Runes of Magic US / AU

Quoted from "Ryuushin;489093"

The best suggestion I could make is to post the effects of the patch to come atleast 2 weeks in advance. Hold polls, or even just take feedback before you implement a patch.

Based on the previous patching comment, that is not available 2 weeks in advance. Heck, it is not available 2 days in advance in most cases.

Nor does feedback based on unreleased and unplayed software sounds like it would be productive. Data gathered from users is traditionally low quality and needs to be analyzed and summarized to be of any use in guiding development. That takes long, long time.

As far as forum reorg, I'll go with:

1) Palenque forums in server-specific forum areas

2) Getting rid of some of the less used forums, such as looking for group, wanting to buy, etc... Instead, I'd make a generic server specific forum, so guilds, people looking for guilds, people trying to sell or buy things not in game, etc, all have a common place.

3) I like EU bug forums and databases. It makes no sense to maintain separate US version of it, so some kind of sharing of info would be nice. After all, we all run same software and see same issues and problems.

4) Rename "Discussion about Runes of Magic" to "Rant, whine, complain, gripe, QQ and bellyache about Runes of Magic". What? It would only reflect its actual use. :p

Quoted from "vfwiffo;489105"

3) I like EU bug forums and databases. It makes no sense to maintain separate US version of it, so some kind of sharing of info would be nice. After all, we all run same software and see same issues and problems.

I agree with this.
I especially like that the EU forums have a section specifically for undocumented changes for each patch. I'd like to see that section in our US forums. Here, we just use the "Discussion About Runes of Magic" section to note undocumented changes, often in in multiple threads for each change we discover (not including repeat threads from different people reporting the same undocumented change).
It would be a lot more organized to have that information available all in one place.

I think it would also be cool if you could implement the server rankings for stats like you do on the Euro servers. Top 100 in each stat over all US servers would be nice.

1. Community guide sub-forums should merge into single one with sticky for all most important things to know. Actually I would separate guides from regular question about guide forum.

2. New member forum should be renamed into introduction forum.

3. Listen vfwiffo regarding open discussion forum.

4. Get rid of all sub-forums. One main forum per server, just like in EU with all server info under one link.

5. It is my opinion that major problems should be addressed on main site, so there should be news stating 'We are aware of problem and we are working on it' with option to comment there rather then creation of 10s of posts with the same purpose, and what's worst - most of them turn into QQ-ing about nerfs/changes.



As for updates, I believe that Frogster should do the same thing I am doing with our ERP software. Once they get new version out, I load new version on test server and I do test it, but even then I wait for some time and monitor community to see if anyone else has problems. (in our case, if Asia servers and community have problems ) Mostly I am couple of months behind in releases, but bad previous experience made us opt for this.

RW should really stop adding new staff into game and workout all issues we have before any major addition, but we all know that and I am sure by now they know that as well.

my 2 cents...

How about the ability to rank fellow forum members based on usefulness of posts?

How about the ability to rank an answer in a thread, not just the thread itself (but keep that too)?

This would allow people the ability to look through a thread, and see which answers the community thinks are the best solution to a question posed in a thread itself. As well as the ability for new and returning players to see whom the community has deemed is a contributing member that is worth a damn. I for one would love the ability to vote certain people as more useful than others (take Peryl for example - I would give him 5 out of 5 stars as a useful contributing member (sadly he is moving on now though), or Drake, or even vfwiffo (while I do not always agree with his point of view, he is helpful to the community and deserves recognition for that) these people need to be recognized as the helpful people they are!).

Palenque needs the ENGLISH portion of the BILINGUAL server to get forum support (as I have been asking for for about two years now...)

If a thread is asked to be stickied by the community, staff should do as the community wishes (within reason - imo no thread should be stickied that breaks the rules, as those get locked or deleted anyways).

If I think of more (I'm sure I will, while typing this I thought of another one, then forgot what it was <.< my memory is slipping...great) I will post them.

Zalmah! You want our opinions? Why? You brought in new community moderaters, why? You don't listen, as far as we can tell. As a player who has been here from the time the game went live, I have seen the same thing over and over again. You say one thing, and then do something different. This last weekend was so frustrating for so many players. The lack of communication was so terribly obvious, and yet Rodatas was the only one who even came close to apologizing to us. And Rodatas owes us more. He lost his temper in several posts that he made, and reminded me of our first GMs way too much.
You want our opinions? Hello, your paying customers are leaving in droves. Again. Sometimes I do wonder how you pay your employees, much less the light bill. One of the first rules of any company involves the realization that current customers earn you more than new customers.

We asked for class balance. This GCD didn't. Knights still aren't balanced. Priests aren't balanced. Most of the player opinions (suggestions?) that were given at the end of chapter 3 were ignored. Ignored. I had to wait 2 weeks to get an answer concerning an issue I sent in a ticket about, and the answer was, srry, not our problem. That took two weeks to figure out? No, I don't think so. Communication goes both ways, and FA isn't doing its job. Our opinons count? Show us. I have not seen any evidence of this at all.

I must really be upset, I didn't bother to talk piratey at all...

Lemon

Quoted from "Lemonater;489247"

Zalmah! You want our opinions? Why? You brought in new community moderaters, why? You don't listen, as far as we can tell. As a player who has been here from the time the game went live, I have seen the same thing over and over again. You say one thing, and then do something different. This last weekend was so frustrating for so many players. The lack of communication was so terribly obvious, and yet Rodatas was the only one who even came close to apologizing to us. And Rodatas owes us more. He lost his temper in several posts that he made, and reminded me of our first GMs way too much.
You want our opinions? Hello, your paying customers are leaving in droves. Again. Sometimes I do wonder how you pay your employees, much less the light bill. One of the first rules of any company involves the realization that current customers earn you more than new customers.

We asked for class balance. This GCD didn't. Knights still aren't balanced. Priests aren't balanced. Most of the player opinions (suggestions?) that were given at the end of chapter 3 were ignored. Ignored. I had to wait 2 weeks to get an answer concerning an issue I sent in a ticket about, and the answer was, srry, not our problem. That took two weeks to figure out? No, I don't think so. Communication goes both ways, and FA isn't doing its job. Our opinons count? Show us. I have not seen any evidence of this at all.

I must really be upset, I didn't bother to talk piratey at all...

Lemon

I'm sorry if you felt I lost my temper somewhere, I can't imagine what you mean though. True, I've been upset with a bit of impotence on my part to provide a satisfactory response to players regarding the recent issues, but I hardly think that would be offensive to you folk. In any case, I apologize if you've ever been troubled by my responses.

Please feel free to contact me personally or use one of the other open threads (or create your own, if you feel you have a different perspective/goal in communication) so we can chat about your issues, but leave this thread for it's intended purpose.

Thank you for your understanding, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Sorry to say Lemon is right, the way its going on our server (Isiltir EU) is that all guild top players are demotivated and considering quitting, we lost all our mages already.

I really don't care anymore, make forums to what you like - as long as the game is ruined it really doesn't matter.

If you want to do something, focus on giving players stability. E.x. try to publish a balancing plan for all classes, were tired of being played with.

Sorry for going off topic.

Quoted from "frafall;489252"

Sorry to say Lemon is right, the way its going on our server (Isiltir EU) is that all guild top players are demotivated and considering quitting, we lost all our mages already.

I really don't care anymore, make forums to what you like - as long as the game is ruined it really doesn't matter.

If you want to do something, focus on giving players stability. E.x. try to publish a balancing plan for all classes, were tired of being played with.

Sorry for going off topic.

oddly, you're kind of on topic. this was put in discussions of runes of magic, not discussions of the forums.

honestly, what we want is for these things to take a back seat to the real issues. get people who speak the language of the programmers to stay up late one night, make some phone calls. tell them what's up. when everyone decides they're still gonna HAVE runes of magic, then you can decide on forum issues,

that's some input, truth told.

Quoted from "vfwiffo;489105"

Based on the previous patching comment, that is not available 2 weeks in advance. Heck, it is not available 2 days in advance in most cases.
snip

That is entirely Frogster's fault. Nothing states that Frogster must release the patch within 2 or less days of receiving it. With patch 4.0.5, it arrived almost 3 full days before they decided to release it. Too bad they did not test it well enough to realize that the new content was mixed in with several game breaking bugs.

Regardless of how early anyone releases the patch notes, Frogster should test the patch. THOROUGHLY test the patch, since everyone knows including Frogster, that Runewaker does not. Whether that delay takes 3 weeks or 3 months, it does not matter, as long as Frogster quits releasing patches that are more buggy than the bugs they are attempting to address.

Quoted from "Whippingboy;489297"

That is entirely Frogster's fault. Nothing states that Frogster must release the patch within 2 or less days of receiving it. With patch 4.0.5, it arrived almost 3 full days before they decided to release it. Too bad they did not test it well enough to realize that the new content was mixed in with several game breaking bugs.

No. The 4.0.5 patch that was released was not the tuesday one. They received updated patch, and that was the one that was released. The notes for updated patch were not available before the patch.

The bugs in this patch are minor. While people disagree with the design decisions taken on GCD and LOS issues, those are not bugs. The SW breaking might be a bug (we are not sure if RW or Frogs are at fault). Sismond Watchers are a bug. Event timer issue are a bug.

None of them are game-breaking. There are no broken quest chains, there is more sufficient experience to hit level cap, the public events work fairly well overall. A lot more went right than wrong.

Quoted

Regardless of how early anyone releases the patch notes, Frogster should test the patch. THOROUGHLY test the patch, since everyone knows including Frogster, that Runewaker does not. Whether that delay takes 3 weeks or 3 months, it does not matter, as long as Frogster quits releasing patches that are more buggy than the bugs they are attempting to address.

Meh... the idea that Frogster can test a patch more thoroughly than RW can is not credible, and can only come from people thoroughly unfamiliar with the process of software development. It is, though, much better than the other idea bandied around, that players should be testing the patches.

Anyway... this is about forum reorganization, not other issues, so let me get back on topic. As far as actual relevance to the topic goes, this came from the "post notes in advance" suggestion. Even if possible, by sitting on a finished patch for a while, the amount of information gleamed from notes is minor, and the outcry from the "you have the patch and patch notes, why are you not applying it" would be rather loud.

Create a new forum rank, Fanboi!!

cant help but think that people keep getting off topic because they dont care about the damned forums at this point in time...the game is broken! i think we would rather have a fixed game and broken forums than the other way around.

Nonetheless, this thread is about forums and forums alone, not the Patch, nor Bugs, nor Siege Wars nor Balancing

We have threads all over the forums already discussing all these topics at full blast, so please let this little thread here be what it wants to be. A collection of feedback and suggestions for a forum revamp. (And please keep in mind, we are CM staff not developers. I do not think you would even want me try to fix game code, now that would be very scary )

an open forum. and what i mean by that is free discussion. a member created a seperate forum because our posts were being edited,locked,closed,deleted. free flow of information is critical imho.

Quoted from "trav42073;489517"

an open forum. and what i mean by that is free discussion. a member created a seperate forum because our posts were being edited,locked,closed,deleted. free flow of information is critical imho.

If you're ever unhappy with a moderation action, please don't hesitate to contact one of our community managers. We do keep an eye and moderate each other when required. Most threads only get closed when they degenerate into pointless flaming or are duplicates of already popular threads, and then only to avoid confusion rather than stem the flow of information.

Quoted from "Dionaea;489487"

I do not think you would even want me try to fix game code, now that would be very scary )

At that point, at least someone would be working on it. Which is one more than is currently...

Create a forum: data to be forwarded directly to RW. Make the threads have to be approved and make someone from RW actually read the things.

For those who still don't get it. Frogster does NOT code this game/write the patches. RUNEWAKER does. Do you think Frogster just takes a lot of feedback, tosses it out the window, and just says everything is going fine RW, keep doing what you're doing? Do you think the CMs and people working there are idiots or something? When people bitch and moan about Froggy not fixing things and nerfing them, and then things not getting better, it's a waste. OBVIOUSLY Frogster is trying to do things that help the community or make the game better. The GCD issue may have been a failure there, so RW will probably be told about it, as they've been told about the large number of other problems the game has. So instead of yelling at the CMs (especially when they're trying to do something that may actually help). Use your brain for 2 more seconds than the 1 it had been working to come up with such rants and if you're so frustrated with the state of things, call Runewaker.

Do you blame the paperboy for bringing a crappy newspaper?

Quoted from "vb2341;489655"

Do you blame the paperboy for bringing a crappy newspaper?

Yes, I would blame the paperboy for bringing me a newspaper rolled around dog crap, the same way I would blame a game publisher for selling me a broken game that gets more broken with each patch, and the same way I would blame a game publisher for selling me a game forum that censors its customer comments and that gets filled with more incorrect info from the game publisher each passing day.