in client Game development meter request

[loftar]

This is the most revealing post you have made in years.

It's certainly not the first time I've said it, though I guess that is partly related to why you feel there is a lack of communication. I feel like many of the things that you may be looking for have already been said, it's just that it's buried deep in the the forums, so it is in many ways no wonder that you don't naturally find it.

[Apocoreo]

-snip-

Not to say that we're in any way perfect, but for the most part, what you call "lack of communication" is simply reflective of how we develop. Communicating future development and roadmaps would imply that we have a formal plan to communicate. We do have loose ideas, of course, but I do think we tend to communicate them, about as loose as they are.

We are working on a bigger implementation. Might be a few weeks.

What is this? OCO? How's it going?

Maybe don't answer here, it's not the place and you just mentioned the stuff getting buried thing.

[loftar]

We are working on a bigger implementation. Might be a few weeks.

What is this? OCO? How's it going?

Well, sometimes there are reasons for being vague, too. You'll find out soon enough. :)

(In this particular case, I'm also quite frustrated, because it's in fact almost ready, but there are a couple of slightly more external reasons that make it highly inopportune to finish it up right now, and there isn't a whole lot I can say about it, unfortunately.)

[shubla]

(In this particular case, I'm also quite frustrated, because it's in fact almost ready, but there are some slightly more external reasons that make it highly inopportune to finish it up right now, and there isn't a whole lot I can say about it, unfortunately.)

They probably finally added diseases but are afraid to add them because of the bad publicity that they would get with the current pandemic!

[Sevenless]

Also if we were to announce a reset at this time, you'd be sure to see it drop to much further lows.

feels like it's the perfect time and looking at how many people are asking for it daily on the unofficial discord it just seems like the right thing to do, obviously if you guys feel like that from the development side of things.

Depends a lot on the dev pipe. If there's some major feature to start the world off, or one that needs testing lest it damage a new world, still worth waiting.

[VDZ]

I don't think it is ever a good idea to announce far in advance how long it is until a world reset. It's no coincidence that the population drops off a cliff whenever we announce one.

Don't you think this is at least partially because whenever you announce a world reset, said world reset is coming up very soon? If you announce a world reset a year in advance a week after the world started, I doubt many people will stop playing at that point. Nobody's under the illusion that the world will last forever. Of course, you'll be having fewer players starting a month before the reset, perhaps even two months before the reset. But considering how the player count declines as the world ages, I don't think it'll be that much of a change. Announcing 'the world is going to end in two weeks' is very different from announcing 'this world will last roughly one year and end on date X'; of course the former will make players go inactive, because what point is there in making progress if it lasts only two weeks?

And that leads me to...

I have no reason to believe anything particularly interesting would happen, to be honest. I think it's fair to say that the only people who want to know when a reset happens are those that are mostly/wholly inactive and just waiting for one.

But could it be that some people do not bother to start playing because they think that all their efforts may go in waste, if you suddenly announce the reset in a few weeks time? Especially this late into the world.
I think that there are plenty of people who would like to play but don't want to because they fear that reset may be soon. If there was a confirmation, some of them may try, if there was enough time for reset (like months).

I don't often agree with shubla, but I know at least I'm not rejoining the game as I expect there will be a reset soon. Starting out only to have a world reset shortly afterwards would suck. While of course the solution I'd most prefer for this would be a world reset (fresh worlds are more fun), knowing that the world will not get reset for at least a month also removes this hesitation. Rust has servers with weekly and monthly wipes (IMO they wipe too often, but that's a different matter) and their regular wipe schedules let me pick a server I know I can play on for a while without losing all my progress almost immediately. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is refraining from rejoining the game for this reason, and if scheduled resets guarantee to players that a reset will not happen soon that might actually positively impact the player count.

I'm not saying you should right now announce the next reset, whenever that will be. But I do think it would be at least a worthwhile experiment to see what happens if you announce at the start of the new world (or even its announcement) when it will end (and then do not deviate from that scheduled end date as that would ruin the whole point, being that players know what to expect).

Not to say that we're in any way perfect, but for the most part, what you call "lack of communication" is simply reflective of how we develop. Communicating future development and roadmaps would imply that we have a formal plan to communicate. We do have loose ideas, of course, but I do think we tend to communicate them, about as loose as they are.

This is the most revealing post you have made in years.

Thanks

Communication, especially towards large groups of people, is time-consuming and potentially exhausting. As they're a two-man team, I think spending more time and effort on solid communication and expectation management would be detrimental to the game. Companies hire people full-time specifically to do this; it's not as simple as it seems.

I am asking that mainly because I was never able to join a world on the first week of its reset at the very least

If that is the problem that you want solved, I'd be more inclined to send a mail to all registered accounts when a world reset is announced. The main reason I haven't done so up until now is that I'm kind of worried about getting our mail servers blacklisted, however, and I'm not entirely sure how to properly handle that.

How about an opt-in mailing list? I think a lot of people would be interested in getting an e-mail before world resets, and a specific 'tell me about new worlds' opt-in list would be far less likely to be seen as spam than mailing everyone who ever registered. (It may come at the expense of forum activity, though; at least for me part of why I still keep an eye on all Haven announcements is so I won't miss a world reset announcement.)

[vatas]

What if devs were to do opposite and make announcement that, for example, they will NOT reset within the next three months.

Would you be more likely to play, possibly aiming to do a certain thing/project in that time?

Would you completely ruin it by complaining that there isn't a reset after three months?

[BoxingRock]

Communication, especially towards large groups of people, is time-consuming and potentially exhausting. As they're a two-man team, I think spending more time and effort on solid communication and expectation management would be detrimental to the game. Companies hire people full-time specifically to do this; it's not as simple as it seems.

Jorb has stated on many occasions that he often spends hours a week reading and replying to DMs.
Besides that he's been seen shadow editing posts that irk him in the forums, arguing about random shit on discord and so on

I think it's incredibly safe to assume that they have a spare 20 minutes a week to articulate what they are working on in a clear and concisely worded paragraph, and similarly explain what is coming up in the next weeks

They are a two man team that seemingly dump 1-2 hours a week in to development.
While I agree that the core of this game's problems is that they don't spend enough time and effort on the development in any regard - the tiny, negligible amount of effort it would take to communicate could not be any more detrimental to the game than any of their other questionable practices.

It's not that they don't have the spare time, it's that they think they are special butterflies and memelords for developing a game without telling their paying customers anything about their future roadmap and upcoming projects.
That's the whole story.

[iamahh]

devs are too accessible to these retarded kids, so they fell like they can tell devs what to do

it's pretty fucking annoying seeing this every update, create your own game you fukin twats, if you think you know so much how game should be, put 10 years work on the fukin table

[VDZ]

What if devs were to do opposite and make announcement that, for example, they will NOT reset within the next three months.

Would you be more likely to play, possibly aiming to do a certain thing/project in that time?

For me, definitely. The reset that's probably coming up soon is the #1 thing keeping me from playing right now.