Breaking this away from another thread.

When (if?) the Rules Subforum is created, will FFG staff actively monitor it?
Or do they allow the players to discuss, and self-regulate?

I've never seen an FFG employee post anywhere on the forum (or CardgameDB, which the company also owns). They answer rules questions only through this link.

Good point. I've been wondering about this. I'm discovering a fair few questions that are pretty nuanced and quite grey and could definitely do with some official clarification, but it seems that FFG don't really do that.

Are the Judges tests or things for FFG games?

As far as I know, until now, FFG officials shy away from the forums.

Rules sub-forums are open for discussion but until now, I don't think the designers have used the forum as an official canal to give rulings and clarifications.

54 minutes ago, Khudzlin said:

I've never seen an FFG employee post anywhere on the forum (or CardgameDB, which the company also owns). They answer rules questions only through this link.

So many non-rules questions.

I ask the following of you, based on your experience with other FFG games.
What is the expected response time?
What is the expected etiquette? (Copy/paste answer to this forum? All forums?)
Is there a way to differentiate an official answer from one that an a-hole claims to have been told?
How many times does a ruling have to be raised before it reaches the FAQ?

19 minutes ago, Bayushi Shunsuke said:

So many non-rules questions.

I ask the following of you, based on your experience with other FFG games.
What is the expected response time?
What is the expected etiquette? (Copy/paste answer to this forum? All forums?)
Is there a way to differentiate an official answer from one that an a-hole claims to have been told?
How many times does a ruling have to be raised before it reaches the FAQ?

1. I'd say a day or two, certainly no more than a few days.
2. Copy/paste both question and answer to CardgameDB (it's the more active forum for rules questions), though it wouldn't hurt to copy/paste here as well.
3. Not really.
4. No idea.

2 hours ago, Ser Nakata said:

As far as I know, until now, FFG officials shy away from the forums.

It is official FFG policy that their employees do not read their forums (except for those, like Elena, who are explicitly allowed to handle customer contact).

I gotta say, cardgamedb was a much better site for community discussion: a card database and deckbuilder on the same site was very useful, as well as properly moderated forums and separate rules threads...

Sadly, once FFG took over that site they basically lost interest in it. At great personal effort I wrote a series of articles for cardgamedb (under the username Asklepios) and after the GW license loss went down, I asked in the backstage / admin forum what the legal status of the articles would be, as I wanted to back them up elsewhere, but under the submission agreement I'd handed the work to them.

That was back in October 2016, and no reply has emerged. We also tried (from April 2017) to get a Lo5R site set up, emailing and calling for attention from the usual people, but basically there's no response at all.

Cardgamedb continues to exist only because no-one in FFG is paying enough attention to take it down. Any new articles are coming from those who admin status before it got moved into the oubliette.

The mistreatment and wilful ignoring of cardgamedb by FFG was almost a dealbreaker for me for getting into another FFG game. It's only a sheer love for Five Rings that has brought me back, though a large part of me wishes it was being run by a company with more respect for its fanbase.

Still, if they can make a good game, then quality will earn a lot of slack. It's just a shame they couldn't have taken the 15 to 20 minutes to add a forum to cardgamedb, and to glance at the admin forums to respond to the occasional query or post. It's just dumb business sense, not to invest 20 minutes of time in maintaining a community that was driving large numbers of sales, generating buzz and enthusiasm for the game, and creating digital content that was significantly increasing the company's web presence.

I mean, FFG, if you weren't going to use the site, why the **** did you buy it?

41 minutes ago, Prepare for War said:

I mean, FFG, if you weren't going to use the site, why the **** did you buy it?

Buying something that competes with one of your services (these forums) simply to remove it and therefore drive people back to your service is a sound business move. Unpleasant, but true.

That'd make sense, if cardgamedb was somehow hurting their sales, as opposed to driving those sales.

47 minutes ago, Malraza said:

Buying something that competes with one of your services [...] simply to remove it and therefore drive people back to your service is

...how you make a monopoly?

It's likely more an issue of consolidating the discussion of product information to a single platform. Sure, there's going to be other sites like social media and blogs, but it takes fewer resources to monitor community discussion when there's a limited number of forum - style sites for that discussion to take place. And I'm pretty sure FFG has someone monitor traffic, even if they aren't active participants.

6 hours ago, Bayushi Shunsuke said:

So many non-rules questions.

I ask the following of you, based on your experience with other FFG games.
What is the expected response time?
What is the expected etiquette? (Copy/paste answer to this forum? All forums?)
Is there a way to differentiate an official answer from one that an a-hole claims to have been told?
How many times does a ruling have to be raised before it reaches the FAQ?

For 3, I'd say it mainly comes down to knowing forum members. Often, on some of the other games' forums, a rules question would spark a discussion and eventually someone would post, "I asked for official clarification and they replied with: <insert claimed response>"

Often, the person who decided to do that is a well-known, respected member of the community, so people take his claims seriously unless they have strong reason to do otherwise. If it's posted by someone who has never really posted much before getting involved in the argument, however, you may want to take it with a grain of salt (especially if the "official" response just happens to completely agree with the poster's views, which don't seem to fit the wording at all).

As far as my experience goes, it basically comes down to agreeing with a guy called ktom.

14 hours ago, Gaffa said:

It is official FFG policy that their employees do not read their forums (except for those, like Elena, who are explicitly allowed to handle customer contact).

Is there a reasoning behind this?
Can we read this policy?

Do they seriously jump on every piece of social media, but avoid their own forums?

9 minutes ago, Bayushi Shunsuke said:

Is there a reasoning behind this?
Can we read this policy?

Do they seriously jump on every piece of social media, but avoid their own forums?

It is probably for the same reason that writers are advised by their agents not to read any fanfictin: so that they cannot be accidentally or deliberately influenced by someone else's idea/

But is this forum (FFG's very own) any worse/better than Discord?

Why frequent one and not the other?

10 hours ago, Bayushi Shunsuke said:

But is this forum (FFG's very own) any worse/better than Discord?

Why frequent one and not the other?

It was FFG's decision. They have never bothered to explain why, although a reasonable conclusion is Karasu's, above.