As Requested by a Dev: A Thread about Devs' Actions/Inactions

Feature Requests and Game feedback
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It’s no longer news that a particular Dev has recently (since Dec 2019) decided to start deleting comments she dislikes in the Bug Reports section ( [Fixed] Bounty Hunter Only Giving 1 Trophy, Despite 4.7 Patch Mentioning 2 Trophies - #7 by Kafka ) with the excuse that the intention is to make Bug Report threads easier to read and act upon: it would indeed be a valid approach, if the evidence didn’t recurrently show that the posts deleted as ‘irrelevant’ are exclusively those with negative comments about the Developer/QA, whereas other equally irrelevant comments that are more supportive of the Devs are allowed to stay on, especially illustrated by how the Devs themselves post non-bug related comments in the Bug Section ( [Fixed] Gw score bug or working as intended? - #14 by Saltypatra ).

A couple of weeks ago, that Dev sent me a private message that included the sentence “Go make a thread about the ways you hate the devs in the feedback section.”: that particular sentence was very illustrative of how dismissive this Company is of players’ feedback, once they have negatively labeled a specific player in their minds (i.e. Facts presented are irrelevant, because this or that player ‘hates’ the Devs).

A week later, she publicly posted that “If you’d like to leave feedback about how you’d like the Class to work or complain about Devs please do so in the Feedback section of the forum or the Official news post. I promise I won’t delete or touch your posts about Devs there at all as long as they don’t break forum rules” ( [Fixed] Barbarian Class 3rd Trait not working as described - #41 by Kafka ): since we now have the dev’s blessing to do so, and paired with the constant inflow of actions/inactions by this Company in the past year or two, I thought it may be useful to start a thread evidencing things that deserve compiling for posterity, in the hopes that no new sudden rule will appear that will result in the facts provided here being modified/deleted, or some excuse being found to lock the thread.

As such, I encourage any participation to remain factual and civil, so that the data can continue to be compiled and easily accessed by new players so that they may set their expectation$ of the game and company accordingly.

Similarly, those who find themselves incompatible with the nature of this thread are encouraged to mute it so it does not disrupt your forum experience.

Either way, the plan is to start compiling as much as possible about how the playerbase has been treated lately (Cedric medals release, Chaos portals drop rates, Epic Tasks, PvP Gold, New Guild Guardians in Gold chests, GW Compensation in Switch denied by the Devs…), as and when time allows.

:vulcan_salute:

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What you are witnessing is a behaviour known as ‘splitting’. This is where an individual (in this case a dev perhaps) views someone (ie a forum contributor) as all good or all bad. Once viewed badly (like many of us), you cannot redeem yourself by complimenting good game design etc after an earlier critical misdemeanour. You are now evil lol. Threads will be hidden/deleted (at whos behest is unclear) to protect the fragile dev ego. These are common behaviours associated with personality disorders (particularly NPD and BPD) where criticism cannot be accepted and resulting in the ‘split’. I’ve had so many posts hidden/flagged by ‘the community’ and I have no doubt that it’s devs that are doing most of the flagging. Free speech? Not likely.

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I think it’s more about the devs not having the time to deal with cheap shots aimed at them rather than free speech itself. They just want you to report the problem and get on with it. If anything they gave you an alternate part of the forum to go to if you want to take cheap shots at them anyway.

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You have a penchant for writing negative feedback a way I tend to do as well. That means you like to slip in some stuff that seems snide and funny but when viewed later comes off as aggressive and hostile. A sucky part about this particular topic is I can’t fetch examples and break them down to help you understand because they get deleted.

There’s also a concept of balance in the “compliment sandwich” style of post they tend to make. What I mean is just because you post, “I see where this is going and it’s a good idea”, you can’t also post “but the dev who set these numbers should quit”. If we assign “mean points” to bad comments, it takes double the “nice” points to make up for it once you cross a certain boundary.

All in all, I think you are responding in an unhealthy way to this situation. This is the devs’ forum. You can’t make them accept your posts. You can complain that they are rejecting the posts, and perhaps stir up some discontent, but at the end of the day the devs are going to keep deleting the posts. Even if you were possessed by the spirit of a great orator, the outcome will be the same. Their movements are being driven by career factors, not player feedback.

I think to you, the win condition is that the devs change, the game turns around, and we run out of reasons to make negative feedback. I think, realistically, we should expect the game to continue barreling forwards like a train. I appreciate and respect your campaign for transparency, but redirect and use that energy for real-life injustice. It’s a wasted effort on a video game forum.

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As always, appreciate your reasoned response and agree with most of its content.

When it comes to their forum personas, this has an additional element that includes the personality traits of the individuals currently effecting the deletions (or e.g. radio silences when a response is clearly needed by the playerbase: even though my personal trigger point was the biaised deletions, these are by no means the intended focus of this thread): as I have observed over decades interacting with similar individuals both online and offline, sooner or later a new authority may come by who sees the missed opportunities and overzealous implementations for personal reasons, and said new authority can benefit from a centralised repository to foster a quicker paradigm shift.

Wishful thinking though, since that is a possibility beyond our control.

New players, on the other hand, will fall in love with GoW like we all did at some point, and I often find myself wishing I had access to a summary of incidents back when I was starting, and probably would have spent le$$ if I knew how much this train prioritizes/patronizes its passengers.

Agreed once again: all they have to do is delete the evidence or any efforts to compile the evidence, and their head can remain firmly buried in the sand. But now that they promised they won’t do it, it will take an extra step in the Morality spectrum to maintain this status quo.

Time will tell.
Hopefully facts will be allowed to do so too.

:crossed_fingers: :vulcan_salute:

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It is not unusual for the authority granted (as opposed to ‘earned’) to moderators to become a tool to justify their personal preferences/shortcomings. It happens in most environments, both online or offline, IMO.

However, the Free Speech that you mention continues to gain momentum in the Internet Nation, and forums who seek ‘respect’ through censorship often find themselves becoming obsolete or abandoned by most except their main groupies, in favour of environments that have actually Earned the respect of its patrons.

Not likely indeed, but hopefully still possible.
:sweat_smile: :pray: :vulcan_salute:

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I don’t think there’s a free speech problem here otherwise this thread would probably have been deleted already. I think it’s more of ‘just get to the goddamn point and tell me what the bug is because I don’t need to hear your life story’ problem. The devs just wanna know what is wrong with the game so they can fix it. They couldn’t care less if you think they should get bent because they missed a bug.

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If all off-topic comments were treated equally, that may have been true: as it stands, ‘negative’ comments are consistently targeted…

…even when the Bug Report is ‘Not A Bug’ ( [Not a Bug] Great Maw + Copycat bug - #9 by AMT )

The facts are there for each reader to draw their own conclusions.
:face_with_monocle: :relaxed: :vulcan_salute:

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That link was funny. So whoever it was that made the thread in the link you provided made that post in the ‘bug reports’ sub forum even though the title of the topic clearly stated it wasn’t even a bug.

I think this is exactly why devs don’t really wanna deal with us. They gotta sift through all the crap just to get to the real issues. Whoever handled that issue probably wasted one second of their life which they will never get back reading that title wondering why the hell someone would make that topic in the bug reports section when they clearly stated the topic was not about a bug.

Bro, if I was a developer I’d probably delete the topic because the urge to troll it would be too damn big.

But in any case this is probably exactly why they are now saying just post it in the feedback sub forum. Rather than deleting all the posts and having people cry foul over free speech just put it in the feedback sub forum. I understand you have the right to voice your opinion but I guess the developers just don’t want you to waste their time doing it when they could actually be fixing real bugs hence the feedback sub forum

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The Dev changed the Bug Report title to ‘Not a Bug’ and deleted all the initial comments in it, further demonstrating that the deletions have nothing to do with getting rid of irrelevant comments in order to zero-in on a bug.

:relaxed: :vulcan_salute:

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I just find it hard to believe that there is any effort anymore
That last class release was so blatantly obviously wrong on the 3rd trait, there has to be 0 testing, as any 5 year old would pick it up in 2 turns at most
On top of the fact that whoever coded it must have completely not understood the English language
Guess they’re outsourcing their work to another country Lmao

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So it wasn’t considered a bug in the first place hence they changed it. Exactly what I was trying to say. They probably have to sift through way too many topics similar to that one to deal with the ones with the real issues so they said to post it in the feedback forums. Sucks that posts got deleted but if they were off topic I don’t see a problem.

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I think you address your points well, but as is, the thread is of limited value. It’s more personal, which you might have a point about, but most people will just not tune into it.

With the comment you have from the pm, take advantage of the opportunity and use it to your/our advantage.

How?

Maybe this - you may be better off listing things that are effecting the gaming experience negatively and things that just seem to be poorly managed/have some degree of disregard by the developers. Highlighting why those situations are adversely affecting what we might consider, let’s think, maybe things which we are losing trust with.

Your point sort of covers this, losing trust and faith, but bottom line it’s what’s been/is happening with the game that matters to the gamers the most, not that comments have been deleted.

You’ve got the floor, with the ability to address issues from your conversations.

Examples?

Let’s just start with ‘watery’ and ‘carved’ on Doomed weapons? The reaction to the ‘legitmate’ issue that the weapons can defeat their purpose when using them has been, let’s say inadequate?

Yes, we have raised this issue many times, we are no further forward, but expressing a view as to why that issue causes a loss of faith, like many others we could list, might encourage a better forum with the devs, than just saying I said this, but they did this to stop me.

The response has been poor to this issue, so having the ability to mention things that we are, let’s say discouraged by, might get more things resolved to our satisfication, and the dev’s satisfaction as it might encourage more people to do more in-app purchases , if confidence improves.

Releasing things on a regular, consistent basis that don’t work as intended. That’s another one.

Faction delves

And so on…

People in the spoilers thread help by commenting on classes/troops and sometimes we get a positive change. So, some things happen. That gives hope.

Collating a list and comments about various issues, may encourage the playerbase to participate in a ‘to the Devs type thread’, and we might get some resolution to simple gaming issues that just help the experience.

It’s not about listing Epic Tasks or say the scarcity of certain medals and the expectations placed on us, those are decisions that have been made for a reason.

We won’t derail the train the devs are on, but I am sure they’d welcome greater player satisfaction on their ride, which of course leads to greater revenue when players are more confident that the product they want to invest in, is working well. That’s where I sit, still in the station waiting for the train to be up to the standard I want to ride on.

It’s now maybe more about the things that reduce confidence, that if they got resolved properly, will be welcomed by the playerbase I’m sure.

A new Beta is on it’s way, maybe the timing is right to support that with the audience granted and tie in as a player feedback kind of thread on ongoing issues?

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I think deleting posts is wrong and less effective than flagging posts as off-topic. If a post is deleted, I may not realize or remember what was said, and post something similar. Sometimes I don’t even realize what I am saying is off-topic, like with the Barbarian Class trait bug report.

Watery and Carved, Sacrifice vs Elspeth ‘kill’ inconsistencies, and other inconsistencies in general leave me confused more often than not as to what is deemed acceptable.

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I’m glad that this thread is in the appropriate sub forum.

Feedback should be kept here, and not left on bug reports. People have been using bug reports to insult the devs and derail the topic for quite some time, and I believe it is in everyone’s best interest to keep them on topic. This helps us parse the issue quickly, and helps players access the information they need without reading several unhelpful replies.

At times we miss comments and may make human mistakes. For this, I apologise. We aren’t interested in limiting your feedback, as long as it stays in the appropriate part of the forums. You are welcome to discuss the game, and our decisions, at length here. The only time a moderator will step in and remove posts is if they become exceedingly hostile or turn abusive. This also applies to threads, they may be closed if the behaviour within is harmful towards us or other players.

EDIT: I would be careful about accusing developers or other forum users of having mental health issues. Please be respectful of us and each other.

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Something like this is indeed the planned content of this thread, as I will be including (actually, anyone is welcome to do so) entries depicting the facts surrounding notable incidents/releases: hopefully can get a first sample out today, partially for illustration purposes.

:relaxed: :crossed_fingers: :vulcan_salute:

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Indeed: if they wanted to clear the clutter without biaised deletions, they could easily have flagged ALL off-topic things that were in their way, thus allowing others to have access to the comments if they so choose.

The facts are there for interpretation.
:vulcan_salute:

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January 2020: Devs acknowledge Bug in Guild Wars (Switch), but refuse to compensate players.

Players started reporting that points were missing in GW, and that victories were displayed as losses: they also expressed their frustration at not receiving the 50 seals & XP boost victory rewards, which they look forward to during GW week. The lack of rewards clearly evidenced that this was not just a display bug.

Within a day, a Dev posted acknowledging the issue, claiming that “We take any issues in Guild Wars quite seriously.”, and then proceeding to assert that “I suspect this is a visual issue only” despite the players clearly reporting that they had not received their rewards. (an indicator of the company’s ability to listen to its customers)

The Dev then proceeded to mention that “This is affecting every Guild in Guild Wars” and that “the rankings have been fixed, if anyone could confirm they received their Daily Reward Victory mail after daily reset today that would be great”: by then numerous additional players had been reporting the same issue, and proceeded to confirm that no rewards were being received (an indicator of the company’s ability to manage their game coding).

The problem continued in subsequent days, with players asking about plans for compensation for missing rewards (seemingly every Guild in GW was recording a loss, so nobody was getting any rewards), with the usual radio silence taking place during the weekend, because even though Devs “take any issues in Guild Wars quite seriously”, the fine-print is known to be ‘during office hours’. They know something is broken with their product, that their customers will have to continue deal with it during the weekend, and their response is basically ‘TGIF! see you on Monday!’.

On Monday, the Dev linked to an article on the subject for any relevant updates ( https://gemsofwar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001328036-SWITCH-Guild-Wars-scoring-issue ), and the last entry from that Dev on the topic states that “Because everyone on Switch was affected equally and because the system isn’t set up to compensate XP bonuses, we’ve decided not to compensate those 4 days Victory Reward Mails” ( (Switch) GW compensation denied by the devs - #61 by Kafka ).

Of course a barrage of discontent by players ensued, which was met with Radio Silence™ by the company, which is a very common response (or lack thereof) on their side.

A simple middle ground such as splitting the difference (e.g. all guilds participating in GW could have received 50% of the rewards, so the company didn’t give out any additional resources even though it was their own mistake, and players would not have been left feeling completely cheated), coupled with an honest apology by a company representative whose apologies may still be considered as sincere (the standard “[…] we are very sorry for these issues […] and we’ll continue reviewing and improving our processes to help prevent issues like this in future” rehashed by the same couple of Devs has lost all meaning), would have shown the players that there is effort in mitigating and owning up to programming shortcomings.

As it stands, if the company makes a mistake, it is ok for the customers to pay for it.
:vulcan_salute:

Sources:

https://gemsofwar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001328036-SWITCH-Guild-Wars-scoring-issue

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It occurs to me, that rather than spending massive amounts of time and effort rehashing dead issues, your thread might be better spent on new issues. You might actually get some action that way. You know perfectly well that revisiting the above compensation issue will not change anything. So what’s the point? You feel it necessary to slap the devs in the face with actions of which you disapprove?

If you intend this thread to be documentation of every action the devs have taken that don’t meet your approval, you are going to spend a lot of time and energy on a project that will change nothing. Consider focusing on what you might be able to change now, rather than venting your past grievances. It seems to me that might be the more productive action.

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As roughly summarized above, the objective is slightly distinct: I personally do not expect changes from the current Devs.
:blush: :pray: :vulcan_salute:

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