Sordeo Regius
|
Posted - 2009.05.23 20:55:00 -
[1]
Signed
Originally by: Zostera Patch 1.2 and subsequent problems have caused me to take a look at communications, or lack of, between CCP and the player base. I was going to wait a while longer and consider a proposal, but reading this from CCP in the general forum kind prompted me to raise this now...
From Issue thread in general forum
"The problem with your repro is that it only confirms that there is an issue. Which was already apparent by the petitions and bug reports sent to us as well as some of the posts in this thread. My first post in this thread was not implying that there was not an issue, just that we had not found out what exact order of events caused the issue.
I will no longer be following this thread after this post."
I found this to be the only response from CCP regarding the frozen client after jumping bug. Nothing in Game development, known issues, Patch 1.2.2 feedback. Two days of a widely reported and common bug receiving what seems to be a dis-interested, half hearted, unhelpful and actually pretty rude response from a CCP employee.
The background to this I think we all know. CCP rushed through a "fix" to a bug allowing an imbalance relating to one ship type, the "fix" was applied despite considerable feedback from players regarding serious and widespread consequences, which in CCP's own words were game breaking. The subsequent "fix" seems to have introduced this new gate freeze issue.
CCP has numerous ways to communicate with and develop the game in cooperation with the player base, forums, petitions, bug reports and CSM. So why did this happen?
Forums. The forums relating to development, ideas, bugs are split over several categories including development, known issues, features and ideas, assembly hall, information portal and general discussion. There does not seem to be a structured use of these various forums by CCP. Sometimes CCP respond to a game issue in a thread raised in one section, sometimes on a thread relating to the same issue in a thread in another section. This may be due to a lack of moderation, and disciplined use and monitoring of the forums by CCP. It is also clear that Dev's do not read these forums or the issues would have been known in advance.
Proposal Reduce and rationalise these forums and moderate them more effectively. Split them into the following.
Assembly hall Players proposals for features and ideas as well as other issues can be raised here for the attention of the CSM.
Game development forum Proposals escalated from the Assembly hall and CCP's own development blogs can be posted here for player feedback.
Sisi test feedback forum Once an idea progresses past the game dev forum onto Sisi the notes are pasted here in a new thread and feddback from the player base invited based on Sisi testing.
Tranquility bug forum Incorporates known issues and workarounds and serves as a bug reporting tool for players who perhaps do not understand how to bug report. Issues on TQ can be raised here.
Information portal Notification of patching, patch notes, server failure notices and links to threads in TQ bug forum can be posted here and locked to keep the forum clean.
Each of these forums should be actively moderated, threads moved to appropriate other sections and locked with a link if duplicates. CCP should monitor these forums daily to gain a good understanding and forwarning of potential issues either prior to or after patch deployment. CCP should also respect the player bases good intentions and effective co-devlopment of this game by responding in a timely and effective manner to issues raised.
To be fair CCP does have better tools for player interaction than most MMO's I have played, it simply needs to use them better.
tl;dr - CCP needs to listen up and communicate more.
|