Why is it so hard for developers to be fully transparent with their communities?
LoverOfDemogorgon
Member Posts: 168
I just don't understand it, it seems to me if the developers actually talked to and asked the community on pressing issues via the forums the game would get a lot better and things would go a lot smoother. But community managers seem to cherry pick on the topics they intervene on, and mostly stay away from the pressing issues that cause much backlash or have controversy to them. I'm never went to school for public relations and all that but it seems pretty obvious to me honesty and clarity is the way to go, but is seems BHVR's dev team disagree's, I just am asking an honest question and would like an honest answer without any fluff speak.
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Comments
Yeah, My 9 page thread with 75 upvotes on the top post in General here? This one: https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/109666/dramatic-but-this-is-how-i-feel-now/p1
Yeah i asked Peanits about it on his stream and he told me "Oh I saw it, but I will be honest I didn't read it. It was clear you were upset, and we only read threads when they are Calm and Collected."
Oh well, sorry for being upset you gutted my favorite Killer again and made me lose faith in all of you. When he saw it was me asking about Legion and if they saw how many people thought they were bad now he said "Oh There's gonna be some bias in this."
Because absolute transparency makes the community feel like they have the right to demand this, that and the other thing even more than they already do. It's still the devs' game and it's up to them what happens.
Also a lot of what we see comes through community managers, we get responses when there's an agreed upon response to be had. It's probably the same reason we don't see a lot of devstreams any more, they get sick of saying "That's an interesting idea, but it's not on our radar at the moment."
Peanits does a lot of responding, and is more often than not the voice of reason on "nerf X" posts to point out why suggestions are simply not a fair change, but they don't need to respond to every single thread to be active.
When there is a severe issue, and people are demanding answers or changes, it's probably better for them to stay quiet than to say something uncertain and be held to that later. Like the Tome changes, there were pages of threads on it, but there's no sense saying "we're looking into it" until they actually knew for sure that changes would be made, or they may have to return with "nothing's changing" which would feel worse with false hope.
The problem is that transparency ISN'T a bad thing either. Look at games like MHW and Deep Rock Galactic. The developers are sharing lots of the communities over there and even LISTENS to popular feedback and the communities aren't "demanding" that the developers implement things.
The fact that Behavior used to listen and care what their community makes it all even worse. The only valuable members of the community to them in the current era of DbD are those influencers on Twitch and people who buy cosmetics without a care in the world.
This I feel is you are answering the wrong question here, the devs community managers never respond to the controversial or hot pressing matters for the reasons Ulven quoted above, because of "Bias" and "Emotion", of course there is going to be emotion and bias in everything but that does not exempt it from a read after a MAJOR patch. Many of these decisions seem to be made because they devs don't look at the majority of proper criticism because they classify it as said above. Imagine if they asked or polled a community on ptb or upcoming changes they would like to implement? Imagine how healthier and more concrete the changes would be because they asked their own community what THEY wanted, because guess what, it doesn't matter if it's their game, WE GIVE THEM MONEY, THEY WOULD BE NOTHING WITHOUT OUR SUPPORT.
Both of you are 1000% correct.
Ok, but people chuck a tanty every day of the week on here over every single thing. Nobody had to open that thread to get "Legion nerf bad" from it.
"Imagine if they polled the community on changes" Yeah, imagine if they polled a community that has to maintain roughly 4:1 play rates of 2 teams which changes should happen. Do you think problematic perks like Balanced Landing would ever get touched? Of course not.
You also make the assumption that many game forums do that the absolutely miniscule amount of people here, who are the sorts of people a poll would actually reach, let alone would respond to it, actually reflects the community as a whole.
You run a company like that, especially a video game, it get's run into the ground. Look at anthem or fallout 76 for an example of what lack of respect and clarity to your community, we respect them by giving them money to increase they quality of the product we invested into, if they want that income stream to last they BETTER respect us just the same and give us transparency to better suit OUR interests as we are the ones that invest into and play their game keeping it alive.
So just read the title and move on, ignoring all the feedback?
They don't have to read your thread. Your opinion is not some sacred text looked over and fed back to the developer team, and to top it off, you threw a tantrum and bothered him while he was streaming to ask why you weren't given the attention you wanted.
You do not understand the difference between a demand and transparency...
I am not asking for the devs to bend to my will when I ask for something
What I am asking and wish all game communities expected of their devs is for information that directly affects the balance of a game is to query the community on it in some fashion and to keep the lines of communication open to respond to controversial topics and issues that matter to those that play their game. In all honesty if the dev team simply asks their community the changes they want to apply majorly then the game and the community would be much healthier for it. Instead they are silent to most things and continue down a path of separation to the voices that cry out one thing and the devs do the exact opposite... how are we wrong for getting agitated when the devs do the exact OPPOSITE of what the community wants? THE COMMUNITY, we play the game so why do the reverse of what we think will make the experience better?
It's a protection thing, basically. Some things they're simply not allowed to comment on for confidentiality reasons.
But in general, they're just cautious about it. It's not a lack of transparency, so much as the fact that they know the community will latch onto their every word and call them out for being "liars" or something to that effect if they don't follow through. So they have to make sure that everything they say is correct and accurate, and that they don't make any promises they're not certain they can keep, because they're constantly under the spotlight and subjected to so much criticism.
And honestly, speaking of criticism, the amount of poop that's hurled at the devs on a daily basis would quite frankly make anyone reluctant to engage. So if they sometimes hold back from controversial topics because they would rather not be bombarded with abuse, I can't really blame them.
The other thing is they're just really busy. There are only a handful of CMs, and they get hundreds of tags and messages and replies on a daily basis (Peanits in particular). And being active on the forums is only one part of their jobs. It's not realistic to expect them to be hanging around here engaging with discussions and putting out fires all or even most of the time.
I've seen a dev comment on like, every major issue I've had with the game, though I had to dig a bit to find it. Honestly all they need is a dev tracker on their forums I think if it doesn't have one already, and it would be fine.
I've seen more dev talk here than in most games anyways; but it's mostly the same two devs but still.
He didn't throw a tantrum and people like you supporting the devs in their backwards corporate centric mentality is appaling. We aren't demanding they read every thread post, they don't seem to flippin read ANY of them or if they do they don't even answer the PRESSING ISSUE, i've seen peanits go into hot topics post's and answer smaller less weighty questions INSIDE that thread... do you NOT see a problem their? They cherry pick and ignore feedback they ASSUME is "BIASED" or "OVER EMOTIONAL" and where has that got them? Making backwards legion changes as such.
Good job trying to insult, attack, and upset me. Not gonna work.
There's policies to follow and more than likely, legal stuff.
Just because I shop at walmart doesn't mean they have to make changes or even listen to my feelings. At the end if the day, BHVR has the complete health of the game to consider. As players, it's common to only consider a part instead of the whole.
Sidenote, don't let a video game take a toll on your mental health. In the end, it's just not worth it ✌...
This would hardly ever be the case if devs actually made an effort to the communities liking's and not screw in alliance with overall balance, there would be much less anger and hate if they wouldn't create an experience in which players come back angry and hateful from, like I said, they don't ask their community on ANY upcoming changes, and don't even TRY to answer controversial issues, all people are doing is asking why, why this, why that? Is every single time the community managers are unequipped to answer these questions? Or as you claim they don't have the backbone to handle them.
There is literally a thread gathering questions for the AMA; you guys can't even give them time to do that before losing your ######### lol...
How does the current legion changes represent them having a firm grasp and understanding on what helps and fixes their game overall? They caused this firestorm
The devs cherry pick the heck out of those questions too, and they seem always resilient to ever go into specifics until patch notes on pressing issues, and hardly ever talk about the reasoning, and if they ever do the reasoning is backwards as heck and no one agree's with it. I would quote almo's response post to why the dev team nerfed deep wound all together instead of you know... NERFING THE LEGION ADDONS ONLY WHICH WAS THE ISSUE. They were okay with buffing borrowed time of all perks and hurting legion even more because... guess what? They are disconnected to what the COMMUNITY wants and place all criticism and feedback on the issue that doesn't align with their outlooks as "Biased" or "Over emotional"
One hell of an imagination you've got there.
I think you're severely missing the difference between "respect" and "bending over to every demand."
It's their product, their accomplishment and careers, and first and foremost their view for what they want to do to their creation comes first. You don't produce the backbone of a game then suddenly the players dictate everything from there out.
To be frank, we have plenty of feedback make it through to changes in the game. Yes, there's always a vocal minority that will oppose every change, especially when it's to something they like. That doesn't mean said changes weren't a net positive and improved the game for most people.
Also, they do go out of their way to find out how the community feels about changes. They have Player Feedback surveys, Q&As for every major patch, and more surveys every time they release a PTB. Not to mention the fact that the forums, well, exist. And that the devs are active on them at all.
What is the purpose of all that, if not polling the community on game changes?
You keep acting like i'm asking for the devs to always follow every thing the community asks them for, to the letter. I'm not but you seem to be dense so I'm done trying to convince you of anything else.
As far as it being the devs game, yeah I know that but you seem to be ignorant to the fact that investors exist that divy up the rights to the game, then publisher contracts, then players which dictate if the game even continues to be MARKETED and to EXIST, player bases will MAKE OR BREAK YOUR GAME. ASK ANTHEM.
You are so dense to our arguement's it is insane, like your entire philosophy is based off an misconception of what we are trying to say and point out... how does it feel to be so undeniably ignorant?
Stop, you're trying too hard.
I've not actually commented specifically on the topic you're addressing but someone else who thinks harassing devs on their streams, or in general is the appropriate thing to do, you're entirely missing the point of my comment, so sadly, the ignorance is all yours.
Same to you. I mentioned it in stream, he told me that then that he wasn't at work or anything. I told him sorry for bringing it up on his off day then dropped it. So, good job attempting to upset me when you have no idea what happened.
Anthem failed for more reasons than "lack of communication." A lot of it came down to being insanely money hungry when trying to break into a niche already occupied by an incredible free-to-play game.
What's the point of that when the devs classify important feedack as "Biased" and "Over emotional" Don't read entire posts because of it, and make changes that go in direct opposite of what the community would wish to happen? Over course this does not happen in every scenario but why are you so easy to forget the devs are honestly a but disillusioned what's the community wants, do we so easily forget how long it took for them to change DS? And why poll so heavily AFTER the changes, why not ask for feedback before they go live? Which they do on ptb's but what of non ptb changes that can gameplay just as heavily? It's better to prevent the firestorm than put it out
No imagination here.
You explained it quite clearly, you made a thread and got a super impressive 75 updoots, and wondered to yourself "why aren't the devs addressing my 75 updoots!" You then decided the appropriate action was to go to the devs twitch stream and question him on why you weren't given any attention, and then call him out on the forums as if he needs to give you an explanation as to why he didn't reply.