Come to the Forums!

bluewolf
bluewolf Posts: 5,734 Chairperson of the Boards
in MPQ General Discussion
Last week, if I recall, there was an in-game Message/pop up prompting players to come here to...discuss? Get news? Engage in the player community?  The message was kind of laughed at in other discussion venues (Discord, Line).  I assume that forum traffic and engagement is down a bit or they would not have been pushing it.  

I personally have been less interested in forum discussions/postings as it is a bit clunky and slow in terms of discussion.  The updated interface is even less mobile-friendly than it was before, it seems to me.  (Which is an odd choice given that the vast majority of players are playing the mobile versions.)  I also find the other chats (Discord, Line, and my own alliance FB chat) to be a lot more user friendly and engaging.  Also, as I have moved to the 5* tier, I'm not that interested in the mechanics of 4's, which is the dominant news. 

The number one thing, though is this:  I'd also come more if I thought there was more information being released by the developers besides "Here's the next PVE and character".   I don't understand why the devs can't come here on a regular basis (once every 1-2 weeks) and provide some information/answer some questions.  They could set up an AMA thread that gets some answers at a set time, or set up a thread for new characters where every other Wednesday, they answer some questions about them for an hour or two (I know this often kind of happens at announcement, but a lot of questions don't always get answered and it might be better to do that after people have a day or so to read over the character and their details). 

I don't know...just some suggestions that would draw people here beyond a generic "Come on over!" idea.  If you want people here, make sure you provide them a reason.

Another thing people bring up is negativity, but there is actually a decent balance here, I think.  A forum where opinions get posted without much ability to directly discuss them unfortunately leads to strong disagreement at times, which can result in language that wouldn't otherwise be used.

Anyway, just was looking to see if anyone has opinions of what would bring you/others here more, since the developers seem interested in that too.  And ultimately, an engaged community will keep the game more healthy than an anemic one.

Comments

  • DaSal
    DaSal Posts: 76 Match Maker
    Remember when they used to post videos?
  • Tony_Foot
    Tony_Foot Posts: 1,791 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2018
    I think forums in general, not just this one are now a dead form of interacting and getting information on games or things you follow. I'd rather they had a official discord chat with sub categories and Q and A.

    One of the other games my son plays has that Discord link built into the game and I find it's a far better use of the community than a chat forum. With the link being in game you have a far better chance of engaging more of the users than a chat forum. A pretty poor one at that since the rebuild.
  • Spudgutter
    Spudgutter Posts: 743 Critical Contributor
    Dragon_Nexus said:
    Tony_Foot said:
    I think forums in general, not just this one are now a dead form of interacting and getting information on games or things you follow. I'd rather they had a official discord chat with sub categories and Q and A.

    One of the other games my son plays has that Discord link built into the game and I find it's a far better use of the community than a chat forum. With the link being in game you have a far better chance of engaging more of the users than a chat forum. A pretty poor one at that since the rebuild.
    See, I don't understand that thinking frm a dev or community management perspective.

    If you're on Discord, for example, you're live. You have to type something and send it out as a conversation and slip ups can happen. On a forum you've got much greater control to type something up because you have hours to get the wording just right. The post will happen when you say it happens, so you can take your time with it.

    A dev/community manager just has to be able to communicate in general though, or it's pointless either way.
    Agreed.  Not to mention, you can't find old posts or back-and-forth conversations cleanly in Discord.  and who is to say that discord will be around for years?  anyone remember Teamspeak? 

    A forum can be accessed from anywhere, just by going on the internet.  It requires a very minimal amount of internet know-how, whereas downloading and navigating Discord at first is much more complicated, especially if the server is multi-format and multi-purpose.  


  • The rockett
    The rockett Posts: 2,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    It’s funny that they ask us to come to the forums and are not around at all, just like every other day/week/month.  When Will showed up on the Colog thread, everybody was so happy. That lasted for 2 months and gone.  Heck, as I posted before, check out the other forums here.   They already do an Q&A every month for Magic.  It’s right there for you to see but this game doesn’t deserve one it seems.  Not sure what would make them change their mind to make this game important to them as it is to us.   
  • jamesh
    jamesh Posts: 1,600 Chairperson of the Boards
    The rockett said:
    It’s funny that they ask us to come to the forums and are not around at all, just like every other day/week/month.  When Will showed up on the Colog thread, everybody was so happy. That lasted for 2 months and gone.  Heck, as I posted before, check out the other forums here.   They already do an Q&A every month for Magic.  It’s right there for you to see but this game doesn’t deserve one it seems.  Not sure what would make them change their mind to make this game important to them as it is to us.   
    The Magic game is developed by a different company (Oktagon for Magic, Demiurge for this one).  So it's not so much a case of a developer ignoring one community to focus on the other.
    It's also worth remembering that Demiurge got bought be Sega back in 2015: a direct competitor to D3 in the publishing space.  While they've continued to maintain and improve the game since then, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some pressure not to provide free labour on things which are considered D3's responsibility (e.g. community management?).
  • shardwick
    shardwick Posts: 2,121 Chairperson of the Boards
    DaSal said:
    Remember when they used to post videos?
    They upload stuff on youtube once in a blue moon but they're so absurdly short, I think Bishop's was like 10 seconds long, that it looks like more of a joke than anything.
  • Magic
    Magic Posts: 1,199 Chairperson of the Boards
    The forum is slowly dying because the game is so stale. There is nothing new happening so players keep grinding but they hardly can discuss something. At the beggining people were talking a lot about combos/strategies. Gone are these days. I can hardly care what are the skills of the latest 4* as I play in 5* land. And we all know who needs to be played in 5* land. What's the point checking on the forum?

    When we have a big announcment here than the discussion will happen (6 pages on costumes is ok. Maybe another nerf if they want 20 pages ;)).-
  • Jexman
    Jexman Posts: 165 Tile Toppler
    It would be really great to have developer interaction on here, so that we could understand where the game is going, so we can decide whether to keep playing...ok, maybe I understand why they don't post here.
  • Tony_Foot
    Tony_Foot Posts: 1,791 Chairperson of the Boards
    Magic said:
    The forum is slowly dying because the game is so stale. There is nothing new happening so players keep grinding but they hardly can discuss something. At the beggining people were talking a lot about combos/strategies. Gone are these days. I can hardly care what are the skills of the latest 4* as I play in 5* land. And we all know who needs to be played in 5* land. What's the point checking on the forum?

    When we have a big announcment here than the discussion will happen (6 pages on costumes is ok. Maybe another nerf if they want 20 pages ;)).-
    It started dying when they changed it over to this new one, so many great threads ruined with the new layout. I also agree when you hit 5* land all you care about is whether the new 5* is going to get any game time. Are they better than Thor and Okoye, no, will they get token game time like JJ or DD? Nope, see you in a month.
  • The rockett
    The rockett Posts: 2,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    jamesh said:
    The rockett said:
    It’s funny that they ask us to come to the forums and are not around at all, just like every other day/week/month.  When Will showed up on the Colog thread, everybody was so happy. That lasted for 2 months and gone.  Heck, as I posted before, check out the other forums here.   They already do an Q&A every month for Magic.  It’s right there for you to see but this game doesn’t deserve one it seems.  Not sure what would make them change their mind to make this game important to them as it is to us.   
    The Magic game is developed by a different company (Oktagon for Magic, Demiurge for this one).  So it's not so much a case of a developer ignoring one community to focus on the other.
    It's also worth remembering that Demiurge got bought be Sega back in 2015: a direct competitor to D3 in the publishing space.  While they've continued to maintain and improve the game since then, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some pressure not to provide free labour on things which are considered D3's responsibility (e.g. community management?).
    While I understand that different companies are involved, at the end of the day I personally don’t care.  It is not the fault of the players if these companies cannot work together, that is on them to figure it out.  Excuses like they are different companies, they are only a small company with not a lot of resources, etc are a no go for me.  They make darn good money off this Marvel property.  
  • Colognoisseur
    Colognoisseur Posts: 806 Critical Contributor
    I think expecting Demiurge to do anything more than they are doing is like writing a letter to Santa Claus. No matter how many time you ask for a pony you’re just not going to find one on Christmas morning.
  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards
    Colognoisseur said:
    I think expecting Demiurge to do anything more than they are doing is like writing a letter to Santa Claus. No matter how many time you ask for a pony you’re just not going to find one on Christmas morning.

    Considering the rollout of supports and costumes, when asking Demiurge for a pony, you might wake up next to a severed horse head.
  • Straycat
    Straycat Posts: 963 Critical Contributor
    I was actually happy to see the game promote the forums for once, because I think this is one of the better game forums that I've seen. Comparing to Spiderman Unlimited and Strike Force at least. SMU has gone thru major leveling changes and there is no updated guide to it, and the forums were no help. Strike force forums seem to be corrupted or something. At least here there are good guides on how to level and build your roster.

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