Ok, so from the title, this is sounds like it is an anti-negativity thread right… No, it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, negativity makes me reach for my teddy bear and seek solace in a quiet corner, but it’s not my place to say negativity is bad and to be honest many valid points are being made in seemingly negative posts.
Righto, what on earth is this post all about. Well, it’s more about MHO on how we have ended up with quite negative forums at the moment and what we can do to improve things going forward, and I promise, I’m not going to preach to people about how they should post!!!
The perfect storm:
Going into beta 1.1 we had a number of already sensitive topics raging, shield cells, Python nerf and some concern of new content etc. Once beta dropped we had a new heat mechanic that was a bit hard to get used to, the Python nerf finally hit and collision damage went weird on us, together with some silly bugs in the community goals and cartography. My recollection is that testers were posting the issues thick and fast and were possibly quite harsh with their criticism (I re-enforce, most of the criticism was still right, it was just tainted with frustration).
I now drift to the subjective, FD developers read beta forum first few days and think, holy cow this is depressing, lets not read all this and carry on as we were and just fix the tickets we see come in. Meanwhile the community is madly comparing issues on the forums and posting videos with oodles of evidence that no-one (ok not fair, few people) is looking at. Finally tickets start being raised as we get a handle on what we are seeing. It takes FD time to collect related tickets and start seeing the picture we all saw early on in the beta phase. Beta 1.1 goes live, some of the issues are thought to be fixed because they were never understood fully and in fact aren’t fixed at all. Live players get frustrated, beta tester feel like they may as well not have been there, even the most patient CMDr is going to have some negative vibes going on
Great history lesson… How do you propose we fix it then genius?
Glad you asked There isn’t a simple fix, but there are thing we could do better I think
1) The beta testing has got to work better for all parties. Feedback needs to be fast and efficient. I think the following could help here
a. We could start with increasing the next beta by a week. Sure that means the live servers have to wait longer, but I think it’s worth it overall. Also, beta period needs to be judged in context of the changes. If we really are looking to judge balance changes, we need to give testers time to get a handle on new mechanics before they can truly judge effectiveness.
b. We need a mechanism to summarise what’s been going on in the beta forum so the devs can get an at a glance view and dig into issues that need looking at. Can we have a thread on the beta board that only mods can post to and have a volunteer mod to write a post every 2 days summarizing the top issues they are seeing in beta, ideally with links to example threads? I’m not a mod, but I can (temporarily at least) spend that kind of time to help the process next time round (1.2).
c. I saw that FD tried to set out what they wanted us to test in the beta forum this time out. That was great to help, I’m wondering though if we should think about having a feedback thread in the beta forum that has a fixed format, eg: You got to post and you have to select the test mission you are running, the ship etc you had and a short description of the feedback. This helps structure responses a little.
2) Community feedback by FD.
a. We currently have the weekly dev posts which are really good. However, during beta perhaps every other day a state of the beta post could be made summarizing what is being looked into and what is ticked off the list for testing in the next hot fix. Would help stem the “Talk to me devs…” threads that popped up during beta.
I have other thoughts, but this post is getting long enough as it is. People may disagree with my analysis and that’s great and all fine. I do think we can improve the way we build this game together and I think we need to look at how we can improve this for everyone next time around.
Thoughts….. (Be gentle with me, I am sensitive you know!)
Righto, what on earth is this post all about. Well, it’s more about MHO on how we have ended up with quite negative forums at the moment and what we can do to improve things going forward, and I promise, I’m not going to preach to people about how they should post!!!
The perfect storm:
Going into beta 1.1 we had a number of already sensitive topics raging, shield cells, Python nerf and some concern of new content etc. Once beta dropped we had a new heat mechanic that was a bit hard to get used to, the Python nerf finally hit and collision damage went weird on us, together with some silly bugs in the community goals and cartography. My recollection is that testers were posting the issues thick and fast and were possibly quite harsh with their criticism (I re-enforce, most of the criticism was still right, it was just tainted with frustration).
I now drift to the subjective, FD developers read beta forum first few days and think, holy cow this is depressing, lets not read all this and carry on as we were and just fix the tickets we see come in. Meanwhile the community is madly comparing issues on the forums and posting videos with oodles of evidence that no-one (ok not fair, few people) is looking at. Finally tickets start being raised as we get a handle on what we are seeing. It takes FD time to collect related tickets and start seeing the picture we all saw early on in the beta phase. Beta 1.1 goes live, some of the issues are thought to be fixed because they were never understood fully and in fact aren’t fixed at all. Live players get frustrated, beta tester feel like they may as well not have been there, even the most patient CMDr is going to have some negative vibes going on
Great history lesson… How do you propose we fix it then genius?
Glad you asked
There isn’t a simple fix, but there are thing we could do better I think1) The beta testing has got to work better for all parties. Feedback needs to be fast and efficient. I think the following could help here
a. We could start with increasing the next beta by a week. Sure that means the live servers have to wait longer, but I think it’s worth it overall. Also, beta period needs to be judged in context of the changes. If we really are looking to judge balance changes, we need to give testers time to get a handle on new mechanics before they can truly judge effectiveness.
b. We need a mechanism to summarise what’s been going on in the beta forum so the devs can get an at a glance view and dig into issues that need looking at. Can we have a thread on the beta board that only mods can post to and have a volunteer mod to write a post every 2 days summarizing the top issues they are seeing in beta, ideally with links to example threads? I’m not a mod, but I can (temporarily at least) spend that kind of time to help the process next time round (1.2).
c. I saw that FD tried to set out what they wanted us to test in the beta forum this time out. That was great to help, I’m wondering though if we should think about having a feedback thread in the beta forum that has a fixed format, eg: You got to post and you have to select the test mission you are running, the ship etc you had and a short description of the feedback. This helps structure responses a little.
2) Community feedback by FD.
a. We currently have the weekly dev posts which are really good. However, during beta perhaps every other day a state of the beta post could be made summarizing what is being looked into and what is ticked off the list for testing in the next hot fix. Would help stem the “Talk to me devs…” threads that popped up during beta.
I have other thoughts, but this post is getting long enough as it is. People may disagree with my analysis and that’s great and all fine. I do think we can improve the way we build this game together and I think we need to look at how we can improve this for everyone next time around.
Thoughts….. (Be gentle with me, I am sensitive you know!)
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