide because people have a right to be angry, that does not mean you have to engage with that customer if they become abusive or violent.

Oh, I agree, but I also commented to the fact that moderators do, or if they don't should, have the power to edit forum posts. Even in the most vitriolic rant there can be some gems of information and knowledge. I'm saying that in those ask the dev forum threads that the devs themselves need to weather the storm a bit while their mod staff delete posts for being non-productive or edit out the insulting portions.

I get that walking away from situations can be a good thing when there's nothing to be gained from staying, but if you're leaving out to dry good fans and people you want to encourage feedback from? That's a problem.

Edited by Flit Asuno, 16 January 2013 - 03:29 AM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Honestly, most of the productive threads, tend to be found in the patch feedback forums, rather than General or Suggestions...which is where most of the bad topics hang out.

[yashmack]

so true...

[ConnorSinclair]

They moved my general discussion topic into the patch feedback section.


As if my thread was actual " Feed back "

And the best part is I submitted and hit work so I literally spent only 5 minutes in the thread and left while there was a wall of Gold and community white knighting of the worlds most incompetent devs ever. Half their *** slapping comments they were giggling about were either misreads, mistypes or lacked comprehension of my statements.


The general discussion was simple PGI has no idea how to make balance, they think restrictions and irritating use are balance.

Even worse some poor shmuck found out they nerfed jumpjets so the spider wouldn't be a flying Aerotech fighter, so now alot of mechs cannot jet like they could.

DV McKenna, on 16 January 2013 - 03:26 AM, said:

Honestly, most of the productive threads, tend to be found in the patch feedback forums, rather than General or Suggestions...which is where most of the bad topics hang out.

OH THE ******* IRONY

[Revorn]

DEVs are more active at other Websites instead of their own? Well, they maybe should tell us, then we can follow.

Edited by Revorn, 16 January 2013 - 03:34 AM.

[Vassago Rain]

Let's see if I can highlight what the PR crew is doing wrong.

This is a general whine thread, and it signals to me that there are underyling issues. I completely ignore what it's saying in words, accurately identify what it's really all about, and now we're holding discussion on these matters.

I'm not a mod, I'm not an admin, and I'm not paid to post here. I'm just a guy. Why can't the PR people, who are paid to post, do at least a comparable job? If they can't, and won't, then they should be disbanded completely, or new people who know what they're doing should be brought in to fill their positions.

[Jetfire]

Confirmed Devs are human. People like constructive feedback. The vitriol on the forums is draining for everyone and accomplishes exactly nothing. I suggest one part of the forum be called the "Whinging Hole" or something like that and all non-constructive posts get thrown in there. Isolate the caucauphony.

[Flit Asuno]

DV McKenna, on 16 January 2013 - 03:26 AM, said:

Honestly, most of the productive threads, tend to be found in the patch feedback forums, rather than General or Suggestions...which is where most of the bad topics hang out.

yashmack, on 16 January 2013 - 03:27 AM, said:

so true...

But the problem with generalizing like this is that you're leaving out all of the good advice and ideas people have brought up in the various forums. There have been a series of threads of both quantity and quality over very real issues in the game.

I think the biggest issue is one that Vass has raised. Consistency. There's a lack of it, or the things we're consistently seeing or aren't seeing give a bad impression.

A long standing complaint I've had is that many of the bits of experimentation that could've been tweaked back in closed beta, such as weapon balance, weren't done. I'm talking five minutes in an xml file. They're "mulling over" changes for months that in game would represent one point in heat change. Many people throw out the "it's a beta" claim, then why not act like it and fiddle with numbers more?

I see "it's a beta" used a lot more to defend the persistency of bugs while ignoring the validity of that statement when people ask for changes to be made that are numerically based and require 0 interaction from art teams or coding except the aforementioned 5 minutes of xml editing.

[Vassago Rain]

Jetfire, on 16 January 2013 - 03:33 AM, said:

Confirmed Devs are human. People like constructive feedback. The vitriol on the forums is draining for everyone and accomplishes exactly nothing. I suggest one part of the forum be called the "Whinging Hole" or something like that and all non-constructive posts get thrown in there. Isolate the caucauphony.

It's not draining for me.
The one time I've gotten this place get to me was when Garth actually trolled me in person. That's the one and only time.

So if he can't do his job, and it's too hard and 'getting to him,' and he needs a big vacation off to go hide in the hugbox, then maybe PGI should fire him, and employ me instead?

[Flit Asuno]

Jetfire, on 16 January 2013 - 03:33 AM, said:

Confirmed Devs are human. People like constructive feedback. The vitriol on the forums is draining for everyone and accomplishes exactly nothing. I suggest one part of the forum be called the "Whinging Hole" or something like that and all non-constructive posts get thrown in there. Isolate the caucauphony.

Except we're not complaining about the devs wanting a hug box as the staff who's entire job is to deal with **** like this is. Would you have much sympathy for a guy who shovels manure complaining about the smell?

[PurpleNinja]

Does anyone take this forum seriously?