Realm of the Silenced: Has feedback become pointless?

I’m gonna try to avoid the “doom and gloom” around this sort of topic.

IE: OMG YOUR GAME IS GONNA DIE IF YOU DON’T LISTEN TO ME!!?1!;"aj;flkas;djfkla


So instead, lets look at it logically and get straight to the point.

Like many others here, I’ve noticed how seemingly “pointless” it is to test or provide feedback.

  • Something highlighted by our Moderator “Chemile0n”


That particular comment was from the “why is respeccing gated?” topic.


Essentially, despite the desire from players to fix something they have an issue with. The problem might and likely already has been addressed on internal builds.

IE: The respec statue was moved to the watchers tower and now costs a single goats blood for each “use”.


However, due to a lack of transparency.. players don’t “know” this and continue mindlessly giving feedback along with personal justifications on why it needs to change while others refuse and defend it “as is”.

Same goes for the borderline drama surrounding “ledges”.


On one side of the coin, there’s nothing wrong with this.

  • Active feedback keeps the community engaged.

This is especially true in longer development cycles where there’s barely anything keeping players around.


So this begs the question: What can the devs do about it?

As stated above, this might not even be an issue to resolve for Thomas.

So he may elect to just throw us a bone or two (teasers) or perhaps do another interview to keep us “engaged”.

  • Every development team is different and will address feedback in a way they think is appropriate.

However, there are still those of us that have wanted to provide more time sensitive feedback that contributes to the current development cycle.

One of the easiest solutions to this “problem” is to make a demo-realm with a hub world and release content in packets.

If the game is designed well (modular) this option becomes a lot easier to implement/execute.

  • Additionally, this also gives devs the ability to release a version of this “hub world” as a demo for players thinking about buying into early access.

Of course, even a proper “testing ground” for active players has it’s own issues.


1. Who is testing?

  • If the only testers (or mass majority) come from a specific genre of gaming or skill level, their feedback will be “tainted with it’s stench” compared to more pure feedback by those of other persuasions.

This is a common problem for games that also had potential for eSports.
IE: Devs listen to “Pros” rather than the casuals (most of their actual playerbase).

2. Failed Reception.

  • The devs think they hit a home run and put it on the testing server so players will shut up or at least have something to talk about but it backfires and players hate it demanding change.

Extremely common problem, evident from the initial release of “The Breach”.

*Imagine Thomas’ relief if that whole mess had only affected the “testing realm” rather than an actual content release.

3. Leaks and Spoilers.

  • Data mined content that the players aren’t testing but is in the testing realm because it has to be for testing other features to work properly.

This problem gets easier to avoid the more “modular” a game is, so you don’t have to put in supporting systems or features/items/ect for players to test the desired content.

4. Feedback Overload and Resource Drain.

  • Players testing time sensitive content can generate an overwhelming volume of feedback, much of it contradictory or poorly thought out. Sorting through this to find something usable can massively slow down decision making or lead to devs cherry-picking feedback that aligns with their biases.

IE: There’s nothing wrong with this feature, the devs are doing a good job and shouldn’t listen to the haters/casuals/tryhards/no-lifes/ect!.

  • Likewise, this can put a severe drain on dev teams with smaller budgets if they pick incorrectly or indiscriminately (hoping for the best because they aren’t sure or are unable to judge an idea properly).

Regardless, if we get a testing realm or not.. more transparency from the devs going forward would be appreciated.

Not just that.. but get involved with the community, do some fun things to engage with us beyond corpo habits.

Perhaps contests or cross over events?

Hype up the community and inspire the creatives!
*Even bad mechanics can be made into lighthearted fun.


To anyone reading this, do you have a game community you remember in a good light?

  • What did they do right?
  • How would you tweak it to fit current gaming trends?

If not, what would you like to see from @thomasmahler or the rest of the devs going forward?

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First of all huge respect for your effort there! And my overall comment is like I think they should lock some features behind some seperated mechs (for casuals and harcores) for certain things in the game (such as respecing, ledge protection or even creating alts) instead of converting the game into a complete casual friendly if they will do it anyway at least they must keep challenging stuffs for the hardcore players.

For exdample: I said this many times before and I think imma say more in the future. As a +300hrs player creating new realms and new characters feels so damn outdated with the current system. They must come up with some creative solutions. Maybe a new dung system which allows you to create your next character from a certain level based on your performance on that dungeon with your first character. And also they must fix the endgame farming system. For now the only solution is to make new realms and complete the whole story to unlock pestilence on them so you can farm each realms every 24hrs which sounds bullshit. I don’t wanna do the same storyline on different realms. I wanna have 1 realm and be able to farm the same amount. Don’t get me wrong I don’t want them to make the endgame like in a live service rpgs’ but it can’t be stay like this. Even if they have some ideas it’s better to share.

And I believe that when they add more sidequests and tips to buff the learning curve, casuals will feel better. I think the biggest problem behind respec drama is that the philosophy behind it is not that clear in the game. Because the game itsel already is not that punishing but not that forgiving as well so people’s expectation might be unstable because of that.

Also %100 agreed about PTR/PBE kinda test server it would improve alot!

1 Like

This is the first time I’ve come across this claim. Would you say it’s reliable?
thx

thanks for the effort you put into this!

we currently have some topics to share news etc, some of which are pinned in their respective categories:

and i am sure i am missing some.

while this still leaves room for improvement, i personally think it has become a lot better in the last few months, and news availability has improved.

part of the issue is also, that new users often do not use the search function to search for topics matching their issue or feedback. we moderators do our best to merge them together with existing topics, to keep everything in place and fight threads getting burried, although we do not always catch everything.

2 Likes

The news of a future rework of combat, leveling, and how classes work I think is what made feedback of the current build less meaningful. I’ve been playing Refined with a build different from my main one just to see how it plays and it’s been fun for what it is. But all the complaints or pain points I’ve gathered I know will be obsolete with the new patches. I think the complete overhaul is only coming in 1.0 even from what I hear, and that’s still months away. So what if I I complain that one rune in one weapon often misses? It’s going to change. So what if I complain that the requirements of the weapons make no sense? It’s going to change. So what if I complain there’s a lack of quests and polish if it’s just because the game is unfinished? You get the point.

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Very cool input, @Aemon_Oni – thanks for that!
I believe this is quite a multi-layered and complex matter with many entry points for discussion. I don’t want to go “all in” on this, but I’d still like to share my two cents:

The NRFTW forum – like most game forums I’ve come across – creates the illusion of being a communication channel with the developers, but in reality, that’s not the case. Yes, there are usually some moderators (often fighting a hopeless uphill battle due to being far too few), but even they are not the developers. So you end up posting bugs or feedback without the slightest clue as to what’s actually going to happen with your input. Will it ever reach a developer? Will it be considered in any way? Or are you just shouting into the void?

There’s a good reason why professional IT ticketing systems have some sort of status indication – so everyone can (at least theoretically) see at a glance what the current state of a piece of information is. But a forum, of course, is not a ticketing system, right? That’s why I’m rather skeptical when it comes to giving feedback via a forum. I still do it – but it doesn’t feel great, and my expectations are very low. And that’s a sad thing, of course.

My second thought about communication concerns @Thomasmahler. I’ve been active in the forum and on Discord for quite some time now. I agree with @Chemile0n that things have (greatly) improved. And hey, what could be better than having the CEO/Game Director himself addressing the players, sharing his thoughts and ideas? There’s no better or more reliable source of information than the mastermind behind this great game, right? Still, I see two issues here.

First: Thomas is just one man. Even for him, the day has only 24 hours… and he has a company to run… a family to take care of… What I’m getting at is: there’s virtually just one person doing 99% of the communication for Moon. And that’s, by any means, not much.

Second: I’ve come to realize that most of the communication from Thomas is, again (like with the forum), one-directional. Yes, I know Thomas occasionally asks players for their thoughts or answers a quick question or two. Still, 99% of the communication is Thomas giving information to players – it’s not really a dialogue. That’s not an allegation (see my first issue just above)! But when it comes to questions like “How much impact does my feedback have?”, “Who is Moon listening to?”, or “Based on what feedback from how many/which players are decisions made at Moon?”, much remains unclear.

Please don’t get me wrong. I absolutely adore the game. Moon/Thomas is doing a fantastic job. NRFTW is, to me, something of a little miracle – I’ve been playing games since Elite on the C64… and (for me personally) NRFTW is one of the best games I’ve ever played… it feels like it was handcrafted for me! But when it comes to communication between Moon/Thomas and the player base, I do see some challenges.

2 Likes