Actually, what would really improve this place is if Doodo came back and created his usual havoc.
Also yes, I am aware that the mods are not TTG employees. That [snip]ped post in the other thread was meant to be edited to change "they" to "the staff" as I didn't mean Icedhope to infer by "they" I meant him--but I accidentally double posted instead so snipped the first one.
The mods are cool. The staff (ie. the employees) are retarded. Especially Dan Connors and his upper management people.
This isn't trolling. I actually do believe that it is upper management's fault that the openness and friendliness of the company has changed so radically.
I would just like to point out that trying to post on here with an iPhone is still a serious chore. The previous forum (the really popular one that Telltale killed off) was much easier to use on my phone. This new terrible setup loads comments slowly and the zooming in and out on this page is so laggy.
I'm telling you this right now. There is much better message board/forum software available out there used by companies with a clue,so why not use one of those and don't put your customers and fans through the agony of having to use this turkey.
In my humble point of view. I kinda like it. It reminds me a bit about facebook, expect it didn't have the dislike button. I honestly don't know why we need the dislike button. If someone disagrees, they can reply with their comments rather then voting up or down. I don't know why people butcher these forums to make it seem like something its not.
It's really not that bad, an improvement. In my point of view. But I am writing off a PC, maybe that has something to do with it.
I would just like to point out that trying to post on here with an iPhone is still a serious chore. The previous forum (the really popular one… more that Telltale killed off) was much easier to use on my phone. This new terrible setup loads comments slowly and the zooming in and out on this page is so laggy.
I'm telling you this right now. There is much better message board/forum software available out there used by companies with a clue,so why not use one of those and don't put your customers and fans through the agony of having to use this turkey.
I agree, the whole up voting down voting reminds me a tad bit to much of Youtube, it is nice and all but we lived for almost ten years without it, so there's that.
Actually, what would really improve this place is if Doodo came back and created his usual havoc.
Also yes, I am aware that the mods are not … moreTTG employees. That [snip]ped post in the other thread was meant to be edited to change "they" to "the staff" as I didn't mean Icedhope to infer by "they" I meant him--but I accidentally double posted instead so snipped the first one.
The mods are cool. The staff (ie. the employees) are retarded. Especially Dan Connors and his upper management people.
This isn't trolling. I actually do believe that it is upper management's fault that the openness and friendliness of the company has changed so radically.
Well, if you're not willing to listen to direct feedback from people who would make use of the software, then yes I would call that retarded.
Again, you're internally going to respond to this by thinking "We are listening. We're making improvements to the forums as people point out bugs." But I'm telling you that you're turning something that's very broken and unpopular into something that's slightly less broken yet equally unpopular.
Turning this place into a reddit clone and removing bbcode is a terrible idea, but no, you don't care if it is or not. You're going to wait 6 months to a year to let the backlash die down as people get used to the change before you actually will decide to consider whether the change was worth it.
Now, what you're again focusing on is the fact that I'm unnecessarily abrasive in my criticism. Instead, you should be considering /why/ these actions are causing users of the software to feel the need to be abrasive about it beyond the standard dislike some people have for change.
I'm absolutely /convinced/ that the powers-that-be are waiting for the backlash against general change to die down before listening to criticism about said change. This means that any openly voiced spite we have for this software is completely pointless and has no bearing on any decisions the company will make regarding its use (beyond simple bug fixes).
In sum: 1) You don't listen to us. 2) You don't talk to us. 3) You think I'm overreacting therefore my argument is invalid. 4) The change is permanent so I should get over it.
I certainly am listening (self evident).
We are talking (again, self evident).
Calling people names hurts and devalues your credibility. You yourself describe your post as "unnecessarily abrasive"!
Nothing is permanent, but we are moving in this direction, and in the end it may not work for you.
Well, if you're not willing to listen to direct feedback from people who would make use of the software, then yes I would call that retarded.
… more
Again, you're internally going to respond to this by thinking "We are listening. We're making improvements to the forums as people point out bugs." But I'm telling you that you're turning something that's very broken and unpopular into something that's slightly less broken yet equally unpopular.
Turning this place into a reddit clone and removing bbcode is a terrible idea, but no, you don't care if it is or not. You're going to wait 6 months to a year to let the backlash die down as people get used to the change before you actually will decide to consider whether the change was worth it.
Now, what you're again focusing on is the fact that I'm unnecessarily abrasive in my criticism. Instead, you should be considering /why/ these actions are causing users of the software to feel the need to be abrasi… [view original content]
Kevin, you are a very poor representative of Telltale Games in the way you dismissively respond to valid concerns of longtime Telltale customers and forum users.
Kevin, your antagonistic approach to those people willing to tell the truth about this horrible redesign is what is not helpful and what is unnecessary. Kevin, it is disappointing that, as a Telltale employee, you would mischaracterize and question the credibility of customers voicing their honest concerns. Please drop the "it's self-evident that we're listening, duh, since I'm writing now" rudeness, and try thoughtfully addressing the many concerns about this failure of a message board design.
Kevin, your disappointing manner on this forum gives the impression that Telltale staff has little concern for community feedback and is stubbornly planning to go in a forum design direction that no one really wants.
I certainly am listening (self evident).
We are talking (again, self evident).
Calling people names hurts and devalues your credibility. You… more yourself describe your post as "unnecessarily abrasive"!
Nothing is permanent, but we are moving in this direction, and in the end it may not work for you.
Okay, so yes you are talking. It's a step in the right direction and that's great.
However, Telltale has had quite a history wherein our concerns and/or complaints have fallen on deaf ears. This image is not helped by the fact that a member of the staff has set Icedhope's thread about his relationship with Telltale as "sunk". It would seem that Telltale wants that thread to quietly go away, which again is reflective of previous experiences with the company such as how Telltale handled announcement (or lack thereof) of the cancellation of King's Quest (as well as direct evidence that everything Icedhope said in that thread is true, especially the part about the company responding to problems by remaining silent and hoping they blow over).
Further, you say "we're moving in this direction, and in the end it may not work for you" and I might agree that changes are not going to please everyone, as well that many are going to be upset by any change no matter what it is. However, while being so adamant about this change, you seem to be completely ignoring the advice from not only a lowly user such as myself, but every single community moderator whom the company hand-picked to manage forums for them. It's not just me, and it's not just dozen or more fairly-inconsequential-yet-highly-active forum members who (from the company's point of view) insist on being irrationally intransigent about change.
Ohhh... okay. I think I see what's going on here. Telltale has a number of highly-active forum members who insist on hanging out on the company's forums even though all that they talk about as of late concerning the company itself is to complain endlessly about the company's missteps (even going so far as to enumerate them all). They also won't stop complaining that the company doesn't want to make classic adventure games anymore.
This endless complaining needs dealing with. It's not good for company PR. It's not good for introducing new users to the General Chat community. It's not allowing the company to completely move on from its past. But the staff can't just ban them all. Besides, not only would that be perceived as reactionary, but even the community moderators themselves join in on the dislike for the company.
So...what does the company do in response? They introduce new forum software that said members will find that they dislike to the point that they leave of their own accord. That way the company can get rid of the problem members indirectly without banning them outright.
Now there are a few brush fires left behind by the stragglers who yet still complain about what once was. Yet again, the company doesn't need to close problem threads outright. They can just sink the offending threads and hope they eventually go away on their own.
...this scenario does sound woefully arrogant and self-important bordering on narcissism. You're going to say that I'm being ridiculous by inferring that a dozen or so people are such a hinderance to Telltale's image that the company is willing to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on custom-built software merely to shoo these people away.
So now you're confused because either I'm saying we're so insignificant to TTG that we're not worth taking advice from, or I'm saying that I think us so important that we're worth spending buckets of money to try and get rid of, and I can't have it both ways, so which is it?
Well... I don't know. I still can't figure out why anyone would think this reddit style is a good idea in the first place. Obviously Telltale is dead set on using it. But why? Why on earth is using this format so blasted important to you? If you're really willing to actually talk to us now, Kevin, then you could at least answer that.
I must say, we may not all agree on everything. I don't know this Kevin, and I haven't been on these forums as long as you. However your attitude and tone is very hostile. I can understand that some members of the community do not like the new site, that's fine. However their are those of us, like me who embraced the new site. Who actually feel its an improvement from the old system.
Perhaps people that have been here for years have been attached to the old site. To me honestly, it looks updated. You have likes and dislikes button. A cool new skin, avatars etc. I have seen you're comments. Like in that one thread about that one person explaining that hes no longer a mod. You made a very hostile comment directly to the staff that was off topic.
I am simply asking for people to tone down the heat in their posts. It seems to me, you are saying. A minority group of people do not like the site, so tell tale must listen to you now and change it back. Respectfully, that's not how things are supposed to work. This seems to be a great community. The games they are rolling out are fantastic.
Lets not ruin all that by arguing over what the forums look like. Honestly, when it comes right down to it. It doesn't matter what the forums look like. It matters what the games they produce look like. Honestly this community have been one of the kindest and most respectful ones I been apart of. It seems to be you are taking every chance you get to directly flame the staff and that's a bit unfair. I say give it a few months instead of creating a hostile environment.
Well, if you're not willing to listen to direct feedback from people who would make use of the software, then yes I would call that retarded.
… more
Again, you're internally going to respond to this by thinking "We are listening. We're making improvements to the forums as people point out bugs." But I'm telling you that you're turning something that's very broken and unpopular into something that's slightly less broken yet equally unpopular.
Turning this place into a reddit clone and removing bbcode is a terrible idea, but no, you don't care if it is or not. You're going to wait 6 months to a year to let the backlash die down as people get used to the change before you actually will decide to consider whether the change was worth it.
Now, what you're again focusing on is the fact that I'm unnecessarily abrasive in my criticism. Instead, you should be considering /why/ these actions are causing users of the software to feel the need to be abrasi… [view original content]
It was Icedhope who created a thread about the history of his crumbling relationship with Telltale. Suddenly the thread was inexplicably sunk... and, as the community mods would seem to indicate, presumably by actual Telltale staff.
Color me reactionary, but that just totally rubbed me the wrong way. Plenty of people practically begged and pleaded with Telltale not to implement the bbcode-less reddit-style aspects of the software. But it was implemented anyway, with nary a word as to why Telltale was so keen on using it in particular as opposed to other better fully-functional-out-of-the-box software. Not even told to the mods.
There has been plenty of recent evidence to support the opinion that the company just doesn't care about us. And it doesn't just start with remaining stone-cold quiet about King's Quest.
If I'm belligerent, it's only because I'm rather irritated, and even rather offended. While my tone isn't exactly the most helpful, I wouldn't say it's unwarranted.
This is my last post, for tonight. I am very tired after a very taxing day. To my understanding the thread you are talking about "sunk" meaning no one replied enough to keep it bumped. Its not locked or deleted by any means. Just not enough people have replied or commented in that thread to keep it bumped. If there was more public interest in it. The thread would been bumped with questions, and comments. Its not the fault of Tell Tale not many people replied to it.
As for the new software. To my understanding. Mods are not paid employees of tell tale games. They are volunteer mods, meaning without pay doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. I'm not sure why they should or need to be informed about these choices before hand. Tell Tale is a corporation, like any other they make choices. Good or bad, its up for the community to decide.
I honestly feel like I am missing a giant piece of information. It seems clearly are offended, but I'm not sure at what. Honestly I am new to these forums. I started coming on here after playing the walking dead like many others. I became interested in the moral choice, not simply just the gore.
However I must say. I do feel they care to a certain extent. The Walking Dead is a massive success for this company. If they keep building on the model. Moral choice that they did on the walking dead and extend that like they are in the wolf among us, and other games. Combined with there comic book style movie productions like games. I only see the rise of success. In fact they already created the walking dead season 2 and the wolf among us comes out shortly, not to mention the DLC. It seems they heard the feedback of the games the community liked.
Just my two cents, good or bad, disagree or agree. There are polite ways we can communicate our feelings to other people. If our post just filled with hate and insult, hostile tone with extreme attitude it only serves to discredit. Perhaps provide detailed examples, showing where and when they didn't care about the people. I sincerely feel like I am missing the part when you got offended, and just followed up right after.
It was Icedhope who created a thread about the history of his crumbling relationship with Telltale. Suddenly the thread was inexplicably sunk… more... and, as the community mods would seem to indicate, presumably by actual Telltale staff.
Color me reactionary, but that just totally rubbed me the wrong way. Plenty of people practically begged and pleaded with Telltale not to implement the bbcode-less reddit-style aspects of the software. But it was implemented anyway, with nary a word as to why Telltale was so keen on using it in particular as opposed to other better fully-functional-out-of-the-box software. Not even told to the mods.
There has been plenty of recent evidence to support the opinion that the company just doesn't care about us. And it doesn't just start with remaining stone-cold quiet about King's Quest.
If I'm belligerent, it's only because I'm rather irritated, and even rather offended. While my tone isn't exactly the most helpful, I wouldn't say it's unwarranted.
There cerainly is no vast conspiracy to bully out any community member or mod. As our games have evolved away from classic adventures (which we still love, I will always be the systems programmer of Grim Fandango!) some members (and mods) have really dwelled on how disappointed they are with the newer games, even though many many more people are playing and enjoying those games. We have never discouraged these discussions or repremanded anyone for being critical of us. In some ways we feel the same pain. Our goal has always been to bring story games to the masses, not to keep old school adventure games on life support for a small group of devout fans (of which I'm one). From the beginning, we have intentionally and publically been pushing to modernize the genre, and it's definitely working, for which we are incredibly proud. We invite anyone to join us in the discussions about that mission, or to critise us for even trying, right here in our own house!
Threaded discussions and voting were arrived at objectively. We looked around at many sites from entertainment, news, social, etc. sites like kotaku, joystiq, reddit, cnn, slash dot, ycombinator, BBC, Facebook, twitter etc. We paid attention to sites that handle a large, diverse audiences and handle a huge chuck of discussions on the internet. We found overwhelmingly that these kinds of sites had these features. They don't facilitate they types of discussions the old format did, but we are OK with that. They facilitate the types of discussions that the vast majority of people on the net are now engaging in. My guess is you many find all those sites as examples of discussions done wrong, but they are prevalent and very very popular.
The internet is a constantly evolving place, the only thing that doesn't change is the guarantee that things will change. We're evolving with it, both in the games we make and the community features here. We honestly desire as many folks participation in this as we can, as long as it's constructive and respectiful. Of course we can't address every issue simultaneously. We have to choose our battles, and we can't be everything to everyone, which inevitably leaves someone feeling slighted, and I honestly don't know how to prevent that, but I'm certainly not ignorant or "retarded" to it.
Let's keep things constructive, respectful and open.
This isn't a question of resisting change or evolution. We all knew changes were needed, but it would have been nice if the people implementing the changes had actually listened to ANYTHING of what people were saying was desired. Are people like Kevin proud of the level of consideration of user feedback that went into this ridiculous, unnecessary, waste-of-money setup? Who exactly are you creating this for, anyway? Why are some staff members insistent on using an inferior format for which there was ZERO DEMAND? Why stick with a setup that is inferior and has less options for both users and moderators? And don't even get me started on how it is with my iPhone.
I posted the following in another thread, but it doesn't seem like staff members are answering questions there lately, so I'll quote it again here:
How many people worked on creating this new message board? Who are those people? Who can we contact to express our disgust over this terrible forum setup?
I would like answers to each of those questions, please.
I worry that we are giving our feedback to, and are only being heard by, employees who worked on this embarrassing redesign. These are not the people who need to hear our feedback. These are probably the people who are most inclined to want to perpetuate an in-house designed forum, since it jusitifies their employment and is what they're getting paid to work on.
Hopefully things can be resolved soon, since it would be great to see this place recapture what was thrown away.
Who can we contact to express our disgust over this terrible forum setup?
>
I worry that we are giving our feedback to, and are only being heard by, employees who worked on this embarrassing redesign. These are not the people who need to hear our feedback. These are probably the people who are most inclined to want to perpetuate an in-house designed forum, since it jusitifies their employment and is what they're getting paid to work on.
Kevin is the co-founder and president of Telltale. So, at least you can know that your concerns are being read from all levels of staff since you're communicating directly with upper management.
This isn't a question of resisting change or evolution. We all knew changes were needed, but it would have been nice if the people implementin… moreg the changes had actually listened to ANYTHING of what people were saying was desired. Are people like Kevin proud of the level of consideration of user feedback that went into this ridiculous, unnecessary, waste-of-money setup? Who exactly are you creating this for, anyway? Why are some staff members insistent on using an inferior format for which there was ZERO DEMAND? Why stick with a setup that is inferior and has less options for both users and moderators? And don't even get me started on how it is with my iPhone.
I posted the following in another thread, but it doesn't seem like staff members are answering questions there lately, so I'll quote it again here:
How many people worked on creating this new message board? Who are those people? Who can we contact to express our disgust over this te… [view original content]
Threaded discussions and voting were arrived at objectively. We looked around at many sites from entertainment, news, social, etc. sites like kotaku, joystiq, reddit, cnn, slash dot, ycombinator, BBC, Facebook, twitter etc. We paid attention to sites that handle a large, diverse audiences and handle a huge chuck of discussions on the internet. We found overwhelmingly that these kinds of sites had these features. They don't facilitate they types of discussions the old format did, but we are OK with that. They facilitate the types of discussions that the vast majority of people on the net are now engaging in.
You mean discussions consisting of short, vapid comments meant to be glossed over and forgotten about as soon as they're posted? That's the kind of discussion you want on your website? Forgive my being direct, Kevin, but THIS IS NOT A SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE. Nor is it a news site. Nor is it a hub for all things pop-culture. It will NEVER be any of those things. It's a game forum. For a very particular set of games.
No one goes to telltalegames.com for the social experience. People come her because they want to engage in meaningful conversations about games that they enjoy. Yes, a social experience can develop out of that but not when you rip out the architecture that supports the discussions that gives rise to it in the first place. And NOT when you tell the people who have volunteered their time to help keep your site running for the past several years that you're "OK" with taking away what they loved about this site so long as it seems to be in line what all the popular kids are doing these days. I really, really hope that you give this some more thought.
There cerainly is no vast conspiracy to bully out any community member or mod. As our games have evolved away from classic adventures (which w… moree still love, I will always be the systems programmer of Grim Fandango!) some members (and mods) have really dwelled on how disappointed they are with the newer games, even though many many more people are playing and enjoying those games. We have never discouraged these discussions or repremanded anyone for being critical of us. In some ways we feel the same pain. Our goal has always been to bring story games to the masses, not to keep old school adventure games on life support for a small group of devout fans (of which I'm one). From the beginning, we have intentionally and publically been pushing to modernize the genre, and it's definitely working, for which we are incredibly proud. We invite anyone to join us in the discussions about that mission, or to critise us for even trying, right here in our own … [view original content]
Although I understand how arguments are just exploding from your mouth when you finally feel you can present them to the responsible party, I still don't much care for Chyron's and MtnPeak's tone in here. That's the kind of derogatory talk I'd usually just stop in the TWD forums.
I've said about everything I could have about threaded discussion in the forums and behind the scenes, and I'm trying hard to get used to it.
There's one thing of Kevin's rethoric to which I do have to respond though.
As our games have evolved away from classic adventures (which we still love, I will always be the systems programmer of Grim Fandango!) some members (and mods) have really dwelled on how disappointed they are with the newer games, even though many many more people are playing and enjoying those games. We have never discouraged these discussions or repremanded anyone for being critical of us. In some ways we feel the same pain. Our goal has always been to bring story games to the masses, not to keep old school adventure games on life support for a small group of devout fans (of which I'm one).
I have always argued that Telltale's development was predictable, and the push for more story and less brainteaser always visible through the years. I don't see how that is a 'new' direction for games to evolve into though; yet most of all, I'm sad to see how traditional adventure games are characterized in Telltale's recent interviews and official statements. It's a genre with much the same history as the FPS, RTS, RPG, action-adventure or sports games. These games haven't much changed in almost three decades. They've stayed essentially the same through countless more or less successful attempts to 'evolve' these genres. The same is true for the classic adventure game. You are vividly painting the image of an old person on his deathbed when you speak of these classic forms of the adventure game, but of course Telltale would not "keep the genre on life support" if it made more adventure games in the LucasArts vein. The genre does not need Telltale's games and dedication to survive.
There are still a lot of people on this forum who continue to ask you to make adventure games with 'stop and think' moments again not because you're the only source they could get that drug from, not because they ask you to keep something alive that should have died years ago. They keep asking because only three years ago, Telltale made quite excellent adventure games. They keep asking because you were really good at it. I respect how you (and Jake!) have professed your love for the traditional forms of the adventure game on this forum, but what I would really like to see as well is an acknowledgement of its right to still successfully exist in the present.
Threaded discussions and voting were arrived at objectively. We looked around at many sites from entertainment, news, social, etc. sites like kotaku, joystiq, reddit, cnn, slash dot, ycombinator, BBC, Facebook, twitter etc. We paid attention to sites that handle a large, diverse audiences and handle a huge chuck of discussions on the internet. We found overwhelmingly that these kinds of sites had these features. They don't facilitate they types of discussions the old format did, but we are OK with that. They facilitate the types of discussions that the vast majority of people on the net are now engaging in. My guess is you many find all those sites as examples of discussions done wrong, but they are prevalent and very very popular.
The problem is that while your community is large and diverse in its own way, it's not large and diverse by internet standards. Your community is all here for your games, and so they will never be as large and diverse as a general news site like Reddit, just by virtue of that common thread. People aren't here for the same reason they go to Reddit. I use Facebook, I use Joystiq, and I use the Telltale forums, but I use them for vastly different things. I want to see Telltale try to emulate Facebook just as little as I'd want to see Facebook emulate your old forums.
Honestly, look around you. Your community was thriving at the end of August. A month later, it's a ghost town. You have The Wolf Among Us coming out at some point in the near future, and its forum is barely alive. Your Walking Dead fans have jumped ship and created their own unofficial forum. That the structure of this site is wrong for the type of company isn't the opinion of just a few fans, it's the opinion of the majority of your core audience.
Who cares if the majority of the people on the internet are using that type of discussion? That's not what most people are looking for when they come here. You're a video game company that pushes your games based on their excellent storytelling, and yet you're actively discouraging people from having deep, meaningful discussions about those stories. Who cares what the rest of the internet is doing? What's important is what's right for you.
Don't look at big news sites as examples. Look at the websites of your peers. Look at the communities on Double Fine, on Irrational, on Steam, even on Penny Arcade. Look at Square-Enix, at Ubisoft, at Sega, at Capcom, at Blizzard. These are some of the biggest names in the game industry, all with large communities, and not one of them uses threaded forums. I cannot stress enough that YOU HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT THE WRONG EXAMPLES. I can't believe I'm saying this, but World of Warcraft is the example you should be following here.
I don't find the examples you cited as discussions done wrong. For the purposes of those sites, for the types of discussions that occur there, it works just fine for them. It would work just fine for comments on the Blog section of your site. But for your community? It's a death sentence. I know there's a few people who really like the new design, but from what I've seen, that's not the majority of the feedback you've gotten. Maybe you should consider the reason for that.
I know that this comes off as a lot of negativity, but I'm honestly trying to be helpful here. I really love this place, and it kills me to see the mass exodus that's taken place in the last month. I really believe that you're trying to do what's best for the site. I just think you're focusing on it the wrong way.
I still feel that sinking Icedhope's thread is a low blow. And I also am in complete agreement that the examples you look to are the wrong ones. I could include many more examples of "peers" who don't use threaded discussions in addition to those cited. Bioware, ScummVM and LucasArts come right off the top of my head.
Edit: I might also include the forums of Activision, Naughty Dog, Bethesda, EA Sports... and I'm not even looking that hard.
This is not a news website wherein people respond to individual daily articles. This is not a social networking website wherein people post personal status updates on their personal walls with a feed page that organizes all thosr whom you have friended.
This is a video game developer's forum, whose community has come together to discuss mutual interest in games and stays together because of the friendships and deep conversations that develop from those mutual interests.
You are looking in the wrong place to see what forum format is popular for the purposes of fostering meaningful commuity interaction.
i think there have been many improvements to the forums but also things that have made it worse, for example in the threaded discussions if there were like 30+ pages and i or someone else wanted to reply to a post made on the first page the reply would be on the first page, it just doesn't seem right to me to be going back to the first page of a topic, and on the traditional linear discussions the reply button doesn't quote the person i am replying to automatically, so i have to manually quote someone which isn't easy and there is no way of verifying the quote and seeing it in context except for manually searching for the original quote.
maybe if there were a hybrid of the threaded and linear style it would be better, so when you reply it would automatically quote the original post and put it on the last page of the discussion, but if you wanted to you could click on a button that would show the discussion in a threaded way.
i actually like the thumbs up/down thing because sometimes i have nothing to add except that this is a good post, so it seems kind of redundant to quote someone and say "this is good" and also if i did have something to add i can thumbs it up or down in addition to replying, i like that there is embeded videos and that pictures resize themselves to fit onto the thread so i don't haver to worry about posting a high resolution picture and taking up a whole page.
sites like kotaku, joystiq, reddit, cnn, slash dot, ycombinator, BBC, Facebook, twitter etc.
I'm sorry, I have to point out that Joystiq has completely removed comments from their site, so they're an awful example to cite here.
I got to agree that those sites are the wrong examples to look at for a forum. The difference is half those sites are not forums. I think Joystiq and Kotaku are news websites for example. It just seems weird to use a forum system that has gotten so much dislike ever since the first beta of it. Yes its good that the Telltale Games team are taking an interest in fixing up the forums and improving them but lets face it. A lot of people has left because they didn't like the new site beta, and its basically the same apart from some changes and that kind of stuff. Even though one of the forum's new features is its meant to be harder for spambots to get on the forums, we still have at least 1 spambot a day making 3 or 4 spam threads. Even Mods have started giving up being mods. The old forums used to have a good amount of activity but now hardly anyone is talking in the General forums and I have no idea about the other forums but my guess is they have followed in the same way. Look again there are features of this new forum I will admit I like (The backgrounds, Each game having their own section of the forums, etc.) But it has more cons than pros in my opinion (No Signatures, No Polls, Its more of a pain to get a custom Avatar, etc)
I will still be sticking around on the TTG forums. I've been here for the last 2 years and most of the people on here are great to talk too.
Interestingly, Bethesda is running IP.Board which hasn't been updated since 2009!
I'm not trying to continue an argument, just attempting to let you know we are listening and paying attention. It feels like we've made a choice you disagree with, but we have committed to the choice. I really do invite and encourage you to help us refine THAT choice, but arguing that the choice is wrong and we should be pointed an entirely different direction isn't going anywhere. I hope you'll continue with us, warts and all.
I agree with the assessment, that threading works for discussing news articles, but is bad for developing a discussion the way we used and loved to do on the old forum.
This thread for example is in Classic Style, and it feels almost like the previous forum, minus some features. Since the direction is keeping the new site and making the best out of it, my suggestion is as follows:
Make the discussion forums classic style, and work on the feature set and look and feel
Use threading only for the Blog, and the Support forum
The blog is obviously like a news site, with a lot of little ideas that can be discussed threaded.
In the support forum I noticed that with threading it is much easier to follow the issue of a single person, if multiple users seek support in the same thread.
I think that way we can get the best out of the new site, and also nothing was wasted.
EDIT
A third option just popped into my head. Let the thread starter choose whether the thread should be Flat or Threaded, and make Flat the default selection. That way people can create threaded discussions if they feel that their topic requires that.
I've been looking at the forums that Chyron8472 has pointed out.
Activision: forums have voting, threading, user rankings, thumbs up/down, … moreetc.
Naughty Dog: flat forums, no threading. Kudos voting system.
Bethesda No threading, no voting, totally flat.
EA SportsNo threading, no voting, totally flat.
Interestingly, Bethesda is running IP.Board which hasn't been updated since 2009!
I'm not trying to continue an argument, just attempting to let you know we are listening and paying attention. It feels like we've made a choice you disagree with, but we have committed to the choice. I really do invite and encourage you to help us refine THAT choice, but arguing that the choice is wrong and we should be pointed an entirely different direction isn't going anywhere. I hope you'll continue with us, warts and all.
@Kevin Tell us what's on the table. Even with all this backlash, you won't reconsider the choice that you made but are you at least willing to reach a compromise? Is something like what thestalkinghead brought up feasible? A sort of hybrid between threaded and linear discussion types? Are you similarly committed to using Markdown? Are you willing to implement a better voting system in which anonymous marks of agreement/disagreement are tied to the post rather than the poster? If we can get a sense of what can and cannot change with this "community", then we can decide for ourselves whether these are in fact benign warts or whether they are symptoms of a terminal affliction.
I've been looking at the forums that Chyron8472 has pointed out.
Activision: forums have voting, threading, user rankings, thumbs up/down, … moreetc.
Naughty Dog: flat forums, no threading. Kudos voting system.
Bethesda No threading, no voting, totally flat.
EA SportsNo threading, no voting, totally flat.
Interestingly, Bethesda is running IP.Board which hasn't been updated since 2009!
I'm not trying to continue an argument, just attempting to let you know we are listening and paying attention. It feels like we've made a choice you disagree with, but we have committed to the choice. I really do invite and encourage you to help us refine THAT choice, but arguing that the choice is wrong and we should be pointed an entirely different direction isn't going anywhere. I hope you'll continue with us, warts and all.
We have discussed hybrid flat/threaded quite a bit internally. We are going to give threaded a chance at least through the launch of Wolf.
The voting system is one of the things that I think is most valuable. It provides an outlet for people to express themselves with a much lower barrier to entry than writing a full on post. It has been argued that this will encourage people to childishly down vote a user in a punitive fashion. I have more faith in our community than that. I am passionate about enabling participation in as many ways a possible. Posting, voting, polling (which is currently absent), and anything else that makes it easier for someone to participate is great in my book. I don't fear lighter, more casual participation and in fact want to encourage it! This doesn't preclude or diminish lengthy intelligent discussions at all. 100 page threads just don't work for everybody in every context.
As far as tying votes to a user, I also think it's valuable to know what how the community is reacting to you. Perhaps we could make it a user preference to hide your vote counts from other users if someone was worried about it. The only reason I could imagine needing to hide it is because the user had a lot of thumbs down, which might be an accurate reflection of how the community feels about the user. We need mechanisms to allow the community to express themselves if a user is trolling, being intentionally abusive, derailing conversations, etc. I'm a fan of comments that (when downvoted below a certain threshold) are collapsed and hidden by default, allowing the community to self-filter content that doesn't work for them.
I'm not advocating mob rule, but the Telltale audience isn't an unruly, vindictive mob. Just look at this thread. There is heated, passionate debate and it has barely ever crossed the line into poor taste, and on the very rare occasion when it has, the community has pushed everything back on the rails. I'm not concerned that these new features are going to change that at all.
Joystiq has comments, threading and voting! (random Joystiq thread here)
Huh, maybe it's just me, then. I see the poll in that link, but the comments always appear as "0" on every article. I haven't seen comments on Joystiq in months.
Also, I have to say, it makes me really happy to finally see you in here, addressing concerns about the site. This sort of back and forth with the community is something I've wanted to see since we spoke about the new site at PAX last year.
Glad you guys truly are listening, thanks for posting Kevin, I get that you want to launch TWaU and see the new site being used properly.
I hope you will change your mind about the threaded comments, we'll see how the discussions go when the game releases, though.
If threaded was gone, notifications actually took me to the correct post, polls returned, etc, you would get many more of your fans posting on here.
I'm serious, if polls aren't back in time for game releases I will have lost a lot of faith in telltale, polling is important and fun. You took out the best parts of the old forum.
OK, just so we're clear - this post is not made as a mod. Hell, for the purposes of this post, just forget I even AM a mod. I say the following as a long-time user of this forum, and as that alone. OK? Good.
It has been argued that this will encourage people to childishly down vote a user in a punitive fashion. I have more faith in our community than that.
I'm glad you have faith in people, Kevin. As a realist and someone who's motto in life is "People are stupid, but some hide it better than others", I do NOT have faith in people. Because people are stupid. You give them even the slightest chance to show this, and they will always rise to the occasion. Every single time.
The thumbs up/thumbs down feature hasn't been abused YET. But it will. Once TWAU launches, we're going to get an infux of people, most of whom will adhere to Gabe's Internet F**kwad Theory. I don't doubt that most of the people posting will act like kids (or will ACTUALLY be kids, age limit be damned) and they will downvote the hell out of anything they even remotely dislike.
The fact that you've made the decision to stick with the Reddit-lite style, despite the overwhelming negativity you got every time you showed it to people is incredibly discouraging. I get that you've invested time and money in it and you want to give it a fair chance - believe me, I do. Probably more so than some of the other disgruntled foru- sorry, community members. But the fact that you seem so determined to stay with it, so convinced that it will work despite everything leaning to the contrary... it just gives the impression that you're out of touch with what people want from this place.
I don't want to go back to the old "oh, it's not the same Telltale any more, they spit in the face of old-school adventure fans" argument, but you really do just see to be making it yourselves with actions like this. We have given you solid feedback, time and again, and it really does seem like you've done nothing with it. It makes us feel like you don't care about us. I HATE feeling like that. I used to love you guys. I want to love you again.
Communicating with us like you are now is a great step forward. It's awesome that you're taking time out of what must be a rather busy period to chat with us in this way. I just wish you had more positive things to say. Even if it's just a glimmer of hope. A "we're open to reviewing things down the line if they don't work out the way we'd hoped" really would mean the WORLD to us. And I get that what I'M saying probably isn't gonna change your mind and make everything better. I don't expect it to (which in itself is kinda depressing - I'm talking to the VP of a company and I know that nothing I say will really matter).
But please - just try and think about this from our point of view for a second and see if you can understand why we're so upset. This used to be home for a lot of us. Now most of us have moved out and this is just a place that exists, devoid of everything that made it so welcoming. It's not a home any more - it's a hotel, and I suspect most people brought here from TWAU will treat it as such. Once they leave - and they WILL leave - we're gonna have to clean crap off the walls, replace broken furniture, recarpet the floor, torture analogies...
i agree with dildor that polls are a good thing, because they can be the lighter, more casual participation @kevin is talking about, sure sometimes the questions can be bias or weighted to one answer, but for example on the walking dead forum there was a poll for "did you cry at the end?" and that is great for a poll, because not everybody would want to talk about that but they may be willing just to simply vote yes/no, and also if there are a lot of votes it may encourage discussion
Edit: on what @Darth Marsden is saying, i believe there will definitely be some downvotes out of spite or childishness, but when i see that happening to a very reasonable post i usually give it an up vote to cancel out the trolls, maybe it will take a while but perhaps it would be good to get into the habit of upvoting things we agree with or think are interesting discussion points
Glad you guys truly are listening, thanks for posting Kevin, I get that you want to launch TWaU and see the new site being used properly.
I h… moreope you will change your mind about the threaded comments, we'll see how the discussions go when the game releases, though.
If threaded was gone, notifications actually took me to the correct post, polls returned, etc, you would get many more of your fans posting on here.
I'm serious, if polls aren't back in time for game releases I will have lost a lot of faith in telltale, polling is important and fun. You took out the best parts of the old forum.
I know this is completely off topic. While Kevin is nice enough to respond to some comments. Can we get any word from Tell Tale about the release of the upcoming game. The Wolf Among us. It was projected it would come out late this month or early next month. I am counting on it, to come out the first week of October.
However as the day grows more closer. Still no announcements have been made. I been a tad nervous that it will be pushed to the second week of Oct. I know some people might see the big difference in playing it first week, or second. I, like others have been eagerly awaiting and patiently I might add its release.
@Kevin Thank you for your response. I'm glad that there is at least talk of a hybrid. Hopefully, you will be persuaded to move further in that direction.
I will agree with you that a voting system is a useful tool but I don't think it’s been implemented very well here at all. There are two separate, conflicting uses for a thumbs up/thumbs down system. One is as a means for a user to express agreement or disagreement with a post without having to go through the laborious ordeal of actually formulating thoughts into words. Sure. Fine. But you also mention another function: to "allow the community to express themselves if a user is trolling, being intentionally abusive, derailing conversations, etc." So as it currently stand, a thumbs down can mean either "I disagree with this post but have no cogent remarks to offer of my own" or "this post is disruptive to the community and should be hidden from sight." And by tying those thumbs down to a user, having a large number of thumbs down can either mean "this user offers up many opinions that others disagree" or "this user is a troll who is not welcomed in this community." You see the problem here? That doesn't work. It discourages differing opinions. And that spells death for any meaningful discussion on this forum.
Look, it's fine that you want to encourage "lighter, more casual participation" but I think you are going about it in the wrong way. That is, by making it harder for deeper participation to take place. Many of the ways that people go about joining this forum is by first reading through the numerous interesting discussion threads on here and then eventually joining in when they feel comfortable enough. Cater to that. Create an improved guest system, perhaps one allowing guest users to vote up a comment or vote in a poll but not vote down or post any comments of their own.
Finally, any word on Markdown? I’d really prefer to switch back to BBCode.
I think what's this community needs, in addition to the thumbs up and thumbs down, is a middle finger up. That would address the problem DomeWing is describing quite well I should think.
@Dartth "I'm talking to the VP of a company and I know that nothing I say will really matter". Though I'm aware you'd like to demote me, I'm the co-founder, president and CTO of the company. We started this whole thing in my apartment 8 years ago. Despite that, what you say does matter! It's a pity that your instinct is to assume that participants in the discussion are defaulted to stupid. I will say I'm not too comfortable with a mod on our forum who's first instinct is to assume that about the people posting here. You've been around here for a very long time and always had great things to contribute. Please take a step back and try not to be elitist and remain objective.
@fusedmass: Stay tuned! We're working with our partners now to secure the release date. It's not far off at all!
@DomwWing: Markdown is more of a technical thing than anything else. I think the current markdown is built into Vanilla so it works out of the box. Jesse would be able to speak more to that than I.
Though I'm aware you'd like to demote me, I'm the co-founder, president and CTO of the company. We started this whole thing in my apartment 8 years ago.
My bad, I got your position mixed up with something else. As for demoting you... I don't think ANYONE wants to demote you. Lots of other things, maybe, but not demote you.
It's a pity that your instinct is to assume that participants in the discussion are defaulted to stupid. I will say I'm not too comfortable with a mod on our forum who's first instinct is to assume that about the people posting here.
I wouldn't assume anything unless experience has taught me to do so. This is the internet we're dealing with, after all. If people prove to be intelligent, then I'm happy to treat them as such, as I'm sure most people will attest to Unfortunately, The Walking Dead launch has taught me that the new guys tend to be... well, very 'noobish', shall we say.
You've been around here for a very long time and always had great things to contribute.
Please take a step back and try not to be elitist and remain objective.
I do. Well, I try to. Same difference.
Right. That's the two lines of my post that you decided to pick on for no real reason. Any thoughts on the other five paragraphs?
Comments
Actually, what would really improve this place is if Doodo came back and created his usual havoc.
Also yes, I am aware that the mods are not TTG employees. That [snip]ped post in the other thread was meant to be edited to change "they" to "the staff" as I didn't mean Icedhope to infer by "they" I meant him--but I accidentally double posted instead so snipped the first one.
The mods are cool. The staff (ie. the employees) are retarded. Especially Dan Connors and his upper management people.
This isn't trolling. I actually do believe that it is upper management's fault that the openness and friendliness of the company has changed so radically.
I would just like to point out that trying to post on here with an iPhone is still a serious chore. The previous forum (the really popular one that Telltale killed off) was much easier to use on my phone. This new terrible setup loads comments slowly and the zooming in and out on this page is so laggy.
I'm telling you this right now. There is much better message board/forum software available out there used by companies with a clue,so why not use one of those and don't put your customers and fans through the agony of having to use this turkey.
In my humble point of view. I kinda like it. It reminds me a bit about facebook, expect it didn't have the dislike button. I honestly don't know why we need the dislike button. If someone disagrees, they can reply with their comments rather then voting up or down. I don't know why people butcher these forums to make it seem like something its not.
It's really not that bad, an improvement. In my point of view. But I am writing off a PC, maybe that has something to do with it.
I agree, the whole up voting down voting reminds me a tad bit to much of Youtube, it is nice and all but we lived for almost ten years without it, so there's that.
"The staff (ie. the employees) are retarded. Especially Dan Connors and his upper management people"
now that's not necessary....
Well, if you're not willing to listen to direct feedback from people who would make use of the software, then yes I would call that retarded.
Again, you're internally going to respond to this by thinking "We are listening. We're making improvements to the forums as people point out bugs." But I'm telling you that you're turning something that's very broken and unpopular into something that's slightly less broken yet equally unpopular.
Turning this place into a reddit clone and removing bbcode is a terrible idea, but no, you don't care if it is or not. You're going to wait 6 months to a year to let the backlash die down as people get used to the change before you actually will decide to consider whether the change was worth it.
Now, what you're again focusing on is the fact that I'm unnecessarily abrasive in my criticism. Instead, you should be considering /why/ these actions are causing users of the software to feel the need to be abrasive about it beyond the standard dislike some people have for change.
I'm absolutely /convinced/ that the powers-that-be are waiting for the backlash against general change to die down before listening to criticism about said change. This means that any openly voiced spite we have for this software is completely pointless and has no bearing on any decisions the company will make regarding its use (beyond simple bug fixes).
In sum: 1) You don't listen to us. 2) You don't talk to us. 3) You think I'm overreacting therefore my argument is invalid. 4) The change is permanent so I should get over it.
I certainly am listening (self evident).
We are talking (again, self evident).
Calling people names hurts and devalues your credibility. You yourself describe your post as "unnecessarily abrasive"!
Nothing is permanent, but we are moving in this direction, and in the end it may not work for you.
Kevin, you are a very poor representative of Telltale Games in the way you dismissively respond to valid concerns of longtime Telltale customers and forum users.
Kevin, your antagonistic approach to those people willing to tell the truth about this horrible redesign is what is not helpful and what is unnecessary. Kevin, it is disappointing that, as a Telltale employee, you would mischaracterize and question the credibility of customers voicing their honest concerns. Please drop the "it's self-evident that we're listening, duh, since I'm writing now" rudeness, and try thoughtfully addressing the many concerns about this failure of a message board design.
Kevin, your disappointing manner on this forum gives the impression that Telltale staff has little concern for community feedback and is stubbornly planning to go in a forum design direction that no one really wants.
Okay, so yes you are talking. It's a step in the right direction and that's great.
However, Telltale has had quite a history wherein our concerns and/or complaints have fallen on deaf ears. This image is not helped by the fact that a member of the staff has set Icedhope's thread about his relationship with Telltale as "sunk". It would seem that Telltale wants that thread to quietly go away, which again is reflective of previous experiences with the company such as how Telltale handled announcement (or lack thereof) of the cancellation of King's Quest (as well as direct evidence that everything Icedhope said in that thread is true, especially the part about the company responding to problems by remaining silent and hoping they blow over).
Further, you say "we're moving in this direction, and in the end it may not work for you" and I might agree that changes are not going to please everyone, as well that many are going to be upset by any change no matter what it is. However, while being so adamant about this change, you seem to be completely ignoring the advice from not only a lowly user such as myself, but every single community moderator whom the company hand-picked to manage forums for them. It's not just me, and it's not just dozen or more fairly-inconsequential-yet-highly-active forum members who (from the company's point of view) insist on being irrationally intransigent about change.
double post.
Ohhh... okay. I think I see what's going on here. Telltale has a number of highly-active forum members who insist on hanging out on the company's forums even though all that they talk about as of late concerning the company itself is to complain endlessly about the company's missteps (even going so far as to enumerate them all). They also won't stop complaining that the company doesn't want to make classic adventure games anymore.
This endless complaining needs dealing with. It's not good for company PR. It's not good for introducing new users to the General Chat community. It's not allowing the company to completely move on from its past. But the staff can't just ban them all. Besides, not only would that be perceived as reactionary, but even the community moderators themselves join in on the dislike for the company.
So...what does the company do in response? They introduce new forum software that said members will find that they dislike to the point that they leave of their own accord. That way the company can get rid of the problem members indirectly without banning them outright.
Now there are a few brush fires left behind by the stragglers who yet still complain about what once was. Yet again, the company doesn't need to close problem threads outright. They can just sink the offending threads and hope they eventually go away on their own.
...this scenario does sound woefully arrogant and self-important bordering on narcissism. You're going to say that I'm being ridiculous by inferring that a dozen or so people are such a hinderance to Telltale's image that the company is willing to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on custom-built software merely to shoo these people away.
So now you're confused because either I'm saying we're so insignificant to TTG that we're not worth taking advice from, or I'm saying that I think us so important that we're worth spending buckets of money to try and get rid of, and I can't have it both ways, so which is it?
Well... I don't know. I still can't figure out why anyone would think this reddit style is a good idea in the first place. Obviously Telltale is dead set on using it. But why? Why on earth is using this format so blasted important to you? If you're really willing to actually talk to us now, Kevin, then you could at least answer that.
I must say, we may not all agree on everything. I don't know this Kevin, and I haven't been on these forums as long as you. However your attitude and tone is very hostile. I can understand that some members of the community do not like the new site, that's fine. However their are those of us, like me who embraced the new site. Who actually feel its an improvement from the old system.
Perhaps people that have been here for years have been attached to the old site. To me honestly, it looks updated. You have likes and dislikes button. A cool new skin, avatars etc. I have seen you're comments. Like in that one thread about that one person explaining that hes no longer a mod. You made a very hostile comment directly to the staff that was off topic.
I am simply asking for people to tone down the heat in their posts. It seems to me, you are saying. A minority group of people do not like the site, so tell tale must listen to you now and change it back. Respectfully, that's not how things are supposed to work. This seems to be a great community. The games they are rolling out are fantastic.
Lets not ruin all that by arguing over what the forums look like. Honestly, when it comes right down to it. It doesn't matter what the forums look like. It matters what the games they produce look like. Honestly this community have been one of the kindest and most respectful ones I been apart of. It seems to be you are taking every chance you get to directly flame the staff and that's a bit unfair. I say give it a few months instead of creating a hostile environment.
It was Icedhope who created a thread about the history of his crumbling relationship with Telltale. Suddenly the thread was inexplicably sunk... and, as the community mods would seem to indicate, presumably by actual Telltale staff.
Color me reactionary, but that just totally rubbed me the wrong way. Plenty of people practically begged and pleaded with Telltale not to implement the bbcode-less reddit-style aspects of the software. But it was implemented anyway, with nary a word as to why Telltale was so keen on using it in particular as opposed to other better fully-functional-out-of-the-box software. Not even told to the mods.
There has been plenty of recent evidence to support the opinion that the company just doesn't care about us. And it doesn't just start with remaining stone-cold quiet about King's Quest.
If I'm belligerent, it's only because I'm rather irritated, and even rather offended. While my tone isn't exactly the most helpful, I wouldn't say it's unwarranted.
This is my last post, for tonight. I am very tired after a very taxing day. To my understanding the thread you are talking about "sunk" meaning no one replied enough to keep it bumped. Its not locked or deleted by any means. Just not enough people have replied or commented in that thread to keep it bumped. If there was more public interest in it. The thread would been bumped with questions, and comments. Its not the fault of Tell Tale not many people replied to it.
As for the new software. To my understanding. Mods are not paid employees of tell tale games. They are volunteer mods, meaning without pay doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. I'm not sure why they should or need to be informed about these choices before hand. Tell Tale is a corporation, like any other they make choices. Good or bad, its up for the community to decide.
I honestly feel like I am missing a giant piece of information. It seems clearly are offended, but I'm not sure at what. Honestly I am new to these forums. I started coming on here after playing the walking dead like many others. I became interested in the moral choice, not simply just the gore.
However I must say. I do feel they care to a certain extent. The Walking Dead is a massive success for this company. If they keep building on the model. Moral choice that they did on the walking dead and extend that like they are in the wolf among us, and other games. Combined with there comic book style movie productions like games. I only see the rise of success. In fact they already created the walking dead season 2 and the wolf among us comes out shortly, not to mention the DLC. It seems they heard the feedback of the games the community liked.
Just my two cents, good or bad, disagree or agree. There are polite ways we can communicate our feelings to other people. If our post just filled with hate and insult, hostile tone with extreme attitude it only serves to discredit. Perhaps provide detailed examples, showing where and when they didn't care about the people. I sincerely feel like I am missing the part when you got offended, and just followed up right after.
I say this with deepest respect.
There cerainly is no vast conspiracy to bully out any community member or mod. As our games have evolved away from classic adventures (which we still love, I will always be the systems programmer of Grim Fandango!) some members (and mods) have really dwelled on how disappointed they are with the newer games, even though many many more people are playing and enjoying those games. We have never discouraged these discussions or repremanded anyone for being critical of us. In some ways we feel the same pain. Our goal has always been to bring story games to the masses, not to keep old school adventure games on life support for a small group of devout fans (of which I'm one). From the beginning, we have intentionally and publically been pushing to modernize the genre, and it's definitely working, for which we are incredibly proud. We invite anyone to join us in the discussions about that mission, or to critise us for even trying, right here in our own house!
Threaded discussions and voting were arrived at objectively. We looked around at many sites from entertainment, news, social, etc. sites like kotaku, joystiq, reddit, cnn, slash dot, ycombinator, BBC, Facebook, twitter etc. We paid attention to sites that handle a large, diverse audiences and handle a huge chuck of discussions on the internet. We found overwhelmingly that these kinds of sites had these features. They don't facilitate they types of discussions the old format did, but we are OK with that. They facilitate the types of discussions that the vast majority of people on the net are now engaging in. My guess is you many find all those sites as examples of discussions done wrong, but they are prevalent and very very popular.
The internet is a constantly evolving place, the only thing that doesn't change is the guarantee that things will change. We're evolving with it, both in the games we make and the community features here. We honestly desire as many folks participation in this as we can, as long as it's constructive and respectiful. Of course we can't address every issue simultaneously. We have to choose our battles, and we can't be everything to everyone, which inevitably leaves someone feeling slighted, and I honestly don't know how to prevent that, but I'm certainly not ignorant or "retarded" to it.
Let's keep things constructive, respectful and open.
This isn't a question of resisting change or evolution. We all knew changes were needed, but it would have been nice if the people implementing the changes had actually listened to ANYTHING of what people were saying was desired. Are people like Kevin proud of the level of consideration of user feedback that went into this ridiculous, unnecessary, waste-of-money setup? Who exactly are you creating this for, anyway? Why are some staff members insistent on using an inferior format for which there was ZERO DEMAND? Why stick with a setup that is inferior and has less options for both users and moderators? And don't even get me started on how it is with my iPhone.
I posted the following in another thread, but it doesn't seem like staff members are answering questions there lately, so I'll quote it again here:
>
>
Kevin is the co-founder and president of Telltale. So, at least you can know that your concerns are being read from all levels of staff since you're communicating directly with upper management.
Threaded discussions and voting were arrived at objectively. We looked around at many sites from entertainment, news, social, etc. sites like kotaku, joystiq, reddit, cnn, slash dot, ycombinator, BBC, Facebook, twitter etc. We paid attention to sites that handle a large, diverse audiences and handle a huge chuck of discussions on the internet. We found overwhelmingly that these kinds of sites had these features. They don't facilitate they types of discussions the old format did, but we are OK with that. They facilitate the types of discussions that the vast majority of people on the net are now engaging in.
You mean discussions consisting of short, vapid comments meant to be glossed over and forgotten about as soon as they're posted? That's the kind of discussion you want on your website? Forgive my being direct, Kevin, but THIS IS NOT A SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE. Nor is it a news site. Nor is it a hub for all things pop-culture. It will NEVER be any of those things. It's a game forum. For a very particular set of games.
No one goes to telltalegames.com for the social experience. People come her because they want to engage in meaningful conversations about games that they enjoy. Yes, a social experience can develop out of that but not when you rip out the architecture that supports the discussions that gives rise to it in the first place. And NOT when you tell the people who have volunteered their time to help keep your site running for the past several years that you're "OK" with taking away what they loved about this site so long as it seems to be in line what all the popular kids are doing these days. I really, really hope that you give this some more thought.
Although I understand how arguments are just exploding from your mouth when you finally feel you can present them to the responsible party, I still don't much care for Chyron's and MtnPeak's tone in here. That's the kind of derogatory talk I'd usually just stop in the TWD forums.
I've said about everything I could have about threaded discussion in the forums and behind the scenes, and I'm trying hard to get used to it.
There's one thing of Kevin's rethoric to which I do have to respond though.
I have always argued that Telltale's development was predictable, and the push for more story and less brainteaser always visible through the years. I don't see how that is a 'new' direction for games to evolve into though; yet most of all, I'm sad to see how traditional adventure games are characterized in Telltale's recent interviews and official statements. It's a genre with much the same history as the FPS, RTS, RPG, action-adventure or sports games. These games haven't much changed in almost three decades. They've stayed essentially the same through countless more or less successful attempts to 'evolve' these genres. The same is true for the classic adventure game. You are vividly painting the image of an old person on his deathbed when you speak of these classic forms of the adventure game, but of course Telltale would not "keep the genre on life support" if it made more adventure games in the LucasArts vein. The genre does not need Telltale's games and dedication to survive.
There are still a lot of people on this forum who continue to ask you to make adventure games with 'stop and think' moments again not because you're the only source they could get that drug from, not because they ask you to keep something alive that should have died years ago. They keep asking because only three years ago, Telltale made quite excellent adventure games. They keep asking because you were really good at it. I respect how you (and Jake!) have professed your love for the traditional forms of the adventure game on this forum, but what I would really like to see as well is an acknowledgement of its right to still successfully exist in the present.
I'm sorry, I have to point out that Joystiq has completely removed comments from their site, so they're an awful example to cite here.
The problem is that while your community is large and diverse in its own way, it's not large and diverse by internet standards. Your community is all here for your games, and so they will never be as large and diverse as a general news site like Reddit, just by virtue of that common thread. People aren't here for the same reason they go to Reddit. I use Facebook, I use Joystiq, and I use the Telltale forums, but I use them for vastly different things. I want to see Telltale try to emulate Facebook just as little as I'd want to see Facebook emulate your old forums.
Honestly, look around you. Your community was thriving at the end of August. A month later, it's a ghost town. You have The Wolf Among Us coming out at some point in the near future, and its forum is barely alive. Your Walking Dead fans have jumped ship and created their own unofficial forum. That the structure of this site is wrong for the type of company isn't the opinion of just a few fans, it's the opinion of the majority of your core audience.
Who cares if the majority of the people on the internet are using that type of discussion? That's not what most people are looking for when they come here. You're a video game company that pushes your games based on their excellent storytelling, and yet you're actively discouraging people from having deep, meaningful discussions about those stories. Who cares what the rest of the internet is doing? What's important is what's right for you.
Don't look at big news sites as examples. Look at the websites of your peers. Look at the communities on Double Fine, on Irrational, on Steam, even on Penny Arcade. Look at Square-Enix, at Ubisoft, at Sega, at Capcom, at Blizzard. These are some of the biggest names in the game industry, all with large communities, and not one of them uses threaded forums. I cannot stress enough that YOU HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT THE WRONG EXAMPLES. I can't believe I'm saying this, but World of Warcraft is the example you should be following here.
I don't find the examples you cited as discussions done wrong. For the purposes of those sites, for the types of discussions that occur there, it works just fine for them. It would work just fine for comments on the Blog section of your site. But for your community? It's a death sentence. I know there's a few people who really like the new design, but from what I've seen, that's not the majority of the feedback you've gotten. Maybe you should consider the reason for that.
I know that this comes off as a lot of negativity, but I'm honestly trying to be helpful here. I really love this place, and it kills me to see the mass exodus that's taken place in the last month. I really believe that you're trying to do what's best for the site. I just think you're focusing on it the wrong way.
Okay, so I've slept.
I'm sorry about my rudeness.
I still feel that sinking Icedhope's thread is a low blow. And I also am in complete agreement that the examples you look to are the wrong ones. I could include many more examples of "peers" who don't use threaded discussions in addition to those cited. Bioware, ScummVM and LucasArts come right off the top of my head.
Edit: I might also include the forums of Activision, Naughty Dog, Bethesda, EA Sports... and I'm not even looking that hard.
This is not a news website wherein people respond to individual daily articles. This is not a social networking website wherein people post personal status updates on their personal walls with a feed page that organizes all thosr whom you have friended.
This is a video game developer's forum, whose community has come together to discuss mutual interest in games and stays together because of the friendships and deep conversations that develop from those mutual interests.
You are looking in the wrong place to see what forum format is popular for the purposes of fostering meaningful commuity interaction.
i think there have been many improvements to the forums but also things that have made it worse, for example in the threaded discussions if there were like 30+ pages and i or someone else wanted to reply to a post made on the first page the reply would be on the first page, it just doesn't seem right to me to be going back to the first page of a topic, and on the traditional linear discussions the reply button doesn't quote the person i am replying to automatically, so i have to manually quote someone which isn't easy and there is no way of verifying the quote and seeing it in context except for manually searching for the original quote.
maybe if there were a hybrid of the threaded and linear style it would be better, so when you reply it would automatically quote the original post and put it on the last page of the discussion, but if you wanted to you could click on a button that would show the discussion in a threaded way.
i actually like the thumbs up/down thing because sometimes i have nothing to add except that this is a good post, so it seems kind of redundant to quote someone and say "this is good" and also if i did have something to add i can thumbs it up or down in addition to replying, i like that there is embeded videos and that pictures resize themselves to fit onto the thread so i don't haver to worry about posting a high resolution picture and taking up a whole page.
Joystiq has comments, threading and voting! (random Joystiq thread here)
I got to agree that those sites are the wrong examples to look at for a forum. The difference is half those sites are not forums. I think Joystiq and Kotaku are news websites for example. It just seems weird to use a forum system that has gotten so much dislike ever since the first beta of it. Yes its good that the Telltale Games team are taking an interest in fixing up the forums and improving them but lets face it. A lot of people has left because they didn't like the new site beta, and its basically the same apart from some changes and that kind of stuff. Even though one of the forum's new features is its meant to be harder for spambots to get on the forums, we still have at least 1 spambot a day making 3 or 4 spam threads. Even Mods have started giving up being mods. The old forums used to have a good amount of activity but now hardly anyone is talking in the General forums and I have no idea about the other forums but my guess is they have followed in the same way. Look again there are features of this new forum I will admit I like (The backgrounds, Each game having their own section of the forums, etc.) But it has more cons than pros in my opinion (No Signatures, No Polls, Its more of a pain to get a custom Avatar, etc)
I will still be sticking around on the TTG forums. I've been here for the last 2 years and most of the people on here are great to talk too.
I've been looking at the forums that Chyron8472 has pointed out.
Activision: forums have voting, threading, user rankings, thumbs up/down, etc.
Naughty Dog: flat forums, no threading. Kudos voting system.
Bethesda No threading, no voting, totally flat.
EA SportsNo threading, no voting, totally flat.
Interestingly, Bethesda is running IP.Board which hasn't been updated since 2009!
I'm not trying to continue an argument, just attempting to let you know we are listening and paying attention. It feels like we've made a choice you disagree with, but we have committed to the choice. I really do invite and encourage you to help us refine THAT choice, but arguing that the choice is wrong and we should be pointed an entirely different direction isn't going anywhere. I hope you'll continue with us, warts and all.
I agree with the assessment, that threading works for discussing news articles, but is bad for developing a discussion the way we used and loved to do on the old forum.
This thread for example is in Classic Style, and it feels almost like the previous forum, minus some features. Since the direction is keeping the new site and making the best out of it, my suggestion is as follows:
The blog is obviously like a news site, with a lot of little ideas that can be discussed threaded.
In the support forum I noticed that with threading it is much easier to follow the issue of a single person, if multiple users seek support in the same thread.
I think that way we can get the best out of the new site, and also nothing was wasted.
EDIT
A third option just popped into my head. Let the thread starter choose whether the thread should be Flat or Threaded, and make Flat the default selection. That way people can create threaded discussions if they feel that their topic requires that.
@Kevin Tell us what's on the table. Even with all this backlash, you won't reconsider the choice that you made but are you at least willing to reach a compromise? Is something like what thestalkinghead brought up feasible? A sort of hybrid between threaded and linear discussion types? Are you similarly committed to using Markdown? Are you willing to implement a better voting system in which anonymous marks of agreement/disagreement are tied to the post rather than the poster? If we can get a sense of what can and cannot change with this "community", then we can decide for ourselves whether these are in fact benign warts or whether they are symptoms of a terminal affliction.
We have discussed hybrid flat/threaded quite a bit internally. We are going to give threaded a chance at least through the launch of Wolf.
The voting system is one of the things that I think is most valuable. It provides an outlet for people to express themselves with a much lower barrier to entry than writing a full on post. It has been argued that this will encourage people to childishly down vote a user in a punitive fashion. I have more faith in our community than that. I am passionate about enabling participation in as many ways a possible. Posting, voting, polling (which is currently absent), and anything else that makes it easier for someone to participate is great in my book. I don't fear lighter, more casual participation and in fact want to encourage it! This doesn't preclude or diminish lengthy intelligent discussions at all. 100 page threads just don't work for everybody in every context.
As far as tying votes to a user, I also think it's valuable to know what how the community is reacting to you. Perhaps we could make it a user preference to hide your vote counts from other users if someone was worried about it. The only reason I could imagine needing to hide it is because the user had a lot of thumbs down, which might be an accurate reflection of how the community feels about the user. We need mechanisms to allow the community to express themselves if a user is trolling, being intentionally abusive, derailing conversations, etc. I'm a fan of comments that (when downvoted below a certain threshold) are collapsed and hidden by default, allowing the community to self-filter content that doesn't work for them.
I'm not advocating mob rule, but the Telltale audience isn't an unruly, vindictive mob. Just look at this thread. There is heated, passionate debate and it has barely ever crossed the line into poor taste, and on the very rare occasion when it has, the community has pushed everything back on the rails. I'm not concerned that these new features are going to change that at all.
Huh, maybe it's just me, then. I see the poll in that link, but the comments always appear as "0" on every article. I haven't seen comments on Joystiq in months.
Also, I have to say, it makes me really happy to finally see you in here, addressing concerns about the site. This sort of back and forth with the community is something I've wanted to see since we spoke about the new site at PAX last year.
Glad you guys truly are listening, thanks for posting Kevin, I get that you want to launch TWaU and see the new site being used properly.
I hope you will change your mind about the threaded comments, we'll see how the discussions go when the game releases, though.
If threaded was gone, notifications actually took me to the correct post, polls returned, etc, you would get many more of your fans posting on here.
I'm serious, if polls aren't back in time for game releases I will have lost a lot of faith in telltale, polling is important and fun. You took out the best parts of the old forum.
OK, just so we're clear - this post is not made as a mod. Hell, for the purposes of this post, just forget I even AM a mod. I say the following as a long-time user of this forum, and as that alone. OK? Good.
I'm glad you have faith in people, Kevin. As a realist and someone who's motto in life is "People are stupid, but some hide it better than others", I do NOT have faith in people. Because people are stupid. You give them even the slightest chance to show this, and they will always rise to the occasion. Every single time.
The thumbs up/thumbs down feature hasn't been abused YET. But it will. Once TWAU launches, we're going to get an infux of people, most of whom will adhere to Gabe's Internet F**kwad Theory. I don't doubt that most of the people posting will act like kids (or will ACTUALLY be kids, age limit be damned) and they will downvote the hell out of anything they even remotely dislike.
The fact that you've made the decision to stick with the Reddit-lite style, despite the overwhelming negativity you got every time you showed it to people is incredibly discouraging. I get that you've invested time and money in it and you want to give it a fair chance - believe me, I do. Probably more so than some of the other disgruntled foru- sorry, community members. But the fact that you seem so determined to stay with it, so convinced that it will work despite everything leaning to the contrary... it just gives the impression that you're out of touch with what people want from this place.
I don't want to go back to the old "oh, it's not the same Telltale any more, they spit in the face of old-school adventure fans" argument, but you really do just see to be making it yourselves with actions like this. We have given you solid feedback, time and again, and it really does seem like you've done nothing with it. It makes us feel like you don't care about us. I HATE feeling like that. I used to love you guys. I want to love you again.
Communicating with us like you are now is a great step forward. It's awesome that you're taking time out of what must be a rather busy period to chat with us in this way. I just wish you had more positive things to say. Even if it's just a glimmer of hope. A "we're open to reviewing things down the line if they don't work out the way we'd hoped" really would mean the WORLD to us. And I get that what I'M saying probably isn't gonna change your mind and make everything better. I don't expect it to (which in itself is kinda depressing - I'm talking to the VP of a company and I know that nothing I say will really matter).
But please - just try and think about this from our point of view for a second and see if you can understand why we're so upset. This used to be home for a lot of us. Now most of us have moved out and this is just a place that exists, devoid of everything that made it so welcoming. It's not a home any more - it's a hotel, and I suspect most people brought here from TWAU will treat it as such. Once they leave - and they WILL leave - we're gonna have to clean crap off the walls, replace broken furniture, recarpet the floor, torture analogies...
Maybe time will tell. I certainly hope it will.
i agree with dildor that polls are a good thing, because they can be the lighter, more casual participation @kevin is talking about, sure sometimes the questions can be bias or weighted to one answer, but for example on the walking dead forum there was a poll for "did you cry at the end?" and that is great for a poll, because not everybody would want to talk about that but they may be willing just to simply vote yes/no, and also if there are a lot of votes it may encourage discussion
Edit: on what @Darth Marsden is saying, i believe there will definitely be some downvotes out of spite or childishness, but when i see that happening to a very reasonable post i usually give it an up vote to cancel out the trolls, maybe it will take a while but perhaps it would be good to get into the habit of upvoting things we agree with or think are interesting discussion points
I know this is completely off topic. While Kevin is nice enough to respond to some comments. Can we get any word from Tell Tale about the release of the upcoming game. The Wolf Among us. It was projected it would come out late this month or early next month. I am counting on it, to come out the first week of October.
However as the day grows more closer. Still no announcements have been made. I been a tad nervous that it will be pushed to the second week of Oct. I know some people might see the big difference in playing it first week, or second. I, like others have been eagerly awaiting and patiently I might add its release.
To be honest, you guys have been a LOT more patient than I thought you would, so thanks for that.
@Kevin Thank you for your response. I'm glad that there is at least talk of a hybrid. Hopefully, you will be persuaded to move further in that direction.
I will agree with you that a voting system is a useful tool but I don't think it’s been implemented very well here at all. There are two separate, conflicting uses for a thumbs up/thumbs down system. One is as a means for a user to express agreement or disagreement with a post without having to go through the laborious ordeal of actually formulating thoughts into words. Sure. Fine. But you also mention another function: to "allow the community to express themselves if a user is trolling, being intentionally abusive, derailing conversations, etc." So as it currently stand, a thumbs down can mean either "I disagree with this post but have no cogent remarks to offer of my own" or "this post is disruptive to the community and should be hidden from sight." And by tying those thumbs down to a user, having a large number of thumbs down can either mean "this user offers up many opinions that others disagree" or "this user is a troll who is not welcomed in this community." You see the problem here? That doesn't work. It discourages differing opinions. And that spells death for any meaningful discussion on this forum.
Look, it's fine that you want to encourage "lighter, more casual participation" but I think you are going about it in the wrong way. That is, by making it harder for deeper participation to take place. Many of the ways that people go about joining this forum is by first reading through the numerous interesting discussion threads on here and then eventually joining in when they feel comfortable enough. Cater to that. Create an improved guest system, perhaps one allowing guest users to vote up a comment or vote in a poll but not vote down or post any comments of their own.
Finally, any word on Markdown? I’d really prefer to switch back to BBCode.
I think what's this community needs, in addition to the thumbs up and thumbs down, is a middle finger up. That would address the problem DomeWing is describing quite well I should think.
what does that flag button do? is it a report abuse/trolling/spam button? because that is what is needed for trolls, not a thumbs down
@Dartth "I'm talking to the VP of a company and I know that nothing I say will really matter". Though I'm aware you'd like to demote me, I'm the co-founder, president and CTO of the company. We started this whole thing in my apartment 8 years ago. Despite that, what you say does matter! It's a pity that your instinct is to assume that participants in the discussion are defaulted to stupid. I will say I'm not too comfortable with a mod on our forum who's first instinct is to assume that about the people posting here. You've been around here for a very long time and always had great things to contribute. Please take a step back and try not to be elitist and remain objective.
@fusedmass: Stay tuned! We're working with our partners now to secure the release date. It's not far off at all!
@DomwWing: Markdown is more of a technical thing than anything else. I think the current markdown is built into Vanilla so it works out of the box. Jesse would be able to speak more to that than I.
So many "@'s... if only this wasn't classic" style comments I could respond to each individually. Ammirite?
@thestalkinghead The 'flag' button is a lot like the 'report post' button of old, and does exactly that.
@Kevin OK, let's go through this.
My bad, I got your position mixed up with something else. As for demoting you... I don't think ANYONE wants to demote you. Lots of other things, maybe, but not demote you.
I wouldn't assume anything unless experience has taught me to do so. This is the internet we're dealing with, after all. If people prove to be intelligent, then I'm happy to treat them as such, as I'm sure most people will attest to Unfortunately, The Walking Dead launch has taught me that the new guys tend to be... well, very 'noobish', shall we say.
I do. Well, I try to. Same difference.
Right. That's the two lines of my post that you decided to pick on for no real reason. Any thoughts on the other five paragraphs?