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

@Talcaram : did you feel like I was ‘provoking and upsetting’ you in that other thread that ended up locked? Because that was half of the ‘reason’ for the warning I received…

It would be interesting to more accurately know how unjustified and biased warnings can be, especially when even Sirrian (allegedly, since that is who signed the reply to my ticket about the double standards) supported the warning despite all evidence being provided that neither of the claims (‘off-topic in bug reports’ when it was clearly not a bug as per my comment, and that thing about upsetting other players) were valid.

It is what it is, just looking for facts so others can set their expectations accordingly.
:relaxed: :pray: :vulcan_salute:

No, on the contrary, you brought me answers that allowed me to make a more complete ticket and avoid an unnecessary discussion phase with the operators.

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Tbh, I don’t think your objection here holds up.

  1. I don’t think it makes sense that a player should get to decide whether or not something is a bug, regardless of how obvious it may/may not be, given that my understanding of the Bug Report category is to convey and crowd source info to the devs, and achieve resolution to bugs. They still have to read through it and label it ‘not a bug’ or change the category, etc., and a player’s judgement could be off, resulting in pre-emptive off-topic comments.

  2. If a report is marked as ‘not a bug’, but then more information comes up, something changes in the game to break it, or players disagree, and there’s a lot of off-topic discussion after the initial resolution (‘not a bug’), it would then make it harder to productively continue that report.

Realistically, I think it only makes sense to include non-Bug Report comments once the thread’s been recategorised, or in a different thread (e.g. here) – and I think this probably actually also applies to the original Great Maw [Not a bug] thread that spurred on this one – although I probably wouldn’t have deleted all the posts, myself.

tl;dr – I think ‘off-topic’ should be based on the thread category rather than [not a bug] status, perceived or confirmed.

Just my personal opinion/reading of it, though (obvs).

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The problem remains the double-standards: I have provided examples of how certain off-topics are allowed to stay up in the Bugs Section, while others aren’t. I can only wonder how many ‘warnings’ are being issued over it too: there are less than 75 ‘Regulars’ in these forums (a category that is designed to be hard to achieve by ‘just any troll’), and while I think we should all be treated with the same decorum and rules, seeing such a blatant bias towards certain long-term forum-dwellers should raise some professionalism flags.

Even upon recategorizing something as a ‘Feature Request’, comments disliked by that Dev will still be systematically deleted ( [Not a bug] Luther tricked me again! Cannot uneqip my current badge on the screen - #17 by Kafka ) thus further demonstrating that this is being used as an excuse to censor. I am unaware of what were the comments in that particular thread, but the point remains that the deletions keep happening under that same disproven ‘this is for bug stuff only’ excuse.

"Surely the OP could decide what is or isn’t on-topic in their non-bug report?
No worries, it’s been done on the OP’s behalf, because the comments were displeasing to the censor. "
Even though that censor decided it was not a bug, recategorized it as a feature request, and promised in writing she wouldn’t delete comments in the feature requests section. The range of censorship seems to have widened, which reminds me of the slippery slope we were discussing when this new ‘approach’ was first introduced.

Add to the above that the claim of ‘provoking and upsetting’ that was half the official reason for the warning has been factually disproven two comments up by Talcaram, and the picture is very clear.

Anyone reading the facts or seeing the same pattern happen (favourably or unfavourably) towards other players, can decide whether this is how a real Mod should be conducting themselves.
:thinking: :vulcan_salute:

Here’s to hoping this is respected (previous promises have been documented above to be stretched in the past).

This also hopefully means now valuable historical information can be accessed by new players, irrespective of whether a particular mod dislikes it or not.
:relaxed: :crossed_fingers: :vulcan_salute:

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Aside from the Nostalgia factor (especially when compared with the weapon-restricted Festival of the Sun, or the absolutely forgettable Council of Chiefs), and the enjoyably large number of troops (and therefore approaches) that can be used in this weekend Invasion, these weekend events are providing an incentive to invest gems that differs from the ‘pay to reduce grind’ that this Company seems to be determined to enforce as of late: because players generally enjoy feeling like they can kill big opponents, it’s fun to have the Siegebreaker at max ascension, and a large number of troops/weapons to choose from from the get-go, and may thus get that extra tier here and there in the shop because they want to, not because they are trying to reduce the grind.

Unusual in GoW, thus noteworthy.
:relaxed: :vulcan_salute:

It is great indeed (aside from the fact that it should have been that way from the start): I would have purchased the 17 or so mythics that I’m missing (minus whichever I get to craft, so maybe around 12 purchases?) if the documented behaviour of a particular Dev hadn’t closed my wallet for good. A tangible financial cost associated to how customers are treated.

Hopefully it will help new players who wish to spend to make up some ground.
:relaxed: :vulcan_salute:

In most businesses, buying a larger bundle gets you a discount…

…not in GoW though:

50 Gems

200 Gems (150 for VIP)

500 Gems

#GoWmath
:man_facepalming: :vulcan_salute:

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@Graeme made a pertinent comment on how the devs are doing their Radio Silence/Business as Usual protocol following the ̶C̶o̶u̶n̶c̶i̶l̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶C̶h̶i̶e̶f̶s̶ ̶2̶ From the Depths release, and was promptly censored with the excuse that he should ‘stay on topic’ and the threat of a warning, whereas a quick scroll up that very same thread reveals countless comments that are as ‘on topic’ as the censored comments, minus the highlighting of the current event design choices that are being so well-received by the playerbase (as illustrated by Do you like the new World Event? (From the Depths.) Poll & discussion , and a cursory glance of the forums feedback).

Through facts like the above hopefully new players will be aware of this company’s impartiality (and/or lack thereof), and set their expectations accordingly.

:vulcan_salute:

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Just for the sake of transparency, it was me who deleted the comments as I considered the tone of them to be inappropriate in retrospect.

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Thanks for the clarification: a positive sign then that they are not back to deleting players’ comments.
:pray: :vulcan_salute:

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Three World Events later: lessons learnt, and lack thereof.

Council of Chiefs, Festival of the Sun, and From the Depths have come and gone, providing the playerbase with an opportunity to once again observe the development trends, and how much ‘player feedback’ matters in shaping said trends.

The first iteration (CoC, 16/MAR) was universally disliked, with the main complaints from the playerbase being:

  1. Random Scoring is unfair and makes no sense
  2. Rewards are too hard/expensive to obtain (>Tier IV from 30 Guild Members for full rewards)
  3. Event constraints applying to Hero are overly limiting, especially for newer players who rely on smaller weapon inventories
  4. The ‘choice’ when selecting battles is borderline inconsequential
  5. Players shouldn’t have to read the forum in order to find out what is the scoring method for an event

Then FotS came in on 13/APR, with scores being apparently homogeneous for all players for the same number of battles (thus removing the unfairness factor), and a lowered cost to obtain all rewards: despite ignoring feedback nº 3 to 5, this event was significantly well-received by the playerbase, thus suggesting it was a move in the right direction when it came to customer satisfaction.

On 11/MAY (and despite the positive feedback resulting from FotS) FtD inexplicably reverted back to the CoC model, reincorporating random scoring for the same number of battles, and requiring an extremely high buy-in from guilds wishing to obtain all rewards: however, due to a self-admitted ‘typo’, the cost of rewards was lowered back to FotS range, thus narrowly dodging a full CoC2 situation.

However, if there had been no typo:

it would appear that the higher (CoC-like) cost to get all rewards was the intended requirement (the ‘clarified’ explanation is anything but, as evidenced by subsequent comments by players in the same thread).

It would therefore seem that “2 steps forward, 2 steps backwards”, and still miles away from the destination…

…assuming ‘customer satisfaction’ is a top priority.
:thinking: :sweat_smile: :vulcan_salute:

Sources:

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As far as new content is concerned in the last 6 months, we got a rehash of explore mode, and a new event which is pretty much a rehash of explore mode.

There are glaring UI issues we have to deal with on a daily basis which do not get fixed, but we’re told they are focusing instead on fun new content for us, and we get… a rehash of explore mode.

Gems of War is a great game and deserves polish and to be built upon and expanded to it’s full potential, and it’s disappointing when it doesn’t happen.

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A noteworthy contrast in stances.
:thinking: :sweat_smile: :vulcan_salute:

Ah you completely don’t understand those statements, let me explain :slight_smile:

The first quote there is a workaround for the end user while we work to fix the bug at the root cause.

The second was in response to a request for a new feature to be developed to get around a bug instead of fixing the root cause and the bug itself.

These statements aren’t contradictory opinions.
In both I have stated the goal is to fix the root cause of the issues - not to put a bandaid on it and ignore it. In the first quote however, players need not go without, there is something they can do to avoid the bug already in the game that we didn’t spend additional development time on, so I am making them aware of that so that even though it’s inconvenient, they are aware there is a way around it while they wait for the fix.

No development time was wasted creating that workaround, it already existed.

The statements were clear, and summarized by the above sentence: the company feels like letting players endure game shortcomings for years (i.e. weapon affixes) is preferable over ‘wasting development time’ to make a quick fix while a permanent ‘proper’ fix is implemented whatever number of years down the road.
:blush: :vulcan_salute:

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as explained in the original thread, creating a new game feature which ties into half the existing game systems, is not a quick fix, which is why it’s not on the table :slight_smile:

It’s been years, so what is considered worthy of ‘being on the table’ by this company is self-evident by now.
:blush: :vulcan_salute:

Here’s the full quote so it’s not taken out of context. If you want to discuss it I’d suggest participating in the thread that’s about this.

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I have.
:blush: :vulcan_salute:

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