Communication and engagement
September 28, 2020 8:32AM
edited September 2020
I know the devs get a hard time - and possibly fair owing to the lack of effort they make to engage with the community.
I'd like to know if you have plans to actually step up the engagement and comms with your community?
I know reddit is toxic, but I'd love to see someone from CG brave enough to take a few punches. Yes, when you put your head above the parapet you have a chance of getting hit, but if you're brave enough and resilient enough you'll be able to take a few blows. Long term, that visibility may lead to less stones being thrown, and more encouragement from your community to get involved.
I think we all know you're about making money, and that's fine, it's the world we live in, it's the free choice we make for playing this game. However, I urge you to please try and engage more with your community. Sure you might get a few mean comments (oh no(!)), but if you make yourself visible people will appreciate it.
It has to be a 2 way thing - I don't understand as a business why you wouldn't want to engage with your community? The businesses I run/support, engagement and communicating is absolutely key to our success. In fact Covid has been a blessing in a way, as it has made us focus on our comms and engagement strategy, and business whilst not necessarily picked up, has remained steady over the pandemic.
You make a tremendous amount of money, you have enough budget to do quite a few things:
Now whilst the game may be repetitive at times, I enjoy the guild / teamwork element of it. That's the thing that makes me stay. I've also been a Star Wars fan for 4 decades and this is one of my guilty pleasures.
We're here willing to engage with you, please start caring more about your community. Stop being so distant and holding your community with what looks like contempt. We want to work with you and grow the game. You have access to one of the most profitable franchises in the world, you can't lose - even a monkey can make money on star wars related content - you're not monkeys, but please start to put more effort into working with your community.
I'd like to know if you have plans to actually step up the engagement and comms with your community?
I know reddit is toxic, but I'd love to see someone from CG brave enough to take a few punches. Yes, when you put your head above the parapet you have a chance of getting hit, but if you're brave enough and resilient enough you'll be able to take a few blows. Long term, that visibility may lead to less stones being thrown, and more encouragement from your community to get involved.
I think we all know you're about making money, and that's fine, it's the world we live in, it's the free choice we make for playing this game. However, I urge you to please try and engage more with your community. Sure you might get a few mean comments (oh no(!)), but if you make yourself visible people will appreciate it.
It has to be a 2 way thing - I don't understand as a business why you wouldn't want to engage with your community? The businesses I run/support, engagement and communicating is absolutely key to our success. In fact Covid has been a blessing in a way, as it has made us focus on our comms and engagement strategy, and business whilst not necessarily picked up, has remained steady over the pandemic.
You make a tremendous amount of money, you have enough budget to do quite a few things:
- Proper engagement with your community
- Plan and release some exciting new content with the feedback you've gathered
- Boost your market by making the game more compelling owing to a more engaged community
- Grow your community
- Actually care / listen to what the feedback is and do something about it
- Drive more spending through better value for money packs
Now whilst the game may be repetitive at times, I enjoy the guild / teamwork element of it. That's the thing that makes me stay. I've also been a Star Wars fan for 4 decades and this is one of my guilty pleasures.
We're here willing to engage with you, please start caring more about your community. Stop being so distant and holding your community with what looks like contempt. We want to work with you and grow the game. You have access to one of the most profitable franchises in the world, you can't lose - even a monkey can make money on star wars related content - you're not monkeys, but please start to put more effort into working with your community.
Post edited by Adoy_IdeJ on
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Replies
I don't need to shout at anyone - au contraire, I want to understand what is being developed. What we like / don't like etc... what would be a good addition to the game, and how they consider and ratify the feedback.
It's just nice to interact with your customers don't you think? That's how my businesses improve their products/services, by listening to feedback, and offering the customers what they want.
Just off the top of my head - I'm sure the list can be sympathetically added to.
I'm not bothered about the game being pay to progress fast (you don't need to pay to win, you just need patience and strategy). I think it's good that people are willing to fund the development of the game.
Ultimately I'd like human interaction with the people that create the game to spend more time understanding how we can get the best out its development.
It is nigh on 5 years old, and it is still around, some could argue it's just the franchise, but I for one, enjoy the game still, albeit it can be a little repetitive, but as I mentioned previously, it's the guild and playing with my friends (sometimes in the pub, sometimes whilst watching the rugby, or sometimes just on whatsapp) that makes it really fun for me.
They have a tremendous opportunity to really make this game sing again, without ripping it apart. I don't want to see the game die, I enjoy it - I just want it to get better.
At the moment just the lack of engagement is troubling for me - I don't know why we don't get better visibility of the team. It's a shame.
2, they have procedures and protocols on how far out they can discuss things, and longer development cycles prevent them from being able to use feedback in certain circumstances because they would have needed the feedback months before they could have talked about it, so by the time they talk about it, the cake is already baking.
Most of your points are "fluff", which is great and we see bits of those in the QAs.
Some of the questions would just be answered, yes, but the cannot speak about the plans.
I think it may be a little naive to think they could or would be able to "know what we like/dislike " this is a huge community and if they tried to base direct moves on that, it would always be wrong (from a certain perspective)
As for the collaborative work group, I believe that was the purpose of <<this>>, and to some extent the purpose of the exhibition style of release of GAC and GCs.
We did.
Once upon a time.
i agree, and I'm hopeful we will see them once again, but there is also a part of the community that saw those questions in the QA as a waste of time.
Yeah but CG shouldn't listen to the community, the community has terrible ideas.
.......but this suggestion is coming from the community.....i'm so confused....
The community in general, not specific sensible parts of the community.
I think this really sums it up well.
They won’t fix what isn’t broke.
We might think it’s broken, but we look at it from a different lens than they do.
Hint: Continued massive profits = not broken
but sure bring your negativity, its always welcome and very helpful to the situation....oh wait.....
I actually do see some value in the negativity.
When people like yourself come here and defend every poor decision/move they make, it’s helpful to make it clear that not everyone buys it.
Great job putting words in my mouth.
Notice I said "parts" of the community. Plural, not singular.
So they weren't making money when they weren't ignoring the community?
Or are you claiming they have always ignored the community?
but heres the thing, no one in this thread was defending anything.....or saying everything was good or fine....but here is the negativity anyway. if you want to bring negativity to the situation you are describing, i see what you mean, but here its just completely unwarranted, and completely irrelevant and in no way constructive or helpful to any situation.
Given that the negativity on the forums is roughly 90% of the total posts (anecdotal aside), I don't think it really needs to be clear. It's more that it needs to be clear that this game isn't 100% trash.
I took his post to mean:
“There is no point in complaining about communication, they are gonna do what they want regardless because it’s working for them”.
I wouldn’t call being negative, more like “accepting reality”.
but its not, its your negative spin on the situation with no proof (unless you care to share a link or quote) that wat you are saying is based on anything other than your negative attitude. which was brought into a thread that didn't have any of the situation you described where "negativity is needed"
as i said, if you want to bring that into a situation that requires your rebuttal to "balance things out", by all means, lets talk. but when it is done for no reason, its just being negative (for no reason). which last i checked is not productive to...well anything.
Sure. My “negative attitude” is totally unwarranted as I have no link to support it.
Please go ahead and ask for an answer on the missing Q&A again (which you have apparently been requesting repeatedly for the past several months) and tell me that it’s my point of view that’s not based on reality. At a certain point, people will draw conclusions.
If you promise better communication, or an “ocean of new content this year”, or monthly Q&As, etc. and then you don’t do it for months and months, people will logically draw the conclusion that those things aren’t happening. Especially if you are silent about it when those same people ask about it.
It’s actually kind of ridiculous for you to say “well you don’t have a quote where they said they weren’t going to live up to their promises communication level, so you’re just choosing to be negative”.
Are you saying that I need to point to a post of them acknowledging that they haven’t met their communication commitments before it’s a fact that they haven’t met them?
And continued silence for months means that people continue to draw our own conclusions about why it’s not happening. Again, that’s reality. It doesn’t seem like a big stretch to say “they aren’t changing anything that they said they would so they must be happy with things as they are”.
You can call me negative all you want if it makes you feel better. The reality is that I have supported the devs many times, even recently, when I felt that it was warranted.
But I also live in reality and am willing to call them out when they are wrong or not doing what they have said.
can you just give me one example in this thread that required the response you gave, because it appears to comes out of left field, just for the purpose of negativity. Its goo to have goals in life, but if that is one of them, maybe its a good idea to examine that goal and think about being part of any solution, rather than just being negative, for literally no reason.
as i said, if you feel you need to "balance things out" or " hold them to X" in you mind, great, it is good to have goals. can you give me one example where that was needed in this thread?
no. is that what you were doing here? it doesn't seem to be.
yes they should. does that have anything to do with the random negativity you brought into this thread?
also, if from your original post, you could explain what was "going wrong" or the incentive they had that made them state the communication we saw, that would be interesting to hear. I dont recall anything, which could mean "what your bottom line" seems to be is really just coming from your feelings about the situation (spreading your negativity, for seemingly no reason)
again, i'm not asking anyone to stop being negative, no point in asking water to stop being wet. but when there is no reason to spread it into a post that doesn't' warrant it, maybe, just maybe that can be a good enough reason to just not.
You dismiss OP's polite post as asking fluffy questions that CG can't answer because 'reasons', reference a beta program that hasn't been mentioned since the original post in April, invoke incomplete releases of GAC and GC (which should be vetted and polished through the aforementioned beta program) as communication and engagement and then ask why there's negativity...
i didn't dismiss them, I said they have answered them in the past in QAs. I called them fluff because as i said in another post, other players dont like questions like that.
I explained why they will not answer certain questions, with a valid reason.
I referenced a program that already exists, that is basically what the OP is asking for, yes.
I believe GAC pre dates the program, and since we dont know the layout or function of the program, or what GCs looked like before it went through that program, that seems like a typically negative comment with no basis in context (again)
all of which was in direct response to the OP.
What do you think 'dismiss' means? You sure seem to think OPs questions/concerns aren't worth consideration.
1:
2: I didn't not dispute that.
again, all of this is you dumping your negativity down, for no reason. its great you feel this way, maybe you should make a post about it in the feedback section rather than rain in on someone who was trying to make a constructive post about the situation.
I get that you have no interesting in trying to be anything other than negative towards the community, but you could maybe try, or at least keep these kinds of responses to someone saying the opposite, and not someone just trying to discuss the situation and the things they feel they could do.
or just throw out a "too expensive" comment and move on.
were all my responses cheery, no, but i was at least trying to directly answer the OP about the subject they were discussing in a constructive manner.
your bottom line is not reality.
and thank you for answering my question about their incentive before....
You're just a moderator and probably don't know what goes on behind the scenes, but also neither do I know what you do for a living - but if you ran a business or was part of a business that sold services and/or products this sort of thing would be fairly significant.
Since you consider it "fluff" it's clear you're probably not that business savvy or lack a little experience, but that's probably the issue - they think it's fluff - when really it is not. It is FUNDAMENTAL business strategy and engagement with stakeholders. Sure I don't run £bn businesses, but these BASIC principles we nail, and our customer retention is high, as well as working with our customers to improve the products and services we offer. Whilst the businesses I run are nothing to do with software (engineering consultancy, as well as on the board of a wealth management consortium) our customers are key to our success. And we don't hold our customers with contempt.
I realise you have to toe the party line, but this blind obedience is harming you more than reinforcing any salient points you are making. In fact there hasn't been 1 contrived answer in your response.
Sure there's secrecy for somet stuff, but that's expected - we have NDAs in place at work on some projects, especially government contracts. But that doesn't preclude us talking about some of the things we have spinning up, some of the SMEs or Universities we're working with, or some of things we're developing, or new partners etc... You get my point, there's always something happening in multi £m companies to keep things going - sure, a lot of it could be internally facing, but there' sa lot of stuff that is externally facing as well. And we're talking about a multi £bn company here - so if I can do it right why can't they?
This was not supposed to be a "bashing" thread - this was supposed to be a white flag to let them come out and play with us again! Let us be part of the journey, if you don't bring your customers along for the journey they you're already going to lose people because they think you don't care about them. Why do you think there is so much negativity Kyno? Because people feel ignored, and because they feel the developers actively don't give a toss about their customers.
I fear you're correct - and this is my plea - that this changes.
We all love star wars (else why would we be here?).
We all love(d) the game
We all enjoy our guilds and community.
So give us a reason to understand what's going to be happening.
And not just bug fixes... just tease us with some stuff - but you know what would be best? Actually work with your customers to get the best product out there.
However, owing to the contemptuous nature of the business they as I fear has been pointed out, are making money (they probably never knew so much money existed - bless), and realise they don't really need to do anything.
@Kyno if you thought my post was negative then you must be a very miserable person. I was trying to be positive and bring some diamonds out of the rough and re-establish some dialogue with the team.
I've explained in my response above to you why I think it's critical. I'm happy to employ someone on their behalf to focus solely on comms - I have a lot of experience in working in technical and MoD environments where you need high level of vetting and access to highly classified IP etc... so translating what can and cannot be shared is a cakewalk. I've had a good year despite covid and that would be my gift to CG - I am UK based though - but the offer is there.
Getting critical feedback is absolutely necessary for improving products - it doesn't have to be negativity. Look, we're all here playing the game, we're passionate about it, so if that isn't a positive then I'm not sure what world you live! Perhaps some critical thinking books / training that CG can pay for would help bring you to becoming a more well rounded moderator.