how to get funcom to read something

[Kurt2013]

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Not arguing the first part. I was not questioning, how you know they read something. I know from firsthand experience they read both forums on TL and private suggestions there. I also agree about the suggestion threads (mainly as i said, because lengthy posts there are forbidden). You are right about the civil posts too, though imo even uninformed posts are useful, because they show something about player perception or can show how players think things should be.

That's why it was important to mention f2p matter and have not the same means to participate. Especially because in the private forum here, the suggestion thread and the TL private suggestion/bugreport part IS a poor way to get people excited. Simply because it is easy to overlook good ideas this way.

I really hope they change this for their own benefit.

[Rathothis]

... imo even uninformed posts are useful, because they show something about player perception or can show how players think things should be.

That's why it was important to mention f2p matter and have not the same means to participate. Especially because in the private forum here, the suggestion thread and the TL private suggestion/bugreport part IS a poor way to get people excited. Simply because it is easy to overlook good ideas this way.

I really hope they change this for their own benefit.

You are of course right that in the ideal world, FC should make correspondence with players as inclusive as possible, and also consider feedback from rather uninformed players.

But this is primarily not a question of format, but of resources. More suggestions (especially) from people who are less familiar with the game means that you need additional resources for review and filtering. As it is, FC have two community managers who - for all we know - focus on TSW, and who - as we know from their streams - are not exactly super-familiar with this game.

With this in mind, I wonder whether the potential benefits of opening up TL (namely, increased quantity of feedback) really outweigh its risks (poorer average quality of feedback, "white noise").

[Kurt2013]

Y...

You do not have to wonder, you can simply look at how this was handled in the past. But since what you say earlier might be true (though i know, resources are mainly a poor excuse...been there), funcom would be biased in their analysis. Still they (and we) have four periods of feedback system to compare:

- feedback possible from majority playerbase (when there were mainly subs or trial accounts), seperate suggestion threads, several forums
- feedback possible from all playerbase (when f2p and premium could post), seperate suggestion threads and forums
- feedback possible from all playerbase (as above), no to one suggestion thread, one forum
- feedback possible from selected parts of playerbase (imo not even majority), one suggestion thread, one forum

Judge for yourself, which period was most constructive and had the most fixes, tweaks and suggestions implemented.
I know of the "white noise" problem, as well as anything not related to sales nowadays is considered a "cost" factor. Still a successfull company needs it. Look at the past and other "struggling" small companies what they have in common and then look at more successfull ones.

From my perception (and i was active on both TL and normal forums during part of first till the last period), the trolling and amount of constructiveness was similar in all periods. WHat changed is the amount of feedback, themes and selective postings (e.g. limited topics, less visionary approach). Sure, of course because of the resource perception in the playerbase too.
Only funcom can judge finally, if the amount of moderation there needed is now significantly less and worth the quality reduction. But looking at the hard numbers, outsiders can "blackbox" judge it too to some extend.

[Bibik]

Opening TL forums to f2p (at least old subscribers) would be awesome, and not too risky considering how thin the community is on both locations.
I don't know about TSW, for some reason i've never suceeded at creating an account here, but do their TL forum is as much as restrictive as the AoC one ?

[Chaman-bourru]

Opening TL forums to f2p (at least old subscribers) would be awesome, and not too risky considering how thin the community is on both locations.

Just went there to check and it already works like that. Haven't been subbed for the last 6 months at least and can still read and post there

[Kurt2013]

Just went there to check and it already works like that. Haven't been subbed for the last 6 months at least and can still read and post there

Just checked and posting does not work, reading always worked. Maybe they treat people differently, because i can rule out a bug (i reported that first officially as a bug, because i could not believe it). Could be a temporary period unsubbers are allowed to post still?

[Chaman-bourru]

Just checked and posting does not work, reading always worked. Maybe they treat people differently, because i can rule out a bug (i reported that first officially as a bug, because i could not believe it). Could be a temporary period unsubbers are allowed to post still?

That's odd. But at the same time subbed or temporaly unsubbed i never got restricted to f2p areas of forums. Maybe it could depend on when your account was created or how much time you've been subbed for. Like if you total more than X nomber of months subbed you keep acces. i don't know.... i just know it works for me and my sub ended the 8th of january this year.

[kalston]

I think it's just broken and they don't bother fixing it. It's like in game, if you've been a subscriber once then you have access to global chat forever even when you go f2p, but a fresh f2p account does not have global chat access.