CO Word of the Week #8

[S.C. Watson]

We’re intentionally vague about what’s in a patch, like the upcoming one Mariina mentioned, as we don’t know exactly what they look like until they’ve been finalized.

Roadmap
This is something we’re currently looking into.

@Licenturion provided a perfectly serviceable roadmap template that is direct, easy to use, easy to understand, and would take less than 5 minutes implement. As an added bonus, it includes everything we need to know. Put the top 5 or 10 things on there, keep it updated, and dumpster fire 90% of the way out.

Okay, maybe 60%. But, you know. Progress.

This literally is not rocket science. What's on the schedule? When do you anticipate it being done? Miss the deadline? Okay, reset it and inform us. It's. Not. Hard. And, what's more, it's standard. It's the type of thing you would expect from any company dealing with project deadlines. Having had to deal with deadlines for more than 25 years in my field, this is how you do it.

Yet, it has to be looked into? Why? Set up a google spreadsheet, keep editing privileges to the CO crew, and open it up to your player base.

~S

 

[Licenturion]

Hi all! What a terrible week for me to be out sick, I missed so much of this discussion. A big thank you to everyone for being constructive in this thread, it’s really nice to see that we can have conversations about toxic behavior in the community without the thread devolving into toxicity. And it’s really wonderful to see that you appreciate us showing up and communicating (even if we don’t say what you hope to hear ). Being active in the community is really important to us, but of course, if the general consensus was it would be better to stay away/be more distant, then we would have to reevaluate our approach

Get well soon!

Appreciate the update, however this post is again what we heard for 3 months "hey, we hear ya, we see ya, we are looking into it, we are looking for the right format, your feedback is important, keep the conversation going'

So I really hope the next WordOfTheWeek just doesn't repeat your answer but has specific and concrete information we have been asking for and not another "last week you told us that, we are now looking into it, stay tuned to hear more about how we will update you next week!"

There are thousand feedback posts on this side of the conversation now what we like to hear, so if our feedback is indeed important we hope on the other side more info is coming as well.

 

[Nerevatar]

Roadmap
This is something we’re currently looking into. While we update you through these posts, we also realize that they aren’t great when you’re looking for a quick overview. Realistically, we won’t be able to include any specific dates or dive into detailed lists of bugs that are being looked into, but we’ll be as specific as we can. Once we figure out a format that feels right for us, we’ll share one with you. So if you have any thoughts on a roadmap that haven’t come up yet, now would be a great time to share them.

Victoria 3 has been really nice in how they do their roadmap after a release that some thought was rocky (I personally loved it from day 1, but opinions differ). They divided it into areas that they are looking to improve, subdividing into some specific and some more vague tasks/areas, each with some description of what it is or what the goal is. This also provides a nice frame of reference when talking about upcomming updates, since they can say stuff like "we will work on area A, specifically subarea B and C" and then everyone knows what it is. This is a "living document" in the sense that more is added, some things might be removed/changed and even if an area is touched upon in one update it might not be completed and thus get updated with new info. Latest version here:

Edit: Weird, I am not allowed to link to the Victoria 3 subforums despite being on this very domain.. Well, just navigate from this forum and into the general Paradox Games forum, click Victoria 3, find Dev Diary 103 (latest) in the top, and then go to previous dev diary (102) by clicking the button... Doing that shows DD102 which is the latest version of their roadmap post.

The simulation
We hear the questions about how the simulation works (or should work) and we’re working on a dev diary to bring you more information and clarity. I don’t have an ETA for it yet, it’s the sort of thing we’ll coordinate with the community team on the Paradox side so it doesn’t overlap with other community events, but I wanted to mention it. Of course, you’re still very welcome to ask about specific functions or systems. I’ve already answered some questions before and I’d be happy to shed some light where I can.

I believe you need to clarify what "how the simulation works" actually means. Some people will say that it doesn't work since it provides no to little challenge while you might think of 'not working' as something classified as a bug.

Same with statements such as "the simulation is working as intended, outside of the bugs" might to you, as an example, mean that the production chains are working without bugs but there is 1-2 bugs in exports, while others will read it as "Once we fix the 1-2 bugs in exports everything is perfect and we will not change/tweak/balance the simulation".

To me it feels like there is some fundamental misunderstandings between the devs and the community due to broad, nebulous terms such as "The Simulation" or "Failsafes" which can mean so many different things depending on who you ask. And I wouldn't be surprised if those misunderstandings also fuels some of the toxicity.

 

[anton95]

I have written about Word of the Week containing lots of words but not much information before and voiced my wish for more information about what things are being worked on.

For making visible what things are currently being worked on, I suggest a trello board. Similar to this one by Ubisoft for The Division 2: https://trello.com/b/F2RU9ia9/the-division-2-known-issues

It shows a simple-to-understand overview of bugs that have been reported, bugs that are currently being worked (with tags for priorities) on and bugs that are ready to be pushed to a patch.

Basically what I am requesting is a kanban board with categories: "Investigating", "In Progress", "Fix Ready", "Fix Live" and priority tags (Low, Medium, High). It doesn't have to be trello. It could just be a table in a sticky post in the forums too. Or a Google spreadsheet. Or a live stream of sticky notes on a wall.

I really don't need specific release dates, just let me know what you are actually working on. A list of hundreds of confirmed bugs without any information which one is being worked on at what priority at this moment is useless.

Other trello boards I found that could be used for inspiration of how to transparently communicate with a community:
EA Sports FC: https://trello.com/b/keigLn6R/ea-sports-fc-tracker
Call of Duty MW3: https://trello.com/b/n58Qr7mZ/modern-warfare-iii-sledgehammer-games-treyarch
Anno 1800: https://trello.com/b/rldv58ho/anno1800-pc-known-issues-board

I also really like the Bug Tracker by WB Games.
For example Hogwarts Legacy: https://hogwartslegacy.bugs.wbgames.com/all

 

[Collector78]

Hi all! What a terrible week for me to be out sick, I missed so much of this discussion. A big thank you to everyone for being constructive in this thread, it’s really nice to see that we can have conversations about toxic behavior in the community without the thread devolving into toxicity. And it’s really wonderful to see that you appreciate us showing up and communicating (even if we don’t say what you hope to hear ). Being active in the community is really important to us, but of course, if the general consensus was it would be better to stay away/be more distant, then we would have to reevaluate our approach.

There are so many questions and points raised in this thread that I won’t be able to address all of them, but I’ll try to cover the ones I can that popped up a bunch.

Roadmap
This is something we’re currently looking into. While we update you through these posts, we also realize that they aren’t great when you’re looking for a quick overview. Realistically, we won’t be able to include any specific dates or dive into detailed lists of bugs that are being looked into, but we’ll be as specific as we can. Once we figure out a format that feels right for us, we’ll share one with you. So if you have any thoughts on a roadmap that haven’t come up yet, now would be a great time to share them.

Patches/bug fixes
We’re intentionally vague about what’s in a patch, like the upcoming one Mariina mentioned, as we don’t know exactly what they look like until they’ve been finalized. The last patch was specifically to include improvements to LODs, so we could talk about that as the patch wouldn’t happen without them. For this next patch, we’re looking at which fixes can be included, testing to confirm they work and that there aren’t unintended side effects. If we share that we’re looking to include a fix for bug A, and then discover that the fix introduces bug B, then the fix wouldn’t make the patch. While I know that a lot of you are completely able to understand that this can happen, I’m afraid that isn’t the case for all in our community, and due to the overall situation we’re gonna be a little more cautious with information to not disappoint.

Bug reports
We’re very grateful for all the reports and we’re working our way through them all as fast as we can. Sadly, that isn’t happening as fast as we’d like, and there are still a lot of reports without replies or tags. Last year we pulled extra staff from their regular tasks to help with the reports, but as they need to get back to those tasks, we’re looking at other options. I’m the meantime, it’s super helpful when you upvote issues that also affect you as it makes it easier for me to determine which ones are widespread and which ones are more rare/specific cases.

Feedback/wishes
We’re not really active in the subforum and that’s not likely to change because the purpose is for you to share your thoughts. We’ll pop in and ask questions if we need a little more info to understand what you’re after, but generally, this is a place where we will lurk more than anything. The fact that we don’t post doesn’t mean we aren’t reading your feedback.

We’re also looking into a solution for our community wishlist so it would be public and you could add directly to it, but it will probably be a little while before we find the right tool that does everything we need it to. But I wanted to mention it as I’ve seen some great feedback on this and we’ll hopefully have a list in the future that makes it a bit more clear that your wishes are noted and considered when we’re looking at new content.

The simulation
We hear the questions about how the simulation works (or should work) and we’re working on a dev diary to bring you more information and clarity. I don’t have an ETA for it yet, it’s the sort of thing we’ll coordinate with the community team on the Paradox side so it doesn’t overlap with other community events, but I wanted to mention it. Of course, you’re still very welcome to ask about specific functions or systems. I’ve already answered some questions before and I’d be happy to shed some light where I can.

It is good to hear that CO wants to be in discussion with us about the problems and innovation possibilities. At the same time I hope you realize that our complaints about the communication are not the result of one week of illness. I also hope that you -after reading all the input in this thread - will agree that 'being vague' is not a good idea.

As earlier suggested by someone in this thread, it might be a good idea to take a small group of experienced players being active on this forum. For sure they will be able to tell you which issues do require the most urgent attention. But you could also take my word for it that you will make all of us very happy if you solve only two bugs as soon as possible: the taxation bug and the land value / sustainability bug. Once those two are solved, the game might become more playable and the heated discussion might cool down a bit.

As also suggested by someone, in the long run it's a good idea to focus on the bug reports. It's indeed a mess at the moment. Many duplicates and unclear what bugs do have the attention of the dev team already. The voting system simply doesn't work. Too few people read the bugs and/or vote. But who knows what will happen if there is one single overview of unique bugs where the voting/prioritization is done.

p.s. if you want a suggestion for criteria for the small group of experienced players:
- at least 1500 hours of game time on CS1
- at least 500 hours of game time on CS2
- at least 250 messages on this forum

 

[sim81]

Hi there and thanks for sharing that story. What do you (and the rest of you guys here) think is the most toxic platform in your experience for CS2?

I'm asking because at first I didn't even realize that Mariina could be talking about other platforms than this forum. I've seen a bit of toxicity here, but not as much as to warrant a big mention in a WoW, so I'm curious to hear your answers.

Sorry, I didn't see that you had replied - I don't check on here much - thanks for responding! I see I got an exciting number of respectfully disagrees to my last post lol, I've always had unpopular opinions!

That's an interesting question, you have made me think, although I'm not sure I know the answer. I've only really looked here and on reddit so I don't have a lot of experience, although I imagine there's some similar stuff on discord and maybe in Steam comments. I'm not sure I could say which was worse as it probably goes in cycles, but I see a lot of the same issue in both places, I suppose potentially from the same people.

I wonder if some of this issue comes down to how we define "toxic" behaviour on here? Obviously everybody would agree that posts screaming in all caps and personal attacks are toxic, but I wonder if its broader than that - at least from the experience from somebody receiving the comment.

I think arguably if you have a legitimate problem and raise that issue through the legitimate channel, but then continue to post about that same issue repeatedly, creating new threads about it, derailing conversations to talk about it, making the same point over and over, then that is toxic behaviour. I think that happens here a lot and whilst it may not be personal or threatening, it's toxic to the functioning of this forum isn't it?

Likewise, if in response to new users asking for help, or posting screenshots of their new city at sunset, your response is something unrelated like "looks terrible, wait 6 months as it's in alpha lol", or "the whole thing is deception and fraud" then again, I would argue that is probably toxic?

This forum is run by a business, likely to encourage engagement between existing users + help draw in new folks - they want to make money after all - but it's not a place for free speech. As things are now, I would not recommend it to a new user, which is a bit of a shame - I do still think the only solution is increased moderation....

 

[anydaytv]

The simulation
We hear the questions about how the simulation works (or should work) and we’re working on a dev diary to bring you more information and clarity. I don’t have an ETA for it yet, it’s the sort of thing we’ll coordinate with the community team on the Paradox side so it doesn’t overlap with other community events, but I wanted to mention it. Of course, you’re still very welcome to ask about specific functions or systems. I’ve already answered some questions before and I’d be happy to shed some light where I can.

Sure. I have a question. What is this? I haven't had statistics since college, but these seem just a little off.

 

[Collector78]

Sure. I have a question. What is this? I haven't had statistics since college, but these seem just a little off.
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Let me help @co_avanya
Your city is in fact Heaven, hence no crime and of course also no need for hotel rooms. On Earth near-death experiences occur; their brief visits to Heaven are counted as tourism. Since death rate on Earth is higher for people who got themselves into dept, you are facing a negative wealth in Heaven, but that's no big deal since everything is for free.
The only thing I'm struggling with is the unemployement stat, so I leave that one for @co_avanya

 

[Zahmbomb]

Right now, I won't be buying any of your products, add-ons etc. ever again.

That's where I'm at.

I'm a very patient and quiet gamer, I rarely leave reviews, I rarely join or post in forums.
After WotW 8, and the lack of accountability from CO, deflecting/gaslighting/projecting Toxicity on the consumers. I was pissed.
To the point, that I did go leave 1 star reviews on both platforms I have Gamepass and purchased it on Steam as well. I also felt it was necessary to defend the "community" and voiced my opinion on roughly 100 separate forum posts.

Also who in their right mind thinks it's okay to tell someone "If you don't like the simulation, then maybe this game isn't for you." With no recourse or refund option.
To say the simulation works so confidently when everyone is experiencing bugs that outright break the simulation.

To this day I cannot get a city beyond 150k because my framerate drops to 10 and the sim speed is going slower than 1x.

 

[meanderingmalcontent]

Hi all! What a terrible week for me to be out sick, I missed so much of this discussion. A big thank you to everyone for being constructive in this thread, it’s really nice to see that we can have conversations about toxic behavior in the community without the thread devolving into toxicity. And it’s really wonderful to see that you appreciate us showing up and communicating (even if we don’t say what you hope to hear ). Being active in the community is really important to us, but of course, if the general consensus was it would be better to stay away/be more distant, then we would have to reevaluate our approach.

There are so many questions and points raised in this thread that I won’t be able to address all of them, but I’ll try to cover the ones I can that popped up a bunch.

Roadmap
This is something we’re currently looking into. While we update you through these posts, we also realize that they aren’t great when you’re looking for a quick overview. Realistically, we won’t be able to include any specific dates or dive into detailed lists of bugs that are being looked into, but we’ll be as specific as we can. Once we figure out a format that feels right for us, we’ll share one with you. So if you have any thoughts on a roadmap that haven’t come up yet, now would be a great time to share them.

Patches/bug fixes
We’re intentionally vague about what’s in a patch, like the upcoming one Mariina mentioned, as we don’t know exactly what they look like until they’ve been finalized. The last patch was specifically to include improvements to LODs, so we could talk about that as the patch wouldn’t happen without them. For this next patch, we’re looking at which fixes can be included, testing to confirm they work and that there aren’t unintended side effects. If we share that we’re looking to include a fix for bug A, and then discover that the fix introduces bug B, then the fix wouldn’t make the patch. While I know that a lot of you are completely able to understand that this can happen, I’m afraid that isn’t the case for all in our community, and due to the overall situation we’re gonna be a little more cautious with information to not disappoint.

Bug reports
We’re very grateful for all the reports and we’re working our way through them all as fast as we can. Sadly, that isn’t happening as fast as we’d like, and there are still a lot of reports without replies or tags. Last year we pulled extra staff from their regular tasks to help with the reports, but as they need to get back to those tasks, we’re looking at other options. I’m the meantime, it’s super helpful when you upvote issues that also affect you as it makes it easier for me to determine which ones are widespread and which ones are more rare/specific cases.

Feedback/wishes
We’re not really active in the subforum and that’s not likely to change because the purpose is for you to share your thoughts. We’ll pop in and ask questions if we need a little more info to understand what you’re after, but generally, this is a place where we will lurk more than anything. The fact that we don’t post doesn’t mean we aren’t reading your feedback.

We’re also looking into a solution for our community wishlist so it would be public and you could add directly to it, but it will probably be a little while before we find the right tool that does everything we need it to. But I wanted to mention it as I’ve seen some great feedback on this and we’ll hopefully have a list in the future that makes it a bit more clear that your wishes are noted and considered when we’re looking at new content.

The simulation
We hear the questions about how the simulation works (or should work) and we’re working on a dev diary to bring you more information and clarity. I don’t have an ETA for it yet, it’s the sort of thing we’ll coordinate with the community team on the Paradox side so it doesn’t overlap with other community events, but I wanted to mention it. Of course, you’re still very welcome to ask about specific functions or systems. I’ve already answered some questions before and I’d be happy to shed some light where I can.

I'm sorry you were ill and glad to see you back. This is what the WoW should have been and the response wouldn't have been nearly as negative (read: negativity isn't toxic if it is earned) toward you guys. Always glad to hear from Avanya.

The game is currently unplayable because of that infinite money glitch. That should be the top priority being addressed, since it was caused by the most recent update you guys rolled out.

I still don't see anyone at CO mentioning it despite the hundreds of bug reports and every other post on every forum talking about it. Can someone please address this game-breaking bug on the next WoW?

 

[Lys91]

Let me help @co_avanya
Your city is in fact Heaven, hence no crime and of course also no need for hotel rooms. On Earth near-death experiences occur; their brief visits to Heaven are counted as tourism. Since death rate on Earth is higher for people who got themselves into dept, you are facing a negative wealth in Heaven, but that's no big deal since everything is for free.
The only thing I'm struggling with is the unemployement stat, so I leave that one for @co_avanya

They are hustling, they got 2/3 jobs each.

 

[Mazisky]

What makes me a bit optimistic is that the core game is very solid and if you look closely there is a lot of effort put into it.

Which means that patches and mods can fix the game and bring it to a very good level.

What is needed now is effort from devs and a better communication, it is bad to blame the community that supported you for a decade when you are in the wrong in the first place. It feels very tone deaf and counterproductive.

This Wow angered the fanbase, most discussion are about people not willing to buy your products anymore.

Think about it. Not worth losing thousand if not potential million sales because of personal feelings.

 

[TenzoZA]

"resulting in people hesitating to engage with the community"
- I had never before felt the need to make a forum post until CS2 release. I made a new topic raising my concerns about the lack of possible keybinds compared to CS1, and shared my frustrations about having to click the roads button constantly instead of having it keybound like before, and how this hurts my gaming experience. Guess how many devs responded. 0

"perhaps you have a constructive way of telling us how we can improve the way we communicate with each other"
- Communicate with your community directly by responding to forum posts more frequently. More engagement is the answer. Not threatening to withdraw even further from community engagement if the community isn't more positive towards you.

I am not encouraging toxic behavior, and if someone is being rude then please ban them. You also have to realize that people's frustrations are born from the state in which the game was released, as well as the slow or non existent responses from devs. This does not help your case, especially when you then use that negative community reaction to justify even less community engagement.

Example:
Months before release every single content creator was asking for a Prop Line Tool (to plant trees in a straight line). This was ignored by devs and have still till this day not even been mentioned, let alone addresses.

 

[tylerdrunken]

You need to speed up all these processes now, it's been months since the game has been released. You have released a game that is not ready, you must compensate for this as soon as possible. Please don't talk about good intentions, what you did was not well-intentioned. Gamers don't trust you anymore, trust should have been your biggest capital. Good luck

 

[tylerdrunken]

"resulting in people hesitating to engage with the community"
- I had never before felt the need to make a forum post until CS2 release. I made a new topic raising my concerns about the lack of possible keybinds compared to CS1, and shared my frustrations about having to click the roads button constantly instead of having it keybound like before, and how this hurts my gaming experience. Guess how many devs responded. 0

"perhaps you have a constructive way of telling us how we can improve the way we communicate with each other"
- Communicate with your community directly by responding to forum posts more frequently. More engagement is the answer. Not threatening to withdraw even further from community engagement if the community isn't more positive towards you.

I am not encouraging toxic behavior, and if someone is being rude then please ban them. You also have to realize that people's frustrations are born from the state in which the game was released, as well as the slow or non existent responses from devs. This does not help your case, especially when you then use that negative community reaction to justify even less community engagement.

Example:
Months before release every single content creator was asking for a Prop Line Tool (to plant trees in a straight line). This was ignored by devs and have still till this day not even been mentioned, let alone addresses.

I've been playing Cities for over 10 years, but this year, with this version, my trust in the developers and this company has been destroy 100%. I will never support this company and its developers financially or morally again, and I no longer consider myself a part of the community. Because I saw CO's perspective on gamers concretely. From now on, all I care about is fixing the errors and waiting the workshop. I will never trust Colossal Order again.

ps. With your last update, my economy panel is completely messed up, I earn 345 million $ per month. Like a joke

 

[KillerChicken]

I am with you all the way Colossal Order. I did not get this game as my computer was a 2013 workstation. I now have a very powerful and new system. I have been thinking, but financially limited about getting CS:II. What I am seeing with all of the fire-breathing fury is border-lining the explosion of the quadratic formula because it almost makes no sense now. I have dealt with incomplete, rushed and broken games since the 8inch floppy era (was just at the end of 8inch floppy, so I was more into the 5.25inch) I just take it with a grain of salt and put my full faith into the company, and I do have the most respect and patience for you. That vacation was well deserved and I am happy that your company did just that instead of feeding the dragon-gamers all through the holidays. You are the best.

 

[co_avanya]

First of all thank you for the well wishes. <3

This needs to be included in the tutorial and relevant numbers/facts have to be shown in the game UI.

We’re also looking at what information makes sense/is needed ingame so you can get to the root of issues in the city. It likely won’t be as in-depth as the dev diary but there’s been some really great feedback about information missing from the info views and statistics. This of course isn’t the highest priority but it’s on our radar and something we’re looking into when there’s a suitable time.

Thanks for the interaction, Avanya.
I wasn't infuriated reading it, so that's a definite improvement.

That's really you guys' job. You need tracking on which bugs are most prevalent and which mechanics need changed the most. The bug forum is a mess - there aren't 4000 unique bugs and issues, and there is currently no way to track which ones are duplicates except by a)reading them all and b) classifying them. That can likely be resolved with more stringent forum support tools - perhaps a multi poll when submitting a report (similar to the questionnaire, except in multiple choice format) that tracks classes of bug automatically and auto-populates a spreadsheet. Web guys can likely figure that out.

You can't rely on the community in it's current (POed) state to do your job for you.

I put this after the above for a reason. Prioritizing the things people want the most is going to be key. None of us want to sit through another 3 months of bug-fixes before any new content is released. Content can be pedestrian stairs or elevators, the mythical asset pack, longer railroad bridges, bikes and bike lanes, firefighter animations, or any one of the things that people want most for the game. Bug fixes aren't a bribe to get people to return; content rules all. Give us a doggie biscuit.

The original intent of this forum may have been that, but there is no better place for us to voice concerns. We're ALL here, interacting with each other, and now, finally, after 13 pages, with a dev. Subdividing all of the concerns into individual bug reports or posts will never get the amount of exposure that an official announcement thread will get; this is your best window to interact with people, have your posts seen and understood by the community, and, again, inspire confidence and assuage fears.

I understand that you risk "amplifying negativity" by responding to all of the concerns. I understand that it's a lot of work.

I think one of the best things you can do is to hold a series of (or even weekly) AMA or town hall style meetings, at set times, and quickly answer and interact with the community. Have 3 or 4 of your guys posting pretty blue messages while we all spam questions at you. Not everyone will be answered, and you guys would pick and choose which questions you want. It would take some coordination on your part - but putting a crew of you in a conference room with laptops would be an event that shows your knowledge, your ability, and your care for the community. Consider it.

Thank you for the feedback and suggestion. I don’t know if regular AMAs are realistic, it would likely depend on the type of questions. We’re not a huge team, so whenever we pull additional personnel for things like AMAs that means other work doesn’t get done. And I get the feeling that a lot of our players already don’t like how long it takes us to fix bugs and put out new patches. We’d definitely have to consider the overall impact that it would have. Alternatively, we might be able to do some Q&As where we collect questions and post answers in batches. But of course, if what you’re after is more interactions from our side then that won’t really be helpful.

Victoria 3 has been really nice in how they do their roadmap after a release that some thought was rocky (I personally loved it from day 1, but opinions differ). They divided it into areas that they are looking to improve, subdividing into some specific and some more vague tasks/areas, each with some description of what it is or what the goal is. This also provides a nice frame of reference when talking about upcomming updates, since they can say stuff like "we will work on area A, specifically subarea B and C" and then everyone knows what it is. This is a "living document" in the sense that more is added, some things might be removed/changed and even if an area is touched upon in one update it might not be completed and thus get updated with new info. Latest version here:

Edit: Weird, I am not allowed to link to the Victoria 3 subforums despite being on this very domain.. Well, just navigate from this forum and into the general Paradox Games forum, click Victoria 3, find Dev Diary 103 (latest) in the top, and then go to previous dev diary (102) by clicking the button... Doing that shows DD102 which is the latest version of their roadmap post.



I believe you need to clarify what "how the simulation works" actually means. Some people will say that it doesn't work since it provides no to little challenge while you might think of 'not working' as something classified as a bug.

Same with statements such as "the simulation is working as intended, outside of the bugs" might to you, as an example, mean that the production chains are working without bugs but there is 1-2 bugs in exports, while others will read it as "Once we fix the 1-2 bugs in exports everything is perfect and we will not change/tweak/balance the simulation".

To me it feels like there is some fundamental misunderstandings between the devs and the community due to broad, nebulous terms such as "The Simulation" or "Failsafes" which can mean so many different things depending on who you ask. And I wouldn't be surprised if those misunderstandings also fuels some of the toxicity.

This is a really good point, and why I think it’s so important to get into the specifics. We need to figure out what might be bugged, but even if nothing is bugged, we also look at why it feels "off." Sometimes it might be hard to understand what’s happening because the game doesn’t provide you enough information, sometimes it might be a case of balancing not being where you expect it or where we intended it. Just because something isn’t broken or bugged doesn’t mean we’ll ignore the feedback, though often times it does mean change is slower.

The goal of the dev diary is to give you clarity on how things work/should work, not end the conversation about how the game feels. Thank you for raising these points, we’ll keep them in mind for the dev diary.

I have written about Word of the Week containing lots of words but not much information before and voiced my wish for more information about what things are being worked on.

For making visible what things are currently being worked on, I suggest a trello board. Similar to this one by Ubisoft for The Division 2: https://trello.com/b/F2RU9ia9/the-division-2-known-issues

It shows a simple-to-understand overview of bugs that have been reported, bugs that are currently being worked (with tags for priorities) on and bugs that are ready to be pushed to a patch.

Basically what I am requesting is a kanban board with categories: "Investigating", "In Progress", "Fix Ready", "Fix Live" and priority tags (Low, Medium, High). It doesn't have to be trello. It could just be a table in a sticky post in the forums too. Or a Google spreadsheet. Or a live stream of sticky notes on a wall.

I really don't need specific release dates, just let me know what you are actually working on. A list of hundreds of confirmed bugs without any information which one is being worked on at what priority at this moment is useless.

Other trello boards I found that could be used for inspiration of how to transparently communicate with a community:
EA Sports FC: https://trello.com/b/keigLn6R/ea-sports-fc-tracker
Call of Duty MW3: https://trello.com/b/n58Qr7mZ/modern-warfare-iii-sledgehammer-games-treyarch
Anno 1800: https://trello.com/b/rldv58ho/anno1800-pc-known-issues-board

I also really like the Bug Tracker by WB Games.
For example Hogwarts Legacy: https://hogwartslegacy.bugs.wbgames.com/all

I completely understand the desire for a clear overview of the issues we’re aware of and working on, but I also want to be up front with you that it isn’t realistic for us to have a list with categories like that. We simply don’t have the resources to keep it updated without taking time away from other important tasks. I would absolutely love for us to update the forum bug reports to "Fixed" when there is a fix, but doing so takes time away from logging new reports. While it would be nice to have, it’s just always going to be higher priority to make sure the reports are investigated.

That said, we can still try and make some improvements to give you a better idea of what we’re working on, even if it doesn’t give a good overview of which bugs are being worked on at the moment.

Sure. I have a question. What is this? I haven't had statistics since college, but these seem just a little off.
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We’re aware of some issues with the statistics and they’re currently being looked into. I’d have to check the specifics to see if that’s what’s happening here, but if I remember right that’s likely the case.

 

[timfrombriz]

Bus lanes... that work like lanes for buses only. Coming from developing public transport simulatoion games, I thought this wouldnt be a bug in one of your games

I completely understand the desire for a clear overview of the issues we’re aware of and working on, but I also want to be up front with you that it isn’t realistic for us to have a list with categories like that. We simply don’t have the resources to keep it updated without taking time away from other important tasks. I would absolutely love for us to update the forum bug reports to "Fixed" when there is a fix, but doing so takes time away from logging new reports. While it would be nice to have, it’s just always going to be higher priority to make sure the reports are investigated.

As per my post here with a bunch of suggestions (agreed/liked by many others), why not grant some community members the ability to flag and offload some of the work. Duplicates & Resolved marking by the community would make it easier for you to filter new issues without wasting time marking duplicates/resolved bugs yourself (and the time spent deciding this). It speeds up your process of identifying bugs, especially bugs introduced by new patches. Get Paradox to create a class of account in the forum with these access privildeges (im guessing thats all it would need) and find some troopers here who will volunteer and be fit for the task.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

Hope ur feeling better @co_avanya and it wasn’t too serious! Hope ur recovering well and in and in a fit state for work.

 

[unmerged(524934)]

@co_avanya First off, glad you're feeling better, there are a lot of nasty bugs going round at the moment, I've had one on and off for about a month and it can be debilitating so I'm happy to hear you're back on your feet.

Re. your latest post - I say this with the best of intentions, but it sounds to me a lot like CO is really struggling to get to grips with the scale of the problems with CS2. For what it's worth, given the fall off in player numbers (I've gone back to CS1 as I know many others have, still enjoying your great assets in that game by the way) and what this might mean for the longevity of the game, has the company considered outsourcing some of the remedial work to third parties? I know that such a move would cause management and quality control issues on top of what you're already dealing with, but while the focus remains on getting the console release ready, CO really needs to act fast to get a grip on the numerous bugs and gameplay fixes that are so obvious in the PC version of the game or risk losing what little goodwill remains among the playerbase.

I'd really like to play CS2 as the game I paid for, and throwing external resources at fixing it might be one way to short circuit what seems to be an issue not of desire to fix the game on your part, but rather of manpower to actually be able to fix it.