The forums are flawed as the main way to collect player feedback.

[Amh_Wilzuun]

Not only do the forums favor one specific region of players over the rest of the world, but it is also full of bad faith criticism. I imagine it's hard for them to find the good feedback here when many posts are completely ridiculous and say stuff like "Yoshi P hates us, (content) literally ruined my life, ded game" (this is barely an exaggeration).

Yoshi-P has a well known quote from a presentation where he states that "A complaint is worth twice a compliment. The silent always leave first. If they complain they still care". For the most part I agree with this sentiment but I think it has a big flaw in its logic. There are also people who are silent because they are happy with things and didn't feel the need to make a forum account to complain. I think their flawed method of collecting feedback shows in changes like the mount tilt system. A small minority of players didn't like it so they nerfed it to the displeasure to the majority of players who did like that feature. Now you have people complaining on the forums to revert the change but getting these devs to backpedal on a change is much harder.

What they should do is implement some form of player survey, either in-game or in emails to improve their data collection by seeking out the average player rather than having skewed data from the forums. If they had this feature they might've seen that like 85% of players liked the mount tilt as is and could've instead made it a toggle between off or the current intensity. But what instead happened was that they saw a few dozen people on the forums say they hated the tilt and extrapolated that it must be some widespread problem they need to address, and these are the ones who cared to "speak up" for the silent majority who were too apathetic to voice their complaints. They can give a small reward for occasional questions like a token for some minions or something idk. Make feedback represent the actual playerbase better!

[Supersnow845]

The forums should always be the secondary way they gather feedback. Public surveys and polls should be the primary way while the forums are there for people who wish the proposals and the surveys in greater detail with each other or to discuss bad implementation of changes that people already voted on (such as the benchmark graphics problems)

[Turtledeluxe]

It's not a flawed way. It just has more potential to be skewed than random game survey.

I feel like people invoke Forum limitations when they don't like whatever is being discussed in that forum. I don't think it's too much to worry about because despite what Yoshi p might say I don't think there's evidence they lift Forum feedback directly into the game necessarily every single time. While I'm unsure if they actually do a survey there is the unsubscription survey at least and for better or worse they do use metrics within the game to make decisions.

As for the mount tilt, that's pretty hilarious imo. I didn't even know about it. But it's a case by case sort of thing isn't it? Kaiten definitely isn't back. Mount tilt is something easily adjusted and of no real consequence to gameplay. It could also affect someone with motion sickness or something. When you combine all that I think it's easy to see why it happened.

[Supersnow845]

It's not a flawed way. It just has more potential to be skewed than random game survey.

I feel like people invoke Forum limitations when they don't like whatever is being discussed in that forum. I don't think it's too much to worry about because despite what Yoshi p might say I don't think there's evidence they lift Forum feedback directly into the game necessarily every single time. While I'm unsure if they actually do a survey there is the unsubscription survey at least and for better or worse they do use metrics within the game to make decisions.

As for the mount tilt, that's pretty hilarious imo. I didn't even know about it. But it's a case by case sort of thing isn't it? Kaiten definitely isn't back. Mount tilt is something easily adjusted and of no real consequence to gameplay. It could also affect someone with motion sickness or something. When you combine all that I think it's easy to see why it happened.

I mean in this case isn’t “method that has more potential to be skewed than other method they could pretty easily implement” basically be the definition of flawed

[Turtledeluxe]

I mean in this case isn’t “method that has more potential to be skewed than other method they could pretty easily implement” basically be the definition of flawed

I'm glad you asked. The answer is, no, because an in game survey has its own limitations and risks too. Doesn't your own post imply this...? They should be used in conjunction even considering possible biases or limitations.

I think what's bad faith is saying forums are predicated on bad faith. Like, huh? That seems like a random assumption. Forums can be problematic, but that's not really why exactly.

Or maybe what you are both trying to say is relying purely on forums is flawed? That could be true. Luckily they don't do that. Just pulling a random recent example doesn't show that lol. Also there is an in game survey. I'm 99% sure I did it and I was able to write a character limited statement that expressed discontent with jobs and story. Or it was Other. I don't remember. You get it when you unsub.

I honestly didn't read the part about his quote originally but now that I have, there's assumption here too. So the game designer is telling you a silent group of players leaves first and you deny that bc...forums are bad? Going by LuckyBancho, this is demonstrably true, unless you feel like we actually heard from the 600k people who quit for the EW patches?? I don't think even 1% of those posted here announcing departure or frankly, anywhere really. He's probably correct. People who aren't really engaged by the content probably leave quickly and quietly...meaning there is no flawed logic because that doesn't mean there aren't also silent but happy players.

[sindriiisgaming]

when was it ever stated they WERE the main way. from what ive seen if mr happy asks for something, it gets implemented the next patch

[Shougun]

I have no idea how they ingest feedback given the healer or homogenization threads always doing well and obviously ignored, but all systems will have some flaw to them. Reddit's karma system strongly encourages an echo chamber. X is a cronenberg. The forums is imo probably one of the better places, though still flawed. Problematically participation is hard to gauge, 30 votes on one subject is crap and on another is incredible that many people bothered.

Polls would be good though. Especially if you took info from one place like forums and then bounced off a larger in game audience.

I'm nervous about them using streamers though, given their perspective is from a LITERAL job perspective, with streamer privileges that don't represent the normal player. They also have streamer disadvantages to be fair, but that also doesn't represent the normal player. The feedback can still be insightful, especially as they play it like a job lol, just there are interesting issues to also be considered which I hope are...

when was it ever stated they WERE the main way. from what ive seen if mr happy asks for something, it gets implemented the next patch

So I just need to make YouTube videos? That's easy, going to see you bois on the other side lol.

More seriously, any examples come to mind?

[sindriiisgaming]

I have no idea how they ingest feedback given the healer or homogenization threads always doing well and obviously ignored, but all systems will have some flaw to them. Reddit's karma system strongly encourages an echo chamber. X is a cronenberg. The forums is imo probably one of the better places, though still flawed. Problematically participation is hard to gauge, 30 votes on one subject is crap and on another is incredible that many people bothered.

Polls would be good though. Especially if you took info from one place like forums and then bounced off a larger in game audience.

I'm nervous about them using streamers though, given their perspective is from a LITERAL job perspective, with streamer privileges that don't represent the normal player. They also have streamer disadvantages to be fair, but that also doesn't represent the normal player. The feedback can still be insightful, especially as they play it like a job lol, just there are interesting issues to also be considered which I hope are...



So I just need to make YouTube videos? That's easy, going to see you bois on the other side lol.

More seriously, any examples come to mind?

the blacklist stuff

[Luluya]

Speaking of bad faith, if OP had bothered to look at even the title of the largest complaint thread (with almost 100 likes) regarding the mount tilt, they would see that is asking for a toggle, not downright removal.

[Jeeqbit]

The forums are flawed as the main way to collect player feedback.

They collect it from social media and reddit as well because Yoshi-P specifically stated this even recently. It's just that the forums are something they control and is easy for them to check what they run and organize themselves, as opposed to say reddit, which has an upvote system and a lot of non-feedback. I agree the system could be improved though because I know other games have done it better. For example, a lot of apps have an issues system where people can raise an issue and then people upvote the issues so the most pressing ones are at the top. However it becomes too full if duplicates aren't moderated.

it is also full of bad faith criticism. I imagine it's hard for them to find the good feedback here when many posts are completely ridiculous and say stuff like "Yoshi P hates us, (content) literally ruined my life, ded game" (this is barely an exaggeration)

I agree so much. Statements like that are ridiculous and out of touch. Anyone that watches live letters and interviews can see he doesn't "hate" anyone, that he is still very passionate and anyone that observes the statistics properly can see it's not dead and is far bigger in population than it used to be.

I think it has a big flaw in its logic. There are also people who are silent because they are happy with things and didn't feel the need to make a forum account to complain.

While that's true, the point of the statement is nevertheless to listen to the minority who complain because silent people may be thinking that also but not expressing it.

I think their flawed method of collecting feedback shows in changes like the mount tilt system. A small minority of players didn't like it so they nerfed it

I doubt they even based it on forum feedback. A developer probably just thought "this looks overboard, let's make it a bit more realistic". I don't usually get the sense changes are even based on forum feedback. Often it's based on a passing conversation Yoshi-P had with a journalist and passed to the dev team, or a video they chanced to watch from a popular youtuber, or something like that. You can often trace changes like that to an interview or popular video from the last year after all. The alliance raid roulette change comes to mind as an example, where they ignored it for years until MrHappy brought it up in his forum reading video... there had been forum posts about it on a regular basis for literally years before this.

What they should do is implement some form of player survey, either in-game or in emails to improve their data collection by seeking out the average player rather than having skewed data from the forums.

They have definitely done such surveys before because I (and others on this forum that they regarded as veteran players) received a survey a few years ago. But it doesn't seem like a universal or regular thing. Surveys often just get given to small, weighted sample sizes though so it's hard to be sure that they don't do them.