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

That’s my problem with your position. How does buying something I truly want in a video game hurt me? The developer puts out a product and if I want it I’ll buy it and if not I won’t. I should not have the option taken away just because someone thinks it’s not worth it especially if the product is legal within the confines of the law.

You have your opinion and I have mine. Its fine.
My english unfortunately dont allow me for too complex elaboration on a precise subject like that.
I could go on about the law saying that something legal now, can very well be forbidden later when a better understanding of the subject is reached…its now legal not because its normal that its legal. It is actually legal because its still very new and low humans companies take advantage of that.
Or about how it could hurt you by saying some people can hurt themselves without even realizing it. Many people started smoking without thinking about any health problem it could cause to them. And then the addiction is in place. That this kind of game create a sense of addiction involving real money that can cause troubles to some people. Thats why a video game should always have a fixed price at release.

But again, in my language I could be more deep and subtle than in english so no point to continue.

You have your view of a perfect video game world, and I have my view of it. I have see it change, mainly with the arrival of internet in the mid 2000s. And some of these changes are extremely worrying for me.
Happy that it is not the case for you. :blush:

Yeah I get where you’re coming from. If I had to choose to either have something completely taken away and not have a say in it or have an option to choose whether I want it or not then I will choose to have the option all day long. Having the choice to buy something is always better than to not have that choice at all and I sure as hell would not want anyone to tell me what I can and cannot buy.

As for the law all I can say is ‘we will see’. The fact is it is legal now and I have no problem if a company tries new ways to make money as long as it is legal. It’s their choice to put out a product that is legal and it is my choice as to whether I want to buy it or not. Morality is a different issue. If it’s legal but I feel it is immoral I have the right to choose to not buy it. The fact is that is a choice that I make not a choice someone else is trying to make for me.

There’s thausands of things the government have choosed for you without you to have a single word to say about them. Paying taxes, driving at limited speed,…etc…

Nothing wrong with government deciding you cant play anymore F2P games… you will still have plenty of quality games to choose from.
They will just remove a cancer from the video game world.

Yeah but this is a video game we are talking about here. There are reasons you can’t drive over the speed limit and there is actually a reason for taxes. The gravity of me purchasing something from a video game pales in comparison to going over the speed limit.

Your examples are pretty much apples to oranges and is a horrible example. Might as well ban sugary drinks or fast food. If anything you have a better case arguing that than arguing to ban micro transactions in a video game. I should have a choice to play F2P games or regular games if I choose to. There are plenty of F2P games I choose not to play. I shouldn’t have my choice taken from me just because you don’t like them.

Micro transactions are legal and if you don’t like them you don’t have to play. I shouldn’t have my choice to play them decided by someone else.

No prob! For you F2P games are fine and for me they should all be exterminated from planet earth. Its fine. We can have different opinions. Have a nice week end. :beers:

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Then, why do you even play one ? Is someone forcing you to play or what ?

Who knows…

Ongoing documenting: a company representative, addressing a customer.
:roll_eyes: :man_facepalming: :vulcan_salute:

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Could you please enlighten me on what’s wrong with this? In the context you took this from I see nothing wrong/inappropriate with the banter displayed. In your crusade/witch hunt against the publisher, I think you’re really grasping at straws here.

Or I suppose I could just be too dense to fathom the severity and subtlety of the evil in your example. :man_shrugging:

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I also thought it was pretty condescending and flippant.

I think because @Fourdottwoone often asks questions regarding design choices from a position of skepticism (which many would argue is warranted, given past experience regarding time sinks, nerfs, etc…), his/her tone might come off to a dev as being outright hostile. I don’t agree — I think the plurality of posts by said user tend to be reasonably stated (even though I often disagree with the conclusions made in said posts) — but if that’s how it’s read then the response is understandable if undesirable from one of the few sources of developer contact the community has access to.

Tl, dr: If even (im)politely asked questions are read as an attack rather than a sincere inquiry and — therefore — are deemed, not simply unworthy of a response, but instead are dismissed in a mean-spirited rebuke, then that is probably a problem.

Because how might the information sought be had without asking the question?

Saying “Shut up, just trust us” isn’t really a great approach…

EDIT: I reread the offending post being responded to, and yeah — that last bit is a pretty blatant condemnation of the current community managers (begs, basically, for the previous level of communication that used to exist, going so far as to request a different person deliver said). The post would have been better off without it.

But still — for the response to someone saying “You don’t seem good at your job because you say you do not understand my complaint, so can you point me to someone who is/does?” with anything other than patience, with something like, “we no longer provide the sorts of roadmaps you miss, or projections regarding how time is meant to equate toward progress, because the game is too big to forecast that way now, sorry, but I promise we’ll try to be clear as possible now and moving forward” is a bummer to many.

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There doesn’t seem to be much merrit in approaching design questions from a position of optimism. “The fuse on this stick of dynamite looks awfully short” tends to lead to better results than “I love the color of the Handle With Care sticker”.

Actually I’m asking for any person to deliver it, including the current community managers, because I believe it was the one outstanding factor that initially made this game a success. If you go through very old forum threads, any time there were controversial changes Sirrian would show up and offer explanations. Reasons for the change, which result was intended, how it would impact you. And players wouldn’t just put away pitchforks, they’d actually agree on the course of action. Pure magic.

And I still believe it needs to be in there. There doesn’t have to be a second Sirrian, just someone willing to interact in a somewhat similar manner with the community. I’m very sure the game would benefit a lot.

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The level of soft-skills required to deliver messages is key indeed, and has been evidenced to be lacking as of late.

In seeing/tolerating today’s example as ‘banter’ (not sure how often we have all come across a company representative addressing a customer as ‘cute’, whether condescendingly -as would arguably be the case- or with any alternative intent), we continue to encourage a treatment of customers that both allows for further progression down the condescending path, and dismisses/ignores past iterations of the aforementioned lack of soft-skills.

Have we all already forgotten what transpired a few weeks ago? Does it look like lessons have been learnt in customer-interaction? When will it be enough?

It has been recently claimed that Sirrian still checks the forums: if he indeed does, and has seen the evidence, one must wonder why are his company representatives still treating customers as described; and if the leadership won’t be doing the needful to ensure its representatives maintain a level of decorum when interacting with customers, the change (if it is to ever happen) must originate from the playerbase.

And while it may be seen as ‘grasping’ by some, or dismissed as a crusade by others, documenting the evidence (for as long as the deletion moratorium lasts) seems like a means to move in that direction.
:relaxed: :crossed_fingers: :vulcan_salute:

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I do agree with what @Fourdottwoone had said, both in the original comment, and their explanation behind it. Sometimes criticism has to be a little rough to get a point across.

I’d love it if Sirrian could give his detailed explanations again, but due to time constraints and sometimes the volatility of a very small number of individuals (the people issuing threats). My compromise would be to allow the community devs to be the communication liason, but the info in general is much more restrictive nowadays.

However, I think the obvious is missed that Salty and Kafka are both still people. They can have a bad day, have a short fuse, miscommunicate, or feel hurt by a comment. Perhaps the line in question struck a nerve and Kaf tried to play it off a bit. The last debacle was a slow full replacement response with a hasty defense of the initial compensation.

There is also a catch-22 in that essentially between 2 people practically handle all of the dev feedback, support help, and small explanations of the inner workings of their team. You can’t be too long of a response, or too brief. Say too much, and you won’t be allowed to say anything more as an employee.

A fix would be having more staff in general, whether it be bug fixes, game rebalancing, weekend support, etc. but, that needs money and people. Higher ups make silly or stupid decisions that others have to act on. As someone in an underappreciated accounting department, I know full well how that feels.

In summary, I acknowledge that the Gow team probably has restrictions in both resources and freedom in the game’s direction. I think documenting the snafus is fine, but we can always be constructive about it. Context is always key, as is the fact that perception matters, but is different from person to person.

Was this a good response, probably not. Was it unreasonable with context, also not. Do I think Kafka was purposely being dismissive? I guess about as much as she may have felt. Personally, it doesn’t even blip on my outrageous radar on dev comments alone.

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Here’s what i was told in regards to the errors in Russian translation:

:roll_eyes:

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Kylenator hit it on the head basically.

I have so much I want to say but I’m not going to or can’t, because it’s not professional and let’s be real this is not about me, despite the personal insults I receive on the daily - it is never about ME personally. So I’ll keep this short:

I am sad we can’t have in depth discussions about Gems of War without someone pulling out the personal insults - whether they’re outright swearing and threatening or down to the 100 snarky subtle jabs (death by 1,000 cuts). Honestly it’s the death by 1,000 cuts that get me as the ones who threaten and swear are easy to dismiss as completely having lost the plot and not acting like a rational human being any more. I say one thing and everyone notices, but they suddenly have amnesia about the 20 posts before mine with the jabs and insults that got me to that place :frowning:

I’m sorry for any time I snap back and I promise I’m working on stepping away when I feel like someone got under my skin instead of responding. It is harder having been home for like 6 months now as well with ever tightening restrictions - it is affecting me, it is affecting everyone.

This isn’t my first rodeo, I know better, and I am knowledgeable about the game despite what some people say - we just can’t sit down long enough in a civil conversation for me to feel like I can prove it to you. Of course I’ll make mistakes or miss things sometimes, and I want you to call it out when I do but explain it to me and I’ll get it! I’m a player too! and we can disagree on points and I can still understand and pass your feedback on - if we all agreed it would make for a boring conversation and the first solution to any problem usually isn’t the best one.

If we could all work on acting more like we’re on the same team that would be my dream goal right there. I’m one of your player reps in house, I speak for you in house and I pass info from the Devs to you, this is a 2 way street and I want to do a good job for you all - so can we work a bit more on that? Can we all just be a bit kinder to one another? I’m the messenger. Don’t shoot the messenger lol.

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With all due respect - we cannot act like on the same team as there are prejudgment calls from the person who “speaks for us”. You guys always will be treating forum users as “good ones” and “evil” based on your personal preferences. I can recall one very tacky situation, when I was banned for someone has shared their PM in the thread. I’m not telling I was “civil” in that PM (I was way off there), but still - this message was intended for the particular person. Nevertheless that was me who got banned from the forum even though this person violated the major forum guidelines.

So, speaking about doing a good job for us all. :rofl:

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We took the appropriate action for that forum user too, but the action taken is based on which rules were broken, how badly and your history of warnings and rule breaking.

That’s all I’m going to say about that particular incident.

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And when that happens, they should step back, have a drink, punch a bop bag with a clown face printed on it, or any other therapeutic method they may find suitable to process work-related stress. Never let it spill on the customers. I am speaking both from a theory and practical standpoint, although I’d rather steer away from credentials and focus on facts: when a customer rep is allowed to consistently act unprofessionally (irrespective of customer triggers, there are official channels to manage such grievances), it says a lot about the company they represent.

While I understand the overall practical validity of this stance given the body of evidence, this here is part of the enabling approach that continues to allow customer reps to further go down the current path: “because this wasn’t too bad when compared to the usual we get from them, let’s let it slide” only invites progression until things are “bad enough” to elicit a potentially outraged/ous response, which brings us to situations like the one we observed a few weeks back.

The playerbase keeps forgiving and often forgetting, and thus the well-documented cycles of (in no particular order) untruths, silences, condescension, pseudo-apologies, and questionable professionalism continue their iterations.

The facts are there, so that any player/sirrian can decide how to approach them constructively.
:blush: :crossed_fingers: :vulcan_salute:

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Didn’t you speak to Sirrian directly about your grievances with me? I know some forum user did, and he gave them his response directly. So it was addressed.

It does feel like you’re on a witch hunt with me AMT.

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