Shhhh, let sleeping Dev's lie.
Anybody at Frontier?
- Thread starter Cmdr Andrew Johnson
- Start date
Shhhh, let sleeping Dev's lie.
Ever since beyond ended FDev did a strict no-comment policy. I highly assume they just don't want to say things that are being misunderstood or causes discussion and questiong of their plans and reasoning. Instead they probably hope that the community will just wait patiently like well behaved kids for their dessert. But we ain't kids waiting for a dessert. We are customers in a restaurant and these do care about more than just the food. Things like price, wait time, quality, method of cooking, wages for workes, etc. are important to us. or in other words, we care more about just the content of the game itself.
But FDev tries to hide this and so any theory, true or not, is more likely to be believed than just accepting tha tFDev doesn't want to share. Wheather or not that is good for FDev is anything but certain.
they have not communicated as they should for more than a year ,10 months and 2 betas to fixing a patch, but the fault/blame is mine/our.
I have been on the forum for less than a year... I suppose it is less painful to blame a user than a company that has made money at your expense.
Do you mean you'll paint the offices, so that each day they go to work, they won't know if it will show up or not?
And it's not just Elite Dangerous...
forums.frontier.co.uk
Planet Zoo has obviously given up on their Community Challenges
First they took away the outfit rewards. They said the rewards had changed, that we'd have to participate to find out. The only thing that changed was their removal of the outfits. They didn't bother announcing on their Facebook page when the newest challenge started. They didn't give us...
![[PS4] Lorenzo Waringos](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/234/234580.jpg?1612617334){kind=avatar}
Fiendish, isn't it?
Not sure why you're posting that - just proves that trying to communicate with people on the forums gets you unjustly abused. And then people wonder why they don't post more often ...And it's not just Elite Dangerous...
Planet Zoo has obviously given up on their Community Challenges
First they took away the outfit rewards. They said the rewards had changed, that we'd have to participate to find out. The only thing that changed was their removal of the outfits. They didn't bother announcing on their Facebook page when the newest challenge started. They didn't give us...
They don't post when you want them to tell you something, they post when they have something to tell us.
Doesn't matter what we think about that really - that's how they do it that's how they've always done it and after five years it's clearly not going to change. So I'd have a nice cup of tea * and forget about it.
* Other beverages are available.
Doesn't matter what we think about that really - that's how they do it that's how they've always done it and after five years it's clearly not going to change. So I'd have a nice cup of tea * and forget about it.
* Other beverages are available.
I dont care if they dont post in forums. I DO care if they don't follow up on promises.
Like dev blogs. They said they'd keep us in the loop for Odyssey via dev blogs, but it's been nearly a month since Odyssey was announced and all I've seen is a couple of server maintenance updates regarding fleet carriers, both of which were maybe two sentences long.
I shouldn't be shocked. And I'm not.
Like dev blogs. They said they'd keep us in the loop for Odyssey via dev blogs, but it's been nearly a month since Odyssey was announced and all I've seen is a couple of server maintenance updates regarding fleet carriers, both of which were maybe two sentences long.
I shouldn't be shocked. And I'm not.
The never said any extra news was happening this month, or any month - just 'before release'.
People on the forums making things up and being outraged by what they made up in their heads - I can't help thinking...
Well then its typical FDev again; making vague promises that are JUST vague enough to allow them to get away with doing nothing.The never said any extra news was happening this month, or any month - just 'before release'.
People on the forums making things up and being outraged by what they made up in their heads - I can't help thinking...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA ..... gasp ..... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
edit - seriously, I LOVE this place!
If you think back, the Odyssey 'announcement' wasn't done when they originally planned, it was brought forward as a bodge after someone forgot to set the 'private' flag on some alpha footage that was uploaded to youtube and let the cat out of the bag.
I'd imagine that any dev blogs and indeed any other news at all will be released on the originally planned timetable now they've got the firefighting out of the way. That's the timetable that probably would have had the announcement itself done maybe this week or next.
Just in case Mogen is serious (I know, but just in case):
www.youtube.com
Planet Zoo announcement trailer April 24th 2019.
Gameplay trailers, June 2019.
Developer diaries started late June 2019, through until ...
Beta trailer in September.
More streams until release trailer in November 2019.
I'd imagine we will get developer diaries and content in the 6 months to release, ie late summer. I guess we might get something, just a sneak peak, sometime before, but the full promotion will start much closer to release I would think.
Planet Zoo
This is the Official YouTube channel for Planet Zoo; watch our channel for the latest trailers and reveals. Build a world for wildlife in Planet Zoo, out now...
www.youtube.com
Gameplay trailers, June 2019.
Developer diaries started late June 2019, through until ...
Beta trailer in September.
More streams until release trailer in November 2019.
I'd imagine we will get developer diaries and content in the 6 months to release, ie late summer. I guess we might get something, just a sneak peak, sometime before, but the full promotion will start much closer to release I would think.
I've never read one of their blogs. Imagine....
"Was at work today, we was all pumped to see how happy the community would be with the latest announcement. We went on the forum. It was terrible, I mean awful, carnage. One of them said he wanted to burn my Nan in front of my eyes because I couldn't give a straight answer to the question about what shoes would be available for space legs. I cried, we all cried. Then they started changing their avatars. One of them said his dog could write better code but he'd have to dig the dog up first because it died 20 years ago. We all just sat there in silence. Then Greg, he works in the post room, he came in, he was looking a bit nervous, he said, "This just came in....it's...it's...well...you'll see what it is...." He put something down and almost ran out. We went and looked, it was a letter. Just looked like an ordinary letter at first, we opened it and the gasps rang out around the room. Not only was it an open letter, it was from some bloke with 6 subscribers on Youtube, one of the creators. You could have heard a pin drop, the fear in the room was palpable."
"Was at work today, we was all pumped to see how happy the community would be with the latest announcement. We went on the forum. It was terrible, I mean awful, carnage. One of them said he wanted to burn my Nan in front of my eyes because I couldn't give a straight answer to the question about what shoes would be available for space legs. I cried, we all cried. Then they started changing their avatars. One of them said his dog could write better code but he'd have to dig the dog up first because it died 20 years ago. We all just sat there in silence. Then Greg, he works in the post room, he came in, he was looking a bit nervous, he said, "This just came in....it's...it's...well...you'll see what it is...." He put something down and almost ran out. We went and looked, it was a letter. Just looked like an ordinary letter at first, we opened it and the gasps rang out around the room. Not only was it an open letter, it was from some bloke with 6 subscribers on Youtube, one of the creators. You could have heard a pin drop, the fear in the room was palpable."
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Amen brother! I'd actually started a thread that was "pushing back" against the "billions per hour" brigade...Listen, I'm no fan of the drama Llama posturing in every other thread about "OMG, FD nerfed hourly mining income from 6 billion a minute to a mere 5 billion, I'm so never going to play this game that I bought a week ago on sale so I could get a fleet carrier within an hour", but there is something to be said about the utter lack of community engagement from the so-called "community managers" of this company.
I don't know, perhaps the job description for that gig includes "under no circumstance communicate with the community you're managing", in which case I guess it's as it should be, all I can say is that I'd take that gig no matter what the pay.
Easiest job I'd have ever had. Don't spend even five minutes on it.
Sure beats every community relations job I ever had where "people are mad at us" wasn't an excuse to curl up under a blanket and think happy thoughts until it all passed.
Hey, FD, need a new one? I'm absolutely ready to take on the responsibility of never touching a keyboard and getting paid for it!
Just seen 500m credits per hour link on youtube, where does it end?
Being an Elite Dangerous fan, the Youtube algorithm's often pepper my suggested videos with Elite related content, one of the most recent ones was 500m cr/hr mining?!?!?!? (I'm not going to post a link to the video) While I didn't watch it for a couple of reasons, not least of which is that I'm...
Community Management without engagement, which FDev seem to be attempting, is a bizarre concept... In any such role the expectation is to liaise between the customer and the company, which @zarrazee elaborates on:
I think you've nailed the expectations of a community manager, but it is just unfortunate they seem to only do the first three bullet points, as they rarely report back.
If the reason they do not report back is they have nothing to report arising from the first three actions, why do them in the first place? By having 3 salaried guys on this games community management team Frontier are making it appear that are wanting to engage with us, that would include listening to our feedback, and by listening to feedback creates an expectation that they are intending to act on the feedback. The "radio silence" however, negates any perception of listening to or acting on feedback.
I'm not expecting instant and or continuous updates from the company, but I do expect them to acknowledge when feedback has been received, and that they reply to it at an appropriate time, within a reasonable timescale. The last message Tim Smith put in the Odessy thread is a good example of an acknowledgement...
Hi Alec,
We’re still reading everything, rest assured!
We don’t have any more details at the moment on how that split would work yet, however we’ve heard the questions and the feedback. We’ll be sharing more information closer to release.
To reiterate (it’s a long thread, things easily get lost!) you will still be able to play the base game and Horizons with VR, that isn’t changing.
Cheers,
Tim
...which, in the middle sentence highlighted in orange, is basically saying "we hear you, we'll get back to you on this one". A lot of threads do not even get this level of acknowledgement, and I believe that even a non-committal "we hear you - we'll get back to you" would have dampened a lot of the dumpster fires that have been burning in this forum.
There is a lot of those types of posts, not to mention the "oh ma gawd dey nerfed mi bilyons per hour gameplay loop" threads, but there are a lot of valid threads/concerns/questions getting ignored. And that silence from FDev reprenentation of any form is deafening, and creates an awkward atmosphere, one in which distrust and resentment thrive, which does as @Defacto said, seed the negative feedback loop.
I've been around here since 2015 - I'm very passionate for the game, and as such I want to find some hope / good will, so I was willing to double check the dev tracker that AgonyAunt (a former moderator) linked to:
Disabling the twitter filter, and scrolling back through the last couple of days shows the only Elite related posts as being by CMDR's Luna & Appollo of Support, as awesome as the folks in support are, and I really mean that - o7 "support wing", its not our CM's or our a developer, and fixing game crashes, or very kindly commiserating with someone on the loss of their cat, or suggesting filing a bug tracker* report via reddit posts doesn't address concerns raised in this forum. The closest we have to an elite post is a newsletter/stream schedule announcing that Bruce Garrido will be on the Loose Screws podcast this week.I generally disable the Twitter one as it picks up on devs private twitter accounts. It does mean you miss the official twitter stuff, but i can live without those.
Elite: Dangerous Dev Tracker
Elite: Dangerous Developer Tracker tracks post across multiple social platforms to help you stay up to date with all the latest Elite: Dangerous updateselitedevtracker.com
Last ED related post was 8 hours ago.
*bug tracker - we have to vote for bugs and only if they are sufficiently popular will we maybe get them fixed? - Really? But that's another rant.
I can see things from the point of view that this forum is "a tough crowd", and may intimidate some people who are tasked with managing it, but I think it is also reasonable to assume that the mere fact we are all still here indicates our passion for this game, and as such we are waiting to and wanting to be won over.
TLDR - Even if a CM chimed in on threads that had gained sufficient traction, at say 20 pages of a thread, and said we've heard your complaints / concerns / suggestions, and we'll consider it, it would be far better than the total radio silence. Even better would be if they could discuss "community feedback" and get back to us with the outcome of the discussion, even if it wasn't the outcome we hoped for, but "picking up on the conversation three weeks ago about "glump, glop and gloop", we've discussed it internally and it was decided to keep it as is, for [REASON]. Maybe not what you hoped for at least you know..." is a whole lot better than being seemingly ignored.
This would mean they aren't responding to very post like a receptionist and get to study the forum like an anthropologist and see what genuinely is buzzing through the community, but nip any concerns in the bud before the unravel into full riots.
As for the comments that the forum is too hostile, a couple of things to say, there are three CM's - I'm sure they can provide each other moral support, anyone who is abusive to the CM's is out of line, and deserves moderation intervention, and our moderation team are, enthusiastic. Finally, more participation with the community would win over the hearts and minds of the community, making this less of a scary place for a FDev employee to enter - that's the flip side of a negative feedback loop, the loop can be broken and reversed into a positive feedback one where they communicate with us, we are nice to them therefore they communicate more, we are nice again so on and so forth.
Which i hope you agree has absoloutely zero bearing on the discussion and that people, moderators or not, are entitled to their opinions and free to discuss matters right?
Hah, its nothing new (not saying its good or bad). Try GTA, where i don't think i've ever seen a Community Manager. I'm not even sure they have one at all.
I do have to admit elite is the first and only "gaming community" I have been involved in. Normally i get a game, play the campaign and move on. As such, by not having had experiences of other games I couldn't genuinely comment on any other games community or the management there of, but that doesn't mean I cannot call out mismanagement of this community when I see it.
I've never seen any personal insults or threats being levelled at any of the staff in the VR protests, although I can't comment on other threads as I don't read everything in this forum. However, if anyone has been threatening or abusive towards the staff, as I've stated elsewhere numerous times, they would be out of line.
I've highlighted the relevant part in orange, & included the paragraph (overly long sentence) for context.
If anyone sees any threats being made to or insults being fired at anyone else, especially the staff*, I suggest they less the report link in the bottom left of each and every post.
*the reason I say to be extra vigilant for hostility in posts targeting the staff relative to the vigilance applied to posts aimed at other players/forum users, is what I guess would pass for "forum PvP". By that I mean that sometimes the bickering in the forum can be quite intense, with certain "trolls" seemingly intent on "pushing the buttons" in others. In those cases, there is potentially a grey area if the troll had been baiting a forum user, they may have merely got what they were looking for if they were aiming to get such a "rise (bite)" out of a person and therefore they could be said to have "deserved it". I have no authority, I'm not the person to make the call on what is fair or tolerable, but I do think a bit of common sense should be applied before notifying the moderators.
What a shame Frontier didn't snap up this guy before Dovetail did.