Here is what should happen
Find 1 or 2 forum users/players who would be willing to sign an NDA
Give them a small amount of extra info/insight (grow that over time as trust is built)
Allow them submit a small number of question per week for an answer by the Dev’s (streamlining the communication time )
Within the guidelines of the NDA - Forum reps provide feedback to community on an ongoing basis
Discussions continue
Bugs get reported
Key community issues have a path - with gatekeepers
Information can slowly trickle out to players
Jeto and Gman continue their current role as is
Kafta comes in over the top for updates and patches
(Sirrian shows up on a live stream at some point)
It’s the same every damn patch. Release a patch, then a week or two of the CX guys hanging around and then radio silence on anything that isn’t a direct graphical glitch or some kind of programming error.
The only exception we got to this behaviour was release when they thought that releasing a class and bumping a version number to 1.0 was worth paying out the ass on Steam for a few relics…
I am almost done with this game. It’s been plain as day from the start where the priorities are and it’s a joke they claim to be a “live service”. I’ve seen Indie games with one or two dev teams provide more service and feedback to their players than this game backed by a multi million dollar publisher
Thanks @Kafka for my temporary ban on the Gems of War forums for my terrible offense of uttering the words PQ3 (apparently I also picked a fight with a GoW user scolding me for the same who just a month ago got pissed off at @Kafka for not providing an adequate answer to a question in 48 hours. The irony!) . Ready for my ban on this forum!
How would you feel if there was over a month-long gap in any communications whatsoever on real issues that are described by numerous users, requested by you, and on which you supposedly sent a pageful of questions?
Ok so supposedly you get it, as a player and as a CX employee.
You keep saying you are are a small team and you have to pick and choose what to do with your time. At some point this loses validity. These comments were from 6 weeks ago. Where has the constructive conversation you referenced actually occurred? Either you have the information and you won’t share it for whatever reason or you don’t. You should at least have the professionalism to come on here and acknowledge the situation. Silence is an absence of responsibility.
And as the Community update goes, well so far you’ve given us 40 words in a preview graphic which is certainly more than we’ve ever been provided before. However, the rest of the update was a recap of the 1.1 Patch Notes. It would be nice to get something more substantive about the number of current issues (not just bugs!) that have been discussed here in this thread and others for many months.
And that’s the issue. It never really gets done. It’s always the same refrain. A couple of days of interaction, “We’re listening!”, “We want to improve communication!”, and then its dead silence on these critical issues for weeks and weeks. And as I’ve said before, perhaps it’s not your fault. Perhaps @Sirrian continues to operate as if he’s the developer of an off-the-shelf game designed in 2007. This code of Omerta on all but the most trivial things though is a terrible path you all have chosen. Plenty of small game developers publish developer diaries, interact with players, and catalog the developer’s feedback on issues brought up by players so they can understand what the future of this “live service” game holds.
Anyways, I’m sharing these comments because I get tired of being made out to be the “bad guy” or being treated like someone who needs a “check-in” to see if he’s doing ok. I think my actions are pretty understandable given these circumstances. Anything resembling real community outreach is absent here, plain and simple. Whatever the reasons, at this point it doesn’t matter any more. What matters is, or at least so I’ve been told, is that it gets done.
I keep thinking I wouldn’t mind waiting an extra day for the next update if we could have that days worth of work spent on communication and discussions here. Multiplied over 3 people that would give a 3 hours a week. Assuming the updates are 8 weeks apart.
That line of reasoning may no longer be valid with introduction of Seasons.
We are approaching 9 weeks since the last update, and there is no indication as of yet of when the next update will land. For Season 1.2 to be a thing, there has to be a client update. Season 1.1 ends on Thursday/Friday (depending on timezone) this week. The question at hand is whether or not there is going to be any downtime between Seasons.
If not, or if there is only going to be a partial week cooldown between Seasons, then the update has to be this week (9 weeks total).
If there is going to be at least a full week or more break between Seasons, then the update cycle is moving to 10 weeks or longer between updates.
Realistically I do also believe it’s going to be more than 8 weeks between updates. But you can just change the math. Even if the updates are 12 weeks apart (and pushed one day back). Three people could use that extra day divided out to spend the equivalent of 2 hours posting on the community forum a week.
That would give us something. It’s a matter of time management and priorities.
I have been a pretty active player but I don’t really see the point in continuing to be one, given the current state of the game. Gonna start voicing my opinion by closing my wallet, and I suspect my next step is walking away.
Nearly two months now and no engagement by @Kafka or @Jeto or anyone on this topic at all. We continue to see higher quality dungeon chests, especially diamonds, at high levels filled with nothing but 4 stacks of food and some shards. It happens repeatedly but it was never mentioned in any notes. Now we get to the Update 1.2 and we have even less on which to use resources like food and ore. These continual behind-the-scenes downgrades occur with no notifications while “increased relics” gets proclaimed every other update with no evidence. We have no way of evaluating these changes, both announced and hidden, because rates are not visible to validate.
This is legitimate feedback and questions about core gameplay and it is being ignored. Sorry, I will not let this go.
EDIT: Just for reference because I have to keep providing evidence that I’m not just some jerkoff forum troll, this was from May 16:
So what is the proper amount of time?
EDIT: And just for further thought, if the core design philosophy about Chests has changed why not make that clear. In the past there was an emphasis on the value of premium chests, and making them worthwhile. @Sirrian said that he felt the wait for opening a Diamond Chest through the vault was appropriate (24 hours) but the contents were not. This was back in May of 2021. Now these same chests are diminished to the point of being purely resource gathering in all forms (both skirmish and dungeon). A Diamond chest is often nothing more than a glorified Iron Chest. Is 24 hours or the use of a premium key that is priced in multiple dollars in the shop an appropriate value for gold, a stack of food that can’t be used, and some shards that can be gotten from a wooden skirmish chest? Should we abandon all hope of doing higher Difficulty Dungeons for the likelihood of a nice item drop or even, god forbid, a higher tier Relic? Is that the intent? A clear throated answer would be appreciated.
I tried to upgrade my CX follower but then realized CX doesn’t exist in any form so instead I just have tons of food from my Dungeon chests which don’t actually drop items anymore.
Still waiting on the responses to the page full of questions about drop rates or a constructive conversation about the state of Chests and drop rates in PQ3.
Well we are marching towards 3 months now and @Kafka continues to run out the clock by not engaging with the very issue that @Kafka specifically requested. There are legitimate questions asked by the community in this and other threads but its just going to get ignored because we continue to play the game so they just continue to pretend like we don’t merit a response.
Every development action both announced (you can buy ruby and diamond keys daily now!) and unannounced (massive increases to food in dungeon chests even though in the most recent July Community update even they don’t know what we are supposed to do with all this food) are part of a continued trend to devalue chests from the original design purpose expressed by @Sirrian. The supposed increases to value in chests (“Relics have a higher chance of dropping”) are simply wordsmithing and ultimately amount to nothing. It’s their design so they can go in whatever direction they want but they have a responsibility to paying customers to explain changes to paid functions of the game if those functions change.
At the end of the day the changes are what they are, and no amount of grousing by me and others apparently is going to change that. But it would be nice to at least be treated with a modicum of respect; to not be ignored because you don’t want to answer difficult questions. We are literally the “customers” of this game and to not even try to make an effort to answer these types of questions is insulting. This has nothing to do with being a small team and balancing priorities, etc, etc.
It’s simply a failure of duty and responsibility.
EDIT: 8/14/2022
Just a reminder that its been 3 months since this topic was specifically requested by @Kafka to address issues that have been brought up by the community and it continues to be ignored.
