Jables thoughts on communication.

Woot! Really excited about pretty much every post you've posted so far.

As has been stated, but I want to reiterate. People in the PA community are extremely passionate. Often Uber can catch flak because people don't like a certain change or addition. It's not because we hate you, PA, or Uber. It's because we love the game so much and all have our own ideas on our vision for PA. Ultimately, it's y'all's vision for PA, but at the same time, the Community knows this game very well, is very invested, and has lots of good ideas. There are bad ideas tossed out there, but there are also some really good ideas. Please don't misread our intentions. We love this game.

Keep the communication coming. Really. It is making a huge difference already.

I'd also love it if y'all did the livestreams like y'all used to do. Just show us some footage of stuff y'all are up to and talk about what you're doing and whatnot. Those were great. I'd love to get back to doing my livestream recaps! :-D

I would also love to see a poll/feedback thread of what's most important to the community. I think it would be quite interesting, and would also be quite helpful to y'all to see where the Community's priorities and interests lie.

Having something like a roadmap would also be awesome. The majority of us understand that roadmaps are fluid and ever changing. But even if it's broad and doesn't include dates. Just shows what y'all are working on and what other cool things are coming... would be a GREAT way to get general hype going, keep people invested in the game, and keep communication flowing.

Notice how the trend is communication? Proper communication would have taken care of a ton of the bad reviews, silence a lot of the bad talk across the web's various discussion boards, gotten hype, helped out the HR KS...

Thank you for what you've done so far and keep it up!

you could just start a poll anyway brian and see where that takes us?

They don't get near as much traction, weight, and overall responses as official stuff does. Some people have done stuff like that in the past, but the results were poor at best. There was obvious bias in the poll (particularly the one I'm thinking of), some of the poll options were really vague and unhelpful.

Having an official poll and/or feedback thread allowing people to voice their opinions on what's the most important priorities would simply garner much better results.

You have just rekindeled my confidence in the development team.

Just one question: Will this communication only be in the form of you posting news about upcoming features or will you take questions as well, route them to the proper experts and come back with an answer where you can too?

I have friends who like to play in systems with the Annihilaser, and their games turn out very differently to the ones I prefer to play. So they would disagree that it adds nothing to the mechanics. It's just that, personally, I prefer mechanics that EXTEND the playtime, instead of diminish it. That's why I tend to avoid it.

Filthy casual! Come back when you have at least 100 hours.

Pffft - come back when you've taken the crown of King of the Planet. Only then will you have proved your dedication to the task at hand.

This is really really great news. I was very frustrated when it felt like Uber was talking to us less and less. That being said I understand that reactions here can sometimes be very frustrating. I think the approach you are outlining - hype free, detailed updates - will help a lot. The community is pretty good at policing it's own reactions over the long term, even if in the short term we sometimes freak out. A steady stream of new information makes sure we're never stuck on one thing too long!

Sounds great. Atm it's really hard to see where PA stands, in almost every aspect. Personally, I have absolutely no clue what's happening or planned with the game, aside from some very old stuff like the KS-goals. The pathfinding/offline/performance improvement show that there was a lot going on behind the scenes, but from the outside it looked more like a black void after the release.

I trust Uber considering their past work, but even then it's not exactly encouraging considering the recent cancelled and failed Kickstarter/EA-titles, who just released and said 'we're done'. Or say 'we'll continue after release', and then development slows down until the project just dies in a painfully slow process.
Ofc those things kinda started it's own dynamic by proxy, when more skeptical or even people from the outside developed their own take on the situation, sometimes even just to call out something wrong (which also could get pretty silly). And without information, peoples imagination is also a powerfull tool, even more if they go more emotional over the whole thing, e.g. because they love the game. I don't think it's a stretch to say that fans can be obnoxious from time to time, and i'm not claiming to be an exception.^^'

It's definitly good to hear that people Uber know their problems with communication and are trying to solve them. Maybe someone from the outside (of PA) is what they needed. I'm satisfied with knowing the development continues at a very reasonable speed.

Uber should do what Sony Online Entertainment does with Planetside 2: Incorporate a Roadmap feature to their website.

http://www.planetside2.com/roadmap

Its changed a fair bit since it was first implemented, but it boils down to a set of miniature discussion threads under each proposed 'feature'. People can Like or Dislike the feature and the difference is calculated in the prominent score on the left, with higher scored features moving to the top of the list.

Within each feature post players and developers alike can discuss the implementation and benefits/drawbacks of the feature. It provides a central spot that devs can keep a running commentary of miniature patch notes and concept drawings: informing people of the progress and updates to that specific feature, and letting devs eventually mark it as Completed, Delayed, shelved or cancelled entirely with appropriate explanations.

Throw in some good sorting features and color coding so the community can see at a glance what is 'right on the horizon' and what is little more than a scribble on a notepad.

This actually gives me some hope for PA. Thank you

This is something the community has been eagerly hoping would happen. I've always said that compared to most other game communities the Community for games like TA, SupCom and PA really are a step above the rest in many different regards. I spent a lot of time on the GPG forums and see a lot of the same qualities here.

I think a Road map is really important given PA's current circumstances and would go a long want to solidifying the community/playerbase to stick around despite initial impressions at this stage. There are a few key things that need to happen with any Road Map put out by Uber;

First off, it NEEDS to be regularly updated, on a set schedule probably. Even if nothing significant changes you need to be there to say that things are carrying on and sharing what Timbits you can. Being shown/told about progress is a powerful tool even if the community doesn't have anything to measure the actual amount of progress made/remaining towards the goal.

Dates. The road map doesn't necessarily need them. Obviously dates can be hard to account for but I like the idea of doing them on month based windows, give a fair bit of flexibility and even if things to change with the regular updates as mentioned above the community isn't anticipating/expecting something until the last minute.

Details. Again, it can be hard to be sure of details some/all of the time and while vagueness isn't the bad per-see, I'd say it doesn't really help either. Being as specific as you reliably can and making sure things stay updated should keep things running smoothly from an interaction point of view thought.

Topics. The Roadmap needs to be as broad as possible, coving everything, even little things. How that's achieved can vary, a Big bulky Roadmap might be too annoying to navigate/wrap one's head around but it can also be split up into a bunch of smaller road maps, one for UI, one for Core Features(ie Saving) ect ect. Even if something is going to sit on the Roadmap for 6 months before it even has the potential to get worked on it still needs to be there because that 6 months is a great time to leverage the community for ideas and opinions about it.

I know it can seem very scary to put stuff like this out there, being worried about "setting expectations"(which is silly really) and more but you need to take that step first before you can actually solve those "Problems". Put what information you can out there and don't be afraid to change things as long as you tell us what and why as much as you are able in a timely manner. The thing to keep in mind here is that the community(overall) can easily handle the idea that things change and the community is willing to do all the foot work for you if you give them what they need. That was the initial concept of the Planetary Vanguards. The idea was that the guys at Uber can't spend the time need to interact on the forums personally where needed. But they had time for a meeting here and there on voice comms with a focused group of people with good insight and it turns out they had plenty of time to take that information to the forums and engage in the ensuing discussions in Uber's place and while it didn't last(why we might never truly know) we did have some points where I feel that placing some trust in the community proved that it can deal with things and approached properly.

I'm hoping a fresh perspective can see both sides of this clearly and move forward without being restrained by past mistakes or assumptions.

Mike

Would personally like to see more communication in the Linux forum on various Linux issues with the game.

We have other designers here at Uber as well @scathis is just our most senior, and most known outside the doors. Some of our folks don't feel quiet as comfortable talking to everyone, so they are not on the forums.

Let me get my head around things more so, and I will be more able to jump in there for questions. Right now, I would have to run to someone else for every single answer, which would make it less than ideal.

short answer: yep. Later on I'll take questions too.

hah, let's not set impossible goals . I would like to see more Jable posts before i'm dead.

Will just reply to Brian since he hit all 3 things in one post.

1. Livestreams are going to pop up now and then when we feel like we have cool stuff to show. We are also talking about the possibility of video updates to explain what is upcoming or just released. This isn't in stone though, and requires some looking into on my part to see what it will cost us in people time/balance that to what those people could be doing for the game itself. To use a normal forum joke,

2. Polls could be awesome! I have a few items already that I can tell will be very close in priority. When those pop up, I was thinking we could let the community choose what came next. Not a promise, but a damn cool idea. No matter what, I want to figure out a way to use polls to get more of your thoughts.

3. Public roadmap is trickier as I am still working on it internally. Let me get stuff straightened out on this end and see where we land. The thing I will be working on it overall communication though. I sorta went over that in the previous post, but yeah communication will be better on upcoming stuff. I'll have more on this later. (not the best answer, sorry)

TLDR:
Livestreams - confirmed, but sporadic (aka: when we have cool enough stuff to share)
Video updates - not confirmed, but we are investigating
Polls - confirmed for later, I like the idea
Roadmap - not confirmed for public, confirmed for internal. (see above for details)

Hi, welcome to the community!

Thanks for the feedback. Reading through this I'd just like to chime in and suggest *if possible* some form of public road map should be high on the agenda.

Allot of the controversy that has occurred is people tend to be a little pessimistic in nature- so in absence of information they assume the worst. Having a simple (and short) list of 'high level' goals that are being worked on would probably be sufficient for many to let them know if feature 'x' hasn't been forgotten.

Anyway good job on the updates so far! The atmosphere is very different from a few days ago

I public roadmap would be quite the mess, but it would be awesome. Like I said, it doesn't need to have dates or a lot of detail. But easily accessible information on what's coming and what priorities are and the like would be awesome.

A public roadmap is a great idea, but it's also problematic as priorities change.

Priorities changing isn't a bad thing and should be an anticipated thing.

The question is - how will people here react to those changes.

I think Uber would say, "Well, people will lose their ****. I mean, look at: offline play, play matching, unit cannon, drm free, etc etc etc etc"

Fair enough - we collectively lost our **** (well, some more than others, anyway) when things weren't happening.

But I think things would have been better received had their been a roadmap that said where those things we wanted fell relative to other priorities and the complexities that made certain features impossible or untenable.

Some people will still be unhappy, sure - but I think the community in general would rally to support a team if there was a roadmap that they could speak to that made sense. The best anyone could say about missing 1.0 features was "ah, cmon - the game is still great - we should trust the team." Which, you know, you can only say that so many times until even you start to feel genuinely unhappy about the situation.

If nothing else, I think knowing about work in progress and work staged to be worked would be a form of a short-term roadmap.

(I think I'm only one of a few people that wants multiple window support. I don't know why folks don't clamor for that more. Also and always, better Linux support.)