A genuine question to gameforge

Quote from threea

Hello everyone,

we know you are really looking forward to the next character release, but you need to understand that as in every game, same in SW, there is a certain schedule that needs to be followed. Releasing all the content at once or within a few months is not possible as everyone can understand. It's not only the translation that needs to be taken care of from our side, but numerous tests,fixes & checks from the whole SW team, in order to assure that the content we deliver to you is working as it should. We spoiled Iris because we are getting closer and closer to her release, something that will make all the people that are waiting for her for so long happy and the teaser is a hint for you to prepare for it. In no way a spoiler/teaser is a "lie", or as someone mentioned "giving false hope to the community", because that would mean that we spoil her but don't release her ever, which is definitely not the case.

Cheers,

threea

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We know that the teaser was not a lie, the problem is that so far, all teaser happened at most one week before the actual release. Because you never communicate on dates or release planning, we assumed that it would be the same this time. If you were clear from that start that it would take 2 weeks (or more) at the moment you post the teaser, people woudln't have been hoping for the release to be this week.

We cannot share the exact date yet and this is why we said "soon".

When it's time for the actual release, you will be informed as every time in the maintenance news.

Cheers,

threea

Welp, looks like nothing changed then but now we wait with extra Iris picture about more info

Quote from threea

We cannot share the exact date yet and this is why we said "soon".

When it's time for the actual release, you will be informed as every time in the maintenance news.

Cheers,

threea

Then sorry to be direct, but you are doing a poor job.

This was a poorly timed teasing (compare to what you have done so far), giving people 'false hope' for a highly anticipated content.

I might

Quote from threea

Hello everyone,

we know you are really looking forward to the next character release, but you need to understand that as in every game, same in SW, there is a certain schedule that needs to be followed. Releasing all the content at once or within a few months is not possible as everyone can understand. It's not only the translation that needs to be taken care of from our side, but numerous tests,fixes & checks from the whole SW team, in order to assure that the content we deliver to you is working as it should. We spoiled Iris because we are getting closer and closer to her release, something that will make all the people that are waiting for her for so long happy and the teaser is a hint for you to prepare for it. In no way a spoiler/teaser is a "lie", or as someone mentioned "giving false hope to the community", because that would mean that we spoil her but don't release her ever, which is definitely not the case.

Cheers,

threea

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thank you for the wonderful response threea ,we're not saying that you're lying about the teaser or the tweet you posted about iris. BUT most of the time you make a teaser for a new patch/content it will take a week to release it. that's why people are expecting that iris is coming this day. Pls understand the community as well as we undertand you guys. again thank you for this response. hopefully you will continue communicating to our community! cheers!

Then post a roadmap Threea it makes things alot easier for us understand when what released

Quote from Nitros

I can only tell you what i now form another game, so don't assume it's automatically the same here.

There is a Community Manager, a Product Manager and Portfolio Manager. What a Community Manager does is simply writing reports. Those reports need to be read but together, and so on... I don't think it's hard to image that this is time consuming. In other words, if you complain about something, it goes trough multiple stages and people, who are not even directly involved with the community. You are probably aware of the game Chinese whispers. I assume similar things happen hear.

Next consider what GF is. A company with a lot of games. SW is not the game that keeps them alive. They also have to manage, multiple of them. As such they are using standard procedure for the majority of their game most likely. Now, at least parts of the staff is also handling multiple communities. As such the attention GFr can give to every individual game is less the what a publisher of a single game can. This isn't GFs life line. Additionally, add that multi server nonsense.

Now then, that is a possible nice excuse, but does't solve the problem. Form my point of view over the past years with GF, they simply are not read to satisfied their customers. It seems to me they are some years behind in that regards. Other companies act in a much more modern way, at least it seem that way to me. So we will only see an average performance because that is every GF can do as of now. Unfortunately their is no competition when in comes to such types of games, like you see with some region getting a region block. Only when you have a monopoly you get away with sich things, which is the case here. Otherwise you would simply lose all your customers, but as it stands they only real option is not to play. So GF does not need to care that much, as long as they still print black numbers. However I will still say this: Good games sell better.

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I wished Nitros worked at gameforge and was a community manager for soulworker, look at his/her posts it's usually well constructed and I think he is German too?

Mm ot: wasn't iris to be released today? Haven't been playing soulworker for awhile now lol actually playing ffxiv and got my new hairstyle after farming dungeons (took forever)! All in all I hope iris releases for you all, I pretty much gave up after Nyoka left as community manager.

Quote from Nekorin

I wish Nyoka were here to speak with us like it was before

I second this, because Nyoka was at least engaging with the community as a Community Manager, on behalf of Gameforge as a medium of communication between the company and the community--the fans, the playerbase.

The new community manager still does the needed job, such as announcing maintenance dates, responding to some threads, however I feel like this was insufficient, and tarnished the good relationship and rapport the previous Community Manager had established over months, it has gone downhill since then; I also understand different community managers have their own unique way to carry out their task and role, but unfortunately it is not exactly effective, thus the uproar we're seeing today is like a feedback to a method.

I really hope to see there is a change, at least more communication--if there is an issue with a patch, do let us know, there might be a group of people who still complain and possibly dismiss the efforts of providing transparent communication, but there will still be a group of people who will sincerely appreciate the effort in being diligent to notify. I feel like this is more about building rapport between the company and players. It helps build the needed trust and assurance that the community can have in the company that they are actively working on delivering contents; as much as I understand weekly sale of costumes are a mean to sustain the company, or the recent new RNG box, are probably new methods from the marketing team to help sustain the cost of operation, and I'm not against any of these, it's about survival in the industry. However, what we're addressing here is solely regarding the severe communication issue we're seeing today.

Now I'm not here to say threea did not do a good job, nor is a terrible Community Manager, but I feel like there is more, perhaps beyond the beyond that can be done as of what we've seen for the past months.

Quote from Rockyta

about what time they put the maintenance?

Usually starts at 9am CEST for 3-4 hours maintenance.

Usually on Wednesday 6:00pm , but some announcement are random like tuesday sunday, but mainte always a day before mainte.

Quote from threea

We cannot share the exact date yet and this is why we said "soon".

When it's time for the actual release, you will be informed as every time in the maintenance news.

Cheers,

threea

You don't need to share the exact date but with (almost) all of the other new content you guys teased the picture and released it the following week, so it's not that weird that most people expected it to come today Most of this could have been avoided if you guys told us that there wouldn't be a patch today (preferably a few days prior). People wouldn't have gotten their hopes up and that way you still don't have to give us the exact date, I totally understand you can't do that.

Most of us found out there wouldn't be a patch through a screenshot someone posted here instead of a forum post or a tweet by you guys. It's like people expect Santa to come but he doesn't show up LOL

Other than that good job, the pace at which you guys are releasing content is fine imo, thanks for posting here

Quote from threea

We cannot share the exact date yet and this is why we said "soon".

When it's time for the actual release, you will be informed as every time in the maintenance news.

Cheers,

threea

Seems like there's no plan on communicating with the player-base with that statement. We all know that the game is gradually losing it's player-base and Gamefroge still thinks that they can get them to stay if they do this "soon" things, which actually doesn't work. It's never too late to listen to your community or you'll just end up pushing them away.


PS. If it will take like week long or more, please "Don't spoil Iris Yuma and the community's interests".

Heres your late content update along with jins advancement not being to long ago not mention the events they keep putting in the game

Quote from Teacher

Heres your late content update along with jins advancement not being to long ago not mention the events they keep putting in the game

Cannon gets bigger and now has what seems like few flying knifes.

Iris meets Sylvi, anyone?