More dialogue with YOUR PLAYERBASE !!!

[vares.8457]

10 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

In short, if players overreact, it means they stil care. You do not want them to stop caring.

You only care if you overreact? That’s nonsense, you can react in a sane, calm and civilized way and that doesn’t mean that you don’t care. 

Edited July 24, 2023 by vares.8457

[mercury ranique.2170]

a dialogue must come from two sides. unfortunally when talking to the playerbase it is mostly a monologue. We put down what we want and expect arenanet to listen en do it. That is not how a dialogue works. If you want a proper dialogue, understand you wont always get what you want. There are many reason for this:

1: budget: it is too expensive
2: technics: it is very difficult to implement
3: it also upsets a large part of the playerbase
4: it doesn't generate profit
5: etc, etc.

We are often forgetting that, while we are good in playing the game, arenanet is good in making it. If you know it better, please go ahead and make your own game.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, vares.8457 said:

You only care if you overreact? That’s nonsense, you can react in a sane, calm and civilized way and that doesn’t mean that you don’t care. 

What you call overreacting, i call having an emotional response. It's quite normal for someone emotionally attached to the game to having an emotional response to it, don;t you think?

For example, i'm quite sure i have been acting in sane and civilized way myself - even when i do allow my emotions to show. A lot of other people raising up the issues they see seem like that to me too. It's the people that keep trying to shout all the complains down that i have doubts about. I mean, they should listen to their own advice and chill out, it's just a game after all.

Edited July 24, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[vares.8457]

57 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

What you call overreacting, i call having an emotional response.

You called it overreacting in the post I quoted from you. 

 

57 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

For example, i'm quite sure i have been acting in sane and civilized way myself

I have to disagree unfortunately. Civilized yes (until now) but not sane and not calm. For example you have been ranting non stop 24/7 for the past three weeks about the upcoming relic system and what that would mean for legendary runes.
If a minor change in a video game leads to such overreaction, oh boy. 

Edited July 24, 2023 by vares.8457

[Astralporing.1957]

4 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

You called it overreacting in the post I quoted from you.

I was merely responding to someone else using that word, and didn;t want to go into separate discussion about it. Let's just say i don't think it is overreacting and leave it at that.

4 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

I have to disagree unfortunately. Civilized yes (until now) but not sane and not calm. For example you have been ranting non stop 24/7 for the past three weeks about the upcoming relic system and what that would mean for legendary runes.
If a minor change in a video game leads to such overreaction, oh boy. 

First, it's not a minor change, it's a change to one of the core tenets of this game. The moment i stop caring about stuff like that, i'll stop caring about this game.

Second, funny how you were present here for about as much, but mostly "ranting" about people complaining. If my posts are an overreaction, showing lack of sanity and calm, what about yours?

[Dawdler.8521]

Typical Anet communication:

"We have beta test for our new WvW system and will give you an update and after report in a couple weeks!"

Literally announce a new PvE expansion instead and never say a word about WvW.

Looks good to me 🤷‍♂️

[robertthebard.8150]

On 7/23/2023 at 6:30 PM, Astralporing.1957 said:

You are right, if players weren't so much emotionally attached, they would complain less. What you are omitting is that they would complain less, because they'd just stop playing. It's exactly that emotional attachement you complain about here that keeps them in game even after that game starts changing in ways they strongly dislike. 

In short, if players overreact, it means they stil care. You do not want them to stop caring.

There's a distinct difference between "I'm unhappy" and "If you do/don't do that, we'll kill you".  There's one linked example in this thread, and then there's the BioWare employee that had to delete all of her social media because she said that she'd rather play a story focused game, than one focused on combat.  Note that she never said they were making that story game, just that she'd prefer to play it, and all those "emotionally attached" players went on a tirade.

In short, in means that when some players overreact, there are other issues that need to be addressed, and it isn't a game dev's job to deal with that.  So, I understand why they don't get overly involved in forum discussions.  This phenomenon is widespread throughout the industry, and isn't even limited to MMOs.  I have seen this exact thread premise in every MMO I've ever played, and in at least half of the SP games that have/had private forums.  Do you remember the old BSN, the BioWare Social Network?  I wonder, why did they have to close it down?  As someone that was active over there when it was up, I can speculate:  There was an awful lot of anti-social behavior over there.

[Astralporing.1957]

13 minutes ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

There's a distinct difference between "I'm unhappy" and "If you do/don't do that, we'll kill you". 

Yes, indeed. Fortunately, the latter cases are quite rare in GW2 community even when something really big blows up. And, in general, when things get so bad that this kind of behaviour becomes a norm,  rather than an exception, it's usualy a result of aggregated prior issues. There are exceptions to that, but those are usually tied to more general political and/or social topics. Those can indeed turn very ugly at the drop of a hat. Notice, however, that in GW2 the most volatile threads aren't actually about those.

13 minutes ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

In short, in means that when some players overreact, there are other issues that need to be addressed, and it isn't a game dev's job to deal with that.  So, I understand why they don't get overly involved in forum discussions. 

Sure, it's not a dev's job to do that. Still, it needs to be someone's job. A game with a community so large does need a "communications department" (or at least a community relations person). And one that is not too shackled by something like Anet's infamous "non-communication communication policy".

[robertthebard.8150]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Yes, indeed. Fortunately, the latter cases are quite rare in GW2 community even when something really big blows up. And, in general, when things get so bad that this kind of behaviour becomes a norm,  rather than an exception, it's usualy a result of aggregated prior issues. There are exceptions to that, but those are usually tied to more general political and/or social topics. Those can indeed turn very ugly at the drop of a hat. Notice, however, that in GW2 the most volatile threads aren't actually about those.

Sure, it's not a dev's job to do that. Still, it needs to be someone's job. A game with a community so large does need a "communications department" (or at least a community relations person). And one that is not too shackled by something like Anet's infamous "non-communication communication policy".

When it gets that bad, the issues aren't on the game side, but firmly in the poster's domain, and the people most qualified to deal with it are doctors, not community managers for a game forum.  The problem with communication from the dev side is, of course, that if it doesn't agree, or goes against what a specific poster/group of posters are looking for it's "they don't listen".  Even if it's more of a case of "they listened and said no".  I mean, we have people here that get upset that they don't get a detailed report of what happened with a suspected bot account, imagine how upset they're going to be when they suggest something, and a dev says they're not going to do it.  More often than not, in today's climate, it's better to say nothing, than to open yourself up to whatever may happen.

[Astralporing.1957]

5 minutes ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

When it gets that bad, the issues aren't on the game side, but firmly in the poster's domain, and the people most qualified to deal with it are doctors, not community managers for a game forum. 

Probably, yes. Doesn't mean you don't need community managers for the remaining 99.9% of the community communication issues. Again, don't use something that is only an extreme as an argument about normal, everyday situations.

5 minutes ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

The problem with communication from the dev side is, of course, that if it doesn't agree, or goes against what a specific poster/group of posters are looking for it's "they don't listen".  Even if it's more of a case of "they listened and said no".  I mean, we have people here that get upset that they don't get a detailed report of what happened with a suspected bot account, imagine how upset they're going to be when they suggest something, and a dev says they're not going to do it.  More often than not, in today's climate, it's better to say nothing, than to open yourself up to whatever may happen.

Have you ever seen how it looks in other games? Because contrary to what you say many games show it can work. Even when players disagree with what they hear.

It's exactly when you refuse to engage with the community that the quality of interactions go downhill. When one side refuses to participate, it discourages people from trying to talk softly, and heavily encourages either walking away and not bothering to communicate at all, or shouting and waving hands in order to get the other side's attention. And both of those only increase divides between devs and community. Which in turn negatively impact any further attempts at communication.

[voltaicbore.8012]

As poor as many folks rate Anet's communication history, I see that as a lesser problem compared to flat out poorly planned/implemented decisions. Frankly I think the thirst for more direct interaction wouldn't be nearly as intense if stuff like the 6th rune bonus change properly accounted for the impact it would have on legendary rune holders in the first place. The spvp forums would be far less motivated to call out cmc directly if stuff like the elementalist's passive-auras-forever stuff didn't launch in the first place.

For me, communication is a nice thing to have, but not really a dealbreaker. It only seems to be in great demand when things are going wrong at a more fundamental level with the game.

One might argue that more communication could help prevent such controversial decisions in the first place, but as a few others have mentioned, I think Anet already hears what the community has to say on a broad level. A simple "hey we're listening" might only make things worse, as that changes the situation from "are you even listening to us?" to "so you heard us but are now just ignoring us." And if you want something that goes beyond "hey we're listening" from Anet, it runs into all the problems with unjustified accusations of promises made then broken, etc. that others have already pointed out.

TLDR; make game good, then have to talk less to players about it. Anet is too busy succeeding, and we're all too busy having fun.

[robertthebard.8150]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Probably, yes. Doesn't mean you don't need community managers for the remaining 99.9% of the community communication issues. Again, don't use something that is only an extreme as an argument about normal, everyday situations.

Have you ever seen how it looks in other games? Because contrary to what you say many games show it can work. Even when players disagree with what they hear.

It's exactly when you refuse to engage with the community that the quality of interactions go downhill. When one side refuses to participate, it discourages people from trying to talk softly, and heavily encourages either walking away and not bothering to communicate at all, or shouting and waving hands in order to get the other side's attention. And both of those only increase divides between devs and community. Which in turn negatively impact any further attempts at communication.

I actually have.  I moderated the Rappelz forums for about 5 years.  Go ahead, explain to me how well that works out.  It doesn't.  Yes, we have plenty of people that take it in stride.  They're not the problem, and trying to say "but that's a fringe element", or similar, doesn't carry a lot of weight. Let's remember, the BioWare incident I outlined above happened as a direct result of communication.  It's exactly because of the extremes that devs become "gun shy" about posting.  If this were a thing that happened once in the 18 years and change that I've been on gaming forums, then yeah?  But I've actually had someone call me on the phone about forum moderation.  They declined my invitation to come visit in person, and declined to give me their address, so I could come visit them, but this (self kitten) can get real, fast.  It doesn't have to be the majority of interactions.

[Astralporing.1957]

11 hours ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

I actually have.  I moderated the Rappelz forums for about 5 years.  Go ahead, explain to me how well that works out.  It doesn't.  Yes, we have plenty of people that take it in stride.  They're not the problem, and trying to say "but that's a fringe element", or similar, doesn't carry a lot of weight. Let's remember, the BioWare incident I outlined above happened as a direct result of communication.  It's exactly because of the extremes that devs become "gun shy" about posting.  If this were a thing that happened once in the 18 years and change that I've been on gaming forums, then yeah?  But I've actually had someone call me on the phone about forum moderation.  They declined my invitation to come visit in person, and declined to give me their address, so I could come visit them, but this (self kitten) can get real, fast.  It doesn't have to be the majority of interactions.

What did i say about you trying to generalize individual cases? Because you're doing it again.

Not, it's not okay to shut down whole idea of community communication just due to some bad apples and fringe elements. This argumentation is like saying that you should never leave your home and meet other people, because some of them can get rude, or outright violent.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[robertthebard.8150]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

What did i say about you trying to generalize individual cases? Because you're doing it again.

Not, it's not okay to shut down whole idea of community communication just due to some bad apples and fringe elements. This argumentation is like saying that you should never leave your home and meet other people, because some of them can get rude, or outright violent.

No, I'm not generalizing.  If the fact that just one interaction can make someone want to stay away from a forum is too much for you, I don't know what to tell you.  It not only can happen, but it has happened.  I cited an example of it above.  Then there's this strawman of "trying to shut down communication".  Go ahead, show me where I said that.  I did say that I understand why they might be "gun shy" about posting, but nowhere have I ever said they shouldn't be communicating.  That is a fiction that you made up so you could have something to argue against.  So, do you want to discuss what I've actually said, or are you going to send me a copy of the screenplay you've written, so that I know what's in the script for what I was supposed to have said?

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

No, I'm not generalizing.  If the fact that just one interaction can make someone want to stay away from a forum is too much for you, I don't know what to tell you.  It not only can happen, but it has happened.  I cited an example of it above.  Then there's this strawman of "trying to shut down communication".  Go ahead, show me where I said that.  I did say that I understand why they might be "gun shy" about posting, but nowhere have I ever said they shouldn't be communicating.  That is a fiction that you made up so you could have something to argue against.  So, do you want to discuss what I've actually said, or are you going to send me a copy of the screenplay you've written, so that I know what's in the script for what I was supposed to have said?

Somehow i think you might not have actually read what i wrote. I wasn't talking about individual devs communicating, because i realize it's not their job. I was talking about company communicating. Which is usually being done through people whose job is exactly that. And i assume that people in such a job would not be some random people that would get traumatized by ideas of social interaction with a crowd that might contain some more excessive voices.

So, again, devs do not have to talk with the community. Anet as a whole however should be interacting with GW2 players to a much, much greater degree than they do currently. And not just through marketing and PR departments that use for that heavily sanitized statements that are as vague as possible.

[robertthebard.8150]

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Somehow i think you might not have actually read what i wrote. I wasn't talking about individual devs communicating, because i realize it's not their job. I was talking about company communicating. Which is usually being done through people whose job is exactly that. And i assume that people in such a job would not be some random people that would get traumatized by ideas of social interaction with a crowd that might contain some more excessive voices.

So, again, devs do not have to talk with the community. Anet as a whole however should be interacting with GW2 players to a much, much greater degree than they do currently. And not just through marketing and PR departments that use for that heavily sanitized statements that are as vague as possible.

Sure.  On the other hand, I don't expect that to do much for the general vibe.  As I indicated earlier, if they respond to something in the negative, it's going to be "they're not listening".  I also don't know what an "acceptable" level of communication would be?  I have read posts by people that believe that because they've never been responded to, the devs are ignoring them.  Maybe some general "X game mode isn't as active as Y game mode, so we're focusing on Y", or "We're patching B because Z".  It's going to stir up some hornets, but then when we get the "they're not communicating" threads that we'll still get, we can point to something to say "What are you expecting them to do, write you a letter?".  🤣

[Zok.4956]

On 7/20/2023 at 9:42 AM, HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:

We had times with more communication between the studio and the player-base. But for one message/post of a single developer, they get like 50-100 responses which are directly addressed to them. You cannot answer that. If you pick only one or two, the others get mad. They do not have the time to spend hours on the forums every day.

There was a time when we had a community manager in the (german) forum. These were intermediaries/translators between players and developers. It worked quite well. But at some point Anet then scrapped this concept.

Dialogue is about much more than players voicing their desires. It's also about answering questions, managing expectations, and providing rationale for various decisions and changes.

A few players will still disturb, exaggerate and not be satisfied. But the majority of players will be influenced positively and Anet will then also benefit from it.

[Lincolnbeard.1735]

Communication was never good on ANet's part, even when community managers were around.
I can still remember Gaile saying something along the lines "say only positive things, if you dislike ascended gear, keep it to yourself".

[Zok.4956]

On 7/20/2023 at 2:54 AM, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

when Arena Net do communicate (eg I'm talking over the last 6 months when I've been most active on the forums) I see an awful lot people picking apart what they said, including a lot of over-analysis and speculation on what they didn't say, why did they word things that way, and often taking the absolute worse case interpretation.

If there is little communication (and the communication is mostly one-sided) and therefore little information on certain topics, an attempt is made to draw as much conclusions as possible from what has (not) been said. This naturally results in false expectations. Before they build up, Anet could easily correct these false expectations with a little more communication.

And Anet does have a history of not-telling the whole truth. Example: The project to restructure the WvW worlds ("Alliances" & Co) was silently stopped for several years and the players remained in the dark as to why there was no progress and no communication. Eventually, many WvW players became more and more angry and sarcastic as a result, and lost confidence in Anet's statements.

[Zok.4956]

On 7/20/2023 at 2:54 AM, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

The second problem is that many people have no idea of the development challenges.

And players don't need to. Because they are players/customers and should have fun with the game. They're not devs who make their living making sure players have fun (and give them their money).

But if developers give players some background info on why/what is easy or difficult for a developer, Anet can lower overblown expectations with it. I remember when a few devs gave insights into finding and fixing some (hard to find) bugs. This was received very positively by most players. Because it also showed that Anet does take care of such bugs even if it takes some time.

[Zok.4956]

On 7/20/2023 at 2:54 AM, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

The last problem is that many people (again, not all), are looking at it from their own short term interests. This is understandable but Arena Net are running a business and they need to make a profit. (BTW, it hopefully goes without saying that if people like playing GW2 (which I do!) then it's actually in our medium term interests for Arena Net to be profitable). This means they need a good game that people like playing firstly, but then secondly they need ways of making money from it

Again, the solution to the problem is: more and better communication.

The better a supplier understands what their customers want, the better they can use this to design the product so that these/most customers are then also willing to spend money on it.

No matter how good a product may be from a developer's point of view, if the customers are not willing to spend money on it, the company will not do well.

There are a lot examples of companies that, out of arrogance or inability to respond to customer requests, have developed products that not enough customers wanted to buy and then had existential problems.

[robertthebard.8150]

5 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

Again, the solution to the problem is: more and better communication.

The better a supplier understands what their customers want, the better they can use this to design the product so that these/most customers are then also willing to spend money on it.

No matter how good a product may be from a developer's point of view, if the customers are not willing to spend money on it, the company will not do well.

There are a lot examples of companies that, out of arrogance or inability to respond to customer requests, have developed products that not enough customers wanted to buy and then had existential problems.

Which customers?  The ones that want all the group content modified to be solo-able?  The ones that believe that the tutorials need to run to level 80?  Maybe the ones that think they should drop the cosmetic development for WvW/PvP, even though those are completely different teams?  Maybe they should listen to the crowd that wants all the mounts w/out buying the expansions?

What happens when they cater to one of those, or the myriad of other things that have been asked for on these forums, and all of the players that oppose that revolt?  Seriously, whether you intended it or not, I came away from this post with the belief that you think there's a magical, one size fits all solution, and that's just not the case.  The communication could be "No, we're not doing that".  What's going to happen with those customers you're referring to?  Are they going to say "Well, at least they told us we didn't have anything coming"?  Or are they going to rage quit, or worse?  Sometimes, it's not arrogance, it's pragmatism.

[Zok.4956]

12 hours ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

Which customers?

All of them.

 

12 hours ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

What happens when they cater to one of those, or the myriad of other things

I never said Anet should do all the things all customers ask for. I said Anet should understand their customers better. What they like about the product, about the vison of the product in the first place. How they think the company stays true to that vision, or not. To use this knowledge to make a good product and to continue to develop a product that (a lot of) customers are willing to spend money on.
 

12 hours ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

The communication could be "No, we're not doing that". 

Sure, why not. And some customers will be unhappy and maybe will be lost. But if Anet would explain and reason, why they do thing different, or why they could not do some things, more  players/customers could understand that and would stay and buy the next update instead of leaving. Also, explaining why changes fit to Anets vision for the game creates trust. And: trust helps that more customers give a company another chance (e.g. in the event of mistakes).

When Anet did the balance previews the general reaction was that as such communication it was good. Sure, there was a lot of criticism (mostly very factual and justified) about the actual balance changes. If Anet had collected this criticism and then explained why it still fits the vision (or admits where something doesn't fit or mistakes were made), or explained how the vision has changed, it would not automatically have made all players happy. But the reactions would have been less angry and in the end more players would have been understanding than now and more confident that Anet is doing 'the right thing' and knowing about it.
 

12 hours ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

Are they going to say "Well, at least they told us we didn't have anything coming"?  Or are they going to rage quit, or worse? 

When Anet stopped working on WvW-Alliances years ago, they could have told players. Sure, players would not have been happy and communication cannot turn bad decisions into good ones.  But Anet's years of deliberately leaving players in the dark has destroyed the trust of many WvW players, and when Anet spoke not too long ago about WvW being a "cornerstone" of the game, players gave it more sarcasm than approval . It takes a lot more effort to rebuild a broken trust than it does to maintain an existing trust. In the end, Anet and the game mode WvW was harmed by it.

Customer loyalty is one of many factors that affect sales.

12 hours ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

Sometimes, it's not arrogance, it's pragmatism.

Not being open and honest when a company change things because they're trying to squeeze as much money as possible out of players (who wouldn't have spent any more money otherwise) would not be pragmatic, it would be dishonest.

 

Edited July 27, 2023 by Zok.4956

[cyberzombie.7348]

28 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

When Anet stopped working on WvW-Alliances years ago, they could have told players. Sure, players would not have been happy and communication cannot turn bad decisions into good ones.  But Anet's years of deliberately leaving players in the dark has destroyed the trust of many WvW players, and when Anet spoke not too long ago about WvW being a "cornerstone" of the game, players gave it more sarcasm than approval . It takes a lot more effort to rebuild a broken trust than it does to maintain an existing trust. In the end, Anet and the game mode WvW was harmed by it.

Ageed, and it's not just Alliances. The recent out-of-touch balancing decisions along with years of neglected bugs/exploits thats been ticketed and addressed causes a lot of contempt against Anet devs. Similar can be said about the PvP community. 

If they say something along the lines of "we know, however X is Y priority atm until Z is finished" both communities would be much more calm regarding the respective issues.

[Obtena.7952]

On 7/26/2023 at 1:53 PM, Zok.4956 said:

Again, the solution to the problem is: more and better communication.

The better a supplier understands what their customers want, the better they can use this to design the product so that these/most customers are then also willing to spend money on it.

No matter how good a product may be from a developer's point of view, if the customers are not willing to spend money on it, the company will not do well.

There are a lot examples of companies that, out of arrogance or inability to respond to customer requests, have developed products that not enough customers wanted to buy and then had existential problems.

These things are generally true BUT ... that doesn't mean the solution to Anet making changes that people don't like is more and better communication. That doesn't make sense. Anet could have the most and best communication ever but that wouldn't stop them from implementing changes that some people won't like. 

The fact is this ... some people need to get over themselves. Changes are going to happen they don't like. Players do not have a seat at the design table, as much as they have convinced themselves it would be good for the game for them to do so. Anet can't change the game so every change gets approval from every player. 

Edited July 27, 2023 by Obtena.7952