Asking Difficult Questions

WolfePhD

I sometimes think that Behavior Interactive is stuck in apology mode. "We are sorry for this", "We are sorry for that". There are real problems with the game that need to be addressed; that naturally arise from the game being a live service, but I question how valuable the current social strategy is. What are your thoughts on this? Do you appreciate it? Or does it have no effect?

UnicornMedal

I think knowing how to apologize and to give compensation is great. It shows humility on their part. But it's a multi-faceted issue.

In my opinion, there's still a lot of push-pull. On one hand, I see an effort on BHVR's part to improve their relationship with their audience. Less antagonistic remarks our way, less "my way or the highway" attitudes, more accountability, etc. I notice less banned accounts here on average for instance, even though there's still way too many for my liking. Does a more positive attitude always land with players? No. But it takes time and consistent effort to win someone back after years of bad behavior.

On the other hand, that aforementioned bad behavior hasn't really fizzled out. It's still a consistent problem that players feel "heard" but not listened to, BHVR still insists that they know best to a fault like TWD stream proved, the game is still suffering in several different areas, etc. Apologies for those recurring issues mean very little, if not nothing at all.

I think in order to see real, genuine change, BHVR has to keep this more positive, accountable attitude and maintain it while minimizing their more negative habits.

UndeddJester

Well... in some ways it's easy to judge, and there have been some less than stellar moments recently. That said, I've never envied the game dev position.

Having to listen to everyone's feedback and filter the gems from the dross is just a Herculean task no matter how younslice it. It's difficult to do that here in just the forums, let alone across Reddit, Twitter, and all other mediums. As the old saying goes, opinions are like buttholes... everyone has got one. Even I have made some horrible takes at times until someone rightly came in and put a boot to my ass. 😅

The biggest problem with game development I see is the issue that buffs are 5 times less impactful pschologocially than nerfs, which is a survival phenomenon in humans based on the idea that there is no real limit on how much you can gain, but there is a definite limit on how much you can lose. This means to keep your audience happy, you need to trend towards buffs instead of nerfs... and this creates a lot of other problems.

This then plays into also another problem that people often don't know what they want. We all say went quality over quantity for releases, where BHVR should take more time to polish things up and fix all the issues... but the reality of that is that many people would absolutely become impatient and start saying things like "game is stale", "devs don't care", etc. Fundamentally these things would need more dev time, which incurs more cost, and realistically should come with a higher price tag... I severely doubt many people would want that... but this is the issue… the gaming market is extremely fickle, and often want to have their cake and eat it too.

Also in terms of getting balance right, that is a constant pain as well. There are scores of ideas that sound cool on paper, but the side effects are often horrendous create a massive problem. For example nobody when asked will say "I think a game should be pay to win"... and yet we have Glitchtrap, and that skin sells extremely well cause of the competative advantage it gives... so... does the playerbase want pay to win, or not? I've seen this kind of thing in many games where 1 thing you can buy makes all other options redundant (such as the Moonbow in Vermintide, the Terran Republic rapid shot rocket launcher in Planetside 2, the Degreaser for the pyro in TF2, or Decisive Strike in DBD). Things can be blatantly overpowered, and something that you have to farm out, or can just buy to get it fast, and it dumps on any other option available to you... and yet, so many players will bold face defend even the most broken and ridiculous of overpowered weapons that sit behind a paywall...

That is obviously 1 example, but there are so many others... and there are times devs should put their foot down and make a firm decision that knowingly annoys their playerbase for the greater good of the game.

I respect that BHVR is making such conscious efforts to listen to its community now, and I think the apologies are a part of that... but in many ways, we gamers are hardly a group that can be called reasonable most of the time... there are many of us that are just outright greedy and selfish, and often want something for nothing... it's a minefield, and I would hope they have to wisdom to know when to listen to the community... but also know when to call us out on our bullcrap 😅

crogers271

Apologies are great, unless the apologizer doesn't actually change, then its just an empty promise.

There's lots about DbD that is going to be really hard. How do you balance a game that's not just a asym, but also has an undefined win condition and various levels of sweatiness (though the game doesn't have to have the latter two, but its a BHVR decision)? Then you add in issues like SWFs vs soloq and how the game is played differently in different parts of the world. We're always going to have balance issues and when BHVR gets them wrong, its understandable.

There have been a lot of unforced errors lately. It's like the kill switch:

Community: Hey, this is badly broken.

BHVR: Got it, kill switched, we'll get a fix ASAP.

or even

BHVR: We understand, we will deal with the situation as quickly as possible.

It was a problem that was exploded when it didn't have to be.

The thing is, will they change? BHVR said they'll provide more info on things like the kill switch, we'll see if that happens. Are they willing to slow down the release of new content to make sure less bugs are in the game?

Basically, what's the plan to actually enact change is far more important than the apologies.

Skittlesthehusky

i think it's great that bhvr has decided to ramp up communication and has been trying to be more direct with their audience in comparison of how it used to be. however, the frustration that comes with playing a game that's been in a less-than-stellar state kind of wears on you after a little while. i think when it comes to the handling of how the community tends to react to things, they're definitely trying to handle things the best that they can.

i just think that repeatedly saying "sorry" to things that are a very clear oversight and not addressing it right away kind of gets old after a bit. especially if it follows after something that has already went wrong in the past, or is a repeat of another mistake.

BbQz

Most likely the dev team and HR team have basically no communication with each other. They pay community managers to keep us happy giving out apologies and BP gifts when things go wrong. With promises of doing better in the future.

The dev team lives in isolation playing friendly costum games for testing with unspoken rules, like they don't naturally tunnel or slug each other. It's why the story around instant flash lights happened the way they did. Or stuff like 99% hooks lasted so long.

The HR manage forums and make sure people don't flame war to much and dish out apologies but none of this information makes it to the actual devs. Who no doubt don't play the game or engage in the forums when working or not working why would you? Things have gotten so bad for so long coming here as an actual dev would be a torture ritual.

Firellius

When I saw the Chandler stream and how badly it went wrong, I couldn't help but think that if it had been Digital Extremes, Rebecca Ford herself would've been one of the casters. Megan Everett would've likely been there too.

DE keeps a very close connection to its community, which is why they're so trusted and liked. The closest thing we have to that is Mandy, but Mandy very rarely comes out and I don't think her job description gives her much leeway to do… Anything, really.

Apologies aren't worth much if there's no connection and if there's no understanding of what it is that they did wrong. General platitudes are one thing, but they need to prove they were paying attention by pointing out -exactly- what went wrong and -exactly- what needs to change.

Otz trying to fix the issue and then getting zero comms from BHVR, and promptly getting thwarted is something that needs to be addressed verbatim. Not obscured with fancy language, just legit, out and out:

'Otz tried to hand us a solution and we didn't give him any communication and ended up interfering with his team's attempts to fix it.'

Unless they can repeat to the community exactly what the problems are, we can't be sure if they actually know what went wrong.

Volcz

Apologies are great if they are authentic. The problem is, BHVR is just saying 'sorry' to save face & not b/c they are actually sorry and want to do better. This Walking Dead chapter was a huge sign that they don't care about player feedback & barely even playtest their own game (shout out to the metal pole that went unseen and made it to live servers somehow).

They care more about cosmetics and selling people on new content rather than actually fixing their game. Its been like this for awhile. & I'm just tired of their same ol 'Were very sorry, we'll do better' reply. I've said it before, how they handle this game is abysmal and they're lucky they don't have a competitor that's pushing them to do better.

Their apologies are hollow at this point.