Your game is not enjoyable in this state
From Hardcore SWF teams sitting in low ranks for easy matches bullying killers, to OP killers bullying low rank Survivors, to the freaking grind you place upon new players. To the screwed up matchmaking.
I really hope something changes soon because I don't understand how your philosophy is fun with so many bs mechanics and issues this game has.
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I couldn't agree more, but I think it's more about the playerbase. If players would consider the other side just a little bit, we would have a great game, but since players typically don't... It's complete chaos.
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The players can only work with what is in front of them. It is not the audience's fault that the game is saddled with these issues, or that toxic behavior is incentivized by some mechanics.
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It's slightly the playerbase in my opinion because one person made another person upset - They didn't consider the other player's fun just a little bit. This cause an avalanche of unfun games since players don't take each other in consideration.
Example
Nea got camped and got upset because the killer didn't give them a fair chance to escape.
Next game: Insta-heal with Tryhard perks.
The killer gets upset with her OP items because they didn't have a fair chance to win.
Next game: Iridescent Hatchets with some NOED.
The survivors get upset with her Iridescent hatchets because they got completely dominated.
Next game: They all use Insta-heals with Object of Obsession.
Etc... You get the point.
If the playerbase would come together, this game would be a lot better. However, I'm not saying it's solely the playerbase's fault, but we are partly to blame.
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But, that's the players working with what is in front of them. Insta-heals, and strong perks, and Iridescent Hatchets, and NOED, and Object of Obsession are all intended game mechanics that are meant to be used in order to improve one's odds of winning.
Just because a player uses one of these things out of frustration doesn't mean that the mechanics suddenly aren't working as intended. I can take Object of Obsession into a match in order to try to leverage its aura because I think it's a good perk (what I in fact have done), and I still theoretically stand the same odds as someone who picked it in some sort of blind rage.
Broadly, competitive players are going to pick the thing that they think gives them the biggest advantage. The cynical view of this is that they are acting selfishly, but the realistic view is that this is just what is.
And like I said, I do think that some of the mechanics incentivize toxic behavior (such as face camping), and should be changed to deter the worst kinds of players from completely shutting someone else out of the game. But, like, picking this or that perk is not, in and of itself, inconsiderate or wrong.
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It's incredibly dull that I can only play 3 killers in red ranks to be viable.
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My killer rank is lower then what i would say my skill is. Since i haven't finished playing survivor, when a killer daily comes along i tend to ignore going for kills and more for choas, point wise i get about 25,000 before getting my daily bonus. Despite the fact for my obvious lack of trying sometimes i will still get survivors who will stand at the exit gates to tea bag me like i'm not letting them get a win. When i finally make the switch from survivor to killer i have rules i'll follow. I'll try to avoid camping and tunneling, i'll let the last guy have a race to find the hatch., i'll use whatever perks/add on's seem good, I'll slug any recently unhooked survivors and chase the unhooker. I'm still going to play to win but it's just a video game i don't care if i lose.
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I personally think blaming the players for using the options they have access to doesn't really solve the problem. It's basically telling them "Sure, the game has a lot of problems, but as long as everyone ignores them, you'll be fiiiiine!"
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It's not about the items; it's about how players are "treating each other", and so they use items/offerings/perks to pass on more negative experiences since they are fed up with other players.
This is really hard to explain, but I'm definitely not blaming players for using items, it's their actions that makes this game terrible. This is exactly like how toxicity ruins your experience of the game.
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I mean, you said it yourself: "so they use items/offerings/perks to pass on more negative experiences"
Note how in your long example above, you didn't mention postgame harassment, sandbagging, hostage taking, exploits, DCing. You only talked about the mechanics the players are using as they are supposed to be used.
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Some things are broken, other are pointless, for example ghostface vs good survivors, ez 0k and nurse 5 blink mori or huntress instadown. This game is unbalanced af
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I feel like if I use an example, it would be easier for you to understand what I'm really trying to say.
How would you feel if you got completely destroyed by an Iridescent Huntress? Like she didn't even give you a chance to play survivor because she had a terrible day. The problem is that, players don't consider each others fun in the slightest bit which leads down a never ending path.
I can't really explain this any better, but it's not the items, it's the players not considering the other side as actual people. If I was using Omegablink Nurse for example, I'll still give survivors a chance to have fun, but I wouldn't go all out tryhard because I wouldn't want that if I was them, ya know?
Are you seeing where I'm coming from?
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I disagree i have a lot of fun with the game. The only thing that hurt my enjoyment recently was Ghost Face and events destroying the queue times.
I'm hoping Freddy doesn't make me temporarily quit DbD again.
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i totally agree with this. Two many idiots roam these forums with their one sided and misinformed suggestions, and most people are quite bad at the game too (due to the large learning curve. I feel like we need to listen more to those with lots of hours on both sides
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I would feel annoyed that the devs don't do anything to rectify the imbalance. Why would I blame the Huntress for using two add-ons they spent bloodpoints on as they were intended?
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I see your view, but the game needs strong design where it is not so dependent on players being sporting to work. As it stands now just one side or the other needs to be toxic just a little to skew the match toward garbage.
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That's still not the point, forget about the add-ons altogether because it's not helping me tell you what my point is.
Players don't care about each other's fun.
If I was clearly dominating the survivor team, I wouldn't keep dominating because what's the fun in that, and it completely ruins the survivors' fun. I'll likely let one of them go, or pretend that I didn't see a obvious Claudette in a corner. I'm treating everyone how I'd like to be treated because it prevents players from being toxic.
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I mean, that's you, though. You are subscribing to the mentality that your goal is to make sure everyone has fun. If that is how you want to approach things, nothing wrong with that. But that doesn't mean the Spikes whose goal is to win are a detriment to the game. People should be allowed to tryhard because the goal of a game is to win without breaking the rules. It is not fair to those people to be demonized because they want to try their hardest to do their best.
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@NMCKE It is unknowable to you or me or anyone else why another player is choosing to build the way that they do. You're applying a moral judgment to a game mechanic, and it's easy to draw conclusions about someone's motive or attitude when you're treating your assumptions as fact.
It is not realistic to expect the game to police players' feelings or perceived sportsmanship. All the developer can do is encourage good behavior and incentivize it via the game mechanics that are presented to the players. If killers were somehow meaningfully encouraged to avoid face camping, for example, that would be a positive step. If disconnects were harshly punished as a deterrence, that would be a positive step.
I get as annoyed as anyone when, say, I get flashlight stunned multiple times in a match. We can probably agree that this experience does not feel good. But this is a game mechanic that is being deployed strategically, as intended. It is part of the game that is working as intended.
You also can't expect strangers playing with each other online to exhibit boundless kindness in an adversarial game. It just doesn't work like that. The game mechanics themselves are all that we have to back up and incentivize good behavior.
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"You also can't expect strangers playing with each other online to exhibit boundless kindness in an adversarial game."
That's what I do, and if more people were to take small steps towards becoming more kind to each other, that would cause toxicity to drop. I'm not saying you need to completely stop trying your best, or stop tryharding, you're free to do whatever you want within the rules. However, I'm saying if you try your best to give players what you would want, people would love this game a whole lot more. Sometimes you have to tryhard, but other times, it's really unnecessary, and it can drive people away from the game.
Overall, whenever you can and if you want to, give other players chances. It can really make the difference for them to carry on your kindness, and reduce toxicity.
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@NMCKE I support the idea and the notion of human beings acting with kindness towards each other, I really do. But we both know it is not realistic to expect or plan around good and unselfish behavior in an anonymized online space. We could get into a whole big discussion about how this has impacted the world for the worse in the last couple of years especially.
But in this specific instance -- a competitive asymmetrical video game where frustrations run high and both sides demonstrably feel slighted constantly -- it is down to the game mechanics to encourage and enforce the kind of behavior that the developers feel is appropriate for their user base to exhibit.
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I think given the tools people just use what makes them strongest and when that happens in a game the other side can react to do the same and it keeps spiralling.
It all depends on what you want out of the game.
Some play for pips, bloodpoints or just fun and others kills or escapes. Players tend to focus on the aspect they enjoy and use what gives them the best chance.
Winning is different to each person so its hard to balance for one aspect and not hurt the others.
It's why I personaly think the matchmaking should not be done off the current rank system but take more info into account so bullying can't be done as easy and SWF should go off the best ranked player.
A 5k hour killer should not meet a 50h player and vice versa. It makes it harder to balance and can skew the stats.
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To the OP's point (hi @Gardenia we should play more soon!), yes, it sucks that skilled players have no incentive to NOT intentionally de-rank so that they can coast through easy games versus mismatched opponents for kicks.
The developers should fix this by attaching clear meaning and rewards to the ranking system, kinda like how every other competitive game with a ranking system has done. It's their fault it is this way, and they deserve every ounce of criticism for allowing it to persist for three years.
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You're missing the forest for an incredibly specific tree.
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I'm glad that we can agree with that, but I'll always try my best to give other players kindness! Just look at how happy these people are because I went out of my way to show kindness to them! 😁
2 people DC'd, but I decided to farm with them because it wouldn't be fun for them if I completely destroyed them. :(
Let this person have the hatch because I felt like he deserved it for being a great survivor. :)
Gave this person the Exit Gates because I gotten 3 DCs in that game, and I didn't want to destroy the last guy. 😊
Gave this person the Exit Gates because this happened:
Overall, whenever you can, showing kindness to others can go a long way. I encourage everyone here to do the same, whenever they can afford to. 😁
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Hm and whenever I do that, I get camped.
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@NMCKE I myself do often try to take actions that I personally feel are equitable and fair when, say, one of the survivors disconnects immediately (I might let them finish a gen, or just kinda mill about and chase without being very aggressive). And when I wind up downing someone right at the open gate, sometimes I'll let them crawl out because I know how awful it feels to get caught right at the finish line.
But you can't EXPECT that kind of behavior from everyone. It's a losing proposition if you try to.
Imagine if the game mechanics awarded survivors an instant gen completion if someone disconnected (and also, say, immediately de-ranked that guy -5 full ranks and/or docked 100k BP). Now THAT would be a way to account for bad behavior within the mechanics themselves, and a good attempt to keep a bad actor from ruining it.
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The 'audience'(IE; survivors) actively lobbied for all of the features that have produced the state of the game as it is now. Killers are blamess; we're not listened to.
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I want to push myself as best as I can and be given a challenge, so that is what I do when I play.
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The players did not design the game or choose how to implement any of its features. If they implemented even half the ideas on these forums, the game with be unplayable. Players are not game designers, and I definitely, definitely assure you that Behaviour knows this. You have a very weird and entitled worldview.
EDIT: Also, it's so weird to me to see this kind of aggressive tribalism. You'd think we were discussing politics, the way that people cling to their 'sides' with regard to survivor and killer. I suspect that data would show us most players play both roles. I know I definitely do, and believe that the game would obviously be better with a more even balance.
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God, my comment got thrown into an approval void after I edited it twice. That basically means it's gone forever.
TL;DR: @ArecBalrin you have a rampantly entitled worldview, I assure you that Behavior knows its players are not game designers. The buck stops with them. And, survivor/killer tribalism is so dumb. Get real, most people play both, and would like both to be an enjoyable experience.
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Wanting fairness and being against double-standards = entitlement.
I'll wait for your post to get approved. Mine usually do about a week later. I no longer bother correcting spelling and grammar mistakes.
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I mean, for you to believe that players can or do have such sway over design decisions, to the degree that you're implying, is unbelievably wrongheaded. Behaviour's designers do not sit in some smoke-filled room, fingers steepled, cackling about how they are going to screw over the killer players in the next patch.
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Are you serious? Freddy was the worst killer in the game and he was nerfed within days of being released, because of feedback mainly coming from people who didn't even own the game but played on a free-weekend. This wasn't that long ago. I can list more but if you can't remember Freddy, you won't remember anything else either.
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Freddy came out almost two years ago.
Also, balance adjustments are almost certainly based, predominantly, on internal data that we can't see. They don't just make giant changes based entirely on the whims of a few vocal people on a forum.
Game development does not happen the way you think it does.
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Please don't make assumptions about what I think.
So what if Freddy came out two years ago? What have the devs learnt since then? They knee-jerk nerfed hatch-closing between PTB and live by making it so it powers the gates. They didn't bother with a PTB on important changes to how pallets and flashlights could be used to get a killer to drop a survivor, leading them to being forced into a knee-jerk U-turn. They knee-jerk adjusted the emblem awards for survivors during that PTB so it rewarded them irrelevent points for their favourite pastime of bullying the killer. And so on and so forth.
As for the supposed 'data-driven' and 'evidence-based' approach you just assume they're using: they've made so many gaffes relating to statistics, no one who has paid attention to them would trust them to know what telemetry they should be collecting, let alone that they are collecting it and interpreting it right. They can't measure player 'frustration' with data, but the Freddy rework is supposedly founded on that; it's the first thing they come out with to sell it to us. Are we also supposed to believe they weren't using data when they nerfed Freddy or before that but have since?
I tried asking them data-related questions once, they even picked my question relating to player population balance. Know what they did? Gave an unhelpfully nonsensical answer.
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@ArecBalrin I don't want to come across like I'm trying to defend the developers; I'm not, and they do make a lot of really boneheaded mistakes, and often fall on their faces when it comes to addressing the game's real, serious problems. I hope we can at least agree on that.
Although I don't necessarily agree with all of the logic behind the Freddy rework, I think two years is a ridiculously unacceptable time frame to wait for such a huge overhaul. They're clearly bad at prioritizing. I still have to think that, like any sizable game development studio, they weigh development and balance decisions based on data and internal testing. They're not obligated in any way to share their internal data with us, or even to justify their decisions in any way they don't feel appropriate, but the fact that they screw so much up (and don't prioritize well) inevitably leads to a lot of our collective bad faith about the whole process.
I dunno what the answer is. I just want them to fix all the broken stuff about their game, like, yesterday, because three years is already an inappropriate grace period from a player perspective.
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By just taking what I said and changing the words around, you're saying context doesn't matter. The game has a history and that history happened, with survivors in a distinct role that is not inter-changeable with killers. You have to try anyway because the case for it is long, detailed, boring, but unanswerable.
The devs themselves have previously used their data, selectively, to justify themselves; in terms of 'we have the data and you don't, so we know how to decide how things should work'. This excludes them from any justification they can come out with about witholding data, unless it is specifically personal data or commercially-sensitive, which gameplay telemetry isn't. It's propriatry of course, but once they're using the inability of players to see the data as a reason to dismiss specific player feedback, they have to explain how they can say that when they're the only ones deciding it's the case.
When my Q&A question was first picked, by even answering it at all they accepted the premise that asking specific questions about data is ok and will be answered; they just dishonestly gave a gibberish answer.
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@ArecBalrin What question did you ask them, and how did they answer it?
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"As a ratio, how many survivors-to-killers are playing the game right now?"
BHVR: "2.6, for every 1 killer"
That was it. No detail was given, no clarifying technical information; which is a basic standard when producing any statistic with the intention of providing useable information. No reasonable person can possibly conclude what that figure actually represents.
I had worded my question carefully, to allow BHVR the broadest possible scope for answering, because there would be data-points and details which I knew I wouldn't be aware of. Including upfront clauses or any further specificity(other than what I did, to avoid ambiquity), would have possibly meant making the question unanswerable without a ridiculously long over-explanation by anyone on the panel who was statistically-numerate. I gave them absolute freedom in their answer, but they abused it.
You can maybe get a measure of what governs my attiude towards the devs since then and anyone else who chooses to make bad-faith arguments.
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@ArecBalrin I would call that a fair answer to the question as-asked. They did tell you the ratio, which was specifically what you inquired about. I mean, what context would you reasonably want to go with it? It wouldn't matter if, say, he were drawing from a player base of 30,000 or 300,000 -- the ratio is still 2.6:1.
I understand you probably wanted more data, but I can see how the question as-asked would lead to a straightforward and simple answer.
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Did you miss what I said about bad-faith arguments?
If they are determined to not give a useful answer, but to seem like they have, then I am in a catch-22 when it comes to phrasing the question. I made the question in good-faith; giving them the utmost freedom in how they answered. It relied on me trusting them to be honest, but they weren't. There is no way the question could have been phrased if they always intended to give an unhelpful answer.
Had I assumed beforehand or known that they were going to do this, I wouldn't have asked the question at all because I know statistics well-enough to know nothing can verbally paint them into a corner. The more I restrict the terms of the answer I'm expecting, the more likely they are able to say 'we don't have any information on this specifically' or 'we don't understand the question' or 'this is how many killers and survivors are actually in matches over this period'.
They is no phrasing of the question 'as-asked' which would have produced a useful answer, because they were determined not to give it. If they had responded in good-faith, it would take a major botching of my phrasing to produce the same poor result.
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@ArecBalrin But it's not a wide-open question, it's a really specific question. You asked "As a ratio, how many survivors-to-killers are playing the game right now?" and they gave you, specifically, a ratio of how many survivors-to-killers are playing the game right now. They gave you the answer you were seeking. I can't fault that as a bad-faith exchange.
If someone showed you that question and that answer in a vacuum, with no other context in terms of whatever baggage and issues accompany this game and this developer and this player base, can you honestly tell me that you would conclude it isn't a fair and straightforward answer? What unsaid information were you hoping, specifically, to get out of it?
In the Q&A thread for Thursday's Twitch stream, I asked this: "Would you ever consider removing perk tiers, so that each perk only has one version? With 65 total survivor perks and 60 total killer perks, this would alleviate the most oppressive aspects of the grind, and actually make prestige a tempting decision, while still requiring players to put time into building up characters."
If this question is selected, I am anticipating them 1) answering the question posed in the first sentence, and 2) addressing the big-picture concern that led to my asking the question (which I have made very clear here). Without the context of that second part, I could rightly expect them to simply answer "No."
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I wouldn't bother with the conversation as It seems they asked a direct question and no matter how they answered they wanted to use that to argue that it was not what they wanted.
it just seems like the person really does not like the devs so no matter what they do it will be met with extreme scrutiny.
Some things are better just left alone.
Post edited by twistedmonkey on7 -
Once again, what I said about bad-faith arguments; it applies to you too.
Your argument here is that as long as the context is completely removed, the answer they gave is fine. This is despite me explaining the context and why it matters. The only way you can then go on to say 'but anyone who saw the question and saw the answer but had no content would think it was fine' is you are doing the same thing: you have no intention of looking at it on a level playing-field or acknowledging that I was working with an information-gap and the devs weren't. My answer on this specific topic and in this context, depended on trusting the devs no matter how the question was phrased.
Your example question required you to only know things which are publicly available; the only thing you don't know is the information you're specifically requesting. My question regarding a statistic would have required in-depth knowledge of what gameplay data they were already collecting and how they were collecting it in order for the question to be phrased in the same exactitude without presumptions.
Do YOU actually know what the answer they gave even means? Lots of people pretended to for months afterwards, even if their ideas were all different. The devs knew what they were doing by giving a useless answer.
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@ArecBalrin I am not trying to argue in bad faith, I'm not on anyone's side here. I'm trying to look at it from the perspective of the person being asked the question.
This is a bit of a lopsided analogy, but bear with me: If you were in, like, a courtroom, and a lawyer asked you a direct question on the stand -- say, "Did you steal the thing you are accused of stealing?" the correct answer (and let's assume the truth for the purposes of this pretend analogy) is simply "No." You don't volunteer additional information, because a) You weren't asked for it, and b) You have no idea, based on the question alone, what the inquirer's agenda is.
I don't know what the temperature, so to speak, was like in the room where you were asking your question. Were there a bunch of big problems? Were the developers in hot water for something at the time that this question was being answered? Were they trying to downplay some big, awful issue? It sounds like you're expecting them to read between the lines, but from their perspective, they don't exactly owe us that.
We all have our issues with this game and how the developers go about maintaining and balancing it, as we have discussed in this very thread. They roundly deserve the criticism. I try to mostly be constructive and actionable about my feedback (though I have admittedly posted some things on this forum out of frustration), but I can't expect the developers to really share the player perspective and readily spill every piece of information and data that they have. I think your threshold for bad-faith discussions might be kind of wonky.
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(Also, maybe the question in my courtroom analogy is a little stupid and too direct for the hypothetical that I set up. It could be any question. "Were you at this address, at this time, on this day?" "No." You don't immediately volunteer where you were, you just answer the question as-asked.)
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@Rydog In a courtroom, anyone being asked questions is required to answer like that; they don't have a choice. They are not permitted to comment or speculate unless they are an expert witness(I am going by common law standards) and may only talk about the topic they are an expert on. All who testify are forbidden to make argument or ask questions other than for clarifcation to enable them to answer, which if they fail to do so can be grounds for one side to object or have the testimy disregarded, which is the only point relevant about the devs here. Even then it's not the representative of one side that gives the clarification, but the most senior bar-member taking part(the magistrate/barrister or judge), which in the context of the livestream would have been the devs themselves. They had a moral responsibility to clarify my question, shape it according to their own specific knowledge of the data and give a usable answer.
They did not, because they had no intention of doing so, however the question had been phrased. The devs were explicitly given the choice by me, because I lack the requisite understanding of their internal data-collating process to ask a closed-question that was relevant to it.
They were not answering every single question. They were being asked hundreds of questions in those days and could only answer about two-dozen on a livestream, giving about 30 seconds to a minute for most. Mine was the shortest answer they have ever given to any question, ever. They had to pick and choose. If they did not have a usable answer for me, why did they pick my question at all? Why did they then research the unhelpful answer they gave specifically when it was a waste of time? It's not like that was the first time they read it, then just so happened to have that figure on-hand.
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@ArecBalrin I do not think the developers would agree that they have a moral responsibility to answer questions. This is the crux of what I'm getting at -- you're trying to apply your worldview on this particular issue to a separate group of people that do not share this perspective, and that you could never reasonably expect to share this perspective, regardless of the grievances that we have with them and their game.
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@ArecBalrin And don't get me wrong, I absolutely share in the sentiment that "Hey, developers, why don't you address [insert problem]? It's making a lot of people upset and/or frustrated, and it would really make everyone happier if you would just chime in and tell us ######### is going on and how you're going to solve it."
I get just as irate as anyone else when I see some garbage mechanics or player behavior that the developer has not sufficiently addressed, or that they are interminably dragging their feet on. But I also know that they aren't always going to share my priorities or my perspective on the matter.
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