On the Other hand I'd pay admission to watch a team of 5 Devs with average equipment try to beat a T2 using the tactics they want us to use.
^^^This.^^^
FearOfADiscoPlanet
0
rickcase276Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,404Arc User
edited May 2015
I think a weekly or monthly state of the game is needed from the development team. This way at least the players have some clue what is going on, the reasons for changes that are made, etc.
Yes and no. It kinda depends who's in charge of what really.
If, for example, you're investigating the difficulty of the game, let this investigating person open a thread, asking what, where and how we experience the problem. If that is not possible, let the person create a thread blog, listing his experiences and how they differ (or not) from ours. If he claims to have no problems running X setup, let him share such information. For all we know, we're simply using the wrong strategy.
For example: If a CW is supposed to be using Shield and we do not, then that's a possible reason for our complaints. If, despite wearing the shield and 2k defense in Draconic Templar gear, CWs still struggle, perhaps the mob Armor Pen could be change to make it more bearable for everyone. Thing is, we don't know what your intentions are and how much increased difficulty was originally intended. We can only share our experiences. Use them.
Hell, let him ask us to join him on preview to show him if he can't replicate the problem on his own. Many of us would gladly join in if that helps improving the game. By visibly spending time working on the problem you create confidence. Which of course you shouldn't abuse by not acting on whatever results you get, even if you don't like these results.
I know suits can claim anything they wish and often do so without any serious knowledge about the product, and most devs won't have any other choice but following orders, but if they can prove the suits wrong with clear player evidence, even these suits will have to reconsider their attitude.
In short, I don't care about the title of the person as long as there is a dialogue going on with someone who can actually make a difference. I fully understand you can't fix all problems overnight, and that's fine. But at least show that you're working on it. Provide feedback just as we provide you with feedback.
I know a lot of what people say here is 100% subjective. But where there's smoke there's fire somewhere. You have players willing to help, if only you don't dismiss them as ignorant clients who know absolutely nothing. Use this to your advantage before that attitude backfires and leaves you with an empty game.
Last but certainly not least, stop with the bloody ninja fixes. You have nothing to hide and we'll find out anyway, despite the usual silence afterwards. Honesty creates trust. Trust generates money. We may not always agree with the change, but the general distrust of "was it ninja nerfed or not?" does not work to your advantage.
As the Russians say "it's better to be slapped by the truth than be kissed by a lie". Something to consider.
Always liked your style mate, you are speaking out of my mind, only more diplomatic, than i am usually.
Many of us have asked for it now and it would be a great tool to add, a Road Map. It would show the CEOs, that their employees are working as intended and to us, the community, that you care a bit for the game, cause sadly i don't see that passion anymore, not with how this Mod came out and is handled ever since that day and the mass flow of negative comments speaks clear words.
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
And by the way...now that I looked into and I quote what panderus said
"In addition, we are always working on upcoming features and modules so it can be difficult to just take a huge chunk of time from those without first examining the schedule and seeing how that would really impact moving forward."
I can clearly understand why things are the way they are....finally.
So they're working on new stuff before even fixing what's wrong with the previous...lol
It's like building on bad foundations and loading more weight on them without taking reinforcing measures.
Is this for real ?
How is a Dev from another team able to build/code stuff that's gonna be attached to another module that's already filled with bugs/errors !!??!!
New lines of code in the new modules happen to call broken/bad lines of code in previous modules and there u have it
If the previous ones are not resolved...well...MOD 6....welcome.
How on earth do you work on new stuff to plug into your platform without repairing the core on which they are going to be plugged in?!?!
Oh my lawd!
This is totally correct. They have a time table they keep to and Community Management is exactly that. It is management of the community more so than any actual communication. Look at the extremely polite though blatantly obtuse posts from the community manager in this thread. People spell to extreme detail how they would like the devs to communicate more with us and his primary question is, "How would you like us to communicate more with you?". Get it? Instead of reading and responding to specific issue we get a polite general question. It isn;t his fault, he is doing what he is paid to do which is basically telling us what we want to hear in a very vague non-committal way. That way, hopefully we are pacified for a while without pwe having to actually commit to anything.
For those who are praising our communication, thank you! For those who want more, how should we increase it? Is it just more developer presence you request?
In the posts prior to this, people have spelled out in detail how they would like you guys to increase communications. Your asking the general question without addressing any specific point made in this thread so far, kind of is a great example of what a lot of people feel the problem is. Just copy and paste the following (the point we feel you making is the same anyways): "Very polite, though entirely vague and non-committal response to highly specific problems as expressed by the player base. Additional vague responses and politeness, general likability minus credibility." Commitment gives credibility, keeping to a commitment gives legitimacy. Failing to commit in the first place just gives a feeling of flakiness and uncertainty.
Sorry, am just being straight with you. This kind of thing can turn into a bunch of glad handing which is as unproductive as straight out miserable negativity.
I'll put it like this: There's a lot of cool stuff I would love to spend money on - new bags, maybe a silly-looking crab mount, and a gob of AD to help get some of my enchants updated. It's not going to happen until I hear about progress with this mess.
Same here, i would like to contribute again, but purely from a business man point, my mind says to stop, until i don't see any substantial evidence of where the game is heading to. Cause when i see, that even whales get 1 shot, then there really is no motivation to pay for better items.
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Thanks for keeping the discussion respectful and on-point, everyone! Some really great stuff here; many of which I wholeheartedly agree on. As a communications team, we're always going back to the drawing board to make our players proud to play Neverwinter and you've given us plenty to work with. In the words of an idol of mine: with great power comes great responsibility.
To quote an anonymous source... "It ain't over till the fat lady sings." In caveman speak that means what you do matters far more then what you say. Once you do (fix the game breaking HAMSTER) maybe the fat lady will start singing. No offense to women who might consider themselves "fat".
Or better yet, as one Knight says to the other, "It's just a model". In caveman speak that means that if all we get is talk and there's nothing really behind the curtain, or its just trivial HAMSTER that is not game changing, there's gonna be hell to pay. No offense to cavemen whereever they might be hiding.
Rgr, out!
...If you know what the "Pendrill Prophecy" is send me a private message.
In my opinion. More time for devs to communicate with players. even through the community manager, would be a good thing.
Even if we had a weekly "Whats happening" post, where commonly asked player questions and requests were answered, Questions like "What are the top priority fixes at the moment regarding bugs?" and "Is there any changes to the difficulty being looked at"
For those who are praising our communication, thank you! For those who want more, how should we increase it? Is it just more developer presence you request?
In my opinion, we would appreciate more communication about the vision that Cryptic has for Neverwinter, an explanation behind some of the changes that you make, and sometimes, some apologies for some of the horrendous errors that are made.
There are class threads and I think you need someone talking in every single one. Why does a class get a certain balancing. What was Cryptic's focus on a certain feat or power. If you want less criticism, panic and anger; get us on board with your decisions before making them - or at least give us some heads up as to how you're positioning the class compared to other classes and content.
Bedlam: Creating chaos as a MI Exec TR Avariel Merilwen: Burn baby, MoF/Rene Aejun The Silver: Devoted to Healing, DevOP/Justice Mina Rosepetal: Super Natural, Pathfinder/Melee Frost: Benchwarmer, Soulbinder/Fury
Hear, hear. What we're looking for, to put it in a nutshell, is substance. It's great that you're paying attention -- that is certainly something. Now, what we're really looking for is, what is the plan going forward? Is there a plan? It's not fair to accuse a brand-new CM of ignoring our feedback -- there would be no justification for that this early -- but please try to look at it from this side of the screen:
1. We were asked for Mod 6 feedback prior to its release, and by all accounts, our concerns were not taken into account. At least, they appear to have had no bearing whatsoever on what was released.
2. While you have made clear that mistakes were made and you intend to do something about it, we haven't heard anything since of any substance to that effect. We've been feeding you mountains of feedback since April 7, but what, if anything is being done about it? We have had no specifics, and it at least feels like "de'ja vu all over again", even if on your side of the screen it really isn't. From this side of the screen, we can't tell.
Harper Chronicles: Cap Snatchers (RELEASED) - NW-DPUTABC6X Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
While I am trying to have a positive outlook for this thread, and hope for some good changes, I can totally see your side on this (especially my cynical side).
The guy probably has 20 minutes to respond to this kind of thing/make forum posts in a day and 7 hours 40 minutes of other things to do.
That is exactly what people are talking about. Communication, not a polite brush off. Does that mean they will create a real position where the job is to actually COMMUNICATE with the player base, at least 4 hours of every day? Nope. No way. He can't say that. We can. And he can communicate that to his superiors and point to this thread as what the players are saying.
The guy probably has 20 minutes to respond to this kind of thing/make forum posts in a day and 7 hours 40 minutes of other things to do.
That is exactly what people are talking about. Communication, not a polite brush off. Does that mean they will create a real position where the job is to actually COMMUNICATE with the player base, at least 4 hours of every day? Nope. No way. He can't say that. We can. And he can communicate that to his superiors and point to this thread as what the players are saying.
You would think the community manager position is about communicating with the playerbase though wouldnt you. haha. though then again its just like most businesses I guess. its less about being part of the public, and more about managing their reactions and emphasizing the positives. Truth be told Strum has been a lot more vocal that I've seen on the forum in a while, even if the majority has been xbox related, or without much actual infomation.
You would think the community manager position is about communicating with the playerbase though wouldnt you. haha. though then again its just like most businesses I guess. its less about being part of the public, and more about managing their reactions and emphasizing the positives. Truth be told Strum has been a lot more vocal that I've seen on the forum in a while, even if the majority has been xbox related, or without much actual infomation.
This is exactly what we want. actual information. when we were getting the "dev blogs" during development, they were awesome. it gave us a little insight into how the devs and the game balancers / programmers felt and thought. If we could get little DEV Q&A like blogs weekly or fortnightly, maybe around patch time. this would be amazing.
I think we could do far worse than Strum as community manager. Managing customer expectations is serious business and incredibly difficult under most circumstances. These circumstances it has to be almost impossible. None the less we want direct, open, an honest answers to the primary questions.
I think we could do far worse than Strum as community manager. Managing customer expectations is serious business and incredibly difficult under most circumstances. These circumstances it has to be almost impossible. None the less we want direct, open, an honest answers to the primary questions.
Exactly. He makes an effort to show his presence on the forum. which is a plus. but I still feel even just the weekly/fortnightly little snips of info about whats going on and being looked at, would really increase the playerbase's general happiness.
For those who are praising our communication, thank you! For those who want more, how should we increase it? Is it just more developer presence you request?
Presence is one thing, it's a start. I believe that many people want more participation from developers as well. It's one thing to stand in the room and be "present", it's a far better thing to actively participate with the parties involved. There are several sections of the Forum (*cough* Foundry *cough*) that would welcome a greater amount of developer participation.
"I don't know, I'm making it up as I go..." Featured Foundry Quest:Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
Get it? Instead of reading and responding to specific issue we get a polite general question. It isn;t his fault, he is doing what he is paid to do which is basically telling us what we want to hear in a very vague non-committal way. That way, hopefully we are pacified for a while without pwe having to actually commit to anything.
Most accurate, specific, relevant, on-topic, clear response yet to anything regarding "company/customer' communication and how it works. And this is true for all companies versus customers, not just the gaming genre and not just this company.
A "Community Manager" (generally-speaking) is to keep a product community (read: fan-base) engaged and talking about the product in a positive way and placate them when things begin to go negative. The above quote contains a perfect example of placating over negativity. An example you see often for 'engaging' is when they tweet something they totally don;t care about such as "What class do you play?" - gets a lot of tweets about Neverwinter - and that's the only purpose of it.
Then when they do communicate something useful (such as the Mod 8 Announcement this morning) people then beotch about it and complain that mod 6 is still broken and whatnot. Make up your minds, people. LOL
Call me Andy (or Strum, or Spider-Man)! Follow Neverwinter on Twitter: NeverwinterGame Like Neverwinter on Facebook: Neverwinter Follow me on Twitter: StrumSlinger
Chat without solve any problem is not the definition of productivity. I would totally prefer they remain silent if they do the job that they should, sadly all the most basic bugs that were reported on preview are now part of Live server and all the communication about them is ignored. If i would like to just chat I would go to a chat site, but if I come here is because i want to play a game that has lot of unplayable content while the devs are chatting?
Chat without solve any problem is not the definition of productivity. I would totally prefer they remain silent if they do the job that they should, sadly all the most basic bugs that were reported on preview are now part of Live server and all the communication about them is ignored. If i would like to just chat I would go to a chat site, but if I come here is because i want to play a game that has lot of unplayable content while the devs are chatting?
Strum is not a dev. He is the Community Manager. There is a difference. He has no actual, direct control over the development of the game, he simply conveys feedback to the dev team, gets some community events going, and acts as a point of contact between us and the devs.
ROLL TIDE ROLL
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
Strum is not a dev. He is the Community Manager. There is a difference. He has no actual, direct control over the development of the game, he simply conveys feedback to the dev team, gets some community events going, and acts as a point of contact between us and the devs.
Exactly, and as they say, don't shoot the messenger. It is a tough job having to get ranted at by people like me and all the other forum goers. The product has to move on, the announcement of Module 8 is showing that there is a planned future for this game. Steps forward, if you will, from what may be perceived as a stumble backwards with the Module 6 issues.
Dev tracker is on fire there days, I'm seriously impressed and very grateful for the increase in communication.
Perhaps being more active during Patch note and/or maintenance days is the optimal way to go - it's a weekly thing and involves a time-space, where the forum player-base can't log in anyway for a few hours and then dedicate some time to going over the patch notes and other updates on the forums.
Strum is not a dev. He is the Community Manager. There is a difference. He has no actual, direct control over the development of the game, he simply conveys feedback to the dev team, gets some community events going, and acts as a point of contact between us and the devs.
In addition to all that, assuming his position is the same as Akro's was, he isn't a Cryptic employee but a PWE employee. This means he dosent even work in the same building as the Cryptic devs. Not that he needs to be, to do his job. But people really need to understand that he simply can't walk down two cubicals to get info on the game.
Comments
^^^This.^^^
Always liked your style mate, you are speaking out of my mind, only more diplomatic, than i am usually.
Many of us have asked for it now and it would be a great tool to add, a Road Map. It would show the CEOs, that their employees are working as intended and to us, the community, that you care a bit for the game, cause sadly i don't see that passion anymore, not with how this Mod came out and is handled ever since that day and the mass flow of negative comments speaks clear words.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
This is totally correct. They have a time table they keep to and Community Management is exactly that. It is management of the community more so than any actual communication. Look at the extremely polite though blatantly obtuse posts from the community manager in this thread. People spell to extreme detail how they would like the devs to communicate more with us and his primary question is, "How would you like us to communicate more with you?". Get it? Instead of reading and responding to specific issue we get a polite general question. It isn;t his fault, he is doing what he is paid to do which is basically telling us what we want to hear in a very vague non-committal way. That way, hopefully we are pacified for a while without pwe having to actually commit to anything.
In the posts prior to this, people have spelled out in detail how they would like you guys to increase communications. Your asking the general question without addressing any specific point made in this thread so far, kind of is a great example of what a lot of people feel the problem is. Just copy and paste the following (the point we feel you making is the same anyways): "Very polite, though entirely vague and non-committal response to highly specific problems as expressed by the player base. Additional vague responses and politeness, general likability minus credibility." Commitment gives credibility, keeping to a commitment gives legitimacy. Failing to commit in the first place just gives a feeling of flakiness and uncertainty.
Sorry, am just being straight with you. This kind of thing can turn into a bunch of glad handing which is as unproductive as straight out miserable negativity.
Same here, i would like to contribute again, but purely from a business man point, my mind says to stop, until i don't see any substantial evidence of where the game is heading to. Cause when i see, that even whales get 1 shot, then there really is no motivation to pay for better items.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
To quote an anonymous source... "It ain't over till the fat lady sings." In caveman speak that means what you do matters far more then what you say. Once you do (fix the game breaking HAMSTER) maybe the fat lady will start singing. No offense to women who might consider themselves "fat".
Or better yet, as one Knight says to the other, "It's just a model". In caveman speak that means that if all we get is talk and there's nothing really behind the curtain, or its just trivial HAMSTER that is not game changing, there's gonna be hell to pay. No offense to cavemen whereever they might be hiding.
Rgr, out!
...If you know what the "Pendrill Prophecy" is send me a private message.
your GWF Capstone request reminds me of the "reworked" sentinel tree based more around being a mobile off-tank I threw together in a different post. haha
In my opinion. More time for devs to communicate with players. even through the community manager, would be a good thing.
Even if we had a weekly "Whats happening" post, where commonly asked player questions and requests were answered, Questions like "What are the top priority fixes at the moment regarding bugs?" and "Is there any changes to the difficulty being looked at"
Drunken Goose of MidNight Express. - 3.3k Paladin , 3.6k GWF , 3.1k GF,
In my opinion, we would appreciate more communication about the vision that Cryptic has for Neverwinter, an explanation behind some of the changes that you make, and sometimes, some apologies for some of the horrendous errors that are made.
There are class threads and I think you need someone talking in every single one. Why does a class get a certain balancing. What was Cryptic's focus on a certain feat or power. If you want less criticism, panic and anger; get us on board with your decisions before making them - or at least give us some heads up as to how you're positioning the class compared to other classes and content.
Avariel Merilwen: Burn baby, MoF/Rene
Aejun The Silver: Devoted to Healing, DevOP/Justice
Mina Rosepetal: Super Natural, Pathfinder/Melee
Frost: Benchwarmer, Soulbinder/Fury
1. We were asked for Mod 6 feedback prior to its release, and by all accounts, our concerns were not taken into account. At least, they appear to have had no bearing whatsoever on what was released.
2. While you have made clear that mistakes were made and you intend to do something about it, we haven't heard anything since of any substance to that effect. We've been feeding you mountains of feedback since April 7, but what, if anything is being done about it? We have had no specifics, and it at least feels like "de'ja vu all over again", even if on your side of the screen it really isn't. From this side of the screen, we can't tell.
Blood Magic (RELEASED) - NW-DUU2P7HCO
Children of the Fey (RELEASED) - NW-DKSSAPFPF
Buried Under Blacklake (WIP) - NW-DEDV2PAEP
The Redcap Rebels (WIP) - NW-DO23AFHFH
My Foundry playthrough channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Ruskaga/featured
The guy probably has 20 minutes to respond to this kind of thing/make forum posts in a day and 7 hours 40 minutes of other things to do.
That is exactly what people are talking about. Communication, not a polite brush off. Does that mean they will create a real position where the job is to actually COMMUNICATE with the player base, at least 4 hours of every day? Nope. No way. He can't say that. We can. And he can communicate that to his superiors and point to this thread as what the players are saying.
You would think the community manager position is about communicating with the playerbase though wouldnt you. haha. though then again its just like most businesses I guess. its less about being part of the public, and more about managing their reactions and emphasizing the positives. Truth be told Strum has been a lot more vocal that I've seen on the forum in a while, even if the majority has been xbox related, or without much actual infomation.
Drunken Goose of MidNight Express. - 3.3k Paladin , 3.6k GWF , 3.1k GF,
I think we could do far worse than Strum as community manager. Managing customer expectations is serious business and incredibly difficult under most circumstances. These circumstances it has to be almost impossible. None the less we want direct, open, an honest answers to the primary questions.
Exactly. He makes an effort to show his presence on the forum. which is a plus. but I still feel even just the weekly/fortnightly little snips of info about whats going on and being looked at, would really increase the playerbase's general happiness.
Drunken Goose of MidNight Express. - 3.3k Paladin , 3.6k GWF , 3.1k GF,
And its sometimes really hard to be a idol
Spidey
Presence is one thing, it's a start. I believe that many people want more participation from developers as well. It's one thing to stand in the room and be "present", it's a far better thing to actively participate with the parties involved. There are several sections of the Forum (*cough* Foundry *cough*) that would welcome a greater amount of developer participation.
Featured Foundry Quest: Whispers of an Ancient Evil [v3] - NW-DQ4WKW6ZG
Foundry Quest: Harper Chronicles: Blacklake - NW-DCPA4W2Q5
Most accurate, specific, relevant, on-topic, clear response yet to anything regarding "company/customer' communication and how it works. And this is true for all companies versus customers, not just the gaming genre and not just this company.
A "Community Manager" (generally-speaking) is to keep a product community (read: fan-base) engaged and talking about the product in a positive way and placate them when things begin to go negative. The above quote contains a perfect example of placating over negativity. An example you see often for 'engaging' is when they tweet something they totally don;t care about such as "What class do you play?" - gets a lot of tweets about Neverwinter - and that's the only purpose of it.
Then when they do communicate something useful (such as the Mod 8 Announcement this morning) people then beotch about it and complain that mod 6 is still broken and whatnot. Make up your minds, people. LOL
My hero!!!
Call me Andy (or Strum, or Spider-Man)!
Follow Neverwinter on Twitter: NeverwinterGame
Like Neverwinter on Facebook: Neverwinter
Follow me on Twitter: StrumSlinger
Strum is not a dev. He is the Community Manager. There is a difference. He has no actual, direct control over the development of the game, he simply conveys feedback to the dev team, gets some community events going, and acts as a point of contact between us and the devs.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
Exactly, and as they say, don't shoot the messenger. It is a tough job having to get ranted at by people like me and all the other forum goers. The product has to move on, the announcement of Module 8 is showing that there is a planned future for this game. Steps forward, if you will, from what may be perceived as a stumble backwards with the Module 6 issues.
glassdoor.com - Cryptic Studios Review
Perhaps being more active during Patch note and/or maintenance days is the optimal way to go - it's a weekly thing and involves a time-space, where the forum player-base can't log in anyway for a few hours and then dedicate some time to going over the patch notes and other updates on the forums.
Cookies all around!
In addition to all that, assuming his position is the same as Akro's was, he isn't a Cryptic employee but a PWE employee. This means he dosent even work in the same building as the Cryptic devs. Not that he needs to be, to do his job. But people really need to understand that he simply can't walk down two cubicals to get info on the game.