[Suggestion] Use the official forums for communication

There is essentially zero information being presented about what is changing, the current status of things, or the philosophy behind proposed changes being presented on the official forums. Literally nothing, no communication of any kind.

I am sure I am not alone in that I do not use Facebook, Twitter, or frequent Reddit and don't feel I should have to sign up for them in order to be informed about what is happening with the game. I don't want to be your 'friend/follower' and don't care what you had for lunch.

All we are getting are snippets of half-formed thoughts with no context reposted by users of such services, sometimes retracted hours later(Mag nerf).

Why would you choose to use a third party service when you have a site you own specifically setup for that purpose? If this is supposed to enhance your relationship it's a miserable failure and is closing you off from a significant portion of your user base.

Inadequate context, lack of accountability, uneven distribution of information, extremely limited opportunity for feedback, smaller audience - these are just some of the limitations you are artificially constructing by choosing to only communicate with us via social media.

If you want to do both, great, but you need to be posting this stuff on the forums.

Wow, I couldn't agree more.

Well said.

I agree, but if they nerf the magriders, it is not going to be easy to stay with Vanu, although I may have to because of all the SC I have put into it

really? without your tank being twice as good or more as the other tanks (according to actual average KDR numbers) you wont stay with your faction?
wow... just wow.

agreed, please post on the forums FIRST then go to your twitters and reddit.
I keep a tab open of http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?recent-activity/ the entire time.... which at least allows me to catch SOME of the twitter crap.

Fully agree. It's a pet hate of mine too. Working in media I'm fully aware of businesses need to feel as though they're maxing out their social media budget, but when you've got your own forums, ftlog use them.

Social media should be used to enhance the company/consumer relationship it should never be used as the single source or tool for which important information is delivered to the public. Everything should come from a central reliable source, in SOE's case I would think it would be here on these forums.

It is hard to keep track of when you have the DEVs on Twitter and their marketing group messing about in facebook along with god knows what other social media they are into....some info will slide from a DEVs tweet and not get mention here...sounds like they do not have a central grasp on customer relations.....not a horrible thing but could be a lot of wasted marketing potential.

I do not think SOE is using these other outlets for directed and specific information delivery.....at least not intentionally. They do post game patch info and server stuff up here on the forums for the most part. I think the forum goers are just wanting information to be centralized and they want it earlier then what's currently the case.

What an absurd idea..

It's not like these are the OFFICIAL game forums.....

It sure would be great if we could get similar communication here on the forums as well.

Very true. It feels simply wrong. These news/discussions should be in the forum first and not last.

Since I got a warning for expressing this opinion in less subtle ways, I figured I'd try to explain myself in better detail.

Improved communication could also help deflate some of the extreme negativity around these parts.

I will laugh sooo hard if... when this topic gets closed . "We appreciate your concerns but this topic has clearly come to an end and is not about the gameplay - closed."
Hahahahaha.... buehehehe.

yeah but forums are soooo yesterday, social media is the hip thing to do (not going to lie I see ps2 news on twitter way faster than I do on here)

The community on this forum is horrible. When they do post they get nothing besides unthoughtful flaming and yells that they are either killing the game or are biased towards a certain faction. They tried using this forum as a way of communication before. There is a reason they decided other outlets were a better choice.

LOL you know there are problems with the game when your own community throws rotten tomatoes at you.

Right, because burying random comments in various twitter accounts can't possibly allow for people to tweet angry replies directly back to the devs via that same medium. Twitter gives them total immunity from negativity doesn't it?

As opposed to locked announcement threads on here that everybody can see, that can be updated, that can contain more than 140 characters, and that are displayed in an obvious, expected place. I don't even know how so many people have figured out all the different twitter and youtube accounts of the various developers, balancers, and whatever else in SOE to work out how to get all the info available, I expected to come to the official game website to find stuff out in a centralized location

As much as I dislike things like twitter or reddit, you're under the false assumption that these forums are here for them to communicate with us. These forums are here so that they have moderation capability over one (and potentially the largest, since these are the ''official forums'') of the game's out-of-game communities. These forums are a sort of advertising, nothing more. Actual communication will occur via the medium of choice (twitter, reddit, messenger pigeon, etc.) for whichever dev feels like communicating.

Likewise, their new Roadmap is essentially just a reskinned poll (as opposed to a mechanism for dialogue). While presumably it's there for data collection; only time will tell if they actually make use of it.

Because the boss says they are:
@mhigby @j_smedley Just got the tweet on Reddit community design meeting. Why do you ignore your own forums? ie no dev interaction.

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4:17 PM - 17 Jan 13 · Details

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Reply to @Rhiker1 @mhigby @j_smedley


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1. 17 Jan
   John Smedley ‏@j_smedley
   @Rhiker1 @mhigby completely untrue. We're on there all the time.
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4. 18 Jan
   Mike F ‏@Rhiker1
   @j_smedley @mhigby I meant why is this not being done on the official SOE forums? Check the tracker.

Now if you look at the SOE tracker you will see that the devs are not on there all the time. We are seeing a few more posts but mostly in the Roadmap area.

Since when have official game forums been mainly for advertising? That doesn't jive with my experience in PC gaming for the past 15+ years.

The official forums have always been about communication - player to player, dev to player, player to dev - long form communication where ideas can be fully explained and discussed in the open.

Social media is not a substitute for that and in the case of this game is an abject failure.

Maybe because any actual discussion here is buried under a kerfarkingzillion suggestion threads posted by a kerfarkingzillion players thinking this place is some sort of telephone to god.

I can barely stand the place and i need the information, the devs have no reason to post here at all. Its obvious from the lack of organisation or management here this is a fan forum only and whatever is posted, only other people posting are ever going to read it.