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Feedback DOES matter.
LordofDecay
Worst case scenario this game is being developed by a executive cookie cutter design plan to get sales but, if the community is angry/passionate enough, the executives may not be confident enough that they will make a ROI or a chance for a sequel once the game comes out. They will make changes to ensure success.
The truth is that there are people who love making games on this project and maybe even some Warhammer fanatics; by giving them feedback, you give the developers something they can show the executives to persuade them in the right direction.
There is still lots of time in development left and they can always take a bit more time if needed.
Relic/Sega is not a two bit company, give the constructive feedback you have and the developers will do what they can!
Comments
Mr_Ruin
You must be new here ...
amarines
Not to mention as soon as a constructively critical thread comes up with a tinge a negative sentiment about the game, the mods get on their planes to destination power trip and lock it up. A fair amount of threads I've seen in the past weeks that takes aim at a specific feature of the game, where the poster raises valid opinions or reasoning, gets locked up under the idea that the moderator is keeping the peace or some other BS.
There is an obvious agenda to lock up the heavily critical threads in this forum, the first page is curated to either be positive or mildly critical at most to the average viewer. As a result there are always five or so threads about the same thing popping up because the last one got locked up by Gorb or whoever else is playing judge on what discussion stays and which one goes.
Psychodrake
The feedback should matter - But it feels like it doesn't. Funny how the official forum for the game is only a small part of the negativity. Almost every post on Facebook is flooded with negative replies - And Relic simply don't reply to anyone who isn't singing their praise.
I can see the amount of work put into the game and it would be an exceptional none-WH40k game, but as it stands you're dealing with a niche yet incredibly passionate fanbase that simply hate what they're seeing and are being treated like fools in official interviews and Q&A's. There's no admission of the game going in the wrong direction and I still hate the fact I was suckered into hype by the superb cinematic only to be slapped repeatedly by actual gameplay and subsequent new information on the games direction. Reminds me of Dead Island's superb cinematic somewhat - Whether DoW3 will suffer the same critical reception is yet to be seen.
Relic seemed to be the developer trying to innovate with their RTS's, why have they taken so many steps back now?
I don't understand why similar threads aren't just merged. The clarity thread had some fantastic and well written responses.
Gorb
Well this has gone down an interesting path. Criticism of moderation, despite no attempts to reach out to a moderator, or convey concerns to a Relic staffer. I want to take these concerns seriously and address them one at a time (because feedback does matter, in all forms).
1 :: "as soon as a negatively-tinged thread comes up, it gets locked"
There are currently three locked threads on the front page, one of which had descended into complete name-calling. Open threads include suggestions on how to improve the dirt layer on Space Marine armour, criticism about the cover system, criticism about the choice of words the Marines use ingame, a thread discussing the shortcomings of Gabriel Angelos' animations, criticism on the map display, talk about fixing sync kills and another ongoing thread about Angelos, this time about how he looks.
I don't think the threads on the front page reflect this statement.
2 :: "the first page is curated" (to a specific end)
All forums are curated. This is a necessary part of doing forum moderation. However, when the number of critical threads easily beats the number of positive threads (there is, for the record, one outright positive thread), again I have to disagree with your statement.
If you want to define what exactly counts as "heavily critical" vs. "mild criticism" then you're welcome to do so, because at the moment I don't know what you mean exactly by those phrases. Someone being angry and disappointed about the game (while entirely allowed to feel that way) is not "critical". Sometimes threads are just venting emotion. "criticism" by itself is discussing the faults and flaws in something; you don't have to be negative in your outlook to be critical.
3 :: "i don't understand why similar threads aren't just merged"
To be blunt, because I made a judgement call. That's what moderation comes down to, a lot of the time. I don't do this expecting people to agree, and I do this having a lot of experience in managing forums. If you feel like you could also do a good job, there is nothing stopping you from applying (I don't think).
Moderation is a very tricky thing to do, because the people that feel singled out will feel like it's unfair. I've had - on these new forums alone - people from both sides of an argument in a thread complain that the other person didn't get punished. It's a bad assumption, given that you don't know how other posters have been moderated. In this case, there were a few factors.
Firstly, the thread title. A word in quotes sets off warning bells, as does putting it in allcaps. Spacing it out is the third warning bell just from the title alone. It implies discontent and gives off an air that the OP is unwilling to entertain the issue they're debating in the first place (and if you can't entertain counterarguments, then you are just simply venting).
Secondly, the topic of animations is incredibly overdone. I mean, incredibly. It's no reflection on the forum posters - with such limited information at the moment (only the Space Marines, etc) we don't have an infinite amount of discussion potential so some things are going to go around in circles. But this also means that moderation is therefore applied to keep the same people repeating the same viewpoints and getting into the same arguments with the same opposing posters. Nobody is learning anything, and people just continue to get frustrated.
Thirdly, the tone of the thread rapidly went downhill. People were assuming things about the posters who liked the clarity argument, assumptions about Relic's competence and motivations were increasingly thrown-around, and so forth. This does not create a fair atmosphere for discussion, particularly on a difficult topic that has been discussed several times before (exhaustively).
I don't have to justify my actions here, but I figured there was no harm in doing it this time around. With Relic apparently gearing up to release news about the Eldar, we should hopefully get some new mission content and units to talk about, and some fresh blood around here to break up the the regular thread participants a bit. I think it's necessary to prevent things from turning into this kind of situation.
Fadlan
Well I voiced my opinions in several threads. Some were locked some are not.
Most old school's folks done it too.
I hope some of it goes to Relic and maybe we will get some information about at least a few changes or not. We will see.
Fr3quency
I agree with you but dont understand where your optimism comes from. After seeing the producer interview I have lost all faith that relic really takes dow1/2 veteran feedback seriously. They have their game design set in stone and will continue with it until the bitter end.
I dont expect them to change the gabriel animation or rework leg movement animations because it involves alot of work to change that. Also fact is that if judging from youtube videos for instance, the feedback is not as bad compared to e.g. infinite warfare. Relic most likely thinks that the critics here are a vocal minority so why change the game for this minority?
The problem is that alot of people are happy with the state of the game, especially press who are driving public opinion more than us. Thats the case because either:
a) they have smaller quality standard expectations compared to many fans of the past games
b) dont care much
c) dont know the lore or dont know the predecessors and therefore cannot compare the obvious downgrade on many fronts even vs dow1
d) or actually like this kind of direction for whatever reason
Bottom line is that we can only hope that dow4 will be completely different game but for that dow3 will have to fail and then there never will be a dow4 ever imo.
Dranu
It would be nice to at least see some minor response in feedback like removing Gabriel's ballerina jump and changing it to like a jump pack or teleporter jump. Perhaps add sync kills for major/elite units with the suggestions made that remove control/RNG issues.
Such small changes would be a HUGE gesture to the fan base and I think increase sales significantly.
WarEagle
IMHO i like to point out that if the developers were actively responding to the criticism in the forums rather than ignoring them and waiting them to escalate to the point of which people start calling each other names, there wouldn't have been this much negativity in the forums.
i have joined other game forums while in development and one thing that i know from experience is that transparency of the games development has a major effect on the forum community.
if needing and example take Eternal Crusade...... not too long ago there was a huge argument in the forums over the game development regarding the map design which escalated real fast. rather than ignoring the negative comments, the developers of the game explained everything to the community to simmer down the heat
Mr_Ruin
Exactly, say to me ok we cannot do that cause of that, that and that. Do it without demeaning the fanbase, and without ''your opinion is only yours and therefore means nothing in the long run''. And I will accept that. But saying that Wh40k is crazy and therefore who cares? Locking threads just cause they are negative? Ignoring? That makes me want to be even more negative ...
Gorb
Threads have to be constructive. Positive or negative tone is independent of that.
Your actions are on you, and not on anyone else. Let's not use something as a scapegoat, here.
amarines
You don't create a medium of communication, these forums, to formulate discussions about your product only to not participate in them. The time of game developers not interacting with their communities has long passed. We are at a point where WoW developers chat to their audience on Facebook, CS:GO developers discuss progress on issues/bugs on reddit threads and games like Dota have fluent responsiveness on their beta test server based on player feedback. Relic has done very little interaction on an informal basis which is a true loss when you see how effective informal conversation is over explicit announcements that are scheduled and structured after dozens of PR QA checks.
We would all be happy to hear from Relic, what they have done and why they have done it. Where are the passionate developers, designers and programmers who want to feed us all the reasons why they have made their decisions for DoW III in order to make it as amazing as prior titles? It would give us some comfort to understand their decision making. Yes I am sure we will occasionally want to pick apart a few game-critical elements but that's just the nature of people adapting to the changes. Further elaboration on this point is not necessary as both @WarEagle and @Mr_Ruin have have outlined this point exceptionally, let us here from Relic.
Admittedly I may have been over critical of you @Gorb in my prior post, obviously I can appreciate you are moderating this forum on rules which rely on the ambiguous task of you measuring the emotional nature of each thread. The threads you're closing shouldn't close down from moderation but naturally with closure. Lack of transparency always causes people to get restless and resistant, it a global trend of human nature.
Edit: spelling
Gorb
I see that sentiment a lot, and believe me locking threads isn't something I'm trigger-happy on . . . but ultimately it doesn't work. Some threads don't disappear naturally because people are invested into keeping whatever argument is going, going. After a certain point the thread itself becomes a lost cause more than any particular representation of the posters inside it, and it's easier to simply lock the thread so people can see what went wrong (as supposed to deleting several pages of offending content).
I mean, the situation varies. Sometimes I'll take that other approach. But, it is less transparent than a lock post and leaving the thread visible to all!
Zimbo123
Agree with these points completely.
I'm watching the development progress on another game being developed by another company (which is an indie company btw) and they stream twice a week and during which they answer questions relating to the game development and even imports on things into Italy!
I can understand that Relic may not want to do this for obvious reasons, but customer interaction is critical at this day and age.
Fadlan
I like paradox interactive and their team of streamers, which always shows new games months before release, even with bugs, like once a week and if they find error they write it down to fix it.
It's worked nice for Hearts of Iron IV for example.
Dranu
The question is: will Relic react to feedback and implement any changes based on it?
WarEagle
well looks like there is a effect
https://community.dawnofwar.com/discussion/8561/feedback#latest
that means that they are responding
that is a first step on the right path
Mr_Ruin
So this thread actually did succeed in making them communicate more. Bravo, guys.
WarEagle
aha like the smell of success in the morning ....... or am i smelling heresy either way i am cool
Zimbo123
Yep it's great to see them responding, hopefully it keeps continuing as its good to see what they're thinking and why they're doing it beyond the 'clarity' thing
SharKnight
Well but are they listening to the feedback? that is an entirely different thing I guess, but at least it's out there.
Zimbo123
Yep, we can't be sure of that yet, but hopefully we will see that they've listened in later vids and info about the gameplay and art.
Ellie
I think its more that people are just saying the same things over and over again, and instead of posting in the loads of threads that already exist about it, they have to make their own new one. this can be annoying for moderators when you see 5 new threads and 4 of them are just parroting eachother.
SharKnight
Art direction has been incredibly lacking so far. I mean they literally got gave giant coin to Macha's forehead and got rid of her ponytail, turning her into the most generic farseer ever.
And dont let me get started on other characters.
g0ll0
I've been supporting this game and I really like the game play however I can not stay silent over the graphics and animations they just look poor I was a dota player and people comparing this to dota doesnt make sense but I installed LOL and OMG this game is just identical graphically even they ported some lol mechanics like brush cover I see a lot of icons above the units that difficult my vision... graphics looks extremelly simple for a Relic game I've never critized a relic game graphically until now after installing LOL I can see where relic took inspiration in one of one of the ugliest and childish game Iv'e played...after seeing the new environment (which also looks horrid and cartoony) I know one should judge a game by its game play but seriously this is the worst relic job graphically I've seen.. I hope they fix that because it is annoying at least for me just google lol screenshots and torchligh and compare it to dow3.... Relic was know for its originality but now they are copy pasting other studions features into their games.... and there is nothing wrong with LOL but that game was made for 8-18 years old players even dota is a little bit more mature however for a RTS ( w40k) this setting just look weird in a dow game... everything else is ok but IMO Relic should focus on animations and graphics add a little bit more realims to the game, understand that adult people like rts
Psychodrake
Reading the official response has just put me off the game further. It was just extra confirmation of what we already knew was taken out as well as some attempts at sugar coating the whole thing.
It really bothers me that there's this huge outcry over general visual detail, yet it's thwarted with a simple "We and GW are happy with how they look". What happened to overachieving like Relic have done in the past? Are we just settling for what costs the least to produce and what makes the most return now?
I wish I was one of the people happy with all the changes, I really do. I've been wanting more Dawn of War for a long time, but I didn't want a de-evolution of the series.
g0ll0
well is happening.. you see games like overwatch, lol, torchlight.. they are using cartoony and childish graphics to attract players ( 8-12 years old players) that works well in a moba like lol but in a RTS? I dont think so is just annoyng for my eyes seing GA jumping like a LOL hero or Librarian doing no sense animations .. I think you can have clarity in a game without turning it into a cartoony childish game even sc2 looks more darker than DOW3
SharKnight
Where did they said such thing?
I think they failed, because she did not need a redesign and on the process they didnt even keep her silhuette which is what made Macha different from the other generic Farseers. The animations of her cape and pony tail when she moved where one of my favorite things on DOW 1 when playing Eldar.
I hope so, and besides I dont think Relic realises what the stripes on her face are supposed to mean because those came out of 4chan.
Gorb
Alright, I don't think that there's a need to repeat the same three lines of conversation in three separate threads, @SharKnight. This thread is for debating the validity of feedback - not for your personal grievances with Farseer Macha.
You even opened a dedicated thread for it! So let's leave it over there, please.
SharKnight
Agreed.
I wonder if the feedback its passed or if sometimes the guys from the studio sometimes surf around here to see reactions or what they think etc.
Saffron
I hope Macha gets better hair then the current one, and please remove that coin