Community Council

Yeah I think it’s important to note that this isn’t a ‘hey this will fix the problem’, this is a ‘hey we are wasting so much damn time saying the same thing over and over’ especially GMs.

Let’s take for example that Lance Knight in pvp defences. We can ping up the bug report here saying its still happening but after a while we stop posting to say a bug is still happening. I bring it up in beta, the devs are like ‘that’s stiil an issue why didn’t you say’ so this council/ meeting would be a chance for those bugs that keep falling through the cracks to get mentioned. Things like czernobog when he had a spelling change that I saw mentioned in general on the alliance, I pinged GMan about and it got fixed before release. These are the things we could get raised and fixed before they are ever an issue, before we waste time reconfirming bug reports, before the devs get tickets about it, so they have time to devote on fixing the big things rather than wasting their time on admin stuff.

There’s no guarantee of change. But doing nothing different certainly isn’t going to help either

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I seem to recall the dev team doesn’t read the bug reports/feedback section, or any other part of the forum. They receive their information exclusively from the community manager team. The last dev I saw visiting was Andrew, about three years ago.

I know Salty missed a lot of feedback points we all made on here but that could of been because there was so many. I’m not sure how they are handled currently. I feel like Jeto passes points on pretty well that I bring up but I genuinely don’t know what the process looks like outside beta

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Well, I should have said staff instead of devs. Jeto and Kafka read the bug reports and feedback section. So, I’m going to go with the assumption that they are telling the truth when they say that they report these issues to the actual devs.

Unfortunately until they see their pockets slim down you aren’t getting anything but trash.

They have programmed too many players to accept failure and hope for success. Literally every update proves that.

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Hi @Hawx,

I have just posted a message what after 4 years daily playing the game I love and played with so much pleasure and passion! Turned this weekend but for sure today!

Maybe your idea can bring back my pleasure, I dont believe in miracles but I dont give up the hope that it can be better in long term!

Thank you for your input, your passion and believing that it can be better and im so grateful for all what you do for this community RESPECT :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :hugs:

https://community.gemsofwar.com/t/dont-let-yourself-get-crazy-by-the-mass-of-paywalls-and-fear-you-cant-reach-it-without-paying-a-ridiculously-high-price/76431

Nope, devs don’t care anymore.

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Not trying to blame anybody specifically, but something in the communication process seems to be broken. There are so many things that get reported, then just fall through the cracks for the next opportunity to show up. Like incorrect battlecrasher counters and duplicate campaign tasks, we already had those during Nexus release, they’ll probably show up again when the next kingdom gets introduced. And I believe those could easily have been fixed with reasonably small effort if somebody had just picked up the task.

I’m not really sure how one could address this. Maybe they need to work on their internal communication. Maybe they need to use some proper bug tracking tools, like Jira. Maybe they need to shift some budget from quantity to quality. However, I’m getting the impression they are perfectly happy with the current state of things, they won’t be interested in changing anything.

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There is definitely a breakdown in internal communication and basic controls going on within the company. Otherwise these issues which get “fixed” wouldn’t resurface again in the next iteration almost without fail.

From a complete non-programmer it almost seems like they make the code go live full of bugs, they patch it after public complaint, but the patching code never goes into the archived version for reuse. Then they go back and reactivate the unpatched code again next time which predates any fixes. Aren’t common tools like GitHub a thing to track version control and keep stuff like this from happening? Extrapolate this out into every single recurring issue that has piled up and you’re trying to carry a bucket of water with holes drilled all in it. Not a very fun experience for the person having to use the bucket for its intended task.

Sadly, I truly think there is nothing external which will have any impact on motivating internal change other than taking our money elsewhere. That is our only actually impactful power to force change as IP2’s customers. Mountains of sound, sincere, and helpful feedback and advice have been given to address all of these problems from the time and care of the community, and it goes nowhere. I don’t think any amount of well-meaning community organization will change a thing, in my admittedly jaded opinion.

I gave feedback multiple times months ago straight to the community team about killing the golden goose by running multiple concurrent paywalled events at once when Kingdom Passes were being tested. We are now in the midst of 3! simultaneously with a two-week event costing more than a year’s worth of Campaign Passes, and all three being various stages of broken. That’s beyond outrageous. Jesus, at least have the decency to pretend to respect your user base as more than wallets on legs. But as a lowly wallet with legs, the only agency I have in this spiraling relationship is to use those legs and walk away… cash in tow. IP2, you all are killing your own game.

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I don’t know that this would do much, but the concept of having a “quick, precise list” is good. Salty mentioned those are helpful. Of course, things have changed since then, and reported bugs are often ignored/missed/delayed.

I can’t say I’m overly optimistic about this idea, but then again, we can’t force the devs to care more about fixing issues - we can only make finding/fixing bugs as easy for them as possible. I think Hawx/Gary would do a fantastic job leading a venture like that. Its effectiveness is what I’m not sure on.

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I echo many of the other thoughts here. If you feel this is worth your time, Hawx, then go for it. Certainly no one should expect any magic fixes - ultimately, the devs have to step up and take ownership of the problem. Perhaps you want to show them you’re fit to be community manager. I suppose there’s no harm in trying. :innocent:

I would love to see the devs address whatever issues are leading to the bugs not being dealt with properly, but I’m not holding my breath.

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It’s also fair to say the game just isn’t worth the purchase price to “keep up” anymore, VIP 15 leaving the game. Not that anyone cares.

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Couple of month ago I made a thread which suggested to stop pushing out new stuff for some time and get rid of the majority of big bugs and fix such things like the disliked offerings and improve Arthurs little help advices (you know what I mean).
Nobody replied to. Nobody liked it. And now while I’m trying to look back into it, it’s vanished somehow. Don’t know why. But that doesn’t matter for me.

If they really wanna save the day, they should create a new server and use it to fix all the stuff and once finished replace it with the current one. Even if it will take the game off for a downtime of a few days it would be more useful then anything else they do currently.

The biggest issue is, I guess, they can’t figure out how to fix the coding somebody else probably implemented and they just use tape and glue to fix the ship instead of building it up from scratch.

I hardly doubt that a counsil would work out as we would like it to. But if you (and they) want me onboard, I’m happy to help. At least for a while if it’ll be sowewhat useful.

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We can be the best community ever, but if nobody hear , it’s all about us.
We need to support each other like we already do, keep continues like this and try different ways to resolve things with the only weapons we have.

I see a huge wall between US and the game and who develop it

We did something like this in another game over Slack - but in chat form.

It lead to a developer/leader thing. Not sure if it’s still active as I’m not active as a leader anymore but it was very constructive.

But!

They also hired a dedicated community manager, they have two now, and they work closely with their players. They hear player feedback and implement most of it, they take player ideas and make them happen if they think it fits the game - it’s quite a different dynamic from what I experienced here so far.

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I like the idea, but I fear this would turn from ‘Community Council’ to ‘Hawx Council plus two semi regulars and one random person dropping in for meetings’ within a couple of months.

I think a council could provide meaningful feedback with regards to gameplay, monetisation, balance, dev prioritisation, etc. But a non-representative council runs the risk of just losing sight of the problems of the community at large, compelling the devs to go back to square one (ignore the community entirely, try to make more money instead).

I think the number of bugs is owed in part to the ‘no programmer shall read the forums’ policy. Community staff aren’t programmers and they don’t look at or pick up on bug reports the way a programmer would. It’s not ideal to have community staff be your intermediaries ALL the time.

To be honest, I think you’re just setting yourself up for more unpaid work and the next level of piss-taking by IP2.

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The ‘dedicated’ part has documentedly been lacking here, as has once again been demonstrated over the past weekend.

Gotta wonder how much of the ‘communication’ issues between playerbase and devs would be solved if they hired e.g. Hawx to do all the simple mod things that would solve/mitigate so many avoidable issues, which now exist only due to lack of mod dedication (not to mention that they do not play their own game, as once again demonstrated by their inability/unwillingness to detect/duplicate that 10th battlecrasher issue right away)
:roll_eyes: :person_facepalming: :vulcan_salute:

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Yes, absolutely.

In the other game we had several community managers over time.

You know when everything started to get really good? When they had someone who was a good friend of one of the programmers/devs and also a player as a community manager.

He had both sides’ ears which was amazing. Player-dev-relationship got so much better.

When he left, his dev friend took over for a bit which brought more improvements.

Then they got a new, awesome community manager - and now they have two.

Their update preview videos are great, the patch notes are amazing - are there still bugs? Yes!

But we get compensated right away and no one is trying to blame player luck, rng or whatever for clear bugs/mistakes.

They messed up big time and had to disable guild wars - and over there, gw has really good rewards - but they acted swiftly, refunded anything spent during GW, and if they really love us, they’ll give us currency for the gw shop (which they did last time, enough to buy one of the most expensive items).

So why am I talking about a different game here?

Because I still have hope.

They had a time where they were kind of hostile towards the player base, ignoring glaring issues. But that’s the past.

If one company can do it, another could as well if they wanted to.

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I think that there is the KEY

If they really care about their game and want it to make it a great successful game where they can be proud on!
They can reach everything!

They dont have to do it alone, coz this community is the proof that so much people believe in this game and want to help make this game great and good working!
Never feel ashamed to ask for help and think you fail if there comes feedback that things not work as they must, should be.

Scripting, code everything behind the screen is not simple! But without a good communication is it very difficult to understand what the players keep busy.

I have learned if you really want something and believe in it and never give up the hope, you reach your goals and feels it so damn good what give you new energy to go for the next goal! :star_struck:

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I support the idea @Hawx and totally respect your commitment. A shortform list of issues directly pinged has got to be more palatable and manageable for eg @Kafka than trawling thru all the forum posts. I am extremely disappointed in recent developments and I think for many it’s last chance saloon. For years we have begged for things such as doom scrolls to be looked at and the “solution” judging by legends is about £65 per kingdom. Thats about £2.5k for 40 kingdoms and you will STILL be way short of maxing the weapons (curse breakers need scrolls also). To implement this at a time of global financial crisis is disgusting. Pricing within game has always been completely unrealistic and even the whales are checking their piggy banks. I just don’t know what to make of it all. The attempted exploitation of FOMO mindset yet again is sickening. I am and will remain VIP1 until pricing policy and game quality changes significantly. It really is time for the company to wake up; some of our players are already leaving or just not bothering to play. Too much.

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