31 réponses à ce sujet

[SofaJockey]

Looks like the Patch 5 beta might be a huge step in the right direction... 

[Caja]

 

[Posted in Scuttlebutt (no spoilers) as there are indeed no spoilers and the subject affects more than those offering feedback]

 

Following David Gaider's recent post, an open question is available to us:

 

"As to whether the forum could also be used for the Community team to communicate with the fans more -- by all means, let them know what you think should happen. I imagine that's information the Community Manager would be interested to hear."

 

 

There have been a few threads on this matter before.

 

The constructive thing to do, is to see how communication could be done that's helpful for the forum community and not onerous on the BioWare community team.

 

This thread is not a demand of the BioWare community team to take part in the thread,

but if we come up with something useful, they can make their own decision 

 

(and if this thread quickly descends into snark, that I guess that is an answer too... )

 

I'd like to see the forum utilised for more useful communication, so what do you reckon people? How?

 

To clarify, when we are talking about community managers we are referring to people like Chris Priestly, right (who doesn't work at BW anymore)? He wasn't a developer but helped to solve community-related issues. I'm asking to avoid confusion here. A community manager is the person who collects feedback from different social websites and talks with the fans while a developer is working on the game. Two very different jobs, I assume. I'm just asking because some of the other posters seem to use the words "community manager" and "developer" synonymously. 

 

Anyway, it's a great topic.  

 

What about a periodic Q&A thing? Users could submit a question, which the community managers can choose from to take the dev team and get an answer or comment, which is then posted on the forum. Obviously there would have to be restrictions on the types of questions they will answer due to confidentiality and so forth, but getting feedback and thoughts from the devs really helps build understanding about the development process for players, which in turn should make their expectations about what the devs can deliver more realistic. I have always found David Gaider's Tumblr blog very informative about the constraints and challenges of the design process, and I think that sharing more of that knowledge with the player base would build better understanding, allowing players and devs to communicate more constructively.

I love this idea. If I remember it correctly BioWare's community managers used to do something like a "question of the month" sort of thing. I did a forum search and found this: 

 

Dragon Age Week Community Message

This week we want to open Dragon Age Week to our Dragon Age community. We know you all have creative ideas for Dragon Age and we want to know how Dragon Age inspires you. Do you replay Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age II making different choices? Do you create fan art of horrible fade demons? Do you read the Dragon Age comics and wish Morrigan or Fenris would appear? Are you baking Dragon Age cookies for the Arishok?

 

I believe there were also threads like "What would you like to see in a Collector's Edition" or "What would you like to see in DA 3"?

 

What I'm aiming at is that we already had a periodic Q&A thing but it was the other way round. BioWare asked the questions and the forumites were giving answers. Some topics were about the game, e.g. cinematics or storytelling (I *think*), and some were about merchandising and other things. I enjoyed these Q&A seesions because they gave me a feeling of inclusion. There could be something similar for DA 3. BioWare's community managers could ask something like "Hey, were there moments where you thought this and that could have been better"?

 

But to make something like this work we...

 

a) have to know what answers could be helpful. And for that someone from BioWare has to ask the right questions .

b ) need someone to moderate and "guide" the thread so it's not going down south.

 

From my point of view, this is something how the forum could be used for the community team to communicate more with the fans and something that I would really appreciate.

 

If we turn the whole thing around then it's basically the fans looking for answers. Okay, that's legitimate, too . But someone already tried to make a "Ask a Dev thread" in the feedback section of this forum. I believe the danger is that the devs couldn't reveal anything specific and to boil the questions down so you can answer them with a simple "yes" or "no" is a bit unsatisfying. Sometimes further explanations are required.

 

Anyway, just my two cents.

[Scofield]

It cant, as has been repeatedly shown

[Bruce Wayne]

For one don't resort to acting like a bag of dicks when giving BioWare "constructive criticism". It sort of defeats the purpose.

[Dreamer]

What about a periodic Q&A thing? Users could submit a question, which the community managers can choose from to take the dev team and get an answer or comment, which is then posted on the forum. Obviously there would have to be restrictions on the types of questions they will answer due to confidentiality and so forth, but getting feedback and thoughts from the devs really helps build understanding about the development process for players, which in turn should make their expectations about what the devs can deliver more realistic. I have always found David Gaider's Tumblr blog very informative about the constraints and challenges of the design process, and I think that sharing more of that knowledge with the player base would build better understanding, allowing players and devs to communicate more constructively.

 

I've seen this tried in other communities and what almost always happens is that community management is pressured into cherry-picking easy, risk-free questions. There is also the inevitable situation of (different) forumers posting the same questions over and over, desperately attempting to get a response which never comes.

[DragonAgeLegend]

I would love if they could communicate directly to us through the forums. I play an MMO called Marvel Heroes 2015, not sure if you guys have heard of it and the dev interaction there is outstanding. 

 

We even have a dev tracker at the top telling us which posts they have replied too. The devs are such awesome people, I would love if Bioware could do the same. 

 

http://forums.marvelheroes.com/

[Dreamer]

To add, I think it's kind of strange that he's putting the onus on the community to define how we'd like the team to interact with us. I mean, I could understand if communication from/with them was a common occurrence, but that's not the case here.