CO Word of the Week #8

[ed anger]

Very few bugs/feature fixes have actually been fixed, features that were again promised within DAYS of release (Maps/Map Editor/Asset Editor/Mods/Functioning Freight and Postal Systems) have been punted into the sun

Read the patch notes, lots of bugs have been fixed. And this WotW you're replying to literally discusses the upcoming release of mods. Take a deep breath, relax.

 

[purplegamer]

The only "rule" we have regarding this is that we must clearly differentiate when we're posting as a "regular" user and when we're posting in our role as moderators.
When we post as moderators, there's a purple-ish background in our posts and sometimes we also use a yellow/orange font so it's got more of a warning-like look. Those posts are not meant to be "reactable" in any way.

As this post has nothing of that, as you can see, it means I'm not posting in my role as moderator.

Thanks so much for that insight! I do think we'd benefit from ensuring moderators, when posting as users, enable their posts to be reacted to.

 

[DocChorMan]

Ah yes, only approve the 'positive' ones; delete the criticism.

I think you’re missing the point. There’s a difference between criticizing and toxic behaviors. It sounds like the devs are wide open to criticism, but not personalized attacks, threats, hate, and accusations of ill-intent. Thats been the message all along.

 

[Kanslee144]

I so, so strongly disagree with this.

Firstly because, in the case of CO and CS2, I totally fail to understand how an honest communication would be worse than the current attitude, which as we all can clearly see, feeds people frustration and deception rather than calming it. Maybe I'm too stupid to understand the big rules of big business, but speaking for myself I would be a lot more satisfied with an honest communication which starts with acknowledgement of what they failed. I'm now at a point where my frustration comes at 90% from this bad communication rather than the current state of the game. I already said that a few times but it costs nothing to say it once more : I totally can understand a failed launch, or bugs, or that I have to be patient. But feeling fooled and abused by people I gave my money to is something totally not acceptable for me.

And secondly because from my perspective, this kind of mentality is exactly why the world we live in feels more and more absurd : companies are totally disconnected from the real world, meaning from the reality their customers are experiencing daily. Companies all over the world are getting more and more power, and use it with more and more dishonesty, losing people trust a little more every day. It's because of this "honesty is bad for business" mentality that each day more people are advocating and fighting for the end of capitalism.

If someone needs to realize something, it's not customers but really those kind of companies (meaning the ones thinking like what you expressed - deep down I still hope that's not the case of CO, but I admit this becomes harder to trust every day that passes). We will not prevent the world from collapsing if we keep acting like they're right to think like they think. Honesty is not "bad for business". It's on the contrary what the world desperately needs right now.

I never said anything that you wrote there. I don't think companies are right about doing that. I'm just saying that, sadly, that's how it works and that's what they're doing.

 

[ed anger]

I think you’re missing the point. There’s a difference between criticizing and toxic behaviors. It sounds like the devs are wide open to criticism, but not personalized attacks, threats, hate, and accusations of ill-intent. Thats been the message all along.

There's definitely a difference. Constructive, specific criticism is always useful, and very different from a lot of the pointless doom postings that pop up here (that are just people having hissy fits, essentially).

 

[DanielR80]

But its our fault for being upset?

I mostly agree with you, but it sort of is. But that is something us customers can change: Don't preorder, and wait for independent tests. I learned this from buying SimCity 2013. Around the same time, TotalBiscuit (rip) made several videos asking people not to preorder. If you haven't seen his videos, check them out while his Youtube channel is still up.

 

[DanielR80]

It will lead to a situation that modders start to provide workarounds for bugs instead of being creative.

Which will lead to console players experiencing the same bugs and creating more "toxicity"

 

[TripleAgent]

I feel like calling your community toxic (leading to actual articles now being written and published in gaming outlets about the community's "toxicity") while you've admitted communication from your end has been insufficient and that people legitimately feel misled by the marketing and CO/PDX statements seems like a less than ideal way to improve relations. It also doesn't help that with most of the "toxic" behaivor already being taken care of by mods, we're left with what looks like you calling the legitimate criticism "toxic" which is only going to hurt feelings more.

All the while we've been sat with a game since OCTOBER that hasn't had much in terms of substantive gameplay improvement, asset importing appears to be just as unfixably broken as it was last year, and we still have zero roadmap or concrete efforts on the part of CO/PDX to address what the community is saying. We can only hear "we see you, we hear you" so many times without concrete response for those responses to start to feel patronizing and gaslighting. All you have to do to placate the community is just do SOMETHING concrete to at least acknowledge that what happened was unacceptable for a professional business to do to its customers. That's the easiest way to significantly neuter the "toxicity" issue. Again, if Creative Assembly can do it I'm not sure why CO/PDX can't.

 

[Swordsman1219]

Read the patch notes, lots of bugs have been fixed. And this WotW you're replying to literally discusses the upcoming release of mods. Take a deep breath, relax.

Thanks for disregarding the entire meat of the rest of my post...

 

[CensoredLOL]

"It will be a busy time of the year for us so I’ll quickly go over some highlights for the upcoming months."
Can you list specific dates, an order to what will be happening first?

"As we have stated earlier, there is no higher priority than releasing the modding support for the game. The Editor UI is expected to be ready enough for the closed beta in a few weeks."
How long will the closed beta last? When can we expect Editor to be released?

"There is an issue with the asset import still that we are hard at work solving. If the issue is not resolved in a reasonable time we’ll consider releasing the editor without the ability to import custom assets and just have the maps and code modding present."
Writing a script to import assets should be relatively easy, compared to a massive simulation.
Do you have the best people with the most knowledge all working towards resolving this?
If releasing modding is in fact the priority, wouldn't this be an All Hands On Deck situation?
Can you define "reasonable time"? Weeks? Months?

"Whichever the resolution for the modding support is, we can’t wait to see your creations!"
Neither can we.

"The console versions of the game will also have the Editor (minus code modding) so therefore the Editor is the highest priority but in parallel, we’re also working on the stability and performance on console to make the game available for the console players as soon as possible."
Can you tell us percentages of your team working on a) getting the editor to work and b) console release? I understand that there may be pressure on-high to release console for the cash infusion - but there are 10 pages of people here that should be listened to first... otherwise you'll have the same issues with console players.
"The schedule for the upcoming months and the early access program for modders will be available later."
Please define "later". It's critical that you start being more open with us about what is happening. You need to assuage fears and inspire confidence.

"Before the Editor release, we’ll have a bug fixing patch that will include fixes for issues that have been resolved while the work above is ongoing. You can expect fixes for simulation and visual bugs, both based on internal findings and issues reported by you. The patch notes will be available when the patch is released. Thanks for all the reports!"
What bugs and issues are being resolved? Please be more forthcoming... even a blanket statement like "land value rebalancing" would be highly appreciated by those in the community.

____
All valid critiques and requests on how a WotW should proceed, in my opinion. You should be working on earning our trust back, and making us excited for new patches and/or content. It reads like "we'll get to it, eventually". That might have flown in early days after release, but there is now a history of that mindset that the majority of people in this thread are reacting to, strongly. I'm saying this because I do care about the game, and the community.
_____
The section below is where this goes off the rails a bit.
_____

"Last but not least, we have seen a growing tendency of toxicity in our community, something we have not experienced to this extent before. Not only directed towards our devs but also our fellow community members -"
I assume most "toxic content" is deleted once it is seen by the moderation team, making it difficult for us to ascertain what was said, or even that it was said in the first place. Threats, harm, name-calling, etc... all of those are toxic, indeed. Criticism, even strongly worded, with words like "bad, broken, horrible, waste, liars, ripped-off", should still be counted as criticism. It is a window into how people feel about the game, and though it is lacking couth, it is still valid... especially if it is at least partially true for some of them.

"- resulting in people hesitating to engage with the community. In the long run, this will really hurt not only the mood and the happiness of community members but also discourage creativity and modding, something we would be very sad to see."
This statement is loaded. You basically state that the toxicity is what is causing people to stop playing, being creative, and modding... limiting the amount of content released for everyone else. It's borderline blaming us as a whole, not just the individuals responsible. I'd wager that more people quit these forums or the game from your post (or the "not for you" debacle) than from seeing a few bad words on a forum. We're on the internet... we're used to seeing bad words. Both of these opinions in WoTW have articles from third party sites dedicated to what you said... that should tell you something.

"We have always treasured having the devs present on the different social platforms and having direct communication with the community, but our biggest responsibility will always be protecting the team and making sure they work in a safe environment so they are allowed to do their best staying motivated and productive. So we hope we can all work together for our devs to be able to stay and be continuously active."
The crux here is that you are saying that keeping devs happy and motivated is directly tied to what we post on these forums. Unhappy devs and unmotivated devs release less content, slower. It's a stretch.

Reading forums is an at-will activity.

Devs should be assigned tasks related to fixing the game, being motivated and productive, not down in the trenches reading troll posts. The purpose of these forums, for you, should be to get community feedback and make a better game - that's it. Your leadership structure should assign individuals that **don't** get harmed by bad words reading the bad words, isolating suggestions and bugs that are critical to the games success, and assigning tasks to the devs.

"As the mentions of this in previous entries do not seem to have moved the needle, perhaps you have a constructive way of telling us how we can improve the way we communicate with each other. Should we add more moderation or is the only option to pull back our engagement on our end? How can we make sure the community is a safe place for you to share your thoughts and hopes for the game?"
Be more open and honest, and less threatening towards your playerbase. You can make this work in the current format, but resentment, disappointment, and dissatisfaction breed toxicity.


And we wish everyone happiness and success in 2024!
And to you.

 

[ed anger]

I mostly agree with you, but it sort of is. But that is something us customers can change: Don't preorder, and wait for independent tests. I learned this from buying SimCity 2013. Around the same time, TotalBiscuit (rip) made several videos asking people not to preorder. If you haven't seen his videos, check them out while his Youtube channel is still up.

Or, if you preorder, expect that nothing happens the way you expect, there's always issues to deal with, etc. Look at No Man's Sky, they fulfilled all of their promises and more, after much hysteria.

 

[Mrt19]

It seems like the game has been 'abandoned' based on the 'progress' I see. How many people are still working on this game? So we can only hope for an 'improvement' in the coming months?

 

[LaserCutter2]

Seriously? This is an absolutely terrible response from a CEO. I feel ripped off for buying your incomplete game and I'm toxic for it? I won't be buying another Paradox game until they get a competent CEO that actually boosts the company's image instead of insulting their users. Shame on you. Did Intercept Games shame/blame their users and make a bunch of excuses when they delivered the half-baked KSP2? No, they put their nose to the grindstone and started delivering on their promises.

Why do you think we care about dev interaction? We just want a complete game that we paid full price for. You're incredibly out of touch with what your customers want.

 

[Ghostmane]

I can't provide my feedback, apparently it is spam? Why? No links, no abusive language, no profanity....

Is this being called spam so you don't have read my feedback? And you wonder why we are toxic.

 

[Askorti]

I can't provide my feedback, apparently it is spam? Why? No links, no abusive language, no profanity....

Is this being called spam so you don't have read my feedback? And you wonder why we are toxic.

I think it might have been blocked because your account is one day old and it was your first post on the forum. Not very surprising if it got automatically flagged as spam.

 

[timfrombriz]

@co_martsu

Development Time Focus

I think theres a pretty strong consensus amongst current customers who have already purchased this game, that the current game needs a lot of bug fixing and polishing. I believe your underestimating how much more work needs to be done here. Your patches to date have only scratched the surface of your bug report forum listings. Your word of the week strongly suggests your now sailing towards console releases, with a splash of bug fixing on the side.

If you sail in the wrong direction, and pick up more customers, your going to loose customers who are already here and abandon ship in hope of this game improving anytime soon, and pick up new customers on console who are going to repeat this cycle of frustration with you.

If you sail in the direction of Paid DLC's, your going to find a lot of people wont be bothered to invest into an already bugged and broken experience.

If you focus on calming the storm your sailing in, repair the boat, paint and seal the floors, it will stop leaking. You will reframe the negativity surrounding the game into positivity, and that is stronger foundations to move to having sucessful sales on console platforms and for expanding the game with Paid DLC.


Quality Assurance

Whoever did your quality assurance (looking at your game credits, it was outsourced to a 3rd party company), NEVER use them again. They failed the players and your entire team. Something went wrong here very bad. Any of your passionate players could of created a list of issues that need resolving, balancing problems, visual issues, as seen on your bug report forums.

Its time to start utilizing that FREE resource of passionate players and start making BETA releases on steam only available to select players that agree to participate in some closed source forum here with you, to do the Quality Assurance to the standards you require. That means you tell your QA Testing players what you want tested, and ask for them to provide the feedback on if there are still outstanding issues or new bugs introduced. Its a win win win. Your getting free QA done, your engaging the community and the quality of testing will be better.


Bug Reporting

The bug report forum as of writing this has 4064 bugs and counting. It seems to be a case of whack a mole. Your staff going through those forums are having difficulty keeping up and managing it, because its inundated. I think you need FREE community help to start labelling duplicates, and marking older bugs that have been fixed as 'Resolved/Fixed'. A need to do something to prioritise these bugs and show what bugs you are swatting and communicate that. Theres already a voting system, but it does not seem to be something utilized in the decision of which bugs are focusd on.


Communication

The Word of the Week is something to players/fans to look forward to, to get a little present each week while waiting to know whats been worked on behind the scenes, whats being fixed. If you remove communication and engagement from the community, then your going to sink your ship. People will let go of the rope of hope and look for their gaming fix elsewhere, most wont return. As ugly as it feels to be in a swamp of negativity, you need to be captain and sail the ship.

The communication should also be speaking as a player and developer. You should be passionate about playing your own game for hours on end, and know what sucks about your own game, and admit it sucks. That type of honesty goes a long way. You need to get Unity C# coders in on these WoTW's, and talk about the technical problems and issues in detail. Factorio developers do a great job of this, and a lot of the players enjoy the technical detials and provide valuable feedback and solutions as technical people themselves. Being more transparent and speaking in the language of a gamer and developer, may open doors you never knew existed. Your codebase is being dissected by the modding community, if there was more visibility of problems your coders are facing and where, you may find the coding modding community learns quicker how the game works behind the scenese and at the same time, provide fixes and suggestions themselves to fixing some of the technical issues your facing and accelerating the bug fixing/polishing process. Your modding community is a valuable asset, utliize it, engage it, its another win win for all.


Emotion

As the mentions of this in previous entries do not seem to have moved the needle, perhaps you have a constructive way of telling us how we can improve the way we communicate with each other. Should we add more moderation or is the only option to pull back our engagement on our end? How can we make sure the community is a safe place for you to share your thoughts and hopes for the game?

Engagement with your community is a win for all (customers and your business). In fact, I think the engagement since release has not been enough and thats part of the problem. The only two people engaging are yourself and co_avanya. None of the devs have been seen engaging since your Reddit AMA and a few days post release on the bug reports, at least on the forums here anyway. The tone in the quote above feels like a parent talking to child, its very insulting to read. As much as negativity sucks, you need to own it, and grow from it. The toxicity you spent half the WotW writing about is confusing to read. Most of your customers only see negativity and frustration in the comments. If there is toxicity of threats, harm, and abusive language, then its already been moderated out and no one but yourselves have seen it and speaking about it only is slapping all your customers for the actions of a minority that havent been seen. If toxicity is negativity and that its a revolving door of people constantly whining, then unforunately, you need to accept the good with the bad. When you speak, your only touching a small fragment of the community, you'll be repeating yourself often to get the message across. As tough emotionally as it may be to on the receiving end of negativity, if you put a wall up by moderating negativity, and/or stop engaging, instead of owning the problems and engaging, listening and steering in the right direction to what your customers are whining about, then I dont see any positive coming from that. You'll push away your current customers, and be left with finding new customers who make purchasing decisions on what they read online by the experience of those who gave up on CS2.

 

[ed anger]

It seems like the game has been 'abandoned' based on the 'progress' I see. How many people are still working on this game? So we can only hope for an 'improvement' in the coming months?

they just posted the next steps for the game. not hard to comprehend.

 

[DanielR80]

Whoever did your quality assurance

CO already confirmed they don't have any internal QA. This needs to be changed ASAP

 

[Shinra375]

I actually want to get off these forums and just play the game. The main reason I check here is to check if there’s been any updates / when the updates are coming as I have given up on the game in its current state (my city is plagued by high rent issues, not enough variety with assets, visual bugs with water etc.)

Game has great potential, and I am happy to pay full price + for a great city builder that feels polished

 

[DiNardo1910]

Open up Steam refunds.

If you're sincere in wanting to rebuild all the lost goodwill, then let the people who feel deceived get their money back.