Fabrice Cambounet Q&A

[Muszka]

If he wants to know what fans would like to see, he should visit the official HV forum.

And some community sites. It shouldn't be that hard to go to 5 sites and run about 2, 3 polls at each.

I hope the greats Charlie Watkins and Tim Duncan decide to do so to and both of them are still around here so there is hope yet.

Just my two cents: I don't know Charlie Watkins, but Timothy's map always have been among my favorites.

[Ya5MieL]

Tim Duncan is a great NBA player



Anyway, since JJ said that UBI's priority is the release of Chinese version of the game to any patches, all this could take a while.

[King Imp]

The whole "community leaders" thing still irks me. I'm sorry, but when did running a Heroes site become synonymous with being the be all/end all of Heroes knowledge?

I don't want to hear how it's more convienient to just get feedback from a select few. The "leaders" do not speak for the whole and it's been obvious through the whole process that many things were missed because of the way they gather info.

Like another said here, is it really so hard to find a thread devoted to problems and gain your feedback that way? I sure have no problem finding the problems threads, but apparently those in charge do. That, or they just don't want to truly know how much needs to be fixed.

And that makes one wonder whether the "community leaders" are worth such title or how the heck are the people chosen with whom Fabrice communicates. If a map editor question is asked, and no-one among "community leaders" bothers to look at the mapmaking forums of two major international forums, then you deserve a little electric shock to wake up.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Like another said here, is it really so hard to find a thread devoted to problems and gain your feedback that way? I sure have no problem finding the problems threads, but apparently those in charge do. That, or they just don't want to truly know how much needs to be fixed.

They wouldn't even have to look for a thread. They could send an email to site administrator or another staff member saying they want feedback on the map editor (or whatever else they want feedback on.) It gets posted on the news page and everybody who has something to say says it. They could then interact with the community through the thread to ask more questions or to say that they think this or that is a good idea that may be implemented.

If they actually asked for input and interacted with the community they would get all the feedback they wanted as well as engendering good will with the community.

An example of such interaction can be found on the Bioiware official site for NWN2 where developers visit the forums, ask and answer questions, and keep the community informed about such things as progress of patches.

GOW

[Muszka]

Tim Duncan is a great NBA player

For me it will always be a great mapmaker.

[Sir Charles]

quote from King Imp: The whole "community leaders" thing still irks me. I'm sorry, but when did running a Heroes site become synonymous with being the be all/end all of Heroes knowledge?


I think you (and many others) misunderstand the group I'm referring to. It's not just people who run fan-sites. It's also long time fans and players. The goal was to get extremely knowledgable heroes players from around the world with a wide variety of ages, nationalities and playing experience. Fabrice DOES read forums. However he also listens to feedback that we gather from forums and from gaming as well. Somehow I think that some people think he ignores EVERYTHING except for what gets filtered through us. Totally wrong.

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Quote from King Imp: I don't want to hear how it's more convienient to just get feedback from a select few. The "leaders" do not speak for the whole and it's been obvious through the whole process that many things were missed because of the way they gather info.


Again, you're misunderstanding. He works with this small group so he can have more lengthy detailed discussions. If he were to attempt to do that on a fan forum, he'd get bombarded with innane questions that have nothing to do with what he's asking. Jeez, just go back and look at ANY one of his posts on the official forum. One sentence from him and you get 10+ pages of people wanting to grill him for information. Our group doesn't attempt to speak for the "masses". We give OUR opinions. We attempt to gather feedback from our forums. We don't filter out the bad comments or just twist things to suit OUR opinions. If we did that we'd not be helping him in any way. As for things getting "missed"....I again disagree. Just because some flaws/bugs have not been fixed yet doesn't mean we haven't notified him of them. There are LOTS of fixes we've suggested to be implemented but aren't yet. But then again, the patch process isn't finished yet either. Their priorities don't coincide with ours quite often. And a lot of those suggestions will simply get moved on to H6's plans.

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Quote from King Imp: Like another said here, is it really so hard to find a thread devoted to problems and gain your feedback that way? I sure have no problem finding the problems threads, but apparently those in charge do. That, or they just don't want to truly know how much needs to be fixed.


No, it's not hard. And he (and others) have done that. But there are more problems than get listed on those threads. Also those threads don't list the details that de-buggers would need usually. Also, those threads don't usually give suggestions on ways to improve problems with the game. A large portion of those topics aren't as easy to find as a "bug thread". That's where we help. Gathering info from multiple sources and putting them together. Of course, this hasn't been happening on a regular basis for several months now due to the late stage of the games' development (it's basically over now).

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Quote from Pitsu: And that makes one wonder whether the "community leaders" are worth such title or how the heck are the people chosen with whom Fabrice communicates. If a map editor question is asked, and no-one among "community leaders" bothers to look at the mapmaking forums of two major international forums, then you deserve a little electric shock to wake up.


Yes, we dropped the ball on that one I'd say. I personally was out of contact quite a bit during that phase. But I think many of the others figured that someone more knowledgable about mapmaking would step forward. UT hasn't been heard from in some time (yes, he's in this group too). The other thing is the timing of it. Fabrice was asking questions about it while we had the beta version of it. There were numerous problems and we helped quite a bit. But I don't recall any later conversations AFTER TotE came out about the editor. But I'm not chatting with them 24/7 either. As for how they're chosen...well, the main administators for most fan sites are in there. And then we suggest others for admission. If we see a need (such as a map maker), we suggest someone. If we're needing someone fluent in a specific language, we suggest someone. If we see someone on the forums who's contributing valuable information/suggestions/bug fixes/etc...they usually get added too. But FC's goal is to keep the group small for easier in-depth conversation.

As for the electro shock.....FIRE IT UP! :O)

[Sir Charles]

quote from Grumpy Old Wizard: They wouldn't even have to look for a thread. They could send an email to site administrator or another staff member saying they want feedback on the map editor (or whatever else they want feedback on.) It gets posted on the news page and everybody who has something to say says it. They could then interact with the community through the thread to ask more questions or to say that they think this or that is a good idea that may be implemented.

If they actually asked for input and interacted with the community they would get all the feedback they wanted as well as engendering good will with the community.

An example of such interaction can be found on the Bioiware official site for NWN2 where developers visit the forums, ask and answer questions, and keep the community informed about such things as progress of patches. "end quote"
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Very good point. That's probably what should've been done. Hindsight as they say is 20/20.

[jeff]

Very good point. That's probably what should've been done. Hindsight as they say is 20/20.

I read through both of your posts and did not find a reasonable explanation for the sad state of the editor, nor for Fabrice’s comment on a lack of input. While some like the editor, the complaints and requests to make improvements have been from the beginning far too common to have been missed, they were ignored. Even the official forum is filled with posts that voice these same concerns. UBI only had to be willing to listen, they weren’t. From the beginning UBI has been selective in all aspects on the handling of this franchise, releasing some details of the development to some sites but not others, making fans search and translate their finds so the rest of us could be kept up to date. Marketing the best package through Amazon.UK only (the Deluxe I think it was) ignoring the entire NA continent, I am sure in their minds it made sense, but as a long time fan I found all of these moves insulting and even worse; I was made to feel we weren’t important. So don’t give me the line hindsight is 20/20, all they had to do was open their eyes and ears. He would have been better served to just say we are done with the editor, but don’t tell me or anyone else that input wasn’t given or available. In any case I am over it, as I am done with H-V, and I actually regret that as I did believe it had promise. Fabrice’s comments only reaffirm my decision to move on, I truly hope that he is not going to have anything to do with H-VI; it needs someone who can see and hear.

[Zamolxis]

Wow... that's some long post there SC. Kinda like some of mine couple of years ago (which FC was using as argument for ignoring my feedback back then...). Well, let’s try one of my own.

The problem with that group - as I see below we start disclosing stuff - is that it doesn't have as main and overriding selection criteria "the best of the best". That actually becomes a minor one, as overridden by the other two: either site admins or important community members which are not uncomfortable to have around.

So the group becomes in the end not very useful. Those most displeased with H5 are not there to give the needed feedback. Site admins cannot say much to not fall in disgrace. The others cannot because they can be very easily asked to leave. So many are left with the choice between being yes-men supporters or closing their eyes from time to time. But that does have an impact on the quality of their feedback as well, due to the loss of motivation.

I beg the members of the group to not take the following the wrong way, as at least on my side I like to still consider them as friends. But I cannot consider them as "community leaders" for at least 2 reasons:

Firstly because a good part of the community does not like H5 - or at least does not like the way Ubival handled the project from many points of view - and practically they are not represented in that group (I don't count those who share the opinion, but are afraid to state it clear enough to make their voice heard). If people like King Imp or Kareeah would have been there, I would have felt represented, but I have serious doubts about Fabrice ever inviting them for example.

Secondly, is their approach/understanding of the concept of “community leaders”. When I joined the mentioned group, I stopped being the Zam from the beta, who was fighting against the inquisitor, gore, half-naked chicks and so on in the game (as many of you might remember). And I refocused on issues that I knew were important for a larger part of the community: the bad story & character building, the voice acting, major bugs, balance, the hideous Treant, missing major improvements (RMG, map editor, hall of fame) etc. But suddenly I found myself almost alone in this position. When I tried to say sth, I was replied with sth like “who are we to act as community representatives” and “even here we cannot be anything but ourselves”. And I guess everybody shared that opinion, as noone took my side in the discussion.

On top of the above, Fabrice does not only need to learn to accept real negative feedback (as harsh as that may be). In order to have an “elite team” from the community side, he has to be able to match them with a really professional team on Ubival’s side. But after 2 years of wasted creative effort on community’s side, treated mainly with (insulting at times) ignorance on the other side, what would still motivate people? Who would still bother to properly scan the forums for of the best and most original ideas, when they all know only 10% will be considered, only 1% finally implemented, and even that maybe not as initially intended or coming with a bug?

[Muszka]

Fabrice DOES read forums. However he also listens to feedback that we gather from forums and from gaming as well. Somehow I think that some people think he ignores EVERYTHING except for what gets filtered through us. Totally wrong.

If he does read forums, he must have notiefied, the editor problems, because nearly in any major thread there are sentences concerning the editor, at least here at the RT. And though I don't go to other forums, I hardy doubt, that only people at RT have editor problems.
I agree with you in that it's impossible to fit to everyone's taste, and to solve all the problems, but noone can deny that the editor is the greates of all, it was requested from the beginning, but still nothing.
I agree that too, if he contacts a fan site, he gets bombed with irrelevant questions, and for one post of his come 10 replays, but GOW gave an adaptable cure for this problem. Also the Bioware example is good one.
I agree also, that people can't spend all of their time at forums. It's not like in school, when duty endet at 2 pm. But I adviced earlier that, they could hire someone who could be the "forum-guy" or the "contact", who would be paid to filter crap from fans and transmit solutions, advices, bug reports, requests from the seriouser people.

Please don't get me wrong, I don't have anything with community leaders, I just agree with jeff that Fabrice and the team don't really care for the old fans, and they somehow tend to forget, that this game actually is nearly 15 years old and not it's not a brand new shooter, what I won't play next year. They are just lazy, and they chase money, but sometimes they do even that wrong.

[Muszka]

Wow... that's some long post there SC. Kinda like some of mine couple of years ago (which FC was using as argument for ignoring my feedback back then...). Well, let’s try one of my own.
...

Well, it became long, but also a good one, and beside that I agree with most of it, it reminds me of a part of an interview with a chief developer, seen a few years ago. The developer talked about a case, when they were to hire a new developer. The choise was between two candidates, one with excelent "papers", while the other was a fanatic gamer with no or not so good diplome. On the practical part, they were somewhere equal.
Finally they had chosen the gamer, because he'll put his soul in the work, and for him it's not just any job, but it's THE job.

Now that isn't one thing that what all should or at least could do. In no way. But at least for a game with such past they should have someone who cares for it, and for the older fans.

[Jolly Joker]

Aside of the fact that time seems to have strange effects on memories certain posts here are a bit beside the point - and I might add, as usual.

The reason is simple, and I'm going to explain it. The community leader thing simply is not applicable for all questions pertaining the editor (and not being able to clearly see this is a blame virtually everyone with responsibility has to take): concerning the PLAYERS the communities are only a very small part of all the players and buyers in the world, therefore you have to take all GAME threads, discussions and suggestions with more than only one grain of salt, because those gamers active here are simply only the most vocal with a clear view on what they and only they like. That's why an approach to keep the din of battle out, so to speak, and filter things makes sense.
That is not so for the editor, though. Clearly, practically EVERY map-maker is part of a community, simply because maps have to be published to be played, they have to be tested, there has to be feedback and so on. Moreover, map-making not only is an art, but a craft as well, and the editor is a TOOL more than everything else, so map-makers are giving opinions as crafter on their tool.
That, of course, means that editor-threads ARE representative which in terms mean they can be taken with much less salt. Practically spoken, no "community leader" is needed for anything (no condensing of opinion necessary), but IF for whatever purpose one was wished for, it would have to be necessarily one who did maps his- or herself AND had a good idea of what makes sense to have in the editor with a view on what the game can reasonably deliver, and here I don't see so many people who can actually do that - which means it makes more sense for the actual game and editor designers to take a look at every opinion at a certain point.
I would even go so far and say that for the map editor after 3 months or so a poll in the map-makers' guilds might have been made which would have solved the input question (which is of course not possible for the game as such).
INSTEAD the same process as for the game as such was used at that time (late summer 06; patch 1.3) for the editor debugging and a bit later for a general streamlining process (patch 1.4), probably a mistake. That mistake is the direct consequence of underestimating the complexity of the editor as such and the map-making process, which is a lot more difficult to verify than game aspects (for which you have cheat codes at that).

[Moragauth]

"The whole "community leaders" thing still irks me. I'm sorry, but when did running a Heroes site become synonymous with being the be all/end all of Heroes knowledge?"



QFT.

[Jolly Joker]

You shouldn't jump to conclusions. Look at this quote from Zam:

"The problem with that group... is that it doesn't have as main and overriding selection criteria "the best of the best"..."

While this is a true statement in a certain sense it is also utterly foolish. "The best of the best"? Who is that supposed to be? For HoMM 1? For Homm 2? For HoMM 3? For HoMM 4? And isn't that completely irrelevant, since we are dealing with H5?

However, the biggest mistake here is a completely overblown sense of importance that statement comes with for "that group". It simply conveys a wrong impression of what the function of "that group" is.
Make no mistake: the game designer is NIVAL. Period.
Second, if you look into the Homm5 credits you'll find the testers as well: a Romania-based group of dedicated old Homm fans led by Liviu Galateanu who do nothing else except testing and they do find such intriguing bugs like the effect the Vampirism spell had on a Phantom (and who ins his right mind would do something like that, but you may just try it). Moreover they have a say in all balancing questions, but of course Nival has the LAST say here - which is as it should be because they are the designers.

Third, there is the producing side - or Ubisoft -, and the producing side tries to keep in touch with the "common folks who actually buy and play the game", which is where "that group" enters the picture. I'll give you ONE reason why they are in (even though there are a couple more): since they manage those sites you can expect them not to quit the game and their hobby next week, so they will be there next year as well.

[MistWeaver]

>>Make no mistake: the game designer is NIVAL. Period.

Sure, until they do exactly what UBI wants. There is a nice postmortem of developing process of H5.

[Jolly Joker]

The next utterly foolish statement.
Not even within Nival all design decisions are unanimous. The producing company will of course try to make sure that the strategic goals are reached, but that doesn't very often interfere with decisions on the DESIGN level. It may have consequences for the priority list, though.
With a view on the editor I'd like to point out that Etherlords 2 came without an editor and never got one after it was published, greatly diminishing the game value...

[Pitsu]

I'll give you ONE reason why they are in (even though there are a couple more): since they manage those sites you can expect them not to quit the game and their hobby next week, so they will be there next year as well.

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If it is important that they won't move away within a year, I would recommend using heavy stone statues instead of live people. What is actually needed are skills/abilities to read regularly discussion boards, analyze info, prioritize things and, finally, be able to discuss, compromise and propose solutions. Community board/ news site owners can surely be in touch with the developer, but they are more into the opposite: getting official information to him/herself (and the community reading their sites) as fast as possible. I am afraid that even the members of "that group" who do not own a site/news page are much more into getting the unpublished info before anyone else than forwarding the info from everyone else upwards. Personal gain vs work for community so to say.

PS. Sure, the lack of Editor feedback is also my fault, since years ago I had some contacts. Then gave up on several reasons.

[Jolly Joker]

I'll give you ONE reason why they are in (even though there are a couple more): since they manage those sites you can expect them not to quit the game and their hobby next week, so they will be there next year as well.

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If it is important that they won't move away within a year, I would recommend using heavy stone statues instead of live people.

A bit too much polemics here, Pitsu. Not moving away is not quite the same as not losing interest (because, for example, another game may be published that someone may change to).

Community board/ news site owners can surely be in touch with the developer, but they are more into the opposite: getting official information to him/herself (and the community reading their sites) as fast as possible.

Aren't you forgetting here that they are under obligation NOT to publish confidential information?

[Zamolxis]

I think JJ does not really get what I meant with "the best of the best". It doesn't have much to do with the H1-4 thing he mentioned. But I guess I shouldn't bother explaining, because he keeps reading what he wants in my posts since we know each other. And when he doesn't have enough arguments, he fills his posts with insults (see the "utterly foolish" label put on MistWeaver's and my posts).

Regarding the 'game designer' story, it comes as no suprise for me that JJ - member of what we could call "Ubi's selected elite group" - tries to throw the responsibility for all that went wrong at Nival (whom he was actually very much defending back in 2005-2006).

Nival might be responsible for copying too much from Warhammer, for being lazy in finishing jobs in time or stubborn in accepting community suggestions. But that's not what the game is all about.

So make no mistake: the crapy storyline, the bad voice acting, a good part of the game concepts and many other elements are still Ubisoft. On top of that, selecting Nival, and the way the whole project was managed, is also Ubisoft's responsibility.

I'm sure those of us who work in big companies, especially in management (or close to), have already seen the difference between a good manager and a bad one. A good manager can have the job done properly with whomever people he/she has under. Unexpected problems may appear on the way, but if the project was well thought and proactively followed step by step, the people properly selected, motivated, followed (and, in extreme cases, yes - also replaced), then there's not much that can go wrong.

But I guess Ubisoft were often too soft to handle Nival's arrogance. And it is us who kinda payed the price. Not only those who still don't have a game they can enjoy, in spite of all the efforts and dedication from the beta. But also the others who, instead of just playing and enjoying friendly chats with us during multiplayer H5 games, they keep fighting us for 2 years on forums, trying to proove that the game is "good enough", that we have a "problem" for not liking one or another thing, and so on. Sometimes I get the feeling some people think that enjoying a game is only a matter of good marketing, so they keep trying to sell us their ideas.

[Jolly Joker]

I think JJ does not really get what I meant with "the best of the best". ...and so one......

This is actually a lot more blah-blah-blah as I'm used to meanwhile, and I like to make one thing perfectly clear here: if something IS utterly foolish then it's not an insult to call it so.
Having said this, your last post adds more foolishness: nowhere do I throw responsibility for anything at Nival - I was just commenting on the influence of "that group" when I said Nival is the designer, period
In fact, if you read carefully, you'll find, that I blame everyone for the somehow suboptimal editor, and that includes Nival, Ubisoft and "that group" including myself, for various and varying reasons.
Now, *I*'m sure that those of us who do indeed work in big companies have seen the difference between loyal, able and dependable people who support the team and those who think they always know better, who have their own agenda and who in general are envious of those who get more money for what they deem to be the same work, have more say with the projects and seem to be generally and undeservedly in a better position...