Feed back from TWI. How do you feel?

[shadowmoses]

The game has been out now for some time. We have all seen this community's forums, ripe with Praise, Comments, Suggestions, Concerns, Gripes. How do you feel the developers have communicated with us during a time where there are lot's of opinions floating about? Have you felt that the post(s) you have seen and made have been fully realized or just blown off? Do you think that TWI should be communicating with us or do you feel that since they are larger now, they should be focusing less on the community and more with their projects?

On a side note, if you feel that TWI should be communicating more, would you like to see it in the form of a Dev Blog? We have heard of one coming but have yet to see it. Is that even important to you?

 

[Andrew Blake]

It's been adequate, it's no point that TWI says infrom us of everything. Because it's unlikely they can promise everything they say.

But still would be nice if they would get up in the loop again, what they are thinking and planning. now that the vacations are over...

 

[Destraex]

I agree. Too much communication can be a very bad thing.
The small TWI crew have no time on their hands and some people have 24hrs a day on their hands to watch with eager anticipation and pick at every detail.

I like to know in general what is going on and TWI have done that. I know in general what vehicles and game modes are coming.

Soon we will know what is planned for this year.

TWI still have to finish the game as advertised .... but I am enjoying it as is with a lot of anticipation for the missing features.....

We have lots to look forward too.

 

[_Dariuszek_]

Such topics only pushing TWI.
You are not helpful writing like this.
In my opinion, communication is excellent, I'm on TWI IRC, so I saw Yoshiro's friendly attitude, he is always helpful.

Try to ask about something ppl from DICE!

 

[SnowyOak]

My first reply disappeared, and I don't know why. -.-

 

[shadowmoses]

My first reply disappeared, and I don't know why. -.-

This is a repost. I'm sorry about that. I posted 2 posts, both which out the poll attached. :/ This is the third attempt. Feel free to repost your respond.

 

[SnowyOak]

I'm 100% positive that I posted it here first, but it's mysteriously gone.

Anyways, I'll water it down and be more vague this time, so as to not tempt whatever force decided to erase the last version.

TWI has been exceptional at working on their game based on user reviews. They might not be communicating perfectly at times, but we've seen alot of changes that were requested over the last few months.

EDIT: Lulz! I just found it & you were right. I didn't realize there were 2 other similar posts :X

 

[shadowmoses]

I'm 100% positive that I posted it here first, but it's mysteriously gone.

http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=73943

Again. Please pardon my noobishness. I don't often post polls

In my opinion, communication is excellent, I'm on TWI IRC, so I saw Yoshiro's friendly attitude, he is always helpful.

I hear you. Not everyone is on the IRC, however. I too have spent time on the IRC and see Yoshi's helpful contribution, in and out of IRC.

 

[Don Draper]

Im fairly happy with there communication... but i am not happy with the amount of work they have done.

They should have more done by now and more content.

So for me to vote i am happy with the communication would be misleading in that TWI could take it i am happy with there progress, which i am not.

Im starting to get Conspiracy therorys in my head regarding TWI and the SDK too.

I am truelly starting to believe they are delaying it so they can sell more add on content like rising sun before they release the sdk. As they have been discussing wether it will be a commercial add on. IF they release the SDK and heaps of maps and mods are done no one will really care so much for rising sun while mods are free.
I think they are rethinking how the SDK should be released now while they have a couple of potentioal adds on they could sell.

But i could be wrong, this only occurred to me the other day when i was thinking...where the hell is all this stuff..been over 3 months...excluding the intial release date setback.

 

[Zetsumei]

The amount of communication is good, but especially early communication wasn't really something that made me happy in the way how the community was lead to think the game was different than it is. Its typical in marketing to make a game appear better than it is to sell as many copies as possible, but generally its a big part that makes community lose its trust in the words of developers.

I don't mind if you promise something and simply cannot make it in the end, but with essets of the game people were scared off from the beginning and then trying to appease the community for those features while knowing that said systems are exactly how the community fears them, that annoys me.

Next to that when a lot of people were displeased with how the game played, all TWI talked about initially that everybody was just whining and the game is a great success in posts meant to calm the community. Even if you think that's the case, that's not really the most ideal way of handling with the community.

Together with effectively in the communication with the community stating that our opinions are not important and that we represent a neglectable part of the community isn't exactly what you want to hear either. Especially since the forums are pretty much the only place where you can poll a large part of the games community.

I can handle a lot of bugs, I can live with slow changes. Those are all things of being part in a niche commmunity, but in return for all short comings I expect honesty from a dev in working with the community.

 

[SiC-Disaster]

What Zets said, I could not have said it better.

 

[r5cya]

communication about patches and the direction of the game is fine, but they really need to hire someone full time, to answer question from those poor people in the support forum, that can't even play the game or get answers as to why they can't. why have a support forum, if there's hardly any support? i been waiting over a month for a simple sound card question to be answered. twice i was told they'd get back to me. a dedicated support person would have been able to handle that.
it seems like only one out of ten questions in support even get attention from anyone at trip.

 

[Don Draper]

Next to that when a lot of people were displeased with how the game played, all TWI talked about initially that everybody was just whining and the game is a great success in posts meant to calm the community. Even if you think that's the case, that's not really the most ideal way of handling with the community.

Together with effectively in the communication with the community stating that our opinions are not important and that we represent a neglectable part of the community isn't exactly what you want to hear either. Especially since the forums are pretty much the only place where you can poll a large part of the games community.

Now they are asking us what we want in a poll 1 week out from christmas.
Kinda stange that.

I can handle a lot of bugs, I can live with slow changes. Those are all things of being part in a niche commmunity, but in return for all short comings I expect honesty from a dev in working with the community.

I wouldnt consider it (RO2) a niche game...maybe the community is, considering its origins in RO1. I think that is a mistake.
This was big release game in reality... not to the scale of a BF3 but big enough. plenty of marketing went into it.
RO2 has not been specifically made to fill the needs of a existing niche community....nor create a new niche community.
I think you labeling it niche lets them get away with thinking they can leave things till they have the time...almost like making games is a hobby to TWI.
Making games for TWI is a buisness now....not a hobby.
Get on with it TWI.

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

For the most part, I think communication has been pretty good. I don't always agree with what is said, or in some cases don't like it (the .0001% was actually a bit insulting), but overall answers and feedback are decent for the size of the company.

I also think that TWI misread the community a bit. Obviously RO2 attracted a larger audience but was unable to keep it. It seems a lot of the newer players may have dropped it because of bugs or optimization, while much of the older RO1 vet crowd state they are more forgiving towards bugs (or don't notice them like players from other games), but the gameplay changes are annoying compared to RO1. Now they are more clear on addressing many bug and gameplay issues than previously and we shall have to see how things go after the holiday break.

 

[AmazingMilto]

Its been fantastic, Tripwire have been doing a glorious job.
Sure the process is slow, but they arent exactly a giant team.

It must be a little disheartening for TWI, when they seem to get hated on at every turn, sure they haven't made the best of decisions and at certain points this can piss us off. But, Tripwire are some of the greatest developers there are when it comes to community, there is no doubt about it.

 

[Apos]

I agree with Zetsumei and Mr Moe posts, nothing to add much. I appreciate what Yoshiro and redeye (support forum) do to communicate with us and help in technical difficulties.

Regarding "you are only 0.001%" felt really offensive. That sounds like "you bough my product, love it like we do or leave it, we don't care about you anymore". TWI should remember, that first Red Orchestra (mod / Ostfront) was the reason why they got enough money to become a game developer. Many of us bough (and enjoyed!) Killing Floor to support TWI in creation of Red Orchestra 2. But somebody decided to screw us, release Heroes and explained that very low number of players online fault is release of MW3. That really hurt. From award winning RO you switched to accessible Heroes, game for masses that no one cares.

For the future: I really would like to hear TWIs statement of "What we are up to poll". Perhaps someone else from TWI, not only Yoshiro, can tell us "what they are up to" and what do they think about poll results. It's been 3 weeks already.

You also can blame DICE for many things, but I like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield3/comments/nwy8o/discussion_of_bf3_weapon_accessories_and_their/
They write a post what exactly they are going to change in game and see community reaction (free agenda). But here again, TWI ignored many community opinions and suggestions in the past regarding RO2, that were discussed long time before game release.

 

[Cyper]

It's been.. quite quiet. But honesty, Its not possible to read through every post and topic, but I feel that many big time topics that have been discussed havent contained any post from TWI.

I do feel left behind and lost a quite good amount of trust for TWI when Ramm posted his big post, telling me that it was my job to fix the game to my likeing (e.i a proper realism mode which I was promised) and that I am not important because I am only a part of the 0,99% of all gamers out there. Well, where is the millions of cod and bf players then? The mainstream consist of over 20,000,000 of active players, yet not even half of them are playing RO2. Something went terribly wrong.

TWI can't have missed out what the community wanted. It must have been very clear because what we (the core community) want have been discussed a long time before RO2 was released, and what's been proven to work have already been seen in RO OST, and with all the mods its been even more clear what the community like and not like.

What I want is action. I have been more and more inactive on this board and I wont keep on giving any feedback if nothing happens. And if nothing happens in the long run, I see no real reason to spend time here. If something is being done it they should tell us. I don't want another board where the devs dissapear as soon as problems occur.

Truth is, its not a big problem. Its not really a big fix. If one can make a game like RO2 the suggested fixes we're asking for should be really simple.

Its just a matter of decision.

 

[Zetsumei]

text

The thing is TWI wanted indeed to have HOS leave the niche space, which is why they essentially stopped caring about the original niche community.

Although in the end HOS is more niche than Roost was, initial marketing and other stuff really helped sell games. But the player amounts of HOS are in the same order as the player amount of Ostfront was 2 months before the release of HOS while Roost was out for 5 years already.

With a successful sequel you expect that you keep the old player base of the old game for the biggest part and some more folk on top of that. Especially with the increased marketing budget and much higher initial sales than with Roost or KF.

 

[DasFist]

It's been.. quite quiet. But honesty, Its not possible to read through every post and topic, but I feel that many big time topics that have been discussed havent contained any post from TWI.

this is my main problem, whilst I think they have communicated a decent amount (compared to the way most devs are going these days, release game then never say a word), they do avoid answering the simplest of questions. Can we choose our own unlocks? just ****ing answer the question, it is not hard. So whilst they have communicated, they also stink of avoidance.

 

[gyps]

The initial sales lead TWI to believe that the RO vets were going to be the minority of the players hence the 0.01% comment and as such weweren't exactly ignored but were certainly sideline from a listening point ofview, which left a bad taste in many vets mouths, while they tried to cater for the larger newplayers , - however it quickly transpired that rather than the minority we are actuallythe main player base as most of the flash in the pan new players having movedon because of the initial bad start (bugs) and the game play not being what theywanted either.

Player numbers fell to a low and TWI were forced to re-thinktheir approach which to their credit they did and now we're starting to makeprogress - more info would be nice, to be fair Yosh had started doing aregular" what we are up to post" and hopefully that will continue nowthe breaks over last one dated 14/12/11 I think this includes the poll

Hopefully now TWI can re-build their relationship with the community,and the way to do this is by being open with us as they have been in the past,tell us what their thoughts are and lets get back the good days, when readingthe forums was a pleasure rather than a drudge