tetra wrote: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?
