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SUGGESTION: Public Relations Staff Department |
Bardiche
Chief Marshal
Joined: November 16, 2006
Posts: 1247
|  Posted: 2010-04-05 16:01
As titled - it seems fairly evident that it may benefit DarkSpace as a whole if staffmembers are assigned or present staffmembers are re-assigned/given the additional role of public relations liaison.
Riley! hit the nail on the head in the Why nerf ions? thread: at present, the DarkSpace staff doesn't communicate well, or at all, with its playerbase, which is problematic.
The role of Public Relations would be to deliver information to the players, either in the forum, through Upcoming Events or on the news bulletin on the main page. Perhaps announce it ingame as well, but that is a step you will have to decide for yourselves.
Why do I believe they are necessary? Well, taking a look at "Why nerf ions?", three problems become apparent:
1) Developers give conflicting testimonies to validate the change: BackSlash trivialises the complaints by coming up with numbers and decreeing favourable battle engagement ranges, whereas Drafell comes with a technical story. This solicits the question: "Which is it?"
Were the ranges reduced because we don't want long-range battles, or were they reduced for CPU usage? A PR department could determine this beforehand and inform everyone all at once of all the reasons.
2) The change went live as a surprise. In this case, BackSlash said that the change 'fixed' a supposed 'bug' or 'oversight' with Ion being too 'long-ranged' - whether we agree or disagree, a PR department could inform the players beforehand that the devs have diagnosed x problem which they intend to change, rather than, "surprise! We've changed it."
Regardless of whether the change was meant to go live so quickly, informing the players before implementing keeps us up to date on what's happening with the game, prepares us and if we disagree we can test it in Beta and provide informed feedback rather than throw it in the live version and have us provide feedback THEN. (which obviously doesn't work)
3) A handful of players weren't even aware that we want to engage at 1,000gu range and that Ion Cannons were overpowered and warranted a 700gu range reduction - which was the initial reason advertised for the change. A PR department could do research among the players, and ask about how they feel about the opposition and their own faction, whether they have comments or noticed something weird, etcetera - it seems this is not happening, because many players, on ICC and K'luth side, are utterly confused by the change, citing no known problems with the weaponry before.
If a few staffmembers took their time to talk it over with players, then there'd be feedback from the playerbase itself which can be incorporated in discussions - this way, the players feel as if suggesting things is actually useful - many people I talk to don't express any hope regarding their suggestions be heard, and frankly I am not entirely expecting anything to come from this either.
PR team could make the playerbase believe their opinions and feedback affect the game - it'll surely make the atmosphere regarding the development team less hostile than it is now at times.
Additional benefits involve a PR team that tries to run events now and again, or liven up the MV with some roleplay shenanigans with Pirates, UGTO Elites or minor events, as well as just generally having more presence - so long as it is positive presence. They can also help less, ah, charismatic staffmembers to sit back and let others deal with threads rather than do it themselves and harness the wrath of the community.
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Tael
2nd Rear Admiral
Palestar
Joined: July 03, 2002
Posts: 3695
From: San Francisco Bay Area
| Posted: 2010-04-05 16:13
Moderators and Administrators are the Public Relations department.
The real irony here is that in most online games there is little to no interaction with the staff.
Here we give you direct access to them and we actually read your posts and threads and interact with you. So then you use that to complain about the actions of the staff...
Would you rather we be like other big game houses where you never see or hear from a staff member?
Stop the whining. Most of the people complaining in the forums and chat are from the same fleet. A fleet with very little credibility in my open and honest opinion thanks to countless issues we've had with several of their members.
Second, most of the whining is happening based based on READING just the Dev Log and not actually going into beta and trying out the changes.
So until you actually get in beta and try out something, dont sit there crying about it. You just hurt your cause even more because you dont actually know anything about the issue you are huffing your chest over.
Every update someone complains.
The original Core weapons were put into the game by Gideon 3 to 4 years back and were very lopsided. In fact originally only the UGTO had an OMG Super weapon and that was disabled in beta in 2001. We tried to return them with the core weapons but balance them to the old code. The older code did NOT have enhancements that increased range.
I will not tolerate any more of the whining posts until people have actually gotten in beta enmass and truely tested out the changes or until they go live.
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