This thread is becoming a Wall of Text Echo chamber.
So now we’re discussing Swedish holiday laws? WT actual F?
Posting constructive comments is the best way to have some kind of meaningful contribution - anything else is just whining at it’s worst. I have a nasty feeling that by keeping posting we’re just throwing plague rats to a bile troll.
Related to communication, they did put out a dev blog today about bot design decisions (including sought after bot improvements for picking up books). Also, a response regarding the regularity of these things on reddit.
This community is filled with more pedantic and bombastic a-holes than is believable.
Its fs game. They can do wtf they want. You can either play it or not. You can offer suggestions but suggestions can be followed, ignored, or rejected.
The community is NOT united. Some scream “servers”, others want bug fixes, others more content, and others want different/better balance. Some want the game harder, something its just right, some think its too hard. No matter what fs does someone will whinge here about it.
They can go on vaca when they and the company want and don’t need to explain it. They work and under EU and Swedish law they rate a vacation. End of story. Nothing to see here folks, move on.
I’m not a huge fan of vt2. I think the players are OP, I think the career paths suck, dread opening loot boxes due to the animations, I hate the keep, and like the idea of the portal but hate running to it. But I accept its their game. They evidently want several minutes of dead time between each mission. Its their game. I told them how I felt. They did what they want. I’m over it.
Because although I love vt1 and don’t really like vt2 I do believe in fs and their game vision. I continue to buy their stuff because I do have hopes that their vision will be realized.
I do think the toxicity of these forums contributes to their talking less. Yes, I think that’s a mistake. But would you want to come here and talk to the a-holes that scream and rant here daily? I wouldn’t.
Wrong. You’re confusing ‘expectations’ with ‘wants’. Expectations are based on previous experiences. If you have someone who cleans and cooks every day, you expect it to be done. If you don’t have someone who does these things for you, you might want them to be done, but you won’t expect them to be done.
It’s the same with the gaming industry. Previous experiences have set a standard, and it’s up to each developer to either meet that standard or manage their users’ expectations with regards to that standard.
Remember, they’re selling us a product. We’re customers, and customers have expectations.
This isn’t a comment on FS specifically, more on the industry as a whole.
Its called being self entitled and with a greatly overblown sense of self importance. Don’t try to pretend some nobility in being a whinger.
If you expect something from someone, you want that he does that in some way.
Ppl write down things here, expect that FS read it and act like they want. That previous games have standards to anything doesn´t mean, that FS have to do the same over and over again like an EA does.
Yeah but the everyone of the 1 million V2 customers probably have expectations on their own. To show FS the middle-finger, because something isn´t like they want, won´t help the game in any way.
I hate to break it to you, but we are not talking about personal life, we are talking about business. Expectations are very much set by industry and trade standards and are, in their core, normative and objectifiable. The key qualifier is reasonable expecations. And before you give me yet another one of your patented examples that have nothing to do with how the real world of busieness works: Reasonable expecations are, under almost all and any jurisdictions I know (and that includes Sweden and I Germany, which I figured is where you lived question mark?), protected by law and actionable in the court of law (in civil suits at that). There is the doctrine of reasonable expectation in contract law (which has its variations in all european countries) and there is reasonable expecation for your contract partner on how to conduct their business with you, which not only applies to consumers but in general to any kind of customer, without any of the two contract partners having to utter a word about their expectations (that’s why they are expecations and not explicit part of a contract). You can even litigate damages if your business partner doesn’t meet those expecations.
That doesn’t say much about how reasonable these expecations are and if they are so for customers. I do think it would be reasonable for FS to change how they conduct some of their business, which at times seems amateur to the point of naive and childish. But it is not my business and it doesn’t do ME any harm. I am, by and large, fine with how the game works, I don’t need endless communication. I still think, as someone with both a legal and a BA degree, that it would be wise from both of these perspectives to change communication, but on a personal level, I couldn’t care less.
But of course, as a customer, I don’t have any reasonable expectation for a company to communicate with me at all, to give me “freebies” (e.g. a company handing out free samples or stuff like that), but on a personal level, customers expect those things AS customers. That’s part of customer retention, one of THE most important things in almost any kind of business. Still find it baffling why these standards should apply anywhere but to FS and this game.
I don’t think anybody wants to tell FS how and when their employees can take vacations. But they cannot treat their customers with such a lack of courtesy and then expect to be met with glory and praise. There will always be people mindlessly complaining, no matter what you do. The difficult part is a.) not letting it get to you and b.) finding a way to filter out legit criticism from “hating” and “crying”. That’s a matter of experience and I do hope they find a way for that.
In the end, by and large, they are doing ok. There is alot room for improvement, but I don’t think it is fair to wail down on them constantly. They will either improve or become obsolete, that’s the way I see it.
Well if you ask me, gaming is part of my personal life and freetime.
Your statements are correct, but if i take an overall view, the gaming industry became a lil bit special in their customer - relationship.
In nearly every business, you’re able to react on the expectations or wishes from the customers. “Yes we can do it” or “No we can’t, because”.
Games (especially Multiplayer) will change again and again and again. It’s not possible to react on millions of expectations or giving out some informations every day / week. Especially with a lot of kids who wish cäncer to everyone or just the gap between newbies and veterans.
It’s is even a better courtesy to be silent and work on the game , than to praise wrong promises or tell anyone " Ok guys… the roadmap was sheet, we’re on vacation now."
That was another big mistake to “buff” the cäncertrain.
FS seems unexperienced in many ways, but they designed a pretty good low price game for us and that community is definately not fair.
I just can appeal to everyone , who loves that game… use your brain , think about what you write down for FS and V2 and maybe help to improve it. There can’t be a good relationship with so much hate and critiscm.
Whatever happened with the roadmap or other promises in the past, it happened and can’t be returned. So take a look at the future and keep this franchise alive. There is no need for new “complaining about FS’s work” threads every week.
There can be: By assessing and identifying the reasons and then changing your strategy. That is what I mean with amateur and “childish”. They entertain an official forums, but all the hullabaloo is happening on reddit. They do very odd dev streams that fail to attract a relevant crowd and fail to communicate relevant information. There will always be “hate” and unwarranted criticism, that is something you have to live with the same way Hollywood movie stars have to deal with paparazzi. But yet there’s stars that see very little paparazzi interaction and others who get alot and it has alot to do with how they conduct their overall public appearance and relations.
Or if you wanna take a more modern twist, Youtubers get a WHOLE bunch of sh*t. I know because some of my clients are and they want me to undertake legal actions against “haters”, which they could, but they shouldn’t because of the Streisand effect.
Of course, there is no “need” for any kind of criticsm towards how they run their business. They will feel the consequences in their wallets, eventually. What I am getting, though, is mixed signals. Sometimes there is communication, sometimes there isn’t. Improvements and changes seem completely random to a point where you can ask “is it because of community feedback, something not working as intended or is it because they just thought it was a good idea?” and not come up with a definitive answer simply because even CM like Hedge seem only to be filled in on a need-to-know basis.
Hanging out on reddit is a good thing to show you care about a grown community, but dealing basically your whole customer relations via reddit is something you do as an indie dev operating from your basement, not as a company that sold as many copies as they did with this game. This is just one of many examples that feel “off” and I don’t see the reason behind it, as these are things that are amongst the easiest to change in a business.
You are definitely right in some way: There are examples of companies being run like any other that is trying to sell a product and then there are companies that still think they are just a bunch of college buddies that have a fun time coding together out of their mum’s basement. That kind mentality you can entertain if you are on Mark Zuckerberg’s or Elon Musk’s kinda level of success.
What is definitely special is the way customers seem to defend obviously flawed practices and products. The gaming industry is arguably one with the most ridicilous amount of buyer’s remorse that I have ever seen. Like, when Dieselgate happened, have you EVER seen ANYONE stepping up and saying “Oh well, they did the best they could, they made a mistake, give them time to fix it, don’t be selfish, it’s their cars, they can do whatever they want with it!”
This is, I think partly owed to the fact that the modern gaming industry is catering towards a younger crowd without much experience in the world of business. But I guarantee you any numbers we have indicate that this kind of behaviour would ruin companies in a matter of MONTHS in any kind of other trade - and I feel this is starting to dwindle since gamers are, on average, above 30 years old and male. And older men are the least agreeable and most difficult to satisfy customers there are.
Which is true. Good business practice is also changing, though in much smaller and more subtle ways. Customer courtesy is, by and large, as important as it was as it was 50 years ago, but it has alot bigger impact due to social media and the speed of distribution of information. Identifying what the biggest crowd is to sell your product to, that is a matter of market analysis. But even big players like Electronic Arts have made the very painful discovery that gamer’s arn’t as gullible and easily swayed as they were 10, or heck, 5 years ago. People are still willing to cut smaller players alot more slack, but that requires tightly knit customer relations. As soon as you step up your game product-wise, sell more and reach a bigger crowd, you need to bring your overall company standards up to speed. I still firmly stand behind that alot of the flak they received, while a majority is in its core justified, could have been mitigated and even turned around by not being so incredibly dense and inflexible (“it’s not the end of the world” used to be a meme for a reason, even though I was one of the folks who established it as such to begin with. The arrogance behind that statement is still way up there and it has cost them alot of trust, I am sure). In an industry where offering complementary compensation in form of some digital goodies costs you almost nothing, it is beyond reason to not do it if stuff didn’t go as planned. But we have been through this.
I am sure that is what they think. I even think they might have a guilty conscience to “go on vacation” while there is still so much work to do. Still, you’d be surprised how far honesty can get you. A little heads up in the ways of “Hey guys, we know there is still alot to do and launch was rocky, but we’ve all been working around the clock to solve these issues and just need some time of. Summer vacations are coming up and we will be able to tackle problems with 100% effort after we got some time to recharge our batteries. Our next objectives are x, y and z and we will be happy to hear from you what you think about it!” and I guarantee you we wouldn’t even be talking about it.
Agreed.
Some parts are, some parts are not. But delving on the bad parts and punishing the good parts for it, I don’t know, that doesn’t seem to solve anything.
You make some good points.
For; instance, I agree that if they had handled the vacation differently it wouldn’t be a topic.
I also agree of they communicated more and (more importantly) BETTER much of this would have subsided.
Any runner can tell you this: when you go on a run you want to know about how far of a run it is and how long it will roughly take. Going on a run of indeterminate distance is very rough mentally. Letting people know what’s going on, what’s being worked on, and about how long (no promises, but ‘an idea’) goes a long way. IMO this is fs biggest failing - there lack of giving out info.
Now on to the flip side:
-people are demanding tons of things from the company, often contradicting each other.
-the tone is downright abusive, rude, entitled, and hostile.
-the people making demands how no idea how hard or easy their demands are to meet.
In addition, you are incorrect about one thing. They are NOT offering a service. A service can be bargained around, negotiated, etc. Instead they are offering a product. It is as is. Take it or leave it.
Digital products are somewhat a mix between offering a product and a service. I can bargain about certain aspects of products, like its price, details, availability, extras or form of distribution. But I agree, software still holds a certain special standing as it is, by capitalist standards, a relatively new commodity that is still developing when it comes to its production, distribution, consumer expecations, industry standards and market behaviour. That doesn’t exclude it from certain aspects like functionality, only that expecations and customary usage have a different scope. End-user compatability and usability is, for example, something that is alot different from, say (again), buying a car.
But the assumption that a developer has absolutely free realm over changing the scope and details of a product offered is ludicrous and simply not true (not claiming you said that, but that is a very common misconception). If they change the code in a way that either makes the software unusuable or at least unusuable within reasonable scope and effort or completely revamp what it did, you bet that under most jurisdictions, you are eligible for litigation. This is, however, more of an issue outside of the entertainment industry, meaning it applies more to applications that are used professionally or at least casually in some kind of “work” context.
My whole poinit is that while I can see why holding FS as a “smaller” company to the same standards as, say, a player like Nintendo would be unfair, one should still not ignore the fact that we are talking, by and large, contractual relations between two market participators to which certain standars apply in general, no matter if we are dealing with services, products, rights or anything in between.
It would be in anybody’s best interest to uphold certain professional standards. That does include customers, but in the end, if a customer conducts their business or behaviour in an unproductive manner, there is hardly any backlash to anyone. This is not true the other way around, and very much so.
Mind blowing to me. This is typically why you have some redundancy in employment and stagger/schedule vacations and PTO. FS is a small studio, but not ‘that’ small.
Of course, I might have a different POV. I can’t imagine not working for more than a week – much less closing down my entire company for a month. That seems crazy.
Pretty much everyone in this thread has been respectful and reasonable. The general consensus is that FS should communicate more, and, if they did, this would probably reduce negativity (although, you can’t eliminate it entirely). Bi-monthly updates would be a good start, IMO.
There’s not much more to add to that beyond the occasional “how dare you question FS” type response. Which isn’t really reasonable in the opposite direction. I mean, we’re paying customers asking for regular updates and communication. That seems pretty normal nowadays when games evolve over time and other developers manage to keep their users/fans updated on what they are doing and focusing on in terms of development.
Maybe they’re sort of getting the message. I guess this is helpful for insight into their thinking? Or something…
Although, something more along the lines of Hedge’s last pinned post on the steam forum addressing current development priorities would be more helpful in terms of addressing OP’s point and general toxicity.
Unfortunately, that post seems to be unpinned now, so I’m having trouble finding it.
In this thread, yes, and in the forums in general too. But the forums and Discord are the more civilized places for discussion; look at Reddit (including the downvoted-to-hiding posts) to see a lot more dislike and downright hatred (although there too things have been a bot more positive lately) and bandwagon-jumping and if you dare, look at Steam forums to see the far worse side.
Sure, but the feedback here has been reasonable. My point is that toxicity in another thread/forum isn’t a reason to make FS immune to constructive criticism – which seems to be a somewhat common stance among some people.
And taking away the hateful comments on another forum, we can (and probably should) address why those people are so angry in the first place. One way could be to say, “they have unreasonable expectations and act like children.” But that’s being a little disingenuous. FS did help create those expectations and they did mess up in several ways. And it’s not just one person who’s upset – it’s quite a few people.
FS could have helped avoid or mitigate some of the backlash by communicating more clearly. Although, the message they seem to have taken away often feels like the opposite. Something like, “Every time we talk to you, you get upset. So we shouldn’t talk any more.”
Because being loud gets reactions. Because hiding behind an anonymous nickname gives a certain freedom from repercussions and responsibility, similar to being the one to “just carry out one’s orders”. Because angry presentation gets views in Youtube and other social media. Because people make their posts in the heat of the moment, without stopping to think what they are saying or doing. Because people read far more into actions and talk from other people than are ever meant, and toss out their reactions to what they assumed was meant, even when it was all in their head. And probably because it’s easier for many to get out their frustrations by just shouting angrily and insulting the devs instead of calmly deciding and dissecting what exactly it is that frustrates them and participating in a calm discussion about it and what can be done.
P. s. I think most children behave better than the angry, noisy gamers. And I work with them, so I’ve met and know quite a few. Children at least say the’re sorry (sincerely) after you have a talk with them, and they show also their positive emotions openly.
What doesn’t help is staying quiet when things aren’t what you want. People get mad about this stuff because they like the game and want more of the good parts of it. Nobody is going to get mad about the way a game is handled if they don’t care about that game.
To be fair, this is their official site, I would like them to focus all their attention here. It’s kind of ridiculous that we have to get information pertaining to the game from a 3rd party website. It would benefit them as well, due to the fact they can outright ban/IP ban obnoxious trolls and people threatening their lives. They have complete control over this site.
That would be nice, but Hedge responded to this a while back. It’s not quite as easy as just picking the official forums to use.