cRPG

cRPG => General Discussion => Topic started by: Joker86 on July 16, 2012, 05:08:13 am

Title: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Joker86 on July 16, 2012, 05:08:13 am
Hi!

In some of the last topics in this forum I noticed some kind of "gap" between the players and the devs, and often some of them felt misunderstood or treated the wrong way by the others.

Simultaneously, the suggestion forum in its current shape always seemed kind of chaotic and of only limited use.

Now my idea is easy: the devs appoint one (or more) community managers. Those members have task of mediating between the devs and the community. Besides of that, they are "moderating" the suggestion area.

Their tasks are:

- releasing news and information about development progress
- writing official statements and answers to current affairs
- asking "viable" community questions to the developers and posting their answers

The suggestion forum will be newly formed. The old forum will be moved into an archive forum, so that for some time older posts can still be referred to. The new suggestion forum will be divided only in "General suggestions" and "Game Balance". The "Realism" forum is rather pointless, because gameplay and balance are always more important than realism. Yes, in some cases you can make decisions in favour of realism, but those cases are that rare, they don't really justify an own subforum.

In the two remaining forums there will be a sticky topic with a list of all created topics, sorted by idea and the dev's response. In the general suggestion topic it could look like:

Archery - Repeating crossbow [Declined]
Archery - Increase bump range against archers [Accepted, WIP]
Horses - Implement heraldic bard [Impossible]
Horses - Taking damage when hitting solid obstacles [Impossible]
Horses - Picking up a second rider [Declined, Impossible]
Shields - Shieldbash [Discussed]

That way you could press ctrl+F and could search for the suggestion you hve, instead of creating yet another topic about always the same ideas.

The task of the community managers would be to first sort out the totally unrealistic, dumb, retarded and biased suggestions (they get rough instructions from the developers), and have to edit the title of the topic, according to the current state. In regular intervals the CMs brief the developers about certain suggestions, and those give their answers. These answers are forwarded to the topics, and the title is being modified accordingly. If something is techincally impossible or has been declined, the topic gets closed. If the developers are not sure, the topic gets a "discussed" flag, and the developers can follow or even participate the topic, to meet a finaly decision. Accepted suggestions are closed, too. Whenever a suggestion is added or the status of a suggestion changes, the overview topic gets updated, too. (You need a seperate topic with a summary post, because there you can search by ctrl+F, which you can't do in the forum itself, because the amount of topics displayed on one page is limited. You would have to search every forum side an extra time)

That keeps the suggestions rather neat and the developers lose only the minimum time possible to give feedback to suggestions, whereas the community gets constant replies to their suggestions, instead of complaining for weeks that a commonly accepted suggestion is completely ignored by the developers, just to see it implemented in the next patch (as it already happened several times).

But to have this whole CM thing working the developers first need to state a few things, e.g. what kind of game they are planning to make, what's more important to them and so on. How much should personal skill and how much should teamplay have an impact on success? How important is realism? Questions like these.

What do you think? Would the community like to have a few people standing in constant contact to the developers, keeping you always informed? Would the developers like someone to filter all those thread sin the forum only for the important stuff, saving them a lot of time which can be spent developing?

I think the community could benefit a lot from it, given that the CMs are really eager to keep up a stream of information by constantly asking the developers (forwarded) questions, and if the developers would be willing to let the CMs have quite a good insight into the development process.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Swaggart on July 16, 2012, 05:16:01 am
I think this will help you greatly.

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/8-steps-to-more-concise-writing/ (http://www.dailywritingtips.com/8-steps-to-more-concise-writing/)
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: TurmoilTom on July 16, 2012, 05:23:53 am
Hey, look, a Joker post.

Obligatory TL;DR.

You're welcome, everyone.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: chadz on July 16, 2012, 05:33:48 am
fill dev's life with boring bureaucracy and useless hierarchy?

fuck yeah I'm in!
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Aderyn on July 16, 2012, 05:38:02 am
Isn't chairman meow already kind of the "community manager"? He cares alot about the community (i think). =)
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: SeQuel on July 16, 2012, 05:43:47 am
Isn't chairman meow already kind of the "community manager"?He cares alot about the community (i think). =)

I thought this was what Meow was suppose to do yet I don't see him anywhere but IRC which isn't very helpful.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Kajia on July 16, 2012, 06:00:43 am
fill dev's life with boring bureaucracy and useless hierarchy?

fuck yeah I'm in!
i think you got that wrong :lol:

(click to show/hide)
i always read your texts as i am not afraid of wise words.

yeah.
i think communication with the community is a hard thing to do if the devs have no clue. or in other words: our beloved devs should get their time to work things out, they should be sure what they want - only then we all can re-start to contribute as the hive mind we are.
the clear thinking process is more important than the data input - a computer can't compute if the script is a mess.

oh, i am NOT saying you don't know what you want, but basically we should know it too. less confusion = profit.
and IF you really don't know it, hey, find someone who will ask us! or in other words: you need a compiler! (geek talk pun intended)
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Vibe on July 16, 2012, 07:34:59 am
Make Joker86 community manager

(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Digglez on July 16, 2012, 08:30:37 am
there isnt a worthwhile community to bother with, hah
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: a_bear_irl on July 16, 2012, 08:42:55 am
fill dev's life with boring bureaucracy and useless hierarchy?

fuck yeah I'm in!

~*~ real game devs~*~ have community managers for a reason, it reduces rage/shitposting - and since that some of the devs are given to the same kind of posting as the community the position wouldn't be useless at all, imo. since you're not selling anything it wouldn't be as much of a boon, but you guys keep working on the mod so i'm assuming you are at least somewhat invested in its success, so why not? i also assumed this was meows role (or shiks?) but neither of them do it so
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Joker86 on July 16, 2012, 10:47:42 am
I think this will help you greatly.

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/8-steps-to-more-concise-writing/ (http://www.dailywritingtips.com/8-steps-to-more-concise-writing/)

Thanks a lot!

I got a similar site for you:

http://higherpayingskills.com/2011/12/improve-concentration-attention-span/ (http://higherpayingskills.com/2011/12/improve-concentration-attention-span/)

Seriously, folks, if you are not able to read any text which is longer than three sentences, I would really recommend you to limit your participation onto the spam forum, because some matters can not be discussed with one liners. I don't fucking care if you didn't read or not.

Make Joker86 community manager

(click to show/hide)

I never said I wanna do the job, and I definitely don't want to. But I still find it amusing how I made you somehow hate me so much, that whenever I post you never miss the occasion to write something negative about my person. Seems I hit a nerve?  :?

fill dev's life with boring bureaucracy and useless hierarchy?

fuck yeah I'm in!

Errr... you got something wrong, there...  :?  :?:

Ah I think I got it! The appointed CMs are not developers, they are supposed to be capable community members.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Christo on July 16, 2012, 10:48:29 am
If such a role would exist because of some kinda accident in the future, count me in.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Joker86 on July 16, 2012, 10:49:30 am
If such a role would exist because of some kinda accident in the future, count me in.

Actually you were one of the persons I was thinking of  :wink:
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Christo on July 16, 2012, 10:51:48 am
Actually you were one of the persons I was thinking of  :wink:
(click to show/hide)

 :oops:
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Molly on July 16, 2012, 10:59:38 am
You stole my critic about the staff communication and made a suggestion out of it! Shame on... Wait... I actually had the same thought but couldn't bother enough to make a thread which will get trolled and/or ignored anyway - already nicely displayed by chadz's response.

Still... took the liberty to +1 the first post.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Vibe on July 16, 2012, 11:07:16 am
I never said I wanna do the job, and I definitely don't want to. But I still find it amusing how I made you somehow hate me so much, that whenever I post you never miss the occasion to write something negative about my person. Seems I hit a nerve?  :?

Joker I don't hate you, I don't hate anyone in this mod really. I just like making fun of you, you can picture me as a dickhead or something, no probs

PS: i never read more than 2 sentences in your posts, sue me
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Bryggan on July 16, 2012, 11:32:07 am
Seriously, folks, if you are not able to read any text which is longer than three sentences, I would really recommend you to limit your participation onto the spam forum, because some matters can not be discussed with one liners. I don't fucking care if you didn't read or not.

True, that's why most people on this forum respond with a giff.  And then the next poster quotes the giff, and adds a smiley face under it.

Anyways, I think people should take what they're given and be happy with it.  Gift horses and teeth and all that.  Still, if this cuts down on all the whiny bitchy people whining and bitching about not getting their way, then hip hip hurrah for it.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Oberyn on July 16, 2012, 11:32:57 am
Meow probably got all the compassion and kindness drained out of him by the community. In his place I would've regularly started referring to people seeking my help as "retarded cunts" or "whiny 5 year old girls with pigtails". In fact, I already do that and I'm not even forced to deal with them.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Molly on July 16, 2012, 11:35:42 am
Joker I don't hate you, I don't hate anyone in this mod really. I just like making fun of you, you can picture me as a dickhead or something, no probs

PS: i never read more than 2 sentences in your posts, sue me
You appeared today in front of this court because you have been accused of being a dickhead who is not capable or willing to read more than 2 sentences of post made by the sueing party.

How are you pleading, sir?

 8-)
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Joker86 on July 16, 2012, 12:47:07 pm
Well, I guess I can already forget about the idea. One reason why I make so long posts is that there should not be any misunderstandings, and still chadz seems to have misunderstood something and replied with a short, ironic post which I interprete as "No. I don't bother giving a reason. Fuck you.", while cmp just gave my OP a "-". And of course there are all the other dickheads which complain that I don't use the forum as some kind of chatroom where the messages stay for some time.

Really, I just realized how much I wasted my time writing that post.  :cry:
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Oberyn on July 16, 2012, 12:54:11 pm
Really, I just realized how much I wasted my time writing that post.  :cry:

And knowing is half the battle.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Molly on July 16, 2012, 12:54:37 pm
[...]
and still chadz seems to have misunderstood something and replied with a short, ironic post which I interprete as "No. I don't bother giving a reason. Fuck you.", while cmp just gave my OP a "-".
[...]
The sad thing is actually that probably nobody expected anything else.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Micah on July 16, 2012, 01:27:30 pm
Meditating is not a good tool to transport informations and never will be. Adding an instance between communicating parties must always be seen as a sacrifice in information transported and additionally the joy to directly talk to the guy who needs to be adressed. Your idea would cause the "gap" you try to close here.  Direct (as in 1on1) communication is simply the best thing you can have. even if its rare for some cases. if you feel the urge to immanently talk to an admin/dev, use the IRC. forum is not the right platform for that.
I just want you to notice that chadz directly answered to your post, which would barely happen if your idea would be implemented. In case of a (how you call it) communication manager, you would always see the bored guy with his fake smile.
Better structured/moderated forums however sounds very nice to me. Even tho a forum will never be more than a big mountain of scrap, it still serves the purpose of granting a view to community interrests.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: chadz on July 16, 2012, 01:31:47 pm
Just when I was to elaborate the reasons, Micah came along and did it better than I could.

When we don't say something, it's not because we are too "lazy" to post on the forum. It's either because we don't know at this point, or we do know and don't want to communicate it yet.

Either way, all you would get from a "community manager" is someone saying "I don't know" on any question you ask him. I can code a bot for that if you want.

And when I have some real info, I have to take the time to explain it to the community manager and make sure he does understand it so he doesn't misquote me.
And how would that be easier or faster than me posting it directly?

It's really just a guy in the middle that takes away community interaction.

Why do you think the "big gamestudios" have someone like that? Because they don't give a shit about the community themselves. I do.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: ROHYPNOL on July 16, 2012, 01:38:57 pm
Nerf Crying
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: chadz on July 16, 2012, 01:39:34 pm
For the record, we read (as a collective dev/admin/beta tester being) every thread in this forum. Maybe except spam. And faction halls. But definately anything worth reading. If you post a suggestion in the forum, we will read it. If it's good, someone will tell me about that good idea. Happens every day, quite often actually. Not all suggestions are really good, but the good ones stick in our head and get the brainflag "pending". We don't reply at this point because people immediately get their hopes up when we do. And we can't guarantee that we can find the time to implement it. And then people will pester us about 20 different things where we once posted "looks interesting, we'll try and bring it into the game".

That's why we usually inform when something is close to getting finished, not when we think about something.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Tristan on July 16, 2012, 01:51:08 pm
Lets go Corporate.

We also need an Senior Accountant, Junior Accountant, Legal Advisor, Marketing Consultant, Direct Sales Representative, Project Managers, Business Developers, Customer Relationship Managers, Community Managers, Country Manages and Area Managers, Cheif of Human Resources, HR Consultanta and HR assistant.

We need ERP systems, ECM system all integrated in the intranet and extranet with an expensive homepage.

Now we only need something to actually manage with all the mid level managers ^^.

Oh and I forgot we need community representatives and CSR inititatives!
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: bruce on July 16, 2012, 01:55:44 pm
All communication must be approved by the propaganda office and pass the censors.

Free posting without propaganda office approval is an outrage!
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Nessaj on July 16, 2012, 01:56:06 pm
A CM for C-RPG isn't needed given the community isn't bigger, what sort of questions and tasks could he answer/do that the current team cannot?
It is true that most CMs for big companies are simply parrots, which usually repeat "I don't know" OR "I have to ask" and doesn't really answer any questions, he or she is just the one to write about new things happening, which anyone could have done really.

However, just taking questions and giving answers isn't the sole job of a Community Manager, there are plenty of other tasks involved which are highly useful to any company, it simply depends on what type of production that's going on. A CM would be the one taking care of fan sites, social media (trust me you'd want someone to handle that tedious crap :P), outside-communities, web-related tasks, compiling user requests, real life event planning, tons of stuff, not just answering forum posts :wink:

CMs are great when there's a big production going on, it is simply impossible to coordinate everything between your staff, so if you let everyone speak and post without any coordination it'll end up with plenty of people misunderstanding each other and the information presented to them - instead a 'front man' (or several) where everything can be forwarded to is hired.

Conclusion: Not needed here.

If there were several thousands of people active at any time though, with a staff working on the mod 8 hours a day etc then 100% a proper CM would be useful for everyone.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Tristan on July 16, 2012, 02:00:09 pm
On a more serious note, several gaming companies have gone away from CM's.

An example is EVE. Before none of the devs were allowed to talk to the gamers directly on the forum.
That policy was changed. Most of the CM department was fired and now devs communicate directly with the gamers.
This has in many great ways developed a tighter bond between the gamers and the devs. You just accept more shit, when you can talk to the guy who coded it himself and you foten realise they don't do bugs and bad stuff because they hate you.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Meow on July 16, 2012, 02:03:36 pm
I thought this was what Meow was suppose to do yet I don't see him anywhere but IRC which isn't very helpful.

Don't wanna hijack this thread but felt like clearing that up, what I did for a long time was trying to solve all the problems players had when they came up.
From time to time I posted stuff I read on IRC which wasn't on the forum at that point so it might have looked like new info for ircless people or I just posted generic lines to calm down threads that went out of control.

Now I hardly get time to be around and it's just much easier to reply to a few lines on IRC than reading through the whole forum, I still try to reply to all PMs.

So basically what chadz said, the team as a whole won't miss good ideas and if there are important news someone will post them.


Meow probably got all the compassion and kindness drained out of him by the community. In his place I would've regularly started referring to people seeking my help as "retarded cunts" or "whiny 5 year old girls with pigtails". In fact, I already do that and I'm not even forced to deal with them.

:mrgreen:
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Nessaj on July 16, 2012, 02:04:20 pm
On a more serious note, several gaming companies have gone away from CM's.

An example is EVE. Before none of the devs were allowed to talk to the gamers directly on the forum.
That policy was changed. Most of the CM department was fired and now devs communicate directly with the gamers.
This has in many great ways developed a tighter bond between the gamers and the devs. You just accept more shit, when you can talk to the guy who coded it himself and you foten realise they don't do bugs and bad stuff because they hate you.

EVE is also special :D

Any company that allows their player base to fully control the environment of the game themselves is per definition awesome.

Either way though, the less CMs have to be parrots the better, IMO the part of coordinating community requests and such (e.g. forum posts and PR) shouldn't be assigned to a CM or a part of a CM's task.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: dodnet on July 16, 2012, 02:08:13 pm
TL;DR.

Sorry Joker, you may have good ideas, but that walls of text from you make me skip all your posts. I believe you could have written that in 5 sentences - everyone else can do it  :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: sF_Guardian on July 16, 2012, 02:18:11 pm
TL;DR.

Sorry Joker, you may have good ideas, but that walls of text from you make me skip all your posts. I believe you could have written that in 5 sentences - everyone else can do it  :mrgreen:

How do you know if you DR?
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Micah on July 16, 2012, 02:18:35 pm
... and you foten realise they don't do bugs and bad stuff because they hate you.
you naive little thing  :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Tristan on July 16, 2012, 02:19:28 pm
I believe in the best of man  :oops:
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Joker86 on July 16, 2012, 03:16:24 pm
Well okay, I see where you are coming from.

My impression was just that the developers don't answer things because they can't read everything, and they can't always see a valid question which is in post #455 on some random topic, which actually deserves receiving an answer.

When we don't say something, it's not because we are too "lazy" to post on the forum. It's either because we don't know at this point, or we do know and don't want to communicate it yet.

I fear this is a basic problem. You created the "cRPG: status and plans" topic in the announcement forum, and when I saw it I was really tickled, but when I read it I was rather disappointed. Yes, it actually contained the stuff promised in the headline, but I was also hoping for some general, more basic plans and philosophies. Like the questions I mentioned above: what should be more important for success? Skill or teamplay? How far do you want to go into the realism direction? How close will you stick to unrealistic but skill demanding gameplay? What is the way you balance items? Do you have a certain background in mind, which cultures/time periods are okay, which are not? Why? Do you try to force the players to behave like in a real battle (e.g. shoulder to shoulder with your teammates?) or are battles only a basic background for indipendant fights? Are you planning on adding "secondary" skills which help in battles, like in SP where charisma or intelligence also play a (minor) role? What is the targeted relation of the influence of skill and character stats on your success? 50-50? 40-60? 90-10?

If those questions could be clarified, a lot of arguments in this forum could be prevented, because everyone tries to interprete your intentions his way, and that's why his opinion is the right one. If everybody knew what the developers would want to achieve, there would be not much room left for discussions.

If you don't really know it yet: then discuss it! Put things clear, I think your work can only benefit from it.


And when I have some real info, I have to take the time to explain it to the community manager and make sure he does understand it so he doesn't misquote me.
And how would that be easier or faster than me posting it directly?

It is not, of course. And if it is a more complicated matter, it's best you post it yourself. It would still be faster because you don't need to read through the entire forum to find the question worth an answer, the CM does it for you, all you have to do is to answer it.

It's really just a guy in the middle that takes away community interaction.

Which interaction?  :P

I think, at least the suggestions which are declined deserve an answer and a short explanation. If someone makes the effort to write a suggestion, then he deserves an answer, I think.

Edit: and if you think the forum is the wrong medium for those things: then I think this ought to be changed, because messages on IRC channels don't last, and if some info is given 99,9% of the playerbase won't get to know it, as it will disappear. You need a medium which is more "sustainable", like a forum. That way you can also refer to older statements. You can't always rely on community members picking up the information in IRC and posting it somewhere in the forum.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Kajia on July 16, 2012, 04:08:46 pm
When we don't say something, it's not because we are too "lazy" to post on the forum. It's either because we don't know at this point, or we do know and don't want to communicate it yet.

Either way, all you would get from a "community manager" is someone saying "I don't know" on any question you ask him. I can code a bot for that if you want.

And when I have some real info, I have to take the time to explain it to the community manager and make sure he does understand it so he doesn't misquote me.
And how would that be easier or faster than me posting it directly?

It's really just a guy in the middle that takes away community interaction.

Why do you think the "big gamestudios" have someone like that? Because they don't give a shit about the community themselves. I do.

good.


and what joker said:
give more immediate answers
how it usally goes: someone posts an idea, then people like it or throw shit at him, and at one point you react, but in most cases all hope is lost (or so it seems) because the idea was just flogged to death or simply abandoned because the text was too long or whatever.


Edit: and if you think the forum is the wrong medium for those things: then I think this ought to be changed, because messages on IRC channels don't last, and if some info is given 99,9% of the playerbase won't get to know it, as it will disappear. You need a medium which is more "sustainable", like a forum. That way you can also refer to older statements. You can't always rely on community members picking up the information in IRC and posting it somewhere in the forum.

this exactly!
maybe you can make the suggestion board a suggestion-only board, with discussions being in a different thread. this would help keeping the spammers/trolls/lobbyists (OP or not) at bay and still be lasting and public. this would treat the ideas with due respect for there is no 'falling into the void of the forum time-line due to reposts'

if there is something to discuss there should be a discussion thread too, but a separate one. if someone has something to say, like honestly, he will quote and post; but if he's just a troll and flamer, he might just don't care anymore, because his attempts are not as a direct 'insult' as they are now.


I fear this is a basic problem. You created the "cRPG: status and plans" topic in the announcement forum, and when I saw it I was really tickled, but when I read it I was rather disappointed. Yes, it actually contained the stuff promised in the headline, but I was also hoping for some general, more basic plans and philosophies. Like the questions I mentioned above: what should be more important for success? Skill or teamplay? How far do you want to go into the realism direction? How close will you stick to unrealistic but skill demanding gameplay? What is the way you balance items? Do you have a certain background in mind, which cultures/time periods are okay, which are not? Why? Do you try to force the players to behave like in a real battle (e.g. shoulder to shoulder with your teammates?) or are battles only a basic background for indipendant fights? Are you planning on adding "secondary" skills which help in battles, like in SP where charisma or intelligence also play a (minor) role? What is the targeted relation of the influence of skill and character stats on your success? 50-50? 40-60? 90-10?

If those questions could be clarified, a lot of arguments in this forum could be prevented, because everyone tries to interprete your intentions his way, and that's why his opinion is the right one. If everybody knew what the developers would want to achieve, there would be not much room left for discussions.

If you don't really know it yet: then discuss it! Put things clear, I think your work can only benefit from it.

absolutely! you speak my mind dude!

devs, I see it this way: your mod is a community project, we help you develop a game by playing it and giving feedback - just tell us where you're going.
on a bigger level I DON'T ACTUALLY CARE if you nerf this or delete that, doesn't matter!! but give us some philosophy to work with and we'll help you figure it out!

enlighten us, please? :D


if this would happen I would even seriously think about helping out with stuff (2D, 3D, animation), but I cba to join the crew of an aimless wreckage floating on a deep pool of haters and fools (which it is not obviously, that's just my most pessimistic impression, there IS hope ... *orchestral melody*).
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: LordBerenger on July 16, 2012, 04:19:48 pm
Sign me up for community manager. I will report your needs, community!
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Micah on July 16, 2012, 04:33:15 pm
Sign me up for community manager. I will report my needs, community!
here, fixed it for you =D
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: bosco on July 16, 2012, 04:36:10 pm
Would be a start to have a thread in the Announcement section that contains info on new versions... right now you usually have to go through the bugtracker to see what has changed.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Zisa on July 16, 2012, 06:42:57 pm
giggle worthy thread.

http://mwomercs.com/media/video/dPoqjslGcO0

skip to the 1 minute mark for the part that makes me laugh every time I think of it...
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Swaggart on July 16, 2012, 07:20:18 pm
Thanks a lot!

I got a similar site for you:

http://higherpayingskills.com/2011/12/improve-concentration-attention-span/ (http://higherpayingskills.com/2011/12/improve-concentration-attention-span/)

Seriously, folks, if you are not able to read any text which is longer than three sentences, I would really recommend you to limit your participation onto the spam forum, because some matters can not be discussed with one liners. I don't fucking care if you didn't read or not.

I was being serious and not trolling in any way. What you wrote can easily be condensed into two paragraphs. That will make your posts much more appealing to read. While this is a forum and not quick messaging service you can't blame people if they don't want to read walls of text that are needlessly long.

No need to be testy.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Nessaj on July 16, 2012, 07:41:58 pm
giggle worthy thread.

http://mwomercs.com/media/video/dPoqjslGcO0

skip to the 1 minute mark for the part that makes me laugh every time I think of it...

FORUM USER KILLER

HAHAHA!

Good name for a Mech.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: chadz on July 16, 2012, 08:22:40 pm
I fear this is a basic problem.

Not for me, for me it's the ultimate freedom.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Vibe on July 16, 2012, 08:31:02 pm
For the record, we read (as a collective dev/admin/beta tester being) every thread in this forum. Maybe except spam. And faction halls. But definately anything worth reading. If you post a suggestion in the forum, we will read it. If it's good, someone will tell me about that good idea. Happens every day, quite often actually. Not all suggestions are really good, but the good ones stick in our head and get the brainflag "pending". We don't reply at this point because people immediately get their hopes up when we do. And we can't guarantee that we can find the time to implement it. And then people will pester us about 20 different things where we once posted "looks interesting, we'll try and bring it into the game".

That's why we usually inform when something is close to getting finished, not when we think about something.

chadz what is your brainflag capacity
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: Lemmy_Winks on July 16, 2012, 10:48:51 pm
I think, at least the suggestions which are declined deserve an answer and a short explanation. If someone makes the effort to write a suggestion, then he deserves an answer, I think.

As a developer there are a lot of ideas the players will throw at you, 95% of them are bad or cant be implemented for one reason or another. Why should they give a reason for why they dont want to implement someones idea. They are busy enough as it is, and as i think has been mentioned before, in the few cases where someone might have a good idea often times there is no way to know if you can really implement it into the game until you try it, so there is no point in announcing your going to do it if you cannot know whether you can in fact implement it into the game, and you don't really know until your about done creating the feature if not done with it completely.

And a CM would really need to have a programming background and have a thorough understanding of the game and programming as it relates to the game so that they can filter out ideas that cannot be programmed into the game. The only people who fit this description are the developers, so the idea of having a CM as a mediator between the developers and community is completely pointless.
Title: Re: Bad communication between community and devs -> community manager needed!
Post by: ArysOakheart on July 16, 2012, 11:02:54 pm
For the record, we read (as a collective dev/admin/beta tester being) every thread in this forum. Maybe except spam. And faction halls. But definately anything worth reading. If you post a suggestion in the forum, we will read it. If it's good, someone will tell me about that good idea. Happens every day, quite often actually. Not all suggestions are really good, but the good ones stick in our head and get the brainflag "pending". We don't reply at this point because people immediately get their hopes up when we do. And we can't guarantee that we can find the time to implement it. And then people will pester us about 20 different things where we once posted "looks interesting, we'll try and bring it into the game".

That's why we usually inform when something is close to getting finished, not when we think about something.

So what you're trying to say, is that you know about the Free Peasants of Fisdnar!?