Open letter to PS2 producer, Sites

I do not care what their excuses are. The Official Forums should always take precedence over Twitter or Facebook. It's where we as a community get together to share information. Why the Developers of this game would steer information away from their own forums to alternate outlets raises serious questions of concern for me and others as well. For now I am willing to forego making any rash decisions and give Daybreak an opportunity to correct this deficiency.

This a thousand times, PS2 Devs are among the easiest to keep track of/communicate to in the industry. I used to hate reddit and twitter, but they are different tools that let different conversations/bits of news happen.

I've been able to toss in a question on twitter and have a little back and forth about upcoming features with a dev, I was able to directly ask promptcritcal about things that might get me banned (using WINE to check daily deals when travelling, answer is no you won't get banned btw). These sorts of things are only possible when you can engage devs in places they are already talking.

The days of having a single site be the convergence for all conversations is long dead.

Which I use religiously. Even I can have trouble keeping up with everything the team is saying. They do a great job of keeping me informed but they are engaging enough this site is extremely helpful.

That's a crappy reason. What that says to me as a customer is that those devs believe they are special snowflakes who think they don't have to follow the rules. Which bodes ill for hoping that they will manage to build a good game.

Heck, if they *had* managed to put out quality code and address balance issues in a timely fashion, we wouldn't care. But it's apparent that they spend more time hobnobbing with the rabble on non-SOE sites then is healthy for the game. That's wasted time when they could be addressing the dozens of serious bugs / flaws and balance issues that they let linger for weeks and months at a time.

It points to poor management if they can't keep their developers under control and let them fly off the handle. Not to mention that they have never managed to keep everyone on the same page with regards to message / communications.

...

On a related note -- oh look, another month of membership and I still can not find out easily when the double XP weekends are! It's not on the PS2 Launcher (where it should be), it's not on the load screens in-game (even though they said it would be), and there's never a "staff" post here on the forums announcing that the upcoming weekend is double XP.

Once again - DBG/SOE fails at communication. Remind me again why I'm bothering to subscribe?

Why is there any discussion at all about what you use? You should be using the Official Forums for any and all dissemination of information relating to Planetside2. Why would I need to use an alternate source to get information from you or any other Community Relations person or Developer? Your "community" is right here on these forums and I have no intention of getting an account from Reddit or Twitter to get information about Planetside2. I don't care what you do after hours nor do I need to know. I only need to know that you as Community Relations are performing your duties to the highest level and that the developers are working to correct the many issues this game has.

The very idea that I'm somehow missing out because I don't use Reddit or Twitter is absurd. You said, "The expectation that a significantly higher level of engagement from the team is going to take place mostly here is unfortunately not going to materialize" is deeply troubling to this faithful fan and subscriber. I am disappointed to say the least and I shall be making an evaluation in the next few days whether to continue my relationship with Daybreak based solely on your post to this Official Forum of Planetside2.

There isn't discussion about what we use. We've been very open about what we use and it's up to you whether that's something you wish to be a part of. And I will very strongly disagree with you. My "community" is not only on the forums but Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, etc...

I'm very sorry we disagree on this but I feel you guys deserve transparency when it comes to how we communicate. We still plan to continue communicating here as we have today with the Roadmap, but if you are looking for smaller granular things like "Weapon X is getting a COF change" then you may not hear about them until they make PTS or the patch notes.

my problem with the whole situation is that you guys pretty much only use reddit and twitter and almost never the forums at all unless its patch notes or a "hey we still use the forums" post
twitter is horrible as you cant have any kind of conversation (word limit) and reddit is stupid as any conversations about anything eventually disappear from the front page the longer they go for which is stupid as the longer ones need to be on the front page as they are the ones people want to talk about more
both twitter and reddit are horrible horrible methods of communication

forums are the best method of communication as subjects that people want to talk about more stay on the front page and not just disappear after a day or 2 and you can use more than 20 words (or whatever the limit is on twitter)

also the people on reddit seem to more talk about irrelevant stuff than they do actual things to do with ps2 that matter

why cant devs make ONE post each a week on information like "Weapon X is getting a COF change" - seriously its not going to take any longer than it does on twitter/reddit and forum users will be much happier

completely ignoring the forum users (apart from patch notes and "hey we still use the forums" posts) isnt getting you guys any brownie points

i just dont buy this at all - every other game i play has a much higher presence on the forums than you guys
just to name a few
firefall
wreckfest
gratuitious space battles
robocraft
project cars
warframe
a mix of games with more income and less income and more people working on it and less people working on it so there isnt an excuse for not going on the forums

all have a significantly higher presence in the forums than you guys do, i can name more if that isnt enough?

It's one of the smaller online communities.......

It's good for true blue "official" communications, and they need to be better with that here too....

but they're not going to do their casual discussions here. Period.

I agree they should post more official posts, but that's all you're going to get here. It's all they should be posting here.

The online landscape has changed.

Not going to reply to you too, Same I wrote above applies ad nauseum.

In your opinion. Tens of millions of people disagree with you.

Ironically? They say the same thing about forum posters. I read enough of both to tell you there really is little difference between you guys.

Up until very recently every single Gearbox game (Their new forum very much resembles a subreddit)
DayZ
Blizzard
Bungie (whose forums also resemble reddit)
Any 2K Game

I can also name more. You are absolutely right many companies do still heavily use forums (Riot is a good example) but I can find you plenty who don't.

This really isn't about a comparison of who does what. This is the methodology we feel works best for the transparent development methods we are using on PlanetSide 2 and once again I would like to point out the Roadmap which gives insight into development lives here on the forums.

With all due the respect, Sorry RadarX that doesnt fit at all anymore excuses after excuses of urs doesnt work and u know that, posting important crap in chitty reddits, in personal twitters and chit leaves really bad tast for players, thats why the game/players and subs dropped like a stone in water. Not just bcoz of bugs, lags etc etc
For last 3-5 months as exemple u were almost the only 1 sometimes using the offcial forum to interact with players (im not counting when was for the updates) the rest of the staff/devs all gone to chitty personal twitters, reddits etc, so basically u guys were showing the "middle finger" to the community in this official forum and players in general even worse to those players who are/were paying such as subs etc.
Just to finish as old saying, u say other companies do the same or similar by using reddits, twitters etc, so let me ask u just this: if other companies jump down the cliff u guys apparently jump after!!!!!
What other companies do i dont give rats azz, simple as that

Well, it looks like Daybreak taking over isn't going to change anything then. There is little hope communication will get any better and there is little reason to believe anything in game will get any better.

This is sad. This game was wonderful.

That being said, RadarX, thanks for chiming in on the official Planetside 2 forums, where it counts. Though I disagree with almost everything you say about where dev news will be communicated (not on PS2 forums), I do appreciate you at least saying so.

It's good to know where the dev priorities are. It's unfortunate it isn't in the official PS2 forums.

THIS.

Just one thing from me:

"some team members are more comfortable communicating via certain platforms than others"

My initial thought was "whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh"

Somehow we have to get the point across that historically our PS2 devs and community related people have always done what is most comfortable for them.

However unintentional, that is completely bass-ackwards and extrememly selfish.

Good game, great community, disappointing social interaction from PS2 staff...business as usual in more ways than one then.

"resembling reddit" isnt reddit now is it? its their official forums still but with a different format
they all use their OWN forums way more than DBG does no matter the format
blizz for example
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/blizztracker/
i cant link to DayZ devtracker (need to be logged in) but they also use their forums way more than DBG
http://forums.2k.com/search.php?searchid=24762931
http://forums.2k.com/search.php?searchid=24763011
thats just 2 of the mods from 2k forums results and theres definitely info there (and back and forth conversations) other than raw patch notes and "we still use the forums" posts which is what is mostly on the DBG tracker

so really thats a pretty poor answer you gave as none of them use reddit exclusively like DBG does

I find it sad that even the community relations guy has to use a third-party website to find out where game information is being posted.

Posting stuff on reddit/twitter/other platforms isnt the problem. Posting stuff on one but not the others is the problem.

Higby said bye bye on reddit, pretty much ignored his own official forums. Like its so hard to copypasta from one board to the other.

I find this thread to be incredibly depressing.

It's been an awful few weeks, and not just for the people employed by the former SOE. I mentally chastise myself for even having the thought that the reshuffle perhaps either didn't go far enough, or affected the wrong people. But I can't help that thought.

This is the only game of this kind that I've ever been involved with where part of the overall sales package isn't a vibrant set of official forums that is the social hub for the game and its players and developers. Things like Reddit and Facebook should be the social spokes connected to that hub. Planetside 2 is fragmented social mess.

It used to be that PS2 people didn't like posting here because of corporate censorship (perceived or otherwise). Those shackles should have gone when SOE ceased to be. If they haven't then the thought that I continually chastise myself for even having is quite possibly a valid and fair one.

All I've gotten from the thread is "we'll post here a bit more, possibly, maybe, probably a bit more than before, probably not. Because we don't want to, because we like posting elsewhere".

As a customer of more than a decade of continuous subscription to one or more of the former SOE games, I request that there is at least as much interaction on the official forums as there is away from it. I don't see why that is such an awful thing for you folks associated with PS2 to have to contemplate. Unless of course you really do think that your personal social needs are greater than those of your community.

Which then brings me to start chastising...I'll stop there

i dont think anyone is saying they should only post here exclusively
but yeah i and many others agree - its ok to post elsewhere but at least give us forum users a go every now and again

when ps2 was in beta and shortly after release all the devs posted here then all of a sudden around 6 months>1year into the game they just stopped and posted exclusively on reddit/twitter

community relations should encompass ALL of the community on ALL mediums equally, not 50% reddit 40% twitter and 10% forums

Btw: when are the forums going to be renamed, for starters?
Sony and all that?