Thanks, Thanny, keep up the good work!
Just one advice from a happy player: I’d recommend checking factually false statements in the forums and on Reddit, to point out that they don’t reflect reality. These things spread from player to player up to the point that they become true for most of us…
It’s not my job to manage the community, but this looks sensible for good marketing.
Trust me buddy - I would love to do that but you guys outnumber me by the thousands 
Which means the only way I can really address these issues is through things like Patch Notes (but let’s be honest, a one sentence message on mobile isn’t what people have stated they want to read, they want a full update), or things like Dev Talks (working on getting one up ASAP!)
Until then, best I can do is try to answer these 1 by 1 as they come up, or hope someone else rallies the info to the other players. Can’t be everywhere at once!
Pretty sure there wouldn’t be thousands of them if they got some info from you every now and then. I mean just put yourself in everyones feet. They wait for mobile, they’ve been waiting for it for more than a year now, but instead of getting any further information on it you actually withdraw what little information they had by removing mobile from your road map and replacing it with “other plattforms” which could mean literally anything.
What would you think if you were a player? What impression does that leave? Nobody really expects to get fixed dates and nobody is going to kill you because your a bit late on it, even though it’s unfortunate. But at least some information every now and then isn’t too much to ask is it?
Just a topic with a short statement like the one above. Not only on mobile release but also about things like “hey we fixed that division drop bug, you can start playing again”. Even if your late on it because you were busy, better get the information out late than keeping it for yourself. One Topic here, one on Reddit and pretty much everyone would have known about it. If you see tons of topics with wrong information, make one sticky where you correct them.
Seriously, you guys made a pretty good game here but your communication policy is the worst I’ve ever seen. Just talk with your players every once in an while, or tell Bandai to do it for you, that’s supposed to be their job isn’t it?
Sorry for the rant but this complete absence of communication really frustrates me to no end.
As @tsevech said, “it’s not my job to manage the community”, but there’s not as many issues as there are players. Answering them would require much less effort, the rest would be done by the community itself.
And let’s be honest, one sentence message - like the one you posted - is much better than nothing at all.
Well, I have a full time job and I still find enough time during evening and lunch breaks to crawl the forums and Reddit to see what’s going on. The volume of posts does not seem overwhelming…
I guess Thanny has other things to do besides community management. When he’s here, he’s an excellent guy as Ryvirath was before him, but a lot of messages still go undetected. Something should be done in this respect, because negativity spreads quickly
hey! that was an amazing phrase.
I actually do a ton of stuff that you guys simply don’t get to see in the short (or long) term (and it’s ALL “community management”)
Besides being the “go to” guy for information or questions, I try to monitor all our social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, these Forums, Discord, even Twitch!.. soo many sites) to gather feedback and the sentiment of the community. I may not always be talking, but I’m typically reading/listening (and there is some value in “natural” conversations when players don’t expect a dev sitting behind them!)
So why do all this monitoring?
I do several things with this information: for starters, tons and tons of reports on what’s going on - I try to document everything that occurs so I can provide a “reader’s digest” to our teams (we can’t expect everyone to be fully aware of the events and interests of our vast community). From what I gather from you guys come the next part…
Other things I work on are project proposals and events - keep in mind that I’m neither an engineer for Duelyst nor the project lead, so while I’m making ideas for/from you guys, it all has to go through approval processes (and what we can feasibly do - development takes time!)
To get these things approved, they need to go from thoughts to writing to meetings to approval (and creation, if necessary with new tech) and then finally - scheduled. (So anytime someone says “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” I investigate, and that may take weeks to months to make it a reality, if at all!) As things get approved (or completed) you’ll start to see more and more things from the community perspective take shape.
(For example, art contest soon™ with some new changes!)
I do apologize for the seeming lack of communication on some of the more popular topics. Something we’re trying to avoid in the future is speaking on things without knowing all the details: it doesn’t do anyone any good (either you guys as the players or us as the devs) if we comment on something and it’s either lacking details or possibly incorrect. With that said, I’ll be trying to make an effort to be more publicly visible, if as mentioned above that these small updates are sufficient.
So if you do ALL that you say you do, then what about @stormshade? Or does it work on the basis that you’re the one and only community lead for Duelyst? Seems rough if so
Ah yes, what about my fellow CM. He works magic!
(Lucky for us he already has an intro thread, with an explanation here, but I’ll see if I can bug him to talk a bit more 
)
We actually work together on a ton of initiatives (it’s really nice to have someone to bounce off ideas with). However, as you may have noticed he’s not around here often, our break in connection is that while I’m a full-time Duelyst Community Manager, he actually leads CM (and currently CS) teams. As my senior (the guy has been doing this 2009!) and our lead, he’s one of the many dudes I coordinate when we create proposals on behalf of Duelyst.
Think of us as a sort of dynamic duo - while I’m the SME [Subject Matter Expert] on the Duelyst community, he’s the veteran with all the years of CM under his belt. Together we form a super-mutant-CM that creates ideas for Duelyst that have been “tested” for years before they would have existed.
This isn’t meant as a (not so subtle) reproach but… Steam Forums ?
While the steam-based duelyst players might be one of the smaller per client player populations, it seems that the steam forums receive (next to) no offical attention.
While I repost e.g. patch notes from here / the official page or direct people with technical issues to the IG support button / support.duelyst.com, steam players which don’t use a second medium are left hanging without help / attention - which is problematic for player retention.
<<…>>
I think we all appreciate hearing a bit about the processes in place for how the suggestions / feedback from the playerbase gets accumulated and aggregated and made into a “digest” for the rest of the team.
Yeap yeap… known but not forgotten! Steam is something that has to receive more dev support someday. Unfortunately, my plate is really full so I have to make room to start looking at Steam. That’s one of the fronts Stormshade is trying to help out with - but totally something we’re trying to juggle right now.
So really what’s bound to happen is that one of us (probably me) is going to have to make room to fully adopt Steam and give it that TLC touch it’s currently missing, or maybe we expand the team so we have more universal reach (time will tell - we haven’t been tested to see what our “full capacity” is just yet).
Glad you think so! Yea it’s definitely one of those weird things that without explaining it, well, you just wouldn’t know! Like there’s no official “suggestion box” but in reality, any platform we have our eyes on is your chance to talk to us 
Thanks for all the explanation, I guess many players will find this interesting!
Hmmm? What? Oh, right… me. I’m still here! Promise! Did you know I can be summoned? It’s weird, but when you mention @stormshade I receive a summons. I can’t promise I’ll always answer the summons, but if there’s good questions and reasons in your post, I likely will.
I’m working on… things… What things? Oh, just a few little things here and there:
CS Improvements
Did you know we have 9 CS forms for Duelyst right now? I’m not sure who’s responsible for that nonsense (It’s me), but that’s got to be cut down. So, I need to make these forms conditional… and make other improvements to our CS systems and processes to better serve you.
Communications Improvements
We need better ways for CS/Community/Dev to talk to each other. I’m working on a number of projects to tie all of the tools we use internally to track customer facing issues together.
Twitchcon
Did you guys know we’re going to Twitchcon? I wonder what would make us want to go there… I guess we must have something to talk about! (Patience!) What we will reveal at Twitchcon is only v1. It will be improved upon in all the ways you ask given time and the right results. (Yes, you still have to wait.
Speaking of which, are you in the U.S.? Do you want to go to Twitchcon? I hear there’s a way to make that happen!
Making more work for @ThanatosNoa
This is one of my favorite things ever! No, really, he has some great ideas, and it’s my job to make sure that he does what he needs to do so that he can make your dreams come true! So I get to spend a lot of time talking to him about various problems and how to solve them. On top of helping him with his ideas, he also has to help me with mine.
Removing work from @ThanatosNoa’s plate.
Wait, what? Am I contradicting myself? No, not really. In order to be able to better manage some of the seriously daunting stupid large, “OMG What are you doing to me Stormshade!” tasks I like to give him, I have to get some of the smaller, but very important tasks he manages off his plate and somewhere else.
Jumpstarting Community Initiatives
Similar to the above, we are collectively working on ways to make some things that used to be re-appear, while improving on them. However, as was pointed out (often times by you guys), BNEA is a much larger company than CPG, which means we also suffer from something I call MRD (More Red Tape). Initiatives have to go through a larger approval process here, with more research into effects of changes.
Other things
Much as I might wish I could live and breathe Duelyst with @ThanatosNoa all day every day, I have a number of other things on my plate that I’m not ready to talk about yet. Some of them are definitely Duelyst related, some of them are connected with Duelyst, some of them involve staring into a crystal ball and trying to puzzle out the future from the reflections seen within. None of it is, “easy”.
Obviously, neither @ThanatosNoa or myself can tell you everything that’s being worked on. There’s reasons for this! Things are changing ridiculously fast! I could tell you right now that there’s an initiative to bring something to the game, and how soon it will be here, only to find out that that thing was shelved or postponed for really sound reasons.
Or, we can talk about what we know we can. So here is the one thing that I can tell you. Almost every major initiative that CPG has announced for Duelyst is still on the road map. Mobile is still being iterated on, and a new beta phase will come as soon as the team at CPG is ready to reveal that. We’re working on more ways to put Duelyst in front of more players than just mobile though. We’re working on making new initiatives that you’ve been asking for to show up on the road map. We’re working to include more QOL fixes in updates, and we’re preparing for the next big content update as well.
I know that you were all hoping to see some smaller initiatives return with BNEA coming on board. The fact is that even though we’ve taken over quite a bit off the business side of things for CPG, they’re still working on major initiatives which take priority. Why? Because Duelyst is far from being dead. It’s growing. You might not see it right now, but it is growing. Think of this as a strange metamorphosis period, and when it’s ready Duelyst will shed its current shell and become a beautiful amazing thing to behold, and be a part of. It’s just really frustrating to look at from the outside right now, because all the interesting stuff is happening inside.
Trust me, we want to be able to tell you all everything, because we’re stupid excited about it all. Yet, we also realize that it’s better to show you the artful cake when it’s finished than when it’s still looking like a bowl of batter, and you imagine what said cake will look like, only to find out that it’s a boring sheet cake with fondant when you were hoping for a good rich frosting on a sculpted artist’s cake. This isn’t to say the cake is bad at all. But it’s not the cake that you imagined in your head at the start, so you naturally feel a little disappointed.
Pieces of this cake will be finished soon, and we’ll be showing you the pieces as we finish them, and have a better idea of what it will look like when you get to taste it for yourself.
Until then, please pardon us while we as a collective team work to bring you the best Duelyst we can.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to return to tackling all of these tasks. But, if you’re going to be at Twitchcon, make sure to find our booth and come say hello. Both @ThanatosNoa and I will be on hand to spend some time with you there.
Thanks,
Stormshade
@ThanatosNoa Are you the only community manager? You really should tell the big guys to get another one so you’d have less work to do, and more community management done. I sort of feel bad that you’re facing an angry hoard of players alone
I’m going to point you to the post right above yours - I’m the only “full time Duelyst CM” but I do not work alone
ah, sorry about that. I should be reading some more.
You made me excited. Didn’t care about Twitchcon before at all, now I do More than 3 weeks till then though sigh
Well… That’s one way of making sure everyone know it’s still In development!
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