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Ideas for improved Dev Communication (no nerd raging/arguing please)
Archived Post
Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
It's noted in the title, but I will reiterate again here. Please, pretty please with sugar on top, no arguing, flaming, nerd raging, etc. Let's keep it constructive, keep it simple, and just keep things moving along.
Reading the forums as of late, seeing all the distraught posts of unsatisfied customers, people leaving, people demanding information from the Developers, it actually makes me feel discouraged which doesn't happen often.
I think of the Cryptic Team I remember way way back in the earlier time in City of Heroes, I think of the potential they have with things such as the Halloween event which I thought was spectacular, and easily one of the most enjoyable events I've played in a game in quite some time. Then I see the current state of their new game here, and I feel disappointed, but I know things can be improved.
I realize most of their "non CO-Dev energies are indeed focused on STO" but when the game first released it seems that things were on the right track (despite the big turnaround on release day), but things started taking a dive downhill, and things need to get evened back out.
Jack has made the claim that he wants Cryptic to be the #1 company for Developer interaction, which is why I've created this thread. We all know his wish for their to be more Dev communication. He's said it, we've been screaming for it. But how about we simply make some suggestions for how this could be done?
And no, this has nothing to do with the secret top secret mission impossible plans for "soon" "early 2010." Having said that, please do not let this derail into a 2010 update discussion. This is about communication in general, to know how the games going, what's being fixed, and where the game's going.
TLDR;
If you have an idea for how the Devs can present information in an easy to digest way to understand the current state of some facet of the game, post it here please.
I'll start with a few.
- Month's top gameplay bugs / issues being worked on
More than likely problems with greatest impact on gameplay are top priority.
What are these things that you are trying to improve. Even if some of the same
items appear near the top of this list from month to month, knowing the problem
is being addressed in some manner is good for us.
- Power balance priority list
The developers have created various stickies requesting feedback from the players
to see what they would like improved (sorcery, gadgeteering, supernatural,
melee, pets etc.). Some of these frameworks have seen their pass, others have not.
Which powerset are you working on, and are you satisfied with your progress?
- Bring back Dev Chats
On a regular basis, maybe every two or three months, gather questions on the forums
about what players want to know, good thoughtful questions that you know you won't have
to beat around the bush about, and sit down and give us a few answers regarding the game
you know the players would like to see answered, and more importantly, things that you
are allowed to answer.
- Bring back the "State of the Game" posts
These don't have to be every month, but to see posts like this regarding how the game is
so far and where you'd like to see the game heading was refreshing even if I didn't
necessarily agree with the developer's viewpoint. Just to know that they are aware
of the game and have foresight for things to come makes me feel at ease.
- Public Test Server & Patch Notes
Yes, the Devs have explained time and again that they essentially want to give us a sneak
preview of whats going on before they give us the notes, and they want to make sure the build
is stable before the patch notes are released, but I'd like to think the process can be
improved. If anyone recalls the patch released on January 4th, you can imagine the horror
and dismay that can be caused by patch notes on the test server.
We first waited for notes, and when they were released there were nerfs and damage reductions
as far as the eye can see. The public test server wasn't exactly in an "uproar" but people
were considerably upset and confused until four days later, Ame had to step in and inform us
that the patch notes we received on January 4th, were essentially incomplete changes from
a server build we were never meant to experience in the first place.
I will wait for notes if I have to, but please, check and doubely check to make sure the
notes for the changes you have intended are as accurate as possible so we can go in to
make sure the changes you want to make are what they're meant to be.
So c'mon in, drop in a suggestion, and hopefully after Star Trek Online is released and things settle back down, the Devs can start taking actions to keep us informed about the state of the game and where the game's heading.
Reading the forums as of late, seeing all the distraught posts of unsatisfied customers, people leaving, people demanding information from the Developers, it actually makes me feel discouraged which doesn't happen often.
I think of the Cryptic Team I remember way way back in the earlier time in City of Heroes, I think of the potential they have with things such as the Halloween event which I thought was spectacular, and easily one of the most enjoyable events I've played in a game in quite some time. Then I see the current state of their new game here, and I feel disappointed, but I know things can be improved.
I realize most of their "non CO-Dev energies are indeed focused on STO" but when the game first released it seems that things were on the right track (despite the big turnaround on release day), but things started taking a dive downhill, and things need to get evened back out.
Jack has made the claim that he wants Cryptic to be the #1 company for Developer interaction, which is why I've created this thread. We all know his wish for their to be more Dev communication. He's said it, we've been screaming for it. But how about we simply make some suggestions for how this could be done?
And no, this has nothing to do with the secret top secret mission impossible plans for "soon" "early 2010." Having said that, please do not let this derail into a 2010 update discussion. This is about communication in general, to know how the games going, what's being fixed, and where the game's going.
TLDR;
If you have an idea for how the Devs can present information in an easy to digest way to understand the current state of some facet of the game, post it here please.
I'll start with a few.- Month's top gameplay bugs / issues being worked on
More than likely problems with greatest impact on gameplay are top priority.
What are these things that you are trying to improve. Even if some of the same
items appear near the top of this list from month to month, knowing the problem
is being addressed in some manner is good for us.
- Power balance priority list
The developers have created various stickies requesting feedback from the players
to see what they would like improved (sorcery, gadgeteering, supernatural,
melee, pets etc.). Some of these frameworks have seen their pass, others have not.
Which powerset are you working on, and are you satisfied with your progress?
- Bring back Dev Chats
On a regular basis, maybe every two or three months, gather questions on the forums
about what players want to know, good thoughtful questions that you know you won't have
to beat around the bush about, and sit down and give us a few answers regarding the game
you know the players would like to see answered, and more importantly, things that you
are allowed to answer.
- Bring back the "State of the Game" posts
These don't have to be every month, but to see posts like this regarding how the game is
so far and where you'd like to see the game heading was refreshing even if I didn't
necessarily agree with the developer's viewpoint. Just to know that they are aware
of the game and have foresight for things to come makes me feel at ease.
- Public Test Server & Patch Notes
Yes, the Devs have explained time and again that they essentially want to give us a sneak
preview of whats going on before they give us the notes, and they want to make sure the build
is stable before the patch notes are released, but I'd like to think the process can be
improved. If anyone recalls the patch released on January 4th, you can imagine the horror
and dismay that can be caused by patch notes on the test server.
We first waited for notes, and when they were released there were nerfs and damage reductions
as far as the eye can see. The public test server wasn't exactly in an "uproar" but people
were considerably upset and confused until four days later, Ame had to step in and inform us
that the patch notes we received on January 4th, were essentially incomplete changes from
a server build we were never meant to experience in the first place.
I will wait for notes if I have to, but please, check and doubely check to make sure the
notes for the changes you have intended are as accurate as possible so we can go in to
make sure the changes you want to make are what they're meant to be.
So c'mon in, drop in a suggestion, and hopefully after Star Trek Online is released and things settle back down, the Devs can start taking actions to keep us informed about the state of the game and where the game's heading.
Post edited by Archived Post on
0
Comments
Here are some suggestions from Captain Obvious:
"Oh yeah they should give interviews containing significant information, answer our bug reports with something better than a generic response, and spend more time posting on the forums."
The real problem is that they aren't spending enough money on this game to keep subscribers satisfied, let alone to attract new ones. The communication will not go up until the resources allocated to this game go up.
Having a monthly report on the state of the game would indeed be useful. They must have a to-do list somewhere which could be published on the forums (with all the hush hush stuff removed from it) explaining what fixes they are working on over the coming month. It'd help to ease fears of people, the trolls will always complain, but us general fans will feel much more secure having a visual representation on what they are aiming to fix.
The problem with this approach understandably would be if something didnt go to plan and wasnt sorted by the end of the month, but thats nothing putting it to the top of next months to do list wouldnt fix. If theres a genuine problem other than time allocation then a brief explanation.
Isometry has a point, but a lot of the things being developed do need a lot of time to be made and with Roper's stranglehold on the release of info we arent allowed to know what goodies await us. An 'upcoming content' post or a 'Things we'd like to add' post by the devs, where things can be shown to us with no release dates given could quell some of the worries.
I doubt you have any more insight into what's going on in Cryptic HQ than anyone else outside the company so you really can't make an unfounded call like that.
Edit: keeping it cool. What seems more likely to you:
1. They have the desire and the resources but don't know how.
2. They have the desire and they know how but don't have the resources.
I hope for the best for the game future and will exit the thread now!
Or option 3: Throwing resources at something isn't going to make it go faster. In fact, old saying appplies to every type of project, too many chefs can ruin the soup, or something like that anyways. Same principle.
It is going to take time for changes to occur, there is and never will be a make it now button.
It would have had so much more impact there.
The devs have been doing a lot of communication. In fact there are a lot of posts everywhere in almost all forums with DEV POST headers on them and you can go straight to the Dev Post forum and see all the posts from devs there. They've bene posting a lot I don't think they could really improve communication more. The problem is, people want information on the big update. And besides teh little hints, they aren't ready to give us the main course yet. Just been giving us apetizers, and people don't want to be content with that.
This is true. It would have undoubtedly had good merit in your thread, and communication is obviously a hot topic at the moment. I'm hoping we can get some civil suggestions collected here, and maybe the Devs will take a step back and think about the ideas we gather here versus what plans they have for communication so we can get the foundation for better Developer to Gamer relations.
I won't deny there has been a surge of Dev posts as of late on a few key things. But aside from the few I've seen lately such as the ones discussing problems with Lemuria, are they posts of true merit. Truly informative things such as the few ideas I posted in the original post?
A regular relay on the current situation of the various facets of the game that need work and feedback I feel would be more conducive than the sporadic (yet sometimes helpful) posts the Devs have been making as of late.
Yes, they are quite a few of them. Again go read the Dev Posts forum. That will give you every dev post ever made.
I'm well aware of the Dev Tracker and have seen the many posts they have made recently. I still, however, stand by my previously stated opinion.
And I will acert, just because it's an answer you don't want to hear doesn't mean it doesn't have any use or value at all. Again, they've been talking, they were talking more than any other dev team before the surge of posts in fact.
I never said the answers they give are ones that have no value. They are helpful and informative, yet sporadic is what I said. I'm just looking to gather ideas from the community on how they can relay information to the community on a regular basis in an orderly fashion.
*Philosophical Content Disabled*
I like bagels!
I know a dev posted lately that they need time to create clips and pics and presentations or else too much is left to the imagination and the boards would tear themselves apart ...
... that is total B.S.
All that is needed is a list of priorities and the most general time line imaginable. As it stands now we have to look through several boards to garner information about upcoming patches. Content updates are mentioned throughout boards, balance issues on test but with no details lately on whats to come, tech issues on other other boards as well buried within posts and dev tracker impossible to look up quickly as it is listed by date and mixed with several different language threads.
A monthly locked and stickied thread with current development update focus would be sweet. Updated each Friday with a response so we don't feel abandoned over the weekend (mostly tech issues likely). Overview of future content focus, current test summary and next planned test focus, current tech issues and priority list, links to last dev chat transcripts etc.
I truly feel it doesn't take much information to keep players happy nor does it need to be horribly detailed. This can quell a great deal of frustration with little effort.
There was a test server, but players were not allowed to access it, but some could through some computer trickery, but a GM would soon boot them out, and subsequent infractions would earn them a ban. The test server was there only for SE to test their patches. No information about what was in testing was ever made known to players.
Updates were made once every 3 months with small "fixes" in-between for exploits or other issues that needed to be resolved. I can't say this is how it was from day one, or even from just three months into the game as it was out for about a year before it came to North America, but I started close to that NA launch and played for 4 years and this was the way it always was and it was always on schedule.
When updates were about to go live, they would give players a few tiny tidbits of info about a month before, and then again two weeks before. Finally on release day, the full patch information was released, HOWEVER, everything was still very heh.. "cryptic" in that they didn't disclose "buffs" or "nerfs" (they used the word "adjusted" frequently but never indiciated the direction) and never fully explained ways in which mechanisms were changed, leaving players to figure out the changes for themselves.
All other times, there was very little information coming from the SE devs. They would post stories and lore, but not much about the state of the game or whats happening, or even keep players up to date very much on current known issues - except if it was something to do with not being able to log in. It wasn't until about 3 years into the game that they started to release reports regarding their fight against RMT cartels and their clients. It was nice to know that they were combatting RMT and they were taking it seriously, but even to this day there are still sites out there that offer FFXI gil.
All this said, Cryptic has been VERY accomodating to players compared to this one other company. They have given us access to their test server, they have kept up communications regarding a plethora of issues and they are frequenting their forums and responding to players. They DO listen to suggestions (I've seen a few suggestions that I and others have made implemented). They have been pushing out update after update, mostly every few weeks. They have (and hopefully will) continue to provide dev chats and state of the game addresses as I feel it does bring the players "closer" to the devs.
I think Cryptic has set themself up for a bit of community backlash, but it obviously was not intentional. They have made the community eager for patch notes and information regarding changes to the game because they have been providing information and changes to the game relatively quickly in such a short amount of time. They announced that there will be some big update in 2010 and left it at that, and I think this has left a sour taste in many community member's mouths (myself excluded...), but it also doesn't help that STO appears to be their focus right now. However, I for one do not expect them to keep up the communication and game changes as much as they have in the past, but I'm sure they'll continue to exceed SE's own standard for community relations.
Abandon the blind adherence to spreadsheets. And start to look at powers in the OPEN system from the perspective of ... the OPEN system.
Get people who can basically see the forest AND the trees. Because as of now, power balancing is just one huge headache due to their approach. For them. And for us.
I think weekly dev chats are the thing I miss the most.
There needs to be no curtain, no hidden items coming months from now. The entire gameplan needs to be on the table. But they'll never do that, because they know if you tell subscribers that this legendary update is coming in May, that give nobody an incentive to pay until then. They're aware that in its current form, CO does not have a leg to stand on, and that's something they'll never accurately admit to.
That'd be a great start, but Daeke has already put his foot down on the whole 'When we're ready and not a moment before' idea. That's their definition of improved dev communication, it would seem.
In-Game Announcements
In game announcements? Why? Well, it just occured to me that there are times as we've recently seen on the forums were the Developers require feedback on powersets, events, etc. Even now, more specifically, they want feedback on the Lemuria fix so they can try and push it to live as soon as possible.
It's also commonly assumed that only a small portion of a given game's population checks or is even aware of the forums. If the Developers were to make ingame announcements such as "Hey, we'd like your feedback on X so we can make changes / fixes as quickly as possible. Please be sure to go to [insert forum link here] and tell us what you think." maybe more people would come to the forums. Not necessarily to post more crazy banter, but to at least go to the stickies and feedback threads, and give the Devs more of the feedback they want to make better, more informed changes based on the opinions of the players.
You shouldn't have to go looking in the forums for the dev posts to see that they are still here. There should be something posted there twice a week at a minimum. If you look back through the past there a lot of things that can be posted here.
I like the state of the game idea as well as the biographies. Maybe even a post that says we are still wroking on the next patch and ironing out the bugs. Check it out on the PTS if you wish. Something to let the world know that there is still people there and working. Heck you can even do a post on the big post of the week, what people's concerns are, etc. etc.
It is Jan 22 and the last post was Jan 12 and the 5th before that. It just seems so sparse and unloved.
What I've found most frustrating is that I generally have no idea if any of them, or some other posters' ideas of similar detail, have even been read by developers, and I am generally left wondering if I'm wasting my time with effort beyond a certain extent, or if one particular failing or thing I haven't considered or discussed clearly, but could address, is a stumbling block for my efforts being useful, and I just don't know it.
However, I do understand (or, rather, theorize, and hope is the reason for a lack of response sometimes) that a developer responding to some types of discussion might invite a scope of conversation that might reveal things that might be distorted without complete context or directly touch on plans precluded from discussion under the policies for future content.
So, what I'd propose is a system that provides a time efficient (for the game developers...not for the web developer I think Cryptic had a job opening for...?
The functionality would be something like a post/thread voting/rating display system some forums have...except, well...not voting at all. It would be a marker/indicator that would allow devs, perhaps listed by name for some of the options if they so chose, to say "I looked at this" with (at most) a click instead of taking time for a carefully worded and sanitized specific response, though it isn't intended to replace those responses.
I'd propose something like the following:
This should be "common as dirt" for suggestions, and occasional for various complaints (even hostile ones), more common for especially frequent ones, to go with addressing complaints with postings/updates.
This should be common for constructive suggestions and complaints, with general discussion in the suggested "updates" touching on as many suggestions as possible as well.
This should be restricted to usage where a post really does reflect things that are being considered, to avoid giving the impression that it is used to just try and "throw a bone" at a user. This would work best with some of the various methods of weekly, monthly, and/or dev chat methodologies of discussing issues under consideration, so specific posts don't have to be replied to when a general discussion of why certain types of suggestions or why a specific issue is handled in a certain way in those discussions would apply to it.
I think this should be a very small and subtle indication that you have to look for next to a post/thread...this should not be a badge that encourages ego inflation and authority-by-proxy behavior, or at least doesn't unduly lend itself to having that effect. Just plain colored dots, or cute and unobtrusive little icons like an eye/arrow/"thinker" profile, in a circle; with posts from staff still being posted, elaborating requests and information and re-assuring posters as currently done, hopefully with increased frequency, to go with it.
I think this could have at least some effect in enriching the communication between Cryptic and at least the customers who frequent the forums, and provides a time efficient (after implementation) way to provide drastically increased communication, and an opportunity to make the forums a more positive environment. Well, assuming it is feasible to implement.
This seems especially well suited to threads started to solicit feedback on a specific topic, where attention would be focused by both players and developers.
Don't just make dev posts in the forums (not all of us use the forums, afterall); also take a little time out to actually interact with us in game as well. Grab a character (Defender, Sapphire, Witchcraft, etc.) and jump into the fray with the rest of us.
Having said that though, if Defender suddenly starts using STC...
=]
Just a thought.
None of that is true, anyways.
I hope that we can see more posts like this, perhaps one every month.
However, daeke has thrown a spanner in the works by saying that the one completely new piece of content will need to be paid for. Im fine with the concept behind it, I understand its marketing and that usually you get new zones solely through expansions. But with so much content missing for those at endgame why give a paid zone when the focus should really be on new things to do in existing areas? They have plenty of unused room in their maps that could have new instances in etc.
Then we'd at least know when we were getting information.