Dark Days Ahead if Things Aren't Set Straight

[ResonKinetic]

I'm noticing a gap growing between the developers, their representatives/site managers, and the people (customers). We haven't hit the bottom of the barrel just yet, but the outcome of this path we're going on is all too real. To remind you of what happens when interaction between developers, middle-men, and customers goes awry, I only have to mention one thing.

Chucklefish.
Or Starbound. Take your pick.

The drama that went on there was absurd, confusing, rage-inducing, and really disappointing overall. I couldn't even believe my eyes when I saw how the community and their opinions (and stated facts) were disregarded or stepped all over by some very inconsiderate people in a position of authority.

I love this game and I love this community, despite its flaws (the memes, sperging levity, mushroomfleet, etc.). I don't want to see this community, which has so much potential and greatness ahead of it become something less-than, or devolve into a situation like that which was previously mentioned. It would really break my heart.

That's all.

and i wasn't sure where to put this so i figured GD would be alright lol

tl;dr everyone needs to find some common ground before it hits the fan

inb4 thread gets shat on by mods #yolo[DOUBLEPOST=1410886211,1410886150][/DOUBLEPOST]and no this isn't because of the whole disagree button thing but that's a contributing factor and to see things like this going on between staff and users scares me deeply.

 

[MrFURB]

Heyyo, @ResonKinetic. I like that you're bringing this up, but I think I'm a bit disconnected from these issues. Can you bring me up to date with the events you're describing?

 

[timethatswasted]

I can't say I share your feelings...

I've alpha and beta tested a number of games over the last decade and I can say I have never seen a development team be in closer contact with the community then this group.

In fact they have been even more open in the last few months compaired to when I started playing this game almost two years ago.

Can you give an actual example of how you feel they are not listening / ignoring the community?

The "disagree" button is gone because of immature morons who ruined it for the rest of us. Be angry at them, not the moderators or web designers.

 

[Saber]

I'm noticing a gap growing between the developers, their representatives/site managers, and the people

Uh....what? Developer's talk with players, "the people" every day. They're always listening to new/old/crazy/already planned ideas from all over the place, so I'm afraid I don't know where you're getting this idea from.

I love this community, despite its flaws (the memes, sperging levity, mushroomfleet, etc.)

MushroomFleet is a huge community within StarMade, how is it a flaw?

 

[RoyalWolfe]

I have to say I too have been made to feel somewhat like this myself.

I was a victim of the troubles mentioned above as well, I was banned by the abusive staff at the chuckle fish myself. I chose to not let it bother me as afterward I found this game. I have grown to love it far more than any other game out there of its kind. having said that I also share a deal of concerns for it as well. however, I also would like to say that as far as those other games do go, this one, had made far and above the most progress than any of them have in the past year alone/combined. that being said my personal feelings are irrelevant. what is important is that we all admit our wrongs and move on accordingly.

Spoiler

I personally understand how many feel about the whole disagree butt0n situation. I respectfully chose to disagree with even having a disagree button. having it removed I felt was also a removal of negative and unwanted feedback.

let us not think about it as the devs censuring feedback, that is not what the system was even designed for at all. and that is something many seem to have forgotten. what many don't realize is, the feedback buttons are not one click response items to simply down vote ideas we don't like. what we need is a way to tell out feeling without simply coming off as spiteful. and personally I that I think is exactly what the feedback buttons are doing. what has happened is, a tool, which was supposed to help us, has been turned into a weapon. it was abused and reused in a way harmful to its original intent. people are more inclined to simply click the buttons and not reply or even attempt to elaborate why they clicked them to give further feedback at all.

how did this happen, why did it come to this. both do not matter. what matters is what can be done to resolve it.

 

[Comr4de]

I think we still have a ways to go before we're even comparable to that. However, you bring up a couple of decent points.

Before I continue, I must apologize if my history lesson has some minor inaccuracies. The old site's search function was, and always shall be, a piece of shit.

The dev team is nowhere near as involved with the community as it was two years ago. You can chart where Schema's slow withdrawal from the community began from the first major shield rebalance (i think that's the right news post, if not please link me the correct one). There was a HUGE community uproar, so much so that schema reverted to the previous system within hours. The next milestone was the infamous docking area fix. For a long time, the docking areas did not display the correct size. Schema uploaded a fix that made them display correctly. Of course, there was a major uproar about this. A certain tester *cough cough* Mou *cough* took it upon himself to decry schema every chance he got. In fact, the only time I've ever seen schema actually yell at someone was in a long-forgotten post in the old tester forums directed at this guy. He still pokes around in the comment sections of the main news site, but he's pretty much irrelevant now. The significance this holds is that it made Schema feel that the community was ungrateful for his work. Nobody is motivated by hordes of screaming children, and at this point Schema began posting less and less on the forums and on other sites (/vg/).

What came next was absolutely stupid and 100% unnecessary. Before kupu the guy in charge of textures, and in charge of public relations was a guy named Beetlebear. I'm going to keep this short but basically his textures were shit. The "old style" textures that were present up until 0.15 were his. I'm not going to cover the entirety of the drama between the two but I think schema's response lays out the whole thing rather nicely.

For clarity, Beetlebear was replaced in his PR role by Calbiri.

Once the new site was announced, it was also announced that the website staff and Schine would be splitting. The new website team would be selected by Duke (I think?) and would report to him. We lost a lot of good moderators (and some of the worst) with this change but I think it was for the better.

A major change between this site and the old was that this site added a rating system. I, in particular loathe public forums with rating systems as it lends a sort of "mob rule" mentality plus abuses with the rating system to start off with. Rather recently, it was decided to remove the "disagree" rating from the forums. According to the moderation staff people were being offended/it was causing problems so it was easier to remove the rating.

Spoiler: soapbox

I personally want the whole damn thing gone. It's a nuisance and a circle jerk and we'd be better off without it.

That just about brings us to today. I'm not posting this to justify the lack of direct communication between Schine and the community but I hope it adds some background information as to why Schema tends to not be as active on the forums.


On the note of the modern Schine staff;

Despite my misgivings about certain members of the team/moderation staff, I believe they're moving in the right direction. Schema's been coming out of his shell as of late, and Calbiri has been doing a DRASTICALLY better job of handling PR than Beetlebear (full disclosure, this isn't really that much of an achievement). One of the changes I want to see happen is for Schine to either come up with their own game news or move away maybe even a foot or two from MushroomFleet. The other change is a uniformity in moderation. I'm all about loose cannons but sometimes those loose cannons need to be reeled in. The "Down with USSR" thread is a perfect illustration of what I'm talking about here. Severe overreaction to a silly joke. HOWEVER, we are nowhere NEAR as close to the hell that was the old moderation team. In that thread in particular, posts were deleted left and right to protect a certain moderator's reputation.


That's all I really have to say on the matter for now. If I think of anything else I'll probably just edit it in.
edit:

MushroomFleet is a huge community within StarMade, how is it a flaw?

The fact that MF is the only stable source of update news is a pretty major problem. Official releases should come from Schine, or more properly, their PR manager in news posts on their site.

Edit2: The fact that we hear more from Kupu than we do the PR manager should say something.

 

[Saber]

Official releases should come from Schine, or more properly, their PR manager in news posts on their site.

News posts do come up on the website, albeit not as frequently as there are updates. Are you just wanting updates more often? Or something more like Space Engineers does, where a member of the development team creates a short, to-the-point video showcasing new features?

 

[Comr4de]

News posts do come up on the website, albeit not as frequently as there are updates. Are you just wanting updates more often? Or something more like Space Engineers does, where a member of the development team creates a short, to-the-point video showcasing new features?

Not quite to the point of videos, but I think you get my drift.

In this context, I mean updates to be a short blurb by the dev/PR manager about how things are going, what's planned, etc. Not a full-fledged patch to the game.

But a news post from Calbiri every week on Wednesday outlining what's coming up, how schema's doing, what progress has been made would certainly be welcome. I know that it isn't possible for Schema to put out a patch every week but some official progress updates would be great for us old geezers who hate Let's Plays with a passion.

 

[NoPantsMcDance]

Open the door get on the floor everybody walk the dinosaur.

EDIT: Is it a bad time to be coming back to this game? Been browsing the forums for a few days and all I've found so far is the drama train.

 

[der_scheme]

I… don't know what to say.

 

[Comr4de]

Also, if ever there was a post the optimistic rating was for, it would be the OP.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Eh, should I get involved? Probably not, but OK, I hereby declare myself involved.
Bad time for the forums? Nah, it's just one thing with the disagree button. I'm almost certain that its intended functionality will get added somehow.
Bad time for the game? No! This has got to be the best time to get back to the game. There are all sorts of updates in the works, and the result of all of them is going to be amazing.
Dev blog? I would also like to see that. It just gives us this good feeling to know what is coming.

As for the updates, the crafting optimizations and the universe update are coming. So stay tuned

 

[Reilly Reese]

Drama Train? Faction crap is at an all time low!!!

Personally I feel that were not going anywhere bad right now. I admit Calbiri and Schema aren't seen very much anymore (How come?)

 

[SchnellBier]

I don´t even know where to start disagreeing. If you think a dev has to do everything the community wants you are wrong. They don´t even have to listen to anybody. They just have to do their job to make a good game. And if you think that they have to listen to everyone in the community to achive this you are more than wrong. Most of the posts here are from people who don´t even know what a game should be like. It´s on them to pack all ideas into a good fitting package and a lot of people will be disapointed by it because they can´t have their candy.

To the topic mushroomfleet. Why do you have a problem with that? Just because there isn´t a dev talking? Most of the time there is even one of them in the chat when streaming. I really can´t see how to get closer to them. Maybe you want a date?

 

[FunnyBunny14]

Drama Train? Faction crap is at an all time low!!!

Personally I feel that were not going anywhere bad right now. I admit Calbiri and Schema aren't seen very much anymore (How come?)

Because they'r busy making the game better
Calbiri obviously is busy with the new crafting system, and both Calbiri and schema are working on the new update.

 

[Criss]

From what I have garnered a lot of people seem to think that Mushroomfleet is the only group that gets inside information to share. The reason schine reveals information to them is because mushroomfleet is the largest distributor of starmade content on YT. Literally nonstop content. The issue is that people have to sift through the non-news videos to find that information. The members of mushroomfleet also have a damn good understanding of the game. Do you know how many times people ask for features to be in the game, that are already in? MF kinda just rolls their eyes. They released videos about those wanted features weeks ago. You can't blame players for not knowing, not everyone cares about getting all this news immediately. But in reality Tomino posts far too many videos to realistically expect people to see and remember every one. And one out of ten is about actual game updates.

I have nothing against MF. I'm in their TS all the time and I record a few things with them. They are some fun people. If you guys want legitimate update videos about the game I would suggest https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6802M2GyVD9u2g1dXKbYzg

This guy did a a pretty simple but effective update video. Honestly I would promote those videos. Let's make sure they keep coming. And if you guys think schine is not listening, you are mistaken. You guys made comments about how 10% hard limit was too much for jump drives and they lowered it to a 5% efficiency cap.

 

[Comr4de]

I don´t even know where to start disagreeing. If you think a dev has to do everything the community wants you are wrong. They don´t even have to listen to anybody. They just have to do their job to make a good game. And if you think that they have to listen to everyone in the community to achive this you are more than wrong. Most of the posts here are from people who don´t even know what a game should be like. It´s on them to pack all ideas into a good fitting package and a lot of people will be disapointed by it because they can´t have their candy.

To the topic mushroomfleet. Why do you have a problem with that? Just because there isn´t a dev talking? Most of the time there is even one of them in the chat when streaming. I really can´t see how to get closer to them. Maybe you want a date?

It's the job of the Public Relations manager to relate with the public. Not sure what you're getting at there.

My issue with mushroomfleet is that you have to sit through a ten minute video to get about one minute of information. There is no scenario in which this is acceptable.

All I'm asking for is a straightforward text post outlining all of the cool new stuff. A devblog is not out of the question when you have a guy whose job is literally to apprise the public of development progress.

 

[blurb357]

What a short me?i would gladly be part of the schine team. thanks for nominating me, now i might kick you and your bollocks off this community STOP POLLUTING![DOUBLEPOST=1410898832,1410898352][/DOUBLEPOST]Ladies and gentleman, it is an honour to be part of the schine team now as I was nominated by @Comr4de as my first act I will wipe him and bollocks of this great and noble community. As he doesn't appreciate how much the schine team does and want them to wipe his ass (his mom refused when he was 30), than I shall kick his sorry arse to North Korea and hope that he learns some manners there.

As always your helpful and great schine team spending our free-time cleaning up the random shit that arseholes like @Comr4de posts.

Always helping Blurb357

 

[Reilly Reese]

Your pissed I can tell.

 

[Comr4de]

What a short me?i would gladly be part of the schine team. thanks for nominating me, now i might kick you and your bollocks off this community STOP POLLUTING![DOUBLEPOST=1410898832,1410898352][/DOUBLEPOST]Ladies and gentleman, it is an honour to be part of the schine team now as I was nominated by @Comr4de as my first act I will wipe him and bollocks of this great and noble community. As he doesn't appreciate how much the schine team does and want them to wipe his ass (his mom refused when he was 30), than I shall kick his sorry arse to North Korea and hope that he learns some manners there.

As always your helpful and great schine team spending our free-time cleaning up the random shit that arseholes like @Comr4de posts.

Always helping Blurb357

Wow, great post, 10/10


Pardon the fuck out of me for expecting professionals to act professionally. I'm not asking for Schine to do something that they haven't done in the past. That thread about thrust? Phenomenal. It let us know what they were planning and allowed us to give feedback. What I'm asking for is more of that, less of ten minutes of awkward randomness for about thirty seconds of news. I don't know why people have accepted this toxic ideology of taking whatever they're given and accepting it with a smile. Schine is doing a phenomenal job. If you read my post(s) you would know that's how I feel. Instead you make a knee-jerk reaction post directed at attacking my character.

But I digress. Apparently it's socially unacceptable to have standards.