SamusDroid advised he has been working on the project for 3 months.
When someone works on a project they need a convenient way to share their files so others can test.
Where would SamusDroid host NS2 mod files I wonder?
What if someone were to subscribe to those mods and look at the code that was in them?
They would come up with wild theories....
He does have that mysterious mod call samus new mod with no description...
Now that *something* is planned for release on May 1st, I will reveal that yes, the date on that whiteboard was a long-ago out-dated speculated NS2 Build 265 release date. I have watched this thread, and the previous one, with some interest. It appears that revealing some types of information, particularly highly opaque and confidentional information such as that whiteboard, causes more upset and frustration than satisfaction for members of the NS2 community.
In this particular case, it appears many members of the NS2 community assumed that a pixelated whiteboard was an announcement, when in reality it was a cheeky phone photo of a whiteboard that is scrawled on every day in the office, with dates and milestones constantly being wiped off, pushed out, pulled in, or created. That's certainly a valid way of looking at the situation - One might reasonably assume UWE is trying to 'build hype' or achieve some other public relations objective, when in reality there was no objective other than to just show one of the more banal and quirky elements of the office (the whiteboard!). All of about 10 seconds of thought went into the entire post.
The question is, do people want UWE to continue making this kind of silly post, effectively 'putting our foot in it,' or is the upset and frustration felt by community members who believe the information revealed to be in some way substantially indicative of actual plans simply too high? Should the camera be kept on a tighter leash? This is a pertinent question as the Subnautica team debates the value of opening up Subnautica task tracking system (on Trello) to the public (like Rust) - If we did that, people would constantly being seeing shifting dates, priorities, failures, successes... Perhaps in the context of lots of non-indicative information, individual pieces such as the whiteboard would cause less upset?
In any case, it's very exciting to be getting so close to release of new Natural Selection 2 update. Whatever your feelings about whiteboards, this update is sure to be a good one
I think anything that does not have a date in it would be alright, and very welcome.
The thing (I think) people feel upset about is not so much the teasing, but the missed time it was "supposed to have been" released.
So, teasing blurry images or single words of bespoke whiteboard and such can be fun, so long as everyone knows that the date has not yet been set.
That being said, if you get corned and have to set an ETA, use the enginerring principle set forth by Scotty, chief engineer of the Enterprise:
You didn't tell 'em how long it'll REALLY take ya, did ya? How do you expect them to think you're a miracle worker if ya tell 'em how long it'll really take!?
I was never upset when the patch wasn't released "on time". I was here for the beta, and learned enough about the game development process from UWE to know that if you set a date in stone, you've effectively just made yourself a great grave marker for the community since it will either be rushed (in which case people rage) or late (in which case people rage)
In this particular case, it appears many members of the NS2 community assumed that a pixelated whiteboard was an announcement, when in reality it was a cheeky phone photo of a whiteboard that is scrawled on every day in the office, with dates and milestones constantly being wiped off, pushed out, pulled in, or created. That's certainly a valid way of looking at the situation - One might reasonably assume UWE is trying to 'build hype' or achieve some other public relations objective, when in reality there was no objective other than to just show one of the more banal and quirky elements of the office (the whiteboard!). All of about 10 seconds of thought went into the entire post.
I'm aware of this, and I think some people overestimate the "hype" here (for me, there is none). It's just that the first thread disappeared under dubious circumstances, and the date was missed for a month. The rest was everyday forum life happening
The question is, do people want UWE to continue making this kind of silly post, effectively 'putting our foot in it,' or is the upset and frustration felt by community members who believe the information revealed to be in some way substantially indicative of actual plans simply too high? Should the camera be kept on a tighter leash? This is a pertinent question as the Subnautica team debates the value of opening up Subnautica task tracking system (on Trello) to the public (like Rust) - If we did that, people would constantly being seeing shifting dates, priorities, failures, successes... Perhaps in the context of lots of non-indicative information, individual pieces such as the whiteboard would cause less upset?
In my opinion, you either should leak more, less or different information.
More:
"They're picking up the wrong signals from our twitter tease. Better release another photo to act against that." (E.g. a sad Hugh standing next to a whiteboard announcing the first of *June*, with May crossed out.)
Different:
"We got build 265 in the work, but we're not telling when we'll release it yet. It may or may not feature..." (You can take different approaches here, varying with the amount of information. But don't include dates that are not set in stone )
Less:
"..." (Don't tell anything until it's released. You *will* have the element of surprise, but the community will probably hate you at first.)
SebMelbourne, AUJoin Date: 2013-04-01Member: 184576Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, WC 2013 - Silver, Retired Community Developer
edited April 2014
@Hugh
I think the main thing is consistency. Figure out a strategy and stick to it, because in the past it has just felt like a mash of a whole different strategies and I don't think it works very well. If you want to do it the way the Rust team does it, that's great, everything is on the table. No obscurity, no smoke and mirrors, everything is available for the public to look at and there are no expectations falsely generated from digesting that information.
However, watch the Valve marketing/community/information video. They really do a fantastic job at controlling what they release, that looks professional, but still allows for rampant speculation because they don't promise anything.. In fact, as said in these video hype and speculation can be rewarding for a developer as it can give them feedback and also new ideas as to what people want in future updates.
I don't think anyone is trying to tell you guys how to run the show, but in my opinion, yes it's great to be able to release information on what you guys are doing, but think about it first. The comment 'it literally took ten seconds of thought' is a bit worrying for me there, because that single image caused a major backlash, even if it wasn't meant to be a concrete piece of information.
So, tl;dr : Choose one way or the other, keep information contained until released (make those NDA's worth it) or be upfront without making false promises and being extremely careful with what you put out to the public.
Yeah....(blame) the community for being what it is OR just label a picture with "random shot, means nothing, changes every day, I love our whiteboard - makes me feel cozy". Takes 10 secs as well and saves the nerves of a dozen people
[just a shot in the blue, I don't follow twitter posts and I don't even know if you wrote sth together with the picture. enlight me community memory!]
The question is, do people want UWE to continue making this kind of silly post, effectively 'putting our foot in it,' or is the upset and frustration felt by community members who believe the information revealed to be in some way substantially indicative of actual plans simply too high? Should the camera be kept on a tighter leash? This is a pertinent question as the Subnautica team debates the value of opening up Subnautica task tracking system (on Trello) to the public (like Rust) - If we did that, people would constantly being seeing shifting dates, priorities, failures, successes... Perhaps in the context of lots of non-indicative information, individual pieces such as the whiteboard would cause less upset?
something i noticed quite often (not only regarding ns2) is that whenever there is lack of information, people will automagically fill in the gaps by coming up with wild speculations. this often leads to conspiracy theories and so on.
so regarding ns2/subnautica i'm all in favor of communicating more infos to the community. if there are certain aspects that need to be kept secret for some reason (e.g. free2play if that's true), then go ahead and keep them secret. just give the community something to look forward to. this will:
1. have speculations which are actually based on facts (less disappointment when not met, because the core-promise (e.g. feature xy) will still be fullfilled)
2. distract us from looking into / speculating about the stuff that is supposed to remain confidential
3. reducing desperate/wild speculations about official "silly post" content (as you pointed out for subnautica; i belive this could also apply to ns2)
4. take away the uneasy feeling of having basically no idea what to expect in the upcoming patch
5. as explained by that tf2 developer (video in an earlier post), it gives feedback to developers prior to release
as for the task tracking system, i think that might work out as well. with frequent changes being communicated, people will get used to it and not be too upset e.g. when a date changes because they are prepared for it.
one more thing: i know it's tricky to set release dates. but i'd appreciate something vague even early on e.g. "several weeks" to prevent the minor disappointed on a daily basis when the patch is not done yet
instead, one could then wait for "within a few days" to get pumped up.
this can also help with planning, especially for people administrating servers and developing mods.
IeptBarakatThe most difficult name to speak ingame.Join Date: 2009-07-10Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
Essentially what Laosh'Ra said, that if the community doesn't have anything to go by we're guaranteed to latch onto the next closest thing to information we can and speculate if that will be the release of HalfNukemForever3.
That said, if our bodies are ready will our wallets be ready?
SpoogeThunderbolt missile in your cheeriosJoin Date: 2002-01-25Member: 67Members
I want to be as constructive in my criticism as I can. Apologies if offense is taken.
If you're seriously pondering if an adjustment needs to be made in how UWE interfaces with its community, your problems are larger than you think.
My first recommendation is to ask yourselves what you expect to gain from the historic method of trickling out information to generate hype and then pulling the string for a big "kaboom" unveiling. If your ultimate goal is simply to generate hype, ask yourselves what that hype actually provides. Do you intend to draw in new players with it? Are you trying to keep the existing community excited? From where I sit, neither of those things are happening.
Next, and I think this probably pertains more to SN, decide if you have a clear roadmap for where you want the game to go. Assuming you have one, release it to the public. It doesn't have to be perfectly detailed and it doesn't need a timeline. A visual roadmap will reassure the community that you have a plan and that you aren't just hanging out pondering the next hipster fad.
Having a public roadmap will also keep the community focused. When you want to ask the community for input on a given scenario you can expect answers that are more valuable because they'll have a better understanding of the context and impact. Of course, it doesn't mean the roadmap can't change, but you'd need to make those changes public as well.
In the same spirit, you need to stop pretending to have open development and actually be open about it. What's been going on instead is a hierarchy has been forming: you have UWE staff developers, then there's a small circle of community members who are "in the know", and then you have the masses. This system is, unintentionally I'm sure, creating an adverse relationship. Again, whatever benefits you think you're getting from the Supar Secrat updates are being squashed by the growing disdain.
You guys have some seriously good product here. You don't need gimmicks to get people excited. Just let everybody know what's going on, what you expect to be doing in the future, and then let the actual content provide the good time feelings throughout the community.
Sorry this is a bit run-on but I've been stepping back quite a bit and all I see is a downward spiral. It's depressing.
Do you mean a picture with no actual value or a post that clarifies that the previous post was not perceived correctly? I would agree that the picture post was unnecessary in the first place, but I think a post to clarify the content would just be common sense, if you don't want to see the related thread to cause havoc.
SebMelbourne, AUJoin Date: 2013-04-01Member: 184576Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, WC 2013 - Silver, Retired Community Developer
Both to be perfectly honest. A follow up post is equally as damaging as the initial post. I am sure we can agree on the fact that all posts should be calculated unless everything is on the table.
I disagreed with you, a pointless post like you described is a waste of time imo.
Lol.... disagree with someone's post... because you find that post a waste of time. Ahhh.
What happened to that bug tracker thing? At least people got to see colors for progress. I like colors. But, srsly, it did show that the devs were aware of bugs n such (which clued the community in). Maybe it had issues that I don't know about.. sorta ignorant on the topic.
SebMelbourne, AUJoin Date: 2013-04-01Member: 184576Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, WC 2013 - Silver, Retired Community Developer
Sorry if I worded that badly, I didn't mean your post was a waste of time, I was implying that the whiteboard posts were. Whatever, most of the people discussing these topics in these threads agree, but don't know enough about this stuff to word it correctly.
Sorry if I worded that badly, I didn't mean your post was a waste of time, I was implying that the whiteboard posts were. Whatever, most of the people discussing these topics in these threads agree, but don't know enough about this stuff to word it correctly.
Spooge's post sums up my feels in reaction to hughs post.
I originally made the 27 day speculation thread for fun. I actually did not expect anything out of it...
But after 27 days reared around and we still had heard nothing... it made me wonder.
What is the point of keeping the tight nit community in the dark? Why are there no more monthly blog posts about development at UWE? Generating hype at this point in the product cycle seems confusing... and out of place within the context of what type of game this is (an extremely challenging RTS/FPS hybrid, not like spit easy titanfall or call of duty). It is not a game you pick up easily after buying it on a whim... perhaps that is what combat may be though...
The question is, do people want UWE to continue making this kind of silly post, effectively 'putting our foot in it,' or is the upset and frustration felt by community members who believe the information revealed to be in some way substantially indicative of actual plans simply too high? Should the camera be kept on a tighter leash? This is a pertinent question as the Subnautica team debates the value of opening up Subnautica task tracking system (on Trello) to the public (like Rust) - If we did that, people would constantly being seeing shifting dates, priorities, failures, successes... Perhaps in the context of lots of non-indicative information, individual pieces such as the whiteboard would cause less upset?
I have to disagree whole heartedly with what you are implying here hugh. The idea that you are entertaining a less open development for SN seems so wrong considering how the community was integral to NS2s development and success. Heck... we stopped the taser. Remember that?
I am positive that if you polled a variety of community members they would say they are frustrated with the lack of direct communication. The reason why NS2 fascinated me so much was how community driven it was. Taking that aspect away from SNs development seems... antithetical to what made UWE so interesting beyond the fact that your programmers and artists are all very talented.
In all fairness us Ns2 players are obviously not the target audience of SN.
The games are totally not alike and therefore there's no real need to involve this community.
My feedback to SN would be:
-make it multiplayer with action and strategy!
-make one side the 'fish' and the other the 'fishermen'.
-get a dude in some command-sub or structure to give orders to his team!
-let the 'fish' save up coral-points so they can evolve to BIGGER BADDER fish.
etc.
In all fairness us Ns2 players are obviously not the target audience of SN.
The games are totally not alike and therefore there's no real need to involve this community.
My feedback to SN would be:
-make it multiplayer with action and strategy!
-make one side the 'fish' and the other the 'fishermen'.
-get a dude in some command-sub or structure to give orders to his team!
-let the 'fish' save up coral-points so they can evolve to BIGGER BADDER fish.
etc.
Don't worry, a mod like this for SN will be released eventually.
In all fairness us Ns2 players are obviously not the target audience of SN.
The games are totally not alike and therefore there's no real need to involve this community.
My feedback to SN would be:
-make it multiplayer with action and strategy!
-make one side the 'fish' and the other the 'fishermen'.
-get a dude in some command-sub or structure to give orders to his team!
-let the 'fish' save up coral-points so they can evolve to BIGGER BADDER fish.
etc.
Don't worry, a mod like this for SN will be released eventually.
In all fairness us Ns2 players are obviously not the target audience of SN.
The games are totally not alike and therefore there's no real need to involve this community.
My feedback to SN would be:
-make it multiplayer with action and strategy!
-make one side the 'fish' and the other the 'fishermen'.
-get a dude in some command-sub or structure to give orders to his team!
-let the 'fish' save up coral-points so they can evolve to BIGGER BADDER fish.
etc.
Don't worry, a mod like this for SN will be released eventually.
In all fairness us Ns2 players are obviously not the target audience of SN.
The games are totally not alike and therefore there's no real need to involve this community.
My feedback to SN would be:
-make it multiplayer with action and strategy!
-make one side the 'fish' and the other the 'fishermen'.
-get a dude in some command-sub or structure to give orders to his team!
-let the 'fish' save up coral-points so they can evolve to BIGGER BADDER fish.
etc.
I would buy it, depending on how cool cory can make the fish look.
In all fairness us Ns2 players are obviously not the target audience of SN.
The games are totally not alike and therefore there's no real need to involve this community.
My feedback to SN would be:
-make it multiplayer with action and strategy!
-make one side the 'fish' and the other the 'fishermen'.
-get a dude in some command-sub or structure to give orders to his team!
-let the 'fish' save up coral-points so they can evolve to BIGGER BADDER fish.
etc.
Great white onos... pufferfish gorge... stingray lerk... uhhh little dolphin skulks? And... uhh.. fade... hmm. Giant, saltwater, otters.
Comments
Heh... HATS
I know some of it
but these lips shall never tell
In this particular case, it appears many members of the NS2 community assumed that a pixelated whiteboard was an announcement, when in reality it was a cheeky phone photo of a whiteboard that is scrawled on every day in the office, with dates and milestones constantly being wiped off, pushed out, pulled in, or created. That's certainly a valid way of looking at the situation - One might reasonably assume UWE is trying to 'build hype' or achieve some other public relations objective, when in reality there was no objective other than to just show one of the more banal and quirky elements of the office (the whiteboard!). All of about 10 seconds of thought went into the entire post.
The question is, do people want UWE to continue making this kind of silly post, effectively 'putting our foot in it,' or is the upset and frustration felt by community members who believe the information revealed to be in some way substantially indicative of actual plans simply too high? Should the camera be kept on a tighter leash? This is a pertinent question as the Subnautica team debates the value of opening up Subnautica task tracking system (on Trello) to the public (like Rust) - If we did that, people would constantly being seeing shifting dates, priorities, failures, successes... Perhaps in the context of lots of non-indicative information, individual pieces such as the whiteboard would cause less upset?
In any case, it's very exciting to be getting so close to release of new Natural Selection 2 update. Whatever your feelings about whiteboards, this update is sure to be a good one
The thing (I think) people feel upset about is not so much the teasing, but the missed time it was "supposed to have been" released.
So, teasing blurry images or single words of bespoke whiteboard and such can be fun, so long as everyone knows that the date has not yet been set.
That being said, if you get corned and have to set an ETA, use the enginerring principle set forth by Scotty, chief engineer of the Enterprise:
I was never upset when the patch wasn't released "on time". I was here for the beta, and learned enough about the game development process from UWE to know that if you set a date in stone, you've effectively just made yourself a great grave marker for the community since it will either be rushed (in which case people rage) or late (in which case people rage)
I'm aware of this, and I think some people overestimate the "hype" here (for me, there is none). It's just that the first thread disappeared under dubious circumstances, and the date was missed for a month. The rest was everyday forum life happening
In my opinion, you either should leak more, less or different information.
More:
"They're picking up the wrong signals from our twitter tease. Better release another photo to act against that." (E.g. a sad Hugh standing next to a whiteboard announcing the first of *June*, with May crossed out.)
Different:
"We got build 265 in the work, but we're not telling when we'll release it yet. It may or may not feature..." (You can take different approaches here, varying with the amount of information. But don't include dates that are not set in stone
Less:
"..." (Don't tell anything until it's released. You *will* have the element of surprise, but the community will probably hate you at first.)
I think the main thing is consistency. Figure out a strategy and stick to it, because in the past it has just felt like a mash of a whole different strategies and I don't think it works very well. If you want to do it the way the Rust team does it, that's great, everything is on the table. No obscurity, no smoke and mirrors, everything is available for the public to look at and there are no expectations falsely generated from digesting that information.
However, watch the Valve marketing/community/information video. They really do a fantastic job at controlling what they release, that looks professional, but still allows for rampant speculation because they don't promise anything.. In fact, as said in these video hype and speculation can be rewarding for a developer as it can give them feedback and also new ideas as to what people want in future updates.
I don't think anyone is trying to tell you guys how to run the show, but in my opinion, yes it's great to be able to release information on what you guys are doing, but think about it first. The comment 'it literally took ten seconds of thought' is a bit worrying for me there, because that single image caused a major backlash, even if it wasn't meant to be a concrete piece of information.
So, tl;dr : Choose one way or the other, keep information contained until released (make those NDA's worth it) or be upfront without making false promises and being extremely careful with what you put out to the public.
[just a shot in the blue, I don't follow twitter posts and I don't even know if you wrote sth together with the picture. enlight me community memory!]
something i noticed quite often (not only regarding ns2) is that whenever there is lack of information, people will automagically fill in the gaps by coming up with wild speculations. this often leads to conspiracy theories and so on.
so regarding ns2/subnautica i'm all in favor of communicating more infos to the community. if there are certain aspects that need to be kept secret for some reason (e.g. free2play if that's true), then go ahead and keep them secret. just give the community something to look forward to. this will:
1. have speculations which are actually based on facts (less disappointment when not met, because the core-promise (e.g. feature xy) will still be fullfilled)
2. distract us from looking into / speculating about the stuff that is supposed to remain confidential
3. reducing desperate/wild speculations about official "silly post" content (as you pointed out for subnautica; i belive this could also apply to ns2)
4. take away the uneasy feeling of having basically no idea what to expect in the upcoming patch
5. as explained by that tf2 developer (video in an earlier post), it gives feedback to developers prior to release
as for the task tracking system, i think that might work out as well. with frequent changes being communicated, people will get used to it and not be too upset e.g. when a date changes because they are prepared for it.
one more thing: i know it's tricky to set release dates. but i'd appreciate something vague even early on e.g. "several weeks" to prevent the minor disappointed on a daily basis when the patch is not done yet
instead, one could then wait for "within a few days" to get pumped up.
this can also help with planning, especially for people administrating servers and developing mods.
That said, if our bodies are ready will our wallets be ready?
If you're seriously pondering if an adjustment needs to be made in how UWE interfaces with its community, your problems are larger than you think.
My first recommendation is to ask yourselves what you expect to gain from the historic method of trickling out information to generate hype and then pulling the string for a big "kaboom" unveiling. If your ultimate goal is simply to generate hype, ask yourselves what that hype actually provides. Do you intend to draw in new players with it? Are you trying to keep the existing community excited? From where I sit, neither of those things are happening.
Next, and I think this probably pertains more to SN, decide if you have a clear roadmap for where you want the game to go. Assuming you have one, release it to the public. It doesn't have to be perfectly detailed and it doesn't need a timeline. A visual roadmap will reassure the community that you have a plan and that you aren't just hanging out pondering the next hipster fad.
Having a public roadmap will also keep the community focused. When you want to ask the community for input on a given scenario you can expect answers that are more valuable because they'll have a better understanding of the context and impact. Of course, it doesn't mean the roadmap can't change, but you'd need to make those changes public as well.
In the same spirit, you need to stop pretending to have open development and actually be open about it. What's been going on instead is a hierarchy has been forming: you have UWE staff developers, then there's a small circle of community members who are "in the know", and then you have the masses. This system is, unintentionally I'm sure, creating an adverse relationship. Again, whatever benefits you think you're getting from the Supar Secrat updates are being squashed by the growing disdain.
You guys have some seriously good product here. You don't need gimmicks to get people excited. Just let everybody know what's going on, what you expect to be doing in the future, and then let the actual content provide the good time feelings throughout the community.
Sorry this is a bit run-on but I've been stepping back quite a bit and all I see is a downward spiral. It's depressing.
I agree with you 100% Spooge.
Lol.... disagree with someone's post... because you find that post a waste of time. Ahhh.
What happened to that bug tracker thing? At least people got to see colors for progress. I like colors. But, srsly, it did show that the devs were aware of bugs n such (which clued the community in). Maybe it had issues that I don't know about.. sorta ignorant on the topic.
Ah I see. Agreed on that second bit.
I originally made the 27 day speculation thread for fun. I actually did not expect anything out of it...
But after 27 days reared around and we still had heard nothing... it made me wonder.
What is the point of keeping the tight nit community in the dark? Why are there no more monthly blog posts about development at UWE? Generating hype at this point in the product cycle seems confusing... and out of place within the context of what type of game this is (an extremely challenging RTS/FPS hybrid, not like spit easy titanfall or call of duty). It is not a game you pick up easily after buying it on a whim... perhaps that is what combat may be though...
I have to disagree whole heartedly with what you are implying here hugh. The idea that you are entertaining a less open development for SN seems so wrong considering how the community was integral to NS2s development and success. Heck... we stopped the taser. Remember that?
I am positive that if you polled a variety of community members they would say they are frustrated with the lack of direct communication. The reason why NS2 fascinated me so much was how community driven it was. Taking that aspect away from SNs development seems... antithetical to what made UWE so interesting beyond the fact that your programmers and artists are all very talented.
The games are totally not alike and therefore there's no real need to involve this community.
My feedback to SN would be:
-make it multiplayer with action and strategy!
-make one side the 'fish' and the other the 'fishermen'.
-get a dude in some command-sub or structure to give orders to his team!
-let the 'fish' save up coral-points so they can evolve to BIGGER BADDER fish.
etc.
Don't worry, a mod like this for SN will be released eventually.
Nautical Sublection
Brain... explosion. Genius.
I would buy it, depending on how cool cory can make the fish look.
Great white onos... pufferfish gorge... stingray lerk... uhhh little dolphin skulks? And... uhh.. fade... hmm. Giant, saltwater, otters.