I wonder, why don't devs don't listen to the player base?

[Hattrix 43]

Honest question.

They HAVE to have tossed about the same concerns that people here have mentioned (claims were fine just limit them, foundation spam issues...) In their meetings, what was the reply / solution when someone brought it up? Really? What was the dialog?

If they DO have answers / solutions to the issues people have brought up regarding post-wipe, WHY don't the devs explain how it'll work so the player base is comfortable?

There are a few reasons I see that they aren't explaining away the issues people have. They are:

1. They don't care and are so arrogant to believe that they have it all worked out and "they'll show us" / "I told you so"

2. They don't really see the same problems that the players see so they're ignoring them because to them, there aren't any issues.

3. They don't have a clue how to address the issues and are just trying stuff without any real thought behind it.

4. They vetted all of the issues players have. Their plan is mostly foolproof, and they don't feel like addressing the player base. They'd just rather us see it to believe it.

Am I missing any reasons?

Star Citizen devs are doing a GREAT thing by SHOWING the players their development schedule / timelines / workload ... ect. It's EXTREMELY transparent.

Any development team that ISN'T as transparent as that seem like they're hiding something. They probably are. I'm not talking about hiding a cool surprise / feature / zone .. ect. I'm talking hiding stuff from the player base because they KNOW it's not right for the game but they're doing it anyway (for unknown reasons).

[MisterMyztik 59]

I think you'll find most of what they have done was based on feedback... it was just based on the feedback of the most vocal group at each time (generally NOT the people enjoying an aspect of the game).

Each iteration will have its detractors and its fans. Generally the fans keep playing, and the detractors make their way to the forums to complain.

Unfortunately if grapeshot don't have a lead developer with a clear path in mind they will twist and turn all over the place by "listening to the players".

[MeatSammich 214]

49 minutes ago, MisterMyztik said:

I think you'll find most of what they have done was based on feedback... it was just based on the feedback of the most vocal group at each time (generally NOT the people enjoying an aspect of the game).

Each iteration will have its detractors and its fans. Generally the fans keep playing, and the detractors make their way to the forums to complain.

Unfortunately if grapeshot don't have a lead developer with a clear path in mind they will twist and turn all over the place by "listening to the players".

The issue is that it seem like they HEAR the complaints, but they don't actually LISTEN to the reasoning behind them, or any solutions of possible fixes. It is really starting to feel like they have, at best, a complete apathy toward PvE, if not an intense dislike, due to the history of half-assed fixes that get put in for problems that only effect PvE, while PvP gets fully fleshed out implementations.

The land claim issue had a large number of people complaining that they couldn't find land for claims, but, instead of limiting claims like the majority of the people asked for, they just said "No claims for anyone, and everything decays" and washed their hands of it.

The weight griefing of ships is another example. People complained about others sinking their ships by being on them while overweight. Instead of not counting non-company people as crew and not taking weight damage while at anchor or any other fixes, they turned the ships into fly-traps for anyone who crossed the boundary of one, due to the levitation effect.

Abandoned ships is another. Instead of just putting in a slow decay on ships while at anchor, they made one attempt at deleting ships that hadn't been set foot on in 3 weeks, which borked and deleted half the ships on the server and required a rollback...and haven't tried, or even mentioned anything about it since - even including this patch.

Notice a trend? All PvE-centric issues. I'm sure there are others, those are just the first few that come to mind.

 

Now look at PvP:

PvP complained about companies owning too much land, they got claim limits, they got settlements (with playershops, wtf??), they got a fully fleshed out feudal lord and renter system, and getting to name their own islands.

PvP complained about offline raiding, they got a system of setting vulnerability windows, and scheduled wars with purchased tokens in otder to fix it.

Pretty much every combat related change, (fire arrow nerfed to uselessness, for example) and every material cost change (stone getting made more expensive, for example) has been done to placate PvP players, without any though of how it will affect PvE.

 

Its easy to see why a large portion of the  PvE playerbase feels marginalized and ignored, even though we make up right around 40% of the playerbase.

Edited March 3, 2019 by MeatSammich

[MisterMyztik 59]

All valid points

The game is clearly being developed for PvP and many aspects will not work for both with just small tweaks.

Edited March 3, 2019 by MisterMyztik

[MeatSammich 214]

1 minute ago, MisterMyztik said:

All valid points except the last.. it was fairly consistently 60:40

But yes, the game is being developed for pvp.

Fair enough. Fixed.

[DannyUK 308]

They probably are listening but throwing around ideas among themselves.

I don't know how hard it is to change systems or how long it takes but they've just spent time changing it to take flags away and won't want to change again without testing it

They were certainly listening on stream everyone asking for X10 xp but they only got X6. I've given up until after wipe, i don't have motivation for it right now like everyone else.

[Yomaz 10]

If they are listening wiping our characters on pve is absurd. I got the fountain of youth buff twice why not let us keep those. I know people that didn't play have said why should you get an advantage. Well its pve there is no advantage except respecting our time for an un need lag fest that we all wanted to be implemented differently before we did it once. Getting discovery points to extend our max level also feels silly if this was for a little ice cream on the cake it'd be one thing but this is for over 50 levels. Everyone knows people play mmo's for dings of xp and that ding of a new level we get 100 plus of those lets actually be able to access those before the wipe after this one. I do like they let us know about the wipe this far in advance it lets us take a break and come back fresh instead of "all yo sh*t gone" here you go start re bug testing for us now. Though if they would of said at least for pve that our characters transferred we could of had things to still work towards and been ok with it to some degree. This is an mmo the amount of time you put in it should reflect on your character simple enough.

[Derfel 11]

On 3/3/2019 at 5:14 AM, Hattrix said:

Star Citizen devs are doing a GREAT thing by SHOWING the players their development schedule / timelines / workload ... ect. It's EXTREMELY transparent.

 

yeah but star citizen is also taking years to release a game , whilst seemingly focusing on revenue generation (ooo look a shiny new ship package! pay us $500 and you can fly this...at some point....)
Grapeshot have made mistakes... But i'll take the trial and error process that they're working through over the Mythical promise of a future game , any day of the week

don't get me wrong , i have a star Citizen ship package and am still looking forward to the game (if its ever released) , but it gets a little irritating to see "valentines themed ships" over the release

Give Grapeshot time...they will make mistakes , they will probably wipe a couple of times , but they ARE listening..we'll get a solid game in the end

[Archsenex 309]

The number 1 reason devs don't "listen to us"

 

There's a lot of "us" and "us" are very noisy and say different things.

 

It's kinda like how Congress can never do anything without almost 50% of people being outraged.

[sand man 99]

On 3/3/2019 at 5:14 AM, Hattrix said:

Honest question.

They HAVE to have tossed about the same concerns that people here have mentioned (claims were fine just limit them, foundation spam issues...) In their meetings, what was the reply / solution when someone brought it up? Really? What was the dialog?

If they DO have answers / solutions to the issues people have brought up regarding post-wipe, WHY don't the devs explain how it'll work so the player base is comfortable?

There are a few reasons I see that they aren't explaining away the issues people have. They are:

1. They don't care and are so arrogant to believe that they have it all worked out and "they'll show us" / "I told you so"

2. They don't really see the same problems that the players see so they're ignoring them because to them, there aren't any issues.

3. They don't have a clue how to address the issues and are just trying stuff without any real thought behind it.

4. They vetted all of the issues players have. Their plan is mostly foolproof, and they don't feel like addressing the player base. They'd just rather us see it to believe it.

Am I missing any reasons?

Star Citizen devs are doing a GREAT thing by SHOWING the players their development schedule / timelines / workload ... ect. It's EXTREMELY transparent.

Any development team that ISN'T as transparent as that seem like they're hiding something. They probably are. I'm not talking about hiding a cool surprise / feature / zone .. ect. I'm talking hiding stuff from the player base because they KNOW it's not right for the game but they're doing it anyway (for unknown reasons).

What ??? ive backed Star Citizen in 2012 and im a vertern backer, and i can tell you that game years behind and getting nowhere fast.

[arzosah 84]

They do listen to the player base.  The problem is that the player base as a whole don't agree with each other, and it's impossible to make everyone happy.

[MeatSammich 214]

8 minutes ago, arzosah said:

They do listen to the player base.  The problem is that the player base as a whole don't agree with each other, and it's impossible to make everyone happy.

You're never going to make everyone happy. The problem is that the solutions they implement are never the solutions that really any portion of the playerbase are asking for. See my post upthread for a few examples.

Its like having a tree near your house that the branches keep growing and rubbing on the house. Your wife wants the tree cut down and a smaller-growing one planted instead. You want to cut the tree down and just be done with it. Your kids just want you to keep paying to have it trimmed, because their treehouse is there.  So you hire a tree surgeon to come up with a solution, and he decides to just burn your house down instead.

[José Gaspar 58]

I does appear that the Developers go not get the PvE version of their own game.    The everything is lawless is better than what we have now, but much depends on the how they implement upkeep.    I am hoping that thatch foundations takes the most to upkeep, wood foundations and pillars take about average, and stone take about the same as wood.   The cheapest thing to spam land with should be the most expensive to maintain.

I think give the amount of time they have to "Fix" PvE making lawless is best way to go.   Later, once player get establish they can review how it goes, and posssibly add soem player control on the island.,    Something such electing a company to govern the island.  SInce defense will not be a thing, ruling an island will be more about providing infratructure like public crafting stations and bridges and protecting spawn areas, in exchange for taxes.   Don't help improve the island or taxes too high, will be voted out, Do a good job may be rulling the island until you stop playing.

First Come first served claims simply was not a good match for PvE, it was far too easy to keep land when you could refresh 11 claims in less than 5 minutes every 20 days.   People not even playing were keeping the lands claimed, just in case they came back.  That would not bnad if a couple of players were doing that, but almost every had an average of less than a player on it, ti had to change.

Edited March 4, 2019 by José Gaspar

[Archsenex 309]

Lawless servers were stabilizing.  Every day I saw fewer with hostile spam and more where people were working together.

The fixes needed are modest, not massive

[LoneXS 31]

1 hour ago, Archsenex said:

Lawless servers were stabilizing.  Every day I saw fewer with hostile spam and more where people were working together.

The fixes needed are modest, not massive

I think that was more down to a dwindling player count than anything. Smaller communities tend to cooperate better, you get familiar with the usual suspects I guess.

And I agree, things just need to be tweaked here and there. The system works its just needs to be balanced to a point where everyone can enjoy it.

[Archsenex 309]

10 minutes ago, LoneXS said:

I think that was more down to a dwindling player count than anything. Smaller communities tend to cooperate better, you get familiar with the usual suspects I guess.

And I agree, things just need to be tweaked here and there. The system works its just needs to be balanced to a point where everyone can enjoy it.

It can also be a dwindling arse-hole count.  there are LOTS of new games coming out every day to go be annoying in.

[Nutcutt3r 173]

Cuz you dont post in Suggestions or Bug reports maybe?

Instead you come to GD looking for a tissue.

[MeatSammich 214]

2 minutes ago, Nutcutt3r said:

Cuz you dont post in Suggestions or Bug reports maybe?

Instead you come to GD looking for a tissue.

To be fair, in a perfect world, thats where most of the suggestions should go.

Unfortunately the suggestion/bug report forums are a hot mess, and a royal pain in the ass to find anything on. Requiring votes to get a topic on  the front page doesn't exactly facilitate getting a topic viewed to foster discussion among the playerbase, when the topic isn't easily visible in the first place.

[Nutcutt3r 173]

2 minutes ago, MeatSammich said:

To be fair, in a perfect world, thats where most of the suggestions should go.

Unfortunately the suggestion/bug report forums are a hot mess, and a royal pain in the ass to find anything on. Requiring votes to get a topic on  the front page doesn't exactly facilitate getting a topic viewed to foster discussion among the playerbase, when the topic isn't easily visible in the first place.

Look at it on their end- they dont want discussion. Just peeps who agree or not. Go figure.

[Nutcutt3r 173]

Although now that I think about it its a very simple way for a few people to spam and get what they want...

[MindOfMadness 98]

What do you mean by player base?

The 5000 people left playing not even 2 months in or the 50,000 that quit playing because of the said issue the devs are attempting to fix now?