Once again, I didn’t say thet ‘they’ don’t read the forums, I said that expressing any suggesstion here has the same random chance of being implemented. Hell, there are tons of features noone ever asked for - those count too because that also implies that you can keep something to yourself which would later coincide with something FS implements. Does that mean they read minds too? - I think not.
You keep saying ‘after’ and I agree, but I say that there is no clear indication of causality or a feedback loop when you look at the big picture.
Reading everything is a waste of time too, and I don’t really care if anyone at FS is aware of our suggestion - as long as there is this long list consisting of even the most sensible suggestion that are yet to be implemented, then we cannot really tell if we are ignored or not heard or whatever else. Results matter, and they don’t look good for people suggesting stuff.
Well I see it in every single patch note release.
P. S. You know you can still scam deeds, right? Done it the day before yesterday.
Most likely, FS has group discussions internally where they compile ideas together, and organize that based on their own game development plan.
They probably have someone, like a community manager (or more likely, an intern) make notes of common requests in the forums that mention certain keywords, or of ideas that are not already on their internal list.
But a popular request on the forum doesn’t mean that it will overwrite their current development schedule, and a good idea, even if it doesn’t conflict or overlap with something that is already on their list, doesn’t always mean they have the resources to implement it.
I think they do see the posts, but they do their own thing. Example, there were a lot of requests for a new class. Their previous map DLCs have been met with mixed reviews, so they’re trying a new kind of DLC. A Bretonnian class got requested often enough on the forums that they had it on their list. There were plenty of other popular choices for a class, but Martin said in the stream that they like Bretonnia, and were biased toward Grail Knight.
As far as business decisions go, its not a great reason to do something lol. I think the person in charge of making these decisions, dating back multiple games, has been going about it in a way that has kept their games from seeing the full potential. But if its their CEO then there’s nothing his employees can do about that.
Before i forget, i assume this is way easier to do with weapons that are held with only one hand. Just as a note, if they finish the animations for all those earlier and need more time for weapons held in two hands, it’s all right, i can wait.
Would they approach it like that or would they just go from hero to hero, or maybe a mix of both?
To be honest I’m glad they did. If you want to use it to scam that’s on you. I use it to change the map. I was able to play a deed in the enchanter’s lair the other day, it was a lot of fun
I really would like to know how FS is doing their internal communication.
After almost a year in the forums now I have never seen anyone of all the other devs besides Hedge and Julia, who are registered here, and there are 75.
Julia ist almost exclusively responding to bug reports and Hedge is rly the only one how gives some hints or any information from time to time but he never gets involved in any discussion afaik.
So I wonder… do they even care about what ppl write here? They say so but if there is absolutly 0 interaction, doing a discussion here feels as pointless as complaining about the weather (not related to the new weather in the game, I am most happy about this new feature).
Yeah they did remove it and then put it back until deed remake (it was in the patch notes) to allow people to have more fun with current system.
They also did listen for deeds remake, it’s in the todo list. Just not at the top of it. They even said that in the last stream about grail knight so deeds are not forgotten.
It’s a tricky one. So we do have a bunch of devs here, of course, but they’re not here to comment. They’re here to stalk and lurk. As for my involvement in feedback, it’s a risky one. First and foremost, you guys all know infinitely more about the nuances of Vermintide 2 than I ever could. So my input would be laughable. That said, when a developer or CM does input in feedback, it usually either derails a thread entirely, or kills a thread entirely. As such, we (I) typically lurk in the feedback threads and let you guys do the conversation. It’s much more valuable to us to see uninterrupted feedback waterfalls.
That’s understandable, but it would be nice to get answers to some of the more harmless questions.
Let’s not touch the subject of the GK, I can understand that. But I see no harm in asking one of the writers clarification on other subjects. For example If you could see and provide me an answer to this question I’d appreciate it.
It’s not the only question I have, but it’s one which admittedly has been nagging me a lot, recently.
I certainly would like more insight into what’s happening and what’s not, or what is kinda blocked.
Like recolor (or a coloring prototype), modding tools, red illusions, a way to actually farm shillings, properties/traits remake.
But yeah maybe your question is indeed important to some.
Something like a new roadmap ^^` (with ‘unannounced thing’ being written ‘unnannounced dlc content - tentative release march’)
eh! I’m not saying my question is that important to the community.
but it’s harmless. I’d like to have insights into fatshark and its roadmap, but I can see they’d be wary there, as revealing it can have PR problem, as they have said. Still, a more active communication with the community in less hot topics would be nice (althought i’d be all for roadmap discussions. We as a community would have been able to help a lot with WoM for example. An open beta is generally too late for changes)
I can understand that it is tricky to take part in discussions from a devs perspective, it’s always a question of revealing to much, creating wrong expectations and so on. Personally, I’m just not a fan of doing “what if”-discussions since it’s kinda wasted time imo. I know there are a lot of ppl who think different and do those pretty much rdy to use suggestions and stuff, but for me it would be a lot easier if I knew the broad direction of development and that’s what I mean with developer involvement. It’s not about taking part in every discussion, just leading the direction from time to time. I mean, as a developer you should have an idea of a project, just a broad outline of the targeted content and I think discussions here would be a lot more purposeful if we know that we are talking about smth. that has a chance to make it into the game. It would be beneficial for you aswell since the feedback would be alot more focused on what you are working on. All that said, this is just my personal opinion, I have no idea about your internal structure and how you work.
After I read @Froh s last post, pretty much what he said…
It’s hard to believe that some threads here, that turn into a mouthfoaming dirtflinging can actually generate anything useful.
It would be better for a dev to actually step in a kill the thread.
Especially with cases when you do know that it’s never going to happen or you have no intention to change it.
Quite right, but that doesn’t speak to them all, in fact it speaks for a minority of threads. We do kill a thread from time to time if we can outright say something will unequivocally never happen. But it’s rare we’ll ever say never. But we have done it.
Invest more time in blog posts, even mundane things just to show you guys live.
We don’t have plans to stop the dev updates. They will come and go, hopefully less off weeks than on. But it’s just not always possible to get something that is well received. Right now it’s approaching summer, so there will be less going on in the “office”, and a blog of my working week isn’t of much interest - a lot of it is stuff we’re also not able to talk about at all just yet.
We didn’t have much lead time with our boy Grail Knight to get some blog posts flowing, but hopefully now we’re about to release the first career, we can build a blog flow around future careers. But sometimes, a lot of the time, we’re stricly not able to open the door on upcoming content a great deal ahead of time. The way in which content is concepted, approved, developed, approved, tested and then greenlit packaged and signed off, all through GW approval processes means there’s kind of an enforced embargo for a lot of that time.
We’ve some cool stuff coming, we’ve some great plans for future careers and additional content, but it’s fairly hard to communicate about them right now for those reasons above. It leaves blogs of really rich content thin honestly. Not to say we wont show more, but a lot needs to be given so many layers of green light before being shown, that often what’s left are cosmetic concepts.
I’d like to do an AtD Series, where we find a team member and get you folks to fire questions at them. Say “this week ask Level Design your questions” and we’ll get back with a post about those answers. Something you’d be interested in?
To be fair. And I know this would be kinda hard to do. Having insight from the game design team (like @fs-bigras post during WoM) is really something that could be done more often.
This was probably one of the most useful posts for us, as a community, to actually discuss things on. (Of course I also remember the heated debates around some wording but it will happens either you post stuff or not).
What I would want in terms of update is kinda what you’re doing already but with the ‘we’re facing difficulties’ part that could provide some insight on why it doesn’t happen, or why something is not a priority anymore. Facing difficulties is kinda normal in all development cycles so being honest on that end means we kinda stop seeing something as abandonned totally. (Example : Mod tools)
The ‘level design’ post for the difficulties faced on remaking level from the first ones was also great.
Stuff like this are actually one of the problem zones. Developers have the problem that everything they say will consider as official statement. So if one says: “Yea, we are kinda looking at possible recolors.” it will be a second later:“FS totally promised this and broke it.” If the community twists your every word you would be wary as well on what you say. The same for road maps. They have the tendency of doing harm.
And like Hedge said, if a developer shows up there is a tendency that he will bombarded with posts. Imagine a trait thread where a developer says: “Yea, we are having ideas for trait rework.” Instantly he would have five different answer from people all trying to unfluence him and getting their position across.
Balance threads in general are a nightmare to weigh in for developers anyway.
I think there is a lot of reasoning why developers should stay out of most threads. Call it “laisser-faire”. But it leads to a more “pure” discussion and in the end better information for the developers. And personally I think that we see in the updates that they read the forum. But due to the multitude of opinions not everyone can be pleased. It is literally impossible. There are still people crying about deeds. There are still people moaning xyz is trash. There are still people complaining about overpowered elements. And often positions can not be comprimised. Like Hedge said. It IS difficult.
This is why we got most communication through the community manager as his word is more representative to FS stance. Which means though that he also must pay attention to what he says because he has a personal opinion as well.
That said there are questions which are a bit more harmless and in the developer updates we get them answered sometimes. I think one thread called: “Ask the developers” with some pre-established rules like: “Answers given by developers in this thread don’t equal promised production content” or similar could help where we can ask more harmless questions like: “What is the actual timeline? When are Drachenfels and Back to Ubersreik actually happening in regard to the Helmgart campaign?”
And also note that if they don’t speak anymore, we will get the same rants nonetheless. (Cf. Steam forums)
I do think they still can without being too precise like something :
“We would like to revisit Unchained specific role in a team, what do you think of it”
Thats a good idea, if there wouldn’t be a blog post a certain week they could make like a weekly or even monthly thread were devs could just give their personal opinions on things without revealing official changes, or answering unofficially, but again there would still be players reading it as official content, or it would be quoted out of context so yea.
Isn’t that the point of a discussion? I mean not the part of PM-ing a dev, but getting your opinions in and arguing about a specific problem in the forums… officially. That’s atleast a way to get feedback on things that matter and not just random topics s1 comes along with.
