Lack of communication

The community is small but talks alot about improvements, dislikes and likes. Yet it barely gets any response from the GoW team while more changes are being made.
A perfect example are the UI changes for both Troops and Overworld. It took quite some major backlash for the troops to be changed to a less horrible version. The Overworld UI has had people speak out as well but so far seen 0 response on that matter.

Even when asked for feedback, like for the most recent update, there is no communication about what’s being listened to, impossible to implement or just outright don’t want to do. So hope the communication can be improved on. Which not just includes these forums but also social media such as Twitter.
If there is a community manager they need to do better and if there isn’t please hire one. As with the lack of communication, things promised that are put on the backburner or in the trash for things no one asked for, changes that makes the game unplayable for some and the increase in micro transactions, the games longevity doesn’t look that good. Which is truly a shame.

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Realised i made the topic on friday when most likely alot of things are not read cause of the weekend. Hope that by bumping this up it can get a proper response though my hopes are quite low.
Wanted to make it clear as well that not asking for everything being implemented or even being fixed but asking for at least a response towards issues. Like what is possible, impossible and when something is being looked into. Just simple communication at the least. Is that to much to ask for?

Hey @Wolfchadren I guess I’m just confused, we respond to every bug report made on this forum and are active on our social media and other threads here on this forum as well.

If you look through threads made both before and after you created this thread you can see me actively communicating in a variety of threads from bug reports to feedback.

We also post multiple blog posts each week.

There were multiple responses to the UI and PVP feedback.

I suspect you have an issue or feedback request that you made personally that may not have received a direct answer rather than this being an overall communication issue like you’ve suggested?

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@Kafka could u guys please respond to the wrong weekly kingdom that switch got about 2 weeks ago when u guys were on vacation? (Yeah, it’s us again, in case u forgot) :joy:

Runic knight was the glory shop troop for SWORDS EDGE not Adana. Everything was associated to the wrong kingdom and NS users were confused as to what happened, leaving some us without key troops or weapons from swords edge for kingdom progress.

Biggest things we missed out were event key mythics, soulforge weapons and the starry scrappy pet.

We need a response and compensation for this oversight.

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That’so true!!! @Kafka @Bramble @Nimhain

@Kafka

What good does a “response” if nothing happens afterwards?

What good does a “response” f.e. to topics that discuss and mark the whole uneven rng as a bad/unwanted thing for the players, f.e. in the unfair distribution of dragons out of dragon eggs, when afterwards we just get drowned in more rng with new cosmic dragons and cosmic dragon eggs featuring the same problem?
Solutions were offered: cap after reaching a dragon 4 times. Nothing happened. Problem successfully ignored. But hey, let’s celebrate, we maybe got “a response”. Yay.

“Actively communicating” is a good thing - actual quickly achieved changes/results afterwards are the real thing players hope for. And those are more often than not just completely missing. If asked about certain things again - silence from official side, as if nothing ever was communicated. Often feels like “I don’t like this topic, I’ll just avoid it.” Just write directly that certain changes will never happen if that is the internal credo and all players can move on without hopes. Transparency.

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Thanks for responding but do disagree with the communication. As seen especially on other social media that there is most of he time 0 response.
This is not about the bug reports as those do seem to be handled well. What i’m saying is the overall communication. Especially on other places then the forums alot seems to be just automated posts with 0 response. Such as with last update when asked for feedback people did give feedback but all seems to have rolled out without listening to the feedback.
After the backlash of the troop UI it would have been a good idea to delay the overworld UI changes as well to not encounter similar problems as with the troop UI changes. That didn’t happen and nothing has changed even though people like myself have mentioned what exactly the problem is with it on other social media.

What worries me a bit in your reply as well is that you mention how you reply to these things and name no one else. When looking at the list of devs, moderators etc. on this forum it seems you are the only one responsible. Which makes it understandable that some things are responded to later or overlooked. Having just one person in your role, at least that seems to be the case, is a bit of a problem with a decent sized playerbase across several gaming platforms.

Again the thing i’m asking for is better communication when it comes to feedback on all social platforms. Not just reading it but also more activily replying to it and taking more things in consideration or explaining better what’s possible to fix or not and a potential timeframe if it can be fixed. Which again if you are the only one responsible for that communication can understand why it is how it is but that means more people should get assigned to that role.

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@Kafka The 6 month product Roadmap was awesome. Would love to see that consistently in the future.

Also maybe you already do this in release/patch notes but maybe highlight all changes/fixes that were implemented at the request of the player base.

Finally, with regard to Beta testing, maybe a little more advance notice on the recruiting and maybe post a list of beta-tester feedback that was incorporated into the release. On the advance notice - it would help to know earlier to check calendars to see if there is time available and plan for it. The last two cycles I’ve had too much going on but could have moved some stuff around if I had known earlier.

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TLDR; Everything is a maybe and nothing is scheduled until we tell you if it’s accepted or rejected and give you a date - if you have no communication about the feedback assume there’s no answer and no date scheduled - this doesn’t mean we will be able to give you a yes/no answer or an eta if we just make the time to reply - the reply will be “we’ll consider it and we have no current plans” - this is not a yes or no, it’s an acknowledgement - we’re not going to spam every thread with this answer - you all hate it when we give the same answer over and over and it will take time away from other things we need to handle (like answering feedback and bug reports that do have solid answers).

Answers generally are given to an “audience” not 1:1 - and only for the biggest feedback points, we don’t have the time or capacity as humans to answer every piece of feedback we receive as there is A LOT.

@Elfin Sure we’ll look at trying to give a bit more notice in future for the beta sign ups!

Long version

We can take a little feedback on our social media but as I understand it you post your feedback there every day so were directed to come here to the forum which is the best place to have feedback discussions.

We simply cannot have 1:1 conversations about game feedback, so you will often get directed to the forum here to discuss it in a group so we only have to answer once.

When we have info on what feedback will be used and when we share it.
We were quite active in the UI discussion board here on the forum which is officially where we reply to feedback, even though we collect it from all platforms.

Our development schedule is scheduled months in advance, and we start work on the next-next update before the next update has even been released, which is why often feedback won’t be addressed immediately in the next update as it may already be about to get submitted to the stores for approval - live service games and especially Gems of War operates at a crazy pace and there’s no getting off this train :bullettrain_front:

Basically, if I know, you know. Things can change quickly, so first of all I make sure of all the details and make sure as much as reasonably possible the plans won’t change before we make an announcement or post about it. We try to acknowledge that we’ve seen the big feedback points - we can’t do this for all feedback posts - it’s not feasible to answer every post.

We receive a LOT of feedback every day from all our communication platforms. We can’t possibly implement all of it or reply to all of it but we also don’t say no to half of it. If there’s no yes, and no no answer, it means we’re actually going to consider it but we don’t have a clear answer for you and we don’t have anything scheduled for it. I know you want answers, but in the amount of stuff waves vaguely in every direction sometimes there is no clear answer.

If you don’t receive an answer to feedback and you’ve checked the forum for dev posts about it and found nothing, you can assume the answer is a solid maybe - with no plans in place or ETA. But we’re only human and we literally can’t respond to every post everywhere about everything and a lot of the feedback is reposts because the person didn’t know it had already been suggested or answered. Much like you didn’t know we’d replied to the UI feedback with what we were doing and when. We don’t expect anyone to be all seeing and all knowing (if you are that’s super cool and we’d like to hire you), I guess just try to see what discussions are going on in the feedback section here if you’re super keen and keep an eye on all the news.

Hopefully this helped? I feel like I’ve just given you a brick wall to run into.
Totally open to improving comms but we literally cannot reply to all feedback all the time everywhere. I’ve spent time writing this reply already not doing bug reports or actually posting more feedback to the team - everything has a time cost and every time we do anything, something else loses that time. We cannot infinitely hire more staff - that’s not how business works even if we are called Infinity Plus Two :stuck_out_tongue:

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That’s more understandable but still very frustrating for the playerbase. However think most people prefer some kind of acknowledgment that things are looked into or not, especially if multiple people have complaints about it, then just being radio silent about it until possible to potentially fix it. As no one likes uncertainty. Communication is key after all.

Understand that people can’t be hired all the time as that would be quite expensive. Though makes me wonder what possibilities there are for volunteers. Who for example can compile ideas and problems that most people put to your attention. Organise that information, send it to the right person/people so that it can be looked into and get a possible to be fixed/implemented or not. Which is then replied back to the playerbase and if the things were mentioned by different people reply to them seperatly. Saves time for the developers and moderators who can focus on the game and bug reports more then instead of also improvements.
Just a thought that might help the situation if possible.

We do enjoy this game and it’s so far i’ve encountered a healthy community that wants to help make things better. Would be a pity if that flips around just cause people don’t feel heard.

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Add an “eventually” to that statement and then I will agree.

It is, regrettably, normal for a topic to go a few days before seeing ANY response from someone with access to the development team, and I realize that it can be frustrating (on the user end) to get only a stock response affirming only that that someone has actually read the topic. But even that is better than receiving ZERO communication.

But certain kinds of bugs are time-sensitive, meaning bugfixes delayed are bugfixes DENIED. The report about the wrong event configuration on Switch (even ignoring the Christmas/New Year’s vacation) lingered over a full week before seeing a response, to an issue that really could not be properly resolved unless it got resolved ASAP.

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As that role is a paid CM position (here we call it CX), it’s not legal to have a volunteer do it.

The best you can do is compile the feedback in the forum in one place where it’s easy for a staff member to grab the information, which is why we direct everyone to the forum to give game feedback.

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There’s still no compensation for that. So my honest question: How long do they think they need to give back what they’ve taken?
We’re talking about Gems. So the premium currency of the game. I paid around 2000. What I was given back were 50. So I’m still waiting for around 1950. Don’t tell me they’re still sitting and trying to “resolve” this. They will never do it.
That’s what they call “life service”. Take real money for virtual currency (gems). Then take the gems and do nothing.
I’m not at the point to say they were doing it on purpose. But they don’t care about what they have done. And - in a comparable situation - they will do nothing… again.
Just my opinion.

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Have given all this some thought and still believe a better communication is needed.

Do remember that in the past there were live streams where the game was played while interacting with the playerbase. Are those still around and just missing them or did that completly stop? If it’s not done anymore maybe try that again as it’s a good way to interact and explain things to players.

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Those stopped quite a while ago when Salty left

Thought so. That’s something that would help alot if brought back. Communication and connecting with others is important to make things better. Hope the developers can look into it to give that a try again.

they are not interested in making things better

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despite devs claiming otherwise in written form in this forum from time to time that “they do”, so far there’s no real actions indicating it is more than just empty words. ways for improvements have been suggested in the past by the active players in this forum, among it also being to make such streams again, or some discord q&a or even something in this forum or several other things that most likely would lead to some form of improvement in minimizing (existing and future) bugs, making the game more “fun”, etc, but seemingly those suggestions aren’t taken serious or into consideration or just noone wants to have any (additional?) work with such things. and after all, there’s a own definition of what is “fun” that is a bit strange to understand for everyone else. I guess anything only counts as “fun” if it is expected to fill the pockets with AU$.

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