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.

[DelSolstice]

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.

The fact is, a lot of people found the mount tilt fun. Which is basically the point of gaming. Hell I'd been hoping they'd add it for years. Since it's causing a few player motion sickness, and not seizures or something like that, the solution should have just been to have it be an opt-in thing, not to nerf it into oblivion to the point where it's not even noticeable, especially when you can turn it off.



And now that we have the nerfed version too, they could easily add it back as an option with the nerfed version as well.


It'd be incredibly simple to do on their end too, I don't know what they were thinking with this extreme overreaction.

[Turtledeluxe]

The fact is, a lot of people found the mount tilt fun. Which is basically the point of gaming. Hell I'd been hoping they'd add it for years. Since it's causing a few player motion sickness, and not seizures or something like that, the solution should have just been to have it be an opt-in thing, not to nerf it into oblivion to the point where it's not even noticeable, especially when you can turn it off.



And now that we have the nerfed version too, they could easily add it back as an option with the nerfed version as well.


It'd be incredibly simple to do on their end too, I don't know what they were thinking with this extreme overreaction.

That is correct. But this is an issue of the team and how they respond to feedback. I tend to call it unilateral. They do it with jobs as well. They always bring the hammer down on issues that are clearly divisive.

All I'm saying is, it doesn't prove the claim here that forums are fundamentally or especially a flawed way to collect feedback. They can be flawed in a statistical sense, but so can everything else.

The post just comes across a little too anti forums imo like "throw out forums because surveys are better!". If Yoshi P only relies on surveys that has its own potential pitfalls. It's as narrow-minded as what the team did here with mounts.

I'd actually say that the forums prove this post wrong. The healer thread is exponentially longer and has more detailed feedback than the mount thread. It has significantly more likes. Yet there's been no speedy overhaul of the healer role.

[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