It's time to start communicating more with us Frontier.
- Thread starter Digler
- Start date
The SteamDB verifies that the game is being updated internally but who knows when the next public update is coming. Are they going to have a Frontier Unlocked stream every month? They showed off some progress a while back with improving raft animations so that they conform to the curvature of the slides. I love amusement park building games and I know they can improve PC2 a lot more. They did address some issues in November and December updates. I wish they would rerelease the carousel so that it goes counter clockwise like US carousels do, in the UK they go clockwise. The Venetian carousel which isn't in PC2 yet goes counter clockwise in PC1. I want the Scrambler, Whip, Paratrooper, and Centrum back in PC2. Those were in a vintage pack in PC1. And those crane games and the Zoltar machine.
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I've been on the edge of my seat waiting the last few days for an update, something to keep me believing this game is being fixed up and any ounce of passion is being given to it. I understand they do a frontier unlocked once a month, but it's evident many people feel this is a more special circumstance right now where the game is on a thin line between "don't worry, we're fixing this up right now, sorry for the state it was in at launch, look at what we're doing' and 'nah, game is fine, business as usual, monthly updates are coming but just have silence in the meantime'. The game could afford some weekly hotfixes right now, let alone big updates.
Once the game is where it should have been at launch with modular gift shops and restaurants, snow, vista points, a better PC UI etc and up and running then the community will be happy with the monthly updates, DLC every 3 months etc. But right now, the community is hanging on by a thread because the game is still completely unfinished for release and littered with bad audio mixing and placeholder UI elements.
It seems most of what's wrong with the game on PC is due to it being made for console then forced onto PC. Bad sound mixing because it was mixed for a TV. Bad full screen management, distracting heatmaps notch at the top and awkward 'construction mode'/'edit mode' coaster building UI because it was made for console. Those things may be fine on console, necessary even, but it is clear PC players are finding the UI tedious and awkward to use on PC, especially in comparison to Planet Coaster 1 and the wonderful polished and fleshed out Planet Zoo.
Perhaps restaurants are missing because they're coming back with modular interiors? Perhaps hotels are missing because they're coming back with modular interiors? Is that why staff rooms have gone back to being a black box, when they had full interior and staff animations in Planet Zoo? I can't possibly imagine why vista points are missing though.
Once the game is where it should have been at launch with modular gift shops and restaurants, snow, vista points, a better PC UI etc and up and running then the community will be happy with the monthly updates, DLC every 3 months etc. But right now, the community is hanging on by a thread because the game is still completely unfinished for release and littered with bad audio mixing and placeholder UI elements.
It seems most of what's wrong with the game on PC is due to it being made for console then forced onto PC. Bad sound mixing because it was mixed for a TV. Bad full screen management, distracting heatmaps notch at the top and awkward 'construction mode'/'edit mode' coaster building UI because it was made for console. Those things may be fine on console, necessary even, but it is clear PC players are finding the UI tedious and awkward to use on PC, especially in comparison to Planet Coaster 1 and the wonderful polished and fleshed out Planet Zoo.
Perhaps restaurants are missing because they're coming back with modular interiors? Perhaps hotels are missing because they're coming back with modular interiors? Is that why staff rooms have gone back to being a black box, when they had full interior and staff animations in Planet Zoo? I can't possibly imagine why vista points are missing though.
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There have been 16 updates today with the last just being 45 minutes ago. We should rely on this. Don't forget that it's difficult to share news. The audience has been so very picky. If they share news or even thoughts and ideas or they wanted to add some reassurance by dropping tidbits of info, most of the community will hold them to it as gospel written in stone and when it doesn't happen or it wasn't quite what people were expecting (original lack of flume physics comes to mind) because it was just a thought or an idea, the socials go mad and the share price drops. It really is a massive risk to be sharing regular news. It might be totally different if the game has been received with more praise or patience.
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I agree. This isn't the first time that news has been somewhat slow in coming, and Frontier certainly isn't the first developer to do so. That's pretty much par for the course I think, and isn't likely to change any time soon, likely for many of the reasons Mr Happy stated.
Perhaps where Frontier is lacking is just general contact like we had with PC1.
No promises, no detailed future plans, just someone in regular contact so people feel that they are being heard. Right now there is no 'face of Frontier' here like we used to have. The Mods here do what they can, but they aren't in close contact with the development team, so it's not the same. The occasional weekly challenges that pop up on Facebook and elsewhere aren't even shared here, which is unfortunate. I wonder if there's not a lot that could be discussed without making promises about what's to come, or if certain problems have been acknowledged, or sharing many details. Just a 'face' that shows 'yeah, we're here' would certainly help.
It's not the communication about specific plans or news - it's the fairly complete silence that I suspect bothers many people.
Perhaps where Frontier is lacking is just general contact like we had with PC1.
No promises, no detailed future plans, just someone in regular contact so people feel that they are being heard. Right now there is no 'face of Frontier' here like we used to have. The Mods here do what they can, but they aren't in close contact with the development team, so it's not the same. The occasional weekly challenges that pop up on Facebook and elsewhere aren't even shared here, which is unfortunate. I wonder if there's not a lot that could be discussed without making promises about what's to come, or if certain problems have been acknowledged, or sharing many details. Just a 'face' that shows 'yeah, we're here' would certainly help.
It's not the communication about specific plans or news - it's the fairly complete silence that I suspect bothers many people.
Absolutely. I do somewhat agree that silence is disturbing but my thoughts about regular communication being a huge risk kinda negates it. Maybe somebody from Frontier will be looking into all of this. I mean it certainly wouldn't hurt, if they are going to the trouble of inventing weekly challenges, surely somebody can invent community content which can arrive here through Community Staff. That way we can all easily know that it is content to drive the community and not really anything to do with development of the game.
We need someone like Bo was for the first game.
She wasn't here every day posting, but often enough that you felt a connection. She passed on information from the crew, often it was just simple things like acknowledging that they were aware of something. And of course she did the update announcements and such, so she represented Frontier really well. We're kinda missing that I think.
She wasn't here every day posting, but often enough that you felt a connection. She passed on information from the crew, often it was just simple things like acknowledging that they were aware of something. And of course she did the update announcements and such, so she represented Frontier really well. We're kinda missing that I think.
I agree they need to talk soon and looking on the time frame it should be sth like that they announce update 2 with some prelim patch notes. They really need to turn around their communication which somewhat started okayish, but went a bit awkward with the silent DLC and more...sorry, but i expect more
Yeah exactly, just community enhancing chat.
Im going to speculate and predict the update coming this Thursday the 16th. Each update has come on a Thursday so far and Frontier said they were looking at an update in early January. I would concider Thursday Januray 23rd or later to be mid/late January. I could be and am possibly very wrong tho!
I've been looking at the SteamDB updates. But my question is, how do we know if they've fixed the thing that caused my crashes. (Snap kit interactions) I have been avoiding using them because thet could cause a consistent crash.
The advantage of patch notes is that I know what they were working on so I can test it again.
I am happy with the game, I have had a few crashes, but I would simply ask for a list of places they were working on so I can that's the versions fully.
The advantage of patch notes is that I know what they were working on so I can test it again.
I am happy with the game, I have had a few crashes, but I would simply ask for a list of places they were working on so I can that's the versions fully.
What you are seeing on SteamDB is internal updates for the developers. An actual update will come with patch notes released by Frontier and will also be listed on SteamDB as a Hotfix/Patch etc. When you see an "Changelist" with a bunch of numbers, they are not public updates.
If you are right, then either their PR Team is still on holidays, they are drastically understaffed or they are doing a bad job.
The Game got a bit of 'reviewbombed' in the last 30 days, mostly because of the DLC, since then it has been radio silent from Frontier. I understand the holidays and everything, but this would be drastically not trying to mitigate the bad reviews, by sending out: "yeah we are cooking on the following: ....", especially, if they are so close to patchrelease. Silentdropping isn't a thing anymore: Most games hype up their patches by communicating and tieing the knot with their community.
Those moves make them actual look a bit amateurish like a small indie developer and not AA-Game Company.
You are welcome. SteamDB has no affiliations to Steam or Valve in any way. And is simply tracking changes made on Steam. This could be anything from internal updates for development, all the way to a change in review scores etc.
I dont understand why they feel the need to wait and release a big patch rather than pumping out small but often bug fixes. Seeing a patch every week or so, even small ones, would be enough for Frontier to be as silent as they wish. Once you squash a bug, ship a patch.
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Testing. You want to make sure everything runs fine. Fix a bug, create another. This is sometimes the dev daily business. So after you did this and you did your part.-
"Nvidia drops a new driver and it f's up your engine, then you need recode this and that.
Oh we are experience crashes on intel GPUs? Let's fix that. Damn, we are now not using the full power of AMD CPUs and the game slows down on them. Now we can release this single fix, oh wait the Xbox series S slowls down again, we need to adjust that."
I know most users just see the change in value, but every single change can create a load of issues somewhere else in your code. They are doing 3 Forks and especially PC can be hellish since hardware isn't standard in PCs. All the Steamdb updates for today could just be updates for the MSI RTX 2060 Super, cause they may encountered an issue with exact this card (and only this card)
The first and foremost target of every dev is a stable release and they aren't so easy to achieve as many of you think.
Testing is what they should have done before releasing the game. Then they wouldn't be needed to fix as much afterwards (incl. bad reviews)...
Frontier unlocked takes place every last Wednesday a month.
Maybe they'll release a new update before the stream and will present their work then.
I'm not sure what it's going to take to get Frontier to change their cloak and dagger approach to their community.
But I agree.
No one wants to bother the devs though, let em do their work. But heck just showing us some concepts and giving us an indication of what is in the pipeline, would go a long way. And I don't just mean a demo of the improved flumes. What are the artists cooking up for new themes etc. What's new and being worked on? It's time to be more transparent.
I do not want to see another livestream of the team patting themselves on the back and acting like everything's hunky-dory (whilst also looking absolutely exhausted).
But I agree.
No one wants to bother the devs though, let em do their work. But heck just showing us some concepts and giving us an indication of what is in the pipeline, would go a long way. And I don't just mean a demo of the improved flumes. What are the artists cooking up for new themes etc. What's new and being worked on? It's time to be more transparent.
I do not want to see another livestream of the team patting themselves on the back and acting like everything's hunky-dory (whilst also looking absolutely exhausted).
When it comes to game breaking bugs that stop people playing the game, it is better to ship regular updates even if they introduce new bugs. You then fix those new bugs and keep going till the game is almost bug free. There is no reason to take so long to patch bugs that are causing people to not be able to play at all.