Discussion What's a Player?

It has come to my attention from multiple faucets that the developer team on Shotbow has begun to completely ignore the community. You can see why this would be distressing to players, as their opinions are not being heard.
One thing I remember from years ago was that all the admins and devs ALWAYS defended each other, even if they knew it was a foolish action. I assume this is somewhere in their contract, which is why I won't blame them for that.

But the worst part of all this? The developers are openly saying everything.

Have they forgotten that the games are created so that players can play them? Do they believe they know what's best for the game despite 100% of disapproval from the players themselves?
Yes. They have, and they do.

Want to know where that quote came from? A dedicated player who offered suggestions on changes for almost every class, was immediately shot down in the very first comment by a developer.

When we've reached the point where the developers are only making the game for themselves, why do we even have the forums? What's the point of players? Their opinions?
Nothing.

If the developers care so little about the players' opinions, why not let us change our opinions by presenting us with valid data that backs your ideas? That way we can make more informed decisions, and can be on the same page as you. But instead, we received the typical answer you can expect from any Shotbow staff member.

*sigh*

Here's more.

If this doesn't show a blatant disregard for the players, then I don't know what will. Murgatron is literally giving the players an ultimatum. Accept all of our tyrannical policies that you have no say in, or leave.

One day Shotbow will wake up. I just hope its before their last day online.

The poll is a bit vague and I object to it, but yes, Shotbow staff as a whole are ignoring even the opinions of former staff. Do I think that's a bad thing? Well, yes and no. Constantly checking back with the community, and the common fallacious arguments thereof, can be taxing if you have any insecurity in the topics in which you are involved with.

I'm not sure of all the details behind why a former staff member is now hosting effectively a clone of annihilation, but this was obviously sparked by infighting in the leadership staff. I asked him why, and he gave this answer:

This boils down to saying nothing given his desire to recode annihilation for his own server. Ether he was just dodging the question or he believes in something that is directly contrary to his actions.

He said he wanted to quit the minecraft scene and start a real* gaming company. So all in all, everyone seems to be really bad at making worthwhile arguments, presumably because the Shotbow Staff don't pay attention to the logical traps that people lay and use so often. Possibly even more broad, people in their low to mid 20's might not make very good arguments. I think this has driven the staff to a completely cut off approach to game design. The only way I can figure this could work is if you are constantly data mining for stats to use in determining what steps to make to balance Annihilation.

In the words of Robert J. Hanlon of the eponymous law, Hanlons Razor:

I believe it should have an addition;

inb4 lock

but yea

You CAN'T know if staff are doing well or not if you aren't on staff team. I thought they were ignoring the community, but thats not true. Since I become a staff member, I noticed that staff team REALLY hear what the community says.

Granted I'm not staff, but again, The Defend Debacle is a highlight of the problem. Do they really hear the community? I'd venture a guess Its 100 to 1 against it, furthermore theres a rumor that KounterattacK was banned for this presumably because of his views. The lack of transparency in Shotbow is tremendously infuriating. I don't see much room for interpretation as it stands.

Shotbow does nothing to let people know whats going on so gossip is king and truth is hidden.
I'd rather people know the truth and decide to gossip than to never know the truth at all.

You can trust me or not, thats your decision.

The only thing you explained was your loss of prejudice when you joined the staff. The proof is scarce, so I err on the side of caution.

Actually, I CAN know if staff are doing well because if I'm playing an Annihilation game and there are 3 guys running around hacking like there are no admins, it's because there actually are no admins. While I may not be able to assess each individual staff member's performance, I can certainly judge your performance as a team.

And it may be true that the staff REALLY listens, but they also REALLY ignore.


I could find countless examples of things just like this, where the staff clearly disregarded any opinion of players. Why? Because they wanted to.

The fact that I've played against hackers more than once today in Anni shows the lack of admins or lack of work done by admins. Either way, its all about poor performance. And the Shotbow staff team is well versed in excuses. I eagerly await more excuses, or even more likely, a lock by an admin who didn't like hearing bad things about his team. To the admin who inevitably locks this thread: Start a PM with me when you do.

You've changed gears, I'm not making a case against changes. Just against conduct. Nobody gave 1.9 a chance, the combat will be updated again.
And I'm not sure how schedule works into the effectiveness of the admins, it doesnt seem relevant. I haven't seen hackers stay online for more than 12 minutes. Even if they did, it's on call volunteer work.

First, I want to start by saying that raising our pitchforks won't solve problems. I feel it is better to reach out respectfully to the staff if we want things done. Making a thread basically saying "The staff doesn't listen" isn't going to make them listen any more than they do now.

I will agree with your first point, Murgatron should not have openly stated that the staff don't have to listen to the community. The defend censoring was a bad change for team communication and was protecting the smallest margin of players from easy to ignore ridicule. Consulting the community on things such as this should be a requirement given that we've had changes to the game before recently that have gone over badly that the community wasn't aware of. (Examples: Dasher was changed after open beta testing for the class update and is now a top 7 class, Thor was top-tier during class update because they added permanent Resistance that wasn't in open beta testing, Archer buff in nexus update is continuing to break the class to this day.)

Galap, although I disagree with a TON of his views on Annihilation balance, was not shooting down a dedicated player with great ideas, but a dedicated player with questionable ideas. Maashg back in early 2017 and before was notoriously known to spam the forums and give ideas that would surely destroy the fabric of balance in this game. Thankfully he has rebounded surprisingly well by giving out some pretty unique ideas recently, but in that particular post a lot of changes were wacky, while others were acceptable. Examples include adding fishing rod pvp to iceman, which was removed from Scout earlier for being frustrating to play against, readding old Succubus which was LITERALLY the best class in the game during its time in the spotlight, and readding the old Scorpio hook that causes falling damage. Galap probably was a little too harsh given that not all suggestions were this bad, but he didn't do it for no good reason like you were implying.

Galap probably shouldn't be giving us as much data either. The problem is if we have the data like the graph he showed us publicly, then what we get is a bunch of uninformed players drawing the wrong conclusions then posting terrible suggestions that might be implemented because it used the data. What we need is for the data to be provided to a controlled group of players that are known to be experienced so they can help the staff read these graphs correctly using their knowledge of the game, rather than open it up to anyone with a keyboard. The graph he showed us was HIGHLY misleading as far as balance goes. The goal of the update was to balance the game, not to make classes more popular. The graph of the data shows what classes are more popular, not what classes are more balanced. The graph ignores the problems in-game such as the bow-meta at mid and the incredibly meticulous planning required to work around an Immobilizer defense because of the one class. If the staff gave out graphs like this every month to any player to see, it could influence the suggestions of players in the worst way possible, and community suggestions and feedback become useless. The point of suggesting features from the game is to give the player's perspective from only gameplay experience. But if we introduce graphs, then we get suggestions that are only based off of the graphs and not what a player would want from experience.

Finally, I want to say that this thread is directed at the wrong people. It seems to me by how you are addressing the community with a poll and using "they" when referring to the staff that you are just trying to stir up some anger. I'm here to tell you that it won't work out in the end. Again, try to reach out to the staff respectfully and see where things go. If you make yourself known to be a fair and respectful person, then they will listen. This past January, I released the third Annihilation tier-list to cover the Nexus Update, and was able to get Murgatron on our podcast as a guest despite his schedule. There was a few things I learned that day:

1) The staff aren't as much in a bubble as we think they are. They disagree on certain aspects of game design and balance and it makes sense because each staff member is different. This means also that community ideas are indeed harder to implement because they weren't the ones thinking of the idea in the first place. It takes more people to convince if one isn't already the person pitching the idea. This doesn't mean it is impossible, but it means that we need to think harder and plan ahead with our suggestions. We can't have under-developed suggestions like the ones plaguing the forums today, we need to think outside the box.

2) The staff care more than we think about ensuring that people are happy. Murgatron put away two and a half hours of his time to listen to me talk about Annihilation and its classes while trying his best to give his own unique developer's perspective. There wasn't any arguing and he considered each idea I presented. Why? Because they want this game to be as great as we want it to be. Otherwise he could've easily waited for the video to come out and just read the thread.

3) More than we think goes on from behind the scenes. Prime example is the Lumberjack change from the nexus update that I still to this day think was a bad idea. It wasn't simply made because the staff thought that it was too powerful or over-valued the armor shred, but because they actually observed a team abusing it in-game to disgusting levels of success and decided to change it. Even though the change was wrong for the situation, it still shows me that they aren't simply just doing internal testing and looking for inaccuracies or mistakes, but that they are, for lack of a better term, watching us. And now with the tournament coming and passing, they have a good idea of what classes need changing by how often they see them used. It's up to them to come to the right conclusions and for us to head them to those conclusions based on our feedback.

Hope this helped enlighten you a little bit on what it going on that some people don't know. I'm not 100% for either side, because this issue isn't as simple as you think it is. Do with this information what you will and make sure to keep your emotions to a minimum.

- Of course you can give opinions.

- Staff team usually bases their actions on your opinions. Nobody is perfect, maybe sometimes theres no staffs patrolling a game because they are visiting a friend, watching a movie at the cinema, having time with his/her girl/boyfriend... Staffs are humans. If you see a hacker that isnt going banned just record it or take photos and make a player report. Thats the best way to make a hacker get banned. Spam "hacker" or submit 300 reports to the same guy doesnt help much...

Damn Guiga, how much time do you spend on your posts LOL. Im always impressed about that

It would seem there is no point in voicing our opinions when they are ignored. And I am not asking the staff to be perfect and to always be online, but as always, you immediately tried to excuse the staff's poor performance. If there's a problem, fix it, don't just say why it's a problem and that nothing can be done about it.

While I do not know or care about Maashg's history of suggestions, I do not see why that has any relevance in the current situation. As you said yourself, some of the ideas were actually good. But Galap grouped them all as terrible anyway.
As for being given data, you think Shotbow should withhold all data from the players because they *might* misinterpret the data? Seems like a foolish way to deal with it. Data is the key to making good decisions. If Shotbow keeps its players in the dark (like it has since the day of its creation) then of course the devs won't like players' suggestions, because they are uninformed.

And no, the thread is not directed at the wrong people. I created this to be an open ended thread where I was hoping to get other players' opinions as well as Staff answers. And you have a problem with me calling the staff "they"? How else can I address them? Do you want me to refer to them as the developers of Shotbow every time I want to bring mention to them? Don't be silly.

Giving a single example of a single staff member giving you a couple hours on a single day is not good enough for me to believe that the staff care about the players or their opinions.

As for "behind the scenes", that's the entirety of Shotbow, so I don't think you can use that as a positive towards them. They may do good things behind the scenes, but I'm sure bad things happen too.

Lastly, for reaching out to the staff respectfully: I can assure you this has never been a successful method for the large majority of players who have tried. The problem isn't as complicated as you think, it's really quite simple. The staff believe they are on a higher plane than the players. Their opinions trump everyone elses. The staff have shown time and time again that the player's opinions are irrelevant in their decision making process.
So am I making this post to stir up trouble? No, that would get us nowhere. I'm making it to get a general consensus on the public's opinion, something Shotbow wouldn't know much about.

Hearing what we have to say and taking some sort of action are two different things. The truth is they aren't doing everything in there power to make this a better server from both a pr and server standpoint.

Berg, I commend you for making this post however much of this has been fought over before. The staff(Murg) will most likely turn a blind eye to this post until it dies or sparks up some conversations that they claim to be some sort of "flame war" to give some dumb remark or answer that doesnt help anyone or anything. I spent most of last year sending hate along with my options on the way this server is run. Mainly because Anni and Minez have been my hobby off and on the past 5 years. The truth is the golden age is dead and ill admit it will never come back. Highlife made his money and ran with it, he grew up so did most everyone else I guess.

Berg is right though, shotbow's(Anni) PR is a mess and their brash decisions keep losing players.

Man, and I just got unbanned. Imma have to hold my tongue here. Sorry guys ;P

The point is for the staff to get the player's suggestion from their gameplay experience without skewing it by providing them with graphs or other influential data. My suggestion was to provide these graphs to only more experienced and trusted players because they will know how to handle the data and not confuse it. For example, Sniper is a strong class with its zoning capabilities in mid. However, the graph shown by Galap has Sniper as a very unpopular class which can be interpreted by the playerbase as the class being bad. Many people don't own all the classes, so people like Maashg who want to cover all classes in their threads will want to include Sniper as a class to buff if they notice that it doesn't get play while they have no data of their own through their own experiences. We don't need more uninformed suggestions on the forums because of players using data that they don't have the experience to interpret correctly, especially since we've seen Maashg and others in the past spamming the forums and downgrading threads with actual value by jumping in front of them.

If the thread is open ended to everyone, then why did you word the thread like you wanted to start a witch hunt for Galap and Murgatron? Many of your sentences were filled with shock-value levels of wording such as: "A dedicated player who offered suggestions on changes for almost every class, was immediately shot down in the very first comment by a developer." No staff member is going to respond to a thread that is baiting animosity from its readers. Therefore, there won't be a line of communication from this thread. Don't be silly.

It was a recording and it is out there unedited for you to watch in its entirety. He gave a more inside look on how he views the state of each class, some BtS on why some changes were made, etc. So no, he didn't just give me a couple of hours, he gave the community a couple of hours and encouraged on camera for players to make more suggestions and spark more discussion. The thread itself was a discussion thread. Take a look for yourself: https://shotbow.net/forum/threads/annihilation-class-update-tierlist.383209/

Also, I wasn't saying that behind the scenes content was good, I pointed out that they are doing more than we think. Big difference in thinking.

Explain to me how Wizard got its change in the nexus update that happened to be using the same idea I made in this thread: https://shotbow.net/forum/threads/class-balance-megathread-2-0.375478/
Jeez, I don't know, maybe because it was suggested by a community member. And look at that ! The third comment is a STAFF member that said that he would borrow an idea. And what did the staff do? They borrowed the idea! WOW! It's almost like my suggestion was relevant in their decision making process.

Also how do you know that a large majority of players get ignored? Did it hit you that a majority of players are disrespectful on the forums and belittle their opponents by calling their arguments trash or perhaps "silly" without even listening to it? We need to get out of our collective bubbles and think for a second why Shotbow does what it does? I can assure you that by keeping this new data private, they have no ill intentions. It is their decision whether or not to release specific data about their game after weighing the consequences of both choices.

lol guiga's like the forum's final boss

Most of your post isn't even worth responding to. Good work on finding a single example though, which is all you seem able to do. Now I'm not going to patronize you like a 5 year old because I'm trying to make progress with this post and talking to you will not gain any progress. Thanks for your input.

I think this thread needs to be locked. The initial post is very hate fueled and conflict provoking. I agree with you to an extent, but behaving this way isnt ok in any setting both in real life or online. You are right. The admins don't listen. The reason why is because they are subject to abusive conduct. If you act belligerent how can any admin take you seriously. Even players are this way. Hate fuels more hate.