Please Devs WAKE UP and do something!

[Saltypatra]

Some of you weren’t around when this happened, but I’m sure others will still remember this. Sirrian wrote a post 2 years ago that still remains true.

@Sirrian

No TLDR here… hard to summarize…

I kind of wanted to blurt out a cranky response to this post, but I DO understand it comes from a vaguely good place that cares about the game, so it deserves a proper answer. I DO want to give you all an honest answer from a dev’s point of view too. And it really comes down to two things:

1. Exactly what @Saltypatra said… TIME! - much as I (and Nimhain) would love to continue work in the community, Gems of War has been growing so much in 2017, the team here has been growing too, and it’s my job to try and keep that all in line from a dev & direction & team pov. And Nimhain’s job to keep it all in line from a design & live-operations pov. At this stage of growth, it’s a massive undertaking… and leaves us no time to drop by here… but that’s where @Saltypatra comes in - she’s here to make sure we communicate with you guys. She reports to us constantly, and we make sure she’s passing information back down the pipeline to you!

Do we wish we could return to the old days where we personally would always have a little time to chat? Sure! But things need to get done, and it takes so. much. darned. time!

2. There is a darker side to this answer. Both Nimhain and myself stepped back from the forums when we realised that it was impacting our work, not only due to time, but due to the amount of abuse & harrassment we would encounter on a daily basis. In all honesty, you get accustomed to a certain amount mud being thrown your way in a public-facing role… as far as I’m concerned, @Saltypatra is a saint for taking some of this stuff in her stride and keeping on moving… I’m not kidding when I say that a week wouldn’t very often go by when someone doesn’t threaten me, and it’s not good, but you put up with it.

HOWEVER, during the Guild Wars preview, I received over 15 Death Threats in 3 weeks, I had my personal information published online, I had some pretty bad experiences on linked-in and social media, and discourse, and even my email… and some of the descriptions of what would be done to me and exactly WHEN they would be done, and where, were disturbing. I’m not easily disturbed, but a part of my mind started wondering “what if there is a crazy person out there?”

At this point, I realised that, yes, this level of abuse WAS affecting my work. I can’t have that happen really… I’ve got a lot of stuff to get done… so it was time to take a step back.

Now I KNOW most of you here are good folk, who are probably a little horrified about what I just shared, but as always, I wanted to be totally honest with you. All I can say is that, I AM actually really sorry I can’t hang out more… the mostly fine folk are not the problem and I really enjoyed discussing things with you! But… EVEN IF I had time, the emotional toll of trying to discuss things as a game dev in a game forum, while being subject to all kinds of abuse, just affects the quailty of your work. That’s a sad reality of the internet… we make an awesome thing for sharing thoughts and ideas, and a small number of crazy people can wreck it for us.

The solution? Well, I’m not going anywhere… neither is the rest of the team. We’re all still fixing bugs, adding features, improving stuff, occasionally breaking a few things too (it’s the nature of the business after all - we’re all far from perfect).

A few points detailed here have changed since. Yes, I am still active, but now we also have @Cyrup and @Kafka to round out our team! We interact with you here, in support, and on our various social platforms.

And since I’m already here, I will address a few concerns.

1. Our DAU are not dropping.
2. Our community and player base are continuing to grow.
3. Gems of War has some of the highest retention rates seen in a F2P title, which has not changed.
4. We are in the process of investigating PVP. If we choose to re work PVP, it will require the evaluation of a lot of working parts, and we always want to implement the most holistic long term solution possible. As such, it is not something we are comfortable rushing. When we have more to announce, we will do so.
5. The main problem that players are experiencing is if you are a high-level player you will be earning less PVP Points/Gold/Rewards for your battles as the game currently considers that you are fighting battles which are easier for your skill level. While this isn’t necessarily always true, the team is aware of this problem and realises it’s frustrating to earn less when you have to fight more battles compared to another player. As mentioned earlier, this is something we are investigating. Unfortunately, it’s a large, complicated problem that affects the overall game design and balancing.
6. We are active across all parts of the design process.
7. We listen to feedback, but when it isn’t constructive or largely consists of yelling at the developers, we often choose to not respond.

I know that this doesn’t highlight an immediate solution, but it is the information I have available for you at this point in time. Please be aware that this is on our radar, and is something we are actively looking into.