Listening to Forums (the Vocal Minority)?

Written by Feldon on . Posted in DGC Wants Feedback

I hear this a lot:

Most of the people I know in game never visit the forums, and the “majority” opinions you see here rarely represent their opinions.

It’s often used as a reason to belittle, dismiss, or outright ignore player feedback on the EQ2 forums.

SmokeJumper responded:

And that’s the tricky part for developers also. The loudest voices are always here on these forums, but there are many opinions. That’s one of the reasons that I spend so much time playing the game. Talking to players within the game as I play is always interesting and educational, even moreso when they don’t know it’s me. Most of us on the dev team do this, whether anonymously or known within a guild.

We get *lots* of info about the game from the forums, but no, it’s definitely not our only source of data.

and in a thread about the demise of player community/interaction:

Have hope. This coming year is going to appeal to a lot of different types of players and some of the stuff we’ll be doing will increase opportunities for socialization. (Not required socialization, obviously, but you’ll end up around other players more often as things roll out this year. You have to choose whether to drink from the trough or not.

Personally, I’d like to see more in-game surveys (as long as they are not written as a push poll), and less reliance on /feedback (which admittedly, the developers just don’t have enough time to read all of). Just a question-of-the-day in-game would be pretty cool. What ever happened to Developer Chats? Developer Q&A’s?

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Comments (8)

  • Lathain

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    I agree people the most vocal on forum are not the true player. Befor DoV i was almost never reading forum (in almost 12 year…). A true player is in game not on forum.

    Unlucky my english is so bad, than no one understand what i want say, they focus on one or two word i write and that all. And i bet i m not alone in this case 😉

    A player know his game when a true player thing are like this, they no want bebat or talk about it, it’s like that nothing else to say.

    When i petition about a bug i enconter, a GM will come and tell me everything is fine, i ll not even try to discusse with him, i ll just ignore the answer and move on. They dont know what they talk about anyway, was of time to talk with them.

    Reply

  • Calain

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    Actually question/pool-of-the-week on the welcome screen sounds like a really good idea. 😉

    Reply

  • isest

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    I wouldwelcome an in game survey sometimes. It sure would beet having an argument with the same rear ends that are on the forums. Honestly I noticed its always the same 30-50 of us all the time going round and round and nothing ever gets done for the most part becasue we all cancel each other out.

    Reply

  • Inque

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    I totally disagree Lathain. A “true player” reads forums to better his understanding of the game and of any changes. Staying always ingame is a bad idea as you have no idea of what’s happening outside of your immediate area of concern.

    It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with to increase player interaction because so far DoV only seems to bring players together for PQs. Groups have become rarer and I’d say more selective of who they take as gear makes such a difference nowadays. I’ve been in much fewer out of Guild groups in DoV than in any previous expansion.

    A question of the week, or even better, a “your primary gripe of the week” poll would be a good start. EQ Devs seem far too removed from the playerbase compared to some other games out there.

    Reply

  • Anaogi

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    If the forums are a vocal minority you can ignore with impunity, why have them?

    It may also be that the folks posting there are ones who have a bit extra invested, and frequently have taken the effort to put the facts together to bring forward with specifics.

    And most folks just ignore surveys. You’d get the same results for the same reasons–they’d just say that only a minority fill them out…

    Reply

  • Liftik

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    I don’t believe there is one, correct definition of what a ‘true’ player is. One player might not have time to read every thread on every forum and simply play the game in the time he/she is allowed. Another might try to get every ounce of the game by researching it religiously. Both are dedicated players of the game and Sony should listen to both of them.

    I personally would welcome an ingame poll. But I don’t think a ‘gripe of the week’ approach would be helpful. That would quickly turn into another version of the forums with gripes and complaints ranging all over. What SOE should do is focus on one problem say, per week. Have each player that logs in answer the poll with a list of pre-generated answers (perhaps taken from players input on the forums, say the ‘top ten’ ideas for a problem), and after a week move on to another issue, and move on the communities input.

    They could also queue a bunch of questions so if a player ingame were so inclinded, while having a few minutes of downtime (say, while waiting for a PQ to start), they could add their input on more than one issue at a time. One problem with this tactic woudl be, when to say when enough input on a subject was enough? I think setting a fixed time for a single issue should be imposed. Larger issues (say the recent distillation of the 4 classe archetypes) could be given longer periods of debate.

    Reply

  • Green Armadillo

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    Back when I started playing in the ancient year of 2009, they actually did a monthly Q&A where they posted a monthly thread and actually answered the coherent, answerable questions. One month, it just stopped, and I don’t know that I ever heard a reason why.

    Reply

  • Petunia

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    There are many reasons for playing an MMO, just as there are many reasons for playing golf or bowling. Some people want to be the absolute best, some just enjoy the activity on a casual level, some play for the social aspects of the games. Some people prefer to figure out strategy on their own, others learn everything they can from others’ successes and failures. I would like to be an “uber” player with great skills and understanding, but don’t think that I will ever be that. I hope that doesn’t make me a “not-true” player.

    Reply

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