There is one problem I have with locking threads based on when they last had a post. Some of the love threads will go awhile without posts, but when something new comes up with that character people use the thread again. I have no problem with locking threads that have no relevance, but I think character fan threads should be an exception to this. Sometimes characters get new content, a new player discovers that character for the first time, etc, etc.

Agreed, this reminds me of Weird People You Meet in GroupFinder in the flashpoints/heroics board, which sometimes goes awhile without new posts but is a genuine classic.

Thanks for asking, Jackie Ko.

I agree with others about giving the Galactic Strongholds forum some love by moving it to the blank area above the Classes forum on the main forums page. There used to be a Customer Service forum (I think that's what it was called; it's been a while) located there. When all of the forums were given new icons, there was Dev mention of moving the Galactic Strongholds forum. That was years ago. It would be lovely if the Galactic Strongholds forum is moved to that empty spot.

Please lock necro'd threads, except for the long standing fanning over NPC threads (for example, this Vector thread), and The Weird People You Meet in Group Finder thread. Long may they stay.

Hi Jackie,

I would like to ask that the Strongholds sub forum finally gets an icon... and finally gets some replies to it from you guys. This is an activity in the game that is heavily monetized but doesn't get any attention from you guys.

The general type of topics are decoration suggestions, CM deco feedback, Stronghold suggestions and... hook placement: the bane of many decorators. But so far you guys have stayed utterly silent on these matters.

So I have to wonder why you created such a forum if you're not going to visit and respond to the topics there yourself.

The post is specifically about ways to improve the forums, not the game itself.

when you have a community manager who is actually willing to listen, i think we'd all try our best to get them to look at our issues...lol

Hi Jackie,

 

 

So I have to wonder why you created such a forum if you're not going to visit and respond to the topics there yourself.

Because it's a 'suggestion' thread, they can't seem to be favouring one idea over another, or if they comment positively on something, people can see it as a yes, and expect it next week, etc. It does suck, I've put many ideas there, and have seen many more brilliant ones, and it's frustrating not to know if they've even seen them, or are thinking about them.

The pvp forum section could use some love with regards to player feed back being mostly ignored. We are lucky to get a Yellow dev post every few months and when we provide feed back to these posts, they feel like they ignored.

An example is this one posted by Chris regarding the deserter lockout.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=985281

It was posted and it feels forgotten. Players have been giving feed back in that thread and many others to do with that topic and it feels ignored.

Because it's a 'suggestion' thread, they can't seem to be favouring one idea over another, or if they comment positively on something, people can see it as a yes, and expect it next week, etc. It does suck, I've put many ideas there, and have seen many more brilliant ones, and it's frustrating not to know if they've even seen them, or are thinking about them.

Aside from the fact that the strongholds section is a sub-forum and not a suggestion thread I think you may need to revisit your thoughts. However, I was asking Jackie as this is her thread asking for feedback on the forums. So you know...

To give you an idea, though, the Stronghold sub-forum also discusses errors and issues with Strongholds and decorating. Such as decorations having the same name, decorations not being categorized properly, hook placement being generally terrible in Strongholds, etc. And the Stronghold forum has little value if there is no participation of BW. That's what I'm saying with that question.

This thread is the perfect microcosm of one of the challenges, frustrations, and (frankly) annoyances you will face.

But before I begin...Welcome!

As demonstrated in this thread, there is the overwhelming perception that any forum outside of "General" is neglected, if not outright ignored. Based on my experience, that perception is well-founded. I can't think of the last time I checked a class forum. I think I checked the PvP forum a couple months ago. Obviously, you can't (nor should) post every time you've read a post, etc., but when there is such avoidance of other forums the outcome is easy to predict.

Point being, the people who post here tend to be passionate about the game. And, unsurprisingly, we all have our own biases and want to advance our agendas.

To wit: I posted about a bug in this thread b/c I had (and have) zero confidence that anyone in a position to do anything about it actually read my post in the bug forum. Given that several others posted about similar types of bugs in the Spirit of Vengeance FP (and Vulkk discussed it on his webpage), and there has been no response from BW, it doesn't exactly instill confidence.

Hence the reason you will receive a grab bag / melting pot / melange of disparate posts any time you post b/c we actually believe (or hope) someone from Bioware will actually read it.

Again, welcome to the forums!

Dasty the Hutt

Hello everyone, hope you’re all having a happy Friday. For those who may not know, I’m Jackie, and I just recently joined the community team here!

 

The reason I am making this post is to get a feel for what parts of the forums I can help improve, check in on, etc… So I am asking for your feedback and guidance on that. I do already have a small list based off of what I saw in my intro post. That includes:

 

Updating stickies/older posts

Being more active in general

Giving the PVP side of the forums some love

 

Feel free to leave links here of threads I can check out as well! Lastly, please give me details. If you say “the forums need help”, I need to know additional info as to what you mean by that statement.

 

I will ask for your understanding in that these types of environment changes do not happen overnight, but part of my job is to understand community sentiment and help the community thrive as a whole. That takes time.

 

To reiterate, this post is focused on feedback regarding the forums. As always, please keep feedback as constructive as possible. I love good vibes! Looking forward to getting to know you all!

 

 

*** First of all ... again welcome and thanks for additional opportunities to converse / interact with the community. It's rare in any game. I personally do not take this sort of thing for granted.

*** Yes... Updating "stickies" is always good. In fact I'd dare say that as much "updated information" across the board (not just stickies) would be a big help.

For example: Class help / builds and other related information. I do find it curious that in many games (not just SWTOR) that it is a common practice for many fans to have an established website with current "builds" etc .. IMO ... that's cool to see that sort of faithful commitment to a game. Years ago I use to have my own site.. Although it never really progressed past its infancy and for another genre (sorry about that).

The one thing that I do find curious is how often most development teamsof just about ANY game depend on those sites to provide " How to Guides" ... etc and do very little in helping players to better understand "current builds". This would include (again another example) the proper use of new items introduced as part of equipment/ builds. True that most of us who have been around for a while can figure it out ... new comers might not. Then begins the search .. Why should anyone have to rely upon offsite information to figure out how to play this game ?

*** PvP .. there have been a large number of threads over the last few years with some interesting / sound suggestions in that area. You will have to dig through that to make the best determination as to the direction you need to follow. Though I'm not active in PvP I do respect the fact that it does need attention. Balance in that area has to be the toughest part of ANY MMO ! Period !!

Progressive consideration, communication (forums which reflect that) and providing a platform to build player confidence in the area of PvP again will unquestionably be a challenge.

*** Other areas: "Forum Feedback" in general. IMO ... listening is a big part of that ! How a team responds to what is being said is important as well.

*** Additional input. There's a couple items I'd love to run by you. IMO .. might be better via PM to initialize. Your call. I respect your decision !

There is one problem I have with locking threads based on when they last had a post. Some of the love threads will go awhile without posts, but when something new comes up with that character people use the thread again. I have no problem with locking threads that have no relevance, but I think character fan threads should be an exception to this. Sometimes characters get new content, a new player discovers that character for the first time, etc, etc.

I agree. They're a place for fans of characters to meet up and talk their favorites. They're fun, they're positive, and it keeps it all in one place for convenience. People who don't want to talk about whichever chosen character a thread is about, doesn't have to go into it. Sometimes we just want to say hi to friends who like the same as we do. No harm in that.

The reason I am making this post is to get a feel for what parts of the forums I can help improve, check in on, etc… So I am asking for your feedback and guidance on that.

Here is my feedback for you: Read the complete dev tracker posts all the way back to 2011. (I'm serious!)

So that you realise how often we were promised better communication from BW's side and how often (read: every single time), we've been let down.

When you find some of the critical posts, go ahead and read the threads that eventually got a rare yellow post, to see how BW allowed things to escalate, when all it would have taken would have been an early answer or reaction. Even just an acknowledgement of something. Instead: silence. Example: The MASSIVE credit-making exploit of winter 2015/16 which BW allowed to go on over the christmas holidays, and then they punished the casual players who cheated just a bit, while the actual whales got away with trillions of laundered credits. It's the main reason why we consider 4 billion credits not so much these days. The inflation we witness now in-game started back then. And it was completely BW's fault. And up to today, they haven't done anything about it. If you don't believe me, as said, just read the dev tracker for proof. It's all there.

If you wonder why the flavour of this forum isn't as positive as you would hope, that's what happens if you leave a community unmanaged for many years. Read the whole dev tracker, if you want to understand why the forum is how it is. All answers are there.

By the way, this forum is HARMLESS these days. Boring even. It used to be much tougher.

That reminds me, is Mr. Kanneg doing alright? He is still in his job position? I ask, because despite him promising to communicate with us, he... well, again, just read the dev tracker. You probably have to click forward many pages to find a post from him.

Don't take it personal, I'm sure you're goodwilled, with a positive spirit and work attitude, but I expect that you will go silent before the end of the year. Like ALL other community management people* before you have done, despite all promises, despite us giving them chance after chance after chance, just to be left disappointed again.

I'm on this forum since 2009, if I remember correctly. It's the last forum I'm active on. But it gets less and less, as there isn't much point. As the latest example, just look at all the bug reports for 6.2 and the dev responses so far about it. We test new things on the PTS, give detailed feedback there, and then it all gets disregarded. This is the way.

Welcome to our forum!

*The only exception is that French guy from Ireland who posts as CommunityTeam, but if I remember correctly, he is actually from the customer support team.

My request is that someone employed by Bioware follow up on threads when we are told there will be follow up. You all have a dismal track record for actually doing said follow up. There will be little bursts of attention, but they quickly die out.

This one is a good example. A change happened in 2017, I reported it in game and in the bug forum and it was ignored. 2018 someone else started another thread about it in the bug forum that got more traction from players, but otherwise ignored. June 2019 Musco said he'd look into it during one of the eras of promising to communicate more. August 2020 a Community Representative finally got back to us to tell us there is no information. (But hey, that is a lot more follow up than we normally get!) http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=950733&highlight=green

Here is another one. This one involves Scourge and Vector. There have been numerous reports about it over the years. On this post from 2013 AmberGreen said they were working on fixing it. Then nothing. I did a post in 2019 during a burst one of the "we will be more communicative" phases and got a response from QA_Droid (poor droid only lasted a couple of months.) He told us there was a fix in place for 5.10.3 and he'd get back to us with more information. No fix. No update. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=961475&highlight=vector

These are off the top of my head because they involve pet peeves of mine, but it happens all. of. the. time! It's to the point that if any official Bioware people say they are looking into something, we assume the post has landed in a trash bin.

Similarly, having a dialogue with people on pts threads asking for feedback would encourage more people to participate. The majority of the time it's crickets. Does anyone read those threads? It doesn't feel like it since nothing ever seems to get modified based on that feedback (Except the Rishi stronghold while Musco was on paternity leave.) Could someone pop in and explain why or why not changes are being made or not being made?

As some others have pointed out, it’s often the lack of two way communication that lets the players to feel neglected or not listened to. This is especially frustrating if you ever do pts testing and you find problems or bugs that are ignored and pushed live after feed back has been posted in the threads specifically started by Bioware for feedback.

An example of this is from before 6.0 released last year. Many of us got onto the pts (which can be a pain to download) and spent hours testing things. So many bugs and system problems (aka crafting) was provided and we got no responses or lip service responses from the community team. Then the game went live with all the problems we’d been providing feedback on. It makes the players feel disenfranchised to testing on the pts in the future and I’ve pretty much steered clear of a lot of testing since then.

For many of us, it seemed like the dev team weren’t actually getting our feedback at all or they were totally ignoring it.(I’ve since found out isn’t the case because they didn’t actually know there were problems that needed to be fixed). Which suggests a breakdown of communication between the forum team and the dev team.

I’m really glad you’ve come on board Jackie and are reviewing how the forums are being used by the players and Bioware alike, I look forward to some positive outcomes in the new year.

Lots of game developers try to avoid posting or responding in an active manner on the forums in discussion threads to avoid forming a narrative or changing community conversation, with a game like swtor where a lot of the game is up to the players to theorycraft around things like class balance, pvp meta and new content requests/discussions.

You say that you intend to be a more active part of the swtor community and increase your presence here on the forums but how do you plan to avoid situations where your input or post will disrupt or change community conversation though your official voice. I think one of the key examples is when Eric Musco said, during a time where server populations were uneven and many servers were "dead", that something "better than cross-server" was going. As it turns out, it was server merges, I realize that the dev team might think that this WAS, in fact, better than cross-servers but the community didn't, however, Eric saying that as an official BW Employee changed the entire conversation between players.

Looking forward to hearing your response on how to avoid changing the direction of community conversations around features, pvp meta or pve class balance while still being an active participant on the forums.

 

I appreciate you bringing feedback to my attention, but I’m using this thread to focus on parts of the forum that need improvement.

 

 

Fair enough, but try to understand from my perspective. I reported about a specific bug in the new FP in two forums, the Bug Forum and this thread. I am pleased to read that it will be fixed w/ tomorrow's patch. I understand you justifiably worry about process, but I worry about results and outcomes. And, frankly, I accomplished what I wanted: The bug for Escape the Trap is now being explicitly acknowledged and is scheduled to be fixed.

Point being, I think I have you to thank for the bug getting reported, which only incentivizes people to report their concerns in GD, particularly when we know there is a BW rep reading the thread.

The question is -- do I have you to thank for sending that report (which is now languishing on page 4 of the Bug Forum)? Maybe, maybe not. But it wasn't until this morning that BW said a fix was in place, despite responding to other bug reports. At some point, there will always be the question of accounting for variation.

But as others have noted, absent BW representation in other forums...well, you know the answer.

I hope you can help change that culture b/c my posts here speak directly to improving the forums, albeit by way of example.

Dasty

While I do have to take into consideration how the dev tracker works as I don’t want to spam that feed, I am here to be a bridge in communication between players and the dev team and vice versa.

If it going to be constructive, improve the existing cycle, and encourage more useful activity:

spam away.

2 of the largest pits that you have been left to deal with:

• Lack of constructive and timely responses, which causes many people to find the 'official' forums a useless waste of time and seek information elsewhere.
  
• Lack of constructive moderation, and I do not mean the ToS police, but people whose only job is to track forum usage and activity, and collapse duplicate posts on the same topic(s) into single threads and keep the forums in general more useful.
  - bug reports: this is the one that needs the most attention, for obvious reasons, namely that people in general are lazy
  -- I would further request that before being allowed to post a new thread there, one has to be required to do at least 1 search with something in the search keyword being in the title of the bug post
  - The suggestion forum is nearly a lost cause, and while we get that this is intentional, it would be nice to have a 'normal' and unofficial conversation with devs for more popular ideas that are either unrealistic for reason X, or need some hashing out to be considered.
   
  

Similarly, having a dialogue with people on pts threads asking for feedback would encourage more people to participate. The majority of the time it's crickets. Does anyone read those threads? It doesn't feel like it since nothing ever seems to get modified based on that feedback (Except the Rishi stronghold while Musco was on paternity leave.) Could someone pop in and explain why or why not changes are being made or not being made?

I’m here to help in that regard. A little bit of a follow up question, what does this process look like in your mind? Individual responses within the same thread? Stickied wall of text that is linked to the thread where the feedback is coming from? Feel free to PM your ideas!

For a good example of active responses from Devs, check out the Feedback: Rishi Stronghold and Feedback: Rishi Stronghold (Final PTS) threads on the PTS forum. I participated in that PTS testing of the Rishi SH, and felt that Devs were reading and responding (based on changes to the Rishi SH) to player feedback.

For a poor example of Devs reading and responding to player feedback, check the PTS threads on 6.0's crafting changes. Players on the PTS gave unfavorable reviews on 6.0's crafting, nothing changed when 6.0 went live, and then ... other players were giving the same unfavorable reviews on 6.0's crafting (including myself) as those provided on the PTS. I think that's an example of BW asking for feedback, then seemingly ignoring the feedback, leaving me to wonder why they even asked if they had no intention of changing anything.

For the absolutely worst possible example of Dev to player communication, check out the Dev posts (or rather, lack of posts) from 4.0. Dev communication was non-existent, except for posts about server maintenance. Those threads were rife with players posting about anything and everything because that was the only time a Dev presence was ever seen on the forums. Bugs, exploits, player concerns -- all ignored for vast swaths of time by Devs on the forums.

Things are better now. And, I'm very happy to see your efforts to advance BW's Dev to player interaction on the SWTOR forums. The CommunityTeam's responses on the Bug Report forum is a welcomed change. Waiting for a bug to be fixed isn't fun, but waiting for a bug to even be acknowledged is incredibly frustrating. The CommunityTeam helps to mitigate that frustration.

I'm not expecting a Dev response to the majority of threads, just enough of a Dev presence so that it doesn't feel like players are shouting into a void when posting on the forums. When it comes to changes proposed by the Devs, or PTS testing, I'd like for there not to be a Dev request for feedback if there is zero intention of making any changes. BW should not ask for feedback in threads if they intend to utterly disregard provided feedback. If BW only wants to know about bugs, then title such threads as only looking for bugs.

Also, I'm not sure if it's part of your purview, but a consolation of the various SWTOR social media posts would be great. Daniel Steed is doing a great job of posting new Cartel Market info, and regularly posting ingame event schedules. But, I think a page showing links to all of SWTOR's social media would be great. To avoid a situation like the announcement of Paxton Rall's release, which went almost unnoticed for some days because it was posted on one of SWTOR's social media accounts, not all of them nor the forums.

For a poor example of Devs reading and responding to player feedback, check the PTS threads on 6.0's crafting changes. Players on the PTS gave unfavorable reviews on 6.0's crafting, nothing changed when 6.0 went live, and then ... other players were giving the same unfavorable reviews on 6.0's crafting (including myself) as those provided on the PTS. I think that's an example of BW asking for feedback, then seemingly ignoring the feedback, leaving me to wonder why they even asked if they had no intention of changing anything.

Good point. This thread brings it all back. Or my reverse engineering spreadsheet, for that matter. There have definitely been improvements since that time, but so much of what needed to be done could've been gleaned from our original feedback.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I can’t respond to every single one or else the dev tracker will be spammed way too much, but I wanted to acknowledge that I am constantly checking this thread, and making note of your replies. There are a couple I want to directly respond to which you will see below.

 

 

 

 

"Quote: Originally Posted by xordevoreaux View Post

Find moderators who comprehend the difference between topics of sex and sexuality. They are not synonymous, and we shouldn't get dinged for one because they confuse it with the other."

 

Please feel free to PM me some examples of what has happened in the past.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, any post that fell afoul of the mods because of what xor has brought up has probably been removed, a few posts have been removed which later proved to be innocent, but have never been reinstated.

NB: To any mod reading this, I'm not talking about specific actions taken, just showing jackie an example of what can happen.