Let's look at a
couple of representative interaction with the fanbase.
PvP
Love it or hate it,
PvP, like PvE is large part of why people play MMOs. Currently PvPers
in SWTOR are pretty unhappy with the state of PvP. (See
http://www.xamxamsays.com/?p=1473
for an excellent post about why folks are unhappy with PvP).
The combat team has
been trying to interact with the PvP community and explain what they
are doing. Recently they explained their thoughts
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8122355#edit8122355
on the success of Sentinels/Marauders. They followed up with
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=8127209#edit8127209.
Reading these after
the fact it looks like a reasonable position. The problem is that the
second post is two days
later. If combat team had posted those two items as a single post
with a sentence saying something to the effect 'That's where we aim
our balance efforts (win/loss ratio), but we understand many of you
look to the leaderboards for evidence of overall class balance…'
they would have headed off much of the two days of vitriol.
Bioware
has to be the ones who connect the dots from how they view things to
how the fans view things. By saying, yes, we see that issue too and
are working to change it for the better Bioware acknowledges the
concerns of the fanbase (and demonstrates they are listening to the
fans, to boot!) No fanbase is going to like every answer, but when
you are listened to you have a reason as a fan to stay engaged with
the communication instead of just grumping about everything.
And,
yes, talking about the leaderboard situation might be a bit Captain
Obvious and repetitious for the combat team, but repetition is
crucial in communicating with your fanbase. You never know when any
particular fan is paying attention so you want to make sure you keep
your messages out there.
The Cantina
Depending on your
point of view, the cantina event at Star Wars Celebration was either
a success or just another Bioware screwup. Given the event was
designed to promote the game, Bioware did a poor job of communicating
what they would be talking about[1] to they most-engaged fans.
It would have been
much better if they had stated something like, 'The SWC cantina event
is for us to promote the coming patch (3.2) to the wider Star Wars,
non-SWTOR-playing audience. There will be a few new things, but don't
expect to see any huge reveals at this time.' That alone would have
helped set expectations properly for the engaged fans. (The fans that
read the forums, follow blogs and websites, listen to podcasts, watch
the videocasts and Twitch/Hitbox streams. Basically, your front line
influencers/tastemakers.) Knowing that Bioware was using the event to
try to expand the player base would have given the engage fans a
chance to help out. As it was, the lack of knowledge simple stirred
the dregs of disappointment as Bioware 'failed' to wow the existing
involved player base with a cool roadmap.
That disappointment
then bred cynicism with the Q&A portion of the event. While the
questions weren't supposed to be vetted, they certainly gave the
appearance of vetting. Vetting to the point of hearing the same
questions asked once again (playable Wookies, anyone -.-). Whether or
not the questions were vetted, Bioware should have announced that
they did vette the
questions. Vette them to add hard questions. If you are going to be
accused of something, make it work for you.
Here's
a couple of questions the fanbase perceived
as hard and that were vetted
out of being answered. I've
included hypothetical answers;
[Hard
question]: PvPers haven't had anything new in over a year. Could we
at least get a new map? We've
shied away from new maps because we didn't want to reduce the chance
of you getting your favorite map. Until we can implement a solution
for faster queue pops we don't want to mess with PvP in a possibly
negative manner. If you want more maps with the risk of seeing the
ones you like less, please sound off in our forums on the issue.
[Hard question]: Why
are we getting an Outfit Designer when we have adaptive gear? Why not
make everything adaptive and just give us a real Gear Manage instead?
First, making everything adaptive would require us to go back and
redo the rewards for all of the old quests. That's a non-trivial
amount of development time that we prefer spend elsewhere. Secondly,
we want to do a Gear Manager. If you considered the Outfit
Designer as a first step to seeing what kind of load such a system
might put on our databases then you might be thinking like we're
thinking. That said, we've had many requests for the ability to use
non-adaptive gear for cosmetic purposes. While recognize this adds
yet another cosmetic system, this was the easiest way for us to go,
development-wise.
Again, dealing with
questions the fanbase thinks you are going to just ignore is a great
way to start building credibility again.
Solutions?
From the fan base, a
goal should be to continue to talk about improvements fans want in
the game including possible
solutions. While folks are frustrated at many parts of the state of
the game, being constantly negative just gives the developers and the
community team the excuse to tune you out. Be fair, if they get it
right, say so. If they make a mistake, say why it is a mistake
without being person. There are enough trolls in the forums, don't be
one. A critical, but fair fan is more likely to rise above the noise
of the trolls and have their signal heard.
Suggest
solutions to problems you see. Bonus points if you explain why the
solution is a win-win for both sides. Bioware is going to expect any
solution a fan makes to be a win for the fan – it takes an unusual
fan to suggest a needed nerf – but a fan that can show how the
solution helps Bioware gives ammunition to the community team and
developers to push through changes. Yes, Bioware may have already
considered the change themselves, but when can point to community
support and acceptance of a possible solution the effort needed to
'sell' the resources required to implement a change becomes that much
less.
From
Bioware, more openness. Let us know if a cantina is going to reveal
new, major information, or if it is going to be aimed more at casual
player. (Engaged fans tend to seriously underestimate the lack of
knowledge the casual player has about upcoming changes.) Explain why
you do things from a developer perspective, but always, always,
ground those explanations in what the player base is looking at.
If
you want an example of what can be done, just look at what Greg
Street (Ghostcrawler) did for Blizzard. His willingness and tenacity
at engaging in a much larger, more vocal fan base changed the tone
and amount of interactions Blizzard has with its fanbase. It wasn't
easy, it took a lot of time, but engaging with your community pays
huge dividends. Dividends a smaller MMO can't afford to miss out on.
[1] Remember the
basics you learned in Speech class where a simple speech should be in
three parts? The first being about what you are going to talk about,
the second being the talk, and the third summarizing what you talked
about. The idea is to be redundant with your communications because
you can't tell when someone will be paying specific attention to what
you are saying.
