Please Politely Respond to/Educate Negative Reviewers like this

Oh I agree, it wasn’t a dig. Just thought perhaps it gives the wrong first impression which may not help with setting expectations. It is close to sandbox, once you’ve got the stuff you want, but getting there is some way off for a new player.

reading OP we do not NEED to Educate/respond personal opinion is personal opinon we are not Na* **

and neaither are we anything else apart from our own person! Its one extream to the other… you cannot say ANY ones personal opinion is wrong… because that itself is just… WRONG :stuck_out_tongue:

Gunna jump in here as the premise of the OP is actually pretty spot on. (If you’ve recently looked at this particular post on Steam, you’ll see that I’ve responded).

If someone posts a feedback thread (even if the general tone seems abrupt or even rude), it’s hugely important to ensure community responses are polite. Debate the feedback by all means, but always appreciate these are peoples opinions; the best we can do is read them and respond in a friendly manner. When myself and James read through this particular thread, we both agreed with quite a few points, but we need these posts to stay constructive so we can see how others feel about it - we don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable about letting us know their feelings towards the game.

If however, someone has posted a thread which contains incorrect information, by all means correct them (again, polite is the key word here), but also try to understand what caused the person to think this way. The likelihood is that the game isn’t communicating something well enough, which is something we can resolve.

With regards to responding to reviews, you’ll occasionally see me respond to one. I usually pick reviews which I think have been relatively well thought out, and provide a few reasons as to why the reviewer feels the way they do. That way, I can ask for a follow up on a few points and start a conversation about it. Of course, if the review just says “Game sucks”, I wouldn’t reply as it’s unlikely to lead anywhere.

I’m gunna hit a truth bomb right here so brace yourselves…

When I look at the Steam forums, I do not see the same fantastic community as I do when I look here. I see a few negative posts which are bumped up every day because someone wants to defend the game they love; but sometimes, this can reflect badly on the playerbase (you may have seen my most hated word used on the forum quite recently… “Toxic” shudder).

Everyone has the right to defend something they love, of course! But you can defend it even better if you look past the negativity in threads and respond to the point.

I’ve come from a heavily PvP focused game, I’ve seen how quickly a thread can turn into flames. It usually starts with a new player putting an opinion out there and coming across a little rude, then all it takes is one existing player to respond negatively for the whole thing to go down in flames.

A couple of years ago when I first bought Boundless, I said multiple times “this is the best community I’ve ever been a part of”, and it still is. All we need to do, is spread that over to the other Boundless social channels. It starts with being polite to everyone, no matter how negative their first post was.

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The game will get a huge set of negative reviews… I’m also sure the game will get a huge set of positive reviews.

We all know the game is not ready for release and has a huge set of issues that will cause negative perceptions. We and the developers can do nothing about this but try to fix the bugs and provide the best good starting perception of the game when it goes live in a month.

We also know that whether the game does well or not at release many people will be playing afterward and the developer team will continue to move forward with fixing the problems and release content for years to come.

So just help the developers now in this critical moment with good bug reports and when we go live be FRIENDLY and HELPFUL to all the new players. Understand that these people are NEW and don’t have the same experience we have. So don’t beat them up for their views - instead respect it and help them with how to make the game better for them. If we all do that then the game will be fine in the long run…

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Yes, that’s why I deleted my previous comments and changed the focus of the OP.

Launch is happening, so, we need to make sure people like the person I linked in my OP are welcomed, not scared off, like in the thread I posted.

And frankly, that goes for me too. Being called a troll multiple times since I got here, and insulted in this very thread when all I’m trying to do is call attention to the community and how if they want this game to succeed they need to step up and understand the importance of Launch, has been aggravating at the very least.

My behavior doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I’m a troll, or rude, all it takes is one person in a Steam Forum thread to make a negative comment (true or not) and someone who loves the game to respond rudely back, to then devolve the entire game’s forums into a 300+ page fight that reflects horribly on the game and affects sales and review scores.

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This is EXACTLY the kind of behavior that scares off new customers. Nothing about this attitude is welcoming and friendly. It comes off as a rude inside joke.

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the only issue with replying to reviews on steam now is most of them are comment locked by reviewer (or does dev speak get around it?)

Also @Steggs101 would it not be good to choose a few modderators for steam? those you guys trust to be fair like Stretchious etc?

Meaning about being more active with mods and etc? and then they can delete the outright troll/toxic ones etc like others do?

Deleting threads is one of the worst things you can do on a Steam Forum, the best way to deal with them is to let them fade off the front page.

When you delete a thread, it pisses off the person who made the thread, so they leave a negative review and then spend days and days making new threads about how corrupt and bad the devs are.

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i guess that’s a very good point

Except they don’t currently fade off the front page because there isn’t enough traffic on the forums to push them down.

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so what? I am an alt account :stuck_out_tongue: and those who know it are still here… but as MDM says… that is kinda a kick in the … and pointless to mention

Pretty sure we can write dev responses still, in which case I would deal with it (again, providing it’s worth starting a conversation).

Mods is a good idea for sure, we will be choosing a couple of people in the future. However, we need some more community members there first (it’s better if community members respond to this positively, than mods - a mod should mainly be around to make sure threads don’t get derailed etc).

As @MinerDiggerMan quite rightly said, we’d never delete posts. We can lock them if things get out of hand, however… when there isn’t a lot of traffic anyway, it’ll take a while for the locked threads to disappear, and locked threads also don’t reflect greatly on the game).

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@MinerDiggerMan

I’m excited you are excited about the game and are worried about it. However, you have completely redone your OP from last night and deleted all of your posts that you don’t see as part of your new narrative for your NEW OP. In doing this, you made everyone’s responses before @Steggs101 response a couple hours ago make no sense.

You constantly deleting or completely rewriting the narratives to your posts is one of the reasons people are wondering if you are just messing with us. If you want to send out a different message make a new thread and if you want the old one to go away, ask to have it closed.

This is pretty good advice, but it applies to more than games and the original poster. This thread is a good example.

The point you have made now is something I feel is very valid, but it is not the same point you made last night when you originally made this thread.

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Is that why he is doing it? I asked the question, but got no response. I believe MinerDiggerMan means well, just not sure why he’s not standing by his words so often.

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Thanks for the private reply, MinerDiggerMan. I don’t understand why you feel you can’t just post your reasons publicly, but to each their own. In the future, less deleting of old posts would clear up the issue without confusion or people asking for clarification.

Peace.

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Timtomato here :slight_smile:
I just delete most my post since i find out the dev teams has their plan set up already which i respect that.
But personally i like the game i joined last month more than the new system.
I will wait till next week to test if this game still the one i am looking for.

  • the color system (Graphic change)
  • the new skill system (play style change)
  • Exclusive recipe from backer’s package (payment method change)

Those three thing made me feel its not the same game anymore.
This why i delete all the command even the positive post i did for them.
However i won’t post the negative post to encourage others to try out either.

This may be my last post in the forum i guess.

After next week if i still cant like the game again i will just quit the game for good :slight_smile:

To be fair, this is the kind of person who goes into games and looks for everything he can to tear apart. He wasn’t actually interested in playing the game. This was cemented in his final two paragraphs.

"This is a terrible game and the first time I’ve had to ask for a refund. The game concept is great (voxel based MMO with an MC style to it) but the execution here is pretty bad. With 40 players at a daily peak, you would have been better off making a plugin for MC and then starting an MC MMO server.

Nothing about this game is “Boundless”. Also, you have no business calling this the “world’s biggest sandbox”. You should try being honest. Good luck with your insulting 9/11 launch anyway."

He picked at incredibly small things, expecting an MMO coming out of Early Access to be completely finished. He didn’t give the game a real chance.

However… There are always going to be negative reviews, and our community can’t be lashing out at people who haven’t been here from the beginning–those who don’t see the entire scope of the game like we do.

I do agree that there should be even more direction in the tutorial than now. There’s more to the game than is taught, and he didn’t even have any clue what Cubits were. The game can be confusing without prior knowledge of it, so people picking up the game and jumping right in might have issues. That’s really bad for the game as the first impression shouldn’t be of confusion.

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He picks valid points. Having 40 characters at peak is a huge issue because the lack of diversity gives narrow focus on game functionality and how it will appeal to a larger base. This thread alone shows how the “fan” culture and people that see no wrong in this game affects it. The low consistent user base has been a huge problem for this game.

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I fully agree that there needs to be some more pop-ups or whatnot in game that explains a few of the basic concepts cough exchange cough and things like that better. Just a short little dialogue window that forces you to hit a button at the bottom to close it.

NOT like our current tips system. Those are annoying 99% of the time, and they seem to repeat even to veterans who know it all already.

Speaking of which, is there a way to turn those off permanently?

you can turn of the tips at setting.

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