I recently posted comments in another thread which I would like to make widely visible via this thread. Comments below:
For clarification, my goal with this thread is to help bring things into perspective for some members in the community. To the new Uber Community Manager, is there anything you can share with the community about the type/style of information that we can expect to receive from you? Edit: What happened to the announcement thread where the new Uber Community Manager was introduced? Was it deleted intentionally?
Beautiful post, I'm glad I found somebody else with a like opinion to mine and better able to put it into words.
I agree. The shitstorm re: orbital reflects the high level of passion in the community, but it's important that the passion is harnessed in constructive positive ways. There's a wide set of views on what 'orbital' should look like for example, but there's a shared set of objectives: fun, awesome, etc which we can all agree with. I always knew the honeymoon period would be when everyone just had their own little 'perfect' picture of their ideal PA in their minds, and that as these got challenged by the real implementation, people would respond vigorously. Uber have done an 'awesome' job thus far and it'll continue in that vein. I've had a great time playing online. I'll look forward to the unfolding of the game - which, while supported by us, is Uber's to make, not ours. The stakes are highest for them too; if they want an enduring and profitable franchise they'll use the unique feedback mechanism the 'backer/forum' structure provides. Naturally this group is skewed into the ultra-keen category though, so to make it accessible more broadly than that, sometimes decisions will happen that not everyone will love. That's ok!
Nice comments. Also, I think you bring up a good point in your last paragraph. Uber is in a tough position to please the backers who made the game possible and also appeal to a wide audience (via less complex game mechanics) in order to bring in the most revenue possible. At the end of the day, the devs have bills to pay and personal aspirations just like the rest of us. As long as everyone tries to be constructive and stay positive, passionate discussions will only help to make PA better. If not by the devs directly, then perhaps by the modding community I hope that the new community manager shares some info soon about the quantity/quality of communication that we can expect moving forward. Edits: Added comment in parenthesis for clarification.
Well heck, I can't turn down what basically amounts to an invitation now can I? Best part is that I already talked about this kind of thing. I think then the issue is that they gave us the wrong data. What we got in the last patch(52512) isn't really worth all that much as it's isn't representative. As a seed for meaningful discussion it's only worth is to draw out what people were hoping for but you could have gotten the same thing by just asking. I think that instead had we gotten a few paragraphs(or more, more is good too) summarizing what Uber sees as the end goal is for Orbital would have gotten much more mileage. If Uber isn't confident enough yet to share that vision/goal publicly yet that's fine, but it help if you at least let us know that's the case and if you can why it's the case. I hope this acts as a lesson for future Information Sharing, elements like Gas Giants, and to a degree Inter-planetary stuff are things that we know very very little about so far with little Dev interaction aside from some very 'high concept' type stuff like Gas Giants having HE3 as a resource or that there will be certain transportation options, but even then it's not really solid/useful information. And that was great info to have back then, but we're in a stage where the community has covered those topics in depth and matured to the stage that we want more details, something we can really sink our teeth into to revitalize these topics. We want more than just the 'what', we also want the 'why' and 'how' so we can form that complete picture and get a better grasp of it all. I Don't think anyone wants information about Gas Giant implementation to cause a repeat of this, because lets be honest, no one is happy about this situation, both sides are just unhappy about different things. I think this is more of a recent attitude, the several months after the kickstarter saw a lot comments and discussion, but it was a lot of the 'high concept' type stuff it was vague in any number of regards or for a variety of (mostly valid) reasons but to be fair that kind of stuff is also easy to do, 'low risk' in a way. In the long run that kind of feedback can't sustain the community forever, especially as we see how the game is making leaps forward in Live Streams and eventually the Alpha/Beta itself. I think Uber had a really hard time figuring out how to move on from that content and with good reason. PA and Uber is really one of the 'trail blazers' for this level of sharing and community involvement, there will be bumpy times but we can't sit back and just give them a free pass for everything. They need to reach out to us in the same way we've reached out to them. Make no mistake, Uber has in many ways gone above and beyond(this is the early post-KS stage mostly) but honestly I think they might have burned themselves out a bit and that they aren't quite matching up to those earlier days. Orbitals, Gas Giants, Interplanetary are all things that weren't as fleshed out in back then and we've seeing the effects of that now. The problem is not so much that there isn't communication going on or that what is there is specifically bad, it's that the content has evolved with the projects and that Uber seems to be somewhat afraid of commitment, look at the Alpha Commander Thread, we get some feedback but as the discussion evolves they go silent and it's been over a month now. No update of even if the issue is being discussed or if we are even having any impact. This whole process is like a giant puzzle, we have the cover of the box, but some parts are blurry and we only have a handful of pieces that don't connect to each other. We ask for more pieces or to un-blur the box so we get a better idea of what's what and we essentially get silence or a new random piece that doesn't fit with any of the pieces we already have. They ask us to not read into the limited information we have but don't want to provide us with more concrete info. It's a bit of a catch-22 really. Mike
I actually think that this response about all the orbital stuff is fine, and maybe within the realm of possibilities that Uber expected, loud reactions can help pipoint the issues and sometimes come with suggestions that may/ may not be helpful. Yes the silence on issues after an issues comes up and concerns are loudly made is frustrating. It either means they're either busy/thinking or ignoring it. And yes people are now starting to express opinions along that later, because after a while of not hearing things people will start collecting on that opinion regardless of what's happening because that's what it feels like. If the goal is getting the community involved in the development, I think the community needs slightly more than waiting for patches to come that address the relevant issue (which due to the iterative process could be a while). I don't like calling for the devs to do anything, I feel like a whiny kid when I do so. But I think having a way of saying "yes we have heard you, please keep talking"(Garat has in my mind been saying this) that isn't buried in pages of postings of people feeling neglected or angsty about their specific concern. A sticky or a new topic even just saying "We heard your concern and we are doing X" would help, where X could be as nonspecific as Uber is comfortable with(examples may be 'are waiting to get more feedback','having loud internal discussions','contemplating things','continuing as planned'(be careful with that last one...)). I see the community as kind of like how one of my brothers is. You surprise them and they potentially get very loud and angry (basically any change at all that isn't expected, and since this is a game in development we are expecting a fair amount of change), but you tell them they're getting something cool/shiny and then hand it to them, they will be ecstatic. And yes, I am one of these people too
Because you are simply seeing in progress work and then trying to interpret it. Don't read so much into stuff. We simply build stuff and integrate it into builds. It's almost as if people don't believe me when I tell them that. This is why I specifically laid out the basics of orbital units in another post. I described it to the best of my knowledge. I've said this over and over and over and over again. We don't know, we build things using iteration. I've described the high level goals here at the same level of detail someone on the team would get. The information simply isn't available yet. Here is everything currently known about gas giants: - they will be large - you can't land on them so you can only have orbital units around them - there will be specific units meant to mine them from orbit so they can be used as resources (specifically a fusion gas mine that creates energy) The fact is that we are simply much busier now than we were at the beginning of the project and something has to suffer. Hence hiring a community manager. The team is bigger, there are more moving parts and we are under more time pressure than ever. Keep in mind a lot of this stuff was stretch goals too. We are pushing forward into areas where we have much more limited experience that are riskier in terms of development. People can get mad at me for being conservative on what we put into the game but there are hard limits to our development time. Not sure what you are saying here actually. I'm not afraid of commitment at all. It's more about getting things done. Now you are getting it! It looks like this to us as well. You guys actually seem to think we have it all figured out and tied up with a magic bow. That's not how game development works and is the thing I've been trying to explain. As we say in the industry, "Making games is hard." So yes it is a catch-22.
So if you don't have a plan either, where is the problem with sharing your own (incomplete) concepts with the community? They are probably coming to the same or at least similar conclusions as you would, but they are faster at that job, because for each single Uber employee, there are at least 5-10 of us who are not less dedicated to the game than you are. (At least part time.) You all are under pressure, thats just natural. But part of that pressure can be relieved, by making proper use of a resource you wouldn't have available under regular conditions: The community. A bunch of maniacs who had enough trust / interest in the project to pay for it on Kickstarter, who write theoretical essays about the game every day, extrapolating every possible feature and who often enough have great ideas how to achieve certain goals with minimal effort. It usually takes a few days until the majority comes to an consensus, but if you ask for feedback early on, you are going to have the results just in time - or at least a collection of well thought approaches, including analysis on advantages and disadvantages for each possible solution.
Regarding these comments, please reference the following post from Garat (especially second half): and the following comment in the post from Neutrino above:
I'll try and hit the high points here; Where was this? Either it's older and I've forgotten it or it's recent and I haven't come across it yet. These are details we've already known about for quite some time thought, these are neat facts and all, but we've pretty much talked about everything we can based on this and I doubt you don't have further ideas about how those systems will actually function from a gameplay perspective just as the community has come up with many, many ideas and theories over the last year but we have no idea how relate-able they are to your own. I can appreciate that you don't know what will stick to the wall until you throw it at the wall but if I had to guess, people want more involvement/transparency on the stuff that happens before something sticks. Especially for things like orbital and Gas Giants where we just haven't had much to create a foundations for our ideas and theories. To try for a cooking analogy, the community wants more time in the kitchen throwing spagetti at the walls instead of waiting in the dinning for the cooked meal. This was more so aiming at the specific content rather than the time frames and such. This is mostly in the vein that in my experience it's been hard getting things followed up on for the most part, we get a new Timbit of info dropped on us but getting follow up questions answered about it have been few and far between. Mike
In the orbital example thread. I basically laid out the main ways of moving between planets. I suppose there could be more detail on orbital units themselves but I'm waiting on some major technical pieces to be finished so we can properly play with them. I simply don't know how to do that in a constructive manner. The amount of content you guys can create far outstrips my ability and time to respond. For example other than a meeting I had at lunch and answering a few questions I've spent my entire workday on the forum today without getting very far. I went to Germany for a week. I think if I'd been here answering stuff people would have been happier about it. This is why we've hired a full time community manager to help facilitate communication. Keep in mind that I was working 100 hour weeks early on and I've scaled back a bit as well. I'm human.
Those are crazy hours! Good you've scaled it back, I think most people prefer their game developers not to drop dead from overwork (especially when the game is still not done! ).
My overall feel is that the game is progressing supremely (!) well, each new build is like getting a mini christmas present, and it's easy to get a skewed view because of a vocal minority. The average knowledge level of game development is pretty high among some of the alpha group so those vocal few are often onto something - but perspective is essential.
When he starts. ;-) Which will not be til September. Which I am eagerly anticipating. Not because I want to talk less, but so I can be more focused in discussing issues and design, and a host of other things, rather than that, and also being one of the forum good cop/bad cops.
