BioWare said this from the beginning, but some players didn’t understand it — They should have made it clearer i guess. Apparently some people were under the impression that the class representatives would have some kind of larger role, yet their sole purpose was to collate the mass number of questions into the 3 that would be given to Bioware for answering… and nothing more!
It doesn’t take a genius to see how this have now turned into a shit storm on the forums….
First DevPost by Courtney Woods
Hey everyone,
I think the expectations for the Class Representative program kind of got lost along the way this week. While I totally understand and expect that there will be a multitude of opinions towards the responses we post, I do want to reiterate what we originally posted when we started this program:
“Our number one goal is to get your questions answered. We have known for some time that players have had Class balance questions, and it has been tricky to get them answered. The purpose of this initiative is to get those questions addressed as directly as possible. I want to make sure we stress the following things:
It is possible, and even likely, that we could disagree with player sentiment towards something in relation to Class balance. Ex: Why does suck at ?! We may respond that we feel they are in a good place in our design goals and we will do our best to explain why.
Attaching feedback to your top 3 in no way guarantees that it will be feedback that is actionable. The purpose is to allow a set dialog between our Combat Team and you here on the forums. Just because something appears in the top 3 provided by a representative does not mean it is feedback that will garner special treatment.
Class Representatives are player elected and will not be granted any special access to the BioWare team. If chosen, you won’t have to sign an NDA or anything similar. You will be a player-elected forum user who assists your Class in formulating the top issues and concerns you would like to have BioWare commentary on.
As with all things on the forums, please remain respectful. Please respect each other, your chosen Class Representatives, and the BioWare developers.”This does not mean we are dismissing anything you say in your questions or the feedback you are giving to our answers. I personally have had James Blunt stuck in my head all day thanks to this thread. However, Please do remember bullet points 1, 2, and 4.
Musco followup on the response to the questions:
Hey folks!
I apologize for the delay in response. In retrospect, I think us posting class top 3 answers on Fridays may be a poor decision. What that unfortunately creates is a situation where we can post answers and then at some point, need to go home. Leaving all of you on the forums to our silence, which is certainly not optimal.
Also, I know for Courtney the end of last week was a hectic one for her role on the team which made it difficult to take an active part in the thread. For myself, I wasn’t in the country, I was in Germany for our Cantina event. Excuses aside, it was poorly timed on our behalf and I want to make sure we avoid that. I would rather us hold the answers for a day or two than kind of “drop the mic” on you after we answer.
This kind of thing is a great learning experience for us on what we can do to improve the class rep system. In both regards to you guys, the forum users, and us on the BioWare side in how we present information. I know this round didn’t exactly make everyone throw a parade but it helps in making sure that we make this system better. At the end of the day I think we can all agree that getting a good dialog going about class issues is a good thing for everyone.
-eric
