141 réponses à ce sujet

[Grieving Natashina]

Perhaps it's too late to make the forums a nice environment for the devs now, even if a community manager was appointed to clear up these forums.

I doubt that.  I've watched firsthand what happens when a developer hangs out regularly.  The forums are actually a lot cleaner and more polite.  Both devs and fans seem to be on their better behavior when on the forums.  If anything, having a dev around not only encourages civility, but it can also remind everyone why they actually like this series.

 

I just feel that those that make the decisions behind the forums need to do something.  The BioWareMods only can do so much and it doesn't help with cases such as the Cassandra thread spammer very much.   From what I've seen on the weekends, it's like only one or two people working for the forums.  They work hard, but it's not enough to get some of the more offensive and pointless threads shut down.  

 

I honestly think having a real community manager to put a face on the company would help the overall attitude that's on the forums.  A lot of folks are getting mighty frustrated that it seems like BioWare never responds.  A post maybe once a month that states what the devs are actually working on would help.  Someone to actually pin patch notes onto the forums as well would be nice.   Maybe someone to go, "Hey, I know you're upset about X feature, but have you thought about it in terms of Y and Z?"  Then you know, take a few hours to chat with the fans in a thread instead of just leaving it as a blog post.    I remember when Allan and DG would both do that.   Of course it wouldn't make everyone happy, but I can say the majority of posters were at least glad to have an answer, even when it's something they don't want to hear.

 

A community manager would help cut down on certain posters that keep making posts and threads that stomp all over the TOU/TOS, and would be able to spot problem posters.  For instance, when one particular poster made a new account, many on the forums knew who it was instantly due to his use of words and grammar.  It took maybe 2 days for us to be proven correct.  If they could hire someone to at least watch the forums in a proactive manner instead of waiting for a report and using a reactive manner, I think we could see some real improvement around here within a month.  

 

I can tell you that a lot of the folks that are getting angry are upset because of the run-around.  "Stop by Twitter...oh wait, not enough characters for a good Q&A.  Check out Facebook...oh wait, looks like they delete any comments not praising the game.  Read our blog and leave a comment...oh wait, they're telling me to go to the forums.  Go to the forums....oh wait, they're telling me to go to Twitter. " 

[Dreamer]

Perhaps it's too late to make the forums a nice environment for the devs now, even if a community manager was appointed to clear up these forums.

 

Again with this strange notion that this place is toxic...

 

The BSN is one of the nicest, cleanest communities in which I have ever spent time. It wouldn't be at the top of the list, certainly, but it's in the top quarter. And this is without an active developer presence; imagine how lively the BSN could be if the team actually cared to interact regularly and meaningfully.

 

They've abdicated their responsibility to cultivate community, and it's posts like yours--even just suggesting we're awful--which allows them to do it. Stop allowing them this excuse to treat us only as wallets.

 

There are sometimes awful people within, but anyone who would use the example of a few to color the whole should be ashamed.

 

Our community is not toxic. We're not awful. We're not harmful to the developers.

[Winged Silver]

I guess my question about this would be... why think about this stuff? At all? I can see thinking and talking about design issues that are actually interesting in themselves; we're having a good time speculating about ME4 moving to Andromeda over on that board. But hair? Either better hair will show up sometime, or it won't.

 

The thing is I typically don't think about it. Once I've made a character to my satisfaction, I momentarily lament the lack of options, then move on and play the game. The reason I bring it up now though, is because, despite the silliness of it, I'd really been hoping some of the delay for BE had been in part because Bioware was going to implement some new things (be they new hairs, a CC code, or at least unattaching the eyebrow color from the hair color).

 

If you find the game perfectly fine with limited hair options, that's great for you I unfortunately get distracted in the cc, as I dislike the majority of styles presented, and also am not really fond of reusing the same hairstyle for different characters. In game, I find it immersion breaking as I'm constantly reminded of an old character who may have had the same look. As you said, they'll either do it or they won't, which is what it is. I'd just appreciate hearing something from that end, since that's one of the few adjustments that'd feel like a personal improvement to me (caveat: I was relatively lucky in terms of having a bug free game, so I feel that Bioware should focus their efforts on trying to make the game playable by all first, but after that, hair would be a personal improvement for me )

[Fireheart]

They don't have to do anything.

 

And they won't.

[trevelyan_shep]

What I don't get is that Maxis can keep up with their own forums just find. The devs show up and answer questions weekly. You can hardly get away with anything there but BioWare has a hard time doing it here. Maybe they need to take some hints from Maxis when it comes to dealing with their own forums.

[Kantr]

Again with this strange notion that this place is toxic...

 

The BSN is one of the nicest, cleanest communities in which I have ever spent time. It wouldn't be at the top of the list, certainly, but it's in the top quarter. And this is without an active developer presence; imagine how lively the BSN could be if the team actually cared to interact regularly and meaningfully.

 

They've abdicated their responsibility to cultivate community, and it's posts like yours--even just suggesting we're awful--which allows them to do it. Stop allowing them this excuse to treat us only as wallets.

 

There are sometimes awful people within, but anyone who would use the example of a few to color the whole should be ashamed.

 

Our community is not toxic. We're not awful. We're not harmful to the developers.

I don't really have an opinion on the bsn. I do know that it's a lot better than in the ME3 days (but then that was a big issue) It can be friendly yes, but there's also moments when it's not. It seems that there are friendlier places.

 

I do think though that they all should make the effort to engage. It's what this place is for after all. The problem is that they are not doing anything about it.Plenty of other developer forums have lots of interaction while the bioware forum doesnt

[BansheeOwnage]

I can tell you that a lot of the folks that are getting angry are upset because of the run-around.  "Stop by Twitter...oh wait, not enough characters for a good Q&A.  Check out Facebook...oh wait, looks like they delete any comments not praising the game.  Read our blog and leave a comment...oh wait, they're telling me to go to the forums.  Go to the forums....oh wait, they're telling me to go to Twitter. " 

This is exactly how it "works". It's such a shame. Lately, the MP devs have been surprisingly active. If they can work on new stuff and actively participate in discussion of feedback, why not the SP devs? It would be silly to say the MP team doesn't work as hard.

 

Again with this strange notion that this place is toxic...

 

The BSN is one of the nicest, cleanest communities in which I have ever spent time. It wouldn't be at the top of the list, certainly, but it's in the top quarter. And this is without an active developer presence; imagine how lively the BSN could be if the team actually cared to interact regularly and meaningfully.

 

They've abdicated their responsibility to cultivate community, and it's posts like yours--even just suggesting we're awful--which allows them to do it. Stop allowing them this excuse to treat us only as wallets.

 

There are sometimes awful people within, but anyone who would use the example of a few to color the whole should be ashamed.

 

Our community is not toxic. We're not awful. We're not harmful to the developers.

Fully agree. It's really not what I would call toxic. There are trolls on every forum. There are... what? A few troll threads active throughout all the sections at any given time? They're usually just laughable too. That's not too bad. Not only that, but if people would just stop responding to them, they would sink to the bottom of the list, and the trolls would get bored. But... no! Sorry, just... why people?

 

If you find the game perfectly fine with limited hair options, that's great for you I unfortunately get distracted in the cc, as I dislike the majority of styles presented, and also am not really fond of reusing the same hairstyle for different characters. In game, I find it immersion breaking as I'm constantly reminded of an old character who may have had the same look. As you said, they'll either do it or they won't, which is what it is. I'd just appreciate hearing something from that end, since that's one of the few adjustments that'd feel like a personal improvement to me (caveat: I was relatively lucky in terms of having a bug free game, so I feel that Bioware should focus their efforts on trying to make the game playable by all first, but after that, hair would be a personal improvement for me )

Especially agree with the bolded part. Now that the BE is out and I know there is nothing new, I don't know what I'll do when I finish this playthrough. I only like two hairstyles out of twenty-eight, and I've used both on my two playthroughs. I wouldn't want to create a new character with the same hair for the reasons you said, so... I guess I'll just try to copy the sliders (because we can't save faces as presets either) and play the same character again? That just... doesn't sound exciting right now. Maybe in a while Lack of good hair can hardly be a non-issue if it makes people less likely to play at all.

[Klebermoreira17]

People who say here that Bioware not have to give satisfaction to their customers, or to communicate with them, stopped for a minute to think what they paid for a product and have full right to know how it works. Or they are consumers and are fully entitled to know the characteristics of the future product that will buy?

[Rawgrim]

Bioware doesn't have to talk to anyone. They aren't getting paid to talk to their customers on the forums. The ones who do do it in their spare time, mostly.

[Grieving Natashina]

You're correct.  Most professional companies hire a community manager in part to talk the fans.  A bit of a mediator between the developers/writers and the fans.  This isn't to know all the ins and outs, but to answer some questions, pass along feedback, post things like the #BioWareChat happening on twitter and the patch notes, and try to give fans a sense of where the developers are at. When the devs say, "We're listening to your feedback," it would help if they were like more professional companies and had a community manager to give fans a bit of a summation of what they are listening to.  Or at least someone we don't have to utterly beg to get rid of some of the straight up nasty trolls we get.  That would be a nice change.  We have a content manager, even though his forum profile says differently, but basically we're left with no BioWare representation whatsoever except when the dev that drew the short straw for the latest patch cycle and has to post a patch feedback thread.

 

 Most big companies make sure to not leave it up to a handful of anonymous mods and the rare dev post.  Most companies with good communication skills with their fans know to utilize their forums, hire a good CM, talk to the fans using more than just twitter and Facebook.    Which would, I don't know, include a forum community manager or two.  I've never been on a forum from a AAA gaming company that without a CM until here.  I was under the mistaken impression until earlier this week that we had one, albeit inactive.  Hell, a lot of smaller game companies have at lest one community manager for their official forums as well.  

 

No community manager, and the majority of conversation is on a platform where there is a max of 140 characters per answer.   I'm glad that the MP crowd has actual developer responses, and I'm not going to begrudge them for it.  Still, I'd say for many fans this is primarily a single player game with some MP on the side.  If the developers for the MP forums have time to talk to the fans, why the complete silence on the SP front?  Unless the SP team has got truly that much of a bigger workload (which they might and I'll be the first to admit it) they are avoiding us for no good reason.  If they are really that busy, then what's the reason their bosses can't hire someone to be a community manager like most responsible companies?    I'm trying not to be snarky here, but I'm disappointed by this.

[Felya87]

Things Like some time ago, where deve answered first to external forums instead than in their own, make me quite depressed.

They said they listen to feedback. Problem is... Wich feedback? Because I'm starting to feel Like Here in the forum no one is reading at all.

[Grieving Natashina]

Things Like some time ago, where deve answered first to external forums instead than in their own, make me quite depressed.

They said they listen to feedback. Problem is... Wich feedback? Because I'm starting to feel Like Here in the forum no one is reading at all.

May I ask what things with DA?  I know that the ME team did that with ME recently after the "leak" hit.  They decided to talk to fans on IGN forums instead of the BioWare forums regarding space travel.  That made me feel warm and fuzzy all over, let me tell you.     

[Sylvius the Mad]

But here's the thing, because of a lack of communication between Bioware and their players, people expected things from the Black Emporium that weren't delivered.

Us making things up is not BioWare's fault. They never claimed those features would be in the BE, so there was no reason to believe they would.

They don't somehow acquire blame because they didn't correct our terrible assumptions. The mistake there was entirely ours.

[Grieving Natashina]

Us making things up is not BioWare's fault. They never claimed those features would be in the BE, so there was no reason to believe they would.

They don't somehow acquire blame because they didn't correct our terrible assumptions. The mistake there was entirely ours.

This I agree with totally.  I have been posting about the lack of communication, but I saw a lot of baseless assumptions regarding TBE that was never hinted at by the devs.  I'm frustrated with the devs, but not over TBE.  

[Felya87]

May I ask what things with DA? I know that the ME team did that with ME recently after the "leak" hit. They decided to talk to fans on IGN forums instead of the BioWare forums regarding space travel. That made me feel warm and fuzzy all over, let me tell you.

Few weeks ago, the devs answered to reddik (I can't remember the exact name) to many questione.

[Grieving Natashina]

Few weeks ago, the devs answered to reddik (I can't remember the exact name) to many questione.

Reddit and I think I saw that AMA (Ask Me Anything.)  Yeah, there's that too.

[Fade-Touched-in-the-head]

Well, I live in Edmonton and Bioware is only a ten-minute drive from my house. Perhaps when I get a free afternoon, I'll swing over there and wave at them from the street while wearing a t-shirt that reads: "a.k.a Brevnau." If the cops pick me up inside of five minutes, then we'll know they at least read the forum.

[Rawgrim]

Quite right. Bioware never said anything at all about what would be in the Black Emporium. If people had expectations about that particular add-on, its on them.

[Dreamer]

Us making things up is not BioWare's fault. They never claimed those features would be in the BE, so there was no reason to believe they would.

They don't somehow acquire blame because they didn't correct our terrible assumptions. The mistake there was entirely ours.

 

While I agree with this in principle (BioWare is not responsible), effective community management of the issue would not have hurt them. In fact, managing community expectations is exactly what this industry needs, but it doesn't happen because hype drives sales. This is why despite knowing the community of fans was watching the PAX-East demo, they did nothing to stem inflated expectations; they were content to have us believe that the game demoed was the game we were buying.

 

In the case of Black Emporium, however, there's even less incentive for BioWare to step in because the DLC was free. If people are upset their expectations weren't met, BioWare could fall back behind cries of "it's free so get over it."

 

So, you're correct: BioWare is not responsible for people getting their hopes up, but they would do well to manage those hopes with clear communication or people will find other things with which to busy themselves.

[Sylvius the Mad]

For the record, BE does everything I expected it to do, and more.

[luna1124]

The only thing I am still asking for is a hair pack. Please Bioware, isn't there anyone talented enough working there that can make decent looking female hair? Even a cute short cut would be better than bald. Since nobody wants to make long hair because they don't want it to clip (I don't care if it clips)

I am very happy with the Black Emporium. Thank you so much.

[pdusen]

TLDR: "Answer our questions about what will and won't be in the DLC so that we don't assume that things you haven't said will be in the DLC will end up in the DLC."

 

I'm sorry, what?

 

Our community is not toxic. We're not awful. We're not harmful to the developers.

 

That's a pretty good joke you just told there. Unless you were being serious; if so, I challenge you to go to the "PC Concerns" thread, pick any random page, and read that entire page. That's the kind of thing that makes you never want to speak to any customer ever again.

[Dreamer]

TLDR: "Answer our questions about what will and won't be in the DLC so that we don't assume that things you haven't said will be in the DLC will end up in the DLC."

 

I'm sorry, what?

 

Yeah, it sounds stupid when you put it that way. But no one is actually asking for that.

 

What people are really looking for is something more like this:

 

Community: "We really hope there's new hair and CC options in the DLC!"

BioWare: "Sorry guys, we hate to bring bad news, but there won't be any new customization options in the DLC. We're looking into it for later."

[AppalachianApex]

Us making things up is not BioWare's fault. They never claimed those features would be in the BE, so there was no reason to believe they would.

They don't somehow acquire blame because they didn't correct our terrible assumptions. The mistake there was entirely ours.

 

Read that OP again please. I very clearly go over that. 

 

Lack of communication is the issue here.

[DanniloSan]

I think that a better interaction with community indeed is a key to better results in the overall game.

 

Let me give you guys an example...

 

There is a little Game developer company called "Gazillion Entertaiment"...They launched an free to play MMO and Action RPG...It's just an example let me finish...

But they had an hard time at the launch,with low reviews and ratings...But,they had an good little gaming community wich they interacted all the time...They got feedback and always asked what the players want...An year later the game is amazing ad they had a relauch and their reviews and ratings are much much higher now...And players are always happy with the developers,instead of all that rage in the foruns,you just find so much love!!!

 

So...I'm not saying that Bioware don't get feedback or something,I'm just saying that,if they interact more with community,clarify more things,let the players know that they are reading our concerns...Players could be more friendly adn happy with the game they paid for...Little companies do that,why big ones don't?That's why I spent more time with the simple companies,that got more time to spent with their players...