KendraP Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 I'm glad you feel free to post there, but seldom here Eric...no hard feelings at all... Oh he'll post... if you're dripping with sarcasm and he can prove you wrong. Other than that, nope. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaceDemon Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 I'm glad you feel free to post there, but seldom here Eric...no hard feelings at all... I think that it's kind of disgusting that there's a hidden forum for "influencers" and just how much attention that forum is getting and how much control they have over what Musco sends over to the devs and vice-versa. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaceDemon Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) Hey Ylliarus! To try to calm any tin foil hats spinning up from that image you linked, let me try to provide some context. The reason you cannot find that post anywhere on the forums is because it came from our Influencer forums. For those that don’t know (and we have a blog in the works for this very topic) we have something called the Influencer Program. This group contains content creators of all sizes who we aim to support via promotion, etc. One of the components of the group is that they have access to a closed, under-NDA forum where we sometimes seek out early feedback on things, address questions from their communities, and more. The image you are linking to is from a specific topic that was brought up by some folks in the group. They were looking to get into creating content for Anthem in addition to SWTOR and were asking for similar support/access to what they have in our Influencer program. What you are seeing is my response to that request. There are a number of EA-wide influencer programs, most prominently the game changers group. We built our own program for SWTOR separate from that as we had very specific benefits we wanted to provide. As a result, being in our group doesn’t automatically mean that someone receives those same benefits on other EA or BioWare titles. So all in all, this post is really just me directing our influencers who are looking to expand into other EA games to investigate the EA game changer program. That is the full context of that post, so I hope that clears up any concerns. -eric Eric, I'm not an influencer, but I consider myself to be a veteran ranked player and the players over on the PvP forum would like for you to engage with us about wintraders and cheaters and enacting harsher penalties for them, and possible changes to the ranked system to make it harder to cheat or to discourage it. We're kind of sick and tired of the way you guys deal (or don't deal) with them. Edited February 21, 2019 by VaceDemon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rion_Starkiller Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) I don't know about you guys, but I'm only on these forums for the spinning tin foil hat theories. Edited February 21, 2019 by Rion_Starkiller Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noerra Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 I don't know about you guys, but I'm only on these forums for the spinning tin foil hat theories. Those are the best theories! Also nicely fills the gap when waiting for in game story updates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Costello Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 I'm glad you feel free to post there, but seldom here Eric...no hard feelings at all... I notice he says address questions from their communities. What about this community? Why give stuff to influencers to give away, why not go straight to the SWTOR community? What is required for Influencer status, 100 followers on Twitter, 1000 views a day to your website? As others have said it feels a little shady as if we knew which sites have a say in the future development of the game we would know which ones to go to instead of here. As it seems very clear this forum doesn't even merit much of a response to issues let alone answering questions or offering feedback on anything other than ops via the PTS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paulsutherland Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 I'm in the dark on this one. What's a influencer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kodrac Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) I'm in the dark on this one. What's a influencer? The people on youtube that showcase, umm, stuff. Erm, not the critical ones. Edited February 21, 2019 by kodrac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rion_Starkiller Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) I'm in the dark on this one. What's a influencer? On social media, like IG and twitter, they are usually a 20 year old with a lot of followers, making millions of dollars a year. For video games? An influencer is someone many 14 year olds follow on YouTube and Twitch. Like Snave, for example. 💋 Edited February 21, 2019 by Rion_Starkiller Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LadyAdmiral Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 I'm in the dark on this one. What's a influencer? In marketing, an influencer is someone who does not work for the company but can have a big impact on the company's business - think when a model posts a product to their instagragram - it's not quite an advertisement, but it's close. There's a really good documentary about Fyre Festival on Netflix and Hulu right now which is a great watch if you want to learn more about that and how it affects businesses and buyers. In SWTOR specifically, it means something a little different, in SWTOR an influencer is someone who creates content about SWTOR. This can be a blog, fansite, podcast, video channel or streaming. AS far as I can tell it is a way for the SWTOR staff to support players who make stuff about the game. You must be invited by SWTOR staff to the program and I assume you have to not have any strikes against your account. There are currently no set-in-stone rules about how to get in. I don't have an exact list of who is in it, but here are a few. Podcasts: The Bad Feeling Podcast, OotiniCast, SWTOR Escape Pod Cast, State of the Old Republic, The Usual Podcast (all but two newer ones)Video/Youtube: me, SWTOR Central, Kid Lee, BoomyFansites: Vulkk.com, mmobits.comStreamers from twitch.tv (I don't have a good list sorry, maybe they will chime in here) What are the perks? Honestly a lot less than you'd hope for haha. Occasionally we get free tshirts. We do have a bit more access to the devs than the average player, but if you think they're taking our advice over the forums - we like to make our voices heard about what we think would be good for the communities we are a part of, but our advice is not always taken blindly from what I have seen. For an example of advice we relay, because I read literally hundreds of comments a day, I was able to pass on that the most-hated free-to-play restriction is... quickbars! With a recommendation that it be the first thing to get the axe if they revamp the f2p system. As a content creator though, even if I wasn't in the program my voice might be heard over the clamor because when I do post opinions, they're in a highly organized and extremely well made compared to a basic forum post - for example, next week I'm going to be doing a video about what changes I'd really like SWTOR to make to their F2P system - I don't need private forums to share my views when I can post it on youtube for everyone to see As for what is on the private forums, just our thoughts on new and upcoming stuff in an organized way, and a spot for us to ask questions. Many of us also post other places like these forums or reddit, which is neat, because I've noticed staff actually do read a lot more by lots of people on both reddit and these forums than they post! A few times they have posted world-first screenshots or art for us to share before even the media does - which is cool, you guys get to see it early this way, and its easier for them to post than to email/message each of us separately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LadyAdmiral Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 I just noticed who I was quoting, hey Paul!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
casirabit Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 Good luck Ylliarus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snave Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 On social media, like IG and twitter, they are usually a 20 year old with a lot of followers, making millions of dollars a year. For video games? An influencer is someone many 14 year olds follow on YouTube and Twitch. Like Snave, for example. 💋 I'm not an influencer. Ironic, isn't it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ylliarus Posted February 21, 2019 Author Share Posted February 21, 2019 Hey Ylliarus! To try to calm any tin foil hats spinning up from that image you linked, let me try to provide some context. The reason you cannot find that post anywhere on the forums is because it came from our Influencer forums. For those that don’t know (and we have a blog in the works for this very topic) we have something called the Influencer Program. This group contains content creators of all sizes who we aim to support via promotion, etc. One of the components of the group is that they have access to a closed, under-NDA forum where we sometimes seek out early feedback on things, address questions from their communities, and more. The image you are linking to is from a specific topic that was brought up by some folks in the group. They were looking to get into creating content for Anthem in addition to SWTOR and were asking for similar support/access to what they have in our Influencer program. What you are seeing is my response to that request. There are a number of EA-wide influencer programs, most prominently the game changers group. We built our own program for SWTOR separate from that as we had very specific benefits we wanted to provide. As a result, being in our group doesn’t automatically mean that someone receives those same benefits on other EA or BioWare titles. So all in all, this post is really just me directing our influencers who are looking to expand into other EA games to investigate the EA game changer program. That is the full context of that post, so I hope that clears up any concerns. -eric My apologies for having caused problems, it had not been my intent! I thought it was simply a dev tracker post and able to be used in conversation and it happened that the conversation in this thread took a turn where I thought it was something that could be discussed amongst the players. Again, my apologies! Thank you for clarifying the situation, it is very much appreciated! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrixxieTriss Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) I'm not an influencer. Ironic, isn't it. That’s cause you tell it how it is. I’m sure if you white knighted more, you could be an influencer Edited February 21, 2019 by TrixxieTriss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrixxieTriss Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) In marketing, an influencer is someone who does not work for the company but can have a big impact on the company's business - think when a model posts a product to their instagragram - it's not quite an advertisement, but it's close. There's a really good documentary about Fyre Festival on Netflix and Hulu right now which is a great watch if you want to learn more about that and how it affects businesses and buyers. In SWTOR specifically, it means something a little different, in SWTOR an influencer is someone who creates content about SWTOR. This can be a blog, fansite, podcast, video channel or streaming. AS far as I can tell it is a way for the SWTOR staff to support players who make stuff about the game. You must be invited by SWTOR staff to the program and I assume you have to not have any strikes against your account. There are currently no set-in-stone rules about how to get in. I don't have an exact list of who is in it, but here are a few. Podcasts: The Bad Feeling Podcast, OotiniCast, SWTOR Escape Pod Cast, State of the Old Republic, The Usual Podcast (all but two newer ones)Video/Youtube: me, SWTOR Central, Kid Lee, BoomyFansites: Vulkk.com, mmobits.comStreamers from twitch.tv (I don't have a good list sorry, maybe they will chime in here) What are the perks? Honestly a lot less than you'd hope for haha. Occasionally we get free tshirts. We do have a bit more access to the devs than the average player, but if you think they're taking our advice over the forums - we like to make our voices heard about what we think would be good for the communities we are a part of, but our advice is not always taken blindly from what I have seen. For an example of advice we relay, because I read literally hundreds of comments a day, I was able to pass on that the most-hated free-to-play restriction is... quickbars! With a recommendation that it be the first thing to get the axe if they revamp the f2p system. As a content creator though, even if I wasn't in the program my voice might be heard over the clamor because when I do post opinions, they're in a highly organized and extremely well made compared to a basic forum post - for example, next week I'm going to be doing a video about what changes I'd really like SWTOR to make to their F2P system - I don't need private forums to share my views when I can post it on youtube for everyone to see As for what is on the private forums, just our thoughts on new and upcoming stuff in an organized way, and a spot for us to ask questions. Many of us also post other places like these forums or reddit, which is neat, because I've noticed staff actually do read a lot more by lots of people on both reddit and these forums than they post! A few times they have posted world-first screenshots or art for us to share before even the media does - which is cool, you guys get to see it early this way, and its easier for them to post than to email/message each of us separately. Please get them to change the gearing system for pvpers so we can have better access to it without having to grind pve dailies. Edited February 21, 2019 by TrixxieTriss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TUXs Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 I'm not an influencer. Ironic, isn't it. HA! I always just assumed you were...unreal... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrixxieTriss Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) HA! I always just assumed you were...unreal... Nah, he asks hard questions when he interviews Musco and tries to pin him down when he try’s to wiggle his way out of it. (You can see him start to sweat a little). Musco doesn’t like that. The last pod cast I heard Musco in (not Snaves) was nearly scripted like an attack on the forum posters and players who had problems with the desync, lag and bugs in pvp. They joked the whole way through it like it didn’t matter and we were complaining for no reason. Eric said they were his favourite pod casters (influencers). So that sums up what type of people they want as influencers, In contrast, Snave has been very critical of the desync and has given plenty of feed back to BioWare about it. That’s the difference between the influencers and people like Snave. BioWare only want to hear the good and not the bad. If you criticise publically they remove you from the program. I know of one they dropped because they didn’t like the “real player” feed back. I know some influencers are great community members and do provide useful feed back for BioWare. But BioWare have relied too heavily on this resource and not come to the players direct. No offence to the influencers, but there is nothing stopping them telling BioWare what they personally want and not what the majority of players want. How are we to know what they tell BioWare on these NDA forums. They are in a position where what they say has a lot more weight to it than 100 reg forum posters. It’s why the game is in such a bad state because BioWare are relying a small number of individuals to influence their decisions. What the influencers want or report back, may not be what the wider community want, especially if giving harsh feed back gets them removed from the program. Having “yes” men around who will never tell you the hard truths is how things fail and fall apart. Bioware could have just as easily engaged the players directly. They could have used in game or subscriber forums to do surveys and float ideas. They could have had their Community manager actually be a community mananger and communicate with the the players. Edited February 21, 2019 by TrixxieTriss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PennyAnn Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 The SWTOR influencer program is a complete joke for one reason: Dulfy isn't an influencer. Dulfy is probably the person who has provided the MOST information about the game for the longest period of time of anyone on the planet. As long as Dulfy isn't an influencer, the whole SWTOR program is a sham, IMHO. But it's really awesome to know that they have access to the developers that the rest of us don't. Perhaps that is where all of the "increased communication" that Keith and others keep promising and failing to deliver is happening about this game, because it sure the heck isn't on the forums that the player base can read/access. Communication here has always been bad, but since Keith's arrival it is down right abysmal. I am not sure that SWTOR actually DOES deserve a revival so much as it deserves a decent burial so that those who keep getting their hearts broken over this game can finally move on and quit setting themselves up for the perpetual disappointment that caring about this game delivers. . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrixxieTriss Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 The SWTOR influencer program is a complete joke for one reason: Dulfy isn't an influencer. Dulfy is probably the person who has provided the MOST information about the game for the longest period of time of anyone on the planet. As long as Dulfy isn't an influencer, the whole SWTOR program is a sham, IMHO. But it's really awesome to know that they have access to the developers that the rest of us don't. Perhaps that is where all of the "increased communication" that Keith and others keep promising and failing to deliver is happening about this game, because it sure the heck isn't on the forums that the player base can read/access. Communication here has always been bad, but since Keith's arrival it is down right abysmal. I am not sure that SWTOR actually DOES deserve a revival so much as it deserves a decent burial so that those who keep getting their hearts broken over this game can finally move on and quit setting themselves up for the perpetual disappointment that caring about this game delivers. . My understanding is Dulfy was once an influencer and she criticised BioWare one too many times publically and they removed her from it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
commanderwar Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) My understanding is Dulfy was once an influencer and she criticised BioWare one too many times publically and they removed her from it. While I am not an influencer I can say that is false. Many of they influencers have always criticized bioware when they wanted and felt the need to do. I can even link videos if you want me to prove, the theory on that influencers are white knights is just not true. Edited February 21, 2019 by commanderwar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ylliarus Posted February 21, 2019 Author Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) But it's really awesome to know that they have access to the developers that the rest of us don't. Perhaps that is where all of the "increased communication" that Keith and others keep promising and failing to deliver is happening about this game, because it sure the heck isn't on the forums that the player base can read/access. Communication here has always been bad, but since Keith's arrival it is down right abysmal. . You do have a solid point tho. It doesn't feel entirely right that the Influencers get all the access to the devs while we - the players - are thrown a bone from time to time on the forums but nothing more. It comes across as a form of elitism, where only a certain group is favoured and the rest ignored. Just have that open and direct contact with us directly, ask us "hey, would you like this or not?". Heck, they can even create polls to get a feel for what we want. It's really not that difficult to reach out to your playerbase, look at the transparency and player engagement that Paradox offers their playerbase. The contact between player and dev with for example Stellaris is just so great and inspiring. I don't understand why transparency and openness but most importantly steady communication seems such an outlandish concept to SWTOR's devs. I get there are a few rotten apples who have attacked the devs in the past - which is just plain wrong to do - but to give up all communication between devs and players because of a small group of seriously messed up people? It doesn't seem fair for the rest of the playerbase. Tbh, the devs shouldn't be too surprised theories and tin foil conspiracies rear their heads up. They're creating the environment for it themselves by their lack of communication and transparency. And favouring a small group of SWTOR players and having all the contact with them exclusively isn't going to take away the feelings of uncertainty many of us are feeling in regards to the game's future. Edited February 21, 2019 by Ylliarus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kodrac Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 There was recently a big hoo haa on the youtubes centered around Anthem coverage (of course) about EA blackilisting people for not giving favorable reviews. It's quite interesting actually how they have shill agreements and all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrixxieTriss Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 While I am not an influencer I can say that is false. Many of they influencers have always criticized bioware when they wanted and felt the need to do. I can even link videos if you want me to prove, the theory on that influencers are white knights is just not true. So you are saying that Dulfy was never and influencer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrixxieTriss Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) There was recently a big hoo haa on the youtubes centered around Anthem coverage (of course) about EA blackilisting people for not giving favorable reviews. It's quite interesting actually how they have shill agreements and all. Exactly my point. They same thing happens with hardware reviews, especially gpu’s. AMD and Nvidia often won’t give cards to people who won’t give them a favourable review. (I know this because I’ve been on the vendor side of it) Edited February 21, 2019 by TrixxieTriss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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