I was reading The Truth About Elite (not a bash) thread last night just before I went to bed and saw this post:
My first instinct was to +1 the author and post a 'right on commander' type of response.
Then my brain kicked in. It might have been due to a lack of sleep and my subconcious rose to the fore and thought: Why should they? Why should FDEV inform us of every detaill they're working on? Too many blind alleys, too many experiments that might or might not work.
Now we can all agree that Communications from FDEV aren't the best, but the type of response above, rudeness when actually given information and NOT saying 'thanks man for passing that on!' is also not the answer. FDEV communicate with us regularly and the fact that the development team take such an active interest in the forums and do pass on information when they feel it's viable, possible and necessary to do so is more than a lot of other game companies do. Their interaction level with us is high, but their communications with us is poor.
Let me explain: FDEV Developers and Team Members communicate very well with us individually. I ask a question or PM Ed Lewis or Michael Brookes and I get a response. Or I make a comment in the forums and Sandro or Mike Evans respond. That is high interaction and far more than many of us should expect from a team of developers working towards launch. It's a level of access unprecedented in my time as a gamer. And this isn't only through my access to the DDF, in many ways the regular forums have as much interaction and sometimes moreso than those of us in the DDF.
But communications is poor. Let's say a hundred people want to know the answer to the question: Is David wearing a blue jumper today? So Bob posts on the forum and creates a thread 'Is David wearing a blue jumper?' A few other people pile in on the discussion, the merits of blue jumpers and red jumpers. The odd crazy person posits that purple jumpers are best and is rightly thwumped by the community. Ed Lewis posts and says he hasn't seen David today but will get back to us when he has. Michael Brookes posts and says that he has seen David today and he was wearing a red and blue striped jumper.
The problem here is that of the 100 people who wanted to know the answer to the question, only perhaps 10 posted in the thread. Another 20 read it. The remaining 70 have no idea and might never know what colour David Braben's jumper was that day.
What should have happened was Ed makes a note that a lot of people are interested in knowing David Braben's jumper. He brings the question to Michael who is aware of the question and was in the middle of posting his reply. Michael tells Ed that the answer to the question he's posting in the forums should go in this week's newsletter.
And there's a possible solution. The newsletter as well as having the information we're accustomed to should also deal with popular questions and answers given in the forums. Or the answers that were to be given in the forums be given in the newsletter. I don't mean every question, but hot topics, particulary ones where Developers feel the need to answer should also be given in a more publicly available format.
A lot of vital information is lost in the noise of the forums. A lot of answers to a lot of important questions ARE GIVEN, but lost in the noise of the forums.
TLDR: Frontier Development interacts well, but communicates badly. And I think we've all been confusing the two.
My first instinct was to +1 the author and post a 'right on commander' type of response.
Then my brain kicked in. It might have been due to a lack of sleep and my subconcious rose to the fore and thought: Why should they? Why should FDEV inform us of every detaill they're working on? Too many blind alleys, too many experiments that might or might not work.
Now we can all agree that Communications from FDEV aren't the best, but the type of response above, rudeness when actually given information and NOT saying 'thanks man for passing that on!' is also not the answer. FDEV communicate with us regularly and the fact that the development team take such an active interest in the forums and do pass on information when they feel it's viable, possible and necessary to do so is more than a lot of other game companies do. Their interaction level with us is high, but their communications with us is poor.
Let me explain: FDEV Developers and Team Members communicate very well with us individually. I ask a question or PM Ed Lewis or Michael Brookes and I get a response. Or I make a comment in the forums and Sandro or Mike Evans respond. That is high interaction and far more than many of us should expect from a team of developers working towards launch. It's a level of access unprecedented in my time as a gamer. And this isn't only through my access to the DDF, in many ways the regular forums have as much interaction and sometimes moreso than those of us in the DDF.
But communications is poor. Let's say a hundred people want to know the answer to the question: Is David wearing a blue jumper today? So Bob posts on the forum and creates a thread 'Is David wearing a blue jumper?' A few other people pile in on the discussion, the merits of blue jumpers and red jumpers. The odd crazy person posits that purple jumpers are best and is rightly thwumped by the community. Ed Lewis posts and says he hasn't seen David today but will get back to us when he has. Michael Brookes posts and says that he has seen David today and he was wearing a red and blue striped jumper.
The problem here is that of the 100 people who wanted to know the answer to the question, only perhaps 10 posted in the thread. Another 20 read it. The remaining 70 have no idea and might never know what colour David Braben's jumper was that day.
What should have happened was Ed makes a note that a lot of people are interested in knowing David Braben's jumper. He brings the question to Michael who is aware of the question and was in the middle of posting his reply. Michael tells Ed that the answer to the question he's posting in the forums should go in this week's newsletter.
And there's a possible solution. The newsletter as well as having the information we're accustomed to should also deal with popular questions and answers given in the forums. Or the answers that were to be given in the forums be given in the newsletter. I don't mean every question, but hot topics, particulary ones where Developers feel the need to answer should also be given in a more publicly available format.
A lot of vital information is lost in the noise of the forums. A lot of answers to a lot of important questions ARE GIVEN, but lost in the noise of the forums.
TLDR: Frontier Development interacts well, but communicates badly. And I think we've all been confusing the two.
![[VR] Deggial](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/47/47252.jpg?1553527110){kind=avatar}
