[Feedback] Game thoughts and feedback

[IMarduk]

I've stopped giving feedback. I dont have any confidence the programmers are actually getting what we write.

Ravel was on chat this morning and said "i am not a developer, am a game master. developers are in another country so i wouldn't know "

Bugs reported on the test-server are happily introduce onto the real servers. And if you cant even manage to contact the developers and answer the quesation "when does the christmas event end" for a whole month....yeah feedback is useless.

So what I would like to see: Developers who just do a regular update. Read these suggestions, workig on those bugs... and just answer simple question. Just fix the feedback function, otherwise it's stupid to even ask for feedback.

developers get the relevant feed from game masters such as ravel, and im guessing, BB_dantesama is passing along (relevant) forum feed to them also.
but dont expect feedback from dev's.... sincerelly, dont you think they got more to do then be answering to sugestions etc? ;p

[Rendor]

Some reaction would be nice tho ... like fixing the game.

[Nogbad]

Hello Nogbab,

The adventure "The Lost Skull" was confirmed a while ago right here .

Best

BB_Dantesama

hello DinkySanta,
wasn't clear, and I guess this confirmed my suspicions.
http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/t...d-to-next-week

Best,
Nogbad. <---------

[Kotugo]

This version requires a translator to convert it from the German version to English, this is most likely who the "English developer" is and they have no control over the content other than what the descriptions say, they can give out free gifts as well :P . It probably also goes without saying that any English feedback requires translation back to German so the core game developer can understand it, as this likely requires money it means all the English feedback is just ignored in favour of saving money.

So if you want to leave worthwhile feedback, maybe learn German and start posting on their forums instead. Just beware that someone mentioned before that the developer mostly ignores the German forums as well, they just blindly do as they please. (Referring to this post)

[NixMan]

I have to go away and out of internet range for nearly a week. I miss a "slumber" function , or the chance to nominate a friend or guild member to look after the game for me ( mainly to keep the explorers and mines running ). This was common on some other browser games I played.

[Promethos]

Yes I actually do expect the developers to answer some questions IMarduk. Not "help I'm stuck at level 12, what can I do???" But it's not too much to ask them to communicate a bit.

For example the announcement with the guild-quest problem. From the announcement it looks like they completely missed the point. It was all about quests not finishing, while lots of guilds couldn't even start. But... ahh too bad, the announcement has been thrown out of the developers tower, pulled through google-translate, and now we're in the dark. Did they indeed miss the point, of is it just bad communication?

There are so many little things that could easily be fixed. The 'produce at least 0'-quests prove to be really difficult for lots of players. A better description would help a lot. It doesn't affect gameplay, so how hard can it be to fix. But we dont even know if developers are aware of the problem.

And seriously, why again did they fail to answer "when will the christmas event end?"... asked numerous times on the forum, in chat. There was a message on the german forum with a date, but we just couldn't get it confirmed. An easy question, which doesn't need more then 1 email. If that proves too difficult, and they cant answer why it went wrong either..... I give up. Dream on, there is NO communication at all with the developers. None!

What already would be a big improvement:
1: ask moderators and/or active players (in help-chat for ecample) to give their top 5 problems
2: combine answers into a top-10 and post that on the forums
3: get the developers to comment on it

Tadaaa, there you go. Doesn't take an awfull lot of time, but finally we would find out some answers to common concern. Do the devs know, are they working on a solution, why is a fix maybe a lot harder then we think.

Same for the suggestions. If you ask players to come up with ideas, it's just normal to comment on them. Let a forum-mod select a few suggestions every 2 weeks or so, and let the developers reflect on them. Why it wont work, or which things are maybe worked on or will be looked into in the future. Lots of suggestions probably wont be unique for our servers, so developers wont be spending hours and hours on answering questions.

As long as it looks like the developers dont even have email, I think this thread is misleading. It gives players the idea developers might hear what we think and write, but .... better chances someone will pick up the phone on the dark side of the moon.

So for de developers: Try communicating. It's fun and free

[Qualan]

So for de developers: Try communicating. It's fun and free

Alas, the reality of life for developers is, it isnt fun and it isn;t free-
There will be more questions asked than they can ever answer
Their answers will never satisfy all, more likely it will satisfy very few
They have work scheduled to complete- going through forums and respond to questions takes away from that work- thats the not free part, either BB slots more time for development (costs money) or more developer (costs money)

But thats what community managers are for imo- provide some answers and/or select hot topics to give some feedback on
I however- do expect more questions/feedback/specific test objectives etc on staging server- not a kinda mini stress test/marginal bug testing (the one of does the server keel over if we push it live one :P) from developers- in the end thats the part where their work/brainchildren can be put to the test and see if they a) work, b) are balanced in game c) meet objectives set by game producer

[EternalPink]

Alas, the reality of life for developers is, it isnt fun and it isn;t free-
There will be more questions asked than they can ever answer
Their answers will never satisfy all, more likely it will satisfy very few
They have work scheduled to complete- going through forums and respond to questions takes away from that work- thats the not free part, either BB slots more time for development (costs money) or more developer (costs money)

But thats what community managers are for imo- provide some answers and/or select hot topics to give some feedback on
I however- do expect more questions/feedback/specific test objectives etc on staging server- not a kinda mini stress test/marginal bug testing (the one of does the server keel over if we push it live one :P) from developers- in the end thats the part where their work/brainchildren can be put to the test and see if they a) work, b) are balanced in game c) meet objectives set by game producer

There being lots of questions should be good (unless of cause they are how to complete a quest such as the "have a production value of 0" which is just poor translation/quest description text - suggested they fix that in Jan) since it means people are interested and not being able to satisfy everybody is a reality of all business/human interactions but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it since satisfying 90/95/99% of people is achieveable.

I've played other games where developers have spoken to the community, saying that BB are unable to do this due to work load (which i'm assuming your assuming as you dont have a BB title so wouldn't actually know) when other dev's in other games can doesn't seem right to me unless BB operates a policy of chaining its dev's to there work stations.

I don't think Promethos is expecting them to trawl the forum answering every thread but taking 10 minutes out of one week to answer five questions seems fairly reasonable to me (would bet more time is spent fetching coffee or drink of choice in a week)

[Qualan]

i never said it was impossible- however i did argue it isnt free and it isnt fun for the people that do the job- |When they go home, in most cases the last thing they wanna do is to trawl forums and be whined at by players with unrealistic expectations. Most games i play you will find only 1 or 2 developers interacting with the community on a regular basis and others on a need to do for the current project basis- mostly they will do so in game or on test server forums as well.

You just assume far too much from reading my reply though. And i dont know where you put your priorities but last time i checked- this game has a ton of localized versions, all with their own forums and feedback threads, bug threads and suggestion threads. If the devs take 10 minutes out on every single one of these (and 2 minutes read/replies etc for 5 questions is not realistic either) all of a sudden it adds up to a large number. Most companies that do software development also do not have the developers interacting with their customers on the whole- the customer contact is structured around program/development managers or whatever they want to call it- so developers can get on with the job at hand instead of getting distractions. It isnt about chaining but about focus.

Anyway- in the end it is all about how BB sees and does things- not what any of us wish/demand etc. They have a long history in this game of not interacting a lot from development side with the non german speaking community and i expect this will remain so- which is fairly logical as it is always easier to communicate in your native language. I also have pointed out on various occations that there is far more interaction with the development side on the german game forums than there is on the test servers' forums and i expect that specific questions from developers will get asked in the german chat on the test server as well

Hence the community managers role will be important in securing a good feedback channel/loop from the non german forums to development and back- which seems to be a weak point though- same can be said for game masters.

[Sinister-King]

Hello!

I assure you Blue Byte do read game suggestions and bug reports .

The latest news and announcements (this includes developers diary) is always published by BB_Dantesama.

Best,
Sinister-King