This is for @HellLois, @ijw, and @psychoticstorm, as well as any other relevant CB staff that might read this. I want to ask for something. I know it’s not just me, since I’ve recently had the fortune of talking about this on a podcast, as well as with other people, so this sentiment is shared with at least some portion of the community: Could you please either designate or hire someone as an official spokesperson for Infinity N4 who people can ask questions, and who acts as a regularly communicating voice of the company? This person’s qualifications would have to be: Knows the game very well (plays it themselves on a regular basis; bonus points if they are familiar with different metas from around the world) Knows the company’s thoughts on the game very well Is a native Spanish and English speaker or speaks both languages at least on a B2-C1 level Has a background in customer communication The person’s roles would be: Communicating ideas, changes, and announcements of the company on a regular basis, either in text or video format, over an official channel (forums, email newsletter, youtube, social media) Collecting comments, questions, praise, and criticism from the community, forwarding them to the relevant people at CB and presenting the answers back to the community. That’s basically it. The problems this would solve would be multiple: The company would be able to communicate relevant things to the community via a fixed channel that everyone is aware of and can use. The community would be able to receive clarity on questions they have in a time-sensitive manner, even if the answer is a simple “we can’t comment on this right now”. Corvus Belli would be able to collect feedback, criticism, and suggestions via a single source. You could then evaluate that feedback and enact relevant changes. The reason I’m proposing this is because of the by now multiple instances of the infinity fan base being confused, bewildered, and left in the dark about many of the decisions CB makes, which is potentially driving away customers and revenue from the company. A few examples: The Roadbot being advertised as a vanilla O-12 unit, put on sale so people would preorder it, only to be left out of vanilla O-12 upon the next update of the app, without an explanation from the company (this was fixed retroactively, and thank you for that – but it could have been avoided if there had been an open communication channel beforehand). A podcast announcing a new (fake) sectorial, with no official comment from the company outside of a forum post in the restricted warcor forums. Changes to units in the army app without any explanations as to why those changes were deemed necessary, or why other units that have been repeatedly pointed out as problematic from diverse and multiple corners of the community are not being addressed. Things like this lead to a lot of frustration for many people, which could be completely avoided by simply opening a channel where constructive discussions with the company can be had. If Social Media is deemed to dangerous because of potential trolls and spam, use email. If the forums aren't seen as a good place because of its negative reputation, use email. (Basically, use email. It's the best option you have.) If you don’t have the funds to pay someone for it, advertise it as a voluntary job among your fan base. There are certainly people who would be happy to do the job. TL;DR: Please, CB, start communicating with your fan base on a regular basis, i.e. outside of sporadic video updates and even more sporadic forum posts. Give us someone to talk to so we can feel heard and understood. Even if you end up deciding against the suggestions you receive, your fans would appreciate it tremendously to at least know why. All the best, burlesford P.S: I added a poll to get some more user feedback.
You are a true gentlemen who can speak rationally with constructive idea. Hope CB can take this opinion seriously.
For the love of Santa Muerte, yes please. It's going to add up better images of the company significantly, while costing fairly small. And these kind of incidents degrade the images of the company, gradually shaking off the concrete supporters. I've been trying my best to stay loyal and calm for this game, but it's getting worse.
I've been saying CB needs a real community manager for a long while. Look at what Rebecca did to warframe. That game had the most clear communication from the players to the devs and it's popularity skyrocketed cause of it.
For the love of god yes. CB makes absolutely baffling changes out of nowhere much of the time, leaves other stuff to rot that actually needs help, and doesn't update the game regularly to balance things. Combined with no communication at all outside of "Look at the new thing we want to sell" it's just frustrating and makes it hard to take the company seriously.
I agree with this proposal, and I wouldn’t mind to either be such spokesperson or help the designated one in case CB prefer to have a in-house member for the role. In regards to qualifications for the role to be, or as an helper of such spokesperson, I was the Hearthstone CM and IM for Blizzard Entertainment. Native Spanish speaker, bilingual in English and with notions of French. Absolutely in love with Infinity since I got in contact with it around the release of N4. And wouldn’t mind to help the Infinity community as this role for free, or help the person or persons that do this for free either.
Yes that would be amazing. Just as an example, The Warcor program : our area and city has no Warcor even though our community is growing, so I applied like more than a year ago, contacted CB via mail several times but it seems like the Warcor program was stopped some time ago, however no information to be found. There also seems to be a growing disconnect between Corvus Belli and the community, and where the game should be heading. Also some communication about certain design choices would be really appreciated. Overall a community manager would be a great idea.
They still need to communicate via their official site, FB, Discord, or something. The forums are rough, but the Discord and FB Groups don't see any more real communication from CB.
Hey @HellLois, thank you so much! It's great to hear you are taking this into consideration. Also, please don't close the forums. Since having blocked all major detractors, I for one like it here :)
exactly why? want to announce a new product? Social media Want to faq something? Post a communicate in social media and then upload to the download section in the web. Forums where fine 6 years ago, now they just scare away potential new players with their aggresive, self proclaimed god gamers and shit posters
Because they only communicate for new releases. That's it. At least GW has a quarterly balance review, updates, etc. CB badly needs community management and they badly need to review factions that haven't been touched in years. Win rate differentials are huge between the top and bottom. If they were more forthright with their reasoning I firmly believe they would see more positive responses. For instance, QK. They had 2 Haris at launch. CB took the second one away with a statement they would review it later. We're nearly 2.5 years in now and nothing. Even just a comment saying "hey, we decided it wasn't good for the game/faction for X reasons" would have gone a long way. This is the problem with how they communicate. They don't. This is an issue GW had, and they have been working to rectify. I still don't like their FOMO marketing, but CB has been really pushing that same thing, so it's a wash.
I would also like CB to have more community management. My major concern is the level of vitriol that would be aimed at them. The dialogue needs to be respectful. One can state their dissatisfaction or frustration without being rude or abusive. No one deserves to have that type of work environment.
To do business you have to be visible, Corvus Belli is a business, it is also necessary that the word of mouth of the infinity product works and that it is publicly perceptible (google), a community of wargame like any other hobby can not work in isolation, in the secrecy of its insiders, it is the antithesis of a social hobby like wargame. For example, Ash Baker's games are nice, but his gaming communities are about isolated and untraceable stuff, so there is no community buzz to join these games, and his games are only a few known because he is an influencer himself. Wargaming communities in general are transforming into private clubs, but real private clubs usually only exist thanks to rich members, which is not the case here. If this forum dies, I wish you good luck in allowing a newbie to find a discord server link, because it is harder to find these servers, than to find a resistance group during WW2 under occupation. So the population of players/collectors will be limited to insiders, a number that will decrease with time because of lack of renewal. And in the end to find cyberpunk miniatures, you will have to turn to 3D printing of .stl from Unit9. Due to the size of its catalog, Infinity won't survive long if the whole community goes to discord or to the private facebook group. Neither of these 2 platforms are open to the public, you will never find anything from these platforms through a google search, the real newbies who arrive there are rare, in the French discord community you can already start to read stories about the ageing of the community and the lack of real newbies arriving. Moreover, the community is getting smaller and smaller every year, to a base of competitive players, but wargaming with miniatures is not a hobby that only focuses on rules (that's wargaming with counters), there is also a whole part about art, I'm a casual player and an artist, I need something different than debates about rules to buy, and the organization of the discord and facebook groups do not allow an optimal display of the whole art/history part in the hobby, because they are just uninterrupted threads of conversation where all the conversations cross each other. Want to know what the future of Infinity would be if everyone was on discord? Look at Aristeia.
i'd also like to throw my two cents in and say that the forums are worth keeping. it's a space within the CB universe where the message can be moderating by them, and where joke sectorial announcements rumors won't spread (but also, c'mon, did you all really think that would be leaked via podcast?). if it feels like it's a bad experience we should just try and make it a better one. discord and FB are no less susceptible to bad actors. the solution is to not engage with them and/or for admins to remove them when the cross the line of community conduct. but the more we all post the content we want to see the better this place becomes.
