The main thing is that you can no longer see when the moderators comment which is really annoying as that's how I always knew when to look at certain posts for info. Now that you can't see that I don't want to spend time looking at posts to see mod comments. This really needs to be fixed and I don't understand why that is taking so long.
I mean this post to be an honest inquiry. Is this no longer an effective way to communicate with the community team? Should we be moving to Discord as a primary platform?
I have to ask, because it seems like communication frequency has nose dived on this platform. There may be a flurry or two of activity from time to time but overall it feels like it nosedived into the abyss. Pinned posts now feel outdated and irrelevant more often than not and time sensitive feedback about AW isn’t getting the acknowledgment it use too.
The game seems like it still has legs but I dunno about the forums… do we all move to Discord and call time of death on the forums?
The two main moderators (Jaxx & Miike) left for reasons and now nobody has actually stepped up ... Dvae was suposoed to be doing it but barely ever see comments from him they're just letting it die.
Guess the poor communication we've had for years is about to get a lot worse 🤷♂️
Or...... Dave is trying to get acclimated to the role that Miike had been doing for 8 years or so.
I think that’s a fair point to raise, but it also seems like the forums have been a low priority compared to other communication channels based on the administrative disorganization and timeliness of communications here compared to other venues, which is why I think it’s worth raising this question.
Most devs aren't paid to go on forums and many are quite scared (rightfully) of coming on here, it is only really the community managers that do that. With the current state of the game, the community managers have been very busy, so you're right that forums is a pretty low priority for kabam at the moment.
In the discord, you can mute the whole thing except for the things in the information channel. Most of the time it is the same announcements that are found in forums anyways. Otherwise the discord is mostly there for the community to chat with each other. If you're really interested in what the devs are saying, you'll have to know how to search discord messages from specific people. The ones that talk the most, from what I've seen, are DLL, Vin_Cent, and nahkip.
I hate to use terms the young folk like to abuse these days, but here it goes. If the forums are a low priority, that's perfectly fine. If they would rather use a third-party platform than an already well established community in their own platform, that's fine. But they could and should communicate that instead of just ghosting the community here.
I mean this post to be an honest inquiry. Is this no longer an effective way to communicate with the community team? Should we be moving to Discord as a primary platform?
I have to ask, because it seems like communication frequency has nose dived on this platform. There may be a flurry or two of activity from time to time but overall it feels like it nosedived into the abyss. Pinned posts now feel outdated and irrelevant more often than not and time sensitive feedback about AW isn’t getting the acknowledgment it use too.
The game seems like it still has legs but I dunno about the forums… do we all move to Discord and call time of death on the forums?
The two main moderators (Jaxx & Miike) left for reasons and now nobody has actually stepped up ... Dvae was suposoed to be doing it but barely ever see comments from him they're just letting it die.
Guess the poor communication we've had for years is about to get a lot worse 🤷♂️
Or...... Dave is trying to get acclimated to the role that Miike had been doing for 8 years or so.
I think that’s a fair point to raise, but it also seems like the forums have been a low priority compared to other communication channels based on the administrative disorganization and timeliness of communications here compared to other venues, which is why I think it’s worth raising this question.
Most devs aren't paid to go on forums and many are quite scared (rightfully) of coming on here, it is only really the community managers that do that. With the current state of the game, the community managers have been very busy, so you're right that forums is a pretty low priority for kabam at the moment.
In the discord, you can mute the whole thing except for the things in the information channel. Most of the time it is the same announcements that are found in forums anyways. Otherwise the discord is mostly there for the community to chat with each other. If you're really interested in what the devs are saying, you'll have to know how to search discord messages from specific people. The ones that talk the most, from what I've seen, are DLL, Vin_Cent, and nahkip.
I hate to use terms the young folk like to abuse these days, but here it goes. If the forums are a low priority, that's perfectly fine. If they would rather use a third-party platform than an already well established community in their own platform, that's fine. But they could and should communicate that instead of just ghosting the community here.
What ghosting is to be had? Crashed still comments on the people who were "incorrectly" banned, and I've Pinwheel comments on quite a few different threads. I feel like forums having the issue where they don't show moderator comments just leaves people to believe that no communication ever happens anymore. IIRC, it took Jax awhile before he was really commenting on forum things when he was new, and Miike was hardly ever commenting on things before Jax came here.
It isn't that they have a higher priority on the discord, it is just there are more of them on the discord than there are here. Forums is a scary place and quite honestly, lots of people are just downright rude to the devs on here. I know I wouldn't want to be here with how they're often treated. However, that's beside the point. The point is that the people on forums are all new to them. The new community managers are Dave, who hadn't played mcoc in forever, and Pinwheel who hadn't ever played mcoc IIRC. They came in here with either no knowledge, or outdated knowledge and need time to gain some of that knowledge for themselves while answering questions and concerns that they can.
@Pikolu i totally understand that a forum guardian wants to defend the forum in all aspects, that’s fine. I would do the same but it really feels abandoned here. No attack bro
I mean this post to be an honest inquiry. Is this no longer an effective way to communicate with the community team? Should we be moving to Discord as a primary platform?
I have to ask, because it seems like communication frequency has nose dived on this platform. There may be a flurry or two of activity from time to time but overall it feels like it nosedived into the abyss. Pinned posts now feel outdated and irrelevant more often than not and time sensitive feedback about AW isn’t getting the acknowledgment it use too.
The game seems like it still has legs but I dunno about the forums… do we all move to Discord and call time of death on the forums?
The two main moderators (Jaxx & Miike) left for reasons and now nobody has actually stepped up ... Dvae was suposoed to be doing it but barely ever see comments from him they're just letting it die.
Guess the poor communication we've had for years is about to get a lot worse 🤷♂️
Or...... Dave is trying to get acclimated to the role that Miike had been doing for 8 years or so.
I think that’s a fair point to raise, but it also seems like the forums have been a low priority compared to other communication channels based on the administrative disorganization and timeliness of communications here compared to other venues, which is why I think it’s worth raising this question.
Most devs aren't paid to go on forums and many are quite scared (rightfully) of coming on here, it is only really the community managers that do that. With the current state of the game, the community managers have been very busy, so you're right that forums is a pretty low priority for kabam at the moment.
In the discord, you can mute the whole thing except for the things in the information channel. Most of the time it is the same announcements that are found in forums anyways. Otherwise the discord is mostly there for the community to chat with each other. If you're really interested in what the devs are saying, you'll have to know how to search discord messages from specific people. The ones that talk the most, from what I've seen, are DLL, Vin_Cent, and nahkip.
I hate to use terms the young folk like to abuse these days, but here it goes. If the forums are a low priority, that's perfectly fine. If they would rather use a third-party platform than an already well established community in their own platform, that's fine. But they could and should communicate that instead of just ghosting the community here.
What ghosting is to be had? Crashed still comments on the people who were "incorrectly" banned, and I've Pinwheel comments on quite a few different threads. I feel like forums having the issue where they don't show moderator comments just leaves people to believe that no communication ever happens anymore. IIRC, it took Jax awhile before he was really commenting on forum things when he was new, and Miike was hardly ever commenting on things before Jax came here.
It isn't that they have a higher priority on the discord, it is just there are more of them on the discord than there are here. Forums is a scary place and quite honestly, lots of people are just downright rude to the devs on here. I know I wouldn't want to be here with how they're often treated. However, that's beside the point. The point is that the people on forums are all new to them. The new community managers are Dave, who hadn't played mcoc in forever, and Pinwheel who hadn't ever played mcoc IIRC. They came in here with either no knowledge, or outdated knowledge and need time to gain some of that knowledge for themselves while answering questions and concerns that they can.
Their absence isn’t helping. Posting once in 3 weeks doesn’t help them engage with the community here. It doesn’t take game knowledge to clean up the forums. It doesn’t take game knowledge to post the announcements here that they’re posting in discord.
I believe Dave's time is divided into so many areas (forum, Kabam headquarters, family), that it might be a bit more challenging for him. Let's not forget that he actively plays the game too, and manages his YT channel.
I mean this post to be an honest inquiry. Is this no longer an effective way to communicate with the community team? Should we be moving to Discord as a primary platform?
I have to ask, because it seems like communication frequency has nose dived on this platform. There may be a flurry or two of activity from time to time but overall it feels like it nosedived into the abyss. Pinned posts now feel outdated and irrelevant more often than not and time sensitive feedback about AW isn’t getting the acknowledgment it use too.
The game seems like it still has legs but I dunno about the forums… do we all move to Discord and call time of death on the forums?
The two main moderators (Jaxx & Miike) left for reasons and now nobody has actually stepped up ... Dvae was suposoed to be doing it but barely ever see comments from him they're just letting it die.
Guess the poor communication we've had for years is about to get a lot worse 🤷♂️
Or...... Dave is trying to get acclimated to the role that Miike had been doing for 8 years or so.
I think that’s a fair point to raise, but it also seems like the forums have been a low priority compared to other communication channels based on the administrative disorganization and timeliness of communications here compared to other venues, which is why I think it’s worth raising this question.
Most devs aren't paid to go on forums and many are quite scared (rightfully) of coming on here, it is only really the community managers that do that. With the current state of the game, the community managers have been very busy, so you're right that forums is a pretty low priority for kabam at the moment.
In the discord, you can mute the whole thing except for the things in the information channel. Most of the time it is the same announcements that are found in forums anyways. Otherwise the discord is mostly there for the community to chat with each other. If you're really interested in what the devs are saying, you'll have to know how to search discord messages from specific people. The ones that talk the most, from what I've seen, are DLL, Vin_Cent, and nahkip.
I hate to use terms the young folk like to abuse these days, but here it goes. If the forums are a low priority, that's perfectly fine. If they would rather use a third-party platform than an already well established community in their own platform, that's fine. But they could and should communicate that instead of just ghosting the community here.
What ghosting is to be had? Crashed still comments on the people who were "incorrectly" banned, and I've Pinwheel comments on quite a few different threads. I feel like forums having the issue where they don't show moderator comments just leaves people to believe that no communication ever happens anymore. IIRC, it took Jax awhile before he was really commenting on forum things when he was new, and Miike was hardly ever commenting on things before Jax came here.
It isn't that they have a higher priority on the discord, it is just there are more of them on the discord than there are here. Forums is a scary place and quite honestly, lots of people are just downright rude to the devs on here. I know I wouldn't want to be here with how they're often treated. However, that's beside the point. The point is that the people on forums are all new to them. The new community managers are Dave, who hadn't played mcoc in forever, and Pinwheel who hadn't ever played mcoc IIRC. They came in here with either no knowledge, or outdated knowledge and need time to gain some of that knowledge for themselves while answering questions and concerns that they can.
I keep seeing devs getting brought into the discussion, and I want to clarify. I don’t think anyone has an expectation for devs to be active on the forums. At least I don’t, I’d rather the devs were here as little as they need to be. I’m incredibly appreciative and grateful to them when they post but my point in bringing this up is that the community managers really seem to be invisible here right now. And I think you highlight one of the reasons why, if there is more interaction on discord because there are more employees to interact with, then that seems to be the priority then, doesn’t it?
But at the moment the forums feel like a ghost town outside of the player base and that deserves to be pointed out. This isn’t an attack, just an issue that needs attention and clarification
Pretty sure Dork and Pinwheel are still getting acclimated. You gotta understand that we went from 2 very experienced CM's on MCOC to 2 brand new ones. Its probably gonna be awhile longer before things come fully into swing again but I seriously doubt this forum is getting axed.
Also, the Discord is pretty cool. I imagine most of the users in here complaining about it simply don't understand how to use it. You can always mute the player communication channels and just keep notifications on for the actual information channels. You can also find the devs in the server and search through what they've said for literally any information you're looking for that's accessible. It's certainly a lot better than the search function here.
Pretty sure Dork and Pinwheel are still getting acclimated. You gotta understand that we went from 2 very experienced CM's on MCOC to 2 brand new ones. Its probably gonna be awhile longer before things come fully into swing again but I seriously doubt this forum is getting axed.
Also, the Discord is pretty cool. I imagine most of the users in here complaining about it simply don't understand how to use it. You can always mute the player communication channels and just keep notifications on for the actual information channels. You can also find the devs in the server and search through what they've said for literally any information you're looking for that's accessible. It's certainly a lot better than the search function here.
Yeah I prefer the forums but people here make the discord sound so complicated when it’s really not. If you want announcements there’s a separate channel for that
I read the forums most days while I'm eating lunch. If I see a question I know the answer to I try to answer, but for the most part I do it to try to keep the team appraised of potential issues and concerns. You can bet that any thread longer than a few pages I have seen, and if it's important I have let the relevant people know that something is amiss.
This obviously isn't the ideal 2-way street of communication but as others have said, please be patient with the community team while they ramp up to their new roles.
Thanks Crashed, you weighing in is appreciated, especially on your own time.
What’s the actual run way for the forums being cleaned up with old pins being removed and when can we expect the community team to be more active on here again?
I mean this post to be an honest inquiry. Is this no longer an effective way to communicate with the community team? Should we be moving to Discord as a primary platform?
I have to ask, because it seems like communication frequency has nose dived on this platform. There may be a flurry or two of activity from time to time but overall it feels like it nosedived into the abyss. Pinned posts now feel outdated and irrelevant more often than not and time sensitive feedback about AW isn’t getting the acknowledgment it use too.
The game seems like it still has legs but I dunno about the forums… do we all move to Discord and call time of death on the forums?
The two main moderators (Jaxx & Miike) left for reasons and now nobody has actually stepped up ... Dvae was suposoed to be doing it but barely ever see comments from him they're just letting it die.
Guess the poor communication we've had for years is about to get a lot worse 🤷♂️
For the record:
Miike (Jeet) was laid off along with a number of other Marketing employees
Jax(Jackson) resigned to become a community manager at Unity
Dave was involved with (and will return to focus on) King Arthur: Legends Rise, now releasing imminently
Pinwheel was/is running Disney Mirrorverse community relations
Most importantly, the guy doing the most impactful communication on the boards (Crashed) happens to be the MCOC live game lead/strategic game economist/ gatekeeper of 7* releases/ core revenue team member, which no offense to community managers, is waaaaay below his paygrade. Clearing up a high altitude question here and there is fine, but closing threads, banning people and arguing with argumentative malcontents is not an economically sound use of this man's salaried time, in my professional opinion.
In short, there's no 1000% dedicated employee to this forum that will interact with the members the way Miike and Jax did. 1000% there's game folks looking at the boards, but most have the good sense not to get into yelling fights with users who **** on their hard work.
Curious where you got your info, but Miike is doing just fine at Diablo Immortal now.
I mean this post to be an honest inquiry. Is this no longer an effective way to communicate with the community team? Should we be moving to Discord as a primary platform?
I have to ask, because it seems like communication frequency has nose dived on this platform. There may be a flurry or two of activity from time to time but overall it feels like it nosedived into the abyss. Pinned posts now feel outdated and irrelevant more often than not and time sensitive feedback about AW isn’t getting the acknowledgment it use too.
The game seems like it still has legs but I dunno about the forums… do we all move to Discord and call time of death on the forums?
The two main moderators (Jaxx & Miike) left for reasons and now nobody has actually stepped up ... Dvae was suposoed to be doing it but barely ever see comments from him they're just letting it die.
Guess the poor communication we've had for years is about to get a lot worse 🤷♂️
For the record:
Miike (Jeet) was laid off along with a number of other Marketing employees
Jax(Jackson) resigned to become a community manager at Unity
Dave was involved with (and will return to focus on) King Arthur: Legends Rise, now releasing imminently
Pinwheel was/is running Disney Mirrorverse community relations
Most importantly, the guy doing the most impactful communication on the boards (Crashed) happens to be the MCOC live game lead/strategic game economist/ gatekeeper of 7* releases/ core revenue team member, which no offense to community managers, is waaaaay below his paygrade. Clearing up a high altitude question here and there is fine, but closing threads, banning people and arguing with argumentative malcontents is not an economically sound use of this man's salaried time, in my professional opinion.
In short, there's no 1000% dedicated employee to this forum that will interact with the members the way Miike and Jax did. 1000% there's game folks looking at the boards, but most have the good sense not to get into yelling fights with users who **** on their hard work.
Curious where you got your info, but Miike is doing just fine at Diablo Immortal now.
Yeah… after the serpent update… after thread after thread of minor changes that would keep him tough but make him just a bit fairer and value skill more… and the ignoring the pending Enchantress AW placements debacle… I think we safely can call this a dead space for meaningful engagement.
I read the forums most days while I'm eating lunch. If I see a question I know the answer to I try to answer, but for the most part I do it to try to keep the team appraised of potential issues and concerns. You can bet that any thread longer than a few pages I have seen, and if it's important I have let the relevant people know that something is amiss.
This obviously isn't the ideal 2-way street of communication but as others have said, please be patient with the community team while they ramp up to their new roles.
Thank you and I appreciate for your honesty. But I have a question, what made the balance team decide that Serpent is fine as is and doesn’t need a nerf? Don’t they know the backlash they would receive from other people who called for a rebalancing?
I come to forums to read up on user's opinions, answers from community regarding game strategy, and general entertainment. In that respect, forums are not dead at all.
Howdy Summoners, the Forums are still a priority on our side and we'll continue to make adjustments and beef up our presence. Discord is not our singular priority just to put that to rest, and we'll continue to improve! Thank you for the continued feedback.
I read the forums most days while I'm eating lunch. If I see a question I know the answer to I try to answer, but for the most part I do it to try to keep the team appraised of potential issues and concerns. You can bet that any thread longer than a few pages I have seen, and if it's important I have let the relevant people know that something is amiss.
This obviously isn't the ideal 2-way street of communication but as others have said, please be patient with the community team while they ramp up to their new roles.
Thank you and I appreciate for your honesty. But I have a question, what made the balance team decide that Serpent is fine as is and doesn’t need a nerf? Don’t they know the backlash they would receive from other people who called for a rebalancing?
The balance team's job is to perform balancing. It is not to satisfy the expectations of the vocal elements of the player community.
I'm not saying they got it right on Serpent. I'm saying the people who wanted changes aren't necessarily right either, and if you can't exercise proper design judgment without being unduly influenced by outside chatter, you are not qualified to be a game designer. You listen, you observe, you perform your own analysis, and then at the end of the day you do what your judgment tells you is correct, factoring all relevant facts.
I was not following Serpent closely, but I can say that there have been many times I was made aware of upcoming changes where I was pretty sure there would be significant backlash or push back by the community, or at least the loudest parts of it, and I say that to the devs when that situation arises. They acknowledge that, which they should, and then they do what they think is best for the game, which is also what they should do.
I'm sure they knew the Serpent balancing announcement would be unpopular. I'm pretty sure they knew Serpent himself would be an unpopular defender, period. I'm pretty sure that's explicitly intended.
I read the forums most days while I'm eating lunch. If I see a question I know the answer to I try to answer, but for the most part I do it to try to keep the team appraised of potential issues and concerns. You can bet that any thread longer than a few pages I have seen, and if it's important I have let the relevant people know that something is amiss.
This obviously isn't the ideal 2-way street of communication but as others have said, please be patient with the community team while they ramp up to their new roles.
Thank you and I appreciate for your honesty. But I have a question, what made the balance team decide that Serpent is fine as is and doesn’t need a nerf? Don’t they know the backlash they would receive from other people who called for a rebalancing?
The balance team's job is to perform balancing. It is not to satisfy the expectations of the vocal elements of the player community.
I'm not saying they got it right on Serpent. I'm saying the people who wanted changes aren't necessarily right either, and if you can't exercise proper design judgment without being unduly influenced by outside chatter, you are not qualified to be a game designer. You listen, you observe, you perform your own analysis, and then at the end of the day you do what your judgment tells you is correct, factoring all relevant facts.
I was not following Serpent closely, but I can say that there have been many times I was made aware of upcoming changes where I was pretty sure there would be significant backlash or push back by the community, or at least the loudest parts of it, and I say that to the devs when that situation arises. They acknowledge that, which they should, and then they do what they think is best for the game, which is also what they should do.
I'm sure they knew the Serpent balancing announcement would be unpopular. I'm pretty sure they knew Serpent himself would be an unpopular defender, period. I'm pretty sure that's explicitly intended.
They deserve the backlash for this. If all the top players to regularly compete in the hardest content in the game know how unbalanced and bad he is for the game, I’m not trusting the Kabam devs for this
Their analysis shows that he’s hard but balanced but I haven’t seen any defender do anything as outrageously unfair as him. They could never justify this defender as being good for the game. I’d love to see this so called data
I read the forums most days while I'm eating lunch. If I see a question I know the answer to I try to answer, but for the most part I do it to try to keep the team appraised of potential issues and concerns. You can bet that any thread longer than a few pages I have seen, and if it's important I have let the relevant people know that something is amiss.
This obviously isn't the ideal 2-way street of communication but as others have said, please be patient with the community team while they ramp up to their new roles.
Thank you and I appreciate for your honesty. But I have a question, what made the balance team decide that Serpent is fine as is and doesn’t need a nerf? Don’t they know the backlash they would receive from other people who called for a rebalancing?
The balance team's job is to perform balancing. It is not to satisfy the expectations of the vocal elements of the player community.
I'm not saying they got it right on Serpent. I'm saying the people who wanted changes aren't necessarily right either, and if you can't exercise proper design judgment without being unduly influenced by outside chatter, you are not qualified to be a game designer. You listen, you observe, you perform your own analysis, and then at the end of the day you do what your judgment tells you is correct, factoring all relevant facts.
I was not following Serpent closely, but I can say that there have been many times I was made aware of upcoming changes where I was pretty sure there would be significant backlash or push back by the community, or at least the loudest parts of it, and I say that to the devs when that situation arises. They acknowledge that, which they should, and then they do what they think is best for the game, which is also what they should do.
I'm sure they knew the Serpent balancing announcement would be unpopular. I'm pretty sure they knew Serpent himself would be an unpopular defender, period. I'm pretty sure that's explicitly intended.
They deserve the backlash for this. If all the top players to regularly compete in the hardest content in the game know how unbalanced and bad he is for the game, I’m not trusting the Kabam devs for this
Their analysis shows that he’s hard but balanced but I haven’t seen any defender do anything as outrageously unfair as him. They could never justify this defender as being good for the game. I’d love to see this so called data
1. i remember when Kabam actually showed the data behind balancing a few years back, to respond to the "show the data" thing. It didn't do anything super productive because, to be blunt, most people aren't data analysts.
2. Data only says what's happening. Data cannot tell you what's supposed to happen. Balancing is about making what is happening into what's supposed to happen, and the target for what's supposed to happen is a matter of design judgment. If you say "this is happening" and the devs say 'yeah, that's what we want to happen" then what? How do you prove they are wrong? You can't, because intent can't be right or wrong. What if the intent of Serpent is to make you mad when you fight him? Then they've succeeded. Maybe you think that's never supposed to happen. But every piece of content with any sort of difficulty makes somebody mad. If you can't make players mad, you can't design content.
3. "I have never seen any defender do anything as outrageously unfair as him" is something I've heard before. In fact, so many times it just sounds like a low buzz to me. That's not to say Serpent is not an overpowered defender: he may be. But the notion that because a lot of people claim he is, he must be, is not particularly convincing. The problem with that argument is that it has been used far too many times to be meaningful. You might as well threaten a boycott, which would be another one of those "too many times, no longer has meaning" things.
I don't trust anyone blindly, but this much is true. There has *always* been defenders that have been called unfair. And in every single case, without changing a hair on their heads time eventually proves them to not be, once the playerbase learns how to deal with them. So when it comes to the devs making game destroying unfair defenders, the players accusing them of this are so far batting zero.
There are a lot of players out there who know way more about Serpent than I do, and straight up know more about the game as a whole than I do, that think Serpent is overtuned defensively. I respect that opinion. But find me one that was right before when the devs were wrong - they believed a defender was unfair, Kabam disagreed, and to this day long past the point where players have had a chance to learn how to deal with them it is still considered an unfair defender - and I'll listen.
Comments
But they could and should communicate that instead of just ghosting the community here.
It isn't that they have a higher priority on the discord, it is just there are more of them on the discord than there are here. Forums is a scary place and quite honestly, lots of people are just downright rude to the devs on here. I know I wouldn't want to be here with how they're often treated. However, that's beside the point. The point is that the people on forums are all new to them. The new community managers are Dave, who hadn't played mcoc in forever, and Pinwheel who hadn't ever played mcoc IIRC. They came in here with either no knowledge, or outdated knowledge and need time to gain some of that knowledge for themselves while answering questions and concerns that they can.
Everything have a shell life..
But at the moment the forums feel like a ghost town outside of the player base and that deserves to be pointed out. This isn’t an attack, just an issue that needs attention and clarification
Also, the Discord is pretty cool. I imagine most of the users in here complaining about it simply don't understand how to use it. You can always mute the player communication channels and just keep notifications on for the actual information channels. You can also find the devs in the server and search through what they've said for literally any information you're looking for that's accessible. It's certainly a lot better than the search function here.
This obviously isn't the ideal 2-way street of communication but as others have said, please be patient with the community team while they ramp up to their new roles.
What’s the actual run way for the forums being cleaned up with old pins being removed and when can we expect the community team to be more active on here again?
I'm not saying they got it right on Serpent. I'm saying the people who wanted changes aren't necessarily right either, and if you can't exercise proper design judgment without being unduly influenced by outside chatter, you are not qualified to be a game designer. You listen, you observe, you perform your own analysis, and then at the end of the day you do what your judgment tells you is correct, factoring all relevant facts.
I was not following Serpent closely, but I can say that there have been many times I was made aware of upcoming changes where I was pretty sure there would be significant backlash or push back by the community, or at least the loudest parts of it, and I say that to the devs when that situation arises. They acknowledge that, which they should, and then they do what they think is best for the game, which is also what they should do.
I'm sure they knew the Serpent balancing announcement would be unpopular. I'm pretty sure they knew Serpent himself would be an unpopular defender, period. I'm pretty sure that's explicitly intended.
Their analysis shows that he’s hard but balanced but I haven’t seen any defender do anything as outrageously unfair as him. They could never justify this defender as being good for the game. I’d love to see this so called data
2. Data only says what's happening. Data cannot tell you what's supposed to happen. Balancing is about making what is happening into what's supposed to happen, and the target for what's supposed to happen is a matter of design judgment. If you say "this is happening" and the devs say 'yeah, that's what we want to happen" then what? How do you prove they are wrong? You can't, because intent can't be right or wrong. What if the intent of Serpent is to make you mad when you fight him? Then they've succeeded. Maybe you think that's never supposed to happen. But every piece of content with any sort of difficulty makes somebody mad. If you can't make players mad, you can't design content.
3. "I have never seen any defender do anything as outrageously unfair as him" is something I've heard before. In fact, so many times it just sounds like a low buzz to me. That's not to say Serpent is not an overpowered defender: he may be. But the notion that because a lot of people claim he is, he must be, is not particularly convincing. The problem with that argument is that it has been used far too many times to be meaningful. You might as well threaten a boycott, which would be another one of those "too many times, no longer has meaning" things.
I don't trust anyone blindly, but this much is true. There has *always* been defenders that have been called unfair. And in every single case, without changing a hair on their heads time eventually proves them to not be, once the playerbase learns how to deal with them. So when it comes to the devs making game destroying unfair defenders, the players accusing them of this are so far batting zero.
There are a lot of players out there who know way more about Serpent than I do, and straight up know more about the game as a whole than I do, that think Serpent is overtuned defensively. I respect that opinion. But find me one that was right before when the devs were wrong - they believed a defender was unfair, Kabam disagreed, and to this day long past the point where players have had a chance to learn how to deal with them it is still considered an unfair defender - and I'll listen.