Why are Fdev so bad at community management?

RamirezKurita

R
Attack Chimp said:
I clearly said they need to hire someone who can communicate with brass at FD also.

It's a two- way deal.

Then you go on to assert that a communicator probably doesn't have enough industry knowledge to effectively communicate. I don't remember suggesting that a rank ameteur coder be hired as a communicator.
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And I clearly stated that "gatekeeper middleman at best", which is exactly what you describe - someone as a go-between for the community and the brass as FD.

The problem with information disseminated via 3rd parties is that it will nearly always be stripped down and minimised (perhaps accidentally, sometimes deliberately, sometimes just because they don't understand what they are attempting to relay), losing so much vital information in the process. The only way to prevent the loss of information by going via a middleman is to simply repeat the information provided to said middleman completely verbatim - in which case why not cut out the middleman and simply get the designer/tester/architect to explain it to us directly?

The only reason to have a middleman would be to ask the questions of the relevant people, whether that's asking them to write a devblog on a particular topic, create and participate in a focused feedback thread, dragging them onto a livestream or even just doing a 10 minute interview with them, but any added filtering or information loss by the middleman would be counterproductive. Either way, it wouldn't be the community manager communicating with us, it would be getting the developers to communicate with us.
 

Riverside

Riverside
Kubicide said:
There are no sources. It's a theory crafted by the poster. Changing the season model had nothing to do with the player base, nothing. It had to due with money and spending it on new developments and not Elite. That's all there is to say really.
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Perhaps someone from FDev would like to clarify. IIRC there was always an intention to use the money from ED to develop the next title, so presumably it's not a major factor in any slowing of progress with ED (because if so it would have been factored in from the beginning). I have no source to back that up, I could be wrong.
 

StuartGT

StuartGT
Riverside said:
Thanks StuartGT, that doesn't line up well with the current situation though.
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New Era is a paid-for update being produced over a ~2 year period, developed for even longer, and FDev have stated it'll be Elite Dangerous' biggest update yet. It doesn't sound to me like a season-pass-like series of updates, but a single, large expansion.
 

Riverside

Riverside
StuartGT said:
New Era is a paid-for update being produced over a ~2 year period, developed for even longer, and FDev have stated it'll be Elite Dangerous' biggest update yet. It doesn't sound to me like a season-pass-like series of updates, but a single, large expansion.
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That reads to me as though DB is ruling out both more seasons and one big update (because of the price). It doesn't line up with how the expansions have worked on Planet Coaster or JWE either AFAIK, which had several smaller expansion packs.
 

krylite

krylite
Lordxenu said:
TL;DR - Why do all other games (including Fdev's other games) get more community engagement than Elite?
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ED has the major 2020 upgrade in the works which would seem like a major change to the game and probably its infrastructure where the estimated dev time will take over at least a year. So it's nowhere near ready probably. As for the minor tideover patches to come that were mentioned, it seems like the next one planned isn't ready yet so FD probably don't have anything substantial to announce yet, and I'm fine with that and don't really think this supports a judgement that FD are "so bad at community managmeent". The next announcement could come anytime, next week, next month, months later , whatever and whenever something is ready; meanwhile there is plenty do and appreciate n the game currrently, imo.
 

Stigbob

Stigbob
Vandaahl said:
Its not a gamble at all. It was they highest tier left for me to support the project. Would I still be able to name an NPC or station I would have gone that way, but I couldn't. The moment E: D was gamma released I already had more bang for bucks than any other game I ever owned.
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You don't exactly what how much or when you'll get stuff for it. Therefore gamble I don't mean it in a bad way, I'd have got one and been happy with it had I been around then.

It's fine if you are OK with the variable outcome. Not so much if you are not.
 

Mangal Oemie

Mangal Oemie
Look, let's be real.... "Community Management" is just the 21st century corporate speak for "PR" but "PR" itself has got such a bad rep, nobody calls it that anymore.

Community management is an empty phrase when it doesn't involve managing or engaging with the community. If anybody does community management here, it is Brett C and the volunteer mods doing a great job of actually engaging with the community.

Community Management at Frontier means speak at/to the wider community, and speak with a small group that some have called the "Cambridge Driving Club". If you're not withing easy reach of Cambridge and on the list of "friends" (including Triple Elite), you don't matter. Frontier doesn't speak with player groups about topics, unless you're part of the little in-group. That's fine, they should just admit it, instead of pretending to listen to the entire community.

Case in point: the /dev/null that is community@frontier.co.uk that supposedly "goes to every community manager and always gets a response".

Not my experience. Not even when wary after multiple past experiences I was assured they were waiting for it, and to please ping us on Discord so I know it was sent.

nothing. zip. nada.

Not even an automated "we received your message and get back to you". Just...

/dev/null

Best community management team? Must be on the basis of the 24 hr charity stream each year, which is often hilarious. Throughout the rest of the year? Crickets and crisis management when the forum blows up.
 
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Killnine

K
StuartGT said:
New Era is a paid-for update being produced over a ~2 year period, developed for even longer, and FDev have stated it'll be Elite Dangerous' biggest update yet. It doesn't sound to me like a season-pass-like series of updates, but a single, large expansion.
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I suspect it is, for most practical purposes, going to be a sequel. Hopefully with CMDRs carrying over. From the Beyond launch, and continuing stability problems, combined with slow pace of development and alarming number of long-lived bugs, I've gathered the development is in technical debt crisis comparable to the third world. They're doing a wide, if not complete, rewrite. This is not fast nor cheap, which means the resources for QoL improvements and bug fixes are going to be extremely modest. Effectively, the current iteration of Elite is being end-of-lifed and we will need to buy what is essentially a new game. We'll possibly get a loyalty discount, but considering how much 2 years of development costs, it could be only the life long pass holders will be eligible.
 

sorcer3r

S
Lordxenu said:
Now that's out the way I recently started playing Warframe.

Warframe is a year older than Elite but the community approach feels like it's matured 100 years ahead of Fdev. Now this isn't a pop at the community team Will, Paige, Brett and psuedo member Sally do a great job but it just feels like the strategy is so wrong!
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Well, Warframe / DE plays in its own league. Every two weeks a dev stream and almost daily sneak peeks on social media.
They just made a great game and their F2P model allows them to work always on new stuff.
Community management must be a dream for a game which never goes into maintenance mode.

On the other hand if a game is in maintenance mode dev streams would be kind of embarrassing and newsletters would include a lot of terms like "exciting stuff " and "next weeks". ;)
 

TheSynopticVision

T
Mangal Oemie said:
Community Management at Frontier means speak at/to the wider community, and speak with a small group that some have called the "Cambridge Driving Club". If you're not withing easy reach of Cambridge and on the list of "friends" (including Triple Elite), you don't matter. Frontier doesn't speak with player groups about topics, unless you're part of the little in-group. That's fine, they should just admit it, instead of pretending to listen to the entire community.
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Exactly. The odd part is that there’s many in this community who actually believe they are best friends with the CMs, just because they tune in to every livestream and hang out on the forum a lot. Frontier is a company, CMs are spin doctors, they are not your friends, and have no intention of being your friends.

As a company, Frontier thinks about revenue and customer satisfaction, not about making BFFs
 

TheSynopticVision

T
Killnine said:
I suspect it is, for most practical purposes, going to be a sequel. Hopefully with CMDRs carrying over. From the Beyond launch, and continuing stability problems, combined with slow pace of development and alarming number of long-lived bugs, I've gathered the development is in technical debt crisis comparable to the third world. They're doing a wide, if not complete, rewrite. This is not fast nor cheap, which means the resources for QoL improvements and bug fixes are going to be extremely modest. Effectively, the current iteration of Elite is being end-of-lifed and we will need to buy what is essentially a new game. We'll possibly get a loyalty discount, but considering how much 2 years of development costs, it could be only the life long pass holders will be eligible.
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I think that this is very optimistic. I’d like you to be right, but I put my money on the more plausible space legs / atmospheres expansion, for that promises maximum results (think about the media exposure once “You can now walk in Elite Dangerous!!”) with minimal effort (as in, far less than recoding a new game from scratch). Which also means, bugs will stay.
 

amigacooke

amigacooke
This week's streams are just going through the motions. Will catching up to DW2. Twice.

Frontier have taken the goodwill generated by Elite and its successors and, in my view, expended it. No more slack cut for Frontier, no more paying in advance, no more cheerleading in the macOS or any other community. It's Frontier's game, not mine, so they have the responsibility to lead, not shrug their collective shoulders and intone 'News maybe next week, month, season, year'.
 
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babelfisch

babelfisch
TheSynopticVision said:
Exactly. The odd part is that there’s many in this community who actually believe they are best friends with the CMs, just because they tune in to every livestream and hang out on the forum a lot. Frontier is a company, CMs are spin doctors, they are not your friends, and have no intention of being your friends.

As a company, Frontier thinks about revenue and customer satisfaction, not about making BFFs
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Nonsense.
 

TheSynopticVision

T
About the -- frankly uneventful livestreams -- it really doesn't take much Google-fu to discover this pretty exhaustive article (and Gamesindustry.biz is a very reputable source) clearly titled How to create a successful developer livestream.

The article's conclusion goes:

In most all cases, streaming falls to the marketing/community/PR department and is a tool for marketing and expansion. That being said, making marketing the focus rather than the game itself will alienate viewers, who may perceive your streams as infomercials rather than cool broadcasts to watch and pass the time.

A common mistake I see, even with Triple-A titles, is developers who refuse to answer the most popular questions about their game. If you don't know when you will release, informing your fans about your development process rather than telling them "we will have info soon" is much more effective. If you don't have concrete info, giving approximations on things like how many hours of gameplay, how many characters will be available at launch, and similar is very effective, and your fans will reward your truthfulness with loyalty.

Remember that this is a two-way street, a platform for engagement that goes both ways. To approach it as simply another communication vehicle for getting your message to your target audience is to miss the point altogether!
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I mean, I am a random guy with no experience in community management, and yet I am able to see how this is good advice (keeping in mind that Livestreaming is "a tool for marketing and expansion.", not to "make friends with players"). How is it that a large company like Frontier, with CM professionals, cannot come to the same conclusions?
 
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