The Problem With QnAs Is Not BHVR
...At least, not entirely. Attention-grabbing thread title aside, they do deserve some moderate criticism for having some kinda lacklustre canned responses for a lot of questions they're asked, but the issue lays at least partly with the community for not exactly doing anything to mitigate that situation whatsoever.
While thinking about the most recent QnAs and their rather lukewarm response from the community, to put it lightly, I started to realise why the criticisms I saw weren't quite sitting right with me: Way too many of the questions they get asked are ones where the only acceptable answer would be a canned "Soon(tm)" or "Nothing to say now but stay tuned" type deal.
Think about it. How many of the questions in the average QnA are just... asking about balance changes, or new features? How many are repeating age-old comments about how certain killers are weak, or asking for the millionth time about cross progression? To a degree, these questions are fine, but they're not the best fodder for a community QnA and you can hardly get mad if BHVR don't have anything new to say about it.
The QnA before last, if I recall, had some pretty solid questions that got legitimate, real answers from BHVR. Questions about the design process of Singularity, and questions about how long it takes to design killers- things that show interest in the game and show actual curiosity in the answers, rather than demanding fixes for issues (perceived or real) via loaded question. Part of this, I suspect, is a noticeable number of players who treat any QnA or feedback avenue as a trial to judge the developers through for not fixing their personal pet peeve yet, but I don't think that's everyone.
It's not that questions about balance changes or new features are inherently bad to ask - there was even a really good one this time around about the upcoming Twins changes that got a good answer from BHVR because it had a clear and concise question they could answer which wasn't related to timelines or concrete details - but I do think they are the questions that run a high risk of needing a "we can't give more details on this but stay tuned" type stock answer, or even "no plans currently".
Now, as I said above, BHVR aren't immune from criticism here. They do have an annoying habit of going for stock answers when they don't strictly need to and they could give a few more details, and they could very easily be criticised for choosing to answer the questions they don't actually have anything to say about, but the community deserves at least half of the blame for not exactly making it easy.
TL;DR if you don't want stock answers ask specific questions instead of airing balance grievances. If and when BHVR give stock answers to those questions, that's when the criticism is justified.
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They can always ignore these questions instead of giving meaningless answers, they can set a particular topic or ban certain topics, instead they give meaningless answers nobody wants to hear.
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As I said, BHVR do deserve criticism. At the same time, a lot of the questions they get are ones that run a high risk of getting stock answers, and I don't think the people asking even realise that risk is there.
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I asked a very specific question about menu navigation on console using the d-pad instead of the simulated mouse thing.
They did not answer it.
They chose what to answer. And it was a very small amount of questions. It's on them.
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Again, that is an example of airing a grievance you have as well as asking about a change/new feature. Even if you got a response, it'd probably be a stock response, because that's the kind of answer you're going to get if they don't happen to have something to announce.
It's not an example of a good question. If BHVR were making every possible right choice in these AMAs, your question would be skipped over. My point is that they don't have as many good options as they should because people keep asking that kind of question.
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No shade but "Questions about the design process of Singularity, and questions about how long it takes to design killers- things that show interest in the game and show actual curiosity in the answers" Most Casual players/people don't care about how long it took to design or the design process, is it cool to see? Yeah but being upset that people want "important" questions answered regarding the health of the game such as balance/bug fixes/etc ain't it.
"How dare you ask them when will survivor hit boxes be fixed and not how the design process of Alien's tail whip goes!"
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Have you seen the old weekly dev streams? There they answered questions on a weekly basis. Showed us what they are working on. Spoke about hot topics from the forum. etc.
I really miss those times. It felt more like they were connected to the community.
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So me asking if they are or could in the future be looking into better menu navigation for console is bad...
What is a good question then?
Am I only allowed to ask about their favorite horror movies? Or the name of animals? Can I not ask about a seemingly simple QoL feature I would like to be implemented?
Dafuq dude?
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Disagree on it. BHVR dindt answered alot of question and tried to stay vague in as mutch points as possible. Instead of using the time to anwer "real" question they answered bait questions.
I think the only game relevant question they answered was to "Made for This" and skul that it "adressed". People are basicly saying since years "what is with trapper" "what is with freddy?"
They said skullmerchant might be reworked. Not when or how or anything. They could just have said "we try to make it until the next patch but we dont promise it", and people would have been happy.
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As I said, there is nothing wrong with those questions. My point is that they are questions that will probably get stock answers back, because they don't inherently have an answer- IE, the only time they would get an interesting response is if BHVR already happened to be working on the thing in question.
I'm working from the observable starting point that the community does not like stock answers. I think it's pretty relevant, in that case, that people keep asking questions that are going to get stock answers. You can't have it both ways because BHVR can't magic up something concrete to share, if you want near-guaranteed in depth answers you can't ask about balance grievances or new features/changes. If you do ask about those things, you're rolling the dice on whether the developers actually have something to share or not, and if they don't... you get a stock answer.
As I said in the TL;DR, this is about not liking stock answers. If you don't want to see those, you probably shouldn't ask the questions that are probably going to get them.
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And dbd was not nearly as big back then, was not on multiple consoles, did not have more aspects to consider during development and did not have a set schedule for chapters, midchapters and hotfixes.
They were more open with the community because it was easier to promise stuff or talk about stuff back then.
With how the game is now, it's alot harder to say or promise anything that is still in development because the number of things to priorities have increased exponentially along with all the uncertainties that follows now.
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my idea would be to make this Q&A's here. one section to ask questions.
3 weeks to collect questions, then the threads got locked down. the most upvoteded questions have a higher priority to get answered. one week or till end of the month is for bhvr to think about answers. bhvr would not have to respond spontaneously to questions and users have time to discuss questions.
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That wouldn't really fix the core issue here, though, which is that people ask questions that may not have an answer. Three weeks, even a month, isn't necessarily time for them to have anything to share on that specific topic, because they don't start work on a thing after they get a QnA question about it.
The current model would be fine, if the community at large either became okay with stock responses, or stopped asking the questions that obviously get stock answers. The issue isn't that BHVR don't have time to come up with an answer, it's that there may not be one because of what is being asked.
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then the question arises for me. why does bhvr do q&a's at all?
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I wish I was around during those! I didn't get to experience that level of transparency. 😔
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Exactly
If you can't actually answer questions, what's the point of hosting an AMA in the first place
They know their community and they know what we are likely to ask about
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Because if they don't, they get accused of not being transparant enough.
As Peanits once stated on this very matter, they just can't win.
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...To answer questions.
It's not as though no questions get real answers. The ones that aren't just asking about balance changes typically do, at least the ones that get answered to begin with. As I said, there were some good ones time before last, and even the most recent one had some good answers in it.
There are more things to ask than just "when are you fixing [x]".
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many people just disguise their feedback, criticism and suggestions as questions and demand answers where pretty much any one with common sense could tell that the answer will be something like „We will consider it“, „we have it in the backlog but not currently working on it“, „soon“..
i know I am doing that as well though I don’t expect direct answers in these cases and get mad when the response is exactly how one should expect.
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The problem with an AMA, or ask me anything, is that it should be expected to get a real answer for the anything. (As long as it is relevant and not just a direct insult of course.) The only confirmed answers being cosmetic related left a sour taste in my mouth and it made it appear as though they (whoever on high that was silencing the devs who even disallowed a 'maybe' answer) only cared about cold hard cash and wringing us dry, and not game health at large. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to know the Iron Maiden skins are not far out, but having an idea of how long a Hostage Merchant fix is estimated to take, current approaches, what is the order of the backlog, how long on average does a backlog item take (from past examples), all ignored.
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I do think they could "win" and be both transparent and communicative by discarding the AMA on reddit format and just do a more regular Development blog-type thing instead.
If the majority of questions they pick to answer from an AMA will get a response like "soon", "in the future" etc. while staying very vague, it is very unsatisfying for the community and I don't know what Bhvr thinks they are gaining from this. I don't think the questions asked are to blame here because I saw plenty of questions that were quite specific that weren't answered at all.
Not a lot of people would praise them for their great transparency on the recent AMA, instead the community gets frustrated or loses more faith in the Devs. This could be mitigated.
I wasn't around for the frequent developer videos that I've read about here but exactly this type of format should be brought back with the same frequency as the AMAs. Bhvr could pick what they want to discuss, get some inspiration from social media or the forums about popular topics and would hopefully be able to share more specific details.
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