I disagree with you when it comes to feedback. Up until now, and i made that comment yesterday or so i think, the critism became “normal”. Obviously you have your typical 4 horsemann of doomposters in every thread but in the past one or two weeks or so, people gave “actual” and good feedback.
Saying that “feedback” didnt revolve most of the time around toxic swearings/insults between players and stomping down legit feedback from actual player, is quite amusing. For the past months people ravaged the forums by throwing around bait posts and toxic tantrums. Maybe 1 out of 5 posts were legit. You saw posts from different people repeating the same stuff just with the same old stuff while insulting the playerbase.
Some examples:
bait post like: Will this game survive D4/BP/TL etc.
stupid argueing about steam charts and player population
topics which actually had merit in itself like pheons or legy skins being completly infested with unreasonable people and hate mobs
Where do you see merit or quality in those posts/“critisms”? I really would like to know. And pls dont respond with: “yes, they were obviously, but not that much/hard etc.”. Cause there were. There are several people on here with only one target and that is derailing actual good feedback posts.
EDIT: On a final point, the mind blowing hostility against CMs and some of them actually throwing slurs at them cause: “Where is ma class, where is ma honing buff, where is ma…”
This is not exclusive to Lost Ark. You will have this regardless of medium and product. Pointing it out its like pointing out that there are rude people.
This is because constructive criticism has yielded nothing. People who took their time making those posts quit the game and others have given up on AGS or SG caring.
Citing pheons and legy skins, as I’ve said before, constructive threads have yielded nothing. I myself made a post where I compared hypocrisy of AGS/SG mentality on legendary skins and esther weapon, not one insult, not one attack on any CM, I just pointed out different systems and their actual $$$ cost. I got a 7 day ban for being “too combative” and the post was deleted so I couldn’t contest the ban. Why would I care about giving constructive criticism if that’s how its met?
I insist that communication with CM’s and AGS has broken down:
EUW players ignored. Imagine paying while playing there, talk about burning away your money.
SA players ignored.
Many of the problems they themselves admitted to in their letter were brought up with constructive threads a year ago.
This is the problem. AGS way of management has driven away the most level-minded people due to indifference or quitting entirely. Now what you have are frustrated dedicated or emotionally invested players that continue to see AGS contradicting itself. For example: With Akkan hard release in August (1600 ilvl), no one without swiping, bussing, or incredible luck will get to +22 to tackle it. Making it, for the most part, whale territory like Argos was on its release. This on the back of their letter saying that content like raids will be carefully paced.
Which is why people complain. You can be fine with it, but you have no say in telling others to shut up and be okay with it. If they want to keep losing players, they have every right to repeat the same process.
I agree with all of your points especially with the monetary side since i was there in those posts agreeing with you.
There is one catch however. Lets take the whole merge for example. The only thing we got so far is, and really only from roxx, that merging two regions with completly different databases right now is difficult or NOT A MAIN CONCERN. Yes, thats hurting, thats unfair, but somehow understandble from a companys standpoint?
I mean what would you prefer if you had the choice between: Putting ressources into legy skins, euw/sa playerbase or reducing the daily grind by 1? All of them togheter would be best, wouldnt it? But you have to take priorities. And merging EUW into EUC isnt a top priority for SG. Its far down at the bottom. They rather spent ressources on making the korean playerbase happy than trying to appease the western one.
I do understand, that after a certain time with CMs giving the same copy pasta response, people are going to vent. All good. But do it one time or maybe two times. But not every minute a post being even close to one already created. Being rude and downplaying staff or other people with “hurr durr, game dies, enjoy your sinking ship, fck of white knights” isnt contructive critism. There are even people admitting to being on the forums for just that kind of “content”.
Yes, its reasonable. However, imagine that you are playing there. I think it’s reasonable that if you have invested 1000+ hours into a game, it makes you invested and thus frustrated that you are not a priority. You should also try to understand why are people being so aggressive.
This is also true for any region really. Imagine you have spent 100-1000$ in the past year in the game (low to medium spender), add to this 3000+ hours. All you’ve seen are the disconnected decisions and problems for the game being ignored. It’s normal for some to get more emotionally attached and lash out. It happens everywhere, not only in games, for much less.
Well, sometimes it’s not he same person making those posts (some are, surely). They might’ve not seen the past 6 NPC responses of the CM. They come to the forum for the first time and they are frustrated enough that they vent.
As I said, most people at this point have abandoned constructive criticism because it yields nothing. So combining AGS ignoring feedback (done properly) and “white knights” telling those who give that feedback to quit (and they do), what do you have left? The current state of the forums, which are disgruntled people seeing this company fumble (in their opinion) a game they spent thousands of hours on.
So you are actually also saying, even tho in an inderctly way, that the forums got more or less “toxic”, dont you?
And i am asking you if thats the case, whats the point of player feedback if, lets say 70% of comments/posts are toxic? Whats to be have here? Newer players are getting nothing out of it, only doom and gloom. Reasonble posts and people getting buried under a pile of toxic sludge. Players more or less fighting each other in almost every thread that has been made.
Is this player feedback/a good groundwork in keeping the Forums alive?
I dont want to attack anybodys opinion here or trying to argue for the sake of arguing but where is the worth to be had here.
The way it is presented is mostly toxic yes, for reasons I already clearly stated. However, the solution is not to close the forums. It’s to cultivate a more positive relationship between AGS and the playerbase that’s invested enough to even bother to come here.
Closing the forums will only bring this to the Discord server. The discord server will start banning left and right and more and more animosity will fester. It will become a curated echo chamber with white knights patting the back of every decision and lurkers who are just too indifferent to care.
They are free to do so, but this will be a big hit to their image as a studio. They are doing the easy short term route which, in my opinion, will only accelerate the decline.
Agree, an echo chamber isnt really a good decision especially after the areo vs slayer crowd announcement.
So keeping the forums alive with mostly toxic and not really contructive critism is the better way of? I dont know, i dont see any incentive to engage in these forums apart from trying to “better” people on their hating knowledge and responding to posts where i know people have a healthy discussion.
Do i need to manuver myself out to such a point, that i have to ignore 70% of community posts? Arent toxic responses and posts talking about the same point 5 threads made before the same as an “white knight echo chamber”? And if it is, what could be done about it? Banning toxic people? That wont work since there already are threads made about threads being deleted cause supposedly AGS/SG doesnt want to hear the truth even tho the deleted post only threw “Game is dieng, AGS are ***, dieng game”.
You are completely delusional if you think things will be different just because they are changing the platform.
All this does is make it easier for them to miss critical feedback. Discord is the worst possible choice for this. While reddit is being run by children with guns.
yeah you’re right this choice will absolutely save AGS.
You guys call the negative feedback “whining” when in reality it is mostly just frustrated users trying to improve the game they have invested time and money into. Some of those suggestions would probably dramatically improve the longevity of this game you so hopelessly “fan boy” over.
Overly positive players that provide no real feedback will do nothing to help this game or the companies behind it to improve.
That is all you will see now.
But I guess this just goes to prove that they never intended to listen to any real feedback anyways. They simply want an echo chamber where any negative voice is swiftly and permanently silenced.
Massive L take from OP and a huge L for supporters of this game ultimately.
Since they burned all the bridges till now, they can keep the forums active and fish for those threads that are level-minded. There is still some worth in listening to disgruntled players. That’s what CM’s are for and, even if some people think the toxicity is extreme here, it’s quite tame to compare it to other CM jobs in other communities.
While doing this, they should actually improve delivery and satisfaction of the product, and engage more and with fewer NPC responses on level-minded threads (to incentivize people to post that way if they wish a response). What they are doing by removing forums is burning more bridges, because there is no way people will not take it as an attempt to curate feedback.
I’ve mentioned this in other posts, but forum feedback might not correlate exactly with the player base, but if the letter and player numbers serve as any reference, it definitely rhymes.
Hope to see you all in Discord!!! We’ve already had some great conversations and feedback provided. Also helpful to have more points of view and thoughts in there.
Yeah, next step: Sunsetting the game … would be best for everyone.
Absolute shitfest of a game with a HORRIBLE community and bunch of positionally dependent classes (back attacking / front attacking) but ALL the bosses move around constantly like they are on crack…
Question: How do you plan to handle feedback there with thousands of players all talking about different subjects? How do we know that our feedback won’t be missed when 50+ people all talk at once? Do you have plans to expand on the functionality of the server?
Absolutely! We have alot of plans to add, adjust, move, and use threads! Alot of feedback tends to be verys similar in topic so even though with so many talking, its helpful to see which topics are more of a priority to players then others.
The current discord layout is to just currently handle and be able to safely moderate moving everyone there. Lots of of fun plans for the future with it!
