Community management change has left me feeling blue

[CMDR Slee Piboi]

I wonder if there is some confusion as to what community management is. It's not just teasing the new stuff or making formal announcements. It's about -- well -- managing the community.

"no we're not that stupid but we're just starving for resources"
"yea nobody around here anymore really knows how that part of the code works so we're not touching it, it's sad but that's just the way it is"
"that thing is on our backlog but not worked on right now, it's still coming though, we've made a feasibility study and a PoC"
"now that was just a mistake to promise in the first place, we didn't realize it would be such a huge effort, you can pretty much forget about it"
"we're negotiating for integrating 3rd party anti-hacking software right now but I can't tell you the name of the software"
"I'll check with the developer and get back to you why she decided to implement it that way, I'm sure there is a good reason"

Each dev post around here generates a wave of responses. That should be enough indication that the community is aching for that interaction. It's just as much about the journey as it is about the destination. The exchange itself has value even if the content seems petty to a person who knows a lot more than is in their right to say. Right now the dev posts are such rare gold nuggets that every "we're looking into it" will get analyzed to death and quoted for years as "but we were promised ". Posts by community managers should be business-as-usual, not special events.

Edit to add -- I was going through today's Twitter feeds for news and I came across this piece ( source ):

As for why Sony is talking about the PS5 (Mark Cerny shared numerous details earlier) before actually announcing the console, Ryan said it's an effort to get ahead of leaks. PS5 development kits are being sent to outside studios currently, and Ryan said he wants PlayStation fans to have "clear and unambiguous" details about the system instead of "garbled nonsense."

So the president of Sony Interactive Entertainment thinks a few clear and unambiguous details is capable of shooting down a massive amount of garbled nonsense. Food for thought.

 

[Alwayslate]

Hello Commanders!

There's a lot of lovely comments, and great points in this thread.

First off, I'll start with a sort-of introduction. I'm Paige! I'm a rather happy-go-lucky type when it comes to playing games, and I prefer to jump in, mess around and work towards a set of small goals than aim to do something lengthier. When it comes to Elite Dangerous, I fly small or medium ships, I love to scavenge goods I find out in the black and sell them for a profit, and I enjoy space journalism. I take lots of photos of Thargoids, Molluscs, pretty stars. I also run our livestream series, Stargazing Tours, where myself and a guest visit some of the sites of Elite Dangerous, discuss a little lore, discuss a little science, and sort of bask in the beauty of the game. The next Stargazing Tours episode is this Thursday with Paul Crowther, and we'll be visiting Generation Ships for some spooky stories!

Obviously, I'm not Will, but his playstyle differs to mine. He loves his medium ships and prefers to engineer his ships, soup them up with guardian modules and go exploring! He travelled on his own time with the DW2 crew, and recently made it to Beagle Point. He's currently out of the office I'm afraid, or I'd ask him more about his game

Both of us play in our own time, though we will admit, neither of us are MVP players of any game!

There's also Brett, who a lot of you know already from these forums!

Ed was an incredible Community Manager for Elite Dangerous, however in his goodbye thread, he explains that he found an opportunity and a new adventure to embark on. We still keep in touch fairly often, and he speaks of the Elite community fondly.

In regards to communications regarding the game, we do our utmost to keep the community up to date with all the latest goings on. We do understand that a lot of people are clamouring for more information regarding the next major update for the game, and we recently addressed those concerns and why we're currently not sharing information yet in this thread.

So uh, if you (or any other FDev staff) have time to read and respond to a thread like this, why don't you read other threads as well, and show us that you are reading them? Especially the suggestion forums, where many valuable suggestions just go collect dusts in the corner. Even if the suggestions are all unusable, they at least deserve a reply of a reason why.

No offence to OP. It is a good post, just not firmly related to game content, or what players concern the most now.

 

[thistle]

So, this is a terrible thread, sorry.

The nice comments about Paige and Will (rightly) are great, but when we start getting into talking about fdev employees past and present people will take the opportunity to criticise individuals.

If this were a thread started by a player about another player, wouldn't it be shut for being about an individual as opposed to the game?

Critique the game, not the people, and especially not the community people who take the brunt of the nastiness every day. To then see a thread complaining about their role, in the forums, it's not on.

And responding as Paige has tried to do, because she's conscientious and nice, leads to the previous comment above "why respond to this but not ..." "no offence ..." etc.

Community management hasn't "left me blue", OP. Your thread has left me feeling concerned for the employees attacked in it.

 

[CMDR Slee Piboi]

^ On my own behalf I can assure you I am not criticizing the persons, however I am offering what is sincerely intended to be constructive criticism for the roles. A community manager by definition can't "play the forums in Solo" because there may be gankers. I wholeheartedly agree with Alwayslate that just an indication of "yep, we are reading this" by FDev makes a huge difference to the community.

 

[ZeroAi]

Hello Commanders!

There's a lot of lovely comments, and great points in this thread.

First off, I'll start with a sort-of introduction. I'm Paige! I'm a rather happy-go-lucky type when it comes to playing games, and I prefer to jump in, mess around and work towards a set of small goals than aim to do something lengthier. When it comes to Elite Dangerous, I fly small or medium ships, I love to scavenge goods I find out in the black and sell them for a profit, and I enjoy space journalism. I take lots of photos of Thargoids, Molluscs, pretty stars. I also run our livestream series, Stargazing Tours, where myself and a guest visit some of the sites of Elite Dangerous, discuss a little lore, discuss a little science, and sort of bask in the beauty of the game. The next Stargazing Tours episode is this Thursday with Paul Crowther, and we'll be visiting Generation Ships for some spooky stories!

Obviously, I'm not Will, but his playstyle differs to mine. He loves his medium ships and prefers to engineer his ships, soup them up with guardian modules and go exploring! He travelled on his own time with the DW2 crew, and recently made it to Beagle Point. He's currently out of the office I'm afraid, or I'd ask him more about his game

Both of us play in our own time, though we will admit, neither of us are MVP players of any game!

There's also Brett, who a lot of you know already from these forums!

Ed was an incredible Community Manager for Elite Dangerous, however in his goodbye thread, he explains that he found an opportunity and a new adventure to embark on. We still keep in touch fairly often, and he speaks of the Elite community fondly.

In regards to communications regarding the game, we do our utmost to keep the community up to date with all the latest goings on. We do understand that a lot of people are clamouring for more information regarding the next major update for the game, and we recently addressed those concerns and why we're currently not sharing information yet in this thread.

Thanks for chiming in Paige! You and Will are doing great!

 

[DeletedUser191218]

There was one thing that surprised me.

Edward was appointed director (I believe) in the period when Frontier moved into its new premises

Many good things for a man. I was surprised at his departure

Right....FDev community managers need to sort out communication post haste. People are now left to guessing why employees change jobs in order to gleem some insight into what the hell is going on. I've literally never seen this with any other game.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Right....FDev community managers need to sort out communication post haste. People are now left to guessing why employees change jobs in order to gleem some insight into what the hell is going on. I've literally never seen this with any other game.

The game is DOOMED!
Why should the CM's bother - folk will continue with their conspiracy theories regardless! Ed left as he'd been Mafia'd (made an offer he couldn't refuse ) and is still young and wanting to climb the corporate tree, well done him.

We have some perfectly good, nice, folk taking over the slot and doing their very best to make something interesting, and 'politically neutral' from the current lull in excitement while something big is being developed and only minor additions are made to the game in the mean-time. We should be celebrating Ed's moving on and embracing the changes, not crying "DOOM!" because he left!

 

[rootsrat]

The game is DOOMED!
Why should the CM's bother - folk will continue with their conspiracy theories regardless! Ed left as he'd been Mafia'd (made an offer he couldn't refuse ) and is still young and wanting to climb the corporate tree, well done him.

We have some perfectly good, nice, folk taking over the slot and doing their very best to make something interesting, and 'politically neutral' from the current lull in excitement while something big is being developed and only minor additions are made to the game in the mean-time. We should be celebrating Ed's moving on and embracing the changes, not crying "DOOM!" because he left!

Elite was doomed the day Kickstarter campaign started, didn't you know? It's been dead for 5 years now.

And counting. Literally nobody is playing it. Never have either!

 

[Factabulous]

We should be celebrating Ed's moving on and embracing the changes, not crying "DOOM!" because he left!

I thought we were crying DOOM because that is one of his games

https://twitter.com/x/status/1123960303497117697

Source: https://twitter.com/edwardclewis/status/1123960303497117697

 

[Rat Catcher]

I thought we were crying DOOM because that is one of his games

https://twitter.com/x/status/1123960303497117697

Source: https://twitter.com/edwardclewis/status/1123960303497117697

I don't have all of those games.... (hehehe!) If you have the BFG edition, there happens to be a fun VR patch...

(but would like the T-shirt!)

 

[znôrt]

We should be celebrating Ed's moving on and embracing the changes, not crying "DOOM!" because he left!

funny that nobody is crying "DOOM!" in the thread. literally, nobody. the only prior reference to doom is someone saying "The game and the company are not doomed."

doom doomers gonna doom doom!

 

[Rat Catcher]

Hi fellow CMDRS

Something has been bugging me for a few months! Ed Lewis left Frontier a while back and I don't know if it is just me or does anyone else feel it's indicative of where Elite Dangerous was or is heading? Could just be a bit of paranoia because we're waiting a long time for the next big update but I just have this nagging feeling Ed's reason for leaving was mainly because of where he felt the game was going?
... snip
Think I'm going to sink a few more hours in to Planet Coaster for the time being.

This sounds awfully like...

funny that nobody is crying "DOOM!" in the thread. literally, nobody. the only prior reference to doom is someone saying "The game and the company are not doomed."

doom doomers gonna doom doom!

Q.E.D?

 

[Rat Catcher]

Elite was doomed the day Kickstarter campaign started, didn't you know? It's been dead for 5 years now.

And counting. Literally nobody is playing it. Never have either!

I stopped playing.... what... HOURS ago!! (but maybe have to check back later to see if anything changed! )

 

[The Replicated Man]

Elite was doomed the day Kickstarter campaign started, didn't you know? It's been dead for 5 years now.

And counting. Literally nobody is playing it. Never have either!

Doom and Gloom! Doom and Gloom!

 

[The Replicated Man]

The less I read in this forums the better I like the game (again). Strange coincidence, I guess?

These forums are a haven for toxic people sadly. Most wont set foot in here.

 

[znôrt]

This sounds awfully like...

... we read what we want to read?

if that's what you consider crying doom, then yes, qed.

i mean, really, please reread carefully. this is a hardcore long time fan who misses old times, for whatever reason (name one of anything who doesn't!). his tl;dr is actually this:

"I am guilty of not really following Paige and Will since Ed left so maybe I brought some of this on myself and need to start tuning in more but after 2000+ hours of Elite I'm taking a break. Just feels like 2019 has been a bit of a downer in terms of people leaving the game and the news that we have to wait a year for the next big milestone. "

no doom whatsoever. in a game expected to last a around a decade you will see many coming and going, you will have seasons and droughts, that's just life. they guy feels down, just give him a hug, nobody pushed the doom button!

 

[Rat Catcher]

... we read what we want to read?

if that's what you consider crying doom, then yes, qed.

i mean, really, please reread carefully. this is a hardcore long time fan who misses old times, for whatever reason (name one of anything who doesn't!). his tl;dr is actually this:

"I am guilty of not really following Paige and Will since Ed left so maybe I brought some of this on myself and need to start tuning in more but after 2000+ hours of Elite I'm taking a break. Just feels like 2019 has been a bit of a downer in terms of people leaving the game and the news that we have to wait a year for the next big milestone. "

no doom whatsoever. in a game expected to last a around a decade you will see many coming and going, you will have seasons and droughts, that's just life. they guy feels down, just give him a hug, nobody pushed the doom button!

With around 1800 hours into the game so far, I would be hard pushed to convince me, or anyone, the game is doomed - but others read in ominous forbodings in the most minor of issues and make me smile.
A little light-hearted banter (I assume you did read the remainder of my post?) and giving positive support to those assosciated with this game, should at least bring a chuckle to those who can read things as they are written.

The starting paragraph of the post, which I quoted, no matter which way I read it, appeared to question that Ed's departure was not solely because he was made a better offer.

We all have to wait until Q4 next year to see that the update actually contains, a portion of the player base appears convinced that 'Space Legs' are already confirmed - despite nothing of the sort coming from developer comments...

 

[znôrt]

The starting paragraph of the post, which I quoted, no matter which way I read it, appeared to question that Ed's departure was not solely because he was made a better offer.

he speculates that maybe ed didn't like where the game was going. that's pretty wild, speculative and unconclusive to be doomsaying. it could even mean a good thing! i don't like where the game is going. at all. and haven't for a while now. i don't work at frontier though, so it's no headline. but i still like the game and it has a stable audience, second chance on the horizon (i should say beyond (oh wait)) ... i see nothing to doom here!

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

he speculates that maybe ed didn't like where the game was going. that's pretty wild, speculative and unconclusive to be doomsaying. it could even mean a good thing! i don't like where the game is going. at all. and haven't for a while now. i don't work at frontier though, so it's no headline. but i still like the game and it has a stable audience, second chance on the horizon (i should say beyond (oh wait)) ... i see nothing to doom here!

I would have long smitten ED to doom for engineers , but I was always smitten by Ed presenting the game . Clunky pun, but Iz German.

 

[Autoculto]

It's probably the new lighting that's making you blue