TL/DR; Lets aim for more community pleasing engagement by FD starting a thread and discussing what Players want out of the communication and feature development. FD can give us back how that can map to what they can and are willing to try. Then we might understand each other better. Dunno, maybe it wouldn't make a difference. But it's a thought.
For example, one thing FD could tell us to help players understand the delay of getting back to more core mechanics, is the commitment to Horizons features in sales promotions even before season 1 concluded. FD had to keep those feature commitments and that slowed any pivot back to core mechanics. it takes time to shift the direction of development without disrupting and massively slowing things down. Also, in the case of Horizons Season, FD promised some specific headline features that they then needed to keep prioritized.
So my comms wish-list rather than feature wish list:
For example, one thing FD could tell us to help players understand the delay of getting back to more core mechanics, is the commitment to Horizons features in sales promotions even before season 1 concluded. FD had to keep those feature commitments and that slowed any pivot back to core mechanics. it takes time to shift the direction of development without disrupting and massively slowing things down. Also, in the case of Horizons Season, FD promised some specific headline features that they then needed to keep prioritized.
So my comms wish-list rather than feature wish list:
- FD did a survey about the newsletter and comms about 2 years ago and IIRC promised to reveal results and make changes based on the survey. What was the feedback?
- DDF-like sub-forum. A bit like this Suggestions thread, but make a designated place for designers and devs to vet their ideas and where players cannot start threads. Devs to ask key questions of the community. Design docs are nice but if FD no longer want to reveal those, then more like "List your ideas to improve exploration", "How to make Piracy less deadly and more fun", "what could we do to extend stealth game-play", "what do you want to see for gameplay in gas-giants", "when we get around to walking around in 10 years, what do you view as the pitfalls to avoid in a 1:1 scale galaxy", "Assuming you can hijack spaceships, how do we handle ownership and things like disposal of the stolen ship, cargo, etc.?"
- For example the recent Karma posts by Sandro- have a designated spot for those type dev interactions, why scatter them about?
- A lot of the desire for "roadmap" info and DDF-like discussion is due to the nature of the game and the long-and expected features, not because we want secrets, because we want to be partners in the journey and support the effort, but also help prevent wrong-turns if possible, before too much time and money is spent; for instance on CQC, ship transfers, Power Play, or even FD developing features too early before the game can fully support them (multi-crew, I'm looking at you for that one)
- Consolidate on the News and Updates thread for those things and move them out of Horizons sub-discussion thread and such. News goes in News forum.
- Monthly sneak peek leading up to releases, even minor things. Maybe even a monthly sneek peek of a cosmetics item as well, what ship kit is next?
- Monthly or per release dev diary. Weekly is too often, never is not often enough. A quarterly video dev diary with DB would be awesome
- Monthly sneak peek in Newsletter.
- Weekly consolidated Dev Comment list from all dev forum and reddit posts put into the Newsletter, along with the sneak peek, make forumites feel like there is more "news" to the newsletter
- Q&A summaries from live-streams in a consistent thread, (or as alternatives to live streams); maybe in the DDF-like forum/newsletter. I don't want to watch a two hour livestream where 10 questions are answered if all I care about are the Q&A and not the witty banter
- End the CQC with Devs and most live-streams
- Try new streams like showing players how to find things currently making the news, like the numbers station in today's live-stream (that was ok, a timed live tutorial and 'play along')
- Instead of so many weekly live-streams, commit to 3 months of every-other-week Galnet video news segment (alternate Newsletter weeks with GalNet video news broadcast weeks).
- using in-game footage and lasting 5-10 minutes.
- Use some stock video and some gathered by using dev 'god-mode' tools to jump instantly to and film at CG sites, war-sites, show Power Play struggles using the 'bubble map', show major and minor Faction expansions, and major in-game GalNet stories.
- Create metrics to measure the effect of video GalNet broadcasts.
- Tell me if this is a lot more work than I think, because I am thinking something like Obsidian Ant videos but more Galnet focused and with a bit more graphical ooomph behind it due to being done by FD themselves. I know the few video presentations I edited took a lot of my time, but I don't do it every week.
- Update the "Beta" Community website- when is the Beta over?
- Talk up the API and Player Logs and third-party tools more in the newsletter
- Monthly "Top 10 List", Best of, Most of, etc.
- Monthly "my first week in the galaxy interview" for that feeling of nostalgia
- Monthly System X in original Elite vs. Frontier vs. ED; the history
- Monthly Lore articles in newsletter or book excerpt from Elite licensed books
- At each point release, add a couple of pages to the Digital Art book covering concepts for that release
- Fix the digital artbook so the text is legible at 100% zoom on 1080p (I see that as a comms issue, yes
) - make sure newsletter features occur in a repeating cadence. Put them on the calendar for a full year, sketch it out broadly.
- Once a quarter have an obligatory Forum Post and Newsletter article about how FD is still working on tech R&D for the super-major paid-for expansions like planets with atmospheres and walking around. No matter how far away they may be. It seems to be said every 6 months or so but folks seem to miss it or need reassurances and some type of vague update would be nice for all of us I think
