Petition/Request for GGG to show that they actually read the official forums and not just reddit

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Cyzax wrote:

Imagine how you'd feel if, year after year, your customers tell you you're shite at what you do (especially when you try your hardest). It doesn't matter which area you're in, game coding or whatever else. It will grind away at you until you finally quit, withdraw, or crack. A few people are able to handle that type of pressure, but not the majority.

Hmm.. Why would it bother them if it weren't true? If someone gives them crap because this game isn't like x game, then that person should just play x game. But if people are pointing at things and saying you're failing here here and here, or this was a dumb choice because x, either that's true or it isn't. If a dev actually feels that's true, it makes sense that they'd feel bad if players could see something they couldn't about their own game. But if they're just going to say fk it and not listen, then they just think they're infallible I guess.

Pretty Please GGG

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Kulze wrote:

First of all, acknowledgement inside the suggestion-form. Making the community know that their personal input is appreciated. The proverbial 'pat on the head' a simple 'you did well and we appreciate it' notion. That isn't done at the current state.

And after that you have to answer every single suggestion with something to not have players be butthurt because "BUHUUU his thread got recognition but mine didn't, WHY GGG WHYYY ?!?!?!", which would increase the number of people actually frustrated and increase GGG's workload at the same time.

Or they could have the same policy as now "We are reading the suggestions, but not directly answering them".

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Kulze wrote:

Secondly, in-detail descriptions of the 'big' workings done in the background, no matter of those are systems which are implemented in the next league, or stuff which the devs are trying to work out solutions for which work.

Again, you are only going to create potentially false hype with this kind of thing, which could just hurt GGG more than anything.

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Orbaal wrote:

They will never give you details before anything is done and final - simply because things may change for various reasons during development and people would not understand it.

Exactly

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Kulze wrote:

As for the 'outcry', this can be handled very easily by making sure the information isn't a promise, that does suffice.

No, this is the internet, there is no need to create unnecessary problem.

Making GGG have to give players information ( = more work ) making player expect more and always more information ( = more people disappointed / angry / pissed - Yes, this is the internet ) are no small things.

I think that you are failing to see things realistically here, seriously.


And as for "can be handle very easily", you're just assuming that you simply know better than GGG, but they're the ones dealing with all the issues and the communication around PoE.

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Kulze wrote:

It's a simple system for regulating the flow of information properly, it warrants a dedicated person in charge of it and barely takes any time away from the devs, or rather... the time which it takes away is easily made up by the saving in time from getting external input which doesn't need to be paid.

The bolded part seems to be an awefully wrong statement, I don't know if you genuinely think that, but I think that you're really, really being very unrealistic here.

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Fruz wrote:

And after that you have to answer every single suggestion with something to not have players be butthurt because "BUHUUU his thread got recognition but mine didn't, WHY GGG WHYYY ?!?!?!", which would increase the number of people actually frustrated and increase GGG's workload at the same time.

Or they could have the same policy as now "We are reading the suggestions, but not directly answering them".

Then the treatment for every platform needs to be the exact same. At the moment Reddit is favored, blatantly so, this leads people to be obviously unhappy about it.

Also some interaction is better then none, to work around this issue is more then easy actually... simply because nearly everything can be probably, maybe, likely, under circumstances, in the right situation... you get the gist there... used somehow. Acknowledging the majority of topics after a few days with a pre-worded post just to SHOW it's been read is all that has to be done in such a situation.

That's already FAR more then we have now. And obviously... people will always complain, just give them less options to do so, that is already a step further to solve that.

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Fruz wrote:

Again, you are only going to create potentially false hype with this kind of thing, which could just hurt GGG more than anything.

Since the roadblocks are mentioned as well, as would be the progress of every major change this actually leads only to hype at the start. Postponing changes is common practice and HAS to be done. Most people understand that if they are made aware of that properly, something which my suggestion would do.

It takes care of issues like 'why hasn't asynchronous trading never made it into the game?' or 'Why is the trade-manifesto as the newest source so heavily outdated' as an example for the trade-experience. There are surely a few important reasons behind it... nobody knows them though.

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Fruz wrote:

No, this is the internet, there is no need to create unnecessary problem.

Making GGG have to give players information ( = more work ) making player expect more and always more information ( = more people disappointed / angry / pissed - Yes, this is the internet ) are no small things.

I think that you are failing to see things realistically here, seriously.

Regarding that... there is an important thing to know about communication. It goes like this:
You can not not communicate.

Keeping silent is a form of communication as well, it's just the one where you have the least possible impact yourself, in many cases it's the least favorable situation even though it also is the one with the least effort.

Also look at the examples I provided, Factorio is a great one in this regard. They don't create any 'hype' despite changing large chunks of the game with every release, they also don't have people whining left and right... and never had actually despite being an Early Access game which are prone to that.
That's the case because they have absolutely superior communication compared to 99% of all the other games out there.

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Fruz wrote:

The bolded part seems to be an awefully wrong statement, I don't know if you genuinely think that, but I think that you're really, really being very unrealistic here.

In this case not really, it's arguable, though it's also easily proven by logic.

The flow of information is the most important part in any company, the larger a company becomes the worse the flow of information usually is. Either because no proper setups are made to ensure them or simply because some people who are in charge of managing this flow of information (middle management) is fairly often not knowledgeable about the actual work being done.

Having a person in charge to provide the ability to increase the flow of information takes care of this common bottleneck as priorities during programming a game tend to change easily, simply because unknown issues tend to pop up very quickly.

Not only does the person in charge of that handle the information the community provides to forward them to the devs but also knows the issues those devs are struggling with at any time. This means this person can provide valuable input to speed up the progression of development while also keeping the community informed.


An alternative way for that is the already recommended option for polls, best-case in-game. By collecting the ideas from the devs themself as well as from the community there can be a list of main-topics which are prioritized further on and presented to the community. By letting people choose which should be done first (or even give active feedback on HOW something will be implemented) a large chunk of the current complaints are taken care of.

A prime example for such a system is OldSchool Runescape. In the case of PoE this would also work well as GGG provides changes to the underlying game-mechanics and the league-mechanic more or less separate, hence voting for the base-mechanics is a viable option which won't ruin the surprise for newly implemented mechanics.

Obviously there needs to be limits on who can vote on such a poll to make sure it's not abused. Hence your ability to vote being bound both to account-age as well as recent activity.

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Kulze wrote:

Then the treatment for every platform needs to be the exact same. At the moment Reddit is favored, blatantly so, this leads people to be obviously unhappy about it.

Reddit is not officially for taking feedback or anything, here in this forum and this section, everything a dev say could be taken as an official statement from GGG regarding PoE's developpement, they need to be very careful, and not interacting is the most careful thing they could do.
Anything outside of their own official communication platform could arguably be perceived as an official GGG statement, but I feel that this is much stronger if it's in GGG's forums.

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Kulze wrote:

Since the roadblocks are mentioned as well, as would be the progress of every major change this actually leads only to hype at the start. Postponing changes is common practice and HAS to be done. Most people understand that if they are made aware of that properly, something which my suggestion would do.

It does not matter if "most" people understand ( which is a wild assumption by the way ), the fact is that many will not, and even if that would not be GGG's "fault", the result will be that many will not understand and QQers are always more vocal that people who don't have complaints.

=> GGG will need to deal with them, ending up with likely more to deal with than in the current situation.

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Kulze wrote:

Regarding that... there is an important thing to know about communication. It goes like this:
You can not not communicate.

Keeping silent is a form of communication as well, it's just the one where you have the least possible impact yourself, in many cases it's the least favorable situation even though it also is the one with the least effort.

So, splitting hairs now ?
They communicate ( actually communicate ) about things that they are ready to communicate about, period.


I don't know that Factorio game you're talking about, but I doubt that it is as complex, deep and have as many people emtionally involved in it as PoE.
I could be wrong, but PoE is really one game of a kind regarding that.



The only thing that I think GGG should tell players here, is how this section of the forum works and that they rarely intervene in conversation regarding feedback / suggestions outside of trying to keep the conversation civil or once in a while in explaining game mechanics.
Just a memo on top of this section.


Of course some extra manifesto could be good, but they really don't need to publish things that they're not sure about, or that are not ready with at all ('hey but you said you were already doing it back then, WHY IS IT NOT READY YET ???').

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Fruz wrote:

Reddit is not officially for taking feedback or anything, here in this forum and this section, everything a dev say could be taken as an official statement from GGG regarding PoE's developpement, they need to be very careful, and not interacting is the most careful thing they could do.
Anything outside of their own official communication platform could arguably be perceived as an official GGG statement, but I feel that this is much stronger if it's in GGG's forums.

GGG has made clear that Reddit is an important part for them. While the system there isn't the official platform they made on their own, their behavior clearly states 'it's an official channel for us' and people focus primarily on it. Well... and also are fairly unhappy with it.

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Fruz wrote:

It does not matter if "most" people understand ( which is a wild assumption by the way ), the fact is that many will not, and even if that would not be GGG's "fault", the result will be that many will not understand and QQers are always more vocal that people who don't have complaints.

=> GGG will need to deal with them, ending up with likely more to deal with than in the current situation.

True, definitely. But... what's the difference to the current situation? Right now GGG has to deal with the issue that a the common notion is 'the suggestion forum isn't being read AT ALL' in the minds of a large amount of posters here.

So, dealing with complaints (which are already present in fairly sizable amounts) would probably even decrease as they can at least acknowledge 'those parts need a re-work, we heard you guys' without stating any time in itself when it'll be done.

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Fruz wrote:

I don't know that Factorio game you're talking about, but I doubt that it is as complex, deep and have as many people emtionally involved in it as PoE.
I could be wrong, but PoE is really one game of a kind regarding that.

I recommend you looking it up. If you have Steam then you got access to the news-section of that game without buying it, as well as access to the community-discussions there.
The game is about building a efficient and very complex factory, focusing on automation.
Their weekly information called 'Friday Facts' is often the size of a whole Manifesto but with far more information inside of it.

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Fruz wrote:

Of course some extra manifesto could be good, but they really don't need to publish things that they're not sure about, or that are not ready with at all ('hey but you said you were already doing it back then, WHY IS IT NOT READY YET ???').

But that's exactly the named issues such a system would tackle. 'Why is it not ready yet' is the major part to be addressed after all. Showing 'we ran into the issue xyz and thus will need quite a bit longer' is massively better then either releasing a heavily broken mechanic (Welcome Synthesis) or just falling silent without ever giving a statement afterwards (Hello asynchronous trading).
At least the community knows then, and if the community knows then people whining about it generally get a verbal slap. Heck, that even happens of the information is ridiculously outdated (welcome Trade Manifesto), still it's held as the 'holy grail of GGG' for stating something at least. And I have to agree, it's at least better then nothing at all state regarding the topic, but a few years old is a bit too old, such information has to be kept up-to-date to at least a single year max.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

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Elua wrote:

GGG use Reddit because is very easy to manipulate and hide and real critics there. Vote system and army of white knight ass lickers do the job. Here, on official forums we can have much more diversified picture of PoE. It looks much, much more ugly and realistic. GGG is trying avoid this at all cost.

Or, maybe, this kind of toxic accusatory behavior levied at the devs as you've demonstrated and can be found in abundance here on the forums, which often gets downvoted and buried, is exactly why they prefer Reddit?

This is such a naive stance in this case i hope you are aware of that. You should be aware, you have been around a long time.


Fact is most of us have given them YEARS of leniency and good will before becoming harsh and truthful, the reason is not the feral nature of internetters, is it ggg actions caused everyone to give up on caring.

We constantly have cases like the recent chris comment that shows them being completely out of touch with forums. We practically never have any answers here, ever. They do frequently on reddit.

Ideas, are either not looked at, or in their arrogance they think they know better and just ignore what people post here. Either way people had enough years ago of this approach. GGG has a lot to learn, they aint nearly as smart as they think they are and they have become quantity>quality incarnate because of these fucking ways of not really caring or trying to care and just pushing on with their view for how they can maintain their intended tiny player size and business model by pushing out more and more and letting the quality go way down, just to keep people hooked on the new-content-cycle.

In other words, after years, it's naive and useless to keep using your good energy to be ignored and not call them on their ways. Let them hide from the mess their design/company approach created, let them run if they won't face the consequences of what they have done to community!

Fact is just, when your game gets good enough it will break through the barrier where it is no longer treated like a nice little small project for fun which always gets praises, and instead compared to the world standard of gaming and if the company doesn't act in a world-class way the community will reject it because they are comparing it to the world best! Doing the early period they will get a lot of feedback from the community, and that is when they should have acted in world class way, listening, improving, rather than carrying on with their own ideas for 4 years before starting to do many things requested for all the years since start for a little bit before returning to their own ways.

They keep posting excuses for design choices, sometimes it's directly fallacy like about trade they just conjure the nonsense that fits their ideas and call it facts even if it's bullshit and false! Look whats 4.0: "Guys, we know one of the oldest complaints and most quits in our game is from us bricking characters and choices, and we don't wanna do that. Therefore we are splitting PoE in two, and doing it anyway." What a goddamn mess is this? Leaving a lot burried in the graveyard, splitting into two games? Unrealistic non-choice they are doing. Blight what a mess is that? Dev1 to dev2 - "yea man i liked those w3 maps lets do something", "yea for sure lets put some minigames put some towe defense inside the ARPG so you can play while youre playing".

WTF is that huh, damn. It's mess, that's what it is. Covering one mess with the next mess! How long will they keep doing? How will the game look like in 3 years pushing content like this? How can some games survive decades without push constant content bloat and what does that tell of poe approach? Based on whalecatching economic schemes and locking the best looks behind either impossible to obtain or not something many people can afford. It's elitist in every construction. So many of these things are things that i do not respect.

A very basic lesson in life is invest your energy where it is meaningful and where your efforts are appreciated and welcomed. Hence, over time people stop giving feedback here becuase that is not the case.

PS: If you are a game dev and take the games you are working on seriously, you should have a clue what's happening in the community else you are just working blind. That includes taking responsibility and checking forums yourself to get first-hand information. Part of doing the job well, being in touch with the community instead of in your own bubble and that can't just be done by someone else always feeding you second hand information.

If they had taken the community serious, they wouldn't have to run from all the true accusations being thrown about. Having done so however, to climb back up they have to endure it until they earn the trust back. But that ship has sailed a long time ago mates, i am afraid to say. They could, but it won't happen they just don't have that drive. Now you just get what you get in PoE from the devs in their bubble, don't get frustrated trying to feedback outside of just small comments, just let it go play what you feel like playing.

Look at them in interviews, they clam up in their defensive bubble if criticism is outside of what they can handle, or if they are smart enough like chris they ignore and refocus the attention elsewhere like a politician. They have chosen the path of fear over that of courage and are seeing the posts here as rude, way too extensive and filled with nonsense bickering and they get defensive reading it i wanna bet then go tell each other how it's not worth it. This last one i'm not entirely sure of, but many of the signs of a nest of this behaviour are present. They can't take these words for example, because they remove the fense they have put up to protect themselves from reality they won't face. And their most common defensive "reasoning" is probably: "It is our game not their game, we do with it what we want".

Well boo fucking hoo. Good for you, but that won't get you far in the world because you are making this game for us!

I can already answer this question that they DO NOT bother reading these forums and all it takes and quick read over some of the horrible feedback on these forums to see why... and with good fucking reason i would have give up on these forums a long time ago as well if i were them.

Same 10 people posting the same bullshit everyday.. With a few random posts by people based on zero actual experience actually playing the game sprinkled on top.. Its a fucking shit show of a forum with mostly shit feedback.. What few good posts get posted here these same few assholes who hate the game more than they play it swoop down to shit all over it. So any meaningful feedback just gets buried by all the bullshit.

I wouldn't try to sort through this mess of a forum either.. Reddit is just the lesser of two evils but, BOTH will be the ultimate downfall of this game in the end. Bitch about power creep then at the same time want AH's or my favorite the game is too easy but they need to remove the Death Penalty feedback so fucking confusing there's no right answer for you people anymore no matter what GGG do you will still find something to bitch about.. Thats what happens when people spend more time on the forums than they do in game.

You're so full of crap and lack any clue what happened here.

It was not always so, there was a time with a LOT of great feedback, people cared, posted extensive thoughts ideas etc. THat was in the early days. Best discussion forum at one point.

Over time, people just gave up on it when it became clear we were talking to people who didn't have any will to reach outside of their own thoughts. The good feedbackers just started disappearing over a period of a year or so, most of them never to be heard of again.

Then the game became more popular and influx of new more seemingly maintream peoples, still a few notorious people i saw at least 1 of them here posting trashy bla blaa arguments in every thread and going to spam misleading argumental crap nonstop until you tell them to buggar off. These 2-3 people here on forums are the main source of abusing this forum nowadays, making every single topic a trash talk full of garbage misleading arguments and personals.

Either way we don't give a shit mate, they failed on listening to community and now community is chaotic mess but don't ucking blame the players for devs actions or lack thereof. People react predictably, that's why as leader it's not sensible to blame people for being animals but rather it makes sense to look ahead of it and guide the natural behavior ahead of time. It leads to nothing to sit back and say, shit we created this mess in our inaction, now fuck these guys man lets abandon them. That's how you fall from grace, and lose respect. That's how people know not to follow you again.

Of course, i don't even think they are emotionally advanced enough to acknowledge any fault in this, which is the first step. That would mean they had to acknowledge their lacks and mistakes as developers. Nope, they will just stick to "it is our game we develop it as we want" - and that's gonna be the end of that.

Where do I sign the petition? From all of the interviews, it seems that GGG does only seem to focus on the feedback of Reddit more than they do of their own official forums, which makes no sense considering there are barriers to write on Reddit due to a Karma requirement, which makes it so that not everyone can post about Path of Exile, also the moderation on PoE Reddit is 10 times worse than on these forums, so it almost feels to me like the devs would rather look at Reddit knowing that not everyone can post on there and because it is more regulated than their own forums. I hate this honestly, I wish that the devs would look at their own forums more because from all of the interviews it seems that they only care about the PoE reddit in terms of getting feedback.