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General: Wachter: Effective Feedback
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com columnist Victor Wachter writes this week's column on effective ways for players to make their voices heard to game developers.
My last two columns have been a little bit on the negative side, and to be frank that's how I feel about MMOs right now. But I talk about it because I think the industry can do better. Also, I'm a community manager because I truly believe that our players can help us make better games. So this week, I wanted to talk a little bit, and in general terms, about how to deliver feedback for best results. I'm not going to name any games or point any fingers to the past. Just think a little bit about how gamers can best interact with and persuade game developers when they deliver their feedback for discussion.
When you want to post feedback and make your voice heard, where's the best place to do it? Official forums are the most obvious place. They're close to home and you know for certain that the developers know the URL. But they're not always optimal. Depending on the population of your game, you might be a single voice among thousands of posters who never gets to stand out. Official forums are also governed by rules set by the company, and their effectiveness will vary by the level of moderation in effect and forum codes of conduct. It's unfortunate, but there are a lot of forums out there with rules that limit feedback, due to incidents with previous posters who were less than tactful with their feedback.
Read Wachter: Effective Feedback.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Excellent point about choosing the right soapbox. Official forums can sometimes be the worst place to post constructive criticism because you then have to deal with the fanboys who dilute the effectiveness of the conversation in your hopes of gathering people around it. Instead, finding a blog with a good intellectual and caring community around it goes a helluva long way. There you can post your feedback and those in the community will often fully understand it for what it is. You're not ranting about the game, you actually care about it a lot, which is why you want to see certain issues dealt with. If you didn't care, you wouldn't be posting about it at all..
What's also interesting is that this approach of "spreading the conversation" out is often what is exactly done at workshops to effectively handle the feedback within it. You may have 100 people but then they break off into smaller groups of six to eight people, so they can converse and communicate more effectively on the subject. Then later, feedback is gathered and similarities are noted. What's often amazing is that sometimes an amazing realization will come out of the workshop and usually from just a very few people (i.e. the "edge" group). In a normal mob situation (I.e. forums), that valuable feedback from those few people might have been drowned out by the masses and never realized at all.
Once the game is out the door, you can't change the underlying structure of the game. You won't ever be able to add physicality to toons in WoW, for example. You just have to wait for someone to develop an MMO that doesn't allow you to casually meander through other characters.
So, this is my first post at MMORPG.com. Go me
I would like to start by saying that I read all the advertised "Columnists" sections just now and I liked the direction yours was heading.
I find feedback on official sites to be a bit like listening to the school bully and his sidekick in the playground, it starts with the bully and his bright idea "You gotta give us all your lunch money" and then the sidekick.. or the masses in this case are all "Yeah! give us your money". Even positive feedback shown in this light seems more like demands than ideas given to the developers and I feel that it all falls on deaf ears.
Moving on to your "last resort", the exit interview. I read a great post on the DDO.com forums recently about a VIP member who had played for two months and decided to leave and that they weren't coming back for a long time, and even if they were to return they would most certainly not subscripe as a VIP. The post was long, and had a couple of repeated sections, but it was well thought it and all in all good reading, covering the reasons for leaving in a precise and detailed manner without any insults or flaming (all bar the "This post will probably get deleted" at the start). I believe this exit strategy worked, VIPs weren't really treated as VIPs was the case being made, and something definitely got done about it for those that experienced the issue.
I personally feel that this type of feedback works really well when it is drafted, thought through, well-written and placed in the right place for people to see and comment on. I'd love to know of other Feedback that has taken noticable effect within developers games (I'll keep searching to link that post I mentioned)
I disagree with the I quit post. It always comes off as whiny no matter how you phrase it. Just the act of going to official forums for the sake of posting "I'm quitting" shows a level of immaturity.
Those posts also inevitably get other players to post "Can I haz ur stuffs?" posts and the like, or the "Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
I personally find it a bit pathetic when I see an I quit post on the official forums, perhaps it's because they are almost always about minor things or fixes that needed to happen. For instance in Asheron's Call they just mentioned tweaking a macro dynamic to make it harder for players to macro top tier loot. And of course a player said that he was going to quit if this was put in. So this guy is essentially saying "I'm quitting if you're going to take out a method I used to break the CoC."
I say post your feedback in a non attacking way (most players seem to miss this point). And try to strike up a civil discussion arguing both sides. Those posts seem to be read the most and are more likely to have an effect.
Making a post calling the devs idiots will most likely not get the post read if it doesn't just get deleted. Most players don't seem to be able to control their emotion over a simple game and can not post feedback properly in any form. But that's simply in my experience of playing MMOs since before UO.
@#$! YOU NOOB! YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THE BEST WAY TO GET RESULTS IS TO USE CAPS ALL THE TIME TO USE BAD SPELING AND TO NEVER USE ANY PUNCTUATION EXCEPT AS A WAY TO FURTHER ANNOY ANYONE THAT READS THE BLOCK OF TEXT THAT YOU HAVE WRITTEN @#$! THIS I QUIT THIS THREAD BECAUSE NONE OF YOU HAVE ANY CLUE ABOUT HOW TO GIVE FEEDBACK
I'm of the opinion that an "I quit" post is valuable, especially when done after the emotional response that has inspired one to quit has died down to the point that it can be expressed in actual feedback rather than insults and expletives. I do agree that many of the posts DO come off as a bit whiny at times, but I believe that this is because one hasn't taken a few deep breaths, or done some form of working out (punching a pillow counts, by the way!) to release pent up frustration over the loss of something the poster once enjoyed. Feedback, positive or negative, is always valuable in the sense that it gives us an insight into what a person is thinking and feeling. In the case of MMOGs, it is good to know why a community is dying, one player at a time, and as long as the person leaving isn't on some sort of personal crusade to take as many with her as she can muster, then normally the feedback given is useful.
I hope that future games will take very seriously the feedback of the community, because I feel there are a great many of us out there that would like a place to enjoy ourselves and do so in the company of other like-minded individuals. I know that I'm still waiting for that next game that sucks me in for months on end, consuming every spare moment of my time. I can certainly find any number of things to do in a given day, but I long for the times when a MMOG was so good that I scraped together any spare moments I could to play it. There are some promising games coming up, and I feel they will only be made better through the feedback of the player base.
Just wanted to mention that fan sites are also a good way to share your insights, either starting one or being involved with one. Often fan sites provide a forum that can be less hostile and more productive than the official forums can be.
The thing is, when a game is still small, especially independent games, the devs and /or community managers have all the time in the world to listen to everyone. That is, they have so few players they have to pampered them to keep them and maybe have them bring some friends, plus the amount of reading needed to keep up with the community can be handled in a couple hours a day.
I experienced it with Dofus some years ago, I've seen it with Shaiya Europe a few months back, and I'm experiencing it with GalaXseeds.
(This is what I really like about a MMO. I like being there in the first steps of an indie game, because I know my feedback is read, wieighted, and used if possible. I feel like I'm helping developing a game, even though I'm not a pro.)
However, there comes always a point, where it's impossible to read everyhting that is being said about your game. In a way, that means you've done it, you're successful (unless all of the talking in flame about a certain ad campaign, yes I'm talking about you Ev...).
This is where the "proper channels" thing really comes into play. There is no finite law there, you may have to roam a bit to find the place that devs like to visit once in a while to take the pulse of the community.
The only thing I'd add about contacting the dev team though, is customer services. There is almost always an email adress to report bugs and glitches.
Ok, depending on the company, the one reading has little to no power to do anything about it, except report. If the next level in the chain just doesn't care, doesn't have time at that precise moment, or forgets, it can get lost. But if enough players report the same issue, and report calmly and legibly enough, the pressure will increase about actually working on the point of contention, until it is impossible to ignore.
And yes, you have to be very articulate when talking to devs. No, they are no better than any of us. But, as I said above, past a certain point, there is just too much to read. It becomes increasingly easy to just disregard and put aside anything that isn't crystal-clear at first glance. It,s bad consumer-service, but it's very humane - wouldn't you do the same?
Likewise, if you're clear, but cearly insulting, the devs or consumer service will just range your complaint in the "emo teenager ranting" case, because they have a gazillion other messages to shift through, and the garbage can is just such a handy way of cutting work by half.
I think if you are angry with a company let them know it in no uncertain terms. Avoid cursing but let them know how you feel, backing it up with reasons why you feel this way. Coming across in a mild and polite manner only belittles your upset downplaying it and making it seem like it's not as big an issue as it really is to you personally, in turn the company in quesiton may not take your complaint as seriously as you'd like.Yes it's whining and sucky but we all feel this way sometimes and the posts/complaints do get read. In fact, it's the very opinionated posts that often get the most attention. This is just my opinion but I know from many years of experience with loud opinionated and not always positive customers that the squeaky wheel really DOES get the grease.
If people want to bash you or make fun of you for leting a compnay know you are upset and leaving their game behind, then they only stand to make themselves look foolish. People get upset, and when you pay for a service that does not live up to your expectation, you're going to get REALLY upset and want to let others know about your experience. word of mouth is and will always be the best form of advertising in the world. Believe it or not public customer feedback aftects an average of 11 people for every public comment, conversation or forum post. (marketing guy here, so I have to know these kinds of details.) a positive post affects just as many as a negetive post. Ask Tiger Woods... he may not be getting the kind of attention he wants right now but he IS getting alot of it, in fact negativity often draws more attention than positivity...almost like a magent.
Customer service hotlines asking to speak to a person's supervisor on up the food chain is often the best way to get what you were promised or expected out of a company. The higher up the food chain you travel the more vested the interest that person will have in providing good customer service to you and will want to make you happy as they will understand the value of good PR... or at least the value of shutting you up so that they can get on with their day.
Make noise... sales & marketing hears it, and money makes decisions these days. Unhappy customers = less money and no one can afford that right now.
I'm sure there is value to be found from some "I'm quitting posts" - but like some previous posters mentioned, it's far better to be calm and rational in your approach to them. There's no point in being a "squeaky wheel" if what actually broke the game for you is lost to anyone reading the post - buried under a mountain of /ragequit hyperbole and whining.
I think it's possibly more important from a company's point of view to have a dialogue of some sort when people cancel their subs, asking why they are doing so. Some people hate these dialogues, but when you play a game that doesn't have one at cancellation, it's an odd feeling - I'm cancelling your game because I don't want to play it anymore, and you don't care why? (Hello NC Soft!)
I'm not one of those players who gets all het up about quitting a game and leaves big forum posts detailing my reasons for leaving, I just leave. If a company doesn't ask me why when I'm cancelling my account, then they're not going to get any information about my reasons for leaving. If they don't appear to have any interest in why players are leaving, then to my mind that does not bode well for future improvements to the game.
Some people quit games over things that other players may consider minor, but if you have subs dropping off in droves after the "free month" it stands to reason that something is very wrong, and input from forums and/or twitter or reasons given for cancellation become extremely important in terms of the game's long-term viability.
Dealing with that demands a high level of engagement on the part of the company and the community reps - if that engagement isn't there or is severely lacking, it doesn't matter how high the quality of feedback is, no-one will be listening to it. A company that has that side of things right is a company worth handing subs money to, because at least players know they are being listened to, and that there is some hope of their issues being addressed down the line.
Good, thought provoking article btw!
there are companies out there that are ashamed of people reading the "i quit" post because in their games such posts will more often than not reveal the plain truth about the game and the company´s lack of competence and ethics.
additionally, and perhaps not suprisingly, said companies employ less-than-capable communty reps to handle these complaints effectively and so they simply decide to delete them altogether.
if such companies would instead treat such posts as valuable feedback (both from the OP and those who engage in the topic) and comment on them in a respectful and professional manner it would go a long way to improve their repuation and image with the players.
I will start with the I quit post. At turbine these get locked very quickly and deleted, as they usually turn into a flame war. The reason wny is the I quit post usually goes of the deep end after what I call a rage quit. I have seen a few I quit posts followed by a long list of items of what drove that person to that point. The sad thing is Turbine shuts theese down hard, saying theres no need to let that go on. Honestly if folks read half my post at Turbine they would know the real reason why I am quitting if it ever came to that. I have a long line of posts concerning gear gating, lack of character progression as well as others.
No on to choosine the right soap box. Just goin off blind rage and calling the devs stupid gets you knowhere. I have lately went toe to toe with a couple of CS and Devs dirrectly at turbine. I finally had to post screenshot to prove they were wrong, and it actually resulted in the CS making a change to his/her post stating that the deed was efected. It is a shame that we have to prove to them that things are not working but I am finding out that a couple of the devs actually listen.
I think it is best to approach the dev's and CS with actuall proof, not just some random out of air I think this is broken. That way if they really do listen them might be able to find the problem a lot quicker. The problem is that after a few years the dev's actually get tired of being berated and beet down, and at that point they don't care. Case in point we only have 2 devs who actually respond now at Turbine items that are under their perview, the rest of the dev team seams to be very quite.
Good article by the way. Feedback does not always have to be negative to get there attention it just needs to be mad e in such a manner to where the dev on the other end is not being hit over the head. Something I know I did a few times.
It is just far to often feedback given is never taken. I can point at several MMO's. Turbine, SOE, NCSOFT and others.
Honestly, forums of any type are likely not to be a good source of feedback. Too often the main point is lost in the deluge of additional posts, or quickly degenerates into a flame war between opposing viewpoints. I also wouldn't discount someone who has a "feeling" that something just isn't right, but may not have the hard data in screenshots or video to back-up this feeling.
Probably the best way to achieve meaningful feedback and/or stimulate a discussion with the playerbase is to have an actual discussion with them. Choose a group of players at random, or a focus-group (PvP focused players, PvE focused players, Crafting focused players, etc) and have the developers chat with them in a private discussion. This way you can tailor the discussion to one area or focus, rather than a free-form discussion where topics may be extremely varied in scope. Pick a different set of random players for the next interaction and do it at regular intervals.
Any trends or concerns should become farily apparent. The playerbase would know that they are being heard and the CSRs could communicate both the players' and developers' stance on issues discussed, minus names to protect the process and foster open communication.
I concur with several of these posts that official forums are often ineffective to communicate feedback. We've all seen the drill. Someone posts a problem and asks if anyone else is seeing it. Very soon the half dozen fanboys who live on the forums descend on the thread and start insulting everyone for daring to suggest there might be anything wrong with the game. The thread then gets derailed and devolves into a flamewar. The company then comes in and locks or deletes the thread under the excuse of fighting. The companies have no one but themselves to blame if they can't get feedback from their forums because they refuse to moderate their fanboys like they will disgruntled customers. It makes you wonder if some companies want feedback at all.
Getting the right feedback as a developer must be a pain. I mean, when I scan MMORPG.com daily, and people are talking about Random MMO X, then you could get the impression they all talk about a totally different game.
On the other hand, as gamer, to make yourself heard, its like in politics: if you play timid, no one will care rats ass. What does get heard? Well, look at Greenpeace: when you are spectacular. When there is something they can't just ignore.
One of the most prominent reactions I ever cause was entirely involuntary, in SWTOR, when I wanted to talk about romance options, as they are frequent in Bioware games, and I suggested there should be a gay option character (like Zevran from DA), and the thread was closed with the comment, there are no gay ppl in Star Wars. You may know it ended flooding up everywhere. It wasnt even my intention, but it was a lesson: people will care for a scandal. They won't care about timid, harmless themes. They juicier the better to make yourself heard, that is sad but true.
Or another example: In the STO debate people where posting by the hundreds about the fact that there is yet no pre-order option ANYWHERE in most European countries. Cryptic did not even answer, like "ok we look into it", until I found some comment from an Atari moderator, saying he checked and atm there are no plans for any EU pre-order. Adding a few poisonous bits, it was bad enough that Cryptic had to answer like "we are looking into this". Naturally we did NOT hear any other answer ever since, which again proofs my point, that only a public scandal can make a change, or simply: when enough numbers create an uprise. If you are alone, you can have all the logic and reason behind you, that will help little. What will have an impact is when you get masses behind you, then they MUST listen. It's called Propaganda.
Yes, in an ideal world we all would be heard for our wisdom and incite and not for the loudness of the drum, but we don't live in an ideal world.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Just a couple things :
1. Soapbox - Yes, the appropriate forum/location to discuss game issues rationally would be preferable to the usual Forums available. Yes, there are simply too many fanboys in any forums to have an effective discussion on game issue. My latest experience with Champions Online tended to show this and I was actually reaching the point where I didn't even bother to have a look through the forums during downtimes. But then from out of the blue a discussion started on the archery power sets and it went on and on; and then the devs stepped in and that was when the discussion got interesting. I don't know whether it was the time when all the fanboys were asleep but we seriously got through to the dev that certain issues existed with the power set and limited fixes could be implemented with the modicum of fuss. Yes, there were 1 or 2 who wanted their usual 1-shot kill power upgraded but the majority discussed in a reasonable manner and within 48 hours the fixes were on test. I believe the frank and reasonable discussion that occurred did more for the power set in 48 hours than anything since closed beta.
So, yes the right forum for discussion is important but more than that, it is the attitude of the people during those discussions that will serve to have the most impact. A word of advice to the fanboys "No developer will ever give you a God Button so don't bother asking in any way form or manner." Doing so just wastes everyone's time.
2. I Quit Posts - I agree that this should resemble exit interviews but unfortunately the majority that I have read always tended to reflect the incredible need for the subscriber to vent on what they perceive is an injustice to their game play. Thus the reasons for these are lost. I am certain that the developers would pay more attention if the subscriber stops saying things such as "You nerfed my xyz powers so I quit.". Rational thought out reasons for leaving, e.g. technical issues, long term unaddressed game issues, lack of responsiveness from customer support, etc, presented with a reasonable amount of proof, would definitely cause the developers to take a second look. The easiest analogy I can think of would be "I'm not buying your Prius because it doesn't come in hot pink !" versus "I'm not buying your Prius because the child safety locks have a tendency to fail."; Guess which one the manufacturer would pay attention to.
Considering who you work for and how you and your "people" handled my situation, I don't think you are joking. Don't you need to go make sure the Russian mob is getting a return on their investments instead of posting here?
I think that there are devs that truly care, but couple them with getting beaten over the head with negativity and being put into uncomfortable timetables and situations by publishers that work on timetables and profit models, it is very easy for these guys to get jaded and stop caring about what is said. Then the only time you start hearing from them are softball scripted interviews or if you get lucky a straight-line led chat by a PR head where no real questions will ever get answered. The devs seem to just get beaten down and jaded after a while, that's why I really salute the rare dev that still comes to work every day full of passion and love for his project that really wants the fans to have the best experience they can.
It's pretty sad but the only method I have seen that is truly effective is the forum rage where you have a 20-30 page rant by disgruntled players who leave or threaten to leave and the only reason they get responded to is because the bean counters see money bags flying out the window unless the fix problem XYZ as fast as possible.
Of course there are exceptions to every rule and it would be good to see more of those but by and large most changes I have seen come about had to be forced in this manner.
Loved the article. The right soapbox is somehow hard to find, but I agree that, just like the exit interview, you need to make sure your post is thought out and well written. With the right community manager and staff in place, they will be read and considered, since intelligent posts are sometimes hard to come by in a game's official forums. If you take the time to post a constructive criticism and back it up with plausible solutions, then a good firm will read and take notes.
I almost forgot...long live Sporkfire!
Twitter is verbal diarrhoea, hardly the proper place for a discussion, stick with forums, official being the best.
“they're speaking from a script provided by their PR department which instructs them on how to evade such a scenario.”
Are MMO staff ever without such a script to hand?
My experience is that the only option developers leave you is to vote with your feet. The number of developers that have ever listened to the playerbase can be counted on a couple of fingers. Some like SOE are so full of themselves that they always know better than their players to the detriment of their games.
One of these days we will find a developer that actually listens to it's players, till then we have to put up with the mediocre game play available today.
Ooh, don't go there man. Those 3 letters are the magical letters to raise a whole load of people's blood pressure, mine likely the most. I get an insane urge to spit at the computer screen whenever I see them. That and the word "Smedley".
"Quite simply, they have experience and expertise that the player can't match."
I LOL'd right there.
No offense to anyone, but half the MMO developers today could be equally matched with a few talented monkeys. Not exagerating either, they suck.
Talent in the MMO industry is like talent in any industry: Rare. And when you have it, you far surpass everyone else. When you don't, you're a moron like everyone else. This is how all things in life work when it comes to the talented person versus the "average joe".
I guarantee you that a handful of talented players have more experience and expertise than the majority of developers. Why? Because one talented person with 10 minutes of experience learns more in that 10 minutes than an average joe learns in 10 years of experience. It's just how life works.
Average is just another word for "barely competent," and the majority of MMO developers are of course, average. Because the majority of any group is average.
And your entire post (starting with the first sentence) shows a level of idiocy.
You're one of the only people who will consider that whining and immature, without even considering the fact it could be an intellectual, well-written and reasonable example of customer relations.
I'd say "Troll Less" but you're not trying to troll. So...
Brain More.
Almost every MMO asks you to list the reasons you're quitting.
In fact, it's more difficult for me to think of the specific games that DONT ask you, than to list the ones that DO. Almost all of them ask why.
Official forums? Moderated. By the time a dev might be able to take a gander at feedback, the PR people have already done so. Being 'handled' is no way to effectuate change.
I quit post? Typically frowned at. You can make the most constructive 'I quit' post ever, but the second Troll_512 starts flaming, it *always* ends up nasty, and no one wants to deal with drama.
Simply not paying? It doesn't fix the problems you encounter. While it might fix the problem for *you* (because you're not playing, and thus the problem no longer exists), it doesn't help the dev fix the same problem others might be having.
Blog? Now we're getting somewhere....
It's all about setting the stage. Literally. On official forums, while streamlined in their topic breakdowns, you're just one voice in the masses. It might be the most intuitive place to go, and undoubtedly gets seen, but no real change can or will take place as long as you're just a voice. You need to make your voice heard.
It's about back-tracking. You must own the stage, and the dev must be in the audience. It's about controlling the community- at least the community's attention. Best way to go about this is to own your own internet real estate (site, blog, w/e) and build a reputation for spitting it like it is. Be mindful that that reputation must be built based on hard and concrete debate and not simple cries for attention. Be a site that is resourceful, that people come to for information and well-formulated thoughts. Offer a service, become a 'household name' in the community.
Devs circulate the internet. They will get wind of your site through casual drops in chat, someone mentioning it on official forums etc. And with enough exposure, they will navigate their way to your stage. We know for a fact that devs play the games they create, at least to a moderate extent. But now they're in your yard, and you're the one who sets the rules. You're the one who can effectively portray an issue, sans moderation- and that's what they need to hear. All of the 'official' methods have too much 'disinfectant' surrounding them, due to legal issues, PR issues, marketing etc.
You need to garner the dev's attention by first gaining the attention of your fellow customer. You must make your voice heard and not just be another voice in a sea of voices. But it absolutely does start with self- making sure your points are valid, not being a cry-baby over it, and being 'ok' with the fact you may in fact never be heard. This last part is truly the one that needs to be embraced by anyone attempting to give feedback.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter