A note on tone (props for d3 this time)

Vhailorx

I just wanted to take a minute to praise to D3 (specifically Cthulhu and Brigby) for the marked improvement in redname communication over the past 4 days of, for lack of a better term, Bonus Hero-Gate.


During the height of player outrage over the Boss Rush debacle, the last definitive redname comment on the event was thursday (the second day of the event) and it was pretty sparse.

Greetings, all.
The dev team wanted to let everyone know they have been reading your feedback and taking it into consideration. Here's word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"Hey everyone,

We're trying a bunch of new stuff with the initial run of Boss Rush and we appreciate hearing your thoughts. We'll look at our data to see how people did and combine that with the feedback to help improve future runs of the event. Thanks for playing the event, and keep the feedback coming!"

Thank you.

That was one of just a handful of comments issued during the botched event. It did not directly engage with player's stated concerns, nor even describe any of the new features implemented with boss rush. It was hard to read it as anything but a non-answer.

Things have been a fair bit better from d3 with respect to Bonus Heroes (though demi has been silent). Cthulhu and brigby were both posting comments during the day on friday (and fairly late into their workdays too). They directly acknowledged player concerns and discussed some specific details about the new system. They noted that any response would not happen until after the weekend. And then on Monday they posted again to say that they had completed an initial discussion with demi, and that potential responses were being considered.

This is all good! I have always said that rename communication, even communication of bad news, was preferable to silence. And by and large I think the player community has responded to this latest controversy in a more polite fashion (yes, there are still some players who have been rude and non-constructive, but that will probably always be the case.)

Now, all that said, demi/d3 could still mess this up. The week after Boss Rush had ended, after continued player frustrations with the lack of official comment on the debacle, d3 posted this:

Confirming that no additional statements are planned at this time regarding the Boss Rush event.

The dev team have taken your feedback into consideration and are currently going over the in-game data. The plan is to factor everything in for any future runs.

Thank you.

This statement was very very hard to interpret as anything but "we have heard you, we aren't going to do anything, now sit down and shut up!" Please do not do that again. I urge d3 to continue providing players with timely communication, even if you are communicating bad news like "the vaulting system is staying". If demi doesn't fix problems caused by vaulting, then I and others will complain about the resulting negative effects on the player experience, but it will likely be a polite, if exasperated discussion. If demi doesn't fix the problems, AND doesn't acknowledge player frustrations or communicate anything about its thought processes to players, then it will be right back to the flame wars and "It's fun and challenging!" memes.

So many thanks to d3 for solid communication of not so great information over the past few days. I hope that we can expect both better info and continued communication moving forward.