A Warm Reflection on Our Community and the Developers' Efforts

[CremeLover]

About some of the aggressiveness that has been given on this forum, particularly the Chinese community, I can give some

First, Klei is not a Chinese company, they do not manage any Chinese forums that I'm aware of, and while they do have translators, I don't think most of their staff knows how to speak Chinese

There was some time ago, during the Wigfrid's skill tree beta if I remember correctly, some issue regarding mistranslation in Bilibili (I think?) from JoeW, he made a comment regarding that in the eternally glorious meme thread:

His response caused some controversy in a portion of the Chinese playerbase from what I understood. I'm not Chinese so I didn't really verify it.
Point is, there is a barrier between the Chinese community and this small Canadian company, and is not an easily surmountable problem, unless they were to hire community managers for both Russian and Chinese community in their own platforms.
Also, do not take my words as facts or assume this is what the devs think. This is but my educated guess.

If as a Chinese person, you feel your voice is not heard, and there is something you want to change about the game or are dissatisfied with, simply come to these forums, and politely and respectfully express your opinion, preferably in a language the developers can understand you and in a clear and concise way, as this has the better changes of your voice as a player and a forum user being heard. The devs are hardworking to a fault, and the best we can do is make their work easier, else if they become overstressed might show on the final product in a negative way, and we don't want that

 

For those who do not frequent these forums, Klei rarely responds to feedback directly. Most of their responses are in regards to technical issues, or why a build is late. They keep it mostly professional. Also there're very few devs that show up in these forums, and many of them also manage other game forums, and are also developers, so the forums are something that do not have dedicated staff to them, please be patient and don't expect a developer response unless there's a discrepancy with the pach notes and the actual released build, or some other developer related issue.

 

In regards to game feedback... Here's a story that happened in this very forum a few years ago.

It was the first quarter of 2020, the Wendy rework just came out, and it was a bit controversial as well.
They changed the gameplay of Wendy and Abigail entirely, the damage of Abigail now scaled with the health Wendy had. The closer to death Wendy was, the more damage Abigail inflicted.

Quickly the forums were flooded with people calling it overpowered, some people liking it, some other people disliking it. Many people posted videos of Abigail doing a large amount of damage to mobs while Wendy stood far away and watched.

Klei read the feedback, but what they took from this was not to tweak the damage, or the scaling, but to rework it entirely, since it promoted a playstyle where you tried to buff Abigail as much as possible while focus on surviving and having Abigail do all the damage. Instead, they added a vex to Abigail, that increased other player's damage, specially Wendy, to promote teamwork between Wendy and Abigail.

 

Klei does read and listen to feedback, but is unlikely they're going to implement your exact idea. In my opinion, is better to give them point of what you think is wrong, why, and to give a direction in which you can nudge them towards, without getting too deep into specifics.

[CremeLover]

38 minutes ago, Fitzee said:

If you were to make this comment its own topic, it'd be the only one "off-topic" to the beta I'd be okay with!

It's clear some people are unfamiliar with how things work around here, so the more people that are informed, the less likely drama will build up.

Maybe is I a good idea. I will, thanks for the suggestion!

Hope it can do some good and not cause even more drama.

[Peasant]

5 hours ago, kroban said:

Huuuh devs barely reply to comments here, its pretty rare if they do, out of thousands of weekly comments they may reply to 1 just to clarify something, but thats it. We know that they pay attention here mostly because in the updates we see that they change things or implement some ideas that comes from our opinions/feedback. But its not like we all get direct replies lol. I dont know why the people in BiliBili think that they should expect better treatment when theres way more to answer there + language barrier that makes it way harder to reply.

And I dont think that the devs not replying directly is something "bad", they already make posts each month explaining their objectives, and when the next update is closer they make posts weekly. They have to be extra careful with what they say (specially if theres a language barrier), and each time they reply to someone some people might get the expectation that they should get an answer too, and that can create toxicity.

Em, what better treatment? At least posts here got replies, though the replies are few they are there, and it's likely that each time there's a beta there will be 2 or 3 replies, while in bilibili there's no reply at all. They post a communication post each month, it receives roughly 1000 replies every time, people would at least know they are not neglected if they reply even to 1 post among these 1000.

As for language barrier, if it's not stopping me from talking to you, it certainly won't stop a company consist of people from all over the world from hearing voices of the players.

[AliceShiki]

57 minutes ago, YXukun said:

As for language barrier, if it's not stopping me from talking to you, it certainly won't stop a company consist of people from all over the world from hearing voices of the players.

Please remember that Klei staff has much more responsibility than us when it comes to forum posts.

People just interacting in forums can easily use a translation software to communicate.

But an official staff member making official statements need to be much more careful with their wording. And relying on translation software for that is not a good idea.

[Peasant]

10 minutes ago, AliceShiki said:

Please remember that Klei staff has much more responsibility than us when it comes to forum posts.

People just interacting in forums can easily use a translation software to communicate.

But an official staff member making official statements need to be much more careful with their wording. And relying on translation software for that is not a good idea.

Makes sense. Then I think extra staff should be needed to achieve communication.

[YuRinshue]

1 hour ago, AliceShiki said:

Please remember that Klei staff has much more responsibility than us when it comes to forum posts.

People just interacting in forums can easily use a translation software to communicate.

But an official staff member making official statements need to be much more careful with their wording. And relying on translation software for that is not a good idea.

This is indeed a problem, but many players actually expect the official to have a positive attitude, rather than not communicating because there may be communication problems, even if the official does not use Chinese but uses English or translation software. As long as there is an accompanying English original text, knowledgeable players will provide explanations for the ambiguous parts of the official discourse. I don't know if you can understand what I mean, 'giving up eating because of choking' is not liked in the feedback.

[Derbab]

Thank you for this! I agree, I admire Klei and their dedication to DST, and I feel like they always try to make the best updates they can even when people are dissatisfied

[AliceShiki]

1 hour ago, YXukun said:

Makes sense. Then I think extra staff should be needed to achieve communication.

That's a fair request. They could try seeking out a freelance translator (since I don't think they have enough work for a full-time translator) to help them better communicate in languages that their games are popular in.

I don't know how financially viable it is for them to do so, but it is a fair request.

[whiteking]

19 hours ago, CremeLover said:

About some of the aggressiveness that has been given on this forum, particularly the Chinese community, I can give some

First, Klei is not a Chinese company, they do not manage any Chinese forums that I'm aware of, and while they do have translators, I don't think most of their staff knows how to speak Chinese

There was some time ago, during the Wigfrid's skill tree beta if I remember correctly, some issue regarding mistranslation in Bilibili (I think?) from JoeW, he made a comment regarding that in the eternally glorious meme thread:

It is interesting that if Chinese players really follow the suggestions publicly posted by Klei (on Bilibili), the forum will be truly bombarded with unfamiliar languages. Because Klei told Chinese players that the forum supports "Chinese" (Klei uses the word "中文", which only refers to the language of China)
In fact, last year, Chinese players initially only heard about hellish jokes on the forum (such as despicable jokes where you have to go to hell if you laugh), and someone posted a racist joke about black people eating watermelon after that "Jew". They came to mock Klei's inappropriate behavior, but soon found out that they had banned Chinese players' comments. Some people are starting to feel dissatisfied. And what really ignited the Chinese community was Joew's claim that 'we know the Chinese community very well'
It's like 'Nobody knows China better than me' - Donald Trump
Now you can see that there are fewer Chinese people willing to come to the forum this year than in 2023.6. More people would rather repeat a joke on a Chinese forum, about a box that would fall to the ground when opened.

Thank you still for your kindness

[CremeLover]

1 hour ago, whiteking said:

It is interesting that if Chinese players really follow the suggestions publicly posted by Klei (on Bilibili), the forum will be truly bombarded with unfamiliar languages. Because Klei told Chinese players that the forum supports "Chinese" (Klei uses the word "中文", which only refers to the language of China)

I cannot vouch for whatever Klei said on Bilibili, but I can redirect you to the official Klei policy in regards to language use on the forum

Quote

Language: Users are expected to communicate in English while using our services and support. Services include things like our websites, social media pages, support systems, blogs and forums. We’re an English based company, and as much as we’d love to help you in Swahili, Klingon or some other language, we work best in English. In the event that additional language services are deemed appropriate, these services will be made available when Klei Entertainment has the ability to offer support in these languages.

The only page I can find that somewhat supports Chinese is this one
https://support.klei.com/hc/zh-cn/requests/new

If someone else can see can see another page in the Klei website where Chinese is supported, please do share it.

 

1 hour ago, whiteking said:

In fact, last year, Chinese players initially only heard about hellish jokes on the forum (such as despicable jokes where you have to go to hell if you laugh), and someone posted a racist joke about black people eating watermelon after that "Jew". They came to mock Klei's inappropriate behavior, but soon found out that they had banned Chinese players' comments. Some people are starting to feel dissatisfied.

Despicable jokes, foul language and racist comments are against the community guidelines too:

Quote

Obscenity: Foul language is not permitted in the Klei Entertainment Community or related services. Excessive use of foul language is not permitted and will be treated as a disruption to other players. This includes public and private discussion as well as user names or any other communication within community services controlled by Klei Entertainment. This also includes in-game player names, chats, and forums.

Disruption: Behavior that is deemed inflammatory, abusive or racist language (in any language), or discussions intended to disrupt players either individually or as a group (i.e. trolling) will not be permitted. This also includes all actions intended to harass, annoy or disrupt the enjoyment of other players.

Intolerance: Language, discussion or activity relating to intolerance of any kind is not permitted. This includes but is not limited to sexual orientation, religion, race, gender or other groups of individuals.

If any comment within this forum do contain the content you mention, it should be quickly reported and banned. If people from Bilibili made an account here with no purpose than to mock Klei, that is also against the community guidelines. While I cannot talk about specific cases, the behaviour you are describing is not allowed here.

1 hour ago, whiteking said:

And what really ignited the Chinese community was Joew's claim that 'we know the Chinese community very well'
It's like 'Nobody knows China better than me' - Donald Trump
Now you can see that there are fewer Chinese people willing to come to the forum this year than in 2023.6. More people would rather repeat a joke on a Chinese forum, about a box that would fall to the ground when opened.

I won't claim to speak for whatever JoeW said on Bilibili, but that does strike me as a mistranslation similar to what I was mentioning earlier here, as Klei has always been quite excellent when it comes to communication with the English playerbase, quickly recognizing when they have made mistakes, and very rarely making brazen assumptions.

21 hours ago, CremeLover said:

 

Chinese is a very complex language, and like any language, a non native or someone who isn't very familiar with the language can create sentences that, even if written correctly, a native could assume another interpretation that means something different than what was originally intended, creating confusion or ill will.

If anything, I hope the more western section of the community has shown to the Chinese newcomers that most people consider Klei to be very good when it comes to communitcation, responsability and professionalism, even if they sometimes miss the mark when it comes to development. Some will say their ideas and direction are not the best, but I doubt anybody will call Klei employees unprofessional, rude, or accuse them of misconduct.

The Chinese playerbase is more than welcome here to share their thoughs and ideas. Saying otherwise would be hypocrite, as I'm a non-english European, but I still come to these forums, and give feedback nonetheless. And I know the devs are listening.
Just make sure to read the guidelines, and do report anything you feel goes against the good spirit of the forums.

I hope Klei can come up with a solution that can address the feeling of being left out that many Chinese are sharing.

[Sacco]

It put a smile on me (:

[Lee Sy]

2 hours ago, CremeLover said:

I cannot vouch for whatever Klei said on Bilibili, but I can redirect you to the official Klei policy in regards to language use on the forum

 

I am not sure if this guidelines was published on last Friday, when JoeW posted a topic and pinned it to the top. I failed to find out its publish time, which is always under the title in other articles.

And Klei posted and pinned this article【玩家常见问题指引-哔哩哔哩】 on 2021.5.1.

Spoiler

General translation in red blank is "if you find bug in game or have any advice to game(support Chinese)", and the forum link follows as you see.

All shall be subject to the latest rules, but if this article is still pinned to the top on bilibili, I don't think it has been abandoned.

But it doesn't matter, I don't care whether we can use other language on forum or not. I will communicate with Chinese players in pure Chinese, if Klei don't like, just hide it.

Klei need to contact with their Chinese players. Klei is never the only one who has registered account in Chinese social media, you can find lots of non-native game companies on bilibili, such as DevolverDegital, whom Klei has followed on bilibili, and they had a linkage last year.

I don't understand why Klei creat a communication post every month but just ignore it.

Spoiler

Like this:

November communication post received 1560 replies.

Maybe Klei encourage us to come here, so we do. But what if all passionate Chinese fans flooded into forum, thousands of Chinese topics will appear for each month. I don't think terribly-translated English will be easier read than standard Chinese, either. I doubt if Klei will fix the language part in forum guidelines.

[gaymime]

18 minutes ago, Lee Sy said:

Klei need to contact with their Chinese players. Klei is never the only one who has registered account in Chinese social media, you can find lots of non-native game companies on bilibili, such as DevolverDegital, whom Klei has followed on bilibili, and they had a linkage last year.

devolver digital has over 300 members and gets a lot of their funding from the biggest game company in the entire world. you are comparing a michilan star chef to someone's grandmother and being angry the grandmother is not cooking you and your twenty friends a 5-star meal....

[CremeLover]

28 minutes ago, Lee Sy said:

I am not sure if this guidelines was published on last Friday, when JoeW posted a topic and pinned it to the top. I failed to find out its publish time, which is always under the title in other articles.

Immediately doubting the devs integrity is not what I was expecting, but I can give evidence to prove this is not the case.

We have something called The Wayback Machine, which you can read more about it here in the Chinese wikipedia article, but basically it shows a snapshot of different websites and how they evolve as time goes by.

The snapshot list for the guidelines page takes you back up to 2016. Here's a snapshot of march 2016, and is pretty much the same, word for word. So I can safely say JoeW did not sneakily edit the page this thursday while twirling his handsome mustache and laughing maniacally in his chair while drinking from his potato cup.

 

The link you sent from bilibili redirects first to the website I mentioned earlier (but the english version for some reason)

4 hours ago, CremeLover said:

https://support.klei.com/hc/zh-cn/requests/new

And also, this post does appear to say the forums support Chinese... which is... weird, since the forum guidelines, while it doesn't ban the use of other languages, it states users are expected to talk in English. Maybe Klei though we would be getting 1 or 2 at best and they would be manageable instead of dozens at the same time? Is hard to make a guess as to what was Klei's intention with that, sorry.

 

45 minutes ago, Lee Sy said:

Klei need to contact with their Chinese players. Klei is never the only one who has registered account in Chinese social media, you can find lots of non-native game companies on bilibili, such as DevolverDegital, whom Klei has followed on bilibili, and they had a linkage last year.

I don't understand why Klei creat a communication post every month but just ignore it.

From searching bilibili posts from Klei, it seems is most of them are company updates, with photos of their new games, and information about upcoming features, standart company stuff that also happens on twitter, and other gaming forums like steam. Klei are also not very active on Steam forums if you're curious.

Not every company has a dedicated community manager dedicated to interact with the multiple languages and regions their products exist in. Wether or not Klei should have one for the Chinese part of Don't Starve is another issue entirely, but from what people in forum have been saying, it does not appear to have one.

50 minutes ago, Lee Sy said:

Maybe Klei encourage us to come here, so we do. But what if all passionate Chinese fans flooded into forum, thousands of Chinese topics will appear for each month. I don't think terribly-translated English will be easier read than standard Chinese, either. I doubt if Klei will fix the language part in forum guidelines.

Is not a wrongful description in the guidelines, if the goal is to better gather feedback from the chinese community, removing the language section and letting both english and chinese interact in the same place in random languages seems a terrible way to go about it.
I don't think is a good idea to have half the forum post suddenly be in Chinese, but I also agree with you that having them be in poorly translated English instead is also not a good idea. I do trust Klei however, and I can at least believe they will find a solution to this issue, though I doubt before the beta is over.
Until then, the best solution would be asking people to be respectful, and be respectful back to them.

We all love the game after all, even if we can't always understand each other. If anything, I decide to put my trust into the hard working developers that brought us here in the first place.
I would like to call attention to the very wholesome first post of the thread, before we stray too far from its original intention, and remember we're here because of passion for the game, and appreciate the hard working developers that made this possible. Let's try giving them a bit of room to do what they do best, and hopefully address the Chinese communication issue after this whole beta is over.

[Lee Sy]

25 minutes ago, CremeLover said:

2016

If so, I will follow the latest one. Klei told us speak English in 2016 and support Chinese since 2021, all make sense.

[renamoe]

1 hour ago, CremeLover said:

Immediately doubting the devs integrity is not what I was expecting, but I can give evidence to prove this is not the case.

We have something called The Wayback Machine, which you can read more about it here in the Chinese wikipedia article, but basically it shows a snapshot of different websites and how they evolve as time goes by.

The snapshot list for the guidelines page takes you back up to 2016. Here's a snapshot of march 2016, and is pretty much the same, word for word. So I can safely say JoeW did not sneakily edit the page this thursday while twirling his handsome mustache and laughing maniacally in his chair while drinking from his potato cup.

 

The link you sent from bilibili redirects first to the website I mentioned earlier (but the english version for some reason)

And also, this post does appear to say the forums support Chinese... which is... weird, since the forum guidelines, while it doesn't ban the use of other languages, it states users are expected to talk in English. Maybe Klei though we would be getting 1 or 2 at best and they would be manageable instead of dozens at the same time? Is hard to make a guess as to what was Klei's intention with that, sorry.

 

From searching bilibili posts from Klei, it seems is most of them are company updates, with photos of their new games, and information about upcoming features, standart company stuff that also happens on twitter, and other gaming forums like steam. Klei are also not very active on Steam forums if you're curious.

Not every company has a dedicated community manager dedicated to interact with the multiple languages and regions their products exist in. Wether or not Klei should have one for the Chinese part of Don't Starve is another issue entirely, but from what people in forum have been saying, it does not appear to have one.

Is not a wrongful description in the guidelines, if the goal is to better gather feedback from the chinese community, removing the language section and letting both english and chinese interact in the same place in random languages seems a terrible way to go about it.
I don't think is a good idea to have half the forum post suddenly be in Chinese, but I also agree with you that having them be in poorly translated English instead is also not a good idea. I do trust Klei however, and I can at least believe they will find a solution to this issue, though I doubt before the beta is over.
Until then, the best solution would be asking people to be respectful, and be respectful back to them.

We all love the game after all, even if we can't always understand each other. If anything, I decide to put my trust into the hard working developers that brought us here in the first place.
I would like to call attention to the very wholesome first post of the thread, before we stray too far from its original intention, and remember we're here because of passion for the game, and appreciate the hard working developers that made this possible. Let's try giving them a bit of room to do what they do best, and hopefully address the Chinese communication issue after this whole beta is over.

Hi CremeLover,

Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful insights! To stay on-topic for this thread, I've started a new discussion specifically addressing the language support policies, as it might shed some light on the reasons behind this issue and provide more context for everyone.

Feel free to check it out and join the conversation if you're interested:

Thanks again for contributing to this discussion and for helping maintain a constructive and positive atmosphere here!

[Frosty_Mentos]

The updates technically for majority who don't pay for skins can be considered as 'free', but they do also get their bills paid by the people that buy skins. Just wanting to clarify misconception cause technically this game's future content is free-mium.

Though free or not, everything is pretty cheap for us which is nice.

[Xplan]

17 分钟前，Frosty_Mentos 说：

从技术上讲，对于大多数不支付皮肤费用的人来说，这些更新可以被认为是“免费”的，但他们的账单也确实由购买皮肤的人支付。只是想澄清误解，因为从技术上讲，这个游戏的未来内容是免费增值的。

虽然免费与否，但对我们来说一切都很便宜，这很好。

That's true of course, but Chinese players are usually strict with free-games like Genshin, League of Legends, Apex, etc. so is DST.

[Peasant]

Just now, Fitzee said:

Well, you have to initially buy the game first. 

I'm unaware, do you have to buy Genshin Impact to play it?

No, Genshin is free to download, it has a inner pay system, like dst, and it's the main method they profit

[Frosty_Mentos]

2 hours ago, YXukun said:

No, Genshin is free to download, it has a inner pay system, like dst, and it's the main method they profit

At least DST is pretty straight to the point with skins and sales instead of putting in some dumb gacha. I guess there's the Trade-Inn but that thing's basically old and useless now.