Mitchverr Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 (as the original threads been locked anyway) I know, topic titles a little extreme but i cant think of 1 thats better and dragging things about isnt helpful but this is something i personally feel strongly about because its something that can make/break groups. I have to be honest, if i had not bought the game and just came across many of the posts by the dev team i would be concerned about the route the community could go down because i have seen it go badly in the past, for the comments below i am basing it off past history and i would suggest recruiting perhaps from the community to get the role filled, even ask for a volunteer to do it, i have done it years ago for free for small groups, it can be exceptionally helpful. After last night, i have to say that it is something that might be needed. Subpoint: Devs needs to have an official title only they can use ingame, a colour could work, but would have issues for identifying which side they are on in battle. 1. Public relations/Tribunal (easier together) Firstly, from what happened last night and from whats happened in other instances (not as bad ofcourse) outside the tribunal area i would suggest that the company look into hiring/recruiting somebody out the community who can be diplomatic to talk on their behalf to become an official face for the company with reguards to dealing with this(or have 2 people or something, the community isnt to big... yet), especially with a known name instead of the ominous "Admin" tag which from what i have heard could be 1 person or several, if several it leads to schizophrenic posting should multiple admins be using it. This person would be diplomatic and able to communicate with the community in a way that would be helpful and be open to the community. Paid or voluntary works, but it would help prevent things happen in the future and could be from anywhere. Threatening/abusing people shouldnt be acceptable, even if you dislike them if you are an official member of a team, not only does it look bad on the person themself but the team as a whole, when you see official team accounts calling people names and being threatening (even if provoked) then it can be seen as bad. Warning people yes, ofcourse, but tone is pretty important especially when typing, took me years to finally tune my language on forums for this. This is especially bad if you have a member condemning a good say, 30 people as guilty in a battle as it makes innocent people highly defencive. Insults shouldnt be accepted from the team either, it looks bad and can be damaging over time. Sometimes an insult at 1 can be read as an insult to many or worse, you could target somebody who is innocent and be abusive towards them. Lastly, the way people were told they should report others and what looked like demands of why they dont report others looked extremely threatening to me as a player, i would suggest dont cause fear amongst the community for forcing them to report on other players or at least let them do it without being seen, some people dont want the grief or hassle of having to report others within their own community thats formed and would rather have things be smooth without needing to be named, i would suggest having a hidden tribunal area also for those whom would rather be anonymous from which perhaps if its not specific or if the user wants, the customer rep can copy and paste a visable thread for the tribunal to happen from, this way 1)the player doesnt have to feel worried about reprisal even if its passive aggressive on TS or something and 2) dont need to deal with the flak of reporting it. Lastly, i know some are fine with it, but i would suggest not naming and shaming people punished, it can look bad from the outside as it can come off as petty in the eyes of some people. I would also say requiring people to make public apologies is kinda OTT also, no need to make people embarassed more by having it be public, a private apology in some instances should be enough, a large company generally gets away with it, but a smaller company needs to look like they have the high ground. 2. Update patches First, great job at least telling us when things go on. However, i would suggest a small change as to this of having more accurate numbers, when we are told "ships are slowed down" its nice to know, but having some kind of arbitrary scale to go off would help greatly in knowing how to find a bug, for example 18 pounder should reload in 35 seconds without crew focusing on guns, having that kind of information would be helpful as we can then go ingame and fire, time it and say "it isnt actually working, its firing every 30 seconds every 3 volleys" or "its firing every 40 seconds like before the change didnt get in", theres always mistakes in patches even for AAA games, this would heavily improve the communities ability to test, simple step but looks more effective from the outside looking in (ie those who didnt buy the game yet think "oh, they give alot of detail") and the community doesnt need to play 20 questions as to "constitution turning changed" as to how it changed for example XD (this is an example btw dont jump on it, lol) 2.1 I would resuggest a forum addition giving us subcatagories for each ship/type to make discussion more friendly over the ships and we can then do more pre-post patch discussion as to how something changes a ship and how effective it was. Close the topic, delete the topic, fair enough, just thought these might be helpful for the future of the game. The language barrier can be a significant issue, so perhaps it would be helpful to hire somebody who speaks english well to go through this as English is a highly common language and a native speaker generally will talk to people with less chance of a misreading. I would have put this up somewhere it wouldnt be seen to be judged by the whole community, but i dont see a spot for that. I would also ask people to not bring up stuff that doesnt need bringing up, this is supposed to help the dev team with their future goals for the game not be a void for people to whine into. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marecek05 Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 I completely agree with Mitchverr especially on his points regarding the patches and the community representative. I know it you might consider it a distraction, but it will become necessity very soon. The game is enjoying an influx of active players (around 100 players on christmas, while yesterday there were over 350 players), which is good for the game development, but will necessarily lead to issues like yesterday's exploits and with time maybe even worse meltdowns. After the introduction of the open world, I am sure the game will explode (at least for some time) due to the quality of the product itself, although being in alpha. If you want to keep community active (as is now), it will be very hard to do. Please don't take this the wrong way, I think you are doing a good job and I admire your determination to reply to almost every suggestion, although in the long run, it will not be feasible to sustain. Your game is going to be big, better to prepare sooner then later. In Slovak there is a saying that could be helpful, which when translated says: "Don't let it grow over your head". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitchverr Posted February 13, 2015 Author Share Posted February 13, 2015 Thanks for the comment, wasnt sure if i was being OTT or anything with it, took me a good while to write up. And yeah as i dont think i made it clear, i love the game, want you guys to do well which is why i wrote it, i just want to help this game succeed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chustler Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 Relations with the community at large is very important, and I do agree that recent events could be taken very harshly by onlookers... Your OP is not out of line. These things do need to be talked about lest they become worse through being ignored. Of course the main issue with all of it is the written word. We have all been misinturpreted on the internet at one point or another. Writing is so inadequate for delicate issues. The language diffenences can only make that problem worse. I have been mostly happy with how everyone has behaved, but everything you wrote in the OP is good to think about for everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prater Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 I agree with your post for the most part.I guess we all have different views of what is insulting and what is threatening.I didn't view the admins or dev's as threatening or hostile in any way. The in-game dev (whatever her name is) was not hostile or threatening as people accused her, in my opinion. People took it way out of perspective in my opinion. Saying exploiters are assholes is not insulting, out of line, or unprofessional in my opinion. I rarely ever cuss, might say damnit every once in awhile. I don't direct it at other people either, just an fyi. It just isn't my thing. But holding this against the dev isn't necessary in my opinion. Maybe they might have withheld saying that, but from what I can tell, it is their style and I am fine with it, even though I don't typically swear. The tester in me agrees with you on the ship statistics stuff so we know how it is supposed to work. However, the player in me says no because a group can compile this information for the purpose of getting ahead in the game But the changes that the devs keep making sure makes it hard to remember what is what anymore, as it probably should be However, I am not too worried about differing reload rates. Guns wouldn't have been reloading at the exact same rate anyway. Also, devs will soon add in a feature where even though ships will be the same class and look the same, each one will have slightly different HIDDEN stats. So this database would be useless except to have a general sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Alvarez Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 Subpoint: Devs needs to have an official title only they can use ingame, a colour could work, but would have issues for identifying which side they are on in battle. This is the one major action item I took away from yesterday's events. Yes - Employees of Game Labs should have something special about their in-game name that denotes them as such. They have stated that abuse of Game Labs employees will not be tolerated, which they have every right to expect. On the forums this is not a problem. However, it becomes difficult when in game there is absolutey nothing that distinguishes them from the average player. Most of us by now has seen the player Game-Labs in game, but everyone else after that is a mystery. So as not to mess with allied/enemy name coloring they should have a star, or some other symbol in front of their name which regular players would be restricted from using. Then we will know who they are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chustler Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 They should be easy to spot I agree, but I would also argue that we should be treating everyone well, not just people with dev tag. Abuse of anyone should not be tolerated... Devs are not special in that. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Alvarez Posted February 13, 2015 Share Posted February 13, 2015 They should be easy to spot I agree, but I would also argue that we should be treating everyone well, not just people with dev tag. Abuse of anyone should not be tolerated... Devs are not special in that. Agree wholeheartedly. However, some of what transpired yesterday began with the dev announcing in game chat he/she was dev and that was met with some skepticism, which is understandable. Anyone can say they are a dev. Properly marked, there would have been no dispute over that and maybe things wouldn't have escalated so much from there. Not saying that was the sole reason for what happened, but it seemed to me a contributing factor for parties involved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rudi Starnberg Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 They should be easy to spot I agree, but I would also argue that we should be treating everyone well, not just people with dev tag. Abuse of anyone should not be tolerated... Devs are not special in that. It's not so much about not being rude to people, but if some random person starts ordering you about just because he claims to be a dev, its not unreasonable to respond with skepticism. If we are to avoid further incidents then people who have the right to expect to be obeyed, i.e. devs, need to be distinguished somehow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brigand Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 I have to ask: Why do people not want to look at the list of moderators and developers already available to them? ~Brigand Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shavier Posted February 14, 2015 Share Posted February 14, 2015 I have to ask: Why do people not want to look at the list of moderators and developers already available to them? ~Brigand Poor visibility of thier work for our community makes posts like this. We need clear comunication with players like in others online games. If this team still hard working means its not efficiency Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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