Wall of text : what's really going wrong

Laeuftbeidir

There are tons of things that are currently going wrong in this game. Some recent changes may hold the potential to improve our experience in mtgpq, but since there is really not much to do in-game, it actually doesn't have a notable impact.

We have old problems like the stall content (check out the link in my signature, btw), we have new problems like the bug denying some players to play at all. I won't be listing every problem right now since we all know them. I'm not even mad that there are bugs after the update: Everybody makes mistakes, and the only way to totally avoid this kind of problems  would be  not to change anything.

So far for the being nice and understandingly part. As I said, I don't judge based on things people did wrong when doing their job; however I do judge, and do get mad mostly in two cases :
When people decide to avoid problems by ignoring them (or, more simple, dont care) , and when the communication is not adequate to the situation.
There are threads all over the board, concerning major problems, minor problems, positive and negative feedback, and most of them are not taken care of properly. Whenever a red name takes the time to answer anything, we take it as it would be something special.. That alone shows how brocken the communication really is.

The more problematic the situation is, the more communication is necessary, it's as simple as that. Right now the communication is just totally random : one day three admins are available and responsive, other days no one is. And if they are, it's a gamble on what they answer.

We have no idea what the tinikitty is going on.
The developers are busy unscrewing things they screwed up? That doesn't mean they couldn't keep us updated at all. Just make an announcement.
Only if they really don't care at all this behavior is understandable, and since the players are paying their wage there are only two good reasons to do so : because we who are active in the forum are an unimportant minority, or just because this game is already canceled.

We won't care if the update takes a day more or less, but we do care about how we're treated: More communication is a win win scenario. Situations like the current 3k brackets, the missing rewards, the missing events etc wouldn't be as annoying as they are if they'd just been announced in advance..just responding days later on the 7th page of a discussion isn't enough. Not even close.

shteev

Laeuftbeidir said:

There are tons of things that are currently going wrong in this game. Some recent changes may hold the potential to improve our experience in mtgpq, but since there is really not much to do in-game, it actually doesn't have a notable impact.

Agreed. The new planeswalker selection and deckbuilding interfaces are pretty great, I think. There are some bugs, and some features that could do with tweaking, but in general they make it much easier to prepare our decks for the same old boring events being run week in and week out.

Is communication really the problem tho? The missing events, the 3k brackets, the missing rewards... they didn't know these things were going to be happening. They've shut down coalition events to solve one of these problems, and they're working hard on that problem, and they want us to understand while they take the time to fix it... not so much with the other problems, tho.

Laeuftbeidir

shteev said:

Is communication really the problem tho? The missing events, the 3k brackets, the missing rewards... they didn't know these things were going to be happening. They've shut down coalition events to solve one of these problems, and they're working hard on that problem, and they want us to understand while they take the time to fix it... not so much with the other problems, tho.

Thanks for reading and responding to this! I might have got carried away when writing this, tbh. I pick the communication as the most relevant problem, just because the (bug-) situation is given: They can't change it right now, but an open, proactive communication would help us to understand. It could re-establish the trust between us and them, since a lot of players just don't think they'd care at all. Those who can't play any event at all want to hear how important this bug is to the developers, (devs aware) just isn't enough.
And the communication is nuts since the first day I've found this forum.

BTW : I don't know why, but I have the theory that @shteev is just @brigby in disguise to tell us everything he isn't allowed to say.

shteev

Laeuftbeidir said:

BTW : I don't know why, but I have the theory that @shteev is just @brigby in disguise to tell us everything he isn't allowed to say.

The real Shyamalanesque twist is that this forum doesn't really exist; it all takes place in my head, and you are all my alternate personalities.

Laeuftbeidir

Hah! Ironie used to mask the fact that you doesn't even deny it!
The next step will be Brigby forming a side-thread out of this called "Are Brigby and Shteev in fact one person?"

And to the topics: What you selected are actually the very things I like in this update, the event decks are just awesome, and finally I can scroll from Arlinn to Tezzeret in less than 5 minutes!

wink

It wouldn't be a side-thread, it'd be a poll. And the neutral option would be "Actually, it's not Brigby and Shteev who are one person, but Shteev and OhBoy"

shteev

Laeuftbeidir said:

And to the topics: What you selected are actually the very things I like in this update, the event decks are just awesome, and finally I can scroll from Arlinn to Tezzeret in less than 5 minutes!

The event decks are *mostly* awesome, and they definitely save time swapping around (particularly now the midweek events are running on for 2 days), but the fact that the decks don't save between events is irritating.

I get why they don't save between events: it's because they want us to buy deck slots. But (and this is the thing I really don't get) deck slots are limited to 3, so you run out of slots  to save decks for your favorite PWs pretty quickly if you play all the different events (It took me a few days to run out with my main man Dovin Baan*).

So... you ARE going to have to spend some time saving screenshots of your decks and manually rebuilding them anyway. And then, if you're going to have to do that... then why buy any deck slots at all? It took me a few days to realise that, but now I have I very much doubt I'll buy any more.



*Sorry, Ajani, it's over between us, I meant to call you and tell you. It's not you, it's me**.


**It's you.


@wink I made this for slack about a week ago : http://imgur.com/a/QQOLH

EDHdad

Wait.  There are people who think that shteeve, brigby and ohboy are three different people?

Brigby

@Laeuftbeidir

Thanks for taking the time to write up this discussion thread. First off, apologies for the recent plethora of issues that have been introduced from the recent patch. Regardless of whether they were unpredictable bugs or mere oversights, the team has been devoting their time and attention to resolving these issues as quickly as possible, and we want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding.

When it comes to communication, I agree that there are moments when I could be more proactive at announcing certain changes, however in regards to the recent issues, we were in reactive mode; figuring out exactly what's going on, reporting it to the developers, and readjusting everything to account for these unforeseen occurrences. In the early moments of those instances, I felt that making an announcement about a largely unknown issue would just generate way more questions than answers.

Having said that though, if starting that kind of an early discussion, even when our team doesn't have many answers yet, is something the community would like to see in the future, then I can certainly discuss that with the team.

Laeuftbeidir

Well, thank you for taking the time to answer me, @Brigby

I do understand that the team was / is  / will be busy, especially in cases when multiple problems require instant responses: but I'm concinved that especially in these cases a proactive communication strategie is advantageous regarding the general "mood" of the community. If you're interested in this, just compare the strategies of the automobile sector and the finance sector in times of crisis: Scandals have happened in both sectors. The first one is still regarded as very trustworthy by most customers.. the second one...yeah, that's obvious.  If not, just don't

I also don't think that you're doing a bad job as a community manager - just to make that clear - you're actually the only one that we know to respond and care. And I'm totally aware, that you're also the CM of MPQ with a way bigger community! I do think that your job might be to restricted  in some ways and you get to little assistance by "them" (I'm convinced you would have given us a lot more information if you received it yourself.).

It seems to me like the community manager is considered a tool, so that "they" don't have to deal with the community at all. Since you update "them" in weekly meetings, maybe you could use these meetings just to point out some (just one or two, we don't need much ) major questions  / issues / discussions and suggest special threads for responses by any of "them"? This doesn't take too much worktime, and would be a great way to show that the community is actually important to "them".   

The kind of announcement I talked about was more or less meant as something like you're already doing in the bug forum, and only meant for situations like the last week: put all the drama combined in one thread and explain that (devs aware), and when you know it, what can be expected. This all is of course not perfect, I just want to throw some ideas in on how to improve the situation. The only thing I can say for sure is: the community doesn't want to feel ignored, and that is what happens way to often.