As title says, who is forum manager? Who does one talk to besides the saltypatra automated system if there is an issue or question?
https://community.gemsofwar.com/about
I suppose, for account restrictions, technical and legal issues surrounding the forum, Kafka would be the primary contact, if we go by this selection (though I think, he does not allow direct messages), while stuff surrounding thread and posting moderation might be best aimed at one of the mods, preferably one, that is still active (so basicly Brambleā¦).
Could not find a contact email or postal adress right now, although there has to be one hidden somewhere.
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But what if the still active person hands out forum suspensions against users?
A better way to solve things than handing out two weeks forum suspensions for the reason of āinappropriate chat / calloutāā¦
(which literally can be āanythingā and which canāt be appealed anywhere - I donāt even know which of my postings or which part, or who handed out this wayward suspension time against me)
ā¦would be to learn to reflect the real problems of the game and live with warranted criticism mentioned from active invested players after continuous bugs and failures the game produces, finally to fix them and minimize their happening in the future.
Instead of clicking the ā(abuse of )powerā-button to try and silence such ācritiqueā it would be neat to please try and do a good job so the players donāt have to deal with as many bugs in the game every week and with every new update. A wild bonus would be to actually answer questions members of the gaming community ask and not to just ādodge themā.
Iām sure thereās things to be found in this posting that somehow justify another wayward unwarranted ban (if that is the goal, againā¦) and considering that thereās seemingly no further control mechanisms.
So, most likely cya all in a month maybe or whenever/after my next suspension runs out.
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@DAeron if you have a general issue or feedback about the forum you can post it in a forum thread (so here would be good).
If itās about something to do with your user account or something else that might be private please contact support
@icy If you want to complain about a ban you can contact support, itās not appropriate to discuss it on the public forum. Thanks!
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Right, the quick support that once needed more than a full year until you yourself responded back (before also abandoning it again, until Jeto took over) on a bug Iām still facing daily ingame while navigating through the map.
Great suggestion. But I have doubts this would work in time or come to any fruition. As if any of you would overturn one anotherā¦ Please just point me to what exactly the suspension was for and who āhanded itā, thanks. Fair?
I donāt want to make mistakes again, but feel unsafe. 
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Support doesnāt answer tickets about bans. So how does one contact support?
Furthermore, I had a comment about Doom Weapon changes get deleted yesterday. It didnāt violate any of the community guidelines. Yet I have no idea who from your company deleted the comment. I assume they misread my post and thought it was more malicious than it actually was. Considering I was saying bad ideas should be cancelled.
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Thats why i asked. I had a comment removed and i dont understand how it couldāve been interpreted as malicious or inappropriate. Im not even challenging it, i just want clarification so i dont violate any rules again.
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Hi @Kafka
What is the appropriate way to tag the support team when they have not responded to a bug report thread? Some forum users tag Bramble - is this what we should be doing?
It seems that some bug reports get sidetracked by conversation between players and never get responded to by the support team. That can lead to the impression that the support team donāt care about bugs and are ignoring issues.
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Unless the bug is quite old thereās no need to tag CX, while we do try to leave a tag in the title to let everyone know the status, if we miss editing the title of some itās still unlikely weāve missed reporting it to the team at all unless thereās literally no edit or anything on it for a very long time (2 weeks+). Weāre not perfect but I think we get at least 99% of the bug reports that come through here. I apologise, if we could acknowledge everyone in a more timely way we absolutely would.
Threads that have been derailed or are duplicates of one weāve already addressed we may leave to respond to later as sorting through irrelevant posts nad duplicates adds more work to reply - ie. we canāt simply reply about the bug, now we also have to get the thread back on track or moderate the forum by merging threads etc. but I assure you everything that comes up is either tested or passed onto the dev team (or both) the same day it appears on the forum. We check the bug reports here every day.
We donāt have time to reply to every thread but I donāt think thatās what youāre asking for anyway, just acknowledgement, which is fair.
If you could flag posts that are derailing bug report threads you are part of, they can be hidden by the community as well which means it will speed up our work in the bug reports section.
We will work on keeping the Known Issues section of the Help Center more in line with the forum reports, which is a much easier way for us to update the status of bugs as well.
@icy you were emailed with your ban reason when the ban was placed. If you didnāt see it check your spam folder.
@AWRyan and @DAeron you will be messaged by someone on the CX team before the weekend if you havenāt been already. I followed up on what happened and it seems your posts were deleted with the intention of messaging you later as dealing with bugs/feedback was higher priority than moderating your accounts. In future posts wonāt be deleted unless a warning or ban is issued immediately after.
I apologise for the lack of communication, Iāve spoken with the team and it shouldnāt happen again.
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Thanks @Kafka.
Sorry, I might have missed it, but what can we do if thereās been no acknowledgement or edit in a bug report thread? Iām not blaming the support team, as itās not hard to see why some threads get overlooked, but am asking what to do in that situation.
I also had posts deleted with no communication.
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I receive eMail notifications for example when you tagged me here. But the infoeMail youāre talking about doesnāt exist on my side. I just checked back, and since July 25 (way beforeā¦) until today I have 0 eMails regarding what you describe. And yes, Iām capable of handling my eMails, I didnāt delete any, nothing in spam folderā¦ I received a āSince your last visitā eMail after my suspension ran out 3 days ago, but in that filled mail it wasnāt anything mentioned regarding a reason as you wrote.
At the time when the suspension was placed there was no eMail sent to me.
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None of what you wrote gives any instructions on how to appeal a ban.
Your response makes me worry that your team is being told to delete comments then ban members. That only fuels the issue at hand. I feel like since January of this year following the community guidelines isnāt enough safety. Any comments made on here may be used against a player if the wrong cx team member reads it. No one that hasnāt been properly trained and has experience managing a community should have the ability to ban players from a public forums. Specially when they do so anonymously since the departure of Salty. So at the very least please remove Salty from the equation and if a cx member bans a player then the player is then notified with the name of the cx member who banned them. And again, players should have the ability to appeal the ban. Iāve said this before, if your team doesnāt have time to explain a ban. Then they also donāt have time to inact the ban.
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@icy Iāll chase that email up today as well and DM it to you - as well as try to do a check to make sure theyāre being sent properly and nothing is broken with the emails.
@awryan anyone who is banned is emailed the reason. And correct, if a post is deleted then a warning or ban should immediately follow, because posts arenāt deleted unless the community guidelines are broken. You can contact support to appeal a ban on the forum.
I donāt believe the forum tools has an option for the ban mail to come from the team member who placed it, it comes from the system - which can be set to appear as a specific user. I thought I had changed it to come from mine or Jetoās account so I will have to double check the settings again and change it to mine.
When a user is banned the whole CX team is notified so it can be checked, although usually everyone is notified before hand to sanity check it before the ban is placed to make sure mistakes arenāt made. Iām satisfied that bans that have been placed have been correct and my manager has also reviewed some bans that were appealed and also agreed with them. Bias is something we take seriously and frankly our careers are more important than being spiteful against individuals on the forums. Weāre just here to do our jobs - only a small part of which is to maintain a non-toxic, constructive environment for discussion. Bans arenāt frequent. Most people participate here in a constructive way.
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Does anyone know how to flag posts?
I see these options (like, share, bookmark, reply):
Iāll review the trust level needed to flag.
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How? As mentioned days ago. Support tickets about bans are ignored. Canāt direct message on the forums for obvious reasons. And though once upon a time devs were approachable on discord that is no longer the case.
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I was banned in January and July. I have not received a single email from any Gems of War staff member since a report a player ticket I submitted in August of 2022 was replied to 5 months later.
Since then crickets.
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Ironic though how the number of bans on users with a history of civil critiquing, and even closing threads that suddenly became āinherently aggressiveā started to happen when a change of staffing took place.
@Kafka It would be nice to believe that the process you portray reflects reality, but the bans parade that have been happening since everything became a ācalloutā just makes it look like the mods have lost the plot and just wanna censor anything they dislike, not unlike what happened for a short period of time in 2019-2020.
Still holding on to hope that you will not let that become the norm again.
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I wasnāt emailed either, was never warned, ever, yet was banned for 5 days for no reason whatsoever. The player that reported me is vip level 20, which seems to be all thatās needed. That player, did, does, and will continue to curse in dutch, yet sheās never banned. Inappropriate chat ? Could you be more vague ? I was only censored once, for the word ātopless.ā I said āI prefer my scooter, as my truck isnāt topless.ā
No response to ticket. Other members of my guild also submitted tickets with no response. The only place that I posted, when I was banned, was channel 038. Iād love to see what I did that was inappropriate, though Iāll not hold my breath waiting.
26 years of playing online games and this is the first time Iāve ever ābrokenā any rule. I say that sarcastically because I did nothing wrong. New concept ? p2b = pay to ban
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Maybe your team should message Nextgames and ask them how they managed to turn the same toxic relationship between them and the players into a positive one.
Hint: A great community manager who actually engaged with the player base, not someone who could just as well be a bot (beep-boop, Iāve made a report).
This is not meant to be rude towards anyone but we feel abandoned, and when we get interaction itās either less personal than chatGPT or it is dissatisfactory.
We occasionally get some great interactions from @Kafka but there seems to be too little time so we sometimes donāt hear from anyone that seems like a real person for weeks.
We spend our time keeping the community going, and donāt underestimate the impact guilds have on player retention. We do the testing, write bug reports, send numerous suggestions on how to improve things, we keep our guilds informed, some make content on YouTube or create tools for the player community - we invest a lot of energy and money.
Is it too much to ask for a dedicated community manager who ideally also plays the game and can work with players and devs to improve the situation?
This could even make you more money. Happy players spend more, right?
Seems like waving around wads of cash is the only way things get any attention seeing how quickly bugs that affect the ability to spend money on the game get fixed.
So consider that closely working with the community will save money, and very likely will lead to make you money, too.
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