D3's communication. Good or bad?

lukewin

D3's communication on the forum. Good or bad?

I've made a poll. I've added 13 options. You should be able to pick 6 of the 12 that are pairs. So I have I can fit in 3 more, so lemme know what I should put. Lemme know if there are any that can be removed/replaced, and with what.

10/9/15 EDIT
Figured I'd bump this post, in case I made a new poll and it got locked for being a duplicate thread. If I would've bumped this post before Galactus, my answers would be completely different, b/c communication had gotten better (IceIX's LINE Q&A, IceIX's recent activity on forums, Sneak Peek threads). Sucks that the communication can continue to be an issue 8 months later.

Unknown

For me it's hard to say to be honest.
ummmm ... I'd have to vote "good" probably
Because I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything super important.
And they respond to "Global-Bugs" with a statement here quite quickly.
Although a full timetable of future events with rewards & required characters would be immensely useful.
(Although extremely hard & restrictive for them to actually implement)

For those people who vote "bad": what would you want from them?


Edit: lukewin is changing my opinion in his thread: "Why change 3* prize to 2* prize on gauntlet?"
__________________________________________________________________
If you have a real account problem - via e-mail D3's communication is AMZING.
Honeslty - customer service via e-mail.
(don't spam them lol )
__________________________________________________________________

franckynight

i will say "way better lately but still need some fine-tuning" especially on ninja updates (there were a time where every update was explained.. a very long time ago..lol)

Unknown

I think the main issue has historically been that announcements are made, sometimes late in the day, without much co-creation. It's their game, that's their perogative (try writing that without thinking of the Bobby Brown song), but occassionally it would be nice to have a few more "what do you think of this idea?" interactions rather than pure 'announcements'.

Overall though, you'd be hard pushed to find a lot of games that comminicate as frequently to their community as Demi/D3 has in the last 3 months in particular.

ShanePHallam

I'd say good. In many aspects in life, people will harp on wanting more communication always that cannot be satisfied. Compared to other games I've played, d3 is top notch in communicating, making posts on the forums, etc. They will share the information with you at some point and if I am expecting a post/announcement on an issue, it almost always comes. Other companies will barely say anything at all, even amidst issues, bugs, or mechanics not working.

Square

Good. I've been playing games for 25 years (unfortunately, I hit 40 this year ), and this is the first time I've ever interacted with a game publisher in any way whatsoever. This has been my first experience with a game company that interacts with its fanbase.

esoxnepa

Good communication overall. It has improved greatly in the last 8 months.

My one frustration is that some of Demiurge_Will's great posts get lost in the middle of threads. I know they tend to be contextual to the thread in question. It would be nice if there was some "Musings of Will" that condensed all the gems of information scattered throughout the forum.

Like, some of the scaling, matchmaking, and other discussion he will have a post that tries to give you some understanding of what is going on, or more often, correct some misunderstood aspect of the item.

It is very rare to get such direct access, and see it guide the game.

Unknown

Great for forum users, terrrrrrrrrrrrrible for anyone that isnt on the forums.

Doc L

Compared to 99% of games I play, the communication is a ton better. Take WoH as a good example as it is also a phone game, involving collecting - they do very little to converse until it's too late, and most times, compensation is poor for mistakes, whilst content is repetitive (though addictive). MPQ is much much better.

Relating to one other Marvel game, Marvel Heroes on PC, the communication there is perhaps the best of any game I've seen or played, and I would recommend looking at the way they tease/release details in advance, often weeks ahead of time, and ask for huge input on characters, powers, etc etc. I realise this is different in many of the options, but letting us know a week ahead that say Cyclops is coming in as a 3* on a pve starting on x day, would help a lot.

Unknown

Communication is better and not really the issue. It's the continued "lets just change the game and let people test it" attitude. Some really silly decisions being made, smacks a bit of laziness or just not thinking it through. They do tend to face up to it though (the awful banner for goon generation etc).

JVReal

I think that as a whole, they do really well. I've only been playing for 136 game days and during that time, I've seen their communication improve. I don't know exactly what it was like before, but I've been mostly satisfied. This gauntlet token scenario is one of the few times where they have dropped the ball. It may seem like a tiny, tiny mistake that really only impacted 1% of the population, but the way it was handled made it way worse than it should have been. The lack of "proper" communication was their undoing here. I don't know IceX, but it sure sounded to me like he was having a bad day and didn't want to be at work on Monday when he "communicated" the error, fix and non-apology.
This one tiny occurrence that has had such a negative reaction will be remembered far more often than the myriads of positive communications that have occurred in the past 3 months. That's just how it works. That's why communication and customer service is so vital to a company that wants to succeed that doesn't have a monopoly on a market. Utility companies, cell phone service providers, and government don't care about customer service because you "need" their services (literally or implied) and you have little choice in who you get it from. Cell phone game companies are not a "necessity" therefore should be very conscious of how their customers feel about their experience with the game.
If you rank high in customer service, you rank high in trust and forgiveness. Part of giving good customer service is accepting feedback from your customers. I think this forum is good at giving feedback, and though it is a tiny sample of their customer base, it is a good group that has many well thought out ideas. That being said, we should not harass others for posting their complaints, because along with compliments, complaints are still a form of feedback whether we feel they are nitpicking or not.
Overall they are doing good, but when going uphill, you only need to trip once to tumble back down to the bottom and start the trek up again bruised and battered.

Unknown

Good to the point ISIS get its target

Unknown

I think overall they've improved, and they could improve further, particularly with telegraphing changes a little earlier. I'm a little dismayed that people treat every response as if it should be a professional HR response, thought out and considering every possibility. The fact of the matter is that takes time, and monitoring every post in the forum takes away from other design/development time. I'd rather they continue with quicker timely responses to upcoming issues rather than having to wait a 2-3 days before being able to respond to a question over fears that a portion of the reading crowd might have a unexpected bad reaction to a quicker less thorough response.

KrazyKeylime

I think this forum has a very active community, and MPQ could benefit greatly from advice the community can give for upcoming changes, balancing issues, making the game more fun to play. the game could also use a general announcement linking to the forum. i only found it to complain about true healing.

Lidolas

Square wrote:

Good. I've been playing games for 25 years (unfortunately, I hit 40 this year ), and this is the first time I've ever interacted with a game publisher in any way whatsoever. This has been my first experience with a game company that interacts with its fanbase.

I've played other social/mobile games with a similar format. They have a forum they host and players do most of the talking. In most cases, it's a similar experience. The devs provide some info. But I haven't seen any that are as involved as d3 is. I think compared with the industry (in my experience) they are doing a great job. I think it's unfair to compare them to other industries' Quality Assurance or Customer Service.

Druss

On the whole I would say Good

For instance, the recent Q&A video format was much better than wading through a large chunk of text.

Also the recent addition of the goon notification, albeit poorly implemented, shows that D3 are reacting to the feedback received.

Vankysher

daibar wrote:

I think overall they've improved, and they could improve further, particularly with telegraphing changes a little earlier. I'm a little dismayed that people treat every response as if it should be a professional HR response, thought out and considering every possibility. The fact of the matter is that takes time, and monitoring every post in the forum takes away from other design/development time. I'd rather they continue with quicker timely responses to upcoming issues rather than having to wait a 2-3 days before being able to respond to a question over fears that a portion of the reading crowd might have a unexpected bad reaction to a quicker less thorough response.

They are still a work in progress but all it takes is one big public snafu resulting in financial repercussions which is why every official response should be a professional response.
At the end of the day, they are employees of a business and they represent that business. Sure they can be personable and chummy on a forum but they have to remember they're interacting with their most passionate fans which may only be a small subset of their customer base but typically have a disproportional influence, positive and/or negative, on how others perceive the company.

I still remember one of the first trainings I had on customer service where the corporate trainer asked everyone to recall their last negative experience with a business and pretty much everyone could recall in great detail whatever grievance they had with whichever company. Then the trainer asked the converse of which company provided you with such great service that it was truly memorable. You maybe had a handful of people that could remember even the company name much less what happened.

lukewin

Figured I'd bump this post, in case I made a new poll and it got locked for being a duplicate thread. If I would've bumped this post before Galactus, my answers would be completely different, b/c communication had gotten better (IceIX's LINE Q&A, IceIX's recent activity on forums, Sneak Peek threads). Sucks that the communication can continue to be an issue 8 months later.

Raffoon

I thought it was getting so much better. We had a bunch of sticky topics with info, a sneak peek thread that was updated pretty regularly, and pretty decent forum interaction.

Then..... Anniversary wiped all that goodwill away.

Malcrof

Remember, they are at comic-con right now.. yesterday, the people we needed were probably in-transit or unable to look at the forums.. today may bring some hope.

Raffoon

Malcrof wrote:

Remember, they are at comic-con right now.. yesterday, the people we needed were probably in-transit or unable to look at the forums.. today may bring some hope.

I'll agree that probably explains a lot of the "why" on the poor communication. Unfortunately, it doesn't make it any more acceptable.

They could have:
Had people travel a day early so they'd be available on the single most important day for communication of the year.

or

Had someone check and post to the forums on a smartphone.

Seriously, if I just didn't show up for work on the most important day of the year, I'd probably be fired. This is not acceptable behavior.