Design-a-Weapon RESULTS!

Official News
21

Here’s the weirdness to me.

I use social media a lot. I track a lot of development things through Twitter so it’s always open. If you think I post on the forums a lot, I spend twice as much time on Reddit. I don’t use Facebook a lot but peek in. I’m in Discord all day:

My observed order of community engagement re: GoW social media goes:

  1. Forums
  2. Global Chat
  3. Discord
  4. Reddit
  5. Facebook
  6. Twitter

A lot of people loathe Twitter and/or Facebook and avoid it. The people who seem to participate there are very likely to already participate on the forums. Most Discord users participate in the forums. The subreddit is a ghost town compared to the forums, and I spend most of my time instructing people with good posts to repost them on the forums so they get some attention.

The forums is the premium community for Gems of War. The game’s most influential players post and recruit here. People who avoid every other form of the game’s social media post here. People who don’t even want to interact socially register here to post their bug reports. It is literally the most important aspect of GoW social media.

…and it’s the one that was forgotten? What the heck?

I don’t think any of the polls showed up in Discord. They didn’t show up in Reddit. That’s part of how I missed that one week had been completely missed. Somehow the decision was made to only post the poll to the least involved parts of the community.

That makes no sense to me. It’s also weird to me that some dev somewhere wasn’t excited to follow the discussion and didn’t notice there was no thread for the new poll.

It’s also frustrating that when it came to light that a community-fueled event was being run and the largest portion of the community had been excluded, everything moved full steam ahead. Heck, this thread’s the first time I’ve noticed Salty even mention it.

Anyway, switching to another point: I don’t like these kinds of events at all. It turns out the more options there are, the more likely a democratic vote will produce unhappy people. Think about it this way: if we were to choose, at every step, between two options, at worst 49.9% of people would not get what they wanted. But if there are 3 options, in a total split, 33% will get what they want and 66% will not.

What the results tell us about the weapon is it has an ability that 63% of the community rejected. So it’s no surprise there are a lot of bad feelings surrounding it. A democratic vote with so many options mathematically guarantees the majority loses.

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22

Nobody cares about twerps on twitter.

23

Vote on a weapon using social media that steals data from me and uses my life and turns it into cattle like at a farmers market.
Or don’t vote on a weapon.
:thinking:

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24

While agree with @Dorgath that the forums aren’t representative of the overall GoW population and that not even close to a large number of that population uses the forums, I too am going to complain about social media exclusive content/updates.

I don’t & won’t use social media. I fail to understand how updates & important info is ever left off of the official forums. I don’t care if only 5 people use the forums, it’s the official forums and therefore anything of importance or consequence should be posted here for consistency and posterity first, and then out through whatever other channels get it seen by the largest portion of the population (ideally referencing back to the forums to bring those people here.

I’m well aware the same argument can be made in the opposite direction by those who refuse to engage on a forum but will social media all day long, but what good is an official forum/website if you can’t count on it to contain everything of relevance & importance?

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25

Agree with the post above.

I used to use Facebook, I think I stopped even before it became more broadly known that it was some kind of hazard - but forget about Twitter.

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26

I hate to break it to a lot of you guys but

Forums were social media before the word was invented to make Facebook feel special. You’re using social media right now. The only way to “never use social media” is to move out to a ranch off the grid and avoid TV, phones, or any other form of media where you share content you create with other people.

“I don’t use social media” isn’t an identity. It means “I don’t have friends”.

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27

And I loved Facebook when I used it as the Candy Crush forums. It has mutated into a platform for everything wrong with the world.
On the “official GoW Twitter or Facebook” it should just have a forums link.
Remember when smoking cigarettes was popular? That’s what Social Media is now. Some users of it will be fine for the rest of their lives. Some will deal the ramifications of daily use for the rest of their lives.
I’m being 100% serious here. Time will prove my thoughts to be true.
(I’ve quit both bad habits.)

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28

That was not only unnecessary but uncalled for and completely nothing to do with the topic at hand. It’s irrelevant why people choose (not) to use various channels and I think many here would appreciate if you not turn the discussion into some uncivilized argument about which channel’s users are better or more important than the others. I didn’t put anyone down for their choice of channels and i’d appreciate the same in return. And while others stated why they do(n’ t) use various channels they weren’t being nasty toward anyone else about it.

Semantics aside you know damn well when someone says “social media” what they’re referring to, and it isn’t forums like this. So stop mincing words to confuse & distract.

If my point wasn’t already apparent I’ll refraze:

There should be 1 single centralized repository channel for ALL content/updates/news to be announced/discussed on and all other channels becoming secondary with the content being pushed out to them. Period. If the devs want to do something special on a social media channel then there should be a post here on the forums simultaneously or preceeding it, directing people there.

No one should have to search all over the internet to find an answer about GoW or to hear about new content for the first time or to get clarification on an issue. Different content on different channels simply confuse people and obscure and issues.

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29

There is a story here, and you’re not wrong, and I’m not editing away what I put there even though I intended that. I’m sorry for my phrasing because it is needlessly offensive and a bad way to make my point.

I meant to edit it out, but I got busy. I was in the middle of doing so when my boss dropped by and I got sucked into a conversation that lasted however long it’s been. Here is what I mean instead, again I’m leaving the bad thing there as evidence that yes, I screwed up.

Some people don’t have a very large in-person network of friends. This is me. I have a few. But my real-life social circle is dwarfed by my online friends. I speak almost daily with a dozen people from as many countries. I have friends on at least four continents. I know most of their real names, I’ve sent mail back and forth between many, and we’ve exchanged long conversations about personal details I wouldn’t share with a lot of my online friends. I’ve known some of them for more than 20 years, others for more than 10. In real life my oldest current friend has known me for maybe 4.

Some of this is a product of how I grew up. I don’t want to get into it. Many of the people I “should have” been socializing with are in jail or worse. By the time I was in a healthy social environment, I was used to avoiding real people and hanging out with online friends.

I get that, in different circumstances, I’d see it all as a waste of time. If I were used to having a set of real-life people who I’m never separated from, maybe I too would not see the value in software that keeps me interconnected with a more disparate social group.

But in the broader internet, I find that “I don’t use social media” is usually used in the same sense as, “…and I don’t like THOSE people who do.” Hell, AWR compared “social media” and “smoking cigarettes” to each other, and suggested people who use it extensively will “deal with the ramifications”.

I got emotional and said a bad thing from that emotional place. Without social media I don’t know how I would have made it through some very tough times, I don’t think I would’ve found a support network. So I don’t like how “cool” it is to wave around that one doesn’t use it at all, as if there’s a value difference between “a person who’d spot me some cash in a tight spot with no strings attached” if they come from Twitter or real life. The right answer isn’t to act as if the opposite is true.

There’s a bunch of different ways to have friends and stay in touch. We should be respectful of all of those ways. I screwed that up too, I’m sorry, and I know you’re going to TL;DR me but whatever, I wanted to say “my bad” and “yes, you called me out righteously”.

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30

I think that’s the key word and difference there: “engagement” (or activity) is much different and shouldn’t be confused with “actual” community. I actually started my initial post with trying to throw out a number of active posters here and realized that there are probably “lots” of lurkers here who may be inclined to vote (because that doesn’t require any actual posting) vs those who do, which is why I ended up using the number of clicks on the link as a measure instead. For instance, I don’t post a whole lot here although I read during the week, so I certainly wouldn’t consider myself an active poster at all.

So… while the numbers of which votes belong to which social media platform are missing, you can’t really connect “active posters” on any of them as indicative of those who are actually on there and following. While the numbers on the polls do indicate the interest and activity.

If that’s what you were trying to say, then I apologize as I took what you said as going in the entire opposite direction :slight_smile:

31

You aren’t wrong. I’m only speaking about one observable metric, it’s possible there are other metrics that invalidate my ordering. Salty’s probably the only one with the data that shows it for real.

I want to say I’d be astonished to find out another platform has a larger audience than the forums. I think that’s a stretch, though. I think what I want to say instead is something like if we ask where the most veteran players tend to congregate, I’d be astonished to find out it’s not the forums.

That may not be the largest group to exclude, but it’s definitely a very involved group that strongly feels like they should have a say in the game’s design.

32

This almost sounds like the Brexit fiasco :joy:

33

There’s a lot to unpack here, so I’ll run through my thoughts. Apologies if they are a bit scattered and I jump around!

As I mentioned, the reason this wasn’t posted on the forums was because I was in transit, and a lot of other responsibilities were making demands on my already limited time. I had several meetings, a talk, jet lag, networking and industry events to give time too, AND I chose to work when I was on leave. Because we banned players directly prior to GDC, I had a huge influx of work (…and abuse) from players. Whether you feel this is right or wrong, it is the reality, and my time/brain space was largely consumed with putting out fires, directly players to support, and making sure my scheduling was correct. On top of this, the Switch launch was organised for when the team was in transit. We did not choose this timing, in fact, it was the worst possible timing for us! So on top of everything else, I had to schedule blog posts, liaise with the publisher and sort things behind the scenes. And things still happened that were out of my control!

The reason the posts still went out on Twitter and Facebook is because I scheduled them too. It is unfortunately likely that I would have forgotten to post them at all if they hadn’t already been written and prepared in advance.

I don’t have anything to add about the nature of social media, you are all welcome to that debate. It is a tool that we employ and players can choose to opt in or out of, just as they may choose to opt in or out of the forums.

I know that this makes me sound like a broken record, but the forums are only a small section of our player-base. Are you vocal? Yes. But that also makes these boards an echo chamber. I place a fair amount of importance on the forums, but you are not our only priority, nor should you be. While the forums breed a lot of discussion, they aren’t our biggest social platform. (Though @Slypenslyde is correct when they say that it is where our most veteran players tend to congregate.)

All that being said, I cannot promise that it won’t happen again. I can’t see the future, and am unsure if demands on my time will cause me to overlook a slightly less important detail. I triage our community needs daily and operate from there. You may not always agree with what I give priority too, and that’s fine, but it is a big part of my job and is integral to all communications processes regardless of company.

To finish, I do apologise, because this is a ball that I dropped. In no way was it malicious or done with the intent to bar parts of the community from participating. I was overwhelmed and this is what fell through the cracks. I’m sorry if this caused anyone harm or frustration, it was never my intention but I understand why it could.

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34

Yay the weapon steals life this is gonna be a great weapon to use in arena

35

not that i care about the weapon or the delay rlly but are we supposed to believe noone else in the company can post png graph of the votes and write a paragraph then hit make thread??? xD

36

I guess my only question is. By the time you realized your mistake. Was it too late to post on here or was the contest already over? And you were unable to reopen it?

(I know you schedule posts on here so I don’t get how Twitter was planned and this wasn’t assuming Twitter was planned to post before all that stress happened. But it’s neither here nor there at this point.)

It would be nice if someone else on the staff could pick up things that fall through the cracks like this.
Or if all the news/spoilers populated on the main website sight first. That would be great. That’s how I found out about the Switch release a few hours before it was announced on here.

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It’s a bit harder when most of the team is in transit. :stuck_out_tongue: And I wouldn’t expect our programmers to be watching this closely, as they have very different jobs and different duties.

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I 100% expect @Ozball to see every post on the forums. He has that responsibility as the first (maybe last) ever true hybrid. :wink: (Was a player who became a dev)

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39

@awryan they are scheduled in separate places and through different programs. It’s not as simple as popping it all into one place and having it auto post. (Oh how I wish it was!!!) By the time I realised my mistake yes it was to late to post.

And your request regarding Ozball is unreasonable. :stuck_out_tongue: He’s a programmer, he’s got code to write and a job to do! Go Ozball go!!!

Now, I have a lot of social to smash through and a bunch of reports to write. As much as I might love you all (and the forums) I have already spent a significant chunk of my morning here reading, replying to PMS and talking to you in this thread. As we speak I have nearly 200 comments and messages to reply to on Twitter and Facebook, so I bid you adieu.

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40

You had my support until this. Lol
But okay… If you see all 3 platforms as exactly the same. Then it’s hard to contest that.

I see the Forums as literally your player base. The members on here support the game in countless ways. Even if 5% of the total players use the Forums. They use knowledge here to help and educate 40-50% of the other players in the game who don’t use social media in any type. Whether it be discord or global chat.
If someone says they read it on the forums the first instinct is to trust it.
If someone says they read something on Twitter or FB. They go and fact check it by asking a dev or checking the forums.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this…
As GoW tries to expand it’s audience and grow it’s daily users count. It’s important to remember the core group that will educate those new players about GoW. Most won’t check the guides (that your core helped make). Most will still get lost even with the tutorial (that your core insisted on making better).
So please don’t forget your core as you stretch out. Mistakes like this will happen. But if you don’t learn from them, then there’s no point in making them.

How many reading this knew that Honor isn’t weighted equally? It was posted on the community guide 18 hours ago and week after it was introduced. See if you can find that out on Twitter or FB. Because I found that knowledge courtesy of @noob when he posted it on the forums. Your #1 source for GoW knowledge, just not GoW contests. :wink:

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