Hi all, I understand I'm in danger of being flamed in putting these comments down here, but I've watched a number of the PA Livestreams and the same thoughts keep coming up over and over to the point that I really want to try and get some feedback to the Uber team - and in particular to Jon. While I think it's great that you guys are taking the time to engage the community directly, I think at times this falls flat on its face due to the way you're going about things. Straight up - and as is clearly visible from my post count - I am not an active member of the PA community. This is my first post here. I saw the Kickstarter, I loved TA and saw this as a worthy spiritual successor, so I backed. I've watched a number of Livestreams and have enjoyed getting updates on the games. What I haven't enjoyed is the attitude that comes across in your videos. Comments about questions being stupid, "what does that even mean" etc are not only belittling to the person asking the question, but they're also really quite awkward to watch and are not in the least bit interesting or entertaining. I can handle it occasionally, but you see it in your videos time and time again. It makes you come across as arrogant. Please note I didn't say that you are arrogant, just that this is the impression that is created by reading out stupid questions (and sometimes simply un-informed ones) and then ridiculing them. Also please note I didn't come here to bitch and moan about how terrible your Livestreams are. For the most part, they're entertaining and informative, which is great. In fact, I've got a couple of suggestions on how to avoid this negative atmosphere leaking into your streams in the first place. Stop taking questions live during streams. There's so many reasons that this is a bad idea. People spam their questions, people ask stupid questions, people ask questions that have already been answered...And, importantly, you run the risk of missing some great questions because your bombarded by, and answering, the stupid ones. There's a couple of ways to do this differently. If you really like the idea of getting people to comment and ask questions live, while they're watching the stream, get someone off camera to collate the best questions for you on the spot and then have them read to whoever is hosting for them to answer. If you're not so worried about live questions, have a post stream chat and address any good questions asked at the next livestream. Or, for a third option, just collect questions from the forums and answer those on the stream. Sometimes you just need to ignore the live feed and do the video you intended to do. One of the most grating videos for me personally was the one where you talked about pathfinding and some of the cool methods you were using to do it. The whole idea of the interview - if I understood correctly - was to get a bit technical. At some point - presumably because he was reading live comments - Jon decided that the entire conversation was above the heads of everyone watching, was "too technical" and made a number of throw away comments that pretty well insulted anyone watching who was actually enjoying the conversation. One other thing...There is a general attitude that permeates the conversations on the Livestreams that I think is a shame...If you've ever taken the time to watch any of the Wingman's Hanger livestreams for Star Citizen, you'd see that the guys at Cloud Imperium are forever grateful for their backers and that they see the entire livestreaming and community engagement as a responsibility that they gladly take on by way of thanking the community. Now, you guys may feel exactly the same way, but it doesn't read that way when watching these Livestreams. There's constant talk of "you're lucky to be seeing this at all" type comments. The general feeling appears to be one of "we're doing you a favour by showing you this stuff". Now, I understand that UE and CI have totally different models at play here - CI probably wouldn't have existed without the help of its backers, UE was already an established and successful studio, but it wouldn't hurt to think about the way you're addressing your backers. I don't expect a personal tour of the studio, I don't expect a phone call or even a name drop in a Livestream, but it wouldn't hurt to keep at the forefront of your minds that the reason you guys are making this game - at least in part - is due to backers helping you to do so. You mouth the words that you're grateful for this, but the general attitude that comes through in the videos is more one that the Livestreams are a bit of a neccasary evil and an imposition. It's entirely an attitude thing. Or, more importantly, it's entirely a perception thing. At the moment, it really feels like there's a certainly level of contempt or annoyance at the community that is supporting you. Again, going back to my earlier points, I think a lot of this (ie, my) perception is because of the negativity that comes through in answering community questions. Remove that problem, lighten the tone up a bit and have fun and we'll have a far more entertaining Livestream and, I imagine, you guys will have a lot more fun doing it. None of the above is meant to offend. It is simply my honest reactions to watching the streams. If I'm way off the mark, then feel free to say so. But please keep in mind that if I'm taking the time to bother writing this down, I'm probably not the only one that is thinking along similar lines.
Good Post. While i dont agree whith everything said. I think i am by your side most of the time. Some things i wanna add for improvement: Regular twitch streamers often use slow mode(only one post per minute and user) or subscriber only for chat. That helps a lot dealing with such issues. Also active chat moderators can help (i would suggest Knight and Nanolathe :twisted: ). Bots that autodelete Caps only posts or link-posts. Day[9] has a questiongrabber that automaticaly grabs question if they are of a special form: in his case: it has to start with: Dear Day9 ..... Don't be afraid to time or perma ban people. Edit: Just my feelings i am no psycologist, but i want to say to c0mc0: I get the feeling that Neutrino is kind of a shy guy. He seems to be under pressure when livestreames happen. Not every person is a camera person. Look at o for instance he handles it better imo. But i think Neutrino because he is the head of the development feels he has to be on stream and the one to answer the questions.
Great post, its sad that you have to type like a broken record and state every sentence that this is your opinion and your only interested in offering constructive criticism But hey... the internet.. = / i agree with the OP on a lot of points, hope they have a look at this forum =)
Uber's attitude to people spamming the chat with stupid questions is entertaining, if irrelevant. It's a refreshing break from panels given by PR people who aren't allowed to say anything bad about anyone. Of course, implementing a flood control wouldn't go amiss.
Uber can deride stupid questions all they want. I for one agree with them on such a stance. I can't abide stupid questions given the time of day when the person asking could have done a little research to find their answer instead of cluttering up the streamchat. If you're asking a stupid question it doesn't necessarily mean you're stupid. It's does mean you're lazy though.
The internet is a terrible place with terrible people. Livestream chatrooms are not bastions of impassioned intellectual debate. They are circle jerks for all the fans to get wet and troll their hearts out. There's nothing wrong with that, but you should expect your feedback (and audience) to resemble that of bored and neglected 12 year old kids.
You make some very good points. I think that the Uber folks are letting the vocal idiocracy of the internet get to them. It's just basic economics and psychology: people who don't take time to think things through (that is, the ones asking stupid questions and making stupid, unreasonable criticisms) are going to speak more often and more loudly than those who have something valuable to add to the conversation. If they can't cope with the pressure - and it's really hard to ignore the vocal minority and realize that they're just that - then they should probably take some steps to shield themselves from the flood of spam and maintain a positive attitude about the community. The first problem, I think, is that the game looks too good right now. The graphics are polished enough that it looks like the game is nearing completion, even though the mechanics are far from complete. People are asking questions as if the game is almost done, and I think that's hurting Uber's morale. I'm not sure what they could do with that, besides maybe showing more greyboxed models in the livestreams. The second problem, is, as c0mc0 said, a livestream Q&A is a cesspool of whoever can spam "ASTEROIDS? ASTEROIDS? ASTEROIDS? ASTEROIDS? ASTEROIDS?" the loudest and fastest. Without a moderator to screen questions and pick the intelligent ones, the conversation is simply not going to be interesting.
I think I also agree with a couple of the OP's points. I once watched a stream with a friend and he pointed out similar things. I study game development so I know from experience, that programmers (really no offence) are often a bit more socially awkward. I learnt to live with it and know how to deal with it, because I came to understand their nature a bit more . Unfortunately most people do not have this luxury and may not understand Jon's point of view as much. I do not know how exactly how to solve the problem, but I think Jon is not really used to speak out like this yet, which is of course no shame. Note that at school everyone (me included ) is socially awkward to some degree. The ones that weren't mostly dropped out. I think letting someone else pick the questions from the streams could be a good idea as well.
OP has a lot of constructive albeit critical feedback. i don't think anyone in the livestream comes across as shy or awkward as much as just tech guys, they're professionals whose job isn't to deal with live audiences or loud derpy minorities. i would reaffirm that some time spent figuring out these quality of life features on twitch (slow mode, caps delete, link delete, repeat offender temp ban, question grabber) would really help both uber and the community's experience. Given how busy uber is this could be delegated to some savvy community members. I wouldn't say Uber lacks enthusiasm but i'm sure it wanes as a result of livechat. A behind the scenes question grabber would probably help. edit: it isn't lost on me that jon is an "in the scenes" question grabber, it's likely difficult to explain tech as you would to a person and mentally filter the chat of the ensuing poor questions. to ubers credit they've done a very good job so far.
That is basically what I meant, cause and effect are a bit interchangeable here. A lot of people joined my education exactly because they do not want to have to deal with the same sort of peers they had to in high school. Being geeky/nerdy and all did not really make you popular there. But can be a pro in professions like this.
yup wasn't disagreeing i just don't want uber to think they're twitch noobs x) there's a reason the professional streamers are better at this sort of thing, this is what they do.
As has been said, he's a human, not a marketing drone. I like it that he shows emotion, even if its annoyance. :mrgreen: Also, he doesn't own us anything. (Well, technically he owns us one game or die trying attempt.) We kickstarted for the vision. Nowhere in the kickstarter it said, one nice lead developer with infinite patience. Do you know wargaming? Its a Belarussian company that develops the wildly successfull World of Tanks game. The have Q&A sessions on the official forums with the devs (its in russian only though). If you ask stupid questions there, you get banned. If its especially stupid, you get permabanned. If you ask something that got answered plenty of time? Ban. If one didn't read the rules regarding the Q&A? Ban. Etc. That's a healthy attitude I support. :mrgreen: Personally, I'd remove the Q&A session for more tech talks. You seldom get good questions and the format doesn't really provide for good questions. (Having to get through a thousand monkeys hammering on keyboards.) But then, I'm not the one deciding (which is good btw.).
There's two sides to this that I think you have to consider. You make some good points about community relations. Insulting the community isn't productive (although let's hope they aren't insulting too much of the community: that would mean there's a lot of uninformed people!). By insulting, I mean being flat out seriously insulting, not joking. And there's better ways t handle the livestream. I and a few others have suggested hosting a QnA on the forums for better quality of questions, and then answering these on the livestream, thus giving everyone, including those that don't read the forums, more informed and interesting answers. a timer for how often you can post on the stream is a great idea, too...if you saw how fast those questions were moving, it was almost impossible to see any of them, and people did spam them (I was sort of guilty of it ). Moderation would be useless though, simply from the massive quantity of posts, unless you applied the timer. On the other hand, here's a couple things for you to consider: 1. a stupid question that easily could have been found by a minute or two search wastes Uber's time. Which means that not only do we get wasted information, but we get game features slower. Being lazy is no excuse when it's so easy. I mean, we have the internet. It's not even that a question is stupid (as every question has context behind the reader), but it's that they're completely uninformed, and it can get tiresome seeing them over and over again. 2. Uber has an opportunity to do something that no other gaming company has had a chance to do, and that's to show us the development process of this game. No where have I seen so many dev posts, and nowhere have I seen such an early look into this. Thus, they want to try to be as public as possible, and not come off like they're hiding information. Which is why I think they take QnA from the livestreams: to look as transparent as possible. It's a great thing. So, it probably get's really annoying to have to deal with uninformed questions, as if people don't realize just how cool this is. 3. Small matter, but I think you took him out of context when he said "you're lucky to be seeing this at all," he means it. I don't think it's him 'doing us a favor' : we really are lucky. This never happens. Ever. He's being dead serious. Which of course leads to the same outcome from both perspectives: change the format of the QnA. I just hope you understand that, when given an opportunity to see this kind of thing happening, it's really frustrating to both informed players and the devs when so many people squander it, and this comes out in the livestreams a bit. Most people wouldn't say anything, in order to be politically correct: I actually appreciate that they aren't. Let's just hope they change the format up so that every one is happy.
I can honestly say that because I work 7 to 4 I will never be able to ask questions during the live feeds. I also probably wouldn't be asking questions on the spot anyway. Uber's live commentary is by far the most enlightening information from the videos and don't raise a ton of questions, but instead answer questions. I watch them a few times to make sure I digest the storm of information thrown at us visually and verbally. Nuetrino and the rest of the Uber team are champions. They are champions because they are cranking away. People that crank hard can get cranky. Nuetrino is obviously cranking the most. I would much rather have a little crankyness than less interaction with the lead designer. The amount of interaction Nuetrino provides is unprecedented. Uber is Uber. I say stay the course and possibly drop the live questions. Nuetrino is already doing a great job answering question anyway, so this wouldn't be a big loss. Nuetrino could be spending question time updating us on latest developments and current work goals or something else meaningful and interesting like lessons learned so far. I do not think live Questions and Answers are important.
In order to have slow mode and subscription Uber needs to partner with Twitch first. I think Uber should either setup the question grabber or have someone else pick questions. With slow mode it would really help cause there is just 2k people watching so the comments wouldn't be coming in every 0.1 second. In relation to some of the OP's points, Jon picked one of my questions that was related to the blowing up animations, in my opinion they were very similar to how Worms 3D and Worms Mayhem explosions look like and I thought maybe it was related. While Jon was reasonably serious and his answer was alright others laughed at it. Kinda makes you feel bad you know.
As far as i'm concerned, i will not blame Uber for Anything. Uber is a small team, lots of stuff, lots of pressure to achieve huge comitment. Uber is Uber, Nothing can't be perfect.
lol... I just imagined Knight and Nanolathe standing infront of the gate to the uber ent. dev team and being all "YOUUU SHALLLL NOTTT PAAAAASSSSS!" :lol:
We're the two Blue Wizards that got lost in the east. We're back now. Carry on. As to which of us is Alatar and which is Pallando; I'll let you figure it out. --- Or if you prefer... Nobody sees the wizard. Not Nobody! Not No How!
