Are OCR (and Marketing) missing the marks?
By
Aura_Familia,
Posted on: 2010-09-08 17:14 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I recently came back after a prolonged break and I can definitely see a dramatic drop in dev posting. The community reps seem to only post if they want announce something. Isn't the job of the CR to be involved with the community, not ignore them?
The only dev that seems to post with any frequency is Noble Savage, which I appreciate greatly. Unfortunately the devs have taken a "head in the sand" approach to any large issues that arise in the community. This goes back to the advent of Mission Architect debacle all the way to the Party Pack concerns that have recently been raised. All we get is some announcement that raises hackles and they sit in stone faced silence while we beg for more information. I won't even get into the whole CHVC mess, that got me so livid that I washed my hands of that section entirely.
I don't buy this busy excuse either. They were busy in the past and still found time to address concerns. Is it so much to ask the community rep to actually interact with the community? Am I being too presumptuous to actually expect them to do their job?
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OCR, or Online Community Reps.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
What's an ORC, by the way?
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That's a good point, and I'm sorry for forgetting to mention the former EU Community Reps in my list in the OP. Before the forum merge, a lot of us in the US kept tabs on the EU Community Reps (especially since event announcements typically happened on the EU forums before they did on the US forums), so we got a good impression of them too.|
Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
I agree.
Coming from the EU where we had outstanding and responsive OCRs in the forms of Brdger, Kerensky and Ghost Raptor, we now have cold efficiency at best. |
Edit: rectified the problem with the OP
There are different devs / OCRs working on CoH/V now. Despite their usual "hello" posts when they are announced, they rarely post past that point. For those forum members who have been around a while, there is quite a difference.
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Ah, I see. Sorry about flipping the acronym like that. I didn't notice I had.
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Originally Posted by Obsidius
OCR, or Online Community Reps.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Considering what most of the old reps posted about was banter and mingling, neither of which I'm interested, I can't say I miss that. The level of actual practical community interaction does not feel to have dropped by a noticeable amount. We get fewer rep posts now, but the posts we do get are down to business, which I enjoy.
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Originally Posted by UnSub
There are different devs / OCRs working on CoH/V now. Despite their usual "hello" posts when they are announced, they rarely post past that point. For those forum members who have been around a while, there is quite a difference.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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The funny part is that when the Community Reps posted a lot, people protested that they wanted to hear more things directly from the Developers, especially when things were changing. We get more posts from Devs, and now people wonder where the Community folks went...
Can't have it both ways, people. CRs only tell us what's ready to be told. If the Devs are too busy to tell the CRs what to tell us, or don't have anything new to report, the CRs stay silent and focus on community events.
I'm betting one reason you're not seeing much in the way of Community Surveys or the like is because they've already gathered enough information from past queries to keep themselves busy for quite a while. Why keep asking about future requests when you've already got more than enough on the plate right now? When the wish list reaches a certain level of completeness, they'll start up the surveys again.
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
While I was adding to the OP, I remembered another point I wanted to mention:
In my personal opinion, it seems as if the forums (including important things like patch notes) seems like they're becoming less community-oriented and more like Marketing Tools. That's not necessarily a bad thing, when the balance is right, but I have to take into account two personal experiences that happened around the launch of Issue 18, which was obviously a big Marketing goal:
- The CHCV debacle - enough has been said on this subject to fill an entire book, but IMPO, there was a lot of cleanup in order to make the forums more presentable to the general public, as well as eliminating discussion of competing video game product, both of which obviously have huge Marketing implications.
- 3D Sound and Win Vista/ Win 7 - Support for DS3D was removed for these to OSs for Issue 18 (without an OpenAL replacement), but not documented anywhere on the official patch notes (Support directed me to Zombie Man's guide as the official documentation). Obviously, including things like this might take away form all the shine of Issue 18, so I have to wonder if this omission was intentional. Even weeks after I mentioned it to Support, the official I18 Patch Notes and Known Issues still do not mention this change.
I understand that Marketing is important to draw new blood into the game... but should it be at the cost of the contentment of existing players? It was this question that almost caused me to hang up my cape after six years as a loyal customer. It was guys like David Nakayama and Matt Miller who made me reconsider, fortunately.
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I edited my previous post to remove a single sentence: "There's a reason we have a separate Community Digest." I didn't want to touch on this because it might come off wrong to existing community reps, but since you bring it up...|
Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
The funny part is that when the Community Reps posted a lot, people protested that they wanted to hear more things directly from the Developers, especially when things were changing. We get more posts from Devs, and now people wonder where the Community folks went...
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Once long ago, both community reps and developers shared the same digest. Invariably, it became filled up not just with patch notes announcements and such, but with a whole bunch of community events I didn't care about in the slightest, as well as a few rep's off-topic posts on movies, games, events, comic books and suchforth. I personally have no problem with our red names mingling with the community, but I check the Dev Digest because I'm looking for new juicy info on the game, or important comments on the game.
I, myself, never said anything about it, and I don't remember if other people did, but we got the Digest split between Dev and Community, and I know it became much easier for me to track specific developer communication that had significant implications on the actual game. Now that the mods basically hand out announcements and occasionally step in to put down explanations, I doubt the split is as necessary, but I'd lie if I said I didn't appreciate it at the time.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I've considered this angle... then considered the Party Pack. The amount of feedback since the Party Pack announcement has been astounding, but astounding feedback to a stone wall is a bit fruitless. Its seems as if they'll be pushing it out without even responding to feedback at all, yet alone reacting to it.|
Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
I'm betting one reason you're not seeing much in the way of Community Surveys or the like is because they've already gathered enough information from past queries to keep themselves busy for quite a while. Why keep asking about future requests when you've already got more than enough on the plate right now? When the wish list reaches a certain level of completeness, they'll start up the surveys again.
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IMPO, it seems like they could have used a survey to figure out what should be in the next pack, given what's been announced and the reception it's received.
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I hate to repeat myself and essentially cross-post, but as I said in the announcement thread for the Party Pack - when rednames go silent, marketing is to blame. Obviously I can't know for certain, but that's my theory.|
Originally Posted by Obsidius
I've considered this angle... then considered the Party Pack. The amount of feedback since the Party Pack announcement has been astounding, but astounding feedback to a stone wall is a bit fruitless. Its seems as if they'll be pushing it out without even responding to feedback at all, yet alone reacting to it.
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It's likely well-buried by now, but another thing brought up in the thread is that the Party Pack has a lot of incredibly suspicious and downright ignorantly-designed elements to it.
Honestly? I'm cynical enough to believe that the party event is a last-ditch, low-cost attempt at drumming up interest in the pack. I could easily be wrong, but my imagination tends to wander when left in silence.
Never surrender! Never give up!
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I don't necessarily agree. The Devs deal with game stuff; what they're working on, what's coming up, explaining technical issues ("We can't do this because...") and stuff. The OCRs deal with community stuff; community events, patch notes, forum conduct and all kinds of other stuff. |
Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
Can't have it both ways, people. CRs only tell us what's ready to be told. If the Devs are too busy to tell the CRs what to tell us, or don't have anything new to report, the CRs stay silent and focus on community events. I'm betting one reason you're not seeing much in the way of Community Surveys or the like is because they've already gathered enough information from past queries to keep themselves busy for quite a while. Why keep asking about future requests when you've already got more than enough on the plate right now? When the wish list reaches a certain level of completeness, they'll start up the surveys again. |
Sure there's a fair bit of x-over but there is no reason why a well run community can't have it both ways. We are customers, after all.
Thelonious Monk
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Doh! Why do I only now realise that my typo caused me to type out Orc? What's an Orc, you say? I dunno, but Warcraft seems obsessed with them.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
What's an ORC, by the way?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Well, a few things here:|
Originally Posted by Obsidius
Warning: block of text, mild rant, nostalgia, possible Appeal to Antiquity
Remember back to August 2008 when a mysterious Marketing Survey was sent to random City of Heroes/ Villain players asking them what they wanted for the future of the game? I do, although I did't receive the survey personally, I only read about it here on the forums and on related gaming sites. And almost all of it has come to pass, and some of it may still be waiting in the wings. The reason I bring this up is because, for the past several months, there hasn't been a lot of communications from the Community Relations staff. Good communications implies bidirectional interchanges. Recently, we've been recieveing a lot of announcements about contests, some forum-run contests that ended a month ago, and general game announcements and patch notes... but nothing in the way of communicating with the community on a more casual level. You might get told about how to buy or win the latest booster pack or costume power. You might get told about the latest GR contest from a third party, or get the latest patch notes. You might get told by a moderator why your thread was closed or your post was deleted (if you're lucky). But OCR, as of late, hasn't been really doing much asking as to what player want, nor have they been responding to player concerns over certain bugs, problems, booster packs, etc. What happened to casual community queries and banter? Where have the polls and surveys gone? Looking back on the "Community Digest", there's not a lot of replies to any particular player-created threads... just a litany of one announcement after another, or clarification of an announcement, or clarification of some contest rules. No communications, just mostly, for lack of better words, mouthpiece talk. Lately, it seems as if developers themselves (Noble Savage, for instance) are the only people communicating with the community - not necessarily a bad thing (we love it when devs post), but by appearances, it seems like OCR could be doing something similar to increase the level of communication between the developers and community. |
1) Referring to a leaked confidential & targeted marketing survey as an example pretty much misses the mark. You don't know that they're not still doing such surveys, just enforcing the confidentiality side more.
2) Said survey came around the time of the massive reinvestment into CoH (going from the under-two-dozen devs to over 100, iirc) and represented a moment to develop a creative vision for going forward. The vision that came from that covered this expansion and could cover more gameplay to come-- it could be that they're not at the point where they need that very broad approach again.
3) As you noted, some devs prefer direct channels. Sure, we haven't had any forum-related surveys like before, but we have the Art director managing and responding to several targeted threads for feedback, input, and criticism... and he's responded to all of them. Those could all have been channeled through community relations, but we wouldnt' have the direct conduit to the dev.
Thus, we can't really tell if there's been a net decrease in feedback or just a change in where the message has come.
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The impression I've gotten over the past few months is that it seems as though OCR has gone from a casual, friendly relationship with the community to one that's a bit more cold as impersonal. Understandably, OCR isn't an easy role, especially following in the footsteps of people like CuppaJo, Cricket, Lighthouse, Ex Libris, Nivienne, Bridger, Kerensky and Ghost Raptor. That's not to put down the current OCR staff, but most of those people were community powerhouses... and big shoes to fill. And understandably, OCR has been busy lately. Even without HeroCon this year, between SDCC, the launch of GR, and PAX, all within the matter of a few months, things are undoubtedly busy for Paragon Studios with all the press junkets and Meet & Greets. And now add to that the beta testing of Issue 19 and 20, and one more event to come, not to mention in-game events. Even so, that's not a reason to post more on the forums, to remark about concerns players may have over upcoming booster packs, persistent bugs, game feedback, and a gamut of other player issues. Even if you are reading and making note, saying something as "We're looking into it" would be better than the silence that has greeted even the official "feedback" threads as of late. |
Their takeaway was 1) don't rely on JUST what your forum base says and 2) don't neglect the rest of your base. In-game community relations has the potential to reach the forumites AND the rest.
It could be argued that the previous OCR's-- with very heavy forum presences-- focused TOO MUCH on the forumites. We've seen a general increase in GAME activity run by these guys- Rikti raids, zombie hunts, parties, etc. They try to make a presence at many player-run events-- including some PvP ones.
These take time to prepare and time to run, so you can't do that AND keep the broad presence on the boards of their predecessors.
The party pack? I don't know... We've had plenty of people joke that they'd pay extra for dance packs... could be that all the sports animations that were developed for Praetoria were just thrown in to sweeten it. Sure, it isn't for everyone... but thats' the point of optional add-ons. Used to be that people would complain when the devs "wasted my $15 on stuff I don't want."
The original rationale that MANY MMO devs gave for optional packs was that they could be used to develop assets that aren't for everyone or just otherwise couldn't be justifiably budgeted. Complex dance emotes, to me, fit that bill.
The problem is one of perceived value... and a history of packs that made habitual buyers out of the people that don't value dance emote.
In defense of the devs and the party pack: Early in beta, someone discovered the popdance, which closely resembles Michael Jackson's famous dance moves. There were a large portion of us that were so amuzed that we stood around dancing instead of running the tip missions (Praetoria wasn't open at the time). And the chatter on the Beta testers channel was almost all about the dance and the other new emotes and stances.
If there was a dev acting as a fly on the wall, and there usually is during beta, we may have given them the impression that we thought this was the best thing since sliced bread. And it was . . . for a free new emote.
50s: Inv/SS PB Emp/Dark Grav/FF DM/Regen TA/A Sonic/Elec MA/Regen Fire/Kin Sonic/Rad Ice/Kin Crab Fire/Cold NW Merc/Dark Emp/Sonic Rad/Psy Emp/Ice WP/DB FA/SM
Overlord of Dream Team and Nightmare Squad
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Then we're on the same page, unfortunately.
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Originally Posted by IanTheM1
I hate to repeat myself and essentially cross-post, but as I said in the announcement thread for the Party Pack - when rednames go silent, marketing is to blame. Obviously I can't know for certain, but that's my theory.
It's likely well-buried by now, but another thing brought up in the thread is that the Party Pack has a lot of incredibly suspicious and downright ignorantly-designed elements to it. Honestly? I'm cynical enough to believe that the party event is a last-ditch, low-cost attempt at drumming up interest in the pack. I could easily be wrong, but my imagination tends to wander when left in silence. |
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One has to wonder though: given the online community on the forums, the people to which it was sent (some of whom were and are big presences on the forums), and the magnitude of the questions on the survey, might it be possible that Marketing was counting on the survey to be leaked? It's a brilliant move to create buzz, whether the intention was inferred or not. If it was intentional, it's something that Marketing got right.|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
1) Referring to a leaked confidential & targeted marketing survey as an example pretty much misses the mark. You don't know that they're not still doing such surveys, just enforcing the confidentiality side more.
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| 2) Said survey came around the time of the massive reinvestment into CoH (going from the under-two-dozen devs to over 100, iirc) and represented a moment to develop a creative vision for going forward. The vision that came from that covered this expansion and could cover more gameplay to come-- it could be that they're not at the point where they need that very broad approach again. |
In any case, couldn't OCR pick up part of the slack in communications?
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3) As you noted, some devs prefer direct channels. Sure, we haven't had any forum-related surveys like before, but we have the Art director managing and responding to several targeted threads for feedback, input, and criticism... and he's responded to all of them. Those could all have been channeled through community relations, but we wouldnt' have the direct conduit to the dev. Thus, we can't really tell if there's been a net decrease in feedback or just a change in where the message has come. |
Case in point: Black Pebble's thread. Although the resolution hasn't been the most timely (probably due to situations beyond his control), the back-and-forth has been good.
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Back in 2004-2005, at one of the developer conferences, a research group presented info that, based on datamining on several MMO's, they had online community forums that were visited at least once a week by 5%-9% of their player population. Never past 10%. Additional surveys indicated that this 5%-9% didn't represent a cross-section of the base. Their takeaway was 1) don't rely on JUST what your forum base says and 2) don't neglect the rest of your base. In-game community relations has the potential to reach the forumites AND the rest. |
It's Marketing the forums to new players, at the cost of a content, loyal fanbase. But, I guess OCR has to follow the orders of those holding the purse strings
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It could be argued that the previous OCR's-- with very heavy forum presences-- focused TOO MUCH on the forumites. We've seen a general increase in GAME activity run by these guys- Rikti raids, zombie hunts, parties, etc. They try to make a presence at many player-run events-- including some PvP ones. These take time to prepare and time to run, so you can't do that AND keep the broad presence on the boards of their predecessors. |
Edit: Speaking of the City Scoop, if memory serves me, one of the key reasons it never returned was due to a lower amount of support from OCR. But I'll have to dig through some Snow Globe posts to nail down a quote.
Edit 2: never mind, it's a Lemur Lad quote:
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| There's also the unfortunate fact that after the departure of Lighthouse and Ex Libris, a lot of our support from the staff dried up. No disrespect to our current community team (truly. I got nothing but love for them), but it became very hard to progress, when we weren't getting any feedback on the new forums and when they were coming and how they would work from a technical standpoint. |
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Not the only one.
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Originally Posted by Obsidius
Then we're on the same page, unfortunately.
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Thelonious Monk
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I have to wonder if there are new people on the Forum and if they will be staying. Customer loyalty seems to matter little. See CHVC forum and pvp.
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Originally Posted by Obsidius
While I was adding to the OP, I remembered another point I wanted to mention:
In my personal opinion, it seems as if the forums (including important things like patch notes) seems like they're becoming less community-oriented and more like Marketing Tools. That's not necessarily a bad thing, when the balance is right, but I have to take into account two personal experiences that happened around the launch of Issue 18, which was obviously a big Marketing goal:
I understand that Marketing is important to draw new blood into the game... but should it be at the cost of the contentment of existing players? It was this question that almost caused me to hang up my cape after six years as a loyal customer. It was guys like David Nakayama and Matt Miller who made me reconsider, fortunately. |
I know it's been a long time, but I still miss CuppaJo.
I agree with the OP by the way, I remember when a community rep would drop into a topic where people were discussing an issue with the game and say something like "that's a good question, I'll point this topic out to castle" or something similar. Of course for all I know they still do stuff like that, just without posting to let people know.
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I know it is hardly a promise, but in one of the Q&A's my question got answered. It was pretty much "Will there be new dance emotes in Going Rogue?" and the answer was (I think from Positron) "Yes."|
Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea
In defense of the devs and the party pack: Early in beta, someone discovered the popdance, which closely resembles Michael Jackson's famous dance moves. There were a large portion of us that were so amuzed that we stood around dancing instead of running the tip missions (Praetoria wasn't open at the time). And the chatter on the Beta testers channel was almost all about the dance and the other new emotes and stances.
If there was a dev acting as a fly on the wall, and there usually is during beta, we may have given them the impression that we thought this was the best thing since sliced bread. And it was . . . for a free new emote. |
I didn't expect them to back out of that and put the dance emotes into a paid extra.
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Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
I'm going to add my opinion and say I would like more interaction with forum peeps and devs/ OCR. But all things considered, we don't always get what we want and complaining about it gets us no where... perhaps we should pm red names links to our threads and important issues to make sure they are getting the point.
And if they turn off pms or block us you know something is wrong. Like my grandpappy always use to say, you can't always believe people will come to you, sometimes you have to meet them half way... (I was selfish when I was little.)
I think OCR and marketing dropped the ball on the new party pack. It may end up being profitable for them and that's cool with me because I like the game and the people who make it.
But their lack of response to a mostly negative reception from the players does not sit well.
50s: Inv/SS PB Emp/Dark Grav/FF DM/Regen TA/A Sonic/Elec MA/Regen Fire/Kin Sonic/Rad Ice/Kin Crab Fire/Cold NW Merc/Dark Emp/Sonic Rad/Psy Emp/Ice WP/DB FA/SM
Overlord of Dream Team and Nightmare Squad
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I know for a fact I stopped reading the Community Digest when Ex Libris made it a habit to just strike up idle conversations with people on the forums, and I haven't gone back to reading the Community Digest yet. I have no problem with developers and community reps just having fun and chatting it up on the forums, but it's not something I'll specifically seek out and read.|
Originally Posted by Zaloopa
I know it's been a long time, but I still miss CuppaJo.
I agree with the OP by the way, I remember when a community rep would drop into a topic where people were discussing an issue with the game and say something like "that's a good question, I'll point this topic out to castle" or something similar. Of course for all I know they still do stuff like that, just without posting to let people know. |
And that's pretty much what our Community Reps used to do - hang out a lot.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Thelonious Monk