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- The problem with shifting responsibility
The problem with shifting responsibility
Warhammer 40K FeedbackHello everyone. I opened this discussion in hope to show the developers, what to avoid when interacting with their customers in the future. Until now i feel they have not only been pretty open to suggestions (for ex. letting the community choose which bolter sound is better), but also established a direct communication with the fans and as someone who is a founder, i didnt see any major change in direction where the game is going so i am quite happy at the moment.
Now the actual reason why i opened this topic is a post on the general discord channel by a user called "[LEGN] - Dozo.
Here is what he wrote:
I must say, I agree with the above video, especially the mention "And five years ago we would be having a different conversation because 5 years ago there wasnt the... colossal fuck up that was Eternal Crusade." and the comment in regard to the fact that it WILL be compared and the reputations aligned. As a more prominent member of the EC community, a 40k gaming guild leader, someone who has spent many hundreds of hours in game in EC and now an Inquisitor founder with hopes to do the same in Inquisitor, I hope whole-heartedly that the cancerous attitude and negative undertones within the community dont make their way to this game too. Because thats heresy which once has taken root, can not be purged and has been incredibly damaging to ECs reputation and could do the same here.
Now i don't know which video he is referring to so correct me if i am reading this wrong, but here is my 5 cent concerning how to treat your customers in the gaming industry:
Referring to the core reason failure of EC being the toxic community means wilfully ignoring or not caring about the lies, rudeness towards their customers and scamming attempts bE has been caught doing while showing a complete lack of dedication and talent for making EC a good game.
Now it is true that reactions are disproportional, because people are anonymous on the internet and therefore more outspoken. But what Nathan Richardson and his team did to their customers would not fly within any industry branch but the gaming industry. And i find it not only irritating, but harmful to blame the community for a big chunk of why EC failed as a game.
With this attitude developers will get the feedback that they can get away with this kind of behavior because there is always people that will defend the devs and/or shift the blame towards the customers because they dont word their "critique" nicely. This is why triple AAA games are pumped out with all the day 1 patches, fatal crashes, horrible performances etc.
Dear neocore developers, please don't listen to this mindset. If you get a big shitstorm because of anything, you need to address it. You have a discord channel, you seem to be willing to interact with your customers directly. This is a big step forward within the gaming industry, which is rotten to the core atm in my opinion. Face criticism head on, don't hide behind excuses like „a toxic community, trolls and haters". Try to see beyond that and recognize what the people are actually criticising instead of putting your players behind a "our players are just entitled crybabies" wall. Don't take the easy route and delete posts and entire threads, banning people because they dislike something about your game in whatever shape or form. This is part of the reason why EC failed. Because they let a big manchild with the user name "Asheru Swiftwind" go on a censoring rampage, because it made him feel powerful on the internet.
Don't treat your community like children or the enemy. Even if some user posts suggest otherwise. Remember, this is the internet. Everybody uses an alias. We talk different here than face to face.
Relic did it with DOW III. They failed.
bE did it with EC even worse. They failed.
Neocore didn’t do any of those. If you devs keep this kind of communication with us up you will NOT fail your customers.
Critique on the internet doesn’t have to be packed nicely. You deliver a product, you sometimes have to walk through the desert of insults and mean words to find the true essence of what people want in their product, because that is what will show your dedication and good will and as a result will pay out nicely for you as well. This is how capitalism works, even on the internet.
Massive shitstorms have a reason. And it's not trolls and haters. They are just a by-product of any game and any company.
Read between the lines and you will find that taking criticism - even if packed as an insult - and reacting to it by trying to improve your product accordingly will secure a solid fanbase of dedicated people that wont mind if mistakes are made, but will actively try to help the devs to come up with solutions.
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When you reach the point of having the Steam launch, I suggest equipping the Neocore forum mods with heavy flamers, and pulling in some Terminator-armored assault squads for handling the Steam forums.
Yeah, Steam forums are that bad. It's literally the only place I've ever received death threats.. for posting a bug report... in the bug reports subforum of a game. The Steam Discussion feature is marked by Chaos Undivided.
I might be paranoid but I'm already steeling myself for the rapid downhill decline of the community, which is sad... so far I've enjoyed chatting with people in General chat when I'm not purging in the name of Emprah Winfrey (you get a bolter, you get a bolter, EVERYONE GETS A BRAND NEW BOLTER!), and found some really entertaining buds to coop with.
Kinda like I did before Eternal Crusade got a bunch of press and players during the mid-beta period, where there were people playing in-character (Kharn was funny if you found him, except a notorious teamkiller because, well, Kharn!) and it was just generally entertaining. And then it devolved into spam, blatant hacks unfixed because they needed to add more cosmetics, and the usual vile toxic filth that comes from unchecked young teenagers with access to mommy's credit card.
I... really do not want to see that here. But I'm expecting to, because it happens to all games with an online component. Hopefully, as the social aspect firms up, we'll be able to limit and tweak our chat without having to drop our cabals to be incorporated into one of two or three cabals housing players we party with/chat with on a regular basis.
Not that I'm not guilty of shitposting/whinging in chat sometimes. I blow off some steam, sometimes I poke someone's buttons, but largely it self-polices and goes back to a mixture of casual chat and/or tearing into 40k lore.
I just wanted to drop by and thank you for this post, very insightful, and it inspires us to not only maintain our ways, but even to do better.
So far, our community has been very polite and articulate, and we're grateful for that, it makes things easier. But if there ever comes a time when we're flooded with insults... we'll still listen. We have a vision for this game, some will like it, some will not (we just have to accept this), but we take every opinion into consideration, no matter how they're formulated.
From what I have seen from Neocore so far,
I myself was wary yet hopeful even at first especially after experiencing the letdown of EC on which I was also an early founding member, but hey I liked the Van Helsing games and when you say 40k and arpg in the same sentence I get all warm and fuzzy.
Game is progressing very well imo, and I look forward to each and every milestone and will continue to bug/playtest as often as I can spare.
Wow. So this just proves that when I have little sleep, I should just wait for the caffeine to work its magic before posting!
Fairly hard since they're posting and working from... IIRC it was the Czech Republic? I don't remember precisely, since it only came up during the VH1 devstreams and it's been a wee chunk of time since then, but anyone in the US expecting posts that suit our timezone will be disappointed. And rightly so, I don't expect folks to get out of bed to respond to my posts, I'm not that important.
Edit To the OP: I've had EC since it was in beta myself, and I can already point out one major difference... Neocore actually has a track record of doing something, and their updates actually fix shit.
Not like the godawful issues with EC, with things like hacks that remained unaddressed for months at a time just to shoehorn more cosmetics into the shop.
Both of these are still a feature, they're not cut from the game. The current roadmap shows the upcoming updates till September, all the features mentioned above (grand investigations, seasons, the campaign, and a lot more) are coming after that, after the game arrives on Steam Early Access. We'll talk about these and more in detail as we're getting close to Gamescom. So the updates won't stop after September!
Actually, I'm now relying on you to find it for me....too much stress you know !!
They only read the posts like once maybe twice a day. Which was already done 4 hours ago :D don't you worry, you will get to the truth sooner or later.
I hope you're right about nothing having changed. However, the lack of a reply to this point is very suspicious. I mean, how hard would it be for someone to come on right now and say: No, nothing has changed.
i'll leave my response in the other thread - but from what I recall nothing has changed - only there has been less use of the word grand investigation. The streams and interviews with Viktor have spent a lot of time discussing it in particular so it's worth revisiting those.
I hate to copy and paste my reply from another thread, but it is relevant here, so I will:
I have a slightly different recollection of what the Grand Investigations & Seasons were intended to be. I remember them as being linked. Each new season would bring a new Grand Investigation. It was supposed to be something that the whole player base worked on to solve. The progress toward solving it would have effects across the Sector. This was supposed to be something separate from the generic investigations & not part of the single player campaign.
This was the core of the persistent open world sandbox theme of the game that was advertised at the start of the founding. If it has been removed or changed in the ways you suggest, it is a major reversal of the Devs original intent. EC all over again.
Can categorically say seasons are still a feature. They are still frequently mentioned within stream as being part of the development plan.
As for grand investigations - Not sure if that means a grand-version of our current investigation system or more single player orientated campaign? - Either way that's still to be added. (First chapter of campaign is still on road-map I beleive) - Might just be hidden behind semantics.
That's sounds great. Since you have yet to answer it in the thread I started, maybe you will here:
Here's a simply yes or no question from a day one founder:
Have you guys cut Grand Investigations & Seasons from the game ?
This is an important topic indeed. Here at NeocoreGames we really want to communicate with you guys. We really want to hear your positive or negative feedbacks. That's why we have so many channels, where you can reach us directly. We never gonna delete posts or comments that we don't like. Instead of that we'll try to understand and fix those issues.
A well thought out post and a trap I am hopeful Neocore won't fall into. Thus far they have been overly transparent with regards to any concerns we have.
Still an important topic to always keep in mind. Communication is everything.
From what I have seen from Neocore so far,
They really seem to care not only about their product but about their customers as well, many queries and questions and bugs are addressed and within respectable time frames (as can be seen below), I have been involved with this alpha from its early days and as of today clocked in over 500 hours of play/bug testing (and outright fun) thus far and happy to say I do feel my opinions are taken on board like many others I have read contributing toward this game.I myself was wary yet hopeful even at first especially after experiencing the letdown of EC on which I was also an early founding member, but hey I liked the Van Helsing games and when you say 40k and arpg in the same sentence I get all warm and fuzzy.
Game is progressing very well imo, and I look forward to each and every milestone and will continue to bug/playtest as often as I can spare.