My Honest Feelings about The Division and the Developers | Forums

[mccallew]

Doesn't matter if you've given up on us. We've given up on you. We've held out for over six months. By the time the dev team gets it's **** together
you'll be populating the DZ with tumble weeds.

Game has only be out 5 1/2 months. I don't think people knew it was this broken in the betas.... at least I didnt after playing closed and open...

[I DarthOnaga I]

Hey all. Let me start with saying this, we hear you all loud and clear. Sometimes, we don't have as much of a forum presence as we should, myself included, but that doesn't mean we aren't reading and forwarding these threads on. All feedback taken here gets sent to the appropriate team and we consider it when prioritizing fixes and updates.

One thing is certain, we have not given up on The Division community in any way. In the weeks to come, we have a lot of great things to talk about and I look forward to the work ahead.

Hang in there, agents.

EDIT:



This is not a contact for feedback or support issues. The statement there is a way to protect players from sharing their great game ideas for new and interesting projects. For The Division feedback and ideas, these forums are the primary place to share that type of feedback. For support issues, support.ubi.com.

Matt, it's not about having a forum presence from a Community Manager. That's your job. You pass long information back and forth. No offense at all, but we need a primary source, not a middle man. I am saying this in truth, because, myself, work in Social/Digital marketing. I share the same frustrations a lot of the time. We pass along information to and from and get crucified when we can't provide the information desired. When we allowed a source (directors of marketing, CEOs, etc) to talk in our place more often, we obtained phenomenal feedback. People started trusting again. People became patient. People became understanding. Then we gave them everything they wanted and more. Communication breeds trust. Trust breeds patience. Patience breeds positive results.

As soon as we stopped hearing from people (State of the Game, weekly updates, etc), we lost patients. We lost trust. And soon, you're going to lose US.

It's great that you're forwarding threads on, but that doesn't mean much when we never hear about them again. We need to hear from the Developers. Having a Developer representative to give us updates on prime issues and bugs. The known issues area doesn't count. That makes us know that you know and then only tell us when it's fixed. We need grey area. No one cares you made a mistake in the programming. We would rather hear about how you found it and what you did today to fix it, rather than tell us you know and then tell us weeks down the road you fixed it.

I want to stress to you that it's not about you giving up on us... it's about us giving up on you. None of this is intended to be offensive, but rather a wake up nudge. I hope it helped.

-Darth (Ryan)

[SkyCheez3_]

On the issue of corporate communication with customers...

Video games are one of the rare industries where you can have a direct, 1:1 interaction with your target consumer base on a daily, if not hourly basis.

Use it.

I've written this before, but the Blizzard devs who work on Overwatch make it a priority, before their official work day begins, to browse the forums and try and address some of the major issues of the (previous) day. This breeds trust and an on-going dialog even if players may not agree with the devs decisions, or reasoning behind those decisions.

I am aware different companies have different communication protocols, but the Blizzard example is one of the more positive ones because it makes the customers feel engaged, heard and VALUED which is the underlying thing Massive / UBISoft have failed to do. It only gets worse when The Division is in the state an Alpha / Beta game might be in six months after launch.

The current State of the Game streams don't cut it, either.

Yesterday's game stream with Hamish and Yannick was more beneficial than 10 SOTG streams since launch because they were both honest about what is happening with the game (they are aware it's not where it should be at this point in time).

The SOTG streams need to be more authentic, not so scripted and stiff. I know some of the devs don't like being in front of the camera because of their body language, so make sure it's mostly Hamish & Yannick because this is the kind of direct communication fans want: The CM and the Lead Dev being honest with the player base on the biggest medium there is right now for video games, Twitch.

[Zathras23]

Lets not forget Massive's ingame presence, the JTF. They patrol and run around while not doing anything really helpful and can't even bother picking their own dead up off the street even right outside of HQ. Who leaves their buddy's bodies rotting in the street? Worst military unit ever!

It could be worse. If it was summer instead of winter the smell would be god awful from the rotting corpses in the hot sun.

[Brook-Lin]

On the issue of corporate communication with customers...

Video games are one of the rare industries where you can have a direct, 1:1 interaction with your target consumer base on a daily, if not hourly basis.

Use it.

I've written this before, but the Blizzard devs who work on Overwatch make it a priority, before their official work day begins, to browse the forums and try and address some of the major issues of the (previous) day. This breeds trust and an on-going dialog even if players may not agree with the devs decisions, or reasoning behind those decisions.

I am aware different companies have different communication protocols, but the Blizzard example is one of the more positive ones because it makes the customers feel engaged, heard and VALUED which is the underlying thing Massive / UBISoft have failed to do. It only gets worse when The Division is in the state an Alpha / Beta game might be in six months after launch.

The current State of the Game streams don't cut it, either.

Yesterday's game stream with Hamish and Yannick was more beneficial than 10 SOTG streams since launch because they were both honest about what is happening with the game (they are aware it's not where it should be at this point in time).

The SOTG streams need to be more authentic, not so scripted and stiff. I know some of the devs don't like being in front of the camera because of their body language, so make sure it's mostly Hamish & Yannick because this is the kind of direct communication fans want: The CM and the Lead Dev being honest with the player base on the biggest medium there is right now for video games, Twitch.

and just want to add to that, with Blizzard's way of communication, the community responded well when dev team needs more time and patience from the customers to fix things. Diablo 3's turnaround didnt have months, it took 2 years, but it was overwhelmingly accepted and the entire community gave Blizzard a lot of credit for turning that game around. Besides the obviously loot system that this game should really follow Daiblo 3's revamped loot system, it is also recommended to follow through on how frequent and transparent (as much as they could have) with the community. You wlll bring back more players instead of turning away even more.

[Exay5]

I gave up yesterday, after 3 days getting Firecrest/Blind even in the LZ Supply Drop i just give up, no Progression for weeks/months, no people to play with anymore (my core group vanished). I am done with this game untill some MAJOR changes happen.

[timdub151]

The fan base is shrinking so much that just yesterday there were three people on the same server as me in the DZ, and no, they weren't in my group. The same thing happened a few nights before. I'm starting to see the same people over and over. That never happened before...