Dev Q & A (3.5 Update, Monday 2/7/18)

Official News
#164

Honestly, when it comes down to it, repeated issues brought up with stuff like the class change fee is a catch 22. It seems that you guys aren’t allowed to say much which causes many to assume the worst. If you do say something lije it won’t be changed, it either confirms suspicions of you guys supposedly being greedy. The only other options are to throw publishers under the bus or be like, eh we thought it wasn’t important and repeat that whole console justice league debacle.

I personally enjoyed what I caught as my guild was doing GW at the time, but a well rounded Q&A on the future, vague rework hints, and lore (some possibly nsfw and I’m not apologizing).

The problem is the tougher questions get swept away for multiple, quite arguably good reasons. BUT, there is no real outlet that seems to be a real discussion on improving it as feedback threads seem to mostly just meanders and rarely seems to get its desired effects on issues, or at least in a timely manner I suppose. There is no real discussion on shop improvements and as we’ve said, the shop is outdated and overpriced. Creating artificial gem demand is not the way to effectively increase gem purchases, or at least without pissing off veterans and getting shallower players who just pay to win that crave f2p models. I personally think the path to glory 2 should be a guarantee for a new mythic during the introduction week. I mean it’s not like mythics comes out once a month, that’d be crazy.

Either way, TLDR: we need either a thread meant for the tough questions and straight to the point answers so that people don’t get upset at the lack of “answers”.

When the dead horse is instead given an off screen burial it sucks, because then we gotta dig it back up or use the necronomicon which on occasion accidently opens a portal to hell. The last time it happened we accidently made a super demon bear and thank god no pigs were involved in that chimera creation.

2 Likes
#165

https://media1.giphy.com/media/y7kvOYLzas6Ag/giphy-downsized-large.gif?cid=790b7611ded4f783f2bce6e5e9946a51391ded9bb1b42b78&rid=giphy-downsized-large.gif&ct=g(image larger than 4 MB)

Well… carry on then.

1 Like
#166

@KYLENATOR001 Unfortunately that is unlikely to happen. If we aren’t speaking about something, it is usually because we can’t. As such, your proposed solution isn’t viable. :frowning:

For some further transparency, there are some instances (though they are very few, to be clear) where I won’t answer a question that I can. This is due to the fact that we have been attacked for far less in the past, receiving death threats, being doxxed and being repeatedly harassed as a result. If this was less of a viable fear, there is the slight chance that I would speak further on some perceived issues, but as it stands it can often be too dangerous for me to do so when players may not like our reasoning.

#167

Never understood people sending death threat for a f2p game. Man your life must be miserable to do something stupid like this

1 Like
#168

Me either, I think people can generally be too quick to anger and either don’t think or care about their actions. I can understand frustration, but actually threatening others like that is lower than low.

#169

Sadly, the anonymity that the Internet can provide for people can be rather empowering for some people for all the wrong reasons.

And, yeah, the devs have been previously attacked openly on the forums for past decisions. It’s one of the reasons that the devs are much more reserved nowadays in openly speaking about game logic and internal gameplay decisions, for exactly the reasons Salty describes.

From the forum archives, when this happened in the past…

4 Likes
#170

Oh boy, It’s not even 7 am and I already feel bad. I know my wording can be harsh at times and I apologize If anyone felt personally attacked. That was not my intention.

And please, keep doing the Q&As. I was not disappointed with the amount of questions, only with the answers. I feel they all boiled down to “It will get better in the future” and I have heard all that before with different games and different companies only to see those games get worse with every update.

I love the game at its core. I just don’t want to see it getting bloated with game decissions driven by greed.

1 Like
#171

Well, the fact that this was the only lore question shows that lore is not what people want to know about when there are so many problems with technical or gameplay mechanics.
Why shoehorn it in when this time could have been used to better adress concerns about recent design decissions?

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#172

No, the reason it was the only lore question is because people got attacked for asking lore questions in the past and “taking up valuable time”. It was mentioned in this month’s Q&A question collecting thread again that some people were hoping that people would not ask about stuff like that. Because, you know, if it doesn’t interest you personally, other people are seemingly not allowed to be interested in it.:roll_eyes:

I used to ask a TON of lore questions/silly questions. I dropped it because I got hate because of it. Last month, I dared to ask one silly question which I even put into a separate post from the normal questions so that no one could claim I’m trying to get likes for the “normal” questions to sneak the silly one in. And still I got called out for it in this month’s thread when I hadn’t even posted anything there.

So yes, you ask questions people find “silly” or “uninteresting”, you are a monster and will be called out for it by those who don’t agree. And also be called a few not-so-nice-things on top if it, if you’re not lucky. I didn’t get any death threats, but it was still pretty bad and maybe I just lucked out on the death threats because no one wants to come over to Germany. :stuck_out_tongue:
I’ve been sick of the hate, so I stopped asking. Razzagor dared this month, now he gets the lashback. Hope it’s not as bad as the stuff I got.

8 Likes
#173

Oh boy, I didn’t realize this community can be that toxic. :disappointed_relieved:

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#174

@Sheba is correct.

@GreyFox474 lore questions are actually quite popular. However, some people get upset when we answer them over other questions. To us, they are just as valid as any other question. Some players are more interested in the lore than mechanic specifics.

7 Likes
#175

It’s just two or three people, really. And it’s always like that everywhere on the internet. It used to bother me, but ever since I started hanging out in international forums where most people are from the US and I am separated from them by an ocean, I’ve gotten more relaxed when it comes to being called horrible things. And if someone ever really wants to find out where I live, charter a plane and fly all the way to Germany to murder me because I asked questions about chinchillas (which were originally asked by someone else) or lore about Khorvash’s Manticore or Fizzbang (which had both been subjects of pretty long lore threads here in the forums) for clarification, then well, that says a lot about that person.

Just checking this thread carefully here about who/how many people either tried to get others to ask only specific stuff or, after the stream, complained that their own, specific question wasn’t answered (clearly rendering the stream useless), you might be able to read between the lines a bit of what kind of PMs people might get (not by the same people, by the way).

Also honestly, I always tried to phrase my questions in a way that, when possible, there was a chance to make it into a real “important” answer. Most people here know I like bunnies, so me asking a long time ago in stream why we don’t have a bunny kingdom was misunderstood (because of question length; I was told before my questions were too long) as “Sheba feels entitled to demand kingdoms”. Which is nonsense. While of course I would love a bunny kingdom, I am actually wondering both lore- and design-wise why, for example, bears, cats, birds and (sorta) goats were chosen to get their own kingdoms, but not other animals and instead we have by now two dwarven and a ton of elven kingdoms.

The old Q&A system kind of made asking questions difficult, actually - as soon as your question got too long so that reading it out on stream would be bothersome, Salty shortened it (for good reason; once a longer one made it in and wow, that was a trainwreck to follow); same with chat questions asked directly in stream. This sometimes led to lore questions/silly questions losing the actual reason why they were asked, making them partially also more uninteresting. The Khorvash-Manticore-Question was one of those; it originated from a thread where people were discussing if its horn was a nose horn or just an odd part of the wing being visible, with also people expressing they wished they could have the “rhino” (:stuck_out_tongue: ) as a mount and that mounts, like in Puzzle Quest, were a thing. I managed to get the lore question to clear the nose-horn-issue in and Nimhain also told us that it’s a special Manticore just for Khorvash, but due to the nature of short questions/people spamming more and more questions in chat, she and I couldn’t get the curve to ask about mounts. And so, I got hate for asking a “useless question which had been discussed on the forum already” because my "Does Khorvash’s Manticore have a nose horn and can we ride it one day as a mount? :stuck_out_tongue: " got made into “Is it a nose horn?” and while the answer “It’s a nose horn and it’s just for Khorvash” is an indirect “No mounts”, I don’t think people got that since Salty cut that part when reading it on stream. That’s how the story goes, or at least how I recall it. Been like 8 months.

1 Like
#176

this is how i imagine death threats going down is aus…

image

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#177

The issue with this streaming was the small amount of time for questions on any themes…
The other issue was that Salty moved to this format (i.e. focus on one aspect, 3.5 patch for example) because the same questions were always asked.
But still, the question about Treasure Hunt was again asked… Every Q&A we get this question, with the same answer… :roll_eyes:

#178

Hence why I will stop asking it from now on. :slight_smile:

#179

On the other side, Sirrian said that he didn’t see good suggestions about Tresaure Hunt on the forum…

You shouldn’t open a new topic about that? Or was it about new Mythic tri-color weapon’s name?

#180

I asked the lore question because Salty asked for some fun questions. I’m glad it got answered. Personally I enjoy the story elements of RPGs and I’ve played GoW long enough to know that game mechanic changes don’t happen overnight. I left the game and came back, and I’m at peace with how it is right now.

At the end of the day, Salty and IP2 run the Q&A, they’ll ask and answer whatever they want to, and it’s not a democracy. Salty was very clear that they weren’t going to discuss the gem fee. 100 grown adults crying about it before the Q&A didn’t change that, and the same people seem surprised that Salty did exactly what she said she was going do.

Edit: it may have been the only lore question but it got a fair number of likes.

6 Likes
#181

Btw if you can’t meet the brief, don’t be surprised that your question didn’t get answered

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#182

I quite enjoy the new Dev Q&A. Coming from other gaming communities where communication with the devs just don’t happen and the community managers are basically invisible, this is a breath of fresh air.

What I enjoy the most is when they go a bit more in-depth in development decisions. Like the process of why they decided to rework the hero classes and the future plan to change existing kingdoms. It’s interesting to get a look behind the curtain.

I also enjoy the random lore bits. This is in parts an rpg game and the lore is something that don’t shine through as well in-game as it deserve. The flavour text that came with the new cards/wep this week is hilarious, and it’s a shame most players will not even know it exist.
It can be added to the news tab, put in a lore tab on the right side, add a lore button to the kingdom or directly on a troop/wep, or all of the above.

When it comes to maps; since the beginning of the game I have hoped we would get the lock picking mini game from Puzzle Quest to use the maps on as well. For the people not enjoying playing mini games, just make it so we can turn the maps into gold in the soulforge.

3 Likes
#183

Not as much toxic and more like people still thinking they are the queen/king of the ball on highschool or some other non-sense because social behavior is mostly about power struggles. To a certain degree everyone thinks their stuff is more important than other’s stuffs, some entitlement here and there, but eh… That’s usual on the internet i would say.

1 Like