Forum Vitriol

Mawtful

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, "This too shall pass".

ClydeFrog76

Smudge

Here is where I think a lot of the problem lies:

NOTE: This was originally posted on May 2, 2016. Bagman has posted all of 3 additional times, the last time being May 13. Demiurge_Anthony has posted all of 11 times since Bagman's post, with the most recent being May 13. No other Demiurge names have a single post to their names since 2015.

Demiurge_[bagman] wrote:

Hello all,

I'll be trying to improve forum communication from Demiurge. A bit.

Communicating well takes time & effort, and frankly we're not good at it. We know it.

We've tried more communication in the past and it hasn't always gone well. As a result the devs now shy away from posting. Regardless, I'm going to try again. If you can't tell, I'm not a PR person.

The ground rules:

Please be patient, I don't know everything and I can't share everything. I can't make any promises about what I can share or how often we'll have new info. My skin is very thin. If the thread devolves I disengage.

Thanks for your suggestions, thoughts, and demands for a better game. We want a better game, too. Thank you for playing MPQ.

I understand that we get "the good word from 'Anthony/Demi'" from David maybe once a week, and I am not knocking David's abilities or efforts as the community manager by any means.

When you supposedly understand that your communication sucks, acknowledge that it sucks, and actively continue to ignore people despite said acknowledgement, you are going to piss people off and draw ire, sarcasm, and cynicism at every corner. It's disillusionment, and instead of healthy engagement with the development crowd, we get announcements from a community manager that say, "This is the way it is now." No opportunity to engage, no follow up until the next proclamation.

I sympathize with OP that things tend to be charged with negative energy around here, and I'm not one to keep sarcasm to myself. However, when your process to engage with your community is dictated by making promises that you know you will never even attempt to keep, you are going to breed the exact attitudes you see in here daily.

FaerieMyst

I used to read and post here often but the negativity just soured me on it. I really don't understand why someone spends time doing something that makes them as unhappy as many of these posts indicate.

I ebb and flow with the game. I play less PVP now. Sometimes I hit a PVE hard for top placement. Sometimes I ignore it entirely. Depends on life at the moment.

I play Game of War pretty hardcore. There is an illusion of generosity from the game. If you are a low level player, it is very generous. If you play to rank high, it's a drop in the bucket. Yep, the game gave me 50k experience .....except it requires 1.5 billion to get to the next level. 50k was huge when I was level 10. At level 57 not so much. It's all about perspective.

I love my devices and games. They are a break from a lot of stress. Seriously, I would uninstall if any game upset me the way it seems to upset some posters.

puppychow

Ludaa wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

I dunno about anyone else but the quality of a devs engagement on a forum does not dictate my enjoyment of a game, other wise I would never play any games.


I think people expect too much, how many other games have a forum where devs give info ? Do any of the big gun?

Slightly related...

I've been periodically reading the official forums (reddit as well) for Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes and It's like watching the history of MPQ forums in fast forward! They're at 9 months I think and are dealing with their own "bait and switch" XF/Thor nerf. Developers seem to be slowing communication with every community uproar.

See, the smart play would be to IGNORE official game forums entirely. reading forums = more angst. Ignorance = bliss. You should have learned that from your engagement w/ D3 forums. Tsk Tsk

Pylgrim

OneLastGambit wrote:

Ruinate wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

I dunno about anyone else but the quality of a devs engagement on a forum does not dictate my enjoyment of a game, other wise I would never play any games.


I think people expect too much, how many other games have a forum where devs give info ? Do any of the big gun?

Please see Riot or Blizzard forums. Also see their presence on Reddit. It's a beautiful thing.

When I first joined this forum I wondered why we don't have a button that shows all the recent Dev posts. Why do I have to go into a Red's profile to find their posting history? Then I quickly realized lol what Dev posts.

I stand corrected. I come from a time when the best you got from a dev was a catridge and an instruction book (and sometimes even that didn't work) so I guess I'm accustomed to far less communication.

When you have to use ways of making business and keeping a playerbase in videogames outdated by almost 3 decades to make appear a today's occurrence as not out of the ordinary, you should know you are doing things wrong. And then you remember that back then videogame makers actually published monthly magazines! Or take for example the amount and quality of communication that WotC has maintained ever since those ancient times for their Magic and D&D communities.

But I digress.

As someone who battled vitriol in these forums back in the day, I'm not sure that the amount of discontent nowadays is bad enough to be qualified as vitriol. It's more disappointment and disenfranchisement caused mostly, as others have pointed, by lack of communication. Hatred and anger are often but love gone sour and many people love and have loved the game and saw its potential, only to be given a cold, silent shoulder from its creators when issues arise (and perdure. For years.) Such is not the way of making businesses in our digital era, especially of the "continuous service" type as MPQ is, as opposed to a one-off purchase of a product and people know it, even if only at subconscious levels.

People who laugh at the outrage the see in the forum and are quick to dismiss its population as a "self-entitled 1%" of the playerbase, often neglect to notice that many of the complaints raised when new features/changes are announced, turn to be true or develop as predicted. Even if you don't like the whining or angry voice of such complaints, the community has a fairly accurate record of identifying issues in the game early, including some that are acknowledged by the devs... only several months after being warned by the community when their implementation was first announced.

Devs ignore the community's feedback and neglect to interact with it at their own peril. Ironically, one of the biggest complaints by the community these days is the lack of communication and by ignoring or dismissing it, they just make the vicious cycle to circle once again.

Calnexin

OneLastGambit wrote:

I stand corrected. I come from a time when the best you got from a dev was a catridge and an instruction book (and sometimes even that didn't work) so I guess I'm accustomed to far less communication.

That was also a time when you got one discrete offering. The devs never asked you to pony up cash for upgrades and updates. It's a different world. One where any gaming experience is crafted to be at least marginally open-ended to create more income post-release. Given the articles I've read re: development hell, I don't think the gaming industry can afford not to employ that model.

This particular business model, with potential to extend indefinitely, really should rely on both player data and their feedback to lengthen the life of the game. I've seen more than one (professed) paying customer on these forums quit because it stopped being fun. This is possibly the most valuable source of data the dev team has access to - the players who like the game so much that rather than delete it, stop playing it for long enough to post on message boards hoping to make their experience less onerous.