The moment you stop communicating, you failed as a gaming company
" Communication is mandatory, not just nice to have. I don't expect Chris to divulge their development schedule or every detail about their way of doing things, but their step back from posting critical information about their plans is a wrong move. Not to mention slip-ups like "only 10% of players play melee..." or "people who don't like Ruthless wouldn't win anyway"... Last edited by nibas on Apr 2, 2023, 4:45:48 AM
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" Of course it isn't, there are more successful games out there with very basic communication than those that truly try to work with their community. Sure, I would like more communication, it's great, but I can't really blame them for just stepping back and doing their job the best they can, considering how that communication has been looking in recent years. The way things are currently, it isn't communication, it's a one-sided shouting match. So in the end they probably took a nice set of scales, put the benefits of active communication on one side and mental health of their staff on the other. It would seem that mental health won, which is kinda refreshing in gaming industry and I can't really fault them for it. Well, it's pretty much what I've been saying some time ago when they started dialing it down a bit - "they can't handle this for much longer so we'll likely end up on 'strictly need to know' model". Wish the armchair developers would go back to developing armchairs. ◄[www.moddb.com/mods/balancedux]► ◄[www.moddb.com/mods/one-vision1]► Last edited by raics on Apr 2, 2023, 4:46:39 AM
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" I don't think there is any benefit to their mental health. The community is just as vocal as before. | |
" If they dont read what the community says any more it is definitely beneficial to their mental health. Much of the forum is very abusive. And as a side note, I am very happy PathofMathh got banned from the game for being abusive. |
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" As the esteemed colleague above said, it helps if they don't read it but I think they kinda still have to, at least to some extent. However, the main thing is not having to say anything in return. You don't have to to think what to say that won't be looked at from all angles and taken at worst possible light. Would you believe it that people type in chat "lol, he doesn't even play his game" when Chris has to ask some other member of the team for clarification on something? He's the manager, of course he won't be able to tell you some mechanical nuance. Wish the armchair developers would go back to developing armchairs. ◄[www.moddb.com/mods/balancedux]► ◄[www.moddb.com/mods/one-vision1]► Last edited by raics on Apr 2, 2023, 5:15:28 AM
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" If they're not engaging with the community, they don't need two or three people to sift through some of the most toxic forums I've ever seen, and this includes 40K and Warmachine forums, which got REALLY bad. Honestly, having done more than one private and public playtest, player feed back is almost always worst than worthless, it's actively damaging. Players of a game are often the WORST and innovating it. Their good ideas are generally insesutious, promoting a narrowing scope of the player experience, and out right awful and self destructive other times, removing the fun even for the person who thought they wanted it. While I do love when a company talks and communicates clearly, and the Dev manifestos where a great way to at least attempt to understand the whys of changes where being made, but I absolutely do not blame them for stopping them, and understand just how much work is involved in making just patch notes, much less someone spending the 40+ hours a week job it is to make something as comprehensive as those manifestos where. And if you think those massive posts that would have been checked by two or three people, passed by at least a manager of moderate position (if not Chris) to make sure the wording and messaging was right, you have never done anything even remotely in that sphere. It's a lot of work, and a lot of very unfun work, like two hour phone meetings that could have been an email sorta work, not the creatively fufilling type of work. Also, honestly, most AAA highly successful companies in the gaming sphere keep their communications as one way as possible. Blizzard basically NEVER took suggestions, they told you the changes in cold patch notes, basically since forever. They STILL don't, or they'd have fixed WC3R by now. The companies that engage with their communites are extreme rarities, and those that do are honestly generally niche. And yes, Runescape is niche, I generally have to remind people Runescape still exists when talking about it in most gaming communites (The same is true of Everquest, a thing most people assume died a decade ago). And to be perfectly blunt, to expect a company (particularly one operating at the scale of GGG, much less the really big fish out there) to address the concerns of even a hundred users is the hight of childish naivety and ego centrism. Last edited by Northern_Ronin on Apr 2, 2023, 5:19:38 AM
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" I think you are misunderstanding who exactly is supposed to be communicating with the players. The average developer is not expected to read and comment to posts on a forum or reddit, for a variety of reasons, from that not being their job to them not having to deal with negative comments. Some dev studios go above and beyond and will communicate like this, Paradox for example is always very active with the community and has a variety of developers posting, answering questions and taking in feedback. In most cases though, what players expect are the community managers to... manage the community. This is a job where somebody is specifically paid to pay attention to what players are saying, bring feedback to the developers, and relay responses. They filter the community and translate what is being said in an easy to digest format for the developers who then spew out some techno-babble response which the CM then translates back into normal speak. This is how developer communication has worked for years, the players get information from the devs about what is happening and why, and developers are sheltered from the trolls and players with anger issues. Mental health of developers is not a valid excuse for lack of communication with players because it's entirely irrelevant to communication with players, outside of small indie studios who can't afford CMs. GGG has CM(s), all I remember them doing in the past like 5 years is posting teaser threads, which they gave up on doing like a year ago and now just update a single news announcement. I'm not implying they aren't doing the job they are being paid to, I'm sure they are living up to GGGs expectations and have other obligations in the company, but they aren't functioning in a role players would expect. | |
" Couldn't be more wrong, some of the best games have zero communication this is a laughable statement. Being communicative with your audience gives you access to more information about key changes without having to think about them yourself or good ideas for direction, it also builds goodwill as long as the current course is dictated as acceptable by the collective audience. Downside is you have to siphon out the good feedback because its rare, many players have no concept of design choices vs right and wrong, technical limitations, time limitations, financial limitations they also will indirectly lie about what they want due to not actually knowing and when you communicate regularly players start to develop toxic fandom about you which leads to them irrationally whining when things don't go there way. In many cases all of the positives about communication can be accomplished by being invested in what players think of a game and reading into it, discussion will happen with or without the developers input and most of the same information is present. Its also quite possible to discover the right answers independently - many developers consistently make good choices for their game without any real communication at all. Ironically despite that I enjoy how much information GGG give me, I think they would be vastly better served by communicating less. In many ways they have created a monster and every league reveal it comes out of its cage to eat a few developers before settling down to sleep. You can't just tell your customers to fuck off though even if that is the stance you need to take so they are trapped in limbo, over explaining problems vs solutions to an audience that largely lacks the ability to process it. Edit: Also quite frankly I think they suffer this method intentionally because it drives sales, they probably have metrics to support this. as a random aside, communication like we don't give a shit about melee because nobody plays it is a classic example of why press releases exist. Its the wrong answer for everyone, wrong for us because many players care, wrong for them because to put it simply its a lie, they frequently prioritise things for a smaller group and there is consistent evidence of this which makes that lie incredibly obvious to melee enjoyers and even regular bystanders that don't care about melee. Won't even get started about the fact nobody plays it because you've fulfilled your own statement about it being bad :p Last edited by Draegnarrr on Apr 2, 2023, 5:55:39 AM
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" That's why I generally said 'staff'. In the end it would be someone's job to get the intentions and reasoning of game designers to the community, and that means someone's job will suck. You know what they say about lies, "keeping it simple is the best", adding details is like adding extra holds to the climbing wall, the more you add, the easier it is for the climber to get on top of it. And it isn't just with lies, it works on any kind of public relations, by saying "we are doing our best to resolve the situation" you give your staff the most freedom to do whatever has to be done, if you get down to whys and hows you won't get anywhere. Case in point, blizzard would've done a much better job if they just said "we are making a multitude of improvements to the game mechanics in order to make our game the smoothest diablo experience there ever was", instead they said "we will have armor apply to elemental damage because we think our players aren't capable of understanding how resistances work". Wish the armchair developers would go back to developing armchairs. ◄[www.moddb.com/mods/balancedux]► ◄[www.moddb.com/mods/one-vision1]► Last edited by raics on Apr 2, 2023, 6:05:03 AM
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Not like i think it's the right thing to just go silent, but i also don't think communicating would do them any good at this point. They have resolved themselves to push the game in a direction most of their playerbase hate resulting in them constantly making decisions that are bound to result in backlash. If they tell the truth they will get scorned, if they tell half the truth they will get scorned and if they just say nothing they will get scorned as well, it really doesn't matter at this point. It's their actions they'd have to change but they refuse to do so that's that.
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