Open letter to PS2 producer, Sites

A shockingly intelligent original post, not to be expected on these forums.

But I think most people have missed the point. Again.

The communication is an aside, what is being said in those communications is irrelevant.

If you want to buy from Amazon you don't go to the Walmart website, you go direct. If you went to Walmart because Amazon pointed you there you would likely end up browsing generally once you had checked the 'Amazon' thing and probably a sale would be lost either in not being made or Walmart picking it up.

Amazon would not do that.

People who use a dedicated forum are there for that product, people who use Reddit I would expect would be using other parts of it as well and also exposed to what I assume is their advertising. I have ABP so don't see any advertising anywhere.

I know nothing about social media, ecommerce or online advertising, but what the original poster has said the developers of this game have been doing for years is somewhat unbelievable - we are promoting our title on another competing ecommerce website where we push the consumer to see what they are advertising, with our bit just as a tiny aside to the main show.

They have been pushing revenue to another not even a gaming company and highly likely at the expense of their own.

And their PR/marketing people have allowed it because they are likely as clueless as me with no background in the sector.

If I ran a company where I just found that out I would be kicking **** and banning anyone from posting anything but signposts anywhere but our site. If they did they would be sacked.

My god, the business model of Planetside 2 is as FUBAR as the gameplay mechanics are.

It sounds as if Daybreak Games (I hate even typing that name - it sounds so corny) doesn't have have enough time or resources to use the official forums. Any community interaction takes place in people's out of work time, so they use social media instead. Understandable, even if short-sighted.

You'd have to assume that they believe that they can afford to turn business away if they feel it's not worth catering to all of their customers.That's a pretty impressive financial turnaround if that's the case.

I don't think that they will change their minds, pobably because the original dreary SOE mindset is still ingrained in their thinking. It's going to take new leadership to change that.

Take a look at any number of other online MMO type games, both big name studios and Indie. You won't find too many of them ignoring their own official sites. It's really just SOE that went that way.

you know, the real problem here is that in the past week (month?) there were about 3 posts by devs on this forum
One was the hotfix patch note
one was the producers letter
and the third was the "updated roadmap" post... that reddit even got a few days earlier...
so, maybe instead of trying to not abandon any form of communication, you should just not do it?

I choose not to participate in social media for personal matters. No one cares that my cat posed in a new way or that I am feeling sad. That being said, I do use social media for professional reasons ie resume posting etc. But I keep my personal information off of it except my phone number. People throw too much information out there these days and it is scary. Photos can link meta-data with location and time.

I play a game to become something that I am not: A character in a sci-fi story of war for control of a fictional planet. I don't need my real-life information involved with that. A game company needs to use its official channels (official website/forums) to post news and other information. If social media is the main source of information, then that tells me the company has their priorities all jacked up. Sure social media is necessary for businesses to drive customers and ultimately profit, but don't ignore your real customers. You know, the ones that play the game for years and don't need a tweet to tell me about a new weapon or map.

P.S. I HATE TWITTER. Just saying the word...TWEET...pisses me off.

I can't help but think that there are so many more qualified people playing the game who can communicate with the player base better than the staff at Daybreak.

I swear to God, somewhere along the way, SOE just threw common sense (along with their loyal player base) out the window and thus, encouraged the buyout by Daybreak followed by the subsequent and predictable layoffs.

I thought new management would mean positive changes. Instead, it seems that the remaining staff are just digging their heels in harder than ever for the race to the bottom. They are just intent on milking it to the end.

If that's how you feel, you should have no problem with Reddit. To make an account, all you have to do is make a nickname and password. You don't even have to put an email if you don't want to. Therefore, no personal information will be revealed (unless you put your first name as your nickname, or post your address, or something crazy like that).

I find it odd to favor reddit or twitter over using an official forum to share information (outside of patch notes, and roadmap), I understand the point of not wanting to make threads every day or few days about, "hey we are looking into changing x." At the same time see no reason could not simply combine piece of that information into a week or bi-weekly dev blog, linking it to the forums for comment or as a commentable forum post in it's own section then sharing it with reddit and the link with twitter. This is (well not sure on reddit but the twitter part) Paradox Interactive does and can hardly say it doesn't work for them. Their twitter is also used to share information about sales, some community streams, or articles about the company/it's games.

On that, things like community streams and general articles seems a good use of reddit/twitter over the forums. Personally I don't want to go to the EU IV forum and see a bunch of posts about this stream to an article about the game (they have a general thread for articles about the game though). If they are making changes to the game I'd be interested in though, I want to see it posted to the forums and not have to check twitter/reddit to see what the plans are.

If the forums are the best way to get information to the most people quickly, but aren't good enough for sharing information about development (outside of a roadmap) I do still wonder the point of having an official forum? I'm sure it has some running costs involved and surely a website could be set-up to list the roadmap or patch notes and use just reddit for discussions. Also, why could those things not be posted to reddit instead? I get twitter is useless for both, but I guess my question is what is the point of maintaining a forum when substitutions are available and it's admitted the only reason the forum is used is to mass share information the best (which, again, substitutions that can be used to achieve the same)?

I'm afraid your assessment is flawed for a number of reasons:

• People on Reddit are furiously loyal to their subreddits. I look through peoples posting history many times to determine if they are universally negative to determine my response. I've found very little crossover from most folks on PS2. I personally rarely if ever leave the comfort of the PS2 subreddit.
• You admit you know nothing about social media, ecommerce, or online advertising. As someone who does let me clear up the difference between promotion and retention. What is being discussed here is retention efforts which can but don't always affect revenue. Less than 5% of the active playerbase of PS2 interacts on Reddit or the Forums. Now sure that does not count the lurkers but even with conservative estimates it would be in the minority. Many of the conversations are minutiae (which is subjective) and not a general concern to the majority of the community.
• You believing my department has "allowed things" because we are clueless is also pretty inaccurate. We spend a good portion of our week looking at exactly these things. Knowing how players react to things and how we communicate is a a big part of what I do here. I'm more than happy to accept any criticism for that because while there are improvements to be made, I'm proud of how transparent the team has been over the years.
• The Amazon and Walmart example you give doesn't make sense. Those are direct competitors with very similar services. Reddit sustains itself on the activity of it's users through the use of ad revenue.

I understand what you are saying but you are looking at this from a very general corporate point of view. We don't sell banking services or high end PC parts. We make games and our community is all around us. The top end important information will always be here, but the day to day conversations which require that next level commitment may not.

Lets make water crystal clear, splitting the game community in different sites for info and discussing the game does not work and never will. Correct me if im wrong if a New Player/s for example comes for some info etc about a game first thing they will be looking for in the official site and forum and not third parties sites.
If they have to google to find some info about the game because they are not able to find in the game official forum/site, im pretty sure the majority will go away from the game and look for another game, thats a fact/truth.
U Devs have to start to understand 1 important thing, advertizing/promoting a game etc in third parties sites is 1 thing, discussing the game, asking for opinions such as, game balance, weap, ideas etc etc its another thing, it has to be always in the official forum.
For all i know its the exact opposite been happening u Devs complete ignore/d the official forum to ask those things, that is absolutely 100% wrong and will always back fire as we can all see already.
Now the road map forum if players did not start to complain about it more recently u guys probably would leave that forum abandon/empty regarding PS2 future/updates/ideas etc Even the darn road map u guys were using third parties sites to give info, until few days ago Sites posted in Roadmap, common thats not acceptable for over 4 months Roadmap did not had any post from any Dev, how sad that can be.
Even the Test server forum does not have any recent update/s in whats going on etc, again all u Devs post in third parties sites whats is going on in Test server, yes last 1 was in 6 January (Koltyr) but look before that 2 - 3 months without any single news whats in the test server etc. Thats was my personally reason i no longer use the test server (uninstall it) for the last 3 or so months bcoz Devs spreading news whats is/was in test server using the twitters/reddits account put me off but not just me but alot of players main reason is we are clueless wuts going on and ill say again ill and probably like the majority of players will not use third parties sites ever to find out the info/discuss were it should be in the official forum in first place, bcoz of the Devs lack of informing players in their own official forum.
Like alot of players already said and i personally agree its not about u Devs posting/using third party sites, but if u Devs want to discuss/ask opinions etc regarding the game or whatever that can be put a link back to the official forum instead. Apparently looks like thats alot to ask u Devs
As u RadarX said before in other topic Patch notes/updates u guys have to post in official forum, i believe even that if u Devs werent forced todo that in official forum would only be posted in third party sites to for sure instead of here. Basically my point is u Devs are only using the official forum just for the Updates/patch notes looks like

Exactly. The dev's treat the official forums and the players who read these forums as an afterthought. We are continually made to go to Reddit in order to find news instead of the other way around.

I hope Reddit is paying Daybreak for driving traffic over there.

That's a fair and welcome compromise.

It's not going to take much to keep people here happy. Many of us seem to be around Reddit at least, as well as visiting this forum frequently.

Let's face it. It's not going to take a gargantuan effort from anybody to improve on what has gone before in the last 18 months or so in terms of interaction. There is absolutely no need to let this forum and the people that post here rot any longer. There is clearly an audience here. I don't think any of us expect the new team to be posting here 24/7. A few minutes a day from a couple of people is all that it will take.

I would hope that this part of the customer base is worth at least that small effort.

Yeah I look at reddit from time to time. But, that still doesn't excuse SOE, or Daybreak...or whatever...from posting in the official areas.

Let's put it this way, flat and simple - We'd love to have a list of priorities established to help compromise on our differences. What gets sent to the forum and what probably shouldn't.

-If it's just a developer updating his progress on a project, it probably doesn't deserve a thread of it's own because that's more along the lines of personal engagement and it doesn't really have affect on the public's general awareness of whatever it may be. (I.E., a dev streaming himself modeling or designing a map/camo or talking about minor experiments.)

* -Big changes that are very real possibilities - talk to us about them early. The wishlist is a wonderful step in the right direction. Thank you!

* -Are those changes coming along slow? Throw us an update post once in awhile. We're not asking for daily posts, just a recap of things up to the point. Just to say hey, we're still working on it, here's what it looks like, some of our concerns so far and if you're interested, you can talk about the little things I change on twitter/reddit as I update them here (link).

- Events coming up? Hey, let us know in advance. We don't need a wall of text or a fancy banner to tell us about it - just a simple line or two on the forum will do.

- Maybe once in awhile just make a thread, get the community talking and ask the devs to chime in for a day or so. Talk about anything. Best killstreak, maybe throw crazy ideas around. It doesn't even have to be serious, but some presence is always welcome. Let us know you're human and we'll throw money at you.


All we're saying is this - just don't forget about us. That's literally all we're asking for. If you ask reddit or twitter a game changing question that's not meant to draw curiosity as a means of advertising, take a moment and drop us a note, you know, let us know where we can find the conversation if all else. We just want to be a part of change and be on top of news as loyal fans. Listen here - ignore the actual complaints but look at the fact that we're complaining about something. We care and we feel like we're getting pushed aside into the mud bog. We want things to be better and if you'd stop to think about it a moment, you'd probably be able to figure that the issue isn't as great as it seems. Make no mistake though, there's an issue.


What do you think Radar, could you at least compromise with us on it? Let's put a cork in it. It's not asking for much more than what you already do and a post outlining what we can expect would help this issue soften up and dissolve.

Dear Mr. RadarX,

this ist meant to be a polite post but I'm not a native speaker.

1) Thanks for the info about 5% of the playerbase is using Forum/Reddit, maybe it would be interesting to check how many of the forumers/redditers are paying for this game in comparison to the others. It would maybe show a different picture.

2) As a longtime MMO-Player (pretty new on PS2) I'm wondering about the "Devs vs. Forumers"-attitude. I've seen it before in many games and it has never done any good. I mean, okay, some of us (at least me) are much more difficult to handle than a player who just plays and never looks on a forum but many of the forumers like/love PS2 and really care about it. Care enough to participate here, share there knowledge with others and bring their thoughts and sorrows to this place. If I understand you correct you know all this already so here's my question. You've got a loyal playerbase on your forum. What's the reason for telling them that they're not good enough to receive the newest info but are welcome to help you to work on this game? Sounds like Forumsiders are second-rate players to me.

3) Ok, this is somewhat speculative: You've closed the international forums, the EU-servers are a mess (my ping to Connery is much better than to EU-server) and you're pushing players to Reddit. I see a future with no international servers anymore and with just Reddit and Twitter. The reason for that is simple: It would be much cheaper.

Yours sincerely
RottenRat

First misconception, not the devs "split the community". The community does it them self (If you can say that). There are little to none threads made by devs on reddit. What you find on reddit are dev comments. To understand what I am trying to tell you, you need to know what reddit is. Reddit is a discussing site where every user can link external sources. Hell there are only 2 ways to start a thread. You either link an external source (you get shiny points for that) or you start a discussion (no points) - that's it.

So what does that tell us? Reddit is like a marketplace for informations. Every user searches the internet for informations on all platforms available (Twitter, Facebook, Official forum, mobile phone camera, pictures, everything). They take those gathered informations and share it on reddit. By definition you will always find way more informations on reddit because of that. It's not like dev's go on reddit and post there stuff there, no it is linked to reddit by an user.

In the end the information will always land on reddit no matter what and people will discuss the informations there. Some devs actually go on reddit and read the responds to certain topics and sometimes, mostly when the community is doing a lot of false assumptions, they actually care enough to make a comment or statement to bring something back in line.

So to clear it up: There are no secret informations on reddit, there are no only-on-reddit threads by devs. It's a place where user spread their gathered informations with all the up's and down's to that. Nobody is actively splitting a community here, people by them-self choose to use reddit because that is where most of the informations are.

Also the complete assumption of "community-splitting" is wrong. Every user can go on the official forum and read the posted informations, then they can go on twitter and read the posted pictures and few words about something new, shiny or private or just a note, then they can go on Facebook and read the new status message, then they can go on stats.dasanfall and oracle of death or ps2.fisu and crawl some numbers, then they can go on youtube and watch some ps2 videos, then they can go ...

...or they just go on reddit and read the links to all those sites posted there. It is only natural that people try to combine multiple sources to increase the convenience. This has nothing to do with splitting the community nor is there any way to prevent that. People really have to understand what reddit is before they grab their pitch-forks and hate for nothing.

1) Believe it or not I have access to how many of you are paying customers on the forums and when the last time you purchased things are. It's a pretty good number but I'd wager Reddit would show little difference. Paying customers are in my experience statistically more likely to be higher engaged in a community.

2) There isn't a "Dev vs Forumers" attitude among anyone. Devs are posting day to day things like concept art or things they are thinking about where it's quick and efficient for them. They don't have any particular animosity towards the forums, twitter, facebook, or any other medium we've used.

3) The international forums were closed because we no longer have international reps to work on them. Not only does it not serve a real purpose but I think it's a huge disservice to you folks to leave open forums that no one here can read.

wouldn't community mods solve that problem? there was that german Q&A guy who always crossposted the Test server patchnotes from reddit in the forums because the devs couldn't be bothered to do it. people like him could do that job without a problem and not cost a dime because they would do it in their freetime out of pure dedication for the game.

Maybe, at one shiny day I'll subscribe to this game Just to make you happy. But I'm one of the few people left who don't like the monthly subscription model for games at all. But I'm happy to use micro transactions and regular game prices any day! Sadly people who just don't like the payment model get kinda screwed by this system, even if (I don't) they pay as much as a subscriber.
Subs gets way more love than any other form of payment in this game.

Well that went kinda offtopic. I for one like the overall forum change but I hope you guys aren't done yet, there is still a lot of room for improvements But now that I went off the train anyway - do you know when we will see the wishlist on the roadmap? A roughly estimated time is good enough.

I guess... I just wanted to clear up that Reddit requires no significant commitment to get into.

Oh is that so!!! i could give u 100's of examples, but ill make it short and simple for u:
1 - Devs post in their Twitter usually first then goes to Reddit by them or some 1 else doing it.
2 - Official forum almost none of the above.
3 - If the Devs post/interact etc in other third party sites/social media more often or regularly rather than the Official forum, doesn't split the community/players when even they do not bother to answered similar posts made here!!!
I will go even further and tell u this, ive seen same posts done here first and did not got 1 answer from a Dev even after few days or weeks did not get any reply from 1 Dev completely ignored, while in third party site same post got answer in less than 5 minutes from 1 or more Devs sometimes, and u say does not split the community!!! sure not.