Toxic, filled with conspiracy theories, and misinformation.
"CG_JohnSalera;82914" wrote:@CG_JohnSalera
Hey guys -
And now, on to what happened here:People who didn't want to Activate or Promote any of the characters currently available in the GW Shipments didn't spend their GW Tokens. Cool. They amassed some number of these Tokens. Cool. (BTW - I have no idea how many people had more or fewer of these tokens. It's not relevant. Perhaps someone on the team knows this, or knew it at one time, but it's really not something we talk or think about a lot. Just wanted to clarify that because some of the conspiracy theorists have asserted that their high balances had something to do with this. "You knew I was stockpiling and wanted to punish me!" or somesuch variant. That's frankly story they made up in their heads and has no bearing on reality.) We fixed this bug and brought this Refresh in alignment with every other Refresh in the game. We didn't message or "warn" anyone about this because we honestly figured it was obviously a bug. Apparently, not cool. We saw the forums heat up and the toxicity flow. (And seriously folks, these forums are way too toxic, filled with conspiracy theories, and misinformation. I'm hoping we can work together to bring the tenor of the conversation to a healthier, more productive and positive posture.) We decided to enact this one week hiatus so people who were upset and frankly calling us all forms of insulting things could spend away as they see fit. Some people rejoiced, some said it was a good move, some still found a way to be upset. I know it's a fools errand to try to make everyone happy, but it is starting to feel like some number of people are going to rise up in fury regardless what we do, change, or add. But that's a longer-term problem related to the toxicity levels.
Respectfully,
You are 100% right from a certain point of view. Everything you said was correct. I would have to agree with the statement, "the official forums are fairly toxic".
And yet there is another layer to this that you might not be considering. When developers hide so much of the information and mechanics that run under the hood people are going to do one of two things; 1) speculate and try and develop theories, 2) lose interest. The community engagement has been lacking. Frankly when there is as little community engagement as we have, it is unfair to lay all the blame for misinformation on the feet of those who are passionate about the game.
For example Team Instinct's Speed Guide is fundamental to understanding how things work. Is that misinformation? Is it accurate? Frankly someone from CG should acknowledge and either confirm or correct it.
Twice @EA_Jesse has promised a Q&A session and asked for questions. Twice we haven't seen anything. Not once have we gotten any information more than one hour before a change was rolled out. The game is filled with typographical errors and bugs (I have to wonder why so few were caught and fixed during the soft launch, but that is another issue), so much so that I have to wonder if many of the behaviors I see are bugs or intended (I have no idea how Ventriss is supposed to work)?
I have been working slowly on getting my Poe and IG-86 up to 7*. Is he going to be worthless two days after I finally star him? I am also going to stop spending effort on my 86 as I don't want to waste shards. In a game that takes a ton of planning to play competitively we lack basic, basic information. Based on the track record I expect Poe to be nerfed right as I finish him up. Given the lack of depth to the game at this point (I understand the game is still young, but except for two more levels and a few stars I am done) so little gameplay coupled with a lack of communication will lead to toxicity in the forums.
You really need to step up your game in regards to community engagement, and stop hiding things until the last possible minute. @EA_Jesse should really have at least twice as many posts as he does if he is indeed a community manager. My last online FTP game was from 5th Planet Games. Now those guys had good outreach. Heck they even had a player council where changes were vetted with a group of players with a NDA and attended meeting via Skype.
Most of us understand needing to make money, a lot of us understand that changing a number in a database from 5 to 50 (a la Dooku) is a trivial fix, whereas the problems you have with the logic order in combat is a major reworking (to fix things like Ventress not gaining buffs from her kills). However all we are left with is speculation.
TLDR; Step up your community engagement. Most of the toxicity grows from the vacuum of silence from CG.
