COMMUNITY - FORUMS - GENERAL DISCUSSION
Less frequency, more substance

I think its safe to say there is a growing portion of the community unsatisfied with the "weekly shinies", given that we seem to still be showing concept art mood pieces after 3+ years of development.

The frequency of being reminded every week that we have no real content with anything to sink our teeth into is, in my opinion, worse than shinies being more spread apart.

This is similar to the "community journal" we so often get that, while extremely bloated with text, has virtually no substance anyone cares about. Being often reminded of this does more to hurt morale than help it, I imagine.

It is my recommendation that these shinies stop happening every week just so SBS can check the box and say "yep 1 per week", and instead switch to a model where it happens less frequently but with more to show.

Instead, I would much rather see a deep dive dev journal on game mechanics, or an in-game rendering of a town, or something else with more substance once in a month than these weekly reminders that we have nothing in our hands after so long. This may also take some of the pressure off SBS to so frequently pump out something, regardless of how hollow it is.

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1/14/2020 6:42:20 PM #1

I completely agree. Too often quantity of communication gets mistaken for quality.

I would much prefer a deep dive DJ ever other month, or monthly dev streams showing the client they are working in, or even an "over the shoulder" stream just watching work once a week as other studios have done.

Meat. More steak, less sizzle.

I would happily sacrifice all the weekly shinies and monthly CJs for one good, informative, substantial dev stream per month.

I know not everyone feels this way, but that's my two cents.


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1/14/2020 6:53:03 PM #2

Or we could, you know, keep the shinies, which get generally positive reviews, and also get some more in depth content? Why can't I have my cake and eat it too?


Evil? More like Chaotic Neutral...ish

1/14/2020 7:23:49 PM #3

Everyone complained they didn't share enough so they start to give us the shinies every week and now people are complaining about the shinies and demanding less but better stuff. SBS can't win.


1/14/2020 7:46:20 PM #4

Posted By Stormbreaker at 2:23 PM - Tue Jan 14 2020

Everyone complained they didn't share enough so they start to give us the shinies every week and now people are complaining about the shinies and demanding less but better stuff. SBS can't win.

The problem is not the shinies. The problem is they are using the shinies as a band aid because they have nothing else to show us. The shinies themselves are fine but after so many months of the shinies and nothing else people start to wonder why that is.


1/14/2020 7:47:03 PM #5

Everyone complained they didn't share enough so they start to give us the shinies every week and now people are complaining about the shinies and demanding less but better stuff. SBS can't win.

Actually that was something I also thought about immediately, at some point sbs would release about 1 update a month, then when they announced that there would be more frequent updates, which many (me included) loved to hear.

But that said I also agree with Vucar, I would rather see more substance showed once in a month, with their most recent progress than seeing "Concept art of architecture 1 of tribe A -week 1, Concept art of architecture 2 of tribe A -week 2, Concept art of architecture 3 of tribe A -week 3" then moving to another tribe and filling month such way, when realistically CAs could be at least grouped per tribe.

I'm not complaining that much about seeing Concept Art, I love that, but it feels like a step back from what we used to see before (Ingame assets, animal animation vids, biome explanation) and moving into 2020 seeing something that was made probably few years ago in a day or two, especially after we've been told so often in 2017 & 2018 how they can't show us much because of so much work being done on back-end and yet we saw some good things pop up...

Which again proves Vucar's point to a degree - I get that it won't always happen that we get new amazing things to see every week, or sometimes every month, but as such impact of watering down the content would be much less if there's nothing impactful to show.

1/14/2020 7:54:29 PM #6

Posted By Stormbreaker at 2:23 PM - Tue Jan 14 2020

Everyone complained they didn't share enough so they start to give us the shinies every week and now people are complaining about the shinies and demanding less but better stuff. SBS can't win.

I think you might be missing the key point he made about quantity vs quality.

The request for them to "share more" isnt automatically granted just because they "share more often".

Take me from example.

I talk a lot. I know I talk a lot. However, I am sure many people would question the "quality" of what I actually say.

You can talk more, while actually "sharing" less.

I would argue that while we do seem to now have a more regular schedule to them sharing, the overall quality of what they are sharing has gone down dramatically.

Even when it comes to words, without looking at tangible game progress, when is the last time we had a new system revealed? Or a true DJ on an existing system? Or a real conversation on the forums about how some system they are thinking about might be inplemented?

Part if the reason people keep drifting towards the negative conversations is that there hasn't been anything new and "positive" to talk about.

All these people still want to be engaged, they still want to be involved - SBS has conditioned them to be that way, and repeatedly emphasized they want it that way.

The best solution I can see is actually giving them something they can get their teeth into.

Hell, we have seen people debate for weeks on the slightest system reveal. Sure, some still injected a degree of skepticism and negativity, but overall, the tone was constructive.

What changed?

We didn't. It's the same people here that have always been here (with some new faces).

What changed was actually having something to talk about.


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1/14/2020 8:03:18 PM #7

They have already gone to the quality over quantity then scraped all dates, roadmaps, and now we are begging them to show less?

If they stopped the unofficial twitter/discord datafrag dumps they wouldn't have to answer the resulting Q&A sessions that result from unofficial data being released during open mic night amateur hour moments that could be better spent on any number of things like promoting the game or showing it off.


If you have items or assets you no longer have use for feel free to send them my way.

1/14/2020 10:02:29 PM #8

I'm for anything that shows forward progress. That's the key thing that's been missing. I think the weekly shiny could work if it wasn't so random and you could see the chronological development of things but as it is it's all over the map and gives no sense of where the project is overall.

I think the studio is keenly aware of our frustrations. I think that is why AshKain was hired and I believe he has a plan. So I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll get greater transparency soonTM.


1/14/2020 10:29:33 PM #9

Probably one of the better threads here on the forums in the past few months, I'll try not to muck it all up. 😁

I know it will probably be Kains job to manage the outbound communication, but that shouldn't mean he should do it all.

Caspian is a busy guy, a few messages a year can suffice.

Serps been doing great but I'm sure the weekly Shiny load could be shared with a few other senior leads a couple of weeks a month.

IMO this would give people more time to prepare better content and help the team relate better to their customer's, especially if a few live Q and As could be held during the year.


You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to get angry. JAMES 1:19 NLT

1/15/2020 12:15:29 AM #10

I 100% agree with this suggestion. This isn’t about “more” it’s about “better”.

More isn’t better, better is better.


1/15/2020 12:32:11 AM #11

I have been saying this for ever!


1/15/2020 1:23:15 AM #12

Posted By Marovec at 2:54 PM - Tue Jan 14 2020

Part if the reason people keep drifting towards the negative conversations is that there hasn't been anything new and "positive" to talk about.

This.

Posted By Makeke at 7:15 PM - Tue Jan 14 2020

More isn’t better, better is better.

And This.

Posted By Watru at 7:32 PM - Tue Jan 14 2020

I have been saying this for ever!

And yes you have.


We Are The Many... We Are The One... We Are THE WAERD !!!

1/15/2020 1:30:06 AM #13

I think it is funny that you consider what we are getting "quantity." Given how much we have paid, I think they could improve on both the quantity and quality fronts.


1/15/2020 6:30:23 AM #14

I'm surprised they have kept it up honestly. I would rather they just show off new stuff they are working on. Over all these concept arts. It's much like for months we just had tribe ones, over and over. But call out for something new? The downvote army comes in. Now suddenly people have had enough? Well it only took 3 years.


1/15/2020 6:40:10 AM #15

Accidentally posted this reply in another thread...

I think more stuff of quality should be shown.

I am making the assumption that there is stuff to show and could be wrong on this; however, I believe there is probably stuff that could be shown that isn't being for multiple reasons, one of which may be fear about the reactions.

I think this can be mitigated with a thorough explanation of why, for instance, it is low poly and not the high res stuff and clarifying that the high res stuff is the goal of the final product for launch.

The reason I feel that more of the stuff which is being withheld from everyone should be shown is for a few reasons.

  1. SBS is already receiving copious amounts of criticism and negative publicity, so I doubt it would make it worse.

  2. Those who are haters and going to criticize no matter what, will no doubt ignore the explanation regarding for instance why low poly is being used; however, on the up side, those who are not trolling but have genuine fears and misgivings, especially about progress, may be reassured and swayed back to the positive side.... either way I personally feel they have nothing to lose, but much to gain by doing so!!

  3. It would certainly help to address the fears people have regarding progress and the viability of the development. It may even reinvigorate backers to spend more.

It certainly can't make those who do not wish to back the development, do any less

win-win!!

I think some of the potential NDA stuff, if it exists, that the masses do not know about is needlessly NDA and could produce some great conversation, renewed interest and hype for the game, in addition to assuaging the fears of many of the lower tier backers.

Anyway. I hope SBS can see that withholding stuff is already doing damage and that this may be a way to turn it around.


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