Do devs actually read the forums any more?

Cartoon Face

This isn't an attack of any sort. I'm just intrigued if the devs even bother reading any of these posts any more?

I noticed Ice has been silent for well over a month and David only ever seems to post in the news and announcements page once every blue moon.

A little concerned that all these posts in suggestions and feedback along with the rest of the forum are just there for the sake of it?

Phumade

heheh,

Ice quit about a month a go, and Dave has lots of meetings that he has to attend.

Cartoon Face

Hope the meetings are not regarding new characters to MPQ lol

chamber44

Honestly, if you were them, would you read the forums?

It's a bunch of nerds on the internet **** about their hard work.

(not that I think they're doing a good job. I'm just not surprised they're not here).

Cartoon Face

chamber44 wrote:

Honestly, if you were them, would you read the forums?

It's a bunch of nerds on the internet **** about their hard work.

(not that I think they're doing a good job. I'm just not surprised they're not here).

At the end of the day it's a business. Like any business ; if you do not hear what your customers have to say and respect their views/points/suggestions then the company will slowly lose profit and plunge.

In all honesty i would be proud to have made this game. It's great fun, highly addictive and has a lot of progression. It is just frustrating when there are loads of great suggestions being put out there and nobody there to acknowledge them. It gives you the feeling of 'why even bother, they don't seem to care'

The last thing i want to do is moan but i also hate seeing great feedback go unread/unused.

Linkster79

chamber44 wrote:

Honestly, if you were them, would you read the forums?

It's a bunch of nerds on the internet **** about their hard work.

(not that I think they're doing a good job. I'm just not surprised they're not here).

If I were a community manager for a company that specialises in mobile gaming that had its own forums I would. Something tells me it would be part of the job description.

evil panda

They've proven time and again that they read the forums.

They may not respond to questions
They may not action all feedback
We may not like the actions they take

But they certainly read. I know this because whatever actions they take are generally influenced by, or in response to, the **** that we throw on here.

There are some inexplicable exceptions like sparkly victory banners and stunned opponents magically jumping to the back, but I won't get into those

Tatercat

Linkster79 wrote:

chamber44 wrote:

Honestly, if you were them, would you read the forums?

It's a bunch of nerds on the internet **** about their hard work.

(not that I think they're doing a good job. I'm just not surprised they're not here).

If I were a community manager for a company that specialises in mobile gaming that had its own forums I would. Something tells me it would be part of the job description.

Actually that sounds like work for the interns. (only half joking on that, I've seen the mentality firsthand).

kalex716

Probably not.

Here is how it typically goes in the games industry...

Particular dev's may check a bit just after release to get a sense of what the temperature might be like for the update with respects to pet features and the like, but after that it is the community managers responsibility to represent and express our interests to the developers as a whole. Most devs are encouraged NOT to participate in community discussions, because interfacing with customers directly is its own skillset. Most dev's are not trained in how to properly communicate directly with end users.

Remember, the community team is generally a separate department from the guys who actually build games.

The Community team-to-developer team pipeline can have mixed results. Its success is dependant on how good the community team is, and how competent the production team is on the development side to pipe community feedback into actual achievable, executable goals for the developers within reasonable timelines.

Source: I work in game dev.

Linkster79

chamber44 wrote:

It's a bunch of nerds on the internet **** about their hard work.

Also I am a geek not a nerd, big difference.

Cartoon Face

evil panda wrote:

They've proven time and again that they read the forums.

They may not respond to questions
They may not action all feedback
We may not like the actions they take

But they certainly read. I know this because whatever actions they take are generally influenced by, or in response to, the **** that we throw on here.

There are some inexplicable exceptions like sparkly victory banners and stunned opponents magically jumping to the back, but I won't get into those

Have they though, they seem to fix bugs pretty fast but i have not really seen anything from suggestions and feedback ever really make the cut. I certainly have not seen a suggestion for a 'sparkly victory banner'

I read a lot regarding ISO for one, 20 iso per match is abysmal in the direction the game is going. I completely understand that it is a marathon not a sprint but someone who starts the game today i doubt very much would play for long with the sheer amount of iso they need to gather and then champion before they start getting a very small slither of that back for every cover they get; and lets face it these covers do not come fast.

Another example i read in suggestion is regarding the sell all function when you have multiple covers to sell. Sometimes you just have covers you wish to keep hold of for more reasons than one. I cant imagine it being that hard to implement a check box system of some sort as was suggested.

Again these are examples i see regularly with no feedback or thoughts from the devs themselves. I understand if this is not a simple thing to do but some acknowledgement every now and then would go a long way.

Cartoon Face

kalex716 wrote:

Probably not.

Here is how it typically goes in the games industry...

Particular dev's may check a bit just after release to get a sense of what the temperature might be like for the update with respects to pet features and the like, but after that it is the community managers responsibility to represent and express our interests to the developers as a whole. Most devs are encouraged NOT to participate in community discussions, because interfacing with customers directly is its own skillset. Most dev's are not trained in how to properly communicate directly with end users.

Remember, the community team is generally a separate department from the guys who actually build games.

The Community team-to-developer team pipeline can have mixed results. Its success is dependant on how good the community team is, and how competent the production team is on the development side to pipe community feedback into actual achievable, executable goals for the developers within reasonable timelines.

Source: I work in game dev.

Would it not be a good idea for a dev to take a look every now and then to see where and what people think of their work. How things could be improved, even without responding they could perhaps pass the message on that certain areas are being looked in to. Look at Ice for example, at least every so often he would show his face and reply. Start topics of what we would like to see from the game etc.

Ludaa

Our devs probably do read, but someone has decided they make more money by keeping us in the dark.

The Adventure Time Puzzle Quest developer team introduced themselves yesterday. It was the most adorable thing my icy, veteran heart has ever seen.

Cartoon Face

Ludaa wrote:

Our devs probably do read, but someone has decided they make more money by keeping us in the dark.

The Adventure Time Puzzle Quest developer team introduced themselves yesterday. It was the most adorable thing my icy, veteran heart has ever seen.

Well you've certainly cheered me up with your sense of humour

Needed that!

Malcrof

From what i know:
the Devs (Demiurge), other than posting the odd announcement here and there, really only check the suggestions and bugs threads (they may read GD, but rarely post in it).

Supposition:
The producers, (D3Go) ala Dave and Cthulhu pop in from time to time and check general etc.. but mostly announcements and sometimes clarifications or answering of questions.

We know they read, or else the PVP list error in the Jan Preview thread would have gone unnoticed, but remember, they are at work, and with 4 games, most likely very busy.. the forums, in general for companies without a dedicated forum/media person (like blizzard has), are usually for players helping players, and announcements.

I'm sure at some point they will pop in for a little Q&A or to answer some things, but for the most part, now, they do read (you can see them lurking from time to time) and save posting for important stuff.

simonsez

Malcrof wrote:

remember, they are at work

Aren't we ALL posting from work?

SnowcaTT

Did they ever? Seemed like one would pop in once a month, not much anymore though.

mpqr7

Well, I made a request to receive all the gifts at once, and they did that, so I don't know if it's because I posted it, but I'm happy that it happened all the same.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36549&p=454613

TxMoose

simonsez wrote:

Malcrof wrote:

remember, they are at work

Aren't we ALL posting from work?

many, if not most. we sure have a lot of passionate people about the game on the forums but when those for whom the game is their job don't show the same passion or dedication, the dedicated/passionate playerbase doesn't understand. really, I wish I had a job I could be as passionate about, but I don't and the devs job is probably a lower level of passion than the core of the active forumites. and I can understand that somewhat, but that doesn't make it less frustrating.

The Viceroy Returns

kalex716 wrote:

Probably not.

Here is how it typically goes in the games industry...

Particular dev's may check a bit just after release to get a sense of what the temperature might be like for the update with respects to pet features and the like, but after that it is the community managers responsibility to represent and express our interests to the developers as a whole. Most devs are encouraged NOT to participate in community discussions, because interfacing with customers directly is its own skillset. Most dev's are not trained in how to properly communicate directly with end users.

Remember, the community team is generally a separate department from the guys who actually build games.

The Community team-to-developer team pipeline can have mixed results. Its success is dependent on how good the community team is, and how competent the production team is on the development side to pipe community feedback into actual achievable, executable goals for the developers within reasonable timelines.

Source: I work in game dev.

Sounds about right based on my own experience in gameDev as well.

It can also be a weird thing where devs aren't "allowed" to talk about what they are working on until it's final. The champion feature is the best example of this. As soon as data miners found out about the possibility of such a feature, the devs should have just come clean and admitted the feature was coming, but many details of the exact implementation were still to be determined. Instead, it got so ridiculous that people's posts were getting deleted and even forum banned just by mentioning it because the information that was out there was not gated correctly.
"Don't you dare mention anything about a vague feature that maybe is possibly coming sometime within the next 4 months or else you'll be banned."
Coming clean earlier in the process would have felt much less antagonistic to the player base, and let people know more specifically something big was coming, instead of a vague "a big new feature is coming" with no context whatsoever.

The dev that let's slip mention about a vague feature everyone takes as gospel because a dev said it. That's partly why IMO those dev video are dangerous (it's been November since the last one; I have a feeling we won't get any more), because they don't ever answer questions or address specific issues that we want them to. When they do attempt to mention specific features/issues, it's always vague intangible concepts or "no comment" that just leaves us guessing or confused.
It almost feels like the Drew Rosenhaus / Terrell Owens press conference from back in the day where he answered every question with "no comment".
Why even bother say anything if you technically aren't saying anything? It makes them look bad because it seems like they don't have their **** together, or are just being obtrusive.

The moral of the story is:
Dev to playerbase communication can be hard. There's lots of things to take into consideration that makes it take more thought than one would think, but it can be done if you know what you're doing or think of it as important.
As this game has grown (and both the dev & publisher have more total projects active), forum presence has probably been squeezed out in favor of supporting other things.

fight4thedream

While the devs tend to have long periods of silence for reasons unknown, they have implemented many changes that were requested on the forum:

Year 1 changes: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17193
Year 2 changes: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=34297

Obviously not all changes made were forum requested or player friendly. But big ones like time slices (Cheers to Dr. Unpleasant who championed this cause), compensation for alliance roster slots, removal of community scaling and not so big changes like delaying the Daken nerf and the occasional instances of compensation for in-game trouble were in response to specific forum requests.

What should be noted is that many of these changes took time to implement and were not actively discussed with the forum community.

I also miss having a red name pop in from time to time to take questions and let us know what's up. Hopefully we will see a pick up in communication "soon".