Greg Street Interview

[Thebadmf]

[video=youtube_share;qOXvOX8w7rY]http://youtu.be/qOXvOX8w7rY[/video]

A good interview with the former wow class designer and current league of legends Design Director.

The whole interview is interesting but I’d like to discuss his thoughts on engaging with the community (13:45) and how it relates to Frontier.

Personally I feel FD are up and down. Around patch time, Dev engagement is relatively high, I like that they ask for feedback on up and coming features but it irks me that we only really hear from the community teams outside of a month either side of patch day (and not the devs themselves). I don’t like the filter.

Anyway please keep this civil and constructive.

 

[Factabulous]

Devs appear on Thursday streams pretty often though, so you're wrong about 'just near patches'. They don't often come out with spoilers about what's going to happen except near releases - is that what you meant?

Ed has said he's putting some things off because he wants to do stuff in the new larger streaming room (which is taking an age, as these things do). IMHO he'd be better cramming people into their current small studio and keeping things rolling, but it is his call. Also, it's holiday season, so things will be quiet at the moment.

Main area they've dropped the ball on is the FFF - I was hoping for some 'this is what we found' from Squadrons / Mining by now, and close those topics off.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Ed has said he's putting some things off because he wants to do stuff in the new larger streaming room (which is taking an age, as these things do). IMHO he'd be better cramming people into their current small studio and keeping things rolling, but it is his call. Also, it's holiday season, so things will be quiet at the moment.

Ohh, I missed this bit, thank you for dropping this. Kinda explains lack of any dev streams, because Ed wanted to do Discovery Scanners, etc. as far as I remember.

 

[gooddoc]

I'd wouldn't say FD are up & down, I'd say they're down & then down some more.

What infuriates the community is they stop responding with us & give out no/very little on what's going to be happening.

The so called Exploration feeedback is a prime example. All we've got is '..postponed...' then nothing!

That's until Ed comes along in his 'Hype train' with all these 'wonderful, amazing, best ever, etc' new things coming in the next update. Frankly most aren't really all that good - but Ed's just flying the flag for the team.

What it needs FD to realise is that the community wants some information on a regular basis, not nothing for months then an overhyped hype train!

It's obvious that the message now, I assume from DB, is 'stop communicating now unless it's sanctioned by me first!'

Pity really, things were so much better in the early days.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

The so called Exploration feeedback is a prime example. All we've got is '..postponed...' then nothing!

Well, such thread is dependant on aviability of developers. So if their plans change, feedback threads get postponed. it is simple as that. Nothing to do with communications there. They just don't know when it will be up. Could be any day.

 

[gooddoc]

Well, such thread is dependant on aviability of developers. So if their plans change, feedback threads get postponed. it is simple as that. Nothing to do with communications there. They just don't know when it will be up. Could be any day.

But why then don't they come out & say so, rather than keep us guessing if they are ever going to actually do this.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

But why then don't they come out & say so, rather than keep us guessing if they are ever going to actually do this.

There will be exploration update with or without feedback threads. I suspect they went back to drawing board to some of concepts and that's why they delayed posting thread. Most likely our feedback won't fundamentally change gameplay anyway so that thread can be posted as closest to beta as possible.

Ergo they will do it, there's still time to do it, reasons why it has been delayed are most likely reasonable from development POV.

 

[gooddoc]

There will be exploration update with or without feedback threads. I suspect they went back to drawing board to some of concepts and that's why they delayed posting thread. Most likely our feedback won't fundamentally change gameplay anyway so that thread can be posted as closest to beta as possible.

Ergo they will do it, there's still time to do it, reasons why it has been delayed are most likely reasonable from development POV.

But the point is communication.

Even if they do some or all that you say, wouldn't it be polite to inform the community, after all FD did state from the start of the feedback forums a date when the exploration forum would be started.

I'm not saying they shouldn't change their minds, but they should at least keep us informed. That's FD's weak point though!