So there are Devs out there

Unknown

So I was browsing the bugs forum, and there was one topic about the prices in yen on steam. It had 2 different Devs comment and fix the issue almost straight away! So if you guys clearly read the posts why do we get so little response in this forum?

Unknown

Because the Gen. Chat section of every Internet forum is a toxic cesspool of nonsensical drivel

NorthernPolarity

Basically what Ghast said. If I were a Demiurge employee, why would I spend time reading the general discussion forums about how terrible the game is, how we should implement terrible balancing changes by doing things like buffing every single character in the game up to Sentry levels, etc? If something like giving out X-Force as the Season 5 top reward can elicit such a negative reaction from the forumbase, why would they bother spending their time justifying their actions? They can't even say something like "we expect to release a new PvE by the end of the month" because if they did and it was delayed, then everyone would be crying about how they never get anything done on time, how they suck as a company and should die in a fire. Gaming forums in general just get really **** once the playerbase grows past a certain point, and d3 really needs to hire a community manager to put up with all the **** that people give them.

Pylgrim

That is true and all, but you still need to engage the community, or the cesspool will fester into something that will repel newcomers the moment they take a whiff. They /promised/ they would have a person in charge of doing so, and improving communication. The month that followed that promise has been, perhaps the quietest month from the Devs in the history of the game (and it included a server outage, that forced them to do some damage control!)

Kiamodo

I think they were so good at talking for a long time we got a little spoiled. Exactly what Ghast said though. When the mob wants your head on a platter or just to throw fecal matter at you at any chance why engage them? This was by far a better forum than other game sites I have seen. Save for some true lay in depth games. It's a fun little three match game. The forum lives and dies by the content the players provide.

BearVenger

I don't play any other online or F2P games, so my experience is limited to "pay once and receive a physical product" game.

Yup, Devil Dinosaur here.

But in a medium where I'm not playing a finished product (rather, a "subject to change at any time" game), with no offline component, and no archived documentation (my gosh, how much of this forum camaraderie stems from us putting our heads together to understand the latest PvE format?), then communication with the devs is critical.

Again, I don't know how LoL or WoW or CotG does it. My experience is putting in a disc, reading a manual, pressing the start button, and playing to the final boss.

So, if the devs want to keep me a happy, prone-to-spend customer, then assessing what I like, don't like, and don't comprehend, is crucial. We don't have to always agree, but I need to know why they're doing what they're doing.

BearVenger

ba-leeted!

Unknown

Ghast wrote:

Because the Gen. Chat section of every Internet forum is a toxic cesspool of nonsensical drivel

Would you say it is the "danger zone" of internet forums?

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Basically what Ghast said. If I were a Demiurge employee, why would I spend time reading the general discussion forums about how terrible the game is, how we should implement terrible balancing changes by doing things like buffing every single character in the game up to Sentry levels, etc? If something like giving out X-Force as the Season 5 top reward can elicit such a negative reaction from the forumbase, why would they bother spending their time justifying their actions? They can't even say something like "we expect to release a new PvE by the end of the month" because if they did and it was delayed, then everyone would be crying about how they never get anything done on time, how they suck as a company and should die in a fire. Gaming forums in general just get really tinykitty once the playerbase grows past a certain point, and d3 really needs to hire a community manager to put up with all the tinykitty that people give them.

Actually, there was a youtube video of a marvel guy talking about the a Marvel or Black Panther movie due to audience demand. He said something that seems to apply to MPQ as well. He said they do not pay the most attention to customer opinions. The reason is that customer opinions change with time due to they do not have all the information that they have behind the scenes and therefore, customers cannot (are not allowed) to see the bigger picture.

Personally, I like how the 3 phases of Marvel movies have been turning out so far. The difference is customers are willing to wait several years for a movie to see the big picture, whereas, a game that people play daily want new content faster and a bigger pay off faster.

Cragger

stephen43084 wrote:

Actually, there was a youtube video of a marvel guy talking about the a Marvel or Black Panther movie due to audience demand. He said something that seems to apply to MPQ as well. He said they do not pay the most attention to customer opinions. The reason is that customer opinions change with time due to they do not have all the information that they have behind the scenes and therefore, customers cannot (are not allowed) to see the bigger picture.

Personally, I like how the 3 phases of Marvel movies have been turning out so far. The difference is customers are willing to wait several years for a movie to see the big picture, whereas, a game that people play daily want new content faster and a bigger pay off faster.

This only works for those properties that actually have a product or intellectual property that has a long-term viability. For Marvel comic books and movies, they can very nearly guarantee some threshold of success that will make them a profit and please their shareholders. Having read the developer comments and CEO blog, it is clear that the Demiurge business model is an adaptive one where there is no larger picture, but only a change-and-see mentality that they hope lucks upon some "Mythical" revenue stream. Products like this are often churned over and flipped very quickly in an attempt to find the combination of play, intellectual rights, viral marketing, and luck that results in an App Store chart-stormer. This game has been very successful in that, but once it is, the business model is still geared towards startup-style game programming.

If this were a real business and not a cellphone app game, they would have been bought out by a company that can handle the success better than a small studio; however, it isn't, its a cellphone app game. Real business rules don't really apply, as much as the app business would prefer them to.