The state of Beta Feedback

@Charan
I know you (moderators) do that, but it seems messy (to me). And sometimes even those unwanted and to-be locked threads is valuable feedback, which is buried because the thread is locked not possible to be responded to. Merging threads might be one way to make the feedback easier to read for GGG staff. Of course in the ideal case this is not needed because players don't make redundant threads. But they do, right? I had no idea about the tools moderators have. With better tools (beside other things) there is better moderation. With better moderation the forums are easier to use. The state of things is not ideal. As I said, why not ask for such tool? It has been done somewhere, why not here?

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Xendran wrote:

It's not that i think GGG is trying to be malicious or that they don't deserve respect, i just think that it may not be obvious how big of an impact responding so little on the official forums these days actually has on the game, its community and its testers.

QFT.

I went on and on and on in CB about map difficulty and the whole risk vs reward bit. None of it was even ever acknowledged IIRC. Now look at what one of the biggest complaints is -> risk vs reward.

They were however very quick to respond to my bug reports, item drop and pickup issues with items out of range, the items and their corresponding base values, visual bugs, everything. It made me want to continue giving good feedback. It made me want to make this game better. Sure, they may not have responded to the the map topic, but I kept posting other things. Since OB, I think the only topic of actual feedback and/or suggestion was about the boss hp exploit. Which was yesterday. I got sick and tired of hearing information from some random player who I had link me the thread on reddit. Seriously, that shit pissed me off. Why am I being directed to outside websites to read about very, very specific game mechanics.

1). Chaos orb recipe change was first noted on reddit by Chris. Not the website.

2). All items having equal chance rate, which NONE of my fellow CB testers knew, reddit.

3). The fact that they were most likely going to add options for the looting system. Or something along those lines. Reddit.

Sorry, but that's just BS. I am very happy that Chris and Qarl mainly do take the time to respond to my PMs when I have a question, in fact, Chris responding so quick about a month ago gave me more incentive to make another $100 donation. All the points are still sitting in my "bank" too.

While I do think Charan said it perfectly about the difference between CB and OB, I do not think the amount of information that is going to reddit, and not here, is not the best way to go about things. It honestly feels like a friend stabbing you in the back so to speak. Like, "he said what?, to whom?, where?". FFS

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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SL4Y3R wrote:

2). All items having equal chance rate, which NONE of my fellow CB testers knew, reddit.

I'm struggling to come up with anything this could mean which hasn't always been the case and known from the forum since the very early days. But I could be misunderstanding you.

The general consensus was, and this came from Chris one time attempting to explain the patch about unique drop rates, and how they were based off of "build enabling". Many people, even quite a few of the more "game mechanic driven" than I, believe that a uniques chance rate was the same as its drop rate (to a degree at least). This actually made sense.

We knew that the all uniques did not have the same drop rate. This is why something like Astramentis was rare as a drop, Dream Fragments less rare, and Crown of Thorns common. Therefore, the chance rate of a unqiue was to be the same as finding one in the wild. I.e. The chance rate was stratified. I find a hell of a lot more common uniques than rare ones. Why wouldn't chance orbs work in the same fashion. Also, "known from the forums" is kind of a moot statement. Where in the forums? When was it posted? :)

I doubt I could find the post by Chris about this. This was a quite some time ago. However, like I said, there was never a confirmed statement by a dev about how they worked. Hell, I even asked Monopoly this when I heard it. His response, something along the lines of, "I guess...". (Sorry if I'm mistaken the short conversation we had Monopoly.)

Point being, that a clear confirmation was given about a core game mechanic outside the forums. Not within. There is nothing about this under chance orbs, in the mechanics thread, in Monopoly's thread, etc. Nowhere.

On a separate note. The fact that I was forced to watch Kripp's stream to see what A3 was going to bring right before OB... Seriously, there was no video on GGG's website, no other tester was allowed to stream. Nothing. Being forced to go give a streamer advertising for something that GGG should themselves provide. If I want to watch Kripp, I'll do so. But I shouldn't have had to watch his stream to be able to see A3. I understand that he's great advertising for you guys, I really do. I even had a little chat with Chris about this.

But don't force me to go watch him for previews. That's exactly what your website is for.

I have to say without sounding like a broken record, that the biggest thing that personally pisses me off is Chris responding to stuff in reddit instead of the actual official GGG forums, especially about intended game mechanics which people don't know about, and other pressing issues

There isn't any point in forums (barring announcements and bug reports) if all of this feedback stuff is just going to happen on reddit

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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Real_Wolf wrote:

The only person from GGG that I feel is deserving of respect is Mark, he responds often to keystone feedback forum, mostly in regards to explaining mechanics, but at least he is responding. I made a post asking how long the evasion entropy timer lasts, and a few questions, he came back fairly quickly with an answer, now I know that if I go out of evasion (not getting hit) for 5 seconds then it resets.

Thank you for the compliment. I'd like to point out, though, that the reason I can do so is because such answers are quick and relatively simple. I usually at most have to look something up in the code, and I generally know where to look.
It's much simpler and faster for me to answer "Does the additional fire resistance from Elemental Equilibrium reduce the damage taken from the ignite triggered when I crit someone with fire?" than it is for Chris to answer "What's going to happen to help melee"
I have time to read the forums in frequent little chunks while I wait for things to compile. That doesn't let me cover as much of the posts as I'd like since open beta started, but I also try to keep on top of them in my own time as well.

I generally deal with around 5-10 PMs a day, and you guys can't email me directly. Chris, on the other hand, gets enough PMs and emails that I'm not convinced he could respond to all of them even if he didn't do any work - and he's a lot busier with more work to do than I am. He doesn't have the time to read or respond to the forums as often as I manage to, and the posts people want him to respond to tend to be the ones that aren't easy to answer quickly.

In short, I do think all the dev team is deserving of respect, and I don't think my ability to answer simple straightforward questions should be taken as a sign that there's something wrong with Chris not being able to answer the hard ones, when he has much less time to do so.

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Real_Wolf wrote:

Edit: Want to say, there have been 50 posts since closed beta about the light radius being based on actual hp available when auras reserve some.

None have had replies other than "this is intended low light mechanics".

That's not true - a few months back I posted what I felt was a reasonably a detailed response addressing the specific suggestions being made in that thread, why they wouldn't fix the problem adequately, or in a way we were happy with, and explaining that we both do recognise there is a problem, and have specific plans for how we intend to address it when we're able. I'm afraid I don't have time to look for it now and post a link, but it's there. Even I don't have time to post in every repeated thread that comes up.
If I find time before I leave tonight, I'll link it here.

Might have stated that a bit harsh. Its not really a case of that I expect an in depth response, but something simple like "we acknowledge this is something to be looked into" just so we know they are there. At the moment this forum feels like it is yelling down an empty hole, hoping the noise will come out over in the UK (opposite side of the world for us in NZ), and then somehow be answered.

Its more a case of just a ton of feedback posts, some with actual genuine high quality feedback, and nothing noted by GGG about these. Indeed there was even a post by you on one of the threads (can't remember which), you did your best to just let people know what was going on, which is the reason that I made my post above. Despite it not being relative to your field of expertise, what you actually work on, or your usual mechanics setup, you took the time to at least read some of it and try to clarify and help.

The return of the beta manifesto is rather good, but something as simple as a weekly update letting us know what sort of priorities you are putting on things would be nice. Sure, you dno't awnt to say "we are going to nerf lightning strike by changing its interaction with pierce mechanics" before you actually do something, but maybe just some more often updated sweeping statements, such as 'we have reached a general idea of HOW we want to redirect melee in the future', and previously had 'we are looking at options for where we can go to help out the melee-range disparity'


It is not so much that I don't respect GGG, you all have made a great game, its that I have seen the low light thread pop up multiple times, I made a post in CB myself, and have responded in multiple threads, and the only response from GGG I ever remember was, I believe, from Qarl, and it said that the low light radius on low life is there to increase the tension while on low life, and that it was an intended mechanic, and after testing they were not going to be removing it. The sad thing is, I like the low light mechanic, but the fact you are 100% on low life was what the discussion in the entire thread was about, and so it just sounded like he was saying "nope, we like it being like that". Oh, and the other one in a different thread where I believe you corrected someone about just WHEN it reaches the 'serious low light' level, which isn't the low life threshold of 33%, but lower (Don't blame you, you were just advising of mechanics, not your place to say 'yes we want it this way' or 'no we don't')

Edit: I note with some interest those making good posts on the beta feedback forums in general (for all that I disagree with some of them sometimes) are the same people who are posting here with the feeling that they are shouting down a well

Was browsing my forum history. Kinda funny to see how I've slowly learning the game mechanics, and how my feedback changed over time to more in-depth stuff.

However, I found this one. Although I will obviously not compare it to OB. I just thought it was interesting. Note the time stamp between my post, and Qarl's reply. As well as the various responses in the thread :)

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/46392

The good ole days :) When disco lights were a common experience lol

Just want to add, a reason the Keystone feedback feels like a valuable place to put keystone feedback, is because of the replies from Mark about mechanics.

Now sure, Mark has not really said anything in specific about what is going to be being done with said keystones (power charge gives +spell dmg uselessness for example), but the forums FEEL read, so that even though there are no GGG responses to some of the feedback threads, you feel like it has at least been noted.

I don't need a dev in here taking time out of his day to respond to us. Grab an intern, tell him his job is to walk around, hear everything that is said, then come to the forum and report to us!

Obvious hyperbole, but I have to believe that there's some super motivated, efficient, and creative kid sitting in university somewhere that could find a way to collate the suggestions and boil them down to questions he can ask the requisite dev at lunch, or during a coffee break. Then he could come to whichever forum and say "Hey guys, I talked with (insert name here) about this and he said he hadn't noticed that and will check it out." Or "He said they know and are trying to fix it." Or "He said that's a dumb problem and you should shut up." Or whatever. He'd get credit and have a potential sweet gig at GGG and you'd have a free PR monkey and a zillion satisfied testers who aren't complaining about everything because they know where the devs stand on it. And the devs don't have to do anything but answer a concise email once every few days, or however you decided to work it.

Anyway, it seems like a false choice if the only options are no responses at all or Devs wasting their day.