DarthDymond Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 This was a post that could have waited until more pressing issues were addressed. Holding off on this topic would not have sped along news on any of the other 'issues' - so what would be the benefit of delaying this post on a topic that they were ready to discuss? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordArtemis Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Holding off on this topic would not have sped along news on any of the other 'issues' - so what would be the benefit of delaying this post on a topic that they were ready to discuss? The benefit would have been that they would not have looked utterly foolish. The thread stands in evidence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordArtemis Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Folks, before you get all up in Musco's face about this being an inappropriate use of his time. Realize that the poor guy is not a programmer not a developer not in anyway someone who can directly work on the game. His role is to interact with us. This post was perfectly timed in order to start developing better interaction. So mocking him for taking the time and dealing with the qq rage of you all. Just makes you the little person after all Thats just silly. This "poor guy" has been making a sincere effort to hurt his own rep on this board for some time now. This is something he did...it is unlikely he was forced to choose this topic to present to the community, seeking feedback. It was bad timing, plain and simple, and the community let him know it. This was not important to most folks I would speculate, and most folks were likely sick and tired of being ignored. So this move was all on him, and he deserved every bit of ridicule he received for this foolishness. These guys have to learn that ignoring the community is not wise under ANY circumstances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChroniKill Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 It would be quite enjoyable to take part in a community stream, would be quite nice to stream my ops group and an 8m dev ops group and either race or do 16 man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karkais Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 (edited) Here are some of the things we plan on doing differently, when we start back up again: [*]Playing Classes we are truly familiar with - We spend a lot of time playing classes on the stream for fun. All that does is show us playing something at a fairly mediocre skill level and doesn't make for good viewership. Not saying we're pros, but we can do better. Let me guess: they are all ranged classes. Edited January 30, 2015 by Karkais Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mogorsmith Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Thats just silly. This "poor guy" has been making a sincere effort to hurt his own rep on this board for some time now. This is something he did...it is unlikely he was forced to choose this topic to present to the community, seeking feedback. It was bad timing, plain and simple, and the community let him know it. This was not important to most folks I would speculate, and most folks were likely sick and tired of being ignored. So this move was all on him, and he deserved every bit of ridicule he received for this foolishness. These guys have to learn that ignoring the community is not wise under ANY circumstances. For posting something so illogical you deserve all the ridicule we can muster. Musco isn't a developer in the least. When he finally starts doing his job which is community outreach aka find out how he can better out reach. You start calling him a time waster and a slacker for doing his job. So do you want Musco to do his job or would you rather he be quiet so you can have the preception he's off coding something for the game, which since he's non IT would be rather interesting and of dubious quality to the game, or would you rather let him do his job which is community outreach and streams are a major portion of that. I have my doubts that you'll actually read this and comprehend it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_cpa Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 I lurk quite often in these forums and it seems much of the community relations fallout of late is mainly due to 2 topics, Ravagers (and its multiple issues) and the slot machine (and its multiple issues). Let me caveat this by saying, I'm not trying to be terribly critical of Eric as he doesn't make a lot of these game decisions, he is simply the link between the players and the developers. He gives developers feedback from players and vice versa when the developers authorize him to. With that said, I believe players would rather more timely feedback on the most pressing issues. So here is my advice (it's worth about what you're paying for it): With regard to Ravagers situation, I think it would've been wise to clarify a few things before the most recent final post was made. And that simply would be a short 2 sentence update. 1 week after Eric's first post about the Ravagers situation which called for "wrapping it up in the next week or so...," a follow up post should've been made. For example, "we are still compiling data related to ravagers. It is our intent to be fair and reasonable with our disciplinary actions." With regard to the slot machine situation, I think the community team (this includes Eric and others on the community team) would have been better off being more plain spoken. Before the changes were made to the slot machine, something like this should've been said: "Using the slot machine is not an exploit. Have fun! However, we hear community concerns about the drop rates and in-game economy. Therefore, we're looking into the slot machine payouts. We are looking into ALL payouts, not just Jawa Junk. It is highly likely the payouts will be changed. Some items may see a significant change and others may be smaller. But to determine this, we're going to take a couple days and look at our metrics to see what has happened." I believe this kind of communication would be appreciated. I think it would be better for Eric and the community team in general to be a bit more transparent with the changes they are considering. I'm not saying they need to be definite since they don't know the all details of changes until they've made them. But they should know the scope of the potential changes. And if that scope becomes expanded or more narrow than previously communicated, then follow up with an additional post as soon as possible. Just a random thought. What if the dev team isn't communicating to Eric and the community team very well and Eric is caught in the middle. I hope this isn't the case. But I'm sure the dev team has deadlines and people they have to answer to as well, and when the pile of stuff to do on your desk gets too high, something has to give. Shout out to LA, you do seem more depressed lately. Hopefully it will pass. I enjoy reading some of your more quirky out of the box posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G_Hosa_Phat Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 (edited) For posting something so illogical you deserve all the ridicule we can muster. Musco isn't a developer in the least. When he finally starts doing his job which is community outreach aka find out how he can better out reach. You start calling him a time waster and a slacker for doing his job. So do you want Musco to do his job or would you rather he be quiet so you can have the preception he's off coding something for the game, which since he's non IT would be rather interesting and of dubious quality to the game, or would you rather let him do his job which is community outreach and streams are a major portion of that. I have my doubts that you'll actually read this and comprehend it While I understand your point, the issue that LordArtemis and many others have with this particular thread has nothing to do with whether or not Mr. Musco is a developer, and neither is it whether or not he's "doing his job". IMO, it appears that he is trying to do his job to the best of his ability, while there very well be extenuating circumstances of which we are not aware that affect this. As posited by the previous poster, perhaps he and the Community Team are not receiving enough feedback from the Development Team. Perhaps they are being stifled or censored by the Executive/Management Teams. Unfortunately, we simply don't know enough about the goings-on behind the scenes over there to make that type of informed assumption. Regardless, I seriously doubt that Mr. Musco and his team are sitting back at HQ, twirling their mustaches with an evil grin and saying things like, "You know, I bet the players would like to hear something about the slot machines... Should we tell them?" <maniacal laughter> "Let's wait until it all blows up on the forums and see what kind of venom we can extract." The issue that I believe is most upsetting to many players is simply the timing of a post that feels like a waste of time due to the more glaring, game-affecting issues that are present and have (had) not seen any sort of response. Thankfully (regardless of how one may personally feel about the actual response given), they've finally come back and addressed the issue with the Ravagers exploit, but there are other issues about which the community has been trying to get some sort of "official" communication and have seen little more than a "we're looking into it" weeks ago (or more) with little to no follow up. This specific thread feels like a waste of time because it could have been handled differently. As I stated previously, if they had simply had their regularly scheduled stream this week, during which, instead of spending any time with gameplay, they discussed and addressed some of the current big issues, but also explained that the format of the streams was changing and the reasoning for why the stream is changing, let the viewers know that there is a move to try to provide more and better communication, and then posted this thread for feedback, I believe there would have been much less of a backlash from a community that is currently feeling unheard and unappreciated in many ways. I certainly don't fault Mr. Musco for wanting to try to make the streams better. That is definitely a part of his job, and I would hope that he would want to make the streams as good as possible from every standpoint. But, his job is primarily about communication - communicating the players' needs and desires to the Development Team, and communicating the changes and fixes from the Devs back to the players. As I said above, perhaps he has some obstacles in his way to accomplishing that type of communication, but that doesn't preclude his responsibilities for the position in which he has been placed. We, as players, generally want to hear more about what is being done to our game, and we want to know about plans, thoughts and ideas that may affect it (within reason, of course). These forums provide such a communication tool, and they are probably the best way to distribute information to the player base as they can reach the most players with the least amount of effort. I don't watch every stream because I'm usually at work when they're on, so I look at the forums to see if there is anything of import that has come out of them. This is a big reason why I am so adamant that there needs to be a great deal more communication happening here. Even the occasional "silly" post or reply to let us know that our posts aren't just going into the void. I'm not saying that they need to reply to every single thread that some idiot posts about wanting to unlock everything on their F2P characters, but simply increasing the interaction rate by a fraction would go a long way to improving the image that we unfortunately have at this point - that nobody's really listening or cares all that much what we have to say (okay, perhaps that's a bit extreme, but a little hyperbole goes a long way). Edited January 30, 2015 by G_Hosa_Phat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mogorsmith Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 The part LA misses and others who share the same viewpoint. Is that no matter how much Musco posts or doesnt post. It will not speed up the resolution of any bugs. So from a rational viewpoint, if Musco can be reaching out to us while other folks are working on the actual bugs, he is doing his job as expected. Jumping down his throat sends the message to Bioware that we as a community DO NOT want interaction with the community team Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_cpa Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 The part LA misses and others who share the same viewpoint. Is that no matter how much Musco posts or doesnt post. It will not speed up the resolution of any bugs. So from a rational viewpoint, if Musco can be reaching out to us while other folks are working on the actual bugs, he is doing his job as expected. Jumping down his throat sends the message to Bioware that we as a community DO NOT want interaction with the community team No, I don't think this is what LA and others are saying. They are saying we want more communication. But we want it about bug fixes, current games issues (such as the 2 most recent) and we want it more timely and in these forums in writing. So we can peruse it at our leisure and not sort through a 1 hour stream trying to find where Eric said "xyz" and then transcribe it back to here. If Eric wants to talk about general thoughts and things on the 1 hr streams and such, that is fine. But some in the community are worried that time spent on the streams will erode his time spent posting here and about current "big" issues in game. Folks like LA are simply stating their preference for communication here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G_Hosa_Phat Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 (edited) The part LA misses and others who share the same viewpoint. Is that no matter how much Musco posts or doesnt post. It will not speed up the resolution of any bugs. So from a rational viewpoint, if Musco can be reaching out to us while other folks are working on the actual bugs, he is doing his job as expected. Jumping down his throat sends the message to Bioware that we as a community DO NOT want interaction with the community team I certainly see your point. No, his posting will obviously not have any effect on the actual resolution of any of the issues about which the community is concerned. However, his communication of the current status of any work regarding the resolutions to those issues would do a world of good from a PR standpoint. Weekly or more frequent updates (depending on information availability) would help to alleviate the perception of the player-base that nobody is doing anything about the issues that affect their enjoyment of the game. Yes, it's a perception thing. It's all about the "warm-fuzzies" that we as players would receive if we saw more gold posts, and has very little to do with the actual resolution time for problems. However, always remember the axiom that "perception is reality". If we perceive that we are getting information in a timely manner, then we will also perceive (at least to some extent) that EA/BW is doing its best to provide us with the best game possible. As it stands, the perception is that a lot of the suggestions, thoughts and concerns that the players are posting in these forums are largely being ignored due to a lack of communication and/or timely responsiveness. If we were to see more posts from the Community Team (and possibly the Development Team), the amount of time that it takes to resolve some of these issues would be more forgivable, not to mention the perception would shift from "nothing's being done" to "they're actually working on the issue". People are not "jumping down his throat" because they don't want to hear from him, they are voicing their concerns here that we don't hear from him and his team enough. Edited January 30, 2015 by G_Hosa_Phat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_cpa Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 This is a big reason why I am so adamant that there needs to be a great deal more communication happening here. Even the occasional "silly" post or reply to let us know that our posts aren't just going into the void. I'm not saying that they need to reply to every single thread that some idiot posts about wanting to unlock everything on their F2P characters, but simply increasing the interaction rate by a fraction would go a long way to improving the image that we unfortunately have at this point - that nobody's really listening or cares all that much what we have to say (okay, perhaps that's a bit extreme, but a little hyperbole goes a long way). Agree with this. I hope Eric sees that we do want more communication. And we want it to be less vague or followed up on with more concrete details sooner. After all, we have plans in-game to take over the galaxy and we may have to alter our plans on how we're going to accomplish this if the Devs modify the methods available to us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G_Hosa_Phat Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 (edited) Agree with this. I hope Eric sees that we do want more communication. And we want it to be less vague or followed up on with more concrete details sooner. After all, we have plans in-game to take over the galaxy and we may have to alter our plans on how we're going to accomplish this if the Devs modify the methods available to us. This thread is a prime example. How much better would we feel about it overall if Mr. Musco (or even another member of his team) would simply throw a post in here to address all of the concerns that have been raised about the timing and reasoning behind starting this thread in the first place? As it is, it's been almost three full days since starting this topic, and it appears (even though it may not be and probably isn't actually the case) that nobody over there has anything to say in response. Even a little post that says something like: "Wow, you guys sure have a lot to say..." would at least give us the impression that they are keeping tabs on the status of the thread. I realize that Mr. Musco and his team likely have a number of duties which may limit the amount of time they can devote to being on the forums, but perhaps that's a flaw in the system. Perhaps (and I realize this may be a controversial and outlandish proposal) they need one or more employees that are solely dedicated to making gold posts. Anything that improves our (again) perception that we are indeed being heard. Edited January 30, 2015 by G_Hosa_Phat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordArtemis Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 (edited) When he finally starts doing his job which is community outreach aka find out how he can better out reach. You start calling him a time waster and a slacker for doing his job. So do you want Musco to do his job or would you rather he be quiet so you can have the preception he's off coding something for the game, which since he's non IT would be rather interesting and of dubious quality to the game, or would you rather let him do his job which is community outreach and streams are a major portion of that. I have my doubts that you'll actually read this and comprehend it Streams are NOT a major portion of that in this context. They are a very MINOR portion of that. That is the entire point. It was a poor choice of topic. Edited January 30, 2015 by LordArtemis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordArtemis Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 (edited) The part LA misses and others who share the same viewpoint. Is that no matter how much Musco posts or doesnt post. It will not speed up the resolution of any bugs. So from a rational viewpoint, if Musco can be reaching out to us while other folks are working on the actual bugs, he is doing his job as expected. Jumping down his throat sends the message to Bioware that we as a community DO NOT want interaction with the community team It does nothing of the sort. He is being ridiculed for his choice of subject, not the fact he reached out. The TIMING of this particular subject was the issue. Edited January 30, 2015 by LordArtemis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mogorsmith Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Feel free to name something Musco could improve on that he actually has the capability to do anything about. As far as I can tell. You are using him as a whipping boy, I doubt that you behave the same way in real life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordArtemis Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Feel free to name something Musco could improve on that he actually has the capability to do anything about. As far as I can tell. You are using him as a whipping boy, I doubt that you behave the same way in real life. Sure. Communication that covers the actual interests and concerns of the community. There you go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G_Hosa_Phat Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Feel free to name something Musco could improve on that he actually has the capability to do anything about. As far as I can tell. You are using him as a whipping boy, I doubt that you behave the same way in real life. We have named something that he can improve on - communication on these forums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mogorsmith Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 We have named something that he can improve on - communication on these forums. So you yell at him for trying to improve communications. The streams have more impact in communicating with folks then these forums do. The forums have easier to see archives though. You all make me scratch my pointy ears Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G_Hosa_Phat Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 So you yell at him for trying to improve communications. The streams have more impact in communicating with folks then these forums do. The forums have easier to see archives though. You all make me scratch my pointy ears I would disagree with your assertion that the streams have more impact. I spend a great deal more time browsing the forums than I do watching the streams, and much of what is said and discussed during any given stream could easily be posted to the forums at any point - even if it's a direct transcription of what was said (although, preferably in the form of something more like "minutes" from the stream posted by a member of the Community Team). Yes, the streams provide a visual element that the forums cannot, but I don't believe that makes them more impactful. It's just a different communication medium. If you prefer watching the streams to reviewing information on the forums, great. Then, perhaps you are exactly the type of person to whom Mr. Musco is directing this thread. However, there are a number of us who would prefer that the primary method the Community Team uses to communicate with us to be these forums, as they provide a more "real-time" element to the interaction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mogorsmith Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 So hijacking a thread to improve communication to the community is productive how? I'm pretty sure he's heard the desire for more forum communication, the pace has picked up for yellow posts in the recent past. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordArtemis Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 So you yell at him for trying to improve communications. The streams have more impact in communicating with folks then these forums do. The forums have easier to see archives though. You all make me scratch my pointy ears You seem to be asking questions that have already been clearly answered. If you are teaching your in the wrong class. If you are genuinely curious I suggest you read the thread....all of your answers are there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G_Hosa_Phat Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 So hijacking a thread to improve communication to the community is productive how? I'm pretty sure he's heard the desire for more forum communication, the pace has picked up for yellow posts in the recent past. How, exactly, is the thread being hijacked? Many of the posts are directly responding to what Mr. Musco has requested: Here we look to all of you as well. What would you like to see us do differently with our streams? Any and all feedback welcome. The "feedback" that we are providing (which is "welcome") is that there is little interest at this time in the streams, and we would prefer that the Community Team devote more time to posting on the forums, directly addressing the issues and concerns that the players are discussing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Transcendent Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 So you yell at him for trying to improve communications. The streams have more impact in communicating with folks then these forums do. The forums have easier to see archives though. You all make me scratch my pointy ears While it may be in your opinion that the Twitch streams have more impact in communicating with folks then (sic) these forums do, has it occurred to you that this may not be quite so accurate? I've watched one Twitch stream (not live either) about the changes to Mercs for 3.0 and disciplines. That's it. I've played the game for well over two years, so clearly just improving one aspect of communication is a fallacy. As other players have suggested, there are more avenues of communication open to BioWare than just Twitch, while it's all very well using it, it shouldn't be at the detriment of other mediums of communication available to the SWTOR dev. team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordArtemis Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 (edited) He requested feedback. He received feedback. The feedback seems to be that some folks want him to talk about important things, and streaming is not one of those important things at this time. Edited February 3, 2015 by LordArtemis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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