You are saying in comparison to Godus there are parallels, but also you are saying, you are not saying both do go the same way. If I got it right this is in relation to not listening to the communities opinion.
But if there are parallels and both don’t go the same way, and Godus’ mistake was not to listen to the community, then BL mistake could be to actually listen to the community.
Although it could be I twist things right now, because you definitely encourage to interact with the community. I irritate myself right now. So maybe not to be taken too gravely.
A weekly development update or something would be a strong step in making the game seem more …what’s the word…like it is advancing, a way to show this.
And yes , more Youtube videos with updated materials
@thorbjorn42gbf Thanks for the games mentioned. “We happy few” seems really promising (i played “Contrast” [same devs] and it was awesome). I only named games i am or was part of the EA. I can’t say anything about other games.
Thanks Took me some time and i tried my best with the formulation because english is not my mother tongue.
Yeah … maybe i screwed the formulation. Let me clear this … Godus and B< share that there was a lot of communication in the beginning. As development continues the godus devs start to ignore the opinion of the players (they added an ingame cash-shop [one of the reasons i’m against cash-shops even for vanity], gameplay changed to grind and freemium) and that’s something i’m scared which could happen to B< too (the start / beginning is parallel - hope the outcome is different). At the moment i’ve the feeling the devs “start to ignore” our concerns and doubts. Let me make an example … both, @Saint_X and i wrote a PM to @james almost a month ago, we both don’t got any answer on our PM and this is not a good sign. Even a “Sorry, no time” would have been better than no answer at all.
@TrueGormagon Hint: You can edit your answers to answer more than one person per post. You can also mention other forum users with a “@” before the name and they’ll get notified. It’s “ugly style” to post multiple answers in a row because it’s harder to read and it’s swell post counter.
Thank you for the well presented and balanced post. We really appreciate the time you’ve put into this, and your desire to improve things.
This is something that is very important to us, and @james and I have had a quick conversation about what we need to do to address the issues you raise.
James is very keen to reply to this fully himself, but unfortunately for personal reasons he is unavailable now, and may be over the weekend too. We may have to ask for your patience for a little longer until James has the opportunity to respond, but we will get back to you (on Monday at the latest), and we work out what we need to do to keep the community with us as we develop the game into the awesome thing we all want it to be.
Hey, at least it wasn´t posted & forgotten like the Dev Q&A Video #1 that was posted almost a year ago
But you are right, the result of the new Q&A thread was quite disappointing, I thought that most oft the questions would´ve been answered withing a few weeks to a month (with “We don´t know yet but will answer this asap” as a perfectly fine answer).
I also have to say that some of the given answers were pretty disappointing too (sorry @olliepurkiss but the Q&A: End Game thread was quite underwhelming)
that’s good to hear, i’m looking forward to read your answers
You are right, that was really sad
Yes i also hoped that. Unfortunately this topic died too after only a few (and partially incomplete) answers.
Sorry @olliepurkiss, i have to agree on this. I hoped for more than an enumeration and i hoped for much more “concepts” you show answering such a question.
The end game thread was made in response to people wanting to have a general idea about what the endgame was supposed to be as we where discussing progression, I really wanted more for that answer too, but it was deffinetly enough to deffine some of the endgame challenges for the discussion.
Banished was/is a nice game, it is a small game but it is nice an makes real fun. From time to time i play some rounds. The game had a BIG developer team, 1 player so far i know ^^.
Like @Heurazio i had played this game. I found the game to start very well, but only after a short time, the game get little changes and became increasingly pay to win. and the game was nearly death. Good start but a bad end.
If you writing something down, the player who has not installed the game, could awaken the interest of players and therefore install the game and invite other players.
You must not writing a such big post like @Heurazio first Post, ~10-20 line (30-60 minutes to write something) is enough to awake the interrest of a player
You can find every time anything what is interresting, talk about trading, collecting, woldbuilder or any idea you had in the developer team. If you say nothing you lost the community
~0.2% active players in the forum is not so good, at the time i have joined the game the forum activitie was higher. in the last time i see only every time the same player answer. I think 1 problem is to less information from the dev`s, the community needs something which they can discuss, and in between a few answer.
this is a good idea
i prefer text form, cost not so much time to create and i can read it from everywhere, and it is easier to understand often.
we get 1 answer, he said we get our answer after his holiday, on the next monday, but we never get the answer, after 1-2 weeks later i write to @james if he forget to answer but i still wait for any answer.
good to know, i hope it has helped the big post from @Heurazio that we get now more informations
I had finally time to read the giant post and then also respond to it ^^
I’ve been thinking a little bit about this, and I think a good format could be a podcast. We don’t always have something to show, but we often have something to say. Posting reams of text or informal ideas feels wrong and often if we do we get held to this later on, can be a bit confusing if you’re trying to understand the journey of development. It’s also a good format to answer questions, and a great format for me to accidentally leak stuff because it’s hard for me to edit after the fact
(By the way, I understand and acknowledge the concerns in this thread. They’re totally valid, especially for an early access game. But you can rest assured that if we’re not really active on the forum we’re spending more time working on the game and upcoming features.)
As I said in my last post, @james wants to reply to this himself, but unfortunately for personal reasons he will be unavailable for the foreseeable future. So you’re stuck with me and @ben!
Firstly I’d like to say that we completely accept your concerns about communication, it hasn’t been good enough for an early access game. We will work with you guys as much as we can to improve matters, so please continue to let us know if what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong.
I’d like to say a couple of things about where we are:
Everything that gets posted on the forum is read by us and taken on board. We are constantly integrating your ideas into the design and your opinions are referred to during our discussions.
Our lack of communication is not a lack of desire or interesting in keeping you up to date, it is purely because we’re trying to fit it in to our working days and it often gets pushed off the end of the list. As you point out, this shouldn’t be the case, and we will fix it.
The last few months have had all the coders porting the game to C++, this has made it harder to give interesting updates. Now we are moving back on to new features there should be a lot more to talk about.
Up until now we’ve been leaving it to individual people to post as and when they can fit it in, and hoping that will get the right information out there. That’s not worked, so instead we’re going to try a weekly update, which as @ben has already mentioned may take the form of a podcast or a hangout. We’ll do one this week and take it from there. I will also continue to answer the questions in the Q&A thread as quickly as I can.
If you want to speak to us directly please message @ben, @james and myself together and one of us will get back to you.
Can you make this a Youtube Video - please no live-stream (I’m sure most of us can’t attend a live-stream either because of time offset or because of available time). Personally i’d prefer a text because it’s easier to quote and talk about but a video would work too if it’s easier for you.
That’s good to hear, i really appreciate this attitude. Rest assured that i always express all my concerns.
Even if it’s good to here that you integrate our ideas (which i’ve never doubted) i see a problem with this (and that’s one of the main reasons for me that i wrote this topic). I’ve made a BPMN diagram for better explanation but i try my best to explain it in text to for everyone not familiar with the diagram syntax.
This picture shows my current feeling / understanding of the EA in B< (which is hopefully superseded now) which feels like a “monologue”. After we’ve received the initial definition of the concept there was no new (or very little) information flow about new concepts to us. Even if you integrate all our ideas an refine your game concept there is a problem that there are different understandings of the game. There is your “Game concept” which is refined and detailed. You know what to do and how things work and there is our very crude “Idea of the game”. Since we do not know what your concept of the game is, it’s really really hard to offer helpful, new ideas or come up with things we’d like to see because we don’t have the insights of your concept. Maybe we’d have super cool new ideas if we would know what’s going on. Furthermore there are different “Ideas of the game” for every single player because the concepts of the game offered by you (the devs) are most likely small leaks in sub-clauses. Not everyone is aware of everything you said and therefore it’s hart to start a solid and productive discussian about a topic.
The diagram above shows my understanding of “how” EA should work (and how i saw it in successful EA games) and what i hope to see (more) in the future. This concept is a real “dialogue” between devs and community. As you can see the most important point in this diagram is on the one hand that there is a “Common Game Concept” which is known to everyone. On the other hand there is a message / information flow into both directions (devs → players | players → devs). You you come up with “New Concepts” (build on the “Common Game Concept”) and when you share it with us we can come up with “Ideas and Notes” in direct relation to your “New Concept”. In this way a discussion can be build on solid informations and can be much more productive and constructive. An other benefit is, that you don’t need to be scared if we like the result or not (you get feedback immediately) and that the iteration can be accelerated (if we now what you plan we can work on concepts that fit into the current “Common Game Concept” and fewer time is wasted with ideas that won’t fit in the game - therefore there is less reading and tweaking overhead for you).
[quote=“olliepurkiss, post:16, topic:4141”]
Up until now we’ve been leaving it to individual people to post [but] That’s not worked, so instead we’re going to try a weekly update[/quote]
This is an excellent adaptation and i’m looking forward to it.
it is now more than a month passed since i wrote this topic. In my opinion it’s now the time for a small recap about what has changed, what is good and where there is still need for optimization.
The New
The changes in the past month showed clearly that this game is not abandoned by the devs. I think this is a good sign for a lot of players and a clear message for all who thought the game was dead (especially in the steam review section).
In the past four weeks we saw a dramatically increased number of dev posts and devlog posts and i hope we will see a lot more in the next time. Also the amount of shared informations changed from “show what we have” more into the direction of “show what we want to accomplish with the game”. This is a good starting point for further discussions within the community and with the devs.
In my opinion it’s also a good sign that all devs are much more active in the forum now. We saw a lot of posts by “other” devs than “only” @james or @ben.
The Good
What are the good changes in the past:
More Devlog Topics
Content changed from “what we have” to “what we want to accomplish with the game”
More dev activity in the forum
Game-Concepts shared (eg. Guild beacons, beacon persistence to name only a few)
More regular updates (thanks to the C++ port i think)
The Bad
It’s still pitty to see that only a few of the questions from the question appeal topic have been answered completely (after that long time). Also a lot of the answers are “vague” and not really clear (usually only after demand - if there is one).
Only few questions from “Questions Appeal” were answered completely
Vague answers about questions
Often necessary to ask for details
Difficult to understand / see how the player opinion affects your decisions
@james Last but not least some things are forgotten (maybe because you have a lot to do - but you said this on April 18 [20 days ago]) like:
Conclusion
The “new” communication strategy is going in the right direction and is a lot more what i’d expect from a EA game than the prior strategy. It’s also obvious that you care for your community and you want to deliver the best game possible.
i hope you will continue with the current strategy and don’t drop it again. Thanks that you took my concerns so seriously (@james, @olliepurkiss, @ben and all other in the team).
I’m looking forward on what is coming and i think you do a great job
Even if @Havok40k is joking I agree with this. There should be at least an official dev log with the trailer or something according to the event. It’s “unusual” to skip a weekly devlog without any info (yes I know there have been posts, but not in the devlog category … I’m tiered of always naming the obvious …). There have been a lot of delays in the last time too (yes, I know @james was ill).
Never the less the devlog time should be respected. In the meanwhile, Factorio had it’s #168 Friday fact in time … they can do it … why now Boundless ? (Because deadlines are “boundless” ? )
Took me some time and i tried my best with the formulation because english is not my mother tongue.
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