291 replies to this topic

[Pok Gai]

Garth Erlam said in Q&A http://mwomercs.com/...evs-26-answers/ this morning that due to the volume of complaints and negative feedback, they now pay little or no attention to the forums. I think this is a slap in the face for every founder and player that supported this game with their hard earned. If people knew they were going to end up like this, would they have still bought founders? Not as many I wager.

They are still actively communicating on facebook and other internet sites to market their game, yet it seems they use this forum as a focus point to censor negative feedback and complaints.

I would suggest putting your face to your comments on facebook to get a response, because it will not be forthcoming here, other other internet mediums where they are still trying to market their game.

[BerryChunks]

Abandon hope, all ye who entre here?

[DragonsFire]

Pok Gai, on 16 January 2013 - 01:04 AM, said:

I think this is a slap in the face for every founder and player that supported this game with their hard earned. If people knew they were going to end up like this, would they have still bought founders? Not as many I wager.

They are still actively communicating on facebook and other internet sites to market their game, yet it seems they use this forum as a focus point to censor negative feedback and complaints.

I would suggest putting your face to your comments on facebook to get a response, because it will not be forthcoming here, other other internet mediums where they are still trying to market their game.

Orrrrr, you're just trolling, because while the negativity is certainly high in the forums, and there is literally hundreds of awful threads to go through just to get anything useful, they still make the effort. I know I don't feel slapped in the face, so it sounds like you have adjustment issues to deal with anyways.

Personally, I think their involvement has been more than sufficient as I would MUCH rather see them spend their time actually developing the game rather than the exhaustive and frankly fruitless exercise that these forums currently represent.

Regardless, you're just out to misinform here for the purpose of flaming and adding to the pile of useless threads and this thread has also now been reported as such.

[Sears]

Which Q&A is this?

I was under the impression that they don't bother with General Discussion but that Garth looks at the suggestions thread and designated patch feedback threads.

[OlF]

Link pls, would like to read that myself.

[Felix]

"Well this is a beta, but we dont like when the beta testers tell us whats wrong with our game, so we are going to ignore them."

Seems like a typical PGI response to a problem

[Armorpiercer M82]

ye, they will close forum[REDACTED] hide in cellar.

but nothing can save this game from poor, slow devs.

Edited by Dakkath, 16 January 2013 - 08:54 AM.
Cleaned up for language

[Mack1]

Pok Gai, on 16 January 2013 - 01:04 AM, said:

Garth Erlam said in Q&A this morning that due to the volume of complaints and negative feedback, they now pay little or no attention to the forums. I think this is a slap in the face for every founder and player that supported this game with their hard earned. If people knew they were going to end up like this, would they have still bought founders? Not as many I wager.

They are still actively communicating on facebook and other internet sites to market their game, yet it seems they use this forum as a focus point to censor negative feedback and complaints.

I would suggest putting your face to your comments on facebook to get a response, because it will not be forthcoming here, other other internet mediums where they are still trying to market their game.

Make your views heard here:

www.facebook.com/MechWarriorOnline

If you can't take the heat....

[Pok Gai]

http://mwomercs.com/...evs-26-answers/

Q: Does the general negativity and unrealistic expectations on the forums dishearten you at all? Or does it make you try even harder to please these particular individuals? [The Dutchmun]
A: It's hard not to have it affect one at all; generally it just makes people around the office less likely to read over the forums. I still do though, and for every negative/unrealistic expection filled post, there are dozens of PM's, emails, and threads that are the opposite. Also, we're dealing with long-time fans of a very old IP, so we expect people to be passionate. If I could have any one thing though, it would be the understanding that: A) we're barely a year into development, and the poor guys are usually here till 10-11pm, so the 'you're just lazy' posts are unnecessary and flat out wrong. [Garth]





It's no secret the devs communicate more with facebook, reddit, than their own forums. My point is if people are wishing a response on ECM or other matters putting it in a public mwo medium will have a much hifher chance of a response from their forums, which they treat with disregard.

Edited by Pok Gai, 16 January 2013 - 01:43 AM.

[Solis Obscuri]

Pok Gai, on 16 January 2013 - 01:04 AM, said:

this morning

It's still November 2012 where you're at? What time zone is that???

[Dragonkindred]

Pok Gai, on 16 January 2013 - 01:38 AM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...evs-26-answers/

Q: Does the general negativity and unrealistic expectations on the forums dishearten you at all? Or does it make you try even harder to please these particular individuals? [The Dutchmun]
A: It's hard not to have it affect one at all; generally it just makes people around the office less likely to read over the forums. I still do though, and for every negative/unrealistic expection filled post, there are dozens of PM's, emails, and threads that are the opposite. Also, we're dealing with long-time fans of a very old IP, so we expect people to be passionate. If I could have any one thing though, it would be the understanding that: A) we're barely a year into development, and the poor guys are usually here till 10-11pm, so the 'you're just lazy' posts are unnecessary and flat out wrong. [Garth]





It's no secret the devs communicate more with facebook, reddit, than their own forums. My point is if people are wishing a response on ECM or other matters putting it in a public mwo medium will have a much hifher chance of a response from their forums, which they treat with disregard.

That is a very long bow you are drawing there. he clearly said "less likely", not "not at all". And also he states "I still do though".

I don't think it is fair for you to be stating that they ignore the forums due to negative feed back. They might not come here as often, so how about not bagging them out so they come back more often???

[Brilig]

This is from the same post.

Q: Has there been any talks about possibly bringing in the other heat scale penalties? There has been some great suggestions going around on the forums like making the heat increment across the cooldown of the weapon (PPC produces 3.0 heat per second for 3s instead of 9.0 heat on firing) and having DHS increase the heat capacity by 2.0 instead of heat dissipation. [Zyllos]
A: We've talked at great length about this - so we do read your threads, and we have 'threads' of our own. Currently it's a 'maybe later'. [Garth]


Aside from that there are at least half a dozen other times where the Dev's talk about reading every post good and bad for ideas and feedback. They also do comment in posts periodically. They do listen to, and have responded to community concerns quite often. Though sometimes they do disagree with, or do things differently than some members of the community would like. (hell its their game) I think the best part of those post are where they call the community "passionate" instead of ********.

Also interesting how you interpreted the word "less" as "little or no attention."

[Oderint dum Metuant]

FIrstly you should all note, that the post he links is from NOVEMBER not today.

[Flit Asuno]

It's kind of a running trend that in certain companies forums that the less attention they pay to "negative criticism" the less you see that company doing well in the long run. Sure, people being just outright insulting doesn't really help things. But when people make solid points and criticisms that aren't worded in the friendliest manner it seems that plenty of staff both here and elsewhere ignore any valid points being made. We've seen multiple instances where Garth, as a PR person, failed to do his job. By that I mean he slung mud right back at forum goers because he let it get personal.

I say this as someone who has a job being a manager, and being involved with people giving me attitude on a daily basis. You can't let your customers make you snap. You maintain professionalism at all times. That's just as a manager. So when I see someone who's entire job is to be the company's face man become petty like that... It's disappointing and irritating all at once for me.

As to the question of their interaction with the forums? Harassing them isn't going to get them to listen. It's just going to make them bury their head in the sand even harder. The biggest thing we want to avoid is a hugbox/circle jerk scenario where the criticism they're getting is so insulting and negative that the only people they want to listen to are those that'll praise their decisions and implementation no matter how bad of an idea it really is.

You don't want blind faith OR blind hate. You have to take a lot of promises with skepticism. Especially with the track record we've seen of feature implementation and the apparent ignoring of several glaring bugs over the course of months. At the same time. People who *****, whine, moan, and gripe about the game on the forums obviously like it. They see the merit and potential it does have and want it to improve. If they didn't, they wouldn't be here.

The time you have to worry, whether you're someone with "goldvision" or a PGI bashing nutjob, is when there's no criticisms being made. When all those people who would ask questions or make complaints are gone and have left. That's when it's time to be really worried.

The go to question I always think is good to keep in perspective. If this game wasn't mechwarrior. If it didn't have the IP behind it? Would you tolerate what's going on? The bugs, the monetization mechanics in the game (their presence alone isn't bad, but their implementation I don't fully agree with), and the prioritization of certain features? Would you still be here if this game wasn't mech warrior? If the answers no then how are we going to attract new players?

Edited by Flit Asuno, 16 January 2013 - 02:19 AM.

[Flit Asuno]

DV McKenna, on 16 January 2013 - 02:08 AM, said:

FIrstly you should all note, that the post he links is from NOVEMBER not today.

And we all know bioware has miraculous started listening to their forums more and more as time goes on right?

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Flit Asuno, on 16 January 2013 - 02:20 AM, said:

And we all know bioware has miraculous started listening to their forums more and more as time goes on right?

I did not realise Bioware were developing MWO..explains alot.

[Violent Tendencies]

facebook? Seriously? Grow some self respect.

[Flit Asuno]

DV McKenna, on 16 January 2013 - 02:20 AM, said:

I did not realise Bioware were developing MWO..explains alot.

There's actually a lot of parallels between the two. We have pr staff becoming petty and inflammatory towards their forum goers. Admissions of less of the staff looking at the forums. User feedback is being treated with the attitude that if it's not constructive it's not heeded. And by constructive I mean complimentary.

Hell, if you'd even tangentally seen the timetable of how bioware responded to the dragon age 2 complaints you'd see a lot of similarities. Threads being shut down or posts deleted for not being positive enough or nice enough. I don't mean that you can't ban or delete a post of someone for being outright insulting and using tons of racist and sexist commentary, but plenty of valid, but somewhat angry, posts were being deleted and shut down. Because they were "trolling". We've seen the same here, but thankfully to a -much- lesser degree. This is the kind of thing though that typically doesn't get better over time. It becomes worse. Especially since fans who are on the fence see staff start to listen less to their consumer/player base now become hostile. It's like an avalanche of vitriol.

Edited by Flit Asuno, 16 January 2013 - 02:27 AM.

[Apoc1138]

first off, they do read the forums... just yesterday Thomas came in to a thread and made half a dozen comments on steps being taken to deal with AFK farmers, disconnectors and general comments on potential cheating

secondly, if they are not reading the forums due to abusive messages from people not happy with how things are going, how likely are they to then respond positively if you chase them down via social media and abuse them there as well?

Flit Asuno, on 16 January 2013 - 02:26 AM, said:

Especially since fans who are on the fence see staff start to listen less to their consumer/player base now become hostile. It's like an avalanche of vitriol.

Funny how different people can read the same forum and pick up different things.
I see staff of PGI posting on the forum pretty regularly and often in a "good ideas, we were thinking of doing something similar / I've included your ideas in an internal discussion" kind of way.
The problem is that often these messages get lost in the sea of whining we see on a daily basis.
Often the responses from devs come in the threads that don't start with "your a bunch of a holes".

Edited by Apoc1138, 16 January 2013 - 02:39 AM.

[Vassago Rain]

Apoc1138, on 16 January 2013 - 02:28 AM, said:

first off, they do read the forums... just yesterday Thomas came in to a thread and made half a dozen comments on steps being taken to deal with AFK farmers, disconnectors and general comments on potential cheating

secondly, if they are not reading the forums due to abusive messages from people not happy with how things are going, how likely are they to then respond positively if you chase them down via social media and abuse them there as well?

If they for real weren't visting here because of 'wahhh, muh hugbox,' then they shouldn't be working on a project like this - especially if they're employed in PR positions.

I said it before. Say you take a job that includes in the job description that bees will sting your mouth. Are you going to be mad when bees sting your mouth?