Dear D3, please hire a PR/Logistics professional.

Unknown

True healing and team-ups both were major changes to the game and were presented in a fashion of, here we made the game better go play with it.
Predicting there would be some complaints is always a winning bet, but there would have been no way to predict the degree of upsetness, tenacity of the complaints and affect it had to morale of everyone who comes to the forums. Thinking it through will never leave them prepared enough to handle the backlash of things like this.

This is why we ask for more communication. We only see what they show us regarding the reasons WHY they make changes like these. And almost always after the fact. Maybe I don't know what I am talking about either but if I were setting up true healing I would come to the forums well in advance and lay out the problem from their point of view.
"Having characters that can heal someone's entire roster back up and allow for virtually unlimited playing is causing extreme problems with MMR, causing a gap between players who over use healing and those who don't, and encouraging players to spend inane amounts of time healing themselves in the prologue which good or bad is not the way we want our game to be played. So we are working on changing this, we see how popular this tactic is but it has no place in the future of MPQ so we are making several changes to healing, (list proposed changes) and welcome your feedback and concerns prior to implementation but know that we have to make these changes for the good of the game even if it may be a hard transition for many of our players. Knowing this we will be monitoring passive healing rates for all characters and making adjustments as necessary, and all players will be awarded 20 health packs to help ease the pain of losing their favorite healers. -D3"

Obviously this was written in hindsight, but I would have had nothing but respect for someone giving me bad news in this kind of fashion.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

We've been on the forum too long. All this communication we get, everyone else (95%+ of players) only get any communication that gets put into pop up in-game.

Moreover, I understand being upset when they don't communicate. I don't understand why people think when mpq communicates, that's not good enough for some people. People who think that mpq had to justify every move they make and seem players' approval to make those moves.

Edit - also, not currently at my highest level of sanity. I apologize, for anything I say that makes absolutely no sense

Let me give you some guesses :

- Because we are customers and pay for the game ?
- Because if we are not there, they go bankrupt ?

Now you make a difference between forumites and non-forumites. Fair enough.

Considering D3P does everything for the money, if they maintain a forum, it's because they can take some advantage from it. Why did they hire a Community Manager then ?

When you do something, you do it correctly or do not do it.

The forum is on fire, and no one is trying to appease the community... Let's see if they ignore the whole thing, the way they did for True Healing.

Unknown

As an afterthought hiring a full on PR person would only achieve the intended results if the PR person was great. A simpler and cheaper option would to pick a very small group of active forum members, give them the chance to opt in as news release "beta testers", make them sign a NDA so they won't take anything they learn and share it preemptively. Keep these beta testers anonymous to the rest of the forum because well that will make their lives easier.

-Give this small group news before it is released
-Give them time to give feedback and ask questions
-Actually address the concerns of the community in the official news releases, and possibly even encourage the group to suggest edits before the news goes out.

This would let them almost invisibly stay ahead of the crowd instead of always having a late, unsatisfying, reactionary response to whatever the issue of the week is.

Unknown

KevinMark wrote:

stephen, take a chill pill bro.

Phantron wrote:

I think the communication from D3 is generally somewhat lacking...

What? Hi-Fi and IceIX are doing a good job communicating lately. I don't understand. Do you (or other people who think like this) want a direct free to call line to devs so that you can bug them non-stop? They have other things to do you know. Like designing new characters, fixing bugs, funbalancing weak and OP characters, designing new events, new game modes etc etc.

@sorcered
This is not a buggy game. What bugs have been bugging you recently? There are probably still some bugs present as with most video games but it is in no condition to call it "bug-ridden".

As for David : has he got better things to do lately than addressing our concerns ?

yogi_

(That awkward moment when a dev upvotes the original post...)

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

KevinMark wrote:

stephen, take a chill pill bro.

Phantron wrote:

I think the communication from D3 is generally somewhat lacking...

What? Hi-Fi and IceIX are doing a good job communicating lately. I don't understand. Do you (or other people who think like this) want a direct free to call line to devs so that you can bug them non-stop? They have other things to do you know. Like designing new characters, fixing bugs, funbalancing weak and OP characters, designing new events, new game modes etc etc.

@sorcered
This is not a buggy game. What bugs have been bugging you recently? There are probably still some bugs present as with most video games but it is in no condition to call it "bug-ridden".

As for David : has he got better things to do lately than addressing our concerns ?

I don't know what his position is in D3. How should I know?

Unknown

KevinMark wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

KevinMark wrote:

stephen, take a chill pill bro.

Phantron wrote:

I think the communication from D3 is generally somewhat lacking...

What? Hi-Fi and IceIX are doing a good job communicating lately. I don't understand. Do you (or other people who think like this) want a direct free to call line to devs so that you can bug them non-stop? They have other things to do you know. Like designing new characters, fixing bugs, funbalancing weak and OP characters, designing new events, new game modes etc etc.

@sorcered
This is not a buggy game. What bugs have been bugging you recently? There are probably still some bugs present as with most video games but it is in no condition to call it "bug-ridden".

As for David : has he got better things to do lately than addressing our concerns ?

I don't know what his position is in D3. How should I know?

It's been said previously, ARE YOU READING ?

SOCK PUPPET.

(Sorry I couldn't help it)

Lystrata

yogi_ wrote:

(That awkward moment when a dev upvotes the original post...)

Lol. Been waiting for someone else to notice that.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

It's been said previously, ARE YOU READING ?

SOCK PUPPET.

(Sorry I couldn't help it)

That doesn't sound like a position to me. More like an insult. Would you tell that to his face? He will read it and is probably already reading or have read. This is like the awkward moment when people talk about someone else in a bad way but that person hasn't left and can still hear them. I won't post in this thread anymore because I don't like the tone of it. I'm getting angry on behalf of other people I don't even know.

Unknown

People are confusing PR with a bribe. There's no real nice way to word a change like true healing because it's something that never should've been in the game in the first place and it's painful to undo it. If they gave everyone 10000 HP for the nerf that's a bribe, not a PR. If they let you respec Sentry after he's nerfed that's also a bribe. It sounds like most people are looking for a bribe rather than a PR, and that's not necessarily wrong to expect compensation but it has nothing to do with the quality of the person doing the PR. If a sock puppet is authorized to let you get a free respec on Sentry he can tell you that too.

I don't think the forum matters that much in terms of money because just on the metrics on their HP expenditure shows most of the money coming from guys I cannot imagine how they play this game. But some of the concerns are universal. If you have any interest in PvP it's reasonable to assume that you'll at some point notice Sentry is kind of powerful and shows up in all the powerful teams you might think 'if I spend some $ on him I can be awesome too', and if he gets nerfed you suddenly have a lot of angry customers. That's why it's a good idea for them to communicate something like a Sentry nerf not because the guys who have been Sentry bombing for the last 3 months means anything in the grand scheme of things, but that the majority of the players don't end up buying a defective product. Also, Sentry impacts the entire PvP progression reward structure. Hitting 1100/1300 will be much harder without him so it'd be useful to know when to expect this and decide whether you should push for the 1300s before they suddenly become much harder to get, so it'd be very useful to everyone to know when the difficulty of getting 1300s will suddenly go up by a lot too and plan for it.

Unknown

Yep, PR is not a Santa. PR is basically a politician, coercing you that while they just have cut your leg off, it's not that bad really and hey, now you only need to buy half as many socks! And crutches are 10% off in their shop right now so hop to it.

And you already had that with 'how great the true healing is for the game' stuff as well with most other announcements.

Pylgrim

Phantron wrote:

People are confusing PR with a bribe. There's no real nice way to word a change like true healing because it's something that never should've been in the game in the first place and it's painful to undo it. If they gave everyone 10000 HP for the nerf that's a bribe, not a PR. If they let you respec Sentry after he's nerfed that's also a bribe. It sounds like most people are looking for a bribe rather than a PR, and that's not necessarily wrong to expect compensation but it has nothing to do with the quality of the person doing the PR. If a sock puppet is authorized to let you get a free respec on Sentry he can tell you that too.

I don't think the forum matters that much in terms of money because just on the metrics on their HP expenditure shows most of the money coming from guys I cannot imagine how they play this game. But some of the concerns are universal. If you have any interest in PvP it's reasonable to assume that you'll at some point notice Sentry is kind of powerful and shows up in all the powerful teams you might think 'if I spend some $ on him I can be awesome too', and if he gets nerfed you suddenly have a lot of angry customers. That's why it's a good idea for them to communicate something like a Sentry nerf not because the guys who have been Sentry bombing for the last 3 months means anything in the grand scheme of things, but that the majority of the players don't end up buying a defective product. Also, Sentry impacts the entire PvP progression reward structure. Hitting 1100/1300 will be much harder without him so it'd be useful to know when to expect this and decide whether you should push for the 1300s before they suddenly become much harder to get, so it'd be very useful to everyone to know when the difficulty of getting 1300s will suddenly go up by a lot too and plan for it.

Er, bribes, compensation, reparations, whatever you want to call it, that IS PR. PR is both about preventing loss of goodwill and taking measures to recover it if it was lost. We're talking about hundreds if not thousands of people who /paid/ D3 hard currency for alliance slots. As much as the new alliance slot decision is paying up a debt of a previous poor decision, it doesn't take away the disappointment of paying customers and the loss of goodwill. I don't understand how taking some measures to alleviate that disappointment and recover some goodwill (and business) doesn't seem like a valuable endeavour to you. Sure, of course that it would have been ideal if it never happened, but as I think we can agree, mistakes just happen and will keep happening no matter how much you try to stop them from happening. So why not invest in palliatives if pain is an unavoidable feature of the road to recovery and improvement?

Dragon_Nexus

KevinMark wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

It's been said previously, ARE YOU READING ?

SOCK PUPPET.

(Sorry I couldn't help it)

That doesn't sound like a position to me. More like an insult. Would you tell that to his face? He will read it and is probably already reading or have read. This is like the awkward moment when people talk about someone else in a bad way but that person hasn't left and can still hear them. I won't post in this thread anymore because I don't like the tone of it. I'm getting angry on behalf of other people I don't even know.

The dude was making a joke based on the initial post.

Yes, it's not a great thing to say about the dude, but it's also not a great position for the guy to be in. He certainly doesn't want to be the puppet newsmaster of the developers, but it's how he finds himself, unable to properly interact with his audience and funnels concerns back, instead only acting as a mouth piece to deliver the bad news to us.

Raffoon

I will give D3 credit for one thing... I never would have predicted that they could come up with ANOTHER thing to piss off their players that could easily be solved with some free digital stuff so soon.

Way to continue emulating Scrooge McDuck, D3.

Pylgrim

Well, credit where is due. That hasty, chronologically uncertain announcement of fixed end times is a classic PR move to distract the masses from forming angered riots. Funny how they had to break their own recent rule of avoiding talking about upcoming features that are not about to come and for which there is not a release date, but at least they managed to turn a bit the tide of negativism and indignation.

Unknown

It's really about Expectations Management. They've figured out how to do this with character nerfs after Spidey, Ragnarok and Daken debacles, now they just need to project their moves by a month for everything else.

I bet with this alliance change they probably thought, Hey players will appreciate not having to pay for alliance slots. What about the people already in full alliances? It doesn't affect them, and the only people who complain will be a small minority, you know, the d3 forums.

I'm still glad they didn't go with a more 'acceptable' solution, eg reducing alliance slot costs by half, and the totally eliminating costs 3 months later. While it would have been better for pr, it would have cost us more HP in the long run.

Lystrata

Pylgrim wrote:

Well, credit where is due. That hasty, chronologically uncertain announcement of fixed end times is a classic PR move to distract the masses from forming angered riots. Funny how they had to break their own recent rule of avoiding talking about upcoming features that are not about to come and for which there is not a release date, but at least they managed to turn a bit the tide of negativism and indignation.

Don't think that's really credit-worthy, so much as blindingly obvious face-palm worthy.

So very blatant. Makes me cringe to read some of the stuff going on.

GothicKratos

Lystrata wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Well, credit where is due. That hasty, chronologically uncertain announcement of fixed end times is a classic PR move to distract the masses from forming angered riots. Funny how they had to break their own recent rule of avoiding talking about upcoming features that are not about to come and for which there is not a release date, but at least they managed to turn a bit the tide of negativism and indignation.

Don't think that's really credit-worthy, so much as blindingly obvious face-palm worthy.

So very blatant. Makes me cringe to read some of the stuff going on.

You know, I don't mind complaints and I don't mind criticism, but honestly, these types of statements are frustrating. Forumites say they ("the devs") need to talk about things more and we'd ("the forums") like more windows and insights, and while the devs say they don't like doing that and give a perfectly reasonable reason why they do it anyways because it's really a big deal, much bigger in the grand scheme than the Alliance fiasco, and people are using that as a way to drag them through the mud --- for doing exactly what we asked them to do for us. Color me confused; do they need a PR manager or do they already know the ropes guys? Black or white? Which is it, because it can't be gray in this scenario.

Lystrata

GothicKratos wrote:

Lystrata wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Well, credit where is due. That hasty, chronologically uncertain announcement of fixed end times is a classic PR move to distract the masses from forming angered riots. Funny how they had to break their own recent rule of avoiding talking about upcoming features that are not about to come and for which there is not a release date, but at least they managed to turn a bit the tide of negativism and indignation.

Don't think that's really credit-worthy, so much as blindingly obvious face-palm worthy.

So very blatant. Makes me cringe to read some of the stuff going on.

You know, I don't mind complaints and I don't mind criticism, but honestly, these types of statements are frustrating. Forumites say they ("the devs") need to talk about things more and we'd ("the forums") like more windows and insights, and while the devs say they don't like doing that and give a perfectly reasonable reason why they do it anyways because it's really a big deal, much bigger in the grand scheme than the Alliance fiasco, and people are using that as a way to drag them through the mud --- for doing exactly what we asked them to do for us. Color me confused; do they need a PR manager or do they already know the ropes guys? Black or white? Which is it, because it can't be gray in this scenario.

This, to me, isn't PR - it's distraction. PR would be to actually address the problems as they arise.

I have nothing against them updating us about a new character, or a new end time, or a new whatever. But that doesn't make other, quite valid, concerns just disappear - which is more my point. Sure, have a positive announcement to detract from negative things, but at least acknowledge the negative as well. Otherwise it does look, quite simply, like a distraction. Which I personally find a bit absurd. This hardly reflects how everyone else feels about the matter - so seems a bit silly to suddenly refer to all forumites when responding to an off-the-cuff post by one person.

pmorcs

Seems like people have a lot of different ideas about what PR is. Quite literally when you hire a PR firm/person, you are hiring a motivated, partisan liar. Has nothing at all to do with doing right by the customer or even managing expectations, but mainly finding a really good **** artist to spin things your way in the face of any and all contrary facts.

Not sure why we would view that as an improvement from the user side of things. Please, don't hire an actual PR professional; it just legitimizes them.