Be honest to your favorite server GM

Started by Bedox, Oct 15, 2017, 06:58 AM

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Bedox

I have seen this problem happening a lot in mid rates servers/high rates when players dont give honest feedback in what should be changed or not for some reason. I have been playing this server where there is an edition I dont like. I went to like 10 players asked them what they think about it All of them said they want it removed, I had already made a post about it a lot of people seen it but they didn't bother to even share their opinion so they do the opposite and make a server review how they like the edition.
that is just one example I especially seen this problem happening in low populated servers where players cant really speak up alone.


Insomnia2000

Part of the problem is that not everyone likes to use a forum and the GMs have a hard time gauging feedback on features. If not many people use the forums and there's a lot of upset people on the forums it must be a big deal, right? Maybe, but it could also be the vocal minority. This is why forum feedback can sometimes be hard to gauge.

You also have GMs listening for opinions in-game, but again, you can't overhear everyones conversations when you're just sitting in Prontera. It's also hard to express detailed reasonings for opinions with in-game chat. And how can you ever go back and reference them?

I'm all for trying to get players to provide more feedback on features in their servers, I think it's just hard to overcome the fact that not everyone likes to use facebook, forums, or discord. It's an additional step that a lot of people aren't willing to take for some reason. Maybe something bothers them, or they like something, but it's not a strong enough opinion to go through the extra steps to post about it.

Some servers in the past have made game accounts or master accounts double as a forum account, probably in hopes of getting more forum activity. It just doesn't seem to work too well. Maybe you could ask your GMs about putting in some sort of infrequent feedback survey that pops up in-game? Or just an NPC that asks questions about content? Anything that would make it even easier for a player to leave feedback.

yC

Asking players in game should give you the direct feedback and that's why active GMs give players a sense of "gm care the server".  I browse to many server's forum and for those that have a discord + social media such as facebook + forum or two out of the three, the forum is nearly empty or invaded by spam bots.  Possibly because they have to register to make a post while most people have a facebook account, sad but true.

For example, some servers have forum and a facebook page or group, they never use the forum.

Insomnia2000

Quote from: yC on Oct 15, 2017, 09:29 PM
For example, some servers have forum and a facebook page or group, they never use the forum.

I feel like maybe Facebook use for RO is culturally dependent. Some players might not want their professional-looking Facebook used for school and work to be intertwined with the same Facebook account that posts "server down pls fix" on some 15 year old MMO game's page.

What's the solution to get all players using the same medium of communication, or at least, getting adequate feedback from players?

Some ideas I had

  • Only have one mode of communication? As in, forums only. No facebook, no twitter, etc.
  • Maybe master accounts doubling as forum accounts make users more likely to post because they already have an account.
  • In-game feedback system that allows players to leave comments for GMs to read at their leisure.
  • Making some sort of anonymous feedback system so players don't feel like they will be ridiculed for posting their thoughts.
I think that last point is important. It can be difficult for someone to post their thoughts or suggestions when you have some people commenting things like "wtf is this garbage" or "learn 2 play" on all your suggestions/feedback and OP is labeled as some PvM scrub or whatever else and never wants to post again. Although, having anonymity could lead to even more of the non-contributing posting. Perhaps it could be a temporarily anonymous post until a staff member locks the thread?

You probably also need staff members that know what feedback is worth listening to as well.

Bedox

to be honest I only made this topic to call out players who are not willing to give honest and direct feedback, I dont think the problem is factual in high populated servers, in the other side if there are like 20 active/daily in a fresh server and only 50 accounts registered in their forum u dont feel very comfortable sharing your opinion since no one is speaking up about it u convince yourself the problem is you but everyone is feeling the same, this is where GMs are a part of the problem u need to be conscious about your server and add some way to receive indirect feedback through a NPC or surveys in game.

Mics Ragnarok

Quote from: Insomnia2000 on Oct 16, 2017, 07:33 AM
Some ideas I had

  • Only have one mode of communication? As in, forums only. No facebook, no twitter, etc.
  • Maybe master accounts doubling as forum accounts make users more likely to post because they already have an account.
  • In-game feedback system that allows players to leave comments for GMs to read at their leisure.
  • Making some sort of anonymous feedback system so players don't feel like they will be ridiculed for posting their thoughts.

For MicsRO, I've opted to only use the Forums as a discussion point. There is a Facebook page, but that's it. No Groups. I believe Groups should be made by the community, instead of the server as 1 it will be hard to maintain both FB page and a Forum. Provided you can cross post but it's better to see the overall in just one outlet.

But I do agree with your points here.

Yuzo

as much as i love forums, in 2017 they are only really good as information hubs and organizing spaces. if you expect people to login to your forum and give feedback, or even more than that, like socialize, you're in for a rude awakening. for a lot of the RO community, posting on the forum is a last resort when things become dire.

For your average RO pleb to get to the point they needed to make their opinion heard on the forum, there must have been some hard times to get there. of course some of the older heads still enjoy forums.

Insomnia2000

Quote from: Yuzo on Oct 17, 2017, 06:32 AM
as much as i love forums, in 2017 they are only really good as information hubs and organizing spaces. if you expect people to login to your forum and give feedback, or even more than that, like socialize, you're in for a rude awakening.

I agree with you. There's a lot of servers that pop up and have hundreds of players and an empty forum. RE:Start section of WarpPortal's forums is pretty active. Maybe it's just an older population that's used to forums already?

Anyway, how do you get proper communication between the players and staff? Facebook? Reddit? Discord? Only in-game? I think it's hard to get any sort of feedback from people in-game, unless it's an immediate bug like a broken warp portal between two fields. Discord could work if you had some heavy moderation in a certain channel dedicated to feedback only, but it's still not easy to get your point across in a chatroom. It seems like a forum or ticket system is the only way, but you just expect 75% of players not to use it.

Terpsichore

There are many reasons for people not stepping in to give their feedback.
It can be because their suggestions were ignored or turned down in the past, perhaps they were good suggestions ignored by staff that doesn't want to commit, or swept under the carpet by lazy developers, or they could have been bad suggestions turned down for some obvious reasons. In either case it's highly likely that the person could feel like not attempting it again in the future.
Some people avoid sheding light on exploits and questionable mechanics because they're benefitting from them, even though they believe those should be fixed, or perhaps some minor issue is kept out of the staff's sight because if they connect the dots, it could lead to a bigger one that's being exploited.
Others just don't think that their ideas are good.

The issue of forums not being used for their intended purposes while social media/Discord/etc are being used for wrong ones is sadly rampart and without a clear solution. It is detrimental for the server at a whole when suggestions/bug reports/etc aren't properly formulated and archived in their intended section of the forum. The staff has to waste time noting down something vague they read somewhere, players don't even know if something was already suggested or reported, etc. Besides organization and visibility, the mere act of sitting down to write something makes you think more about it, refining the idea and maybe even getting you to realize that it wasn't good to begin with.