Should Private Messaging be allowed to the Developers?

So many people think it goes like this : "oh this dev has chosen to ignore my suggestion about better NPC behaviors, theres a conspiracy against me"

But I do not personally know one person on these forums that had an extreme reaction like that.

If after 4 years you've suggested thousands of improvements which you took time to debate on threads with thousands of reads and dozens of active participants, then you start seeing a pattern.

Then you react to said pattern, not in a negative way by calling every dev a double face... but you ask one of your friends who is a high backer to PM a dev, and poof, the change is made. It's a great idea all of a sudden ! Magic !

Multiply this experience by a few dozen times and you have another pattern to react to.

Did the messenger get any credit ? No its become a wonderful Portalarium idea...

This is not how you build loyalty and root a community, at all... this is elitism, and so is all censorship including those made by deleting threads when it doesn't suit your narrative or you beleive it will make you look bad.

Not only that, it will discourage great critics to play it politically correct and safe, which in most cases mean not correcting people who start from wrong assumptions, thus adding more job to the moderators.

A forum needs to be built to SAVE job to mods and increase participation and feelings of belonging to the community.

 

Also a great post. Different views and positions.
Enjoying this thread.

No matter what position. All respected.

 

I'm so sorry but I, too, had a hard time understanding your post so I'll speak to the title hoping that's the point of your thread.

Yes, messaging to developers should be allowed. Why wouldn't it? It's impressive that not only is this allowed, but we usually receive responses (at least I have). Why is this a bad thing?

I honestly don't care where the good ideas come from, dev or player or disgruntled person who swoops in and is perceived as a troll, as long as it's a good idea. This is a group effort, both financially and creatively.

 

I'm very happy Myrcello that you begin not to care what other thinks, people should know by now that you do your best to have clear english and if they feel they don't understand and you need to clarify, they should respectfully ask questions.

That is why communication needs to flow both ways and many things need to be funneled in the pubic eyes, for community's sake.

One of the "needs" many people have lacking in their lives right now is feeling of belonging, we all came here because we feel we belong, we need to root those feelings deep into the subconscious and unconscious as well, knowing is not enough, community isn't like love in that respect.

 

I find communities a great thing but also am aware that the feeling of belonging to a group always means the seperation from others.

We grow up always with this basic need to belong to something. Identity.

But at the end all be aware that this should not mean to exclude others questioning your community or your identity.

It means to grow on these critical questions

 

In a one-to-one perspective, its not a bad thing, I'm actually very happy at least some devs who I admire for their work on UO told me anecdotes about their experiences, great thing ! In most games I alphaed of betaed we did not have such, but then again its a player funded project, so you'd expect some joy because of the nature of gratitude.

However when something major comes up, a gameplay discussion, it should be a community reflex to tell the person in PM, well lets bring this to an official thread and let people fight about it while we sit back and reflect.

Oh sure it might become unproductive and cause some angst, but not 1/10th of the angst that is caused by censorship.

The fact that its official and proposed for feedback already deters most trolls to participate, because they know the thread will have active scrutiny.

Also it offers a reassuring layer of transparency to the process where a player suggestion is made into a final decision.

As I've said, of course Berek can't do it alone, we need a minimum of 3 people.

In the meantime, it looks bad to outside eyes and many feel that community and ethics go hand in hand, and they will be weary of games that feel like elitism.

I know what I speak of, we had similar debates while developing those big freeshards, and there was no money involved *emphasis*.

In the beginning it looks like a mess, but then everyone is allowed to find a spot where they belong and they stick to it until the end

 

Myrcello, I'm interested to know where you might draw the line between constructive feedback and unconstructive feedback? For me, I allow the developers to determine which is which. In that way they are essentially the moderators, referees if you will, the authority (for good or for worse).

I ask this questions because at some point people that are unconstructive may very well feel excluded when they get banned or they're ignored, or their motives are questioned.

 

There was one time in my life, I wrote a letter very emotional. The other Person took it in a wrong way and was very angry

And I felt very sad... but there was no possibility to delete it...

From this moment, every letter I am writing and feel not sure about to send the content how it is, because of the length and/or emotions during writing, I have decided to sleep one night over.

A day later a lot of things look and read different as in the moment full of emotions...

Beside this:
I see nothing wrong to talk to a developer in a crowdfunding project. And also in which way.
At last it is the decision of each person to take the information from each channel they have and using it to make a better game

 

I have deleted a post after considering what I said and I don't think anyone can be 100 percent satisfied with all responses they individually make. I know for myself I so wish for myself to be constructive and continually one who forwards the conversation verses one who obstructs progressive and valuable conversations to work something out.

Alas we are all human and our inbread automatic ways of being ie human reactions to other people's ways of being do not always keep reins on our emotions during responses we make. This too is very interesting to realize that we are each coming from our own 'view of life' given by the experiences we have each had during our lives.

To 'be' in the conversation sometimes takes something to really hear people and listen to what is trying to be said and I hate when that happens and I miss something being said from some internal noise getting in the way of my hearing or seeing something important.

I want to hold myself accountable for my conversations and yes I may be weird but I think everything is possible through conversation. It is what humans have. Now I am in deep thoughts today, *sighs*. Maybe we should rename your thread myrcello to 'deep thoughts'.

 

Hard Question for me. What is regarded constructive and not lies alot in the Eye of the Beholder and the stage of a Process when the feedback is given.


If i give the Feedback before a Combat System is startet that i do not enjoy the base concept of a Action Based or Skill Based Combat it is the right time i would say.

Now lets say the Combat System is startet to being developed. And it is fundamently not what i like.


Should i stop providing feedback as i know it is no matter how they tune it a base concept i will not like.
I think yes.
But if i like the base concept i should play and help finetune it till the end.

The tricky question is - what if the developers
Stated that they might withdraw from a combat system if most are against it. Then i would keep providing my position of not liking the base idea.

So very depending

 

If you chose to delete a thread you created that is your choice and you should not give one hoot about what other people on these forums think!

I also delete my threads sometimes because they where proven wrong or corrected or . . . But most I delete because there are way to many people here that just hijack threads and take them off topic and or try and twist the topic to suit their needs.

If a player does not like the fact that you delete your threads there is one and ONLY ONE option for them- they can ignore you and should just stay off your threads or just do not reply . . . .

ANYONE WHO POSTS A REPLY "WARNING OTHERS" IS A COMPLETE TROLL AND SHOULD HAVE JUST WALKED AWAY FROM THE START.

If you feel the need to appease people who are negative, opposing, or corrective and worry about their feelings you should prob just ignore them, it is not worth you brain power.

Now as for PM the devs - if it is a serious issue such as a bug or exploit then yes PM them but any and all suggestions for, criticism of the game, . . . . . should be here and ONLY here. Discord / Twitch/ Any other mode of communication should be ignored .

This should also be how we receive information FROM ONE place - these forums. (General or announcements, or the update page)

There have been to many ; "Players asked for . . . " and when you dig into it was a PM or a Discord chat or, OR, . . . . .

That is actually one of the weak points of this game - to many points of communication.

 

Indeed, I don't think nobody is going to lawyer them, bro

There is realistically alot of times where discussions should and have been handled perfectly in private.

As you say the devs are all kind of moderators, so saving them work would be a noble endeavor.

If some nonconstructive people feel hurt by what is often a bad multiplication of circumstances that is when the arbitrator steps into play, he isn't a moderator and will not attempt to filter some extreme viewpoints, but he will know who are the best suited to repair a thread and invite those players to the good place.

Being called to participate by the arbitrator enhances the feeling of belonging, it uses people strengths where it matters and will also enhance the perception of transparency.

What it really does is that it prevents people from falling into holes they perhaps have made for themselves but they would never know unless someone points it out. That we have seen a wee bit too often : to many "initiated" and "elite" folks immediately react to someone that has dug a hole for themselves so they think "well lets just ignore the guy, and not make efforts about him in his future threads".

As we've said many times before, perception eats reality for breakfast.

Thats when the PR person steps in... he is there to make lists, lists of people and lists of their expectation, and lists of what expectations are pitted against perspectives and which subject cause some of these people to start speculating/comparing/judging. He might have to call upon the moderator from time to time, but often those situations can be avoided all together because 90% of the time they spring from miscommunication.

 

That's a great example.

For the record, I have major problems with the combat system. I think over the last four years I've been more vocal about that than anyone. I provided tons of feedback early on stating that I didn't want to give that kind of feedback after they already wasted all their time making something I wouldn't like. It just doesn't make any sense!

The problem I think some players have though, is once the development team makes a decision on combat, it also doesn't make sense to continue to haunt them about it. I could write for hours on all the things I dislike or would do differently about combat. Sometimes I do!

But I realize that the best way for me to make an impact on the future of the game is not to continuously second guess the combat system as a whole and instead to suggest balance changes to the existing system that will make it a little bit better.

I feel the same way about all kinds of elements in this game. Timing is a big deal here too.

Were the quest systems always bad? Well maybe, but they were always incomplete too. Now that they're effectively finished, I played them and gave feedback. Not second hand feedback, not "I heard someone say X,Y,Z and then raged about it" feedback. But actually take the time to figure out what's really happening and provide feedback in the moment.

You're right, it's a tricky question because what's constructive is absolutely in the eye of the beholder. But I would argue that whatever gets the developers attention and drives actual change is what's important. And I think we have a large enough sample size over the last four years to say that when someone provides feedback too soon (unfinished systems) there's only so much the developers can or are willing to do with that.

 

Depends on how it feels not being constructive. Your car breaking down. You just know something feels wrong, bad, broken. But it would be like saying your mechanic won't look at it until you can tell them specifically what is wrong and tips on how to fix it. Because you are not in the know enough to tell the mechanic specific actionable feedback, other than "This feels wrong."

 

A constructive example would be simple :

I have this great idea for systems that encourage people interaction, but another system completely prevents it from working.

I might have proposed other ideas like this and this led to people thinking "well this guy dosen't read the patch notes" let's not care...

Leading to me feeling "well what are those boards for".

That thread might end up in a bad shape, with 10 pages, people starting to insult each other.

We might think "well if a dev had stepped in, said : sorry this is not possible because of system x that would cause your idea to be exploitable"

Thread stops after the third post, less reading and less job for devs/moderators.

However can we ask devs to read all the forums to find those threads out that seem ambiguous enough to cause zizany ? this would be unrealistic...

That is why we need a PR person who links ressources on the fly, and often said PR person could call upon a player who is known for his experiences on those issues, so there isn't even a need to disturb a dev about it.

Win win.

 

I couldn't agree more.

And sometimes I think the developers here are fine receiving feedback like that. For example once they've developed a system beyond a first pass or to a level where the design is functioning as intended.

But what happens when the mechanic looks at your car and says "it's fine, I've been doing this for 20 years and it's not only safe to drive but it looks like it should be good for another 100k miles"? Do you stand outside the mechanics shop and scream at people that walk in saying "he doesn't know what's talking about don't go in there!"? At some point you kind of need to take a step back and think about what's going to be the most constructive path to getting your car fixed. If you feel like you have to take it to a new mechanic, well then sell off your game and get out of here. Or perhaps there's a middle ground?

 

Not perhaps, there always was and forums have existed before the internet... I have studied 6 years in social sciences, but all my study have been almost for nothing.

In 15 years I have not been able to get my point across on pretty much all forums and endeavors I have set my mind to.

Yet I remember clearly that in school, and for forums in schools online and offline, the principles I explain up here in other posts are considered the strict minimum.

It's not a theory anymore, its a way to do things that consider ethics and social hygiene that has been made academic.

Problem is that its not easy to implement.

So is Portalarium's vision !

Nobody said it would be easy...

 

haha yes, we sure studied that in college philosophy classes... but there is a big difference between attachment and engagement.

Feelings of prestige and accomplishment are also a basic need in a gaming community.

 

That actually happened with my motorcycle. Local place (next door from work, convenient) wouldn't believe me on how tight the rear brake should be. Just claims it is "within tolerance" after a few times taking it back. To me it was real mushy and didn't slow things down much. Took it to the dealership (over an hour way in Hurst, TX, not really a ride I wanted to do without, for me, a properly working brake) and they fixed it properly. Not sure how this helps. Not like a third party dev team is working on the game, and I pick up and go back to Portalarium. But yes I get your point anyways.

 

Unless... there is no other mechanic that can do the job... such as it is with portalarium right now

I have looked around, found a few openings but no structure to make it happen...