PSA: Please Don't Post Spoilers!

GothicKratos

There's an obvious difference between "this is what's coming in the near future" or "this is how championing works" and "this is what I'd like to see"/"this would be neat"/"here's a suggestion" thread - sort of like the distinct difference between a suggestion and a conversation.

This intentionally pretentious thing doesn't suit you, Mawtful, just go back to your normal routine of complaining and/or necroing old threads with spam.

[EDIT] On the case of reading spoilers, the only thing I personally read is what I happen across on Line. There's nothing anyone can do to stop people from posting spoilers outside of the forums (Tumblr, Line, other forums, etc), but the developers don't want them to be on the forums, so they won't be.

Bowgentle

Yesterday (29th) would have been the perfect day to put a detailed explanation of championing into a forum thread.
It was the last day of the app store freeze period, so the developers were assured that the explanation is around before the patch hits.

As it is, I fully expect the patch to show up today whenever the app store refreshes without any explanation beforehand.

It's not rocket science: As soon as you submit your patch to first parties, write a detailed explanation of new features - because the details are FIXED once you submit.
Prepare the info for the community manager to post BEFORE the patch goes live.
If the community manager is not around, have a mod post the thread.

If the details are not well liked by the community, you only delay the pitchforks by staying mum until the very last possible moment. This does not help you.

But we know communication isn't their strong side, along with playtesting, funbalancing, understanding of high end play, etc.
So no reason to be surprised, really.

Malcrof

Bowgentle wrote:

Yesterday (29th) would have been the perfect day to put a detailed explanation of championing into a forum thread.
It was the last day of the app store freeze period, so the developers were assured that the explanation is around before the patch hits.

As it is, I fully expect the patch to show up today whenever the app store refreshes without any explanation beforehand.

It's not rocket science: As soon as you submit your patch to first parties, write a detailed explanation of new features - because the details are FIXED once you submit.
Prepare the info for the community manager to post BEFORE the patch goes live.
If the community manager is not around, have a mod post the thread.

If the details are not well liked by the community, you only delay the pitchforks by staying mum until the very last possible moment. This does not help you.

But we know communication isn't their strong side, along with playtesting, funbalancing, understanding of high end play, etc.
So no reason to be surprised, really.

From what i understand, vacation until the 1st would be why!

Bowgentle

Malcrof wrote:

From what i understand, vacation until the 1st would be why!

Yeah, then let one of you green guys post it.
The info was ready when the patch was submitted, so the post could have been prepared weeks ago.

Unless they submitted with their last click before leaving the office, without leaving any internal patchnotes.
Which is possible, knowing their track record.

kensterr

Just like the mods having green names, the devs also like the color green, especially Jean Grey's green... FULL OF SURPRISES! when the update comes out. SURPRISE!

JamieMadrox

Bowgentle wrote:

Malcrof wrote:

From what i understand, vacation until the 1st would be why!

Yeah, then let one of you green guys post it.
The info was ready when the patch was submitted, so the post could have been prepared weeks ago.

Unless they submitted with their last click before leaving the office, without leaving any internal patchnotes.
Which is possible, knowing their track record.

In general, even though it's already in the code it needs to be enabled by a daily patch so the devs still have the option to not turn it on right up to , and beyond, r91 release.

JamieMadrox

Mawtful wrote:

colwag wrote:

Mawtful wrote:

But how would you know if that information has been released/announced? I could easily post something that looks legit but is entirely fabricated. What if I'm just guessing but I turn out to guess correctly?

Probably depends how trustworthy you find said datamined information.

Like, before the new Spiderman and Venom release, I peeked at one of the spoilerblogs out of curiosity and they datamined a new Spiderman and new Venom, and had their powers listed.

BUT.... in their descriptions of Spiderman's powers, they mentioned "Peter", not Miles. And obv. Venom's powers changed a bit before release, too.

The datamine was accurate for the important spoiler part, but the data wasn't exactly complete.

Ah, sorry, bit of mis-communication on my behalf. When I said "how would you know" I meant "how would the mods know". Since mods are going to remove posts which reference specific details (such as ability names), then they have to know what those details actually are.
Either they're getting advanced notification from the devs - in which case why not just release it all anyway? - or they're datamining/reading spoiler sites themselves - so if it's ok for mods then why isn't it ok for the rest of us?

Yes we get advanced information in some cases. We need to in order to be able to mod the forums effectively. That said, a lot of times we'll get told "X information is a datamined spoiler, please remove all mentions of it and stop leaks" so really we have no more advanced info than anyone else.

Nobody is saying you can't read spoiler information on other sites. We're just saying that the rules are no spoiler information on this site.

Mawtful wrote:

So we can't post specific details, but we're still allowed to guess, but what happens if someone guesses correctly?

Obviously guesses are completely different than datamined info. It's once thing to say "wouldn't it be cool if..." and another to say "here is X new unannounced feature and how it works/what it does"

Mawtful wrote:

Guessing colours based off the character name is highly probable - you may not get the right order, but there's only a finite number of possibilities.

Sure and this has always been the cases. Colours are fairly predictable based on the game mechanics. We know that specific colours map to specific ability types so guessing colours based on character is not hard. Again, there's a big difference between saying "X character may be these colours based on their abilities" and saying "X character is going to be these colours because the code says so".

Mawtful wrote:

Guessing the powers for a character, well that's a bit harder, although the devs do tend to stick to certain patterns - especially in the 4* tier. At my count there are 10 out of 25 4*'s that have two actives and one passive, 4 of those have been in the last 3 months, so I think it's a pretty solid guess. The specific powers are all hybrids of existing stuff, just presented in a slightly new way. Black Bolt's scream is called the "Quasi-Sonic Scream" on his Marvel wiki page - it's easily his defining ability and it's got a specific name, so I'd very much expect that he would have it as an ability and it would be named correctly. So does guessing it count as spoiling if it actually does turn up in the game?

Again, I'd expect people to figure out a new character's general ability set based on their knowledge of the character, but specifics would be a huge stretch to guess. Guessing that Old Man Logan would have healing is one thing. Guessing the specifics of it would be another since it works differently from the other 3 Wolverines in the game (which are all different from each other too).

At the end of the day it all boils down to using common sense and not being a troll. The rule is no spoilers. Follow it or get banned. If you want to datamine your own spoiler info and post it elsewhere or talk about it on Line or Facebook, go nuts. I don't care and neither does anyone else.

Dayv

One more thing:

If someone doing data-mining wants to post their "guesses" --that is, spoilers phrased as if the information is simply conjecture to try to keep it from getting deleted -- sooner or later it's gonna get noticed. A dev might notice it and ask us to remove it (as mentioned above), or if one of the mods thinks it smells fishy we might ask the devs to take a look at it.

In the past, the devs have been extremely firm against spoiler posts in the forums. There has even been talk of not only banning the poster, but possibly even locking their account out of the game. I don't know if they plan to do this at any point, but really: is posting spoilers worth the risk?

Not speaking as a moderator:

As far as not announcing the new feature yet, they may have a press release or marvel.com article planned for the announcement to coincide with the feature's release to players. In cases like that, they keep an absolute lock on the info until the article or press release goes live, due to publicity agreements. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if we see such an article comes out early next week detailing both the teased new character (I think it's Black Bolt, too) and the heavily speculated and (possibly inaccurately) data-mined new feature.

News sites are less interested in running a story if the info is publicly known, because they'll get less traffic. Similarly, D3 and Demiurge want the story to go wide because every time they get featured outside of the dedicated player community, they'll get an influx of new players. As much as we all talk about them designing features for whales, new players are the lifeblood of any freemium game.

jffdougan

As a player who has been firmly in the anti-spoiler camp, I wouldn't mind more drastic action happening.

jobob

So when someone posts a thread and says "lets have a 'theoretical' discussion" about this potential feature (which, granted, some have mentioned as being a possible spoiler)... that gets deleted also?

D3 has an opportunity to get feedback from the player base (possibly ahead of time if the guess is right, or just good general feedback about how the players would feel about a particular mechanic)... and rather than even doing us the courtesy of simply IGNORING us, they go so far as to have the mods delete it?

You have to understand how bad this looks. It comes across as D3 intentionally burying their head in the sand by locking down any discussion on the topic, so if the player base doesn't like a new feature, they can play the "BUT WE HAD NO IDEA" card. Otherwise, why not just leave up a theoretical discussion?

Malcrof

jobob wrote:

So when someone posts a thread and says "lets have a 'theoretical' discussion" about this potential feature (which, granted, some have mentioned as being a possible spoiler)... that gets deleted also?

D3 has an opportunity to get feedback from the player base (possibly ahead of time if the guess is right, or just good general feedback about how the players would feel about a particular mechanic)... and rather than even doing us the courtesy of simply IGNORING us, they go so far as to have the mods delete it?

You have to understand how bad this looks. It comes across as D3 intentionally burying their head in the sand by locking down any discussion on the topic, so if the player base doesn't like a new feature, they can play the "BUT WE HAD NO IDEA" card. Otherwise, why not just leave up a theoretical discussion?

At least it isn't like hardware tech companies, who have people arrested and jailed for leaking things.

Corporate leaks and corporate espionage (which is basically what data-mining is, if you worked for a competitor of demiurge etc) is a crime. (industrial spying and the uses of data mining in gathering business intelligence to be exact, had to msg my bro-in-law to get the wording, nice having a detective in the family, even if he is a tinykitty).

If they wanted everyone's input, i am 100% sure they would ask, no-one has ever accused this forum of not speaking it's mind, or letting them know how they feel about a particular component, and being brutally honest about it. The fact that they are being strict right now, means they don't want the input, they are sure of what they are doing, and want us all to be surprised when it happens.

We will all have a chance to give them our opinions when it goes live! Which hopefully will be soon!

DaveR4470

jobob

Malcrof wrote:

At least it isn't like hardware tech companies, who have people arrested and jailed for leaking things.

Corporate leaks and corporate espionage (which is basically what data-mining is, if you worked for a competitor of demiurge etc) is a crime. (industrial spying and the uses of data mining in gathering business intelligence to be exact, had to msg my bro-in-law to get the wording, nice having a detective in the family, even if he is a tinykitty).

I don't think anyone here is supporting the data mining or corporate espionage... I am certainly not.

But when someone says "let's have a discussion about what you would like to see IF a certain gameplay mechanic were THEORETICALLY introduced," it's not a spoiler. It's not corporate espionage. It's not industrial spying.

Comparing it to those things is just silly.

The fact that they are being strict right now, means they don't want the input, they are sure of what they are doing, and want us all to be surprised when it happens.

...Yeah, that's definitely the message they are sending. I just assumed that they wouldn't particularly want to send that message, but if that's what they are trying to communicate... job well done, I suppose.

mpqr7

It would be nice if they at least posted a date when we'd be getting more information. Something such as "If y'all can just hold tight until Jan __, 2016, all will be explained then". Most of us want to know when we can stop stockpiling all our tokens and sell everything (or not).

Malcrof

The ultimate trolling... What if the hint isn't Blue and Black at all, but White and Gold???????

ronin_san

Malcrof wrote:

The ultimate trolling... What if the hint isn't Blue and Black at all, but White and Gold???????

Lidolas

Malcrof wrote:

The ultimate trolling... What if the hint isn't Blue and Black at all, but White and Gold???????

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/10/101073/2233533-stk463488.jpg

Heroic Age Iron Fist!

ronin_san

Lidolas wrote:

Malcrof wrote:

The ultimate trolling... What if the hint isn't Blue and Black at all, but White and Gold???????

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/10/101073/2233533-stk463488.jpg

Heroic Age Iron Fist!

I'm all for that.

Malcrof

ronin-san wrote:

Lidolas wrote:

Malcrof wrote:

The ultimate trolling... What if the hint isn't Blue and Black at all, but White and Gold???????

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/10/101073/2233533-stk463488.jpg

Heroic Age Iron Fist!

I'm all for that.

Seconded!

itstime1234

While I agree spoilers in this forum shouldn't be condoned, I also recall that when the Spoiler thread was closed an announcement was made that D3 would be much more proactive in their communication.

Outside of when they royally mess up the only time they posted with any frequency was when IceIX was bidding farewell. It would be nice to have a fairly more regular dialogue.

And before people say maybe there is nothing to talk about. People are begging for any form of an update on championing. Even if the response is its still be worked on and is several weeks away that is much better than what has been given.