FDev, please open direct interactive communication lines with us! Drag Munition situation proves this is needed.

[Lightspeed]

For the sake of this game, please open up direct interactive communication with your players. You've done some good work such as allowing us to help show case which bugs we feel is a priority via the issue tracker, thank you for that!

However, as evidenced by the situation around the changes to Drag Munitions, we clearly need to have open and direct lines of communication to some capacity to help avoid these kinds of situations. If we had open interactive 2-way communication between FDev designers / developers and the player community, we could have:

• Immediately given feedback to why the change would not have been welcome
• Understood better why this change was proposed, and perhaps suggested better alternatives to achieve said goals
• Communicate our current grievances with the game to help FDev understand what the problems are, and suggestions on how to fix them that may have prevented the conception of a poorly received change in the first place

Many of us are frustrated, some have already left the game. Please open more interactive lines of communication so we can help this game realize it's truly great potential. Whether it's Reddit AMAs, discord discussions, anything is better than the current situation.

I realize we have the suggestion forum, but I don't believe these are adequate for the following reasons:

• We don't know what's coming, we can only comment on the current state
• There are thousands of posts, it's not focused
• There's rarely if any communication back from FDev

Frontier could introduce a pop-up window in the Forum. "Hi, I am Samantha, how can I help you?"

 

[Maro-Val]

A lost case... They can't communicate, because they don't have the means to do the changes needed in a decent time frame of days or even weeks, in order for the communication to be two way. It takes ages to change something in this game. Thats why there is no need for betas or focused feedback sections.
I bet this drag munition incident was a simple matter of something that was supposed to go live in game the very first day the drag munitions effect was introduced and just was lost somewhere! It just found its way in the development path just now! Not a mystery if you think about how things work in this game.

 

[rhiz]

I just want to see a little mini-documentary about a day at the ED offices. It'd help humanise this whole affair so much, and help dispel the myth that FDev is some kind of monolithic entity that just churns out poorly-thought-out updates. It's just a bunch of people trying to make a fun game and sometimes making mistakes.

Have you seen the Brass Eye "Shaftsbury's Jam Factory" sketch?

Sorry, I couldn't resist...a terrible thing to say . You're undoubtedly right, and a much nicer person than I am.

 

[Werewolf13]

Is it so bad to want to drive change for the better?

No - unless the drive is to no where; then it's just stupid...

 

[Mohavor]

It's just a bunch of people trying to make a fun game and sometimes making mistakes.

It's not even that, it's just a bunch of people that work in an office somewhere in England. Wouldn't be suprised if it goes like this: they roll in at 9 or 10 am, sip coffee and chat the morning away while they "wake up," don't actually start any work until after lunch. At 4:30pm they just say "right, that's it then," spend 30 minutes getting ready to leave. Then they go home to the things they actually care about.

 

[Hole in Head]

It's not even that, it's just a bunch of people that work in an office somewhere in England. Wouldn't be suprised if it goes like this: they roll in at 9 or 10 am, sip coffee and chat the morning away while they "wake up," don't actually start any work until after lunch. At 4:30pm they just say "right, that's it then," spend 30 minutes getting ready to leave. Then they go home to the things they actually care about.

I have no doubts they're dedicated hard working. It's easy to think otherwise if you're detached from the group working. Let's not try and tear people down with baseless conjecture.

 

[Kaocraft]

I think we need an open communication channel with Obsidian Ant so that the community can decide which issue he calls Frontier out on; his videos are the only thing Frontier listens to.