Like many CMDRs I care deeply about this game, as well as the development team that produces it. From what we see on live streams, meets, etc. the devs, designers and community team are great people that I have no doubt try to produce the best game possible with the resources they have.
However, historically, there have been a number of "swings and a miss" when it comes to changes to the game, or announcements. The latest incidents have been the changes to drag munitions that were dropped on us with 3.4 that have already been announced to be reverted, and today's Interstellar Initiatives announcement that... well, fell a bit flat. But there have been countless other examples that can illustrate this problem. This is sad, as no doubt the thinking internally was that these were good ideas with a thought behind them. But often FD seems to dramatically misread the community.
Hence, I propose the creation of one or more focus groups that collect players and player groups from the community as a sounding board for such changes. Ideally, this would be a separate group depending on the type of game area affected (i.e. PowerPlay, BGS, PvP/combat balancing, etc.) or a central group, especially for big changes that affect the whole community.
Participation could be done in a few ways. FD could reach out to groups known to be specialists in a certain area, or they can open it up to anyone who would like to participate and make a selection based on whatever criteria may be relevant.
Depending on how willing FD would be with being open, this could either by a wider community discussion or a group providing feedback under NDA. FD presents an idea to the focus group, the participants discuss among themselves and/or involve the wider community, and produces a consolidated response back to Frontier (including any disagreements). FD does with that feedback what it wants.
At the very least, FD will be able to anticipate the community reaction to new changes/proposals. At best, new changes to the game are welcomed by the community and actively engaged with.
However, historically, there have been a number of "swings and a miss" when it comes to changes to the game, or announcements. The latest incidents have been the changes to drag munitions that were dropped on us with 3.4 that have already been announced to be reverted, and today's Interstellar Initiatives announcement that... well, fell a bit flat. But there have been countless other examples that can illustrate this problem. This is sad, as no doubt the thinking internally was that these were good ideas with a thought behind them. But often FD seems to dramatically misread the community.
Hence, I propose the creation of one or more focus groups that collect players and player groups from the community as a sounding board for such changes. Ideally, this would be a separate group depending on the type of game area affected (i.e. PowerPlay, BGS, PvP/combat balancing, etc.) or a central group, especially for big changes that affect the whole community.
Participation could be done in a few ways. FD could reach out to groups known to be specialists in a certain area, or they can open it up to anyone who would like to participate and make a selection based on whatever criteria may be relevant.
Depending on how willing FD would be with being open, this could either by a wider community discussion or a group providing feedback under NDA. FD presents an idea to the focus group, the participants discuss among themselves and/or involve the wider community, and produces a consolidated response back to Frontier (including any disagreements). FD does with that feedback what it wants.
At the very least, FD will be able to anticipate the community reaction to new changes/proposals. At best, new changes to the game are welcomed by the community and actively engaged with.
