This forum is very negative | Forums

[hanks420]

There is always a good amount of negativity on game forums. It comes with the territory.

The people who seek out a games forum are going to be its most passionate players and typically they are the most likely to get annoyed by glitches, not so well planned events, messed up leaderboards and the like. What we sometimes forget is that the people here represent a tiny percentage of the total players.

I can guarantee that there are a lot more players who either don't care that the leaderboard is screwed up or don't realize it is. There are a lot more people who aren't very good at this game than those who are. Who really cares about the leader board issues? The one hundred people at the top? Maybe the top 2000? That's still a tiny fraction of the people who play the game. I'm not discounting those peoples frustration, I'm just pointing out that it's a kind of a 1%er type problem.

[justinman114]

Yeah I mean, we can be negative, but what is a forum for? We aren't being negative just for the sake of it. We usually have reasonable complaints backing it up. And most of us love the game, that's why we still torture ourselves playing it lol. I think this is one of the strongest communities I have been a part of online, and though we are grouchy and grumpy all the time, we mean it in the most constructive manner.

I personally tend to be sarcastic a lot, it's my favorite form of humor. That being said, it's hard to see sarcasm in text without the use of clever emotes so sometimes things may seem more serious than they really are. I think all the complaints and such really just show how much we still really do care about the game in some sadistic sort of way. Plus we all get along with each other for the most part, and our age group spans about 5 decades.

I'd say there is plenty of negativity, but there is plenty of positive posts too. All in good fun.


I mean really, look at this thread I made not even too long ago! http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1420957-Hey

[hanks420]

Yeah I mean, we can be negative, but what is a forum for? We aren't being negative just for the sake of it. We usually have reasonable complaints backing it up. And most of us love the game, that's why we still torture ourselves playing it lol. I think this is one of the strongest communities I have been a part of online, and though we are grouchy and grumpy all the time, we mean it in the most constructive manner.

I personally tend to be sarcastic a lot, it's my favorite form of humor. That being said, it's hard to see sarcasm in text without the use of clever emotes so sometimes things may seem more serious than they really are. I think all the complaints and such really just show how much we still really do care about the game in some sadistic sort of way. Plus we all get along with each other for the most part, and our age group spans about 5 decades.

I'd say there is plenty of negativity, but there is plenty of positive posts too. All in good fun.


I mean really, look at this thread I made not even too long ago! http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1420957-Hey

Like I said, it comes with the territory of gaming forums.

I used to be a moderator on the official forum for a shooting game, you think this place can be negative, you shoulda seem that one. The goal of the game was to shoot your opponent dead in the street in an old fashioned gun duel. You could also steal people's gold if the didn't have a safe and a "telegram" system for in game messaging. Over there you had the same game functionality complaints along with members who literally hated each other and fought both in game and on forum. Good times, good good times.

You're 100% on sarcasm, having a specified color text for it works good for forums so people can realize it's sarcasm and you're not just a jerk

[Ubi-JollyCharly]

Helo Riders!

Very interesting thread, and I would like to give my view as a community manager with some years of experience in that field, especially in free2play games communities.

First of all, in my opinion, forums are not created for players to "vent" because venting isn't constructive, and very easy behind the anonimity of internet.
Forums have two main purposes, the first one being offering a space for players to build a community, a feeling of belonging to a group of peers who share a common interest. the second one is more practical. Forums are a mean for the gaming company (or any company) to communicate information to its players, and to gather information, feedback from them.

As a community manager, I can't, and won't, do anything with comments such as "me very unhappy, your game sucks" because as it has been said before, a game has million of players, so it is statistically impossible to please everyone. So this kind of comments will go to the category "haters that don't bring anything to the conversation and will complain no matter what we do".
However, critics with arguments, examples, are very valuable. This are the comments that CM compile and forward regularly to the production team to give them an overview of players sentiment.

And yes, I agree with the fact that gaming forums are most of the time quite negative. It depends on the game, but even farming games can generate lot of anger ^^
Our forum is mostly populated with what I would call "expert players". Expert in the game, but also expert in new technologies in general. Compared with shooter games forums for example, I agree that we do have a solid community here
Not everything is pink and shiny, but we manage to discuss and present arguments, constructive criticism.

To finish, I would like to add something on the debate "does the company owes anything to its players?"
I think (and it's my personal opinion, it doesn't engage RL teams in general) a gaming company owes the players a good service, quality and entertainment. But because of the business model of a free2play game, in the end, in-game purchase is the indicator of success.
A very common mistake players make is to believe they are entitled of being listened to. The company doesn't owe the player to follow their feedback and suggestions.
Now gaming companies know it is very important to listen to the fan base, because unhappy players mean less players. But they don't HAVE to, that's the distinction players tend to under-estimate.
On the other end, the company isn't entitled to its players. Players can leave at any time, stop making in-game purchase, not buy the next game, etc.

Games are not so different than physical goods. If you buy a mixer, and it doesn't work, you can send it back (the company owes you a product that works), but if you think that the material used to make the mixer looks a bit cheap, or if you think it's too noisy, then you won't buy this brand next time. Maybe you'll leave feedback on Amazon, or write to their Customer Support. The company will take note of your remark, but doesn't have to listen to it and change their product according to your feedback. If they do, awesome, you'll keep buying this brand. If not, too bad, you'll try another one.

JollyCharly

[Ubi-JollyCharly]

I'm so tired of seeing this arguement. Yes, you don't have to pay them anything, but the game is financed and get revenue through advertisement, which they are able to because the playerbase is the size it is. Therefore, to be able to sustain a large playerbase, you'd think it would be in their best interest to listen to some player feedback.



This is just a completely delusional and naive view of how the industry works. No one does anything for anything else than to make a profit, with very few exceptions being small indie firms. RedLynx is not one of these.

The reason there is so much negativity is because there are so many unnecessary bugs with the game that appears with every new update, yet RedLynx seem to only pile on top updates with new content instead of bothering with fixing the old one.

Bugs are another story, and to be clear, I wasn't talking about this kind of feedback in my previous post. The company duty is to provide a good service, which includes reducing bugs to a minimum.
I am no developer, so I can only make an educated guess, but for mobile game, adding regularly new content is a challenge. Devs have to balance between keeping players busy and interested with new content, and provide bug fixes. Not all players are experiencing the issues, and for those players, it is important to add new content. Actually a majority of players aren't experiencing bugs, because they don't play so often, because of their device, because of luck...
And adding new content always comes with complications since it means reworking the code, adding new lines, and it is tricky to foresee all the consequences of one new feature on the whole game.
However, I can assure you the team is taking this problems very seriously, and is constantly working on fixing the bugs. I do understand it never seems enough, but hopefully, we'll get there

JollyCharly

[CagBall]

Good thread *thumbs up*. It's always good to put everything into perspective once in a while. We do have a good community here as illustrated by the depth of the responses to this thread *two thumbs up*.

[Ubi-JollyCharly]

Good thread *thumbs up*. It's always good to put everything into perspective once in a while. We do have a good community here as illustrated by the depth of the responses to this thread *two thumbs up*.

we do!!!

[CZE-Barton]

well I work as Support manager and Product test manager at huge software company and yes feedbacks are very important even negative once. And I know there are dead lines to provide new promised updates as well as fix the bugs. Maybe not that many people understands that the new features and content might affect the old code thus create new bugs. This involves a lot of regression testing and it takes a lot of time. so the devs and tested have my respect.I personally think the game is progressing well eventhough I do complain sometimes as well

btw what about free track or something for those dedicated/addicted players, maybe they spot complaining for a while, for sure Im one of those...

[Ubi-JollyCharly]

I agree, but from what I've read, there are some bugs (messed up LB for an increasing amount of tracks comes to mind) that have been around for months, if not almost a year now, and is being experienced by everyone, yet are still not fixed. Those types of things cause frustration. The recent crashes are another. It would be great to get some sort of acknowledgement from the dev team that they are indeed aware and are working on fixes etc, if they in fact are. It feels like the communication is very one sided here, and I don't blame you for that, I get the feeling you just don't receive much information from them at all.

Hi NO-bwestlie-TFG,

I understand your point. But this LB issues in-game for month are exactly the example of what CZE-Barton explains above. The LB mechanics are central in the game's structure, and any modification, addition of new content, impact them. So there are 2 options for the devs:
- temporarily fixing the LB for each update, but it would mean that preparing an update would take way more time, and that they would have to rework the LB everytime they add content
- find a long-lasting solution to fix the LB and make sure future new features won't affect them again. This means that the resolution takes longer, and the devs team is working on it in parallel with the updates. But with each update, we add more content to the code, so it makes it more complicated to find a long-term solution.
As I said, it's a balance between new content and bug fixes.

I know we don't always have much information to forward back to you on the forum, but I said many times the team is aware of the issue and is doing its best to solve the LB issues. With the last updates, we even had some bug fixes for the LB, which proves they are working on it

JollyCharly

[Whitechapple]

Good rant.

I know my most recent thread,
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php...ld-love-to-see
was one I meant as an upbeat thread for cool achievements or badges we would like to see added, but it turned increasingly negative, and I contributed to that negativity.

I know online forums are often a hub for trolling or negativity, but I do want to point out one area where this forum stands out. I almost never see that negativity focused on one player to another. The most junior player can come here and ask questions, and for the most part they'll get useful, helpful answers, not the usual "STFU n00b" responses you usually see. The forums, and the fan-made websites for Frontier that I found out about on this forum, are the two big reasons I still play. I gripe from time to time, but it is because I want to keep playing and enjoying the game, not because I feel Ubi owes me anything.