I don't want to be rude... but...

[tetra]

It seems like this new thread is supposed to finally be the first step of answer for the questions from players to be eventually answered by Nevrax here and here. It's been about two weeks now with no answers since the threads were started, but the first step can be boiled down into:

• there were lots of bugs introduced early on, we improved testing and hope to do better while also fixing more of the old bugs.
• Outposts will be real cool... they are coming real soon now. A lot of nothing has been said already, so we aren't going to repeat more nothing. More coming soon!
• There are a handful of rights, we are working on more and have a whole bunch that will trickle in over time.
• more next week!

Now I don't want to attack Xavier on his first attempt to bring something to us, and it certainly was nice to see that he is trying to let us know about some stuff... but... answering a handful of cherrypicked questions is not something that should take two plus weeks. Could we please have some answers?

[raynes]

I uderstand what you are saying but give the guy a break. His position was announced on Feb 23rd. It is not Feb 26th. In his introductory post he said we were going to get "a ''report'' on the current general tasks in production, to clarify what's in the pipe for short and mid-term development". He produced that in 3 days. The article was helpful too. It at least gave us reasons why patches have happened the way that they have.

I am sure he knows that we are looking for answers to those questions. Give me a bit of time to get into his job. So far he has done a great job.

[vinnyq]

I hate to be rude, Tetra, but shut up a minnit please

THe report actually told us a lot of stuff.

[tetra]

I uderstand what you are saying but give the guy a break. His position was announced on Feb 23rd. It is not Feb 26th. In his introductory post he said we were going to get "a ''report'' on the current general tasks in production, to clarify what's in the pipe for short and mid-term development". He produced that in 3 days. The article was helpful too. It at least gave us reasons why patches have happened the way that they have.

I am sure he knows that we are looking for answers to those questions. Give me a bit of time to get into his job. So far he has done a great job.

The article was "neat", it quantified things we already knew. We already knew that they were working on outposts and wanted to get them out soon. They have been a patch or two away since very close to the beginning of the game. So now we know that they want to have outposts on ATS in 4-6 weeks, that's not news... that's simply a number placed on what we already knew. It's not information though, we still don't know anything about outposts. All we know is what we have already known and suspected, "they are coming soon and will be cool but we can't tell you anything about them or how they work". Sure it told us that they had insufficient testers when there was only 3, and they bumped it up to 8 along with some new testing proceedures.... but knowing that it moved from 3 to 8 testers, doesn't really change the fact that we already knew they didn't have enough internal testing originally and have made a lot of progress in getting better recently. We have known that there are more rites that they want to push from ATS to live, we have known that there are more that they want to throw on ATS as well; putting a number on how many doesn't say anything about them.

You can both call me demanding and unresaonable, but there is nothing demanding or unreasonable about expecting nevrax as a company to be able to answer a handful of questions after 2+ weeks. There is nothing demanding or unreasonable about pointing out that Xavier's letter was very neat, but answers to our questions are expected and getting to a point where most everyone can agree they are overdue. Simply bringing someone on staff to a new position, when that person was already part of the company to begin with, does not suddenly make everything ok.

[vinnyq]

No, it doesn't make everything ok, but it's a step in the right direction.

[khayne]

Wow for once I completely agree with Raynes!



well...theres been other times...but lets not talk about them

[raynes]

The article was "neat", it quantified things we already knew. We already knew that they were working on outposts and wanted to get them out soon. They have been a patch or two away since very close to the beginning of the game. So now we know that they want to have outposts on ATS in 4-6 weeks, that's not news... that's simply a number placed on what we already knew. It's not information though, we still don't know anything about outposts. All we know is what we have already known and suspected, "they are coming soon and will be cool but we can't tell you anything about them or how they work". Sure it told us that they had insufficient testers when there was only 3, and they bumped it up to 8 along with some new testing proceedures.... but knowing that it moved from 3 to 8 testers, doesn't really change the fact that we already knew they didn't have enough internal testing originally and have made a lot of progress in getting better recently. We have known that there are more rites that they want to push from ATS to live, we have known that there are more that they want to throw on ATS as well; putting a number on how many doesn't say anything about them.

You can both call me demanding and unresaonable, but there is nothing demanding or unreasonable about expecting nevrax as a company to be able to answer a handful of questions after 2+ weeks. There is nothing demanding or unreasonable about pointing out that Xavier's letter was very neat, but answers to our questions are expected and getting to a point where most everyone can agree they are overdue. Simply bringing someone on staff to a new position, when that person was already part of the company to begin with, does not suddenly make everything ok.

Your problem is that you were expecting his first article to be answers to the questions we put in that other thread. And that stems from the fact that you didn't read his introductory post. In his post the following was said:

"But enough of that : what about concrete measures to improve the communication ?

Here are a few points I want to work on setting up. I would like to have your feedback before I actually start working on it, so you can get a chance to give your suggestions

* Reports on what the team is working on. We have regular meetings here, to ensure that everyone at Nevrax stay up to date on what the others do. I think giving you some bits of what we say during this meetings could interest you.
* Sets of answers to questions from the forums (relayed by the community managers). If you have read the boards lately, you have probably noticed that the community managers started threads to ask for your questions. They will serve as a pool on which I will draw the next sets.
* Features articles, describing important aspects or changes to the game. This way, you will know what will come, and get a chance to comment on it."


Notice how he said he wanted to get feedback on those things before he started working on them. One of those items is the questions we posted. Further on in the article he said nothing about answering the questions this week, but instead said he would post a report about general production tasks and clarify what was in short term development. His article did both of those things. In fact the first thing I suggested in the thread where he is asking suggestion on how to improve communication is for a clarification about the testing process. Why there have been huge bugs and what they are doing to improve it. His article adressed that. I'd also like to add that you haven't even bothered to take the time to post suggestions.

His post did something that was VERY badly needed. It gave us some information on what is going on in areas that we all have complaints about. He talked about their testing problem (very honestly I might add) and how they are working to correct them. He gave us information on how the encylopedia was planned to be released, why that changed, and what the current plan is. He gave us information that the top priority now is cleaning up code (which should kill a ton of bugs). He gave us a REAL time frame on outposts, something we did not have before. Many of us have been complaining about the lack of events. Well he gave us information that there are new tool available and that the event people are going to be trained on them. He didn't just say sometime in the future, he gave a specific Date. Even more exciting is that he said that future events will have a stong focus on "background story
and life on Atys, including religious customs, politics death and rebirth, along with the Kami and Karavan conflict". Notice what is missing in that list? The Kitin. That's right they have heard that we don't want everything to be about the Kitin, they have heard we don't want every event to be an invasion so in the furture events will be based on a wide variety of things.

I suggest if you are really unhappy with the information he provided you do as he asked at the end of that post:
"That's for the start. If you have any comments or questions about all
that, do not hesitate to post in your respective per-community forums.
It will help to prepare the first set of answers, which will be posted
next week."

From what I can tell you are looking for very specific information about the upcomming rite missions and outposts. Here is what I suggest you ask:

1)Outposts
So far Nevrax has given little information concerning the details about outpost. Can you give us some detailed information. Stuff like what will they be based upon? What requirements will guilds have to get them? What sort of system will be in place for defending them? It also might help if you could give us a overview of the procedure players will have to go through to get and keep them.

2) Encylopedia Rite Missions
Can you tell us some more about the type of rite missions that are planned? So far we have seen finding people, digging for stuff, and crafting for stuff. We have also heard of escort missions, but else is planned. What about things that aren't yet planned but you want to do? Are the encylopedia missions every going to become so important that you will have to do some to take part in certain areas of gameplay?

[tetra]

Your problem is that you were expecting his first article to be answers to the questions we put in that other thread. And that stems from the fact that you didn't read his introductory post. In his post the following was said:

No, my problem is that I expect to not have to deal with shell games and delay tactics on something as simple as answering questions. There is no excuse for not having the questions answered already. Over a week ago, when I asked Cerest if there was any word on when the questions would be answered, she said she was told that she would hear back from nevrax by the end of the week. Well guess what raynes... it's been well over a week, and we still have not heard word one from nevrax.

blah blah blah blah blah let's quote xavier some more

I'm well aware of what Xavier wrote, I simply am not willing to accept it as an excuse for nevrax taking this long to answer our questions when they were the ones who made a big deal abou tit in the first place. At this point, it's starting to look painfully apparent that the whole "ask questions let us answer" thing was nothing more than a delay tactic that will wind up being shuffled away with empty meaningless answers. Now if Xavier or Cerest or anyone else comes out and proves me otherwise I would be quite happy, but for now I feel the need to point out the obvious. We have already been told that not every question would be answered. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever that it would take over 16 days to handpick some questions and answer them. none.

Notice how he said he wanted to get feedback on those things before he started working on them.

Again... the question and answer threads were started on the 9th... it is now the 26th, they have had more than two weeks worth of "feedback" on the silence...

One of those items is the questions we posted. Further on in the article he said nothing about answering the questions this week, but instead said he would post a report about general production tasks and clarify what was in short term development. His article did both of those things. In fact the first thing I suggested in the thread where he is asking suggestion on how to improve communication is for a clarification about the testing process. Why there have been huge bugs and what they are doing to improve it. His article adressed that. I'd also like to add that you haven't even bothered to take the time to post suggestions.

Again, Nevrax has failed to answer the questions that they asked for. Throwing out something shiny is not an excuse for over two weeks worth of silence on the matter.

His post did something that was VERY badly needed. It gave us some information on what is going on in areas that we all have complaints about.

none of that information was completely unknown, it simply confirmed what was already known and gave some numbers that were simply fluff.

He gave us a REAL time frame on outposts, something we did not have before.

yea, cause 4-6 weeks is so much different than just a couple patches away. It's the same damn thing raynes.

I suggest if you are really unhappy with the information he provided you do as he asked at the end of that post:

"That's for the start. If you have any comments or questions about all
that, do not hesitate to post in your respective per-community forums.
It will help to prepare the first set of answers, which will be posted
next week."

From what I can tell you are looking for very specific information about the upcomming rite missions and outposts. Here is what I suggest you ask:

1)Outposts
So far Nevrax has given little information concerning the details about outpost. Can you give us some detailed information. Stuff like what will they be based upon? What requirements will guilds have to get them? What sort of system will be in place for defending them? It also might help if you could give us a overview of the procedure players will have to go through to get and keep them.

2) Encylopedia Rite Missions
Can you tell us some more about the type of rite missions that are planned? So far we have seen finding people, digging for stuff, and crafting for stuff. We have also heard of escort missions, but else is planned. What about things that aren't yet planned but you want to do? Are the encylopedia missions every going to become so important that you will have to do some to take part in certain areas of gameplay?

No raynes, those are your questions, I'm simply pointing out the complete lack of information and rehashing of the already known. We already knew just about everything he said, the rest was mostly fluff.

You may be all giddy cause he mentioned wanting story and roleplay to be a bigger deal, but that's not anything new... they have been saying that for a long time now Raynes. The only excuse for for him needing more time to answer our questions, is if Nevrax has completely ignored them for the last two plus weeks. And that is unexcusable.

[khayne]

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd rather have the programmers programming instead of answering questions about the stuff they should be programming. Good thing they appointed a question answerer information giver person to take care of it for them so they can keep programming. Or wait...lets take a day or two off of programming bug fixes, rites, and outposts to answer a whole bunch of questions and just push them all back a bit further...they can wait. Besides, having information of what will come sometime in the future is better than having the future come sooner, right? But oh wait, 3 days to answer dozens of pages of questions from three different languages should be plenty right? Why start off with general things to lay a foundation? Lets shingle the roof THEN we'll lay the concrete! GOOD IDEA!

[jackmor]

Your problem is that you were expecting his first article to be answers to the questions we put in that other thread. .

I suggest if you are really unhappy with the information he provided you do as he asked at the end of that post:
"That's for the start. If you have any comments or questions about all
that, do not hesitate to post in your respective per-community forums.
It will help to prepare the first set of answers, which will be posted
next week."

From what I can tell you are looking for very specific information about the upcomming rite missions and outposts. Here is what I suggest you ask:

1)Outposts
So far Nevrax has given little information concerning the details about outpost. Can you give us some detailed information. Stuff like what will they be based upon? What requirements will guilds have to get them? What sort of system will be in place for defending them? It also might help if you could give us a overview of the procedure players will have to go through to get and keep them.

2) Encylopedia Rite Missions
Can you tell us some more about the type of rite missions that are planned? So far we have seen finding people, digging for stuff, and crafting for stuff. We have also heard of escort missions, but else is planned. What about things that aren't yet planned but you want to do? Are the encylopedia missions every going to become so important that you will have to do some to take part in certain areas of gameplay?

Raynes i like you but you use too many words when you write.

These are the questions asked a great number of times in to many posts to start asking them again. If no one has answerd them properly yet I dont beleive they ever will.

If you all think that adding a liason is a step in the right direction then you dont know a pacifier when you see one.

This game has potential but that potential is being wasted. If you think that their first priority is to get the game up and running you are wrong. The first priority now is to keep the custumers from leaving. The pattern of actions taken by this company are those of desperation not direction.

I don't know what their problems are nor do I care. They have been hiding their incompetance behind a corporate screen for a long time but, that screen will only hide so much for so long. This is a do or die time for them. Make no mistake about that. Do not fool yourself into thinking that everything is fine. There is no need for a liason when every thing is fine.