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I and I believe most of the community will join me in one request
captmason
Member Posts: 42 Arc User
I personally and I am sure that most of the community will agree that it would be FANTASTIC if a developer or someone who can speak for the developers could be patrolling the forums after patches.
They would be able to:
Doing this would:
I.E. After the 10/23/14 patch many players lost specialization points. This bug has already gotten more separate bug posts than it needs, and has stirred up multiple rumors. If someone were present after the patches to acknowledge the bug and let people know that they know of it and are looking into it then it could have prevented some of these issues.
I have personally done Dev work on games, websites, etc. and I can assure you that having someone attempt to acknowledge the issues helps quite a bit.
They would be able to:
- Acknowledge that the Devs know of the bug.
- Confirm that the issue is a Bug and not a change that was not placed in the patch notes, or was not explained in the patch notes very well.
- Keep the community in the loop
- Put the community's fears/concerns at ease
Doing this would:
- Help eliminate having multiple threads about the issue
- Prevent the spread of rumors
- Show concern to the community members
- Show the community that the developers are working to fix the issue and not just working on something else
- Increase overall happiness and morale of the community
I.E. After the 10/23/14 patch many players lost specialization points. This bug has already gotten more separate bug posts than it needs, and has stirred up multiple rumors. If someone were present after the patches to acknowledge the bug and let people know that they know of it and are looking into it then it could have prevented some of these issues.
I have personally done Dev work on games, websites, etc. and I can assure you that having someone attempt to acknowledge the issues helps quite a bit.
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Fleet Admiral Mason
Fleet Admiral Mason
Post edited by captmason on
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Even a single dev post of "Yeah, we KNOW and we're WORKING ON IT" is something that folks can point to.
Not a volunteer moderator post, a dev post.
They seem to work more like PR people than actually getting involved in the community. So either Smirk and Trendy's hands are tied when such problems crop up, or it's not part of their job description at all.
One would hope that with as many problems that have arisen in the history of STO during patches they would have someone on the forums to be involved with the community. Today's problem is a very good example as to why we could use someone.
A quick sticky post about how a problem this size is known and directing people to 1 common bug post wouldn't take much more than 2-3 minutes to do, and would save them the time of cleaning up all the duplicate posts/threads later.
Fleet Admiral Mason
For me it all comes down to priorities.
People using the R&D level 15 trait glitch? Boom, sticky.
Tau Dewa not being used as intended? Boom, Galactic News Network announcement.
Massive, glaring glitches with people begging for even an acknowledgement? Crickets.
Those poor, poor Mac barstids.
Yeah, it would be great if developers were wasting their work days away chatting about games instead of making them better.
It would be fantastic if community specialists were patting us on the heads and telling us everything's going to be alright instead of communicating player needs to developers and coordinating those needs.
Just in case you couldn't catch the sarcasm, let me put it more bluntly.
Your demands to have your whines pandered to by professionals are irrelevant.
I'm not a Cryptic apologist. They've goofed some stuff up big, recently. But they have limited resources and big problems to fix, and it's a waste of their time to respond to every little troll with a gripe on the forums.
They're listening. You can bet your TRIBBLE on it. But talking to you doesn't get **** done faster.
Furthermore, you wrote, "If someone were present after the patches to acknowledge the bug and let people know that they know of it and are looking into it then it could have prevented some of these issues.
"I have personally done Dev work on games, websites, etc. and I can assure you that having someone attempt to acknowledge the issues helps quite a bit."
How exactly do you think that professionals talking to you would prevent issues? That claim makes no sense to me. How does talking to YOU about the issues get the issues fixed faster, or prevent them at all?
Community specialists see posts, they forward the information on to the right people. Sometimes they write to you, but sometimes they don't. You can either assume that they're doing their job, or you can assume that they aren't. Demanding someone to talk to special-little-you is just immature.
Uh...do you know what a Community Manager and Community Team are supposed to do? Interact with the community. Taking customer issues and putting them into appropriate format for the appropriate department is customer service. Community work is different.
The community team is largely placebo affect. Have you looked at the forums today and seen all the rumors flying around? Why? Exactly because there is no community team patting people on the head and telling them it will be all right. You say that like it's complete silliness, but yeah, that's mostly what a community team does. Provide empty reassurance based on what little information they're allowed to actually give.
They have a community manager and moderators. If their job is not to monitor and work directly in the forums and other community interaction then their titles need to be changed, as they are misleading.
It doesn't get the issue fixed faster for the most part (sometimes it does if the devs need specific info, like rig builds, ISPs, or whatever), what it does is put a virtual face on the company for people to talk to. Whether you believe it or not it's important for consumer confidence.
Just one open sticky by one moderator saying, "Okay, we are aware of the spec point issue (as an example) post everything about it here, all other threads will be closed" and then monitor that thread would reduce a lot of this paranoid insanity, multiple threads, quit threads, etc.
That's why major companies have successful Twitter and Facebook accounts and why successful game companies have great forums. It's cheap, easy PR that can do fantastic things for their business.
A game company, in this day and age, having a forum that they largely ignore just shocks the TRIBBLE out of me. It's remarkably bad business.
I do not demand or request that they speak to me personally, nor do I want someone to pat me on the head and tell me that everything is going to be okay.
I do not want them to go around and respond to every post that is made about it.
I would hope that they would have someone speak to the community as a whole with ONE main post that says "Yes this is a bug and not a rollback/punishment, and we know about it. See this bug thread if you have the issue.", and then update it as needed. It only takes a few minutes to make the post, and then 30 seconds to update it.
In no way did I ever mean to imply that talking to the community would fix the issues faster, or prevent them at all. It would, however; help prevent all of the flame posts and rumors about how once again Cryptic/PWE is TRIBBLE us and going out of the way to punish people.
Fleet Admiral Mason
You know that they have 2 people, they are call community managers, that their work is to communicate with us. To bad that since DR disaster they seem to be hiding.
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I have a strong feeling it's not.
Also, am I the only one who read this thread title in a Jamaican accent?
I was inclined to file a bug report, in the Gameplay Bug Reports section, like:
"BUG: Community Manager not working after DR."
But what's the point?! They'd just ignore that too.
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STO player since November 2013
I know it doesn't solve the problem, and is VERY BAD timing, but Smirk told us all he would be taking a week-long vacation now. This was stated BEFORE the release of DR and reiterated on his Twitter multiple times. This is why HE is so silent. As for the rest, I think they are more worried about saying the wrong thing to us that we or their superiors will come down on them.
Even doing PR *right* would not cause these sorts of problems. This is good advice, Cryptic--take note!!
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Where is pwlaughingtrendy then?
Smirk is not alone and as a community manager it's your job to talk to the community. If I would be afraid to get scolded by my boss for doing my job then it's time to change. Although I find some of that hysteria in the forum just childish, I would wish there is a stonger presence of the community managers and a bit more information of what is actually going on.
People found a way to get a couple new specialization points, or dil when they got all 110 of those, every 10 to 15 minutes...and now they're all over the forums crying that it wasn't an exploit. Right. Sell it to someone else. Anyone doing that KNEW exactly what they were doing. Now, if you ground a few levels, but weren't doing it to that degree, then you're fine. Definitely some guilty consciences here, though.
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
i think it is because i did not lose any of mine
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Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I hope you're right.
That raises the quesiton, what will be the fix?
I want to know what's what. If this is a bug, great. If it isn't, i expect to be clearly told so. No hiding behind silence, like they're so fond of doing.
Well, "expect" is a wrong word, considering what i've come to actually expect from Cryptic's management is coming closer and closer to what you get at a phone technical support script. I'd love to be proven wrong, but i'm not holding my breath.
Not that ppl track my posts, but I've mentioned I work in Silicon Valley. Your definition of a community manager is accurate; in fact, I interact with some of ours. No comparison; mine engage and get issues addressed/resolved.
I've criticized previously the lack of business acumen within Cryptic/PWE. What it comes down to: seriously poor management practices. I get the impression the current CM's, while contractors and just trying to do the job expected of them, lack any fortitude to take things to the next level. I can say professionally speaking that they would not last long at various other companies in the Valley, nor would their management.
Rise to the occasion, Cryptic/PWE.
Fix your business.
You are losing customers, imo, with the DR snafus, the lack of paying attention to Tribble testing feedback (which is solicited, then ignored repeatedly: LoR, crafting, doffs, DR as examples); the broken Mac client (FIX THIS! Or give updates!)... The list goes on and on...
Seriously, you can't be arsed to write even a small "We're aware, and looking into it." post? I am very disappointed.
On this note, I have served as a community mod on another F2P games forums. I lead a small team of about 6 who rotated and gave hours of their day on the forums addressing things just like whats happening here. No, mods cant fix anything in-game. They can, and should, work to communicate what they can here on the forums, however and work to douse any fires that may be smoking.
As a Lead Community Officer (as they were called) when something like this would happen Id keep a sticky post and an open line of communication with the concerned playerbase. Id go back and talk with the devs and try to get some information I could share to let everyone know whatever the problem was, it was being addressed. Yes, I would be given certain information that I could NOT share but was always given something I could. Often times Id even manage to get a dev on the forums to gives an official update. It was uncommon but it happened.
Now, I am not blaming the mods on this forum for a total lack of communication; I am assuming they work under a similar model as above. This means if they are in contact with the devs, they arent sharing info with the mods that can be shared, which is poor business practice.
I think thats what it all boils down to a total lack of communication. If someone would just pop on and even sticky a closed thread outlining whats going on it would help ti settle quite a few flames here.
If the mods arent communicating with the devs, on the other hand, then there is a much larger issue at hand.
While he likely has a VERY busy work load, he manages to inform the community, both here and on reddit.com/r/sto
Compliments and kudos. This is one example to follow.