Opening the Communication Lines

[DoRonRon]

It always seems to me that the Devs ask for feedback only when tasked with a particular chore. Don't much look at the reams we have written on a subject over the years since the last effort and that feedback. For us to try remember what we all have contributed and repeat it all again. It's not like we see any evidence someone has the job of reviewing and understanding what we have said and can make an informed decision to record and/or pass such on when the subject becomes active again. When you drift through the game hardly knowing what your skills do you aren't pushing the limits of how they interact with each other and with trait choices for their best use. Apply that same mentality to every game system you ignore and you're as much use as a Lizz Truss lettuce to the game. If you are at those limits then you are far more likely to be affected by class changes applied in ignorance of what those limits are. Bored with the way the class plays? Or just unaware of what others are doing with it at the edges?

But like streamers and "content creators" (what a joke, that's the devs, you know) and influencers anyone putting efforts into such aren't playing this game primarily.

But with life these days everyone who has formed an opinion, however they have come to it, informed or ill-informed will take umbrage to being questioned by the other. I'm at odds with a lot of folk who are ever trying to influence others to make the same mistakes they do. Seems like the old biddy who gets scammed and goes into denial rather than face up.

In the past I have been prompted into visiting other "channels" when people have been talking tosh to followers but it just got too much! Seems like those running them were on the Daybreak idea of loyal fans rather than fans of the game and what it once was before all it's dismantling since 2015.

Orion has learnt enough to not ask again I suppose.

[Elmagor]

Fact: LOTRO has an official Forum

Fact: Devs open threads on the official forum asking for feedback

Fact: Said threads get no replies from the Dev that opened them

Fact: That same Dev finds time to post on other places like discord

Fact: Aforementioned threads remain mostly void of Dev replies on the Ofifical Forums

Fact: People feedback on foum about problems based on Bullroarer testing, and even with beta testing, same problems appear on live servers and fixed (or never fixed) in upcoming hotfixes, so updates released with many problems, even when developers know about that

Fact: Even when you don't post about problems, or tell about them to GM on Bullroarer or make tickets, same thing happens. No one guarantee what your feedback lead to anything.

The problem isn't Discord.
The problem is that Devs open threads here for feedback and then unceremoniously never bothering to reply to the feedback they themselves asked for BUT replying hundreds of times on Discord.

IMHO: We have so much problems because of 2 different things:

1)Game have a lot of dead weight after Turbine. Many changes or feedback can't work because something created by Turbine don't make it happen or don't make it happen fast
2)Developers rarely play game, so they can't judge how problems can affect gameplay
3)Developers consider Lotro as hoppy, not as product what have clients and can make money. They just want develope more and more content, without fixing old content. Or they fix some parts of old content and never touch other parts

[Bio-Flame]

Fair points.

To expand on your ideas

Minstrel Gameplay was changed (at least partially) because the Dev didn't like how Anthems played.
Nevermind that the reception was mostly negative (64%) and the backlash was so huge it directly led to the creation of this very thread.


Regardless of what happened to Minis, this thread was created to opening up the communication lines.
Which remains mostly void of Dev interaction...


SSG opened the communication lines....but it is as if we are communicating to a wall.
And yet, discord has hundreds of replies.
Why don't the Official Forums get the same amount of attention, time and respect as a non-official discord??



SSG keeps treating their customers like Trash and it is baffling to me why they do it. We are their second best asset, ONLY behind the rights to the IP itself.
We and SSG should be almost like partners.
We are Loyal fans, that have been here throughout the good and the bad, all these long teses.
But SSG keeps treating us like garbage.


Not respecting us, nor our time and the feedback they themselves asked for is ultimately bad for the game and for the business

[bohbashum]

Minstrel Gameplay was changed (at least partially) because the Dev didn't like how Anthems played.
Nevermind that the reception was mostly negative (64%) and the backlash was so huge it directly led to the creation of this very thread.

Any real evidence to those claims?

[Lambtron]

To Orion, MoL, or anyone actually involved with the following:

Can we have an idea of when or IF there will be a revamp to Lalia's Store?

Some of us greatly appreciate the cosmetics that have been made for the game, in some cases, absolutely beautiful (especially in how they combine creative talent whilst fitting within the world of Middle Earth).
However, ever since I have been playing from early 2015, it's the exact same rotations over and over. How about bringing back some older cosmetics or cosmetic versions of older skins that we haven't seen in a long time or are otherwise unavailable? Surely it's no skin off the nose of development, as they already exist?

I do understand this is low in terms of priority. There are other more pertinent issues that need to be dealt with. This isn't necessarily an 'issue', albeit it can definitely be brought back to its former glory.
Some of us genuinely love the cosmetics in the game, and would gladly support SSG if they were made available in the store!

[Bio-Flame]

Any real evidence to those claims?

I counted replies on the 17 pages of the minstrel changes thread, spliting into "Positive reaction", "Mixed Reaction, "Negative Reaction". I discounted people that posted multiple times.
I only counted each fórum name twice on that thread: once after the Dev original post and once more after the Dev had posted some changes.
So everyone that posted more than twice i did not cont.
I also discarded the replies that were off topic.


The final result at page 17 on the mini thread:

1- Positive reactions = 15 (~13%)
2- Mixed Reactions = 27 (~23%)
3- Negative Reactions = 75 (~64%)



Again: did not count the same poster more than twice(and the second time only the post was after OnnMacMahal did an update to Anthems)..


So yeah, there is some evidence that the the reception to the changes was/is very poor.
Not once was this addressed by the Devs.


PS- Trying to find my original post with these numbers on the mini thread , I can't find it. I think my original post was deleted?

[LabadalofDorlomin]

Due to the fact that a large % of players always dread change of any fashion they will use an algorithm (whether fluid or by design) to offset the positive from the negative. So there will always be a much larger group of players who balk at anything new but this has to be weighted against this natural urge and fear of the unknown.

Of course in this game the developers usually don't really care what we think and these thread are just lip service to collaboration and they will forge forward with their "great" ideas. Because, they know best after all. They are complete experts in playing all of these classes.

[ReneKiller1]

I counted replies on the 17 pages of the minstrel changes thread, spliting into "Positive reaction", "Mixed Reaction, "Negative Reaction". I discounted people that posted multiple times.
I only counted each fórum name twice on that thread: once after the Dev original post and once more after the Dev had posted some changes.
So everyone that posted more than twice i did not cont.
I also discarded the replies that were off topic.


The final result at page 17 on the mini thread:

1- Positive reactions = 15 (~13%)
2- Mixed Reactions = 27 (~23%)
3- Negative Reactions = 75 (~64%)



Again: did not count the same poster more than twice(and the second time only the post was after OnnMacMahal did an update to Anthems)..


So yeah, there is some evidence that the the reception to the changes was/is very poor.
Not once was this addressed by the Devs.


PS- Trying to find my original post with these numbers on the mini thread , I can't find it. I think my original post was deleted?

Thanks for the work, but there are two things we should no disregard about this statistics:

1. Many many players aren't even on the forum, therefore it is very difficult to say if the forum posters are representative for the whole player base.
2. Negativity bias: negative things have in general a greater impact than neutral and positive things. Because of that, players who don't like the mini rework are in general more likely to post (and complain) about it than players who like the mini rework.

On some personal note (this is of course not statistically relevant): the feedback about the mini rework from the people I'm regularly playing with (this contains endgame players and casual players) is mostly positive. Sure there are some negative points (e.g. that there is not enough incentive to use melody stance) but I think mostly it was a good rework.

[Hierona]

Any real evidence to those claims?

He doesn't, cause he just counted all the comments in a threat that only attracted people who are not happy about it. In other places there is a lot of praise for what minstrel has become since it is much better and usable. It makes that rk can be the second healer besides beo and mini can go red while still contributing besides Anthems, something red or yellow mini never could before.

Same will probably happen with captain and warden. I would personally advice the devs to just ignore all that do not have feedback with arguments. Hoping for some nice meat to the reworks. There is a lot said over the last months, like (taking captain) a solo stance and a group stance to increase personal damage or buffs. Moving SoD to blue and giving yellow a new capstone. Giving blue more single target healing and so being able to fill in a mainhealer spot. The rez probably being chucked higher into blue, but hoping to make it concrete in the diary.

[Bio-Flame]

If you had bothered to read my reply, I did not count all of the replies.
Many were not counted due to being off topic or more than One reply had already been counted from that player.

Why do you reply without even bothering to read what was said?

As for disregarding the numbers just because negative reviews are more common than positives, that is just nonsense.
The stats are not supporting your world view so you decide to ignore them on a whim.

But the replies are there and are mostly negative.



One of the best proofs of that is the fact that SSG felt the need to create this very thread.
And that is the matter at hand: SSG does have a problem with how they interact with their playerbase.

It is not new, nor recent. It goes back quite a few years.
Even SSG admita they have this issue.


So why are some players desperately trying to prove there is nothing wrong when even SSG thinks something IS wrong with their communication?

[Fadil]

SSG keeps treating their customers like Trash and it is baffling to me why they do it. We are their second best asset, ONLY behind the rights to the IP itself.
We and SSG should be almost like partners.
We are Loyal fans, that have been here throughout the good and the bad, all these long teses.
But SSG keeps treating us like garbage.

Dude, stop being so melodramatic.:P
The problem is that some of the message board regulars have no ability to reflect upon their own behavior at all.

Look at you for example: your attitude towards the devs was downright rude and offensive from the start.
You littered the mini threads with big offensive words, telling whoever wanted to hear it, how much the dev in question sucked.
How he had to be fired, how he sucked, how he only changed mini’s because he personally didn’t like mini gameplay, and so on.
If you go over your message history, you see almost none stop personal attacks against the dev in question.

Then, a few weeks later, you: “the problem with SSG is that they look at the players as enemies” "they treat their players like trash".…
/chuckle

[Fadil]

Thanks for the work, but there are two things we should no disregard about this statistics:

1. Many many players aren't even on the forum, therefore it is very difficult to say if the forum posters are representative for the whole player base.
2. Negativity bias: negative things have in general a greater impact than neutral and positive things. Because of that, players who don't like the mini rework are in general more likely to post (and complain) about it than players who like the mini rework.

On some personal note (this is of course not statistically relevant): the feedback about the mini rework from the people I'm regularly playing with (this contains endgame players and casual players) is mostly positive. Sure there are some negative points (e.g. that there is not enough incentive to use melody stance) but I think mostly it was a good rework.

Yup, its a perfect example how the negativity seems dominant on these mbs. Although even in the mini thread, the recepton was somewhat more 50/50, if you look at people who actually tested the changes and play mini's.
The fact some spam threads like that doesnt mean the majority is against something.

Like you, I know a lot of mini's on the server I play on (evernight) and I talk to a lot, but I have yet to hear from one who doesnt like the changes.
There are certainly some fair points of criticism possible, but once they athems are up, its easy peasy to keep them up, no matter what the mb people tell you.
The fact some are still complaining about it here, like 25 years later, shows exactly how useless these mbs are for feedback.

[Bio-Flame]

Dude, stop being so melodramatic.:P
The problem is that some of the message board regulars have no ability to reflect upon their own behavior at all.

Look at you for example: your attitude towards the devs was downright rude and offensive from the start.
You littered the mini threads with big offensive words, telling whoever wanted to hear it, how much the dev in question sucked.
How he had to be fired, how he sucked, how he only changed mini’s because he personally didn’t like mini gameplay, and so on.
If you go over your message history, you see almost none stop personal attacks against the dev in question.

Then, a few weeks later, you: “the problem with SSG is that they look at the players as enemies” "they treat their players like trash".…
/chuckle

Lies and strawman.

I never said I wanted any Dev fired. In fact I Said that the Dev in question most likely had good intentions (but bad execution).
I do not confuse the man with the job. Maybe you do but I do not.


I would kindly ask of you that if you can't reply to my posts without personal attacks and strawman, then please do not reply to them. Please do not make this about me and you.
This is about SSG and opening the communication lines.


I strongly disagree with the mini changes. But that is water under the bridge.
What I find very disturbing and impolite is asking for feedback and then ignoring the Official Forums.
And it is not just the Mini Dev, there have been a lot more situations like that Over the years.


And this is why someone at SSG decided that creating this thread was needed.
Again: whether we disagree with the mini changes is irrelevant at this point. What matters for this thread is that the very poor communication on the mini thread kicked off this dissatisfaction with SSG's communication skills.


Why would any player oppose better communication from SSG is Beyond my comprehension...

[Ghyn]

The minstrel rework was excellent and has made the class better overall. Especially redline minstrels can be happy now that red minstrel is actually considered for higher tiers of raiding. They did a great job with how anthems now work and blue minstrel is arguably the strongest healer in the game now with the rework. I find it hard to see how people could be negative to making a class better. Hopefully we get the same effect with warden/captain.

[Feoh]

Why is this thread still open?

[elvenes]

Why would any player oppose better communication from SSG is Beyond my comprehension...

because being in a bubble makes em feel extra speshul? kinda like the ones that felt the need to complain about this thread on the lotro reddit, where according to them it is like hell, but the lotro reddit fails in the opposite direction: nothing but fake, toxic positivity, where you are downvoted to oblivion if you dare say any criticism, not insults mind you, but actual criticism. Praise only! I wonder why if it's such a safe haven no dev posts over there either.

to answer the above, this thread is still open because a dev specifically did so to talk about communication, so closing it would kinda be counterproductive.

here's a suggestion actually: perhaps one similar thread should be opened on the reddit too, that'd be interesting

[Feoh]

to answer the above, this thread is still open because a dev specifically did so to talk about communication, so closing it would kinda be counterproductive.

It became counterproductive some pages ago. It's just people arguing now. In other words, it's the opposite of communication.

[Neinda]

It became counterproductive some pages ago. It's just people arguing now. In other words, it's the opposite of communication.

Actually, whether people agree or disagree here, at least the player base is participating in some form of communication. Would it be nice if SSG published a communication roadmap? For me, the answer to that question is yes. I cannot think of any downside to SSG stating where people should go for information concerning the game. We can safely "assume" it is not the official forums since SSG posts here are insignificant in number and quality compared to a private discord where the number of posts are in the thousands and there is information there about the game that has not been posted here.

Maybe, people would complain less if they felt the company was treating them the same as they treat the people on the private server. Will people like all the changes? Doubtful. Does the private discord only allow those people who will say everything is wonderful? Companies need feedback, both positive and negative in order to continuously improve. Companies that only solicit feedback from those who will say they are the best ever need a very big paying customer base of those types of customers.

If someone at SSG would clarify where information and feedback are posted in various situations it would be nice. If SSG prefers a player run discord, SSG could step up and state that is where players should go.

SSG has not stated anywhere recently that the official forums are the place to get information and provide feedback. So by default a private discord appears to be the SSG communication forum of choice due to high amount of activity and posts by the SSG representatives on that private discord.

[Lambtron]

It became counterproductive some pages ago. It's just people arguing now. In other words, it's the opposite of communication.

On the contrary, I think it's useful to have such a thread where we can communicate with the devs. Whilst I don't expect to receive a response (it is a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things), I am grateful that there is a conduit which allows that possibility, or at the very least, the community's concerns/ suggestions to be seen.

[Elmagor]

The minstrel rework was excellent and has made the class better overall. Especially redline minstrels can be happy now that red minstrel is actually considered for higher tiers of raiding. They did a great job with how anthems now work and blue minstrel is arguably the strongest healer in the game now with the rework. I find it hard to see how people could be negative to making a class better. Hopefully we get the same effect with warden/captain.

Negative reaction comes from players who used to play same class, same spec, same way for 10+ years and hate to relearn how use him. And based on their "10+ years of experience" they consider what SSG can't make him better

[Bio-Flame]

The minstrel rework was excellent and has made the class better overall. Especially redline minstrels can be happy now that red minstrel is actually considered for higher tiers of raiding. They did a great job with how anthems now work and blue minstrel is arguably the strongest healer in the game now with the rework. I find it hard to see how people could be negative to making a class better. Hopefully we get the same effect with warden/captain.

Ghyn, I respect you and you channel. However, maybe you haven't read the Mini feedback thread (understandable if you're not a Mini main) and thus you haven't had the grasp of what Mini players are complaining about.
This will be slighty off topic, but since this is the communication thread, I'll try to explain to you other players what so many Mini players on official feedback thread were complaining about. And in the end, it will get us back into the communication aspect.



The issue about Minis being "Better" after the update has two sides to it. There is "better" meaning stronger, and there is "better" meaning more fun and enjoyable.


It is undeniable that the Mini is stronger. Let's get that one out of the way. Mini *is* stronger.
But, there's a big but...Mini is also less enjoyable to play with.
Most Mini players that disliked the changes were not and are not upset because the Mini is weaker.
The complaints were instead that the Mini is less fun to play, or clunkier or boring . Of all the negative feedback given, mostly everyone said that the culprit were the Anthems, particularly the shared cooldown and the much, much lower duration that make the Mini feel very much different, for the worse.


To reiterate: Mini players on the official feedback thread were not saying Mini is weaker now or that they can't play Mini because it's too hard now. No. They were complaining that Mini doesn't play like Mini anymore, due to the spammy aspect of the new Anthems.
Whether you agree or disagree with them, at least acknowledge correctly what those players were complaing about. It was never about "power", it was about the "feel" of the class.


Note - I was a Mini main. As a raider, I am happy that Mini is stronger. But, as a player and raider, I am happy someone else plays it instead of me, because this is not a Mini. It's a spam machine and it's very clunky and unfun to play with.



Making a class "stronger" is really easy. Just increase the damage numbers on a skill, or the healing numbers and it's done. Anyone can do it.
Now, making a class "better" by making it stronger AND engaging to play with, that's a different thing and much harder to do.
And the Dev in charge of the Mini changes failed quite spectacularly at that. So much so in fact that the negative reaction was so strong and so sustained in time that SSG felt the need to create this very own thread (maybe not solely to the Mini debacle but it was definately a contributing factor).
And he failed not because he couldn't do it nor because he lacked the technical expertise. He failed because he was too proud to listen to the feedback that was given.



There were simple solutions to the Anthems problem, that would have answered the overwhelmingly majority of the negative reaction that players had. Basically, either inscreasing the Anthem duration to the old 3 minutes, or removing the shared cooldown, allowing the player to use all of them at once like before.
But the Dev never addressed these suggestions, never even acknowledged them.



That is the true nature of the Mini debacle. The changes were awful, sure. The Dev forced them down our throats without regard to our true complaints (the Anthems duration and shared CD). Sure.
But what transformed an awful change into this debacle was the Dev lack of empathy and acknowledgement that players were not happy, and the lack of interaction on the official feedback thread on the official forum whilst still posting lots of times on your discord.
That was borderline impolite, and escalated this whole mess. It stopped being just a Mini issue and it became a LOTRO issue.



After the debacle that came with the Mini rework, do you really want to say or wish for the warden/captain rework to have the same effect?
I don't wish for it, I don't want other players to feel like gargabe as the Mini players felt on that thread.




What we want is for SSG to learn from their previous mistakes and try to improve.

Opening a communication thread and then not bothering to post (but still posting hundreds of times on your Discord) is NOT what players were expecting on this thread.
It sends the opposite message that the title of this thread suggests.



Is it too much to expect for the Devs to interact on the official forums AS well as in other sites and apps?
Is it too much to ask for players to be treated like a valuable asset or at the very least loyal partners instead of enemies?
Are players being that unreasonable?

[Hetweith]

The minstrel rework was excellent and has made the class better overall. Especially redline minstrels can be happy now that red minstrel is actually considered for higher tiers of raiding. They did a great job with how anthems now work and blue minstrel is arguably the strongest healer in the game now with the rework. I find it hard to see how people could be negative to making a class better. Hopefully we get the same effect with warden/captain.

i'll have what this guy is smoking plz

[1Asy1]

This was a good talk!

Massive engagement from the blue names.

[SSG_Orion]

Closing this thread now.

We will continue to discuss, in other threads where we are ready to have discussions on upcoming changes.