The next patch, I hope it's as detailed as this

Titus Balls

Titus Balls
BECAUSE PEOPLE DON'T READ PLEASE NOTE THIS THREAD ISN'T ABOUT EVE, OR IT'S GAMEPLAY OR IT'S COMMUNITY. THIS IS SPECIFICALLY A THREAD ABOUT FRONTIER WITH REFERENCE TO CCP.

Anyone who knows me on the forums know that where Frontier do good things with ED, I'm full of praise and defence. But I've also been critical of how they communicate to us, especially around the point of releases. I've personally always felt that it's been too much marketing, not enough meat.

With that in mind, CCP have released the latest Eve patch. Now the patch notes, Frontier get this pretty close - but they could always do with a little more detail and a little less technical:

http://community.eveonline.com/news/patch-notes/patch-notes-for-tiamat

vs

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=112197

As an example. More importantly, they have a bit more in the way of "here is the cool stuff" in the form of http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/coming-to-eve-in-tiamat/

But also on top of that, more detail:

http://community.eveonline.com/news...l-destroyer-and-projectile-changes-in-tiamat/

Wow look at that detail

View attachment 15718

(As an aside, Frontier - STOP HIDING THE META! Just tell us the stats straight up for a ship and stop keeping it hidden in a little black box.)

Or upcoming little changes that have big effects

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/corp-little-things-friendly-fire-control/

Amazing

15-best-cat-memes-ever-meow--3283dd863e.jpg

Rebalance? I LOVE REBALANCE

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/rebalancing-modules-round-two/

1912-so-much-win.jpg

(Seriously, stop hiding the meta from us)

This is the level that needs stepped up to

Oh and also, marketing IS allowed if it's slick:

http://community.eveonline.com/releases/tiamat/
 
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KING5TON

KING5TON
Agreed.
What's worse is that we were told we would be given more information such as a road map.
I know there are dev updates but like everything in Elite:Bare Minimum it's the bare minimum of information.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
Viajero
NP.

Also, in your proposals "meat" = "marketing". Not that it is a bad thing, but that just is what it is. CCP or CIG are great at it. FDEV needs indeed to up their marketing, it would seem they are a tad too shy!
 
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WiseDuck

WiseDuck
I agree that FD do need to communicate a little more dynamically with the community but you made a boo boo, you mentioned EvE.
 
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Titus Balls

Titus Balls
WiseDuck said:
I agree that FD do need to communicate a little more dynamically with the community but you made a boo boo, you mentioned EvE.
Click to expand...

Simply because it's their next big content patch day, and they delivered on it smoothly, efficiently and with good communication - nothing more, nothing less.
 

ianw

I
Sorry - you lost me at Cher - she is like so O-vah!

But yes - more concise and detailed communication is always welcome...
 

Robbeh

R
Ofcourse CCP's patch releases are yet another angle for marketing but at least they know the target audience, something the authors of the weekly news marketing letters we get from FD could do with revising.

The patch notes however are fine as they are IMO, I wouldn't want the dev's spending time on explaining every technical point in laymans terms.
 

Monk

Monk
While I wholeheartedly agree that communication could see improvement. I want to also think about whether our expectations are realistic, and, if not, how could they be more realistic.

See, when I compare marketing and communications between FD, CIG and CCP I see one major difference, money. Frontier was very successful at running a Kickstarter campaign and were able to put together the money they thought they would need to bring this game to release. That initial KS ask was probably spot on for the game we have released, however, it probably did not include a significant enough budget to handle the marketing. This, likely, would have left FD to rely on whatever resources they have for their other games, which would be modest but probably not able to scale to the popularity and hype of ED.

CIG has their VP of marketing putting a lot of face time (too much, in my opinion) with the community and the press. Certainly not cheap to have that happen so often without a robust team behind her. Same goes for CCP, they have the money and, therefore, the resources to dedicated to providing detailed and well thought out communication to the player base.

At Frontier, the honorable warriors they are, there just doesn't seem to be that same critical mass of people to put out communication. It certainly doesn't get any easier when you have a small team, either. Coming from the husband (and sounding board) of an editor in corporate communication, the job is hard and isn't easy to just whip up some decks, videos and newsletters in short time.

So, how do you best communicate with limited resources? I think FD has got some good things going for it. The Executive Producer, Michael, is regularly posting on the community forums. While his responses tend to be curt, somewhat mysterious and a little hint of annoyed, this level of communication with top brass on a development team is really great. Keep that up! The newsletters, while slim, offer up the basics and is a decent communication that gets to the most people. What is wrong with them isn't necessarily the content, but the timing. Often, they are informing players of features already implemented by a patch a few days earlier. The newsletters, imho, should be revealing more about imminent releases. Where FD could gain a lot of community points with the least effort is by talking to us openly. Maybe just a video once a week or two that lets a couple people on the dev team just talk about what they are working on...even if it has to be mysterious in spots, seeing the excitement that FDev has for this game would go a really long way. Heck, even seeing them laugh over their own struggles would help humanize the whole team.
 

Titus Balls

Titus Balls
Monk said:
While I wholeheartedly agree that communication could see improvement. I want to also think about whether our expectations are realistic, and, if not, how could they be more realistic.

See, when I compare marketing and communications between FD, CIG and CCP I see one major difference, money. Frontier was very successful at running a Kickstarter campaign and were able to put together the money they thought they would need to bring this game to release. That initial KS ask was probably spot on for the game we have released, however, it probably did not include a significant enough budget to handle the marketing. This, likely, would have left FD to rely on whatever resources they have for their other games, which would be modest but probably not able to scale to the popularity and hype of ED.

CIG has their VP of marketing putting a lot of face time (too much, in my opinion) with the community and the press. Certainly not cheap to have that happen so often without a robust team behind her. Same goes for CCP, they have the money and, therefore, the resources to dedicated to providing detailed and well thought out communication to the player base.
Click to expand...

Agreed on the CIG front, I actually find their marketing goes so much the other way it puts me off - it's too saccharine, plus they basically get people to pay an additional subscription to afford it. The few times I've watched 10 for the Chairman I can't get passed the first question it's just TOO annoying.

On the other hand, CCP get Fozzie up in his woolly jumper standing in one of the glass offices - he can't even pronounce the ship name right and fluffs a couple of lines but they keep it in - it doesn't have to be high production value and polished, just informative and humanised. At the moment it feels like MARKETING BOT 5000 is writing the emails (and not spell checking them - on that you can at least do a better job, it just takes having one or two people read it over - written communication can be cleaner than videos).


Monk said:
At Frontier, the honorable warriors they are, there just doesn't seem to be that same critical mass of people to put out communication. It certainly doesn't get any easier when you have a small team, either. Coming from the husband (and sounding board) of an editor in corporate communication, the job is hard and isn't easy to just whip up some decks, videos and newsletters in short time.

So, how do you best communicate with limited resources? I think FD has got some good things going for it. The Executive Producer, Michael, is regularly posting on the community forums. While his responses tend to be curt, somewhat mysterious and a little hint of annoyed, this level of communication with top brass on a development team is really great. Keep that up! The newsletters, while slim, offer up the basics and is a decent communication that gets to the most people. What is wrong with them isn't necessarily the content, but the timing. Often, they are informing players of features already implemented by a patch a few days earlier. The newsletters, imho, should be revealing more about imminent releases. Where FD could gain a lot of community points with the least effort is by talking to us openly. Maybe just a video once a week or two that lets a couple people on the dev team just talk about what they are working on...even if it has to be mysterious in spots, seeing the excitement that FDev has for this game would go a really long way. Heck, even seeing them laugh over their own struggles would help humanize the whole team.
Click to expand...

I also agree on the timing. Except for the patch notes, the actual release information was put out on the 28th January - plenty time to get people EXCITED about the features and just enough description and content so people know what to expect. In comparison Frontier drip feed small tidbits in the newsletter but not enough for us to understand the feature fully (leading to confusion and heated debates on these forums). Also at this time they had testing up on SiSi of features already past the 80% mark of development - the rest was the 20% polish.

Beta 1.1 didn't feel like that, it felt like at most some features were 50% done, some were only just started that sprint. It might not be the case, but the perception on the forums (and on twitter) were that was the case.
 
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Nicodemus

N
It's ok to mention EvE as it is now because they have had 10 years of making mistakes and getting it right. However, at launch EvE had less content than ED, and less communication and also had it's first content forays go quite badly (I still remember how lackluster and broken the original missions were). I would like a little more communication from Frontier in regards to what is supposed to be coming but also accept that they are a lot smaller and somewhat focused on getting things done to always be yabbering at us about what to expect.
 

[HJ]-RedRaven

[HJ]-RedRaven
I agree, CIG and Eve obviously have significantly larger marketing budgets and the personnel to use it.

Expectations have certainly changed though. Take the development of Halo - I remember drooling in early ?1999 when 3-4 screenshots of the Puma buggy and kneeling soldier whatsits came out and it was "Amazing" "Cool" and "Blown away". I never ended up playing the game because I'd over-anticipated it and burnt out to lack of information (even on release).

Nowadays CIG can pop out videos at prodigious rates citing open dev communication as the top ten commandments and Eve creates masterpieces that bear no real resemblance to the game but add directly to surrounding lore, storyline or overall cool factor.

I'm afraid now the genie is out of the bag, and our increasingly unquenchable desire for media immediacy will hit a wall soon. Only a pipe plugged into our heads will top what's just around the corner.
 

Titus Balls

Titus Balls
Nicodemus said:
It's ok to mention EvE as it is now because they have had 10 years of making mistakes and getting it right. However, at launch EvE had less content than ED, and less communication and also had it's first content forays go quite badly (I still remember how lackluster and broken the original missions were). I would like a little more communication from Frontier in regards to what is supposed to be coming but also accept that they are a lot smaller and somewhat focused on getting things done to always be yabbering at us about what to expect.
Click to expand...

CCP is only an example because A) They had a content patch today and B) There is a lot of crossover of players here.

You are correct, CCP was terrible and it has taken that many years, but many other companies have too - basically the baseline for a lot of mistakes and lessons have been set and that mean the standard today should already be a lot higher to begin with.
 

Monk

Monk
Indeed, 1.1 was not a good release. At least Michael and Frontier had the integrity to own up to that fact. I can't help but think the development and release management of these updates are being pushed along by a force not on either of those teams. It almost feels like a scramble at the moment, and features are being shoved down the pipeline more quickly to satisfy some other motive. Perhaps I'm just paranoid...time will tell.
 

Titus Balls

Titus Balls
Monk said:
Indeed, 1.1 was not a good release. At least Michael and Frontier had the integrity to own up to that fact. I can't help but think the development and release management of these updates are being pushed along by a force not on either of those teams. It almost feels like a scramble at the moment, and features are being shoved down the pipeline more quickly to satisfy some other motive. Perhaps I'm just paranoid...time will tell.
Click to expand...

You're not the only person to think that (I can name at least 4 other people on here I've spoken to - and you only have to look on twitter to see a similar sentiment).
 
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