Community Manager Apologizes for Lack of Responses in Mod 15 Feedback Threads

Bringing new content to the public test server in Neverwinter often is a double-edged sword. On the one hand players get a sneak peek at upcoming content and devs some sort of public beta test of the new features. On the other hand however, by the time a module hits preview, Cryptic has already moved on and is working on the next module. It means the devs have little time to actually follow up issues and the community often feels like their feedback is useless.

Community Manager Apologizes

This is no different with the current preview cycle of Module 15. Especially with the large-scale balance changes, the feedback threads fill up with comments and questions, most of them unanswered. It also doesn’t help that one of the main designers left the studio a few weeks ago. All of this has naturally led to confusion and anger, and Community Manager Julia addressed the issue in a post yesterday.

[su_quote]Instead of replying to individual threads, we wanted to issue a reminder to please keep your feedback civil and constructive. Feedback that devolves into attacks towards other players or Developers will not be tolerated. Feedback that is mostly profanity will be immediately discounted. There is a lot of feedback coming in, especially regarding class changes, and we are reading the comments. Due to time constraints, we aren’t able to reply to every comment or question. The game team is actively working on polishing M15 to get it ready for the November 6th release date. This does not mean that all issues (bugs and feedback/opinions) brought up during the preview time-frame will be addressed prior to release date, but we continue making notes based on the comments we are reading for post-launch considerations and needs.[/su_quote]

Generic Answer

It’s a generic answer that pretty much means that little to no changes based on the current feedback will actually make it into the first live build. Before you rage too much by the way, this has been the case forever. As mentioned the devs only have so much time. So they simply save most feedback from the preview server for later use. It would certainly be better if the whole process was more interactive. It would do wonders for player motivation if ideas were discussed immediately for example. This has happened in the past by the way, but is not the norm. It’s a little bit unfortunate but a direct result of how Cryptic operates.

Process Should Be More Interactive

Players often struggle to realize that the turnaround time from feedback to actual implementation can be months. Even on a public test stage like the preview server. It’s also not ideal that the mods react to the mounting discontent with the only way they know: Deleting posts. Our ARC Undelete feature, which tracks deleted postings, filled with many new entries the last couple days, most of them from Official Feedback Threads.

Amazingly some of the posts contain valid feedback, which adds insult to injury for many players engaged in the threads. As one user put it:

[su_quote]Step 1 ask for feedback,
Step 2 ignore it
Step 3 delete it
Seems legit[/su_quote]

And:

[su_quote]Can’t believe that now someone started to delete relevant stuff from threads? This starts to get annoying. I am done cryptic, test yourself, do the brainwork on classes and maybe get paid for it. Or follow the input of 100 crying player running etos all day long….[/su_quote]

As you can see the situation escalated quickly. It’s even more hilarious since the devs and mods have to clean-up a mess they themselves created, as always. No well-meant post by the Community Manager is able to help here. Either the devs start to embrace the preview test phase and closely work together with the community, or these things are bound to happen every four months.

All you can really do at this point unfortunately is to continue providing feedback and hope that the devs will go through it at a later date. Because based on Julia’s post it doesn’t look like the devs will be able to do a full re-balancing / feedback pass before the live launch.


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9 thoughts on “Community Manager Apologizes for Lack of Responses in Mod 15 Feedback Threads

  • October 19, 2018 at 8:45 am
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    That ARC undelete feature is amazing. I wonder how long until they update the forums to prevent it from working, because they can’t be happy that we can see ‘behind the curtain’ so to speak. A lot of the posts are of course nastiness and sniping at each other that needs to be dealt with, but so much of it is calm, constructive feedback, that the forum mods lose any benefit of the doubt, assuming they had any left.

  • October 19, 2018 at 9:28 am
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    I’ve been a trickster rogue since Mod 7 When no one would accept us in a Q or we would get kicked at the final boss. These changes they’re going to make are unbelievable. I currently have 4 legendary mounts, 8 Mythic artifacts, 16 rank 14 enchants, I have literally spent thousands of dollars to get nerfed in mod 15.

  • October 19, 2018 at 9:35 am
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    Where is the apology. I can not see one. Saying you are too busy to respond is an explanation not an apology.

    Their only commitment seems to be to release a bug filled mess and sort some of it out later. No change their then. Unlikely to be accompanied by an apology at that point either.

    • October 19, 2018 at 9:55 am
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      It depends on how you view it. Word for word it’s not an apology, but knowing Cryptic and how they word stuff it’s as close to an apology as they can possibly get. Might even be that they didn’t want to write an apology, but remind people to remain civil while they work as hard as they can. But all the post really says is: “Sorry, but we’re overwhelmed and unable to process everything at the moment.”

  • October 19, 2018 at 10:14 am
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    Sorry but it does not say sorry. It does not apologise. It does not express regret of any sort. I can see nothing in the tone which would even imply regret. It starts off aggressively then says they are too busy to respond followed by a statement that they wont have stuff fixed until after launch. This looks more like arrogant dismissiveness rather than any form of apology. You are obviously more full of the milk of human kindness than I but even so I can not see any hint of sympathetic feeling toward the players though I suppose you may feel sorry for the developers as they are probably under a lot of pressure.

    I do not feel sorry for them. Everything that is happening to them was under their control, scope of change, timetable for change, competence of the coding. None of these are dictated by players even though it is in their interest to paint themselves as victims and players as perpetrators.

  • October 19, 2018 at 10:58 am
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    Great thing to write about this problem!

    I agree with Anton Koc, that response ISN’T AN APPOLOGY because it came from a ‘so called’ PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY MANAGER. Maybe Cryptic staff/direction think a “community manager” should mediate a mess like that? ROFL!

    But I guess they didn’t realize it can, and will come hit them back hard. And it’s not just virtually, what they do is really IRL dangerous for them.
    I sincerly hope they care better in the futur, because we will all be losing.

  • October 19, 2018 at 11:54 am
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    Based on the timeline, I can’t see that they ever intended to collect or implement much feedback before release.
    The preview server was up a couple weeks ago, and they want to push it live for November 6th.

    That doesn’t realistically leave much time to do anything more than fix as many bugs as possible before release.

    Seems to me that the goal of the preview server is just to bug-test and maybe advertise the new mod coming out.
    They’re not actually looking for feedback.

    ——————–

    As far as the forum goes, most game-related conversations happen on reddit. … That right there tells you all you need to know about the forum.

  • October 20, 2018 at 2:02 am
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    That’s no apology, JoSh.

    I don’t know. I always tell myself it’s better to respond like potholer54 and be rational, charming and intelligent, rather than being a foul-mouthed Howard Stern or something. But these pig-shit stupid, lying fuck-witts are a bunch of dishonest, retarded cunts and make me sick.

    Just collate all the feed back and delay Mod Shitsteen until November 20th, FFS! Or December 6th, if necessary.

    😡

    I don’t know, game devs are mostly artistic, creative people who love what they do and want to do it well and be appreciated. I do feel a bit sorry for them, but not the corporate bread heads, nor Gutbucket Pizzaface Necocystitis. It’s such a tragedy that Cryptic were bought up by Chinese scammers in the form of PWE.

    🙁

  • February 24, 2019 at 1:22 pm
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    its a bold move on cryptic to make all this come at one time with all the previous issues of the last few mods.. release of perma banned accounts should be addresssed since the community needs these ppl back as the content is not enough ppl to help run content as normal. lessons learned on both ends and would be a great move to bring back the players we need.

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