J, stop feeding the troll. Phage has spent the past two weeks trying desperately to get attention by spamming threads and picking fights. Stop giving him what he wants - he’s allegedly 37 with children and yet he’s got nothing better to do than haunt these forums like a poltergeist, do you really want to keep playing chess with the metaphorical pigeon?
5 Likes
Talk about absentee father 
2 Likes
Figured I’d give it a go. But when the strawmen are so thick and many that I am asked if I can guarantee that everyone will talk to FS with a level head…
As if that is some bar that anyone, ever, in any context could meet or guarantee on behalf of anyone else. I guess no one should talk to any customers ever, because someone might be rude.
It is indeed pointless.
3 Likes
I don’t think many CMs take death threats seriously so long as you’re not doxxed, but reading them day in and day out CAN do a number on your mental health after a while. While people like to argue that “I’d read insults all day if I was paid to!”, it’s really not that cut and dry; and CMs really aren’t paid all that much.
Also, I’ll say something controversial.
A lot of times when players say they want communication AND the sentiment of the community is poor, they’re not saying they want any communication; they’re saying they want to hear good news or things that will make them happy to hear. No community wants to hear, “Hey, we heard you, but you’re going in a different direction.”
If you communicate negative news when the sentiment is poor, no matter how transparent and true, you run a high risk of making things even worse.
Not saying that’s the case here, as Skulls is right around the corner, so it would make sense they might let the showcase do the talking for them (unofficial hunch, I need to disclaimer again; I really have no clue what’s being shown there).
But just saying this as someone who has been there and done that. I think the only way I managed to get away with delivering bad news in V2 was I had already built “street cred” prior to my coming in at Fatshark in that IP. Had I not; things could have been much worse.
Just my two pennies.
10 Likes
Yeah I’ll agree with all of that.
I do think it’s possible, though difficult, to keep the lines of communication open even when the mood has turned sour. It’s obviously not easy if you keep having to deliver bad news into that sour community though.
But again one can’t help but wonder if something isn’t broken somewhere else (far removed from the CM) if they do mostly have bad news to give. Presumably the dev would want to change things for the better, even if what they’re doing to change things isn’t exactly what the community is asking for.
3 Likes
And that’s the problem.
The player population would be far greater if it wasn’t for the RNG BS that pushed large chunks of the player base away.
And instead of creating new content, time has been spent fixing the fecking game, and the things they are fixing, is not the thing that pushed most players away.
The amount of BS you have waffled on this RNG debate has produced enough methane to raise global temperatures by 5C.
You are so oblivious to the fact the RNG crafting is so broken, so abhorrent, and so anti-gamer friendly and no way in any capacity fit for purpose is laughable.
You know, some people think that Ted Bundy was a decent guy, doesn’t mean they are right and just because “you” like the RNG crafting system, doesn’t make you right.
Hold on, I got you covered, bro:
2 Likes
Yep. Seeing you play the game at the highest level and encounter the same BS we did back then made me and a lot of people say “oh well, she’s suffering through the same sht we are. Fccking FS again” and be done with it.
Which is why devs/cms playing the game they work on is important. Not just for balance or qol reasons.
1 Like
Tbh I think that’s because when the average player says they want ‘communication’, it comes with the unspoken addition of ‘we want that communication to go both ways’. Not acquiescing to community demands is seen as a communication breakdown even if it’s accompanied by weekly posts about the thing the company is doing and lots of activity from CMs.
‘Communication’ is a two way street, and for a live service, a company needs to listen to their players. HD2 got hit with that recently, albeit kinda hilariously in terms of ‘you trained the community to descend upon objectives en masse like a seagull horde and now Sony is running around covered in potato chips’. But now they’re facing player dissatisfaction at game balance and rushed content - and what do they do? Well, the CEO states he’s gonna look at things, the devs say that’s actually happening, and they’re deciding what to prioritize next.
People don’t praise Arrowhead’s communication just because it’s frequent, they praise it because they feel they’re being heard.
Fatshark seemed to think the first was all that was necessary, and gave up when community mood didn’t improve, but in reality giving the players what was advertised would have been more effective even if they weren’t putting out biweekly patches.
2 Likes
It depends on the demand of course. 
But yes, I agree, it is a two way street where the flow should be incoming and outgoing; and then what feedback is acted upon is balanced appropriately between sentiment health and overall game balance/business sense health.
Unfortunately, what AH is doing is still considered new and novel in the industry, and it helps the CEO is also very outspoken, which probably frees up a lot of CM red tape. A lot of studios get stuck on the incoming phase and then struggle with the outgoing phase. Hoping Arrowhead really creates a trend that the rest of the industry can catch onto though.
5 Likes
I guess it depends on what segments of the industry you look at. Larian (which was decidedly mid-sized) based their entire development process around feedback, hence the long early access times for all of their games.
I think it was Obsidian or inXile who did a poll (which was stated as being informative, not majority wins for sure) about whether one of their games should be turn based or RTwP. And so on.
Few have had such quick and direct back and forth as AH though, that’s for sure.
1 Like
Eh, back in the kickstarter days for Owlcat Games, we managed to get them to do a Q&A with us on four-chan:
They had such a buzz going for them back then, it was insane. You have to be a part of the community or have ‘Street Cred’ to pull this kind of thing without it backfiring on you though.
Iron Tower Studios, another cool group, does neat things too, like doing awesome interviews where they ain’t afraid to speak their mind:
Such a legendary interview.
The Iron Tower bros are all OGs from old Rpgcodex - a website where we nitpick RPGs and engage in real time pvp over opinions, also free speech - they constantly jump into discussions and talk about anything with us - I love them so much because of that, even if they tell me my ideas for their games are horrible.
3 Likes
Ah, The Codex and NMA… such wretched hives of villainy.
Kudos for linking an article from when RPS was amazeballs, though. I still remember vividly the takedown of Peter “I can’t stop lying” Molyneux.
1 Like
Bro! You know it!
“You can do ANYTHING”
I’ll always have a soft spot for him simply because he made Black & White. Such an amazing game back then.
You are all! We love your game, but we need transparency like never before!
1 Like
It was an interesting game for sure, though a lot of it didn’t quite work.
Last I heard he was dabbling with NFT scam games, which, you know, sounds about right for him.
1 Like
I believe that was his curiosity whatever game where the final prize in the box was a share of his next game’s revenue, some kind of flop mobile game, Godus I believe.
Yeah, but that’s two out of how many studios? This is what I mean; it’s not common practice. (And again, as I mentioned before, they’re smaller studios; AH notwithstanding).
Also, 4chan is a terrible platform for Q&A haha.
1 Like
Lots of the OGs from the 90s went the NFT/Crypto scheme, sadly.