Is it just me or are the forums hurting for new material

There's four sides to that:

1. People may not be understanding the answers correctly.
2. People are missing the answers.
3. Devs reply but don't actually give answers.
4. Devs give answers to questions without thinking beyond what was asked (to understanding the real issue and "why" people asked those questions).

With all due respect to @Lord British (and the message he's conveying), his post in this thread falls into #3... don't worry though, I understand his intent wasn't to give answers but to argue a point.

I think what people need to understand is that silence will progressively be a reality as the devs go on crunch. What the devs and (respectfully) the "white knights" need to understand is that replying for the sake of making noise can be just as destructive if not enough thought was involved in the response... which happens very frequently.

Chris posts on the RNG, for example, were understandably defensive but didn't address the problem that players were experiencing with it. "The math is good, deal with it" is not how a game designer should approach the problem. (#4)

I remember very clearly the day during a Telethon where Lum merely shrugged in defeat in regards to the dialogue system stating "I'm not that good at writing a text parser. This is the best I can do." Another (#4) If you (or anyone on the team) can't make it better, then the idea needs to be scrapped so that a different (better) solution can take form. This isn't the first game to feature a dialogue system; use what works.

People are pissed off and saying "Omg! The devs said this was story complete but the quests are buggy and this and that" when the devs already explained ad nauseam what "story complete" entails. (#1) It doesn't mean anything more that a player can reach the ending of the story. Nothing more.

Any other time someone asks for a dev to comment on a subject and someone else in the forums posts a dev quote. (#2)

As much as I like the guy, that's not good enough in my book. I'm not here to solve their problems; I'm here to point them out. I'm already "working for free" as it is for spending my time in the forums.

In my particular case, providing solutions for them would actually be a "conflict of interest".

This is a recurring theme with my (critical) posts. If you acknowledge that there's a problem and you can't find a solution, maybe you need to take a second look at your goals and think if it's worth the hassle.

The "meh, good enough" attitude isn't healthy; especially if it's regarding to core elements of your game.

 

There was no change that made decay accumulate only during playtime; it was considered but never implemented.

 

Dev comments from to time are great and all but the substance of those comments are hardly ever definitive design goal type posts. I might be alone on this but I think we are at a point where we can expect details on designs instead of "this is what we are thinking".

IE: the purpose of PvP. We still don't know more than open PvP

We don't even know what a moral system looks like or if we will ever have one. No moral system will turn me into a very vocal person. I will not be happy.

 

As far as the forum needing new material, a funny thing happened on my way here ...

 

I almost agree with this line of thought......... But I was young in my UO days and didn't know what I had!!!

Now I am old " And I truelly at this point believe I am going to die BEFORE someone releases another game as good as UO and SWG.... and to be honest i would rather that happen before I die!!!
So I will shout as loud as I can in the forums of games with the MOST potential to possibly become as good as what is now lost for the ages....
And that is currently Sota and Crowfall.... But it would be amazing IF an MMO could release before I die that recreates the open world sandbox experience with housing and vendors and pvp the way UO and SWG did....

 

I'll take almost

However, I hope you don't die any time soon. We older gamers need to stick together and keep rocking on! No guarantees that SoTA will hit the sweet spot that SWG did (Wanderhome was my server), but it has a lot of potential. Let's remember that when SWG released, it had no speeders and no space missions...LOL.

If we keep giving constructive feedback and solutions to the problems we're experiencing with SOTA in it's current state, I have no doubt some of those concerns will be rectified one way or another. I'd like to believe we'll all be pleasantly surprised, but then again - can't please everyone.

I wish you well!

 

A prove that he didnt read the forum because there where multiple solutions mentioned and he only answered because it is terror in the forum.

 

Still no answer to the topic, like i sayed

 

Sorry but this feels like a copy paste. Did you read anything? And when Starr read anything, why didnt he respond like he always say?

 

In my opinion, the devs will rarely answer here about your concerns, and that's pretty logical, after all.

When they get a complaint about the game, they have to get the big picture first and IF they feel that something has to be changed, then they'll have to use the best media to make the announcement.

Of course, that will rarely be the forum but, rather, the patch notes and the announcement part of the website, eventualy the livestreams and the telethons, because they'll have to reach all the player base and some players simply don't use the forum at all. At least, that's what I suspect.

They already know how the population is behaving in SotA because they have stats (not the steam ones, which don't even show the total of the active steam players !) and they read the forum. I don't think that they try to avoid us.

I think that they just have to manage their time. Answering to everyone on the forum would be a waste of our money. I mean, look at the forum statistics :
Discussions:
84,043
Messages:
810,992
Members:
202,426
If the devs had to read and answer every message, three of them would have to take something like 2 minutes per message, working on a 8/24h, 7/7d basis since 2012 (marketplace not included). And those devs would not have time for anything else. A waste.

You just have to understand that, like everyone here INCLUDING ME, you are nobody (no offense intended there). They won't create the game for you nor for me, nor for @majoria70 , nor for the tens of players complaining about this and that. They have to create the game for all of us and they are at the best place to do so.

I'm not saying that you can't complain at all. Of course you can ! Problem lies in repetition. Repetition is not constructive. It's just boring, as @Stundorn pointed out. The best proof of that is that you seem to be bored yourself, while you don't even know how the game will be once it is released.

That said, there is one concern that people can have : Do the devs play their own game without any cheat, just to get the real feeling about it ? I don't only speak about the quests but about crafting, grinding, etc...
@Lord British : could you answer this, please ?

 

I stopped playing about 6 months ago, but I haven't stopped checking the forums. I will be back in-game after release.

 

I can understand that they dont answer everything but a topic with multiple threads and many many pages with alot of people waiting for a statement should be answered.

 

The next topic is about players who complain about that there's nothing to complain.....

 

if only that were true. Unfortunately, inequality has been at the core of some of this development's most divisive issues.

 

That's what a community manager is supposed to do. If an actual dev want to spend time to answer questions, they might want to make it worth while for everybody involved; including themselves.

I, for one, care more about the quality of the posts than the quantity and frequency.

As for the devs playing their own game without cheats, they claim to have established a mandate for that. That fact in itself have so much more meaning than the dev probably intended.

 

I know this is a little off topic, but just curious Majoria have you ever tried Black Desert?

 

While i get your point..
I quite easily respond to just about every core thread. I wotk fulltime and hsve a 3yr old. It doesnt take long.

How many of those threads and messages r actuslly needing dev input? How many are duplicstes of the same issues or topics?

Honestly your talking 5-10 min every 2nd or 3rd day..
I highly reccomend you guys look at camalot unchained. Somehow the devs manage to develope while the community never has lingering questions.. which leads to less need to answer.. which leads to more time for real feedback.. etc etc.

Look at the post history of RG and or darkstsrr? Or Chris? 15 posts in 3 months? All about as lucrative and informative as the one he posted here.

This is exactly why i stopped trying to give real feedback lol

 

Definitive answers. We have plenty of core design features with dev statements that can be referenced when someone makes a post.

IE: consensual PvP - these threads always circle back but we know the dev position on the design.

A thread that is in the 100+ page status without dev comment is 100% due to no dev statements on the core design.

We are at the state of development that we can expect hard line answers. Even if they include options to change course.

Credit to the @Chris blog and thread. As it does what I am saying.

 

Yes I did check out the game. It's a very ambitious game with tons of players right now. To me it successfully captured the "a lot to do" aspect we are really missing in this point of development. I am one to check out games. Black Desert encourages afk playing. It has you leaving your character fishing, or walking the road back and forth or riding your horse on a chosen by you pathway to raise skills. Much different than the attitude here which is banning offences. Also it seems to encourage solo play if desired. While the game has some thing for everyone for me black desert misses the mark in giving me a warm inviting feeling and that certain almost unexplainable feeling I am hoping we can achieve here.

So The certain touches that make you want to log in every day and make you want to keep playing are absolutely necessary. This has always been my desire and dream for this game. It will be in the details. This game cannot skimp on the details in its features and systems and I hope and pray they too know that. Examples are fishing being interesting and detailed, agriculture having interesting detail like maybe plants that wilt or get disease, worms come out of the ground to harvest when it rains. Perhaps we play music to our plants and on and on and on. For example we get a criminal system with wanted posters. I can go on and on as most here do know.

I am here for the details we are adding in to this game and will be adding. Imo that is why we are all here. We say when experiences are unsatisfying and need more detail or something tweaked. I truly feel This is our very important job here. which is to help si that we don't maketo another soul-less, lifeless (with out soul) game. I am determined this game won't be that. We say no to limited over repetitive just thrown in features over and over to give rich experiences. Although I do say yes to daily quests as well for fishing, crafting, PvP, agriculture etc as extra reasons for some to do them with rewards too.

Edited after coffee

 

I have also been feeling this for quite a while... although I kind of understand when you spend your day on the computer crunching bugs you come home and don't even want to open the TV (I speak for myself sometimes)... but then again if I was a programmer or artist and RG told me "I have a job for you" you can bet I would spend my leisure time around here making sure everything we communicate is being understood, so the quality of feedback improves and there is less sifting to do.

I would even log in unity from home and do world building on my freetime so much gratitude I would have for being given a job that is so aligned with my passions.

I work 60 hours a week, half of it in front of the computer doing accounting and boring stuff, the other half doing sales and service which is mostly complaints and returns and maintenance, very physical and mathematical work. Every week I also give 30 hours of volunteer work for my lover who started her farm... so yea... my mind is full, my body is aching, I even get depressed because my work is uncertain and unstable.

Yet I have the time not to miss a thing here, watch the telethons, read the patch notes, pretty much everyone's feedback. It has value to me, because its my childhood dream to make games like this... so when a dev gets impatient and yells at his own playerbase, I'm hurt.

Saying thank you in the telethons is one thing, expressing gratitude is more complex in our situation.