Why don't the Developers Ever Chime in Here to give us Feedback???

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There are so many problems in so many areas of this game and we chat about them all the time on here, yet we never get a legit solid response for why things are the way they are. They never come around to show our opinions are valued, or mention that they plan on making any changes to meet our suggestions. No conversation from their end is really flat out rude and deceptive. Come on out from behind the curtain and give us answers and solutions!

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  • Gunmix25
    Gunmix25 Posts: 1,434 Chairperson of the Boards
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    There are so many problems in so many areas of this game and we chat about them all the time on here, yet we never get a legit solid response for why things are the way they are. They never come around to show our opinions are valued, or mention that they plan on making any changes to meet our suggestions. No conversation from their end is really flat out rude and deceptive. Come on out from behind the curtain and give us answers and solutions!
    Oooookay.

    You say you've been playing for awhile. But are obviously out of the loop in how things were vs now. How long have you been in the forums?

    I started in nov. 2016. The devs were literally non-existent. It took a serious bug to even get an acknowledgement of the problem. That bug literally needed to be one that made an event unplayable... not something like a card not giving a creature +2/+0 for each spell cast. You could post in the bug forum until you were blue in the face. 

    As I understood it, the predecessors used to have devs come in here and chat with the players about various issues and what not. But as my clanmates had explained, the vitriol they endured caused them to retreat and basically ditch the forums altogether. They simply just made and released new sets and dealt with critical issues when needed. 

    @Brigby was the only contact for long time and he made a monumental leap of contact after Okatgon came on board. By comparison to before him, he was a chatterbox. But even then he couldn't give or discuss in depth the stuff you asked for. He was merely a contact point between us and the Devs (which never ever come in here to chat... only read when instructed - as per brigby had told us) he was frustrated as we were because he didn't have the answers and rarely he could post one. He created the Q&A to try and address this. Sadly that often devolved to more selfish requests or accusations rather than inquisitive, concerning or requests for information about X or Y. 

    Also since oktagon took over, they had to learn to adapt to a code they did not develop and of course that created a plethora of glitches and bugs. But... they continued to work on and clear these bugs. Not ignore them and they tell us 90% of the bugs they are correcting in update posts. Not all the bugs and sometime they forget to tell us about what they are fixing in a needed maintenance. But for me that is still a vastly improved method of communication from before. 

    The lady behind @Oktagon_Support has communicated with me numerous times in PM when I PMd her ... politely and professionally of course, about issues in the game. She responds and let's me know they are investigating. I'm good with that. I do not feel like I need to be hand held and given answers. I feel that giving them the space and having a civil conversation in the forums for them to read, I have faith that they are working on the problem. 


  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Hmm, I'm somewhere in the middle of the two of you.

    I definitely agree with @Gunmix25 that this is the most communication we've had from the devs since the way back old days of Cthulhu doing a live Q&A before a new set release (wow I've been here a long time lol).  Pretty much every bug thread is answered by a dev and they are at least reading our questions most of the time (and Marcela is amazing atkeeping us involved)

    That being said, @Endbringer is right that most of our Q&A questions go completely unanswered and we very rarely get a direct answer about something from the dev team other than a generic "looking into it" response.
    They are pretty terrible at explaining why certain changes are being made or the thought process behind some of their more controversial designs (for a contrast the old dev team was great at explaining the reasoning behind new walkers and new events even while they were atrocious at responding to bugs).

    Honestly if things stay exactly like this forever (communication wise) I could live with it.  It's not great, but its certainly not as horrible as it feels sometimes.  It would be nice to get a little more of a peek behind the curtain at the development process and maybe get more of our suggestions validated.  Just hearing the same "we're looking into it" and "we're working on it" responses definitely get old after a while.
  • jtwood
    jtwood Posts: 1,285 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Has there ever been a case where game communities engaged positively with the game devs?
    Always seems to me that gaming communities are fairly negative, and even more so when they are digital.
    I mean, I wouldn't engage directly with a gaming community if I was a game dev. Zero chance.
  • ambrosio191
    ambrosio191 Posts: 293 Mover and Shaker
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    jtwood said:
    Has there ever been a case where game communities engaged positively with the game devs?
    Always seems to me that gaming communities are fairly negative, and even more so when they are digital.
    I mean, I wouldn't engage directly with a gaming community if I was a game dev. Zero chance.

    It's not strictly a mobile game, but off the top of my head I'd say the Minecraft community is fairly positive towards the devs, and the devs routinely interact with the community, often taking their feedback into consideration.  Probably not a great example since Minecraft is owned by Microsoft and thus has the resources to properly support the game and community.
    I dont play any other mobile games so I dont know their community/dev relations.
  • Gunmix25
    Gunmix25 Posts: 1,434 Chairperson of the Boards
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    jtwood said:
    Has there ever been a case where game communities engaged positively with the game devs?
    Always seems to me that gaming communities are fairly negative, and even more so when they are digital.
    I mean, I wouldn't engage directly with a gaming community if I was a game dev. Zero chance.
    ditto... no way in hades would I ever. 
  • Bil
    Bil Posts: 831 Critical Contributor
    edited November 2020
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    jtwood said:
    Has there ever been a case where game communities engaged positively with the game devs?
    Always seems to me that gaming communities are fairly negative, and even more so when they are digital.
    I mean, I wouldn't engage directly with a gaming community if I was a game dev. Zero chance.
    You make a point hère ... But on the other hand ...

    I Wonder how a positive comment about something working as it IS supposed to would feel ...

     A comment like "i just bought this bundle and the card IS working as intended, thanks a lot" ... Can either feel :

    - useless (because there's nothing to comment when things work as they should)
    - sarcastic (because being surprised by something working properly might mean things are not used to work properly)

    Technically ... If you buy a brand New cellphone and it's working ... If you make a phonecall to the store to thanks them, you'll be considered as a lunatic... However, you will call them if you have an issue with the phone... 

    It seems reasonable to assume that the relation beetween customer and developper should work the same way.

    Now, when something really cool Comes from the devs (we're not talking about a bug fix here ) ... WE should expect some positive feedback ... But it's been a while since the last cool move. On the contrary, every event or feature that feels cool for players IS gotten rid of or nerfed precisely because it is "too cool" from the devs perspective.

    It took several years to get a decent charge system while it should have Taken a few weeks at best ... And the playerbase still felt thankful for it ...

    What we have on these forums isnt an hostile playerbase ... Just players who fail to understand how things are handled by the head and Ask for more Logic and/or considération.
  • Aeroplane
    Aeroplane Posts: 314 Mover and Shaker
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    I believe there is no solid ground to give feed back. Having so many problems from the original code and the obvious pay to win direction , I'm assuming, they don't want to be forthcoming with any direction they're going.

    Whether Bigby left or was let go , he was quite informative and engaging with the community, but maybe that was the problem. I always remember when he answered one of my questions on how they use a broad brush to fix bugs which in turn could cause side effects to other cards.

    The one glaring problem with their current approach is without reinforcement with communication of future plans to improve a very fragile game, they have created a distrust for the customer to invest money into the game. The company is to small to release a new version of the game and probably has too small of a margin to swallow any monetary losses to compensate players for mistakes they've made or devote too many resources to fix an already broken code.

    In the works and near completion threads would be a better link between the community where feed back would be passive and give a little more positive discussion about the game rather than being in limbo.


  • jtwood
    jtwood Posts: 1,285 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Aeroplane said:
    Whether Bigby left or was let go , he was quite informative and engaging with the community, but maybe that was the problem. I always remember when he answered one of my questions on how they use a broad brush to fix bugs which in turn could cause side effects to other cards.
    Brigby neither quit nor was he let go
    "While this is certainly exciting news for us to reveal, it is also a bittersweet moment for me to inform everyone that I will also be transitioning onto its Production team, and off of Magic: Puzzle Quest."
  • ambrosio191
    ambrosio191 Posts: 293 Mover and Shaker
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    jtwood said:
    Aeroplane said:
    Whether Bigby left or was let go , he was quite informative and engaging with the community, but maybe that was the problem. I always remember when he answered one of my questions on how they use a broad brush to fix bugs which in turn could cause side effects to other cards.
    Brigby neither quit nor was he let go
    "While this is certainly exciting news for us to reveal, it is also a bittersweet moment for me to inform everyone that I will also be transitioning onto its Production team, and off of Magic: Puzzle Quest."
    Brigby left D3 in March: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/81744/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish


  • FindingHeart8
    FindingHeart8 Posts: 2,730 Chairperson of the Boards
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    MTGPQ is probably a sideproject for the developers.

    The MTGPQ Manager likely only allows them to make any significant updates this game when it serves the Manager's purpose of "how can we get more money from our consumers?"
  • Volrak
    Volrak Posts: 732 Critical Contributor
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    jtwood said:
    Aeroplane said:
    Whether Bigby left or was let go , he was quite informative and engaging with the community, but maybe that was the problem. I always remember when he answered one of my questions on how they use a broad brush to fix bugs which in turn could cause side effects to other cards.
    Brigby neither quit nor was he let go
    "While this is certainly exciting news for us to reveal, it is also a bittersweet moment for me to inform everyone that I will also be transitioning onto its Production team, and off of Magic: Puzzle Quest."
    Correct.  He was promoted.  That was D3's response to his work on mtgpq.
    The MTGPQ Manager likely only allows them to make any significant updates this game when it serves the Manager's purpose of "how can we get more money from our consumers?"
    This suggestion may come as a shock to all the folks who didn't realise mtgpq was a commercial venture.

  • jtwood
    jtwood Posts: 1,285 Chairperson of the Boards
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    jtwood said:
    Aeroplane said:
    Whether Bigby left or was let go , he was quite informative and engaging with the community, but maybe that was the problem. I always remember when he answered one of my questions on how they use a broad brush to fix bugs which in turn could cause side effects to other cards.
    Brigby neither quit nor was he let go
    "While this is certainly exciting news for us to reveal, it is also a bittersweet moment for me to inform everyone that I will also be transitioning onto its Production team, and off of Magic: Puzzle Quest."
    Brigby left D3 in March: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/81744/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish


    I even commented on it hahaha 😄
  • ambrosio191
    ambrosio191 Posts: 293 Mover and Shaker
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    jtwood said:
    jtwood said:
    Aeroplane said:
    Whether Bigby left or was let go , he was quite informative and engaging with the community, but maybe that was the problem. I always remember when he answered one of my questions on how they use a broad brush to fix bugs which in turn could cause side effects to other cards.
    Brigby neither quit nor was he let go
    "While this is certainly exciting news for us to reveal, it is also a bittersweet moment for me to inform everyone that I will also be transitioning onto its Production team, and off of Magic: Puzzle Quest."
    Brigby left D3 in March: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/81744/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish


    I even commented on it hahaha 😄

    March was like a decade ago, so I think you can be excused for not remembering.  I was surprised to see it was only March when he left, it feels like forever ago.
  • jtwood
    jtwood Posts: 1,285 Chairperson of the Boards
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    jtwood said:
    jtwood said:
    Aeroplane said:
    Whether Bigby left or was let go , he was quite informative and engaging with the community, but maybe that was the problem. I always remember when he answered one of my questions on how they use a broad brush to fix bugs which in turn could cause side effects to other cards.
    Brigby neither quit nor was he let go
    "While this is certainly exciting news for us to reveal, it is also a bittersweet moment for me to inform everyone that I will also be transitioning onto its Production team, and off of Magic: Puzzle Quest."
    Brigby left D3 in March: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/81744/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish


    I even commented on it hahaha 😄

    March was like a decade ago, so I think you can be excused for not remembering.  I was surprised to see it was only March when he left, it feels like forever ago.
    Amen to this