The Community Needs Better Communication From Kabam

trk20

I recently watched Kabam Broccoli's interview with Prof Hoff. It was amazing, and gives me new hope for the game as a whole despite the future absence of the legend himself. However, I came out from watching the interview with a takeaway that I think needs to be heard and understood.

There absolutely needs to be better communication between the Kabam team and the community.

Hold up!- I can already hear the thoughts; "Thanks captain obvious", or alternatively, "That would just put unnecessary strain on the team and slow down more important things", and so on- please just read before making judgement.

What i'm saying is that it's the kind of interaction, not necessarily the amount of it, that needs to change. Forum posts are interaction, yes, but as is very obvious from the responses from the community is that they FEEL impersonal- points are too easily misinterpreted to be passive aggressive or dismissive, and it's really bad when that sort of thing happens, for everyone involved.

The best received communications have consistently been the instances where the passion of the developers is on display: Dev Diaries, and most recently the aforementioned interview with Broccoli, are examples of what communication from the Kabam team should look like, but I think even the odd unedited "talking head" video could do a lot to show the community, as Broccoli said in his closing statement for his interview, that Kabam cares. The community doesn't need to be TOLD that, persay, but the connection to the team and excitement for the game's future should be implicit in every interaction where it is possible.

Another way this could be done is by doing collaborations with some of the numerous content creators- I think (although this might just be my opinion) that they are a criminally underused resource. They are the people who know both the game and it's community best from the player side, and public interactions like interviews, as I think is aptly demonstrated by the recent Prof Hoff one, would go a long way to both ease current tensions and get players excited for what's to come.

Furthermore, even if it is hard to make this happen, I sincerely believe that it would be worth it. The community at this point in time is very much not in a good place, and I think this might be (at least part of) a solution.

This post comes at a time where I suspect very major things are coming to the game in the near, things that I think could be unjustly overshadowed by current issues, and I hope it is taken to heart.

@Kabam Miike if you (or any other members of the team) do end up seeing this post, I hope that my intention with is it clear - I want this game I love playing and its community to be the best it can, and criticising what has happened in the past is not my intent. What I want, and what I hope you want as well is to see the game grow and evolve in a positive way.

Thanks for taking the time to read this and have a good day

SpagNidus

Go check out how Digital Extremes interacts with its community. They are fantastic and a lesson could be learned.