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[PATV] Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 11: Community Management
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
[PATV] Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 11: Community Management
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Bungie's community manager, DeeJ, is pretty popular among the community. Or are you thinking bigger than that?
I really enjoyed the position. I modded under a different name than my player name and I think I was pretty popular. Half of it is just being active. The other half is being fair, not playing favourites but also not being a dick ( someone who breaks a rule accidentally doesn't necessarily deserve the same punishment as a player who did it wilfully even they its the same rule). In time I even won over some of the people I banned.
I think being a player helps too, you understand peoples complaints better. I know one of my biggest issues with WoW was when you read an update to your class/spec with disbelief on your face realising they just killed your class and the devs seem none the wiser. Blatantly obvious noone on the dev team plays your spec to any serious level (removing snare remove from feral druids is an absolute CLASSIC) and it generates a lot of animosity.
Just keeping cool, dont swear, never lose your temper. Be in control. That way your an immutable force. Always be visible. Make at atleast 2 or 3 posts every day even if they are just "none" posts in offtopic threads so you are visible. Again with wow, nothing pissed me off more than knowing the blues never looked at the EU forums, you feel so sidelined and forgotten. Like your experience doesnt matter.
My biggest issue was that Bigpoint asked an AWFUL lot for a position that was being fill for free in people free time. I ended up quitting because I realised I was doing 40 hr a week for free when I was supposed to be writing an essay for uni. But overall I enjoyed my time doing it.
If they had been more open and admitted earlier that they had passed up on recreating the event in favor of new and exciting content that was almost done, I don't think anyone would have been very upset. However, the community was left totally in the dark, and as a result, the less mature of us started getting absurdly mad.
Valve has no dedicated public voice for the game to address user questions or talk about plans--they simply update their blog every month or two whenever they have finished a new update, or silently add more items or bugfixes. It's a case of an excellent game made with a lot of care and love being marred by the relative lack of effort being put into the devs' community relationship.
See, this is why I think companies don't give a crap about CMs, because the forums are filled with people who feel this way. In general, the game forum represents a very small percentage of players, and any game is going to be at serious risk if they only listen to that small percent.
Blizzard even made fun of it a few years ago at BlizzCon with a video titled something like "If we listed to the forums" and they had what MC would look like and it was over the top ridiculous.
Too often players only see things from their own, biased prospective. Which is why game forums more often than not turn into shouting matches about why they have been negatively effected, and why everyone else is getting buffed. That's why WoW turns into "Ghostcrawler plays a mage so he's forcing the devs to buff mages!" threads.
I imagine in single player games it's not as bad, but then again I'm not sure the CM is as important a role in those cases, so it's a bit of a catch 22.
Truthfully, you'd probably suspend them for a week or so for first offense and explain very clearly why you did it.
If it escalates, I might ban them permanently pending a written apology for what they did. If it worked in kindergarten, it'll probably work in CM.
If they stop, the other players may well follow their lead, and if I get a round of apologies to the harassed player then I don't see that any action needs to be taken at all. If they don't stop after my awesome attempts at a peaceful solution, they get blown up just like anyone else would; their spending and popularity mean nothing to me if they're using that visibility in a negative way.
Giving community managers the ability to mute someone to anyone but their friends list for the bad behavior mentioned in the video isn't something that just happens. Stats and achievement sharing are other major community aspects that could be easily improved with forethought.
Are there existing frameworks you can point to, or is it still all ad hoc?
I dont doubt that many, most even, are raging for them to be the best. I remember that vid, it was pretty good. Equally, however, they consistently chimed in in balance discussions on the US forums while ignoring the EU forums. Additionally equally, they did makes design choices that literally everybody in the class failed to understand. My example of removing snare removal from shifting from Feral Druids in Cata (I think) is a classic. A prefect example. The number of feral druids active in the game dropped off a cliff. I dont remember the exact figure but something like 90% of feral left within a handful of weeks of that patch change. Ferals who had been playing since day one quit. To this day the number of feral druids have not recovered to pre nerf levels.
They made a choice, advertised the choice. Listened to the feedback that Druids needed shifting so they reinstated it to Resto and Balance, the two specs that didnt actually need it (but ghost crawler did play) and kept it from feral and it killed the spec. How much more of a PERFECT example of "no dev plays the spec" do you need than this. Noone who plays feral would have EVER suggested this change, it was integral to their entire pvp play style. A a Priest I thought it was fuckin nuts.
As a PvPer, I can also say I felt that none of the devs seriously played PvP at any real level. All you have to do is look at the quality of changes in games like Starcraft. Micro changes to just tip balance, compared to the hamfisted broad stroke changes in wow to see it. Things like, taking nearly 2 whole seasons to accept locks were ignore resilience (something that had been bandied about on the forums the whole 2 seasons). Removing Heroism/Bloodlust, which I first saw suggested in the PvP forums nearly 5 seasons (a whole xpac) before they FINALLY did it. The fact that Vamp Touch causing Horror on dispel broke shadow (took them a season to fix that). The fact that prot Warriors were broken and could deal more damage than any 2 dps.
Just the number of things that were overlooked, ignored or just done without an regard to how it would actually affect balance. You could argue that some/all of it was pve focused but much of what they did have virtually zero effect on pve (the shifting, again, being the classic).
Because I can read french I would often go to the french forum and read about upcoming change ahead of time (weeks, months) but on the NA server the CM would announce change the day they were happening, if even. Once one of those patch made the most popular skill in the game useless (and this was a game that took 2-3 month to complete) this was a huge blow to many people and we asked for free re spec, which took week to actually happens, at which point it didn't matter anymore for most. I don't think it was the CM fault per se, they didn't do anything wrong (they didn't do anything right either), but it seems to me like the problem was more the communication between dev and CM was very deficient, and that seems to be another area that CM need to focus on.
The same way you'd deal with them if they weren't popular. They may be big contributors to your game, but showing favoritism to them for it sure as hell won't help your community.
What that entails depends on the standards you already had in place for that kind of behavior.
Anyone who knows that name knows why I said it here.
For those that don't, look up Cuppajo and City of Heroes, you should find her in the CoH Wiki. Much Respect. Being a woman and a CM likely meant she was earning peanuts, but she deserved so much more.
She reprimanded me once because I started a thread that almost brought the forums to a halt (Post Count Padders Anonymous) but she also knew it was all for fun so she left the original post up, just locked it. Long live the Forum Cartel (Edit: the forum cartel does not exist).
her replacement deleted the AASQ (Ask a Stupid Question, largest thread on the forums) thread for not being on topic -.-
He obviously didn't share her sense of humor.
Hope she's doing well where ever she is now.
_WAter_
I have a contrasting opinion about CuppaJo. She had a pronounced tendency to play favorites, and a lot of abuses by her favorites got swept under the rug without punishment. The very thread you're complaining about was a huge spammy off-topic mess that devolved frequently into personal attacks. For players who weren't part of that favored set, the forums under her reign were a wasteland. My Supergroup threw a party when she quit. And no, we weren't on some kind of bad list. We were all pretty much squeaky clean play-by-the-rules sorts, the kinds of players who actually read the terms of service before signing in. Which is precisely why the failure to enforce those rules consistently bothered us so much.
The Golden Age of the City of Heroes community didn't begin, in my opinion, until years after she fled the post. I'm sorry that your private Forum Cartel garden party wasn't quite as well defended without her, but it seemed worth the price to make the forums open to all players.
He spent all his time hanging out with his favourites on Mumble, shielding them from criticism and allowing them to shout down dissenting opinion. He practically manufactured a toxic community single-handedly.
While the launch of the game had a lot of problems (it left beta a little too early, the design team split the community at a crucial point, etc); it's hard not to think it might have turned out differently if the people who ended up saying "I told you so" hadn't been marginalised.
As for City of Heroes / Villains; the reason I left that MMO was because of the community.
From a moral perspective, that's the easy answer. But keep in mind that as a CM you are doing a job and are accountable to your employers. I don't know the exact relations between CMs and the people actually making money off the players, but I have to imagine a CM would be frowned upon if they banned major moneymakers, especially for smaller games that rely heavily on small numbers of high-paying individuals. It's all well and good to take the high road, but if that goes against the wishes of the people signing the paychecks, you end up with a more difficult situation.
So, for the last seven years I have worked in community management at a pair of Action-Adventure Camp and Conference Centers. So, lots of CM experience, and a demographic that's similar in scope (everyone, with a significant percentage of amazing young people) just in a slightly different field.
Anyone who disagrees with me, please say so and explain! I'm always looking for more perspectives.
Let's say that JasonB is being harassed by 0Hulk0 and RnBwDsh. RBD is a very high profile player, and even though you have worked tirelessly to create a positive community environment, he's just going off. Maybe he's drunk, maybe he's had a bad day, who knows.
The obvious need is to stop the harassment. The issue is when that starts out as the primary focus.
Let me explain. If someone who is A: Highly active in my community has B: Not bought into the community culture, C: I've failed somewhere.
Let's assume I haven't failed in the general culture. It's healthy and active, the vast majority of interactions (especially the highly visible ones) being positive in nature.
RBD has been a generally neutral entity in the community so far. Sometimes being trollish, sometiems being helpful... just a general user who happens to be quite popular (and again, is a user that puts a lot of money into your game).
What an amazing opportunity!
Here's my PM:
FROM: Dr. Suave'
TO: RBD
Hi RBD!
First off, you've been a fantastic presence in our community, and I'm sorry I haven't stopped and said hello beyond forum responses before this! Having people like you around here is one of the things that really keeps me going as a person, and us going as a community.
I mostly wanted to check in and see how you're doing. I saw some recent posts from a few of our community regarding JasonB, and noticed that you didn't seem yourself. I know it's not that much of my business, but I wanted to find out if you're doing ok, and if there is anything I can do to help if needed.
I know none of the posts were meant to hurt JB, but after reading through them a few times, I feel that that has been the unintended side-effect.
I'm going to post some generic "Hi guys, this isn't the kind of communication we like here on the forums." note and lock the thread in a few moments, but I wanted to shoot you a message first.
One thing I noticed is that you are a pretty amazing community leader here. When you say something, people really do listen. My second reason for sending this, is to see if you would be interested in a slightly official volunteer position in our community? With the way more and more people have been joining in lately, it's becoming more clear that having people like yourself officially representing a positive force is vital to our survival.
I'm thinking of a title along the lines of "Community Ambassador." We'd get you a few forum privileges and advance news when we're rolling out new things... maybe even some swag to pass out soon!
Anyway, let me know what you think! If you like the idea, I'll send you some basic NDA and community guidelines paperwork to fill out.
Have fun!
-Dr. Suave'
By changing the primary focus from "We have a problem with these people." to "We have a chance to bring more leaders to the team!" the goal of fixing the problem still gets taken care of, but so much more gets done as well. Of course, this doesn't always work, but as long as the knee-jerk reaction is to raise up more leaders in the community, good things will happen, more often than not.
This is the kind of thing that we did a lot with staff and guests over the years, and it's worked surprisingly well. Even when we had trouble campers who were going to be around for a while, doing this got them a little inside of our leadership community, and we would deliberately let our positiveness rub off on them. Then, when people started getting rowdy, having one of their own number step in and say, "Guys, let's not do this" did so much more good than if one of us had to do it.
Whenever I saw this happen, I would find the people who were involved later and tell them how impressed I was at how they restrained themselves, and would give them some form of reward for it. As long as you have guidelines for how the self-policing occurs, your community will grow and mature more than you can dream.
In this case, it ends up a win-win-win for you, the community manager (you've won a moral victory and made the community a better place), the company (you've elicited more buy-in from the current user-base, and heightened the number of contacts they will talk to about the product), and the players (JasonB and users like him have one more ally, RBD feels as if he has more real-world agency, and again, you've made their community a better place).
Anyway, that's my two cents... that ended up being more like seven cents.
Any thoughts would be welcome!
-Suave'
That's it.
Inevitably bad community managers are those who have the biggest egos, they like the job for the attention, praise, and power. As such they like to wield their power like a blunt instrument, more interested in crushing people instead of directing them towards more favorable behavior.
People who are humble end up doing the job because they enjoy it, and as such tend to take softer approaches to people.
Yes there's the factor of 'fun' CMs who randomly engage with the community, but it's mostly an irrelevant factor. A fun egotistical CM *will* create divides in the community, and is arguably worse than a "serious" egotistical CM due to how they will create a bubble of fans around them, where as a "serious" egotistical CM will be reviled by everyone.
As for the 'answer' to how do you deal with a troublesome 'popular' player harassing another. A way to deal with the situation might be along the lines of:
"I apologize for the behavior of the community, since we're here to have fun. The best kind of fun is when it's not at anyone's expense, otherwise that's just bullying. Next time try to find ways where everyone can enjoy the conversation, not just a select few."
Just my inane babbling.
Seriously, doing epic feeling events in Minecraft of all things?! You guys were/are nuts.
You are kind of proving my point. This is stuff that happened what, three years ago and you are still mad about it. The forums are filled with people who react emotionally about the game and rarely every look at it rationally. The most common thing is ignoring any real statistical evidence based on "this one time class <insert class they're angry about> globaled me, nerf <class>". For years Hunters were the victim of this, they were always the bottom feeders until very recently (seriously, look at their 2200+ representation from S1 through about S12), yet the forums were full of people saying how OP they were. Yet, clearly they weren't.
I played WoW since release, but as an altaholic, I played pretty much every class and theorycrafted the crap out of the game. I feel I was pretty rational when any changes were made to classes, because I had no "my class" like so many do (like you with Druids for example), but there weren't many of us, at least on the official forums anyway. Back in Vanilla I came up with a point system evaluating gear for Enhancement Shaman, it was picked up by a bunch of people and even was on the WoW Wiki for a while (it was similar to Shadowpanther's point system or Rogues that was pretty valuable back in the day before resiliance was added to the game). Since I wasn't calling for buffs, just for people to gear smarter, I was called everything under the sun by angry Shaman, I was accused of being a spy for other classes, and of course Hitler...a number of times. I would go back to the forums once in a while after that, but never as much because it was rarely a place for rational conversation.
Specifically to WoW, people don't seem to get that balancing it is so much harder than a game like Starcraft, and with their current policy of not splitting the game in two distinct parts (PvE and PvP), I'd argue it's actually impossible. Not everything they do is right, or even close to it, but the idea that nobody on the development team plays a class is just silly. Just as silly as the idea that Ghostcrawler orders them to buff mages.
When EC mentions the "tests" you could give a potential community manager hire - especially the "fun" test - I immediately thought of hospitality management. In the past, I used to think it was kind of a goofy specialty for someone to study or choose as a career, but it is really valid, and the community manager of a popular multiplayer / persistent video game is an excellent case where that specialty can be used.
I've had friends describe that line of work as "being paid to help people party." A lot of careers fall into this group, from hotel & restaurant managers and event planners to parks & rec personnel (depends on the municipality, obviously). I suspect that many of the people who are successful at these jobs would do great as CMs and could be an excellent source of hires.
Alright, so they can have fun... but would these people be any good at cleaning up a mess? I think so. A lot of what separates good hospitality management from poor hospitality management is not having the service you pay for be perfect, necessarily... it's that they can handle problems like "This chicken is underdone" or "Housekeeping hasn't stopped by to clean up the room today" elegantly, without causing further harm.
Anyway, there's little excuse that the large AAA studios and publishers can't find some of these people to help run their community or pay them decent wages.
@DrSuave' - You wouldn't happen to have been trained as a public school teacher, would you? Reading your example came across as "dealing with obnoxious class clowns 101." The go-to strategy is "Treat them as a leader, and induct them to working for you rather than against you." Sounds almost exactly like what you're trying to advocate.
For me, it worked out rather well because most of the staff I worked WITH (another aspect of community management not addressed here) were not as "iron-fisted" nor were they as active. So they had me to do more of the nitty gritty sorting work and I had them to do more of the bridging the gap between different personalities within the community. So it could be that we were both "right" so long as we worked together.
At any rate, just wanted to add that one of the reasons I spent so much of my WOW time doing solo stuff and then in the end left it without looking back was how toxic the community was and how VERY LITTLE Blizzard of all companies was at dealing with it. Not ingame channels, not public parties, not even their own forums. I wasn't alone in this sentiment and apparently, they believe the bottom line of not putting forth the effort is worth more even with all the people they've alienated because of it.
I do get you point, the reason I remember those things specifically (the ones I mentioned) were because they are the things that built up and eventually ended with my quitting, or they were things that went on for years so its hard not to remember them. Most of the DK stuff apart from being massively OP on release I couldnt tell you because they were pretty good at fixing it, bit by bit. I mained priest but I had a maxed out pally/lock/mage and hunter.
Once they got fixed I was happy to let it drop. Its just that they consistently dragged their heels on PvP balance especially. Does it take a whole 2 seasons to admit dispelling UA on players is doing to much damage, a quick 10 min test revealed the problem to me (it was ignoring resil).
Once they admitted it was an issue they fixed it in 6 weeks. Prot warriors doing too much damage in pvp. Harder to fix. A good quick fix however is reduce their damage by a third and bum the agro generated by 3. Its not a permanent fix but it would prevent 17 of the top 20 teams being some variety of prot warrior combo and since the tanks damage doesnt matter in PvE and his threat hasnt changed PvE is unaffected.
Arena maps being buggy, pillars being bigger than they actually are for collision purposes, some obstacles not blocking LoS when they look like they should (Ruins of Lordaeron). The Circle of Blood Arena where for nearly two whole expansions locks were virtually unkillable because of Demonic Circle being placed on the bridge (I know they did eventually fix this by making it require LoS or something and reducing the range slightly). All things that they did eventually fix, essentially admitting they were broken but sometimes taking YEARS to fix them after the problem became apparent (the lock portal trick was highlighted several times in several different tournaments years before it got fixed).
All of these little things just added up to a generally sense of dev apathy for me. I know why people screamed hunter op, I know why they screamed mage op and in some instances I do see and maybe agree (my god Ive just realised mages STILL have mage armour, Im happy to be bias on this one, that ability exists to invalidates S. Priests and affi locks, though admittedly 25% is a damned sight better than its old 50%/35%. I loved it when I was playing my mage), its generally just the amount of time it takes them to even admit there is something wrong. It just showed they didnt care.
Maybe instead of looking at it from a community manager point of view, the industry needs to look at from a customer service representative point of view? That's something already understood and quantified by the business world. Having really good CSRs will make or break a business. The NPS metric system all but quantifies this specifically. Companies that have garnered good success (Apple, Rack Space, Amazon, GoDaddy) understand this. It's part of what brought them continued success.
Your example of how to nerf Prot Warrior damage then makes raiding (non-farm) that much harder (if you don't understand what tank DPS means to a raid, you've never raided anything while it was worthwhile). Tanks don't deal damage ONLY to produce threat, their damage helps push bosses into next phases and is required for many mechanics (including bosses like Alysrazor from Firelands and ANY boss with an enrage-type mechanic). In fact, I would often get two sets of gear and socket/enchant one for regular tanking and one for dps tanking. And would use them depending on the circumstances.
So, you nerf the Prot Warrior's damage, but leave the other tanks' dps up, you are going to have non-PvP Prot Warriors not getting into parties/raids. The only answer to this is to then nerf all tank damage to keep in line with Prot Warriors. But, now you are making these other tanks useless for PvP. So, maybe you buff their bursty attacks, so they are still viable for PvP, which makes them happy but now cloth wearers are dying too quickly while everyone else is fine. So now you increase the clothies' defensive cooldowns, which then makes them unkillable (ex: Disc Priests).
So, now the healers are "healing for too much" or their "bubbles are OP." So we reduce healing effects or mobility effects, etc... So now the other healers have to be brought in line with the ones who were nerfed, and so on and so forth...
You've now affected every class both in PvE and PvP simply because one spec of one class is doing "too much damage".
You can't just knee-jerk reaction change things, and the fact that they were able to figure out fixes within a season or two is admirable. The devs are hardly lazy or apathetic and your assumption that they don't understand PvP is laughable as well... It's their job to play the game, I'm sure they understand far more than you think (and more than likely, more than any of us understand).
After working in customer service for so many years, I'll tell you that pleasing the individual customer is first and foremost, even above the rules set forth by the company. When I worked at Gamestop, even if we followed the rules set forth by corporate verbatim, the second someone called the corporate office the rules went out the window.
For customer service, the main rule is: The customer is always right, no matter how wrong they might be. But, each customer is an entity unto themselves.
A community manager has to (appropriately) manage an entire community of people. They can't put the needs of an individual over the needs of the masses. They also have to learn when to stand firm on, when to bend, or when to break the rules.
A customer service rep needs to be charismatic and quick on their feet (as well as a good idea of the rules and an general overview of the product). Their biggest problems are going to be from singular customers with problems with a product, price, sale, etc... Their main job is to fix everyone's problems as quickly as possible while still making sure the customer leaves satisfied.
For a community manager, most of your interactions are over the internet (some over the phone). This means that even an introvert can be a good community manager (and since a good deal of the gaming populace are also introverts, it might be better that way). These people need to be good critical thinkers and have a knack for mediation. Their main job is to explain things to a community of people on the internet: whether that be explaining changes, policing forums, or just general understanding of problems. They have to understand that their stances aren't going to keep everyone happy, their job isn't to keep people happy.
A good community manager is a boon to the community that developers are trying to cultivate.
A bad one is a PR nightmare.
I want you to imagine the difference between a good forum moderator and a bad one, then imagine that you paid $60 or more to join that forum. Every problem becomes magnified once people feel that they've got money on the line, even when... ....no, especially when that notion is ridiculous.
Every so often Mike's (Gabe) sojourn into the forums is still brought up to use against him. No one ever forgets a bad community moment.
@tralfaz21xx - Nope! All experience/self-taught. It's cool to hear that teachers do the same kind of things.
@sarief - I would love to hear someone from the gaming industry answer to your question as well. While Camping has been a fantastic journey and wonderfully developing, it's time for me to get into my career job now, and I want it to be in Community Management for the gaming community. Whether it's card, board, tabletop, or video games, this intersection of technology, play, and people is where my passion and skillsets lie.
I live in the Seattle area, where there are dozens of positions open for this sort of thing. I recently applied for a couple jobs in this arena, most recently with a company that develops and produces (among other things) a collectible card game. After submitting my resume, I realized that while it showcases my skills well, it's tailored for the Camping industry, which I believe has a different demographic when it comes to hiring managers. I have since been looking for pointers/tips for presenting myself to a company and letting them know through text that I have the skills they need.
I hope your question gets answered so I can tweak my resume with the new knowledge acquired!
@mepis - I think you may have hit one of the topics square on the head. In my experience in the gaming world, Customer Support Representatives and Community Managers often end up being one in the same person. Honestly, that's really not much of a problem as long as we realize that CSR and CM are different hats.
In the industry I have the most experience in (Year-Long Adventure Camping), those two roles are very distinct, and even though they sometimes are filled by the same person, different skill sets are used.
Again, if anyone has experience that contradicts what I'm about to say, please say so! Half of this is near-certainty, the other half is deduction.
---CSR---
CSRs in the Digital World or Assistant Directors in the Camping World hold a very reactive role.
Although the term "reactive" often holds negative connotations, it doesn't always have to be negative.
They're like the military generals who listen to a thousand different issues that are already present, and find the solution.
(Team Fortress example)
"The enemy has the west hallway covered with snipers and a heavy? Great. We're going to send you two scouts and a demoman in to keep them occupied. We need two spies to take out the rear snipers, and one brave engineer to make us a teleport pad in the storage room, so we can do a flanking maneuver with the Pyros. They think they've got us? They've only given us the perfect road to victory. Ready? Let's do it!"
or "Every other post in the forums says we don't listen and that we don't care about our community. Ok. My suggestion is that we slow development on most of our unannounced updates, and focus on some of the issues that the community has requested. In addition, we need someone to write up a letter to the community that in a serious, yet lighthearted way acknowledges their feelings. In fact, we need to admit that we haven't been listening as much as we should have. And then, this is what we need to do moving forward..."
In the end, they fix problems once they arise. An insanely vital role.
In contrast...
---CM---
CMs in the Digital World or whatever name they get in the Camping World hold a very proactive role.
Side note! - At my camp, this role is what I have filled for years, but they didn't have a title for the position. They ended up creating a position called Suave'/Culture Carrier. They named it after me because they wanted me to be able to define the position as I went along... And because saying, "I'm Suave', and my job title is Suave'!" sounds cool.
CMs are like Jedi Knights, looking at a galaxy of possibilities and drawing on an innate skill and experience to understand the far-reaching results that little actions will make. They influence the outcome using both small and grandiose means, directing the future.
(Star Wars example... or at least how I feel it should have gone)
"Alright Luke, I know Darth Vader pretty well, and I know he's going to recognize my presence. I could mask it, but if I do, he'll sense you and that'll be game over for the galaxy. I'm going to head out and distract him, shutting down the force fields as I go. Vader is going to come for me, but that's okay, it's all part of the plan. I recognized the girl in the message. I can't tell you why, but she's very important. Give me a head start, then you all go rescue her from the prison. R2 will show you the way. Now, here's how you can sneak into the prison. Chewie, I know this isn't the most pleasant idea, but trust me like you trust my own master, Yoda. By the way Luke, if you find yourself attacking this place in a single-pilot fighter, trust your feelings. You'll get it when the times comes. Now, as for getting in the prison, this is what you'll do..."
or "To our Dear Community,
I know it's been a quite several weeks from us, and I see a few of you are growing excited about the Holiday events. Just to let you know, we have some amazing things in the pipeline, but we did end up getting quite sidetracked from our plans to implement the first event. We're drafting a big post to give you more details soon (and by soon I mean, within a week or three).
Just remember that we've heard you all, and although we had drifted from our plans, your input helped bring our focus back to these events, and you've shaped what we're working on next! It's going to take a bit more coding that seems obvious to make the Holiday events happen, but our teams are transitioning to that project as quickly as we can!
More info coming! Stay tuned, and keep smiling!"
In the end, CMs hold two distinct roles. Developing, coordinating, and hosting profitable events that benefit and bring value to the community, and predicting/adressing issues before they arise enough to show up on a CSR's radar. Two insanely vital roles
---Together---
In the end, these are both very important to a company's success. Without good CMs, communities become toxic/acidic, and whatever the community was built up to support and enjoy eventually dissolves from within. Without good CSRs, when everyday or serious issues arise that need to be addressed come up, nothing positive happens. Negativity builds up, slowly eating away at the enjoyment factor, and again, whatever the community was built up to support, erodes from within.
Of course, both these roles have overlap. The big thing to remember is that if a CSR is doing their job well for a community with a good number of users, they are working on finding ways to prevent issues that keep popping up, and working tirelessly to keep everyone enjoying their times. If a CM is doing their job well for the same community, they are constantly developing new events and adding new value to the existing game, while simultaneously using their Jedi Force Sense to predict where new problems will arise, addressing them before they ever get big.
@gtadem actually addressed this earlier, he was on a CM team for a large community where he got to do a lot of the preventative maintenance, while the rest of his CM team did the more crowd facing/pleasing elements.
Salami and Pepperoni both bring flavor to a Pizza, but unless they're crappy, you can easily tell the difference.
-Suave'
Still, we have drifted off topic somewhat. This started out as a critique of my opinion of blizzard piss poor community interaction on the forums, especially on the EU side which was virtually none exsistent.
All very good points (re: WoW). And neither of even mentioned the added challenge of making those changes with gear / level changes thrown in.
The gear inflation has been ridiculous in the game. In early Vanilla (pre-AQ), getting 4K HP was actually difficult, but it's what you needed if you wanted to PvP. When I stopped playing this past summer, 400,000 was about the minimum for serious PvP (slight class variation there, but a decent enough estimate). This is a situation games like Starcraft or LoL just doesn't need to deal with.
The deck is so stacked against balancing classes in WoW that it's practically impossible. I commend them for trying, but I just wish they'd split the game into two and turn the PvP part into a 3rd person MOBA or something.
How this relates to CMs is people on forums rarely can appreciate that things aren't "easy". So if developers can't instantly fix something, there must be another reason. They're lazy, don't care, or being told not to fix it, when in reality it's just that balancing what 20+ viable PvP specs is just incredibly difficult.
I was under the impression that WoW was intentionally kept off-balance to encourage players to try new things. That the constant iteration of classes and gear was never intended to achieve better balance, but just to ensure that the min-maxxers with their spreadsheets arrive at a different conclusion than they did last patch.
Rather than create true Incomparables, they settle for making a different class OP for a little while. Once the clever players have figured out the new best answer and told the rest of the playerbase about it on the wikis, there's a brief period while everyone catches up, and as soon as metrics report that such-and-such a class is being sufficiently over-utilized while other classes wither on the vine, bam. They drop a new patch. And once everyone has levelled up to the new maximum level and gotten all the best gear, you find that different classes and playstyles are now at the top of the food chain.
The gear inflation is just a side-effect of maintaining this constant oscillation while nerfing as little as possible of what the players feel they have already collected fair and square. You need the Warrior to be OP in this next patch? Give all the players new items that are 5% better, except that the Warrior's new Best Sword does 10% higher damage than before instead of 5%. Need to tone him back down to baseline? Give everyone else 10% better armor while you make the Mage or somebody the new OP.
Of course, in order to actually implement this, you need to have figured out what the hypothetical "baseline" actually is first. I am convinced that WoW figured out this "perfect balance" long ago, and has deliberately stayed far, far away from it in the interest of keeping the experience fresh. And good thing, too. We've all seen games that got boring as soon as we figured out the system and settled into a groove. It may not be LoL level of Balanced-but-Incomparable, but it's probably as close as WoW can come without completely changing some of the core elements of WoW. (Not that that's ever stopped them before, right?)
TL;DR: They have all the metrics and developer manpower they could possibly ask for. If they wanted it balanced, it would be.
You are free to believe that, but I think most rational people would agree that balancing 30+ specs for PvE and PvP across all 90 levels and all levels of gear is simply impossible.
Which brings us back to the CM issue. The people who post on game forums are a very small segment of the population, so the question is, is it worth listening to them because it might actually be detrimental.
Great thinky post.