Clear communication matters so much

[Missjusi]

Hey all, I wanted to share some feedback about communication because I think it's becoming one of the biggest opportunities for improvement right now.

To be clear, I truly appreciate that the devs have been upfront about certain things: you've told us there isn't a dedicated Community Manager yet and Kestrel reluctantly took the role (and have been doing a fine job!), and you've also said that traditional change logs aren't something you plan to do in the near future. that's fair enough.

The problem is that at the moment there doesn't seem to be any reliable place for us to learn what's actually being added to the game.

A lot of important info ends up being delivered through random in-game conversations with GMs. Someone might happen to be online when a GM mentions a new dungeon (Windhorn Canyon), another might hear about an important questline (weapon skills quests) etc. And these conversation happen in the middle of the night for EU players, specifically. Information ends up scattered across the two realms, different time zones etc.

I want to actively want to follow the updates and development, but I find myself wondering whether I missed something. Was a feature added? Was this bug fixed? Is there a new dungeon available? Sometimes the answer is yes, but unless you happened to be in the right place at the right time, you'd never know. People constantly ask in /world about restarts and new features - it took almost a week for the community at large to understand what the changes were to rested exp and tents/inns.

What's especially confusing is that there already seems to be infrastructure in place to solve all this. The RSS feed exists but it rarely (if ever) gets used - the latest announcement talks about physical server infrastructure, which let's be real, not a lot of people actually care about. The forum exists, but major announcements don't seem to end up here either. As a result there isn'ty really a central source of information that we can check.

The reason I care about this isn't because I want exhaustive patch notes - I totally get that documenting every small change during the beta and restoration effort takes time.

What I do think is very important - is communicating player-facing content.

When you restore a dungeon, that's exciting. When a major questline is added back, that's exciting. When a large piece of unfinished content finally works, that's exactly the kind of thing we should hear about!

I will attach some screenshots from another private server's Discord because IMO they handle this almost perfectly. Their announcements are simple, focused and easy to find because they all live in a single place. They don't need massive patch notes, they just make sure players know when something interesting/important has been added.

I'd love to see something similar here (knowing, of course, that there is no Discord to post to, but you do have the RSS feed which could work the same way).

PLEASE use the RSS feed to announce new dungeons, zones, questlines, major gameplay additions. Use it to warn us about server restarts/shutdowns or longer sign-up windows. Let people know when there's new content worth checking out. It doesn't need to be anything complicated just a reliable place where we can see what has been added to the game and what the dev teams wants us to know about.

It would also be great if those announcement could appear somewhere on the website homepage. Even a small "Latest announcements" secion would make a huge difference and give us easy way to stay informed.

The team is clearly doing a lot of work behind the scenes. The server is growing and content is being added much faster than I think any of us anticipated. The issue isn't a lack of development - it's that much of this work is effectivaly invisible unless players happen to hear about it through word of mouth.

Good communication doesn't just inform players - it builds excitement, it makes people log in and see what's new. Right now, a lof of great work is often going unnoticed for days simple becauyse nobody knows it happened. I think a small amount of consistent communication would have a much bigger impact than you might realize.

Another thing I'd especially encourage the team to think about is timing. Right now we're in beta. The pop is small, the amount of content being added is managable and communication habits are still being formed. This is THE IDEAL TIME to establish good communication system. Hopefully one day, OctoWoW will have thousands of players. It's far easier to build those habits now while the community is still growing.

One final thought: every time someone asks in chat whether a feature is added, whether a dungeon is live or whether a large bug has been fixed, that's usually a sign that the information isn't reaching people effectively. As the server grows, those questions will only become more common.

Sincerely,
an ex-PR and communications major with too much free time

[Darktifa]

You can read all GM messages in the discord


http://discord.gg/octowowfans

[Missjusi]

You can read all GM messages in the discord

1. "The" Discord is unofficial, community-ran and also one of many OctoWoW fan discords.
2. Can you let me know what features and bugs Pig is talking about in the screenshot attached? Everything there is incredibly out of context unless you either were in-game at the time or look through literally hundreds of messages in the other bot channel.
3. The entire point of my post was to ask for ONE cohesive source of truth for all the players/discord bots/guild webistes to pull from.

[Darktifa]

You can read all GM messages in the discord

1. "The" Discord is unofficial, community-ran and also one of many OctoWoW fan discords.
2. Can you let me know what features and bugs Pig is talking about in the screenshot attached? Everything there is incredibly out of context unless you either were in-game at the time or look through literally hundreds of messages in the other bot channel.
3. The entire point of my post was to ask for ONE cohesive source of truth for all the players/discord bots/guild webistes to pull from.

1. show me another OctoWoW discord (plz dont mention Maro's discord, lol)
2. there is search function on discord if u know how to use it
3. i didnt disagree with that

[Missjusi]

1. I totally understand you're deeply involved in one specific Discord server, but the OctoWoW site itself lists two (I think there were 3 at one point?), as well as subreddits. I don't care about discord server drama, I'm going from what is listed on the official site. There are also discord servers for pretty much every guild, not everyone hangs out with the entire population in one specific place.

2. Great, let me work through the steps needed to get this information:
- Have or make a Discord account
- Look for a specific fan-made Discord server
- If you're in EU like me, wake up and scroll through an entire night in gm-messages channel, through completely unrelated messages and look for words like "implement", "PTR", "patch", whatever.
- Once you spot a mention of something being added/thought about/available on PTR/fixed, go to the world-chat channel and either look for the name of the person GM replied to (if you're lucky and they did) or cross-reference timestamps from one channel to the other. Also make sure you're in the correct world-chat for the realm this was mentioned on.

This is jumping through too many hoops. And trust me, I do that every day and then spend half my playtime trying to answer questions in game for people who don't bother. Do you understand why I'm advocating for CLEAR communication?

The devs have already implemented systems to do so, they just don't use them. We got an "official" announcement about physical servers, or that killing pets while hunters are taming is griefing (which, IMO, should be just the kind of messages left for in-game GM messages). But when a dungeon or an important quest is added back (weapon skill quest BiS for half of classes, which looking at the number of warriors/paladins/rogues on HC is probably 70% of the population), we have to hunt down info about it.

[Darktifa]

1. I totally understand you're deeply involved in one specific Discord server, but the OctoWoW site itself lists two (I think there were 3 at one point?), as well as subreddits. I don't care about discord server drama, I'm going from what is listed on the official site. There are also discord servers for pretty much every guild, not everyone hangs out with the entire population in one specific place.

im contributing in all Octo discords and as u can see, im trying to help here on the forums too
so, spare the "deeply involved" to me
Maro's discord is a joke, created only cause he lost his mod status and even abandoned his own "ship" a few days later
3rd discord are the banned Exiles from the original discord and it's hillarious that they even mention it on their official site
there was a 4th one, called "not another octo discord" fyi

2. Great, let me work through the steps needed to get this information:
- Have or make a Discord account
- Look for a specific fan-made Discord server
- If you're in EU like me, wake up and scroll through an entire night in gm-messages channel, through completely unrelated messages and look for words like "implement", "PTR", "patch", whatever.
- Once you spot a mention of something being added/thought about/available on PTR/fixed, go to the world-chat channel and either look for the name of the person GM replied to (if you're lucky and they did) or cross-reference timestamps from one channel to the other. Also make sure you're in the correct world-chat for the realm this was mentioned on.

one of your points is to copy another discord announcements
However
- having/making a discord account
- looking for a specific discord blah blah
you make it appear like it's a BIG struggle and definitely contradicting yourself

i feel like you being argumentative just for the sake of it
w/e

[Keldro]

This sounds like a great idea, and would be highly appreciated since I also find it somewhat difficult (for lack of a better word) to keep up with changes/dungeons/fixes being implemented and to know what is working and what is not.

I understand the team is doing its best to inform us through the in-game world chat, but as you say players who are offline miss these announcements entirely and may not be aware of any changes. I've also seen my fair share of players using world chat to either inquire and ask for information or even stumbling upon fixes themselves but there is a lack - or gap - of coherent and clearly communicated updates collected in one place. It would be a nice addition to have relevant news regarding updates in a organized format, especially to lessen confusion amongst the players.

Using the RSS Feed is one option, however I would highly recommend using the website as the main source for this kind of information since the Discord is run by a fan community rather than the team itself, and not everyone uses Discord regularly (or at all). A link through the launcher could also be used, similar to what Turtle did.

I think these suggestions would go a long way to ensure people have an easy and obvious route to check the status of the game quickly and allow people to keep up with announcements, in a way that is also accessible for everyone.

[Raerity]

This has been asked about/for over and over and they said it’s not really a big priority for them. They’d rather spend time restoring/fixing than spend time typing about it. This is why you see so few direct Dev Announcements.

There is really only one discord to get reliable information and it’s the fan communities with 5k members. The rest are either dead or turned into Capy discords/not about Octo at all. Yes it does kinda suck that you have to look through multiple channels and “glean” information from them but it’s the only option we have. You could wait for Pigs newsletter to be posted in “Nautilus News Network” in this forum, glean the information from the forums (the discord records every single Fireside chat and posts them here) or glean it directly from the discord. Between all of that and the in game Fireside chats, and the bug trackers themselves, you have a lot of options although it’s not perfect.


Also yes, it’s “unofficial” discord but you’re never getting an Official anyways as stated by the Octo team. None of the Reddit pages are run by the Octo team either as they have a strict “no social media presence” rule for their team. Almost every answer and avenue you’re provided is supplied by the players themselves, save for Forums/Nautilus Newsletter and Fireside Dev Chats or in-game GM messages.

TL;DR
None of the social medias other than forums are run by Octo team and that’s not likely to change. Could it be improved? Sure. Do they know that already? Yes, that’s why they started the Fireside Dev chats and Nautilus News Network. Will it be improved to the extent you’re asking for? Eventually, when they have less to do already.

[Keldro]

I was not aware, until this forum post, that this has been asked for multiple times so it’s good you mention that they are aware of it and has put it aside for the time being.

I would argue that although the Fireside Chats are a nice way to strengthen the bond between the community and the team it is not quite the same as what the original poster meant. Those chats seem to be more of a dialogue covering subjects within a wide range of topics such as player wishlists, long-term plans, quirky questions etc and not a ”pure” list of changes.

I missed that the Nautilus News will have a section covering development, that might be worth checking out in the next edition.

Also, yes, that is exactly the point. It's not about advocating for a social media presence or a discord run by the team, on the contrary the point was that because they are run by a fan community it would be an improvement to use the website and/or launcher instead as a direct channel to inform people, instead of having players scour for tidbits of information from sources outside the Octoteam.

I'm certain we will see this implemented in one way or the other down the line as priorities change. For now, however, the gleaning shall continue.