Attention All Forum Users: Bringing Order to the PlanetSide 2 Forums

Salutations, Auraxians!

As you may have noticed, there’s been a lot of contentious and nonconstructive feedback on the PlanetSide 2 forums as of late. Great threads and posts have gotten missed due to this. Negative feedback is always welcome, but there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to phrase things. We definitely want to hear constructive feedback from both sides of the coin - good and bad - as each thread and post allows us to take action to better our game.

The forums are supposed to be an avenue for you, the player, to communicate with the Development Team and each other. This should be a safe place to bounce feedback off one another and a secure environment for the Development Team to respond inline or ask for your opinion.

Going forward, I’d like your help in improving the awesome community we have here on the official PlanetSide 2 forums. We have passionate and dedicated players and developers who love this game. Let’s work together to create a safe place for us to brainstorm and build a better game.

What can you do?

• Follow the Forum Guidelines.
• Report posts that do not follow the Forum Guidelines. (Click the “Report” button at the bottom of each post.)
• If you have feedback on a topic, make sure your title is specific to your topic and make sure that the body of your thread provides details on your topic.
• If you have feedback on multiple topics, split it up into multiple threads. This will allow developers who work on specific topics to easily see your feedback. It’s hard for a developer to find your feedback when it’s hidden in a thread about other topics.

We can’t wait to continue to read your constructive feedback and share our ideas with you. If you have any questions, please feel free to email forum-admin@soe.sony.com or create a response in this thread.

this is why i never post on these forums anymore so much negative people & feedback it's just sad. but I love reading constructive feedback posts from people and the debates. Hope to see more positive posts and not all negative. i know this community can do it.

Good to see you are bringing some order to the forums, we need you guys to pay more attention to the forums and less reddit, there are great suggestions here and you guys dont seem to care.

We definitely do care and we read the PlanetSide 2 forums far more than Reddit as it's our largest pool of feedback.

awwww I even posted a link to this thread on Reddit why you no like us

Higby is much nicer, he posted a Dev AMA on Reddit!

So much this.

I would like to see, as part of this drive for the forums to become a better place, a compulsory month of no social media, only official forums from the devs (with relation to PS2; not personal stuff etc). This would bring people back to the forums just as they are being heavily policed such that they're a pleasant place to be, and would strengthen the devs bonds with the community.

Moreso, it would in itself stop the forums being such a toxic place; a whole lot of the reason the forums have degenerated and degenerated since launch is because every question is unanswered and every debate is unaided, meanwhile, congratulations are given to epic killstreak threads etc. This has given the forum community a massive chip on its shoulder about being eternally ignored in favour of Reddit, Twitter, and PSU, all of which then contributes to an overwhelming sense of hopelessness as regards the state of the game. This in turn means that even if a consensus is found during a constructive debate, the end result is 'Ah well, no one will ever read this, and SOE will never listen even if they do.' That's just a horrible feeling.

I absolutely understand that at launch, commenting on every thread (or even one in 20) would have been ridiculous, because there were so many new threads created every hour you, Luperza, would have needed a team of a dozen CSRs just to keep up in offpeak time... But now the forums are slow. The same 5 topics hang around for a whole week, or at least the weekend, and most other topics don't require/request any dev input.

Give it some thought. Community engagement is -so- much more than just reading a few forum threads from time to time, or even just fixing your forum's attitude problem.

Oh for sure. We spend our fair share of time on Reddit as well.

I wasn't the Community Rep when PlanetSide 2 launched. I was actually on the Development Team as a Game Designer, so I didn't get a hand in moderation at that time. I'm now taking over in full force. The PlanetSide 2 forums are actually very active! No matter how hard I try, I can not read every thread, unfortunately. This is why I implore you to help make threads better by reporting posts that violate the Forum Guidelines.

In regards to stopping other community engagements, like Reddit, Twitter, etc, we won't be stopping any of that any time soon, but the Development Team has already started posting more on the forums (if you've noticed). It's equally everyone in the communities job, as it is mine, to make them feel safe here.

Oh and believe me, as an acting Community Manager, I know that Community Engagement is far more than just reading some forum threads. My job entails many things.

Whilst I appreciate the sentiment, firstly, it's not just about reading the forums, it's about getting involved, discussing with the community, giving your own opinions as game designers (so many debates could be settled with some of the statistics you no doubt have - not like, 'ZOE is OP' debates, but like, 'X number of players play all 3 factions, compared to Y that only play 1' etc) and players too, as yours are just as valid as ours.

Secondly, again, whilst appreciating the sentiment, Higby's just thrown up an open Q&A on Reddit, alienating the forums further. We're lucky if we get one question answered in a month here; now Reddit gets an exclusive 6 dev AMA? Can you see what we mean when we're talking about ignoring the official forums and conducting all important business on Reddit and Twitter?

Understandable, I shall hunt Higby down and let him know you want your own AMA on the forums.

Thank you so much I shall cease banging the drum in earnest haha!




^ Even that amount of engagement makes people feel heard/involved and thus happier. It really is much appreciated. Now I cross my fingers and wait

What I've mostly seen over months are nerf cries, they're really plaguing the forum.

But you know what's the best way to stop them? It's just to have someone take a stance on particular points here, and make that a sticky. Have it be a "Monthly Higby Point Of View On The Current Game Balance" or something. It has to be on the forums themselves, videos/facebook/twitter are nice but they can only get so far.

I have a feeling most of the stuff on the forums degenerates because we lost the link with the dev team.

Apologies - I hope that didn't seem like placing blame, or patronising either. I'm also a Comms Manager (amongst other things), so really just wanting to see things here become pleasant and welcoming, I suppose! As well as seeing the best ideas utilised to the fullest, instead of the loudest

My point regarding the slowing down of the forums was more in relation to threads that could really use a helping hand in getting to constructive conclusions - these are the ones that will normally be floating around the top of the forum with 5+ pages for a number of days, in my (far too many hours on this forum ) experience. Most of the smaller threads (whilst probably in need of moderation ) rarely need feedback.

I'm excited to see how things go under your leadership!

I'm getting a distinct feeling of deja vu. Wasn't it just a couple of months ago something quite similar was enacted and promptly forgotten?

I agree as what VSderp said. A lot of negativity can become unhealthy. I to hardly go here because of it. I used to post all the time but it got old being jumped on all the time. I feel that more info and Q&As and what not should be posted here first rather then reddit or at least the same time. These are the official PS2 forums after all. What's the point of all of this if mostly everything is posted on reddit? Just to clarify this but I don't have anything against reddit.

Does this mean you read my ZOE balance post seeing as this would be best to make all sides happy.

by the gods! the devs have set forth to bring order to forumside!

How do you expect people to stay positive when you release patches on double xp weekend, keep reducing the SC bonus on sales and dont release any content for months?
OMFG you say? well guess what, you should have thought about it before releasing the game, i was in the tech test and everyone knew the game is far from ready for release but you just got blinded by $$.
after 1 year i canceled my sub and i wont spend anymore money on this game, sad but after i saw what you did to PS1 i kinda knew this would happen.

Discussions about future nerfs/buffs are angering a lot of people, hence why many are flaming on the forums.

Perhaps more AMAs on Reddit or some other way to talk one on one with Devs/you guys would soothe the flames .

Luperza, the main problem is that there are close no response from the SOE team. For example: I created a thread about massive issues on the Ceres server. No a single response from anyone from the SOE team.. I'm paying to play the game, because I want to support you, but it really feels like you don't care much - even though you might!

These are the official forums - your primary focus should be here, not twitter, not FB and not reddit. but here! Else you might as well close the forums down for good.

Like I've told you, and a few of your colleagues: Communication is vital. You need to let people know that you care. When someone reports a bug, reply to the thread and say that you have noted it and forwarded the issue to the dev team. If I send my car to the mechanic, I want to know what's going on. It's okay if it's delayed, as long as he tells me.


With all that said, let's end on a happy note: You've done a damn good job on the O:MFG patch! Performance is SO MUCH better than before. Keep it up!

We would like to see a lot more activity of dev team in forums just sharing their thoughts and chatting to community about new ideas and so. We would like to know what is going on inside, what are you working on in details...