In the theme of transparancy between all of us, things like this are genuinely a bit hard to read - I won't lie.
A lot of us in Community Management come from development and dev team roles - several of us with over a decade worth of experience.
Despite your opinions here in this post, I'd like to reassure you that we do know and love the game (we dedicate our lives to it at this point), we do hear and understand what people believe is potentially needed for a greater experience, but that's not for us to then personally sign off as CMs. We can only take hold of it and relay back, keeping in line with how development works, stakeholder wishes, priorities for the wider players - many factors with how a game is developed and how a development team functions. This takes time and careful handling - we ALL want to get it right for you.
We aren't content creators, so wouldn't expect for our roles as CMs to be imagined in line with their awesome work, or us assumed to carry less clout than them if they were the "negotiating buffer". If they spent their time being that buffer (as we do, believe it or not), I can't imagine how they'd have a chance to then be the incredible content creators they are, in all fairness. That would make them CMs.
They're unique and a force in their own right and we cherish (and are hugely grateful for) any amount of time they choose to commit to Elite Dangerous.
We communicate daily with development teams and we read a vast array of comments, feedback, DMs on all platforms, tackle any immediate and nasty issues we see, whilst aligning that with our dev side work - we're not lying to anyone if their particular issue isn't fixed in the update they wish, it's not our decision to make, it's collective and aligned with all core functioning teams and the development cycle at that time.
Decisions on development are made out of our hands as CMs, but these decisions when based on gameplay changes, additions and suchlike, could be better communicated to you, we've spoken out about that fact, we do know it's a source of frustration for you all and we truly are aiming on working harder in this area as we move forward.
We understand why it's a huge deal for you, seriously. We want to do better at this. We're not going to hide that fact.
I hope this at least gives a bit of personal insight from my side of things really.
There's a lot of misconception about the team currently and if I can help settle anyone's frustrations right now, then I'll try and be as human as possible about it.
Thanks for your time, as always.
Hey Sally,
I'm very sorry about the position you and the community management team are in right now. Without digging into it, I'd imagine its an incredibly difficult place to be and I'd like to thank you and the team for fighting through it. After reading this post I have a better appreciation of the fact that the your work to improve communication is a work in process. In hindsight, of course it is. It was pretty dumb of me to think that changing the way an organization determines what to share and how to share it would be a flipped switch.
So far, I haven't commented on the "state of the game" the response from your team or Frontier in general but I'd like to now make a suggestion regarding the clarity of communication given what I've seen on here over the past month. I don't want to pile on to the pressure y'all are under right now and I don't claim to know all that the community managers to of that I could do it better. I am not, and will not, question your ability or your character and I hope that comes across here.
(Wow that was an obnoxious and unnecessary number of words)
I feel the comments in this tread went the direction they did because of the vague messaging in the original post. I understand that there are things that you can't say because they are in flux that is a separate issue, and I'm content with a "we can't give you that answer right now" type response. When an announcement is made, or the situation around something that was previously announced changes, the messaging needs to be as clear as possible.
Especially if something changes.
Things change. Schedules get pushed, people are unavailable for streams... Stuff happens and most people will understand that. But the original post, not at all mentioning the developer stream, which was stated as definitely going to happen, leaves room for speculation and, to some, feels like Frontier is trying to be sneaky. Whether warranted or not there is a lack of faith among the community right now and this kind of "announcement through omittance", especially at the end of your work day when no one will be able to clarify for at least 12hrs, gives a lot of space for negative ideas to spread. Had it been specifically stated in the original post that a dev stream would not be happening this week, with a brief description of why (which hasn't been given yet), that would have prevented so much worry, stress and negative vibes, likely from both the community and the community managers. Also, important changes and announcements like this and the 1 week postponement of the 5th patch should ideally be announced on all platforms since no one person uses all of them.
Explaining why there is no dev stream on today's Supercruise News is definitely welcome. But if that is the only place it's explained, anyone who doesn't watch the stream will be getting that information second hand with whatever context the person broken-telephoning it choses to include. A stream being canceled/moved or an update being pushed back one week are not "Huge" deals. But when people don't know why, or if anything has actually changed as opposed to just being overlooked in the communication, can make them seem like much bigger issues through free speculation under the context of a lack of faith. Being upfront, putting as much reasoning as you can along with announcements, not at a later date, and widely sharing that information could save you all so much faith and stress.
Well, I feel like a jerkish, pretentious, know-it-all jack-something posting this but I hope it helps? Or something?
I'm truly rooting for y'all.
Take care,
Mags
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