Not at all. We still listen to the general feedback.
Again, this is incorrect. It’s not about how much money someone puts in. But this is also the issue with open/public beta. You get a lot of feedback from people who aren’t even all that bothered about the game. Feedback from people who play for an hour and without fully understanding the game or all of its systems, start demanding that 80% of the game is changed.
The idea for the Community Council is to get some feedback from players with significant playtime experience.
And this is exactly why we’re specifically asking for people who can and are willing to dedicate the game. We don’t want to open this up to people who “might” play the game for 20 minutes a week.
Not exactly. You could be getting feedback from someone who has played the game for hundreds of hours and has a good understanding of the game and its mechanics, or you could be getting feedback from someone who played for half an hour and is asking for something to be changed because it doesn’t work how they expect it to. Not all feedback carries equal weight.
You wouldn’t pay attention to a review of feedback on a 2 hour movie from someone who only watched the first 10 minutes.
Being lazy and inattentive does not mean being bad. Personally, I could not be a Backer on Fig, and those who helped then were Cool Fans .
My emphasis was on the lack of a request from the Devs, to leave full feedback, not just a bug report.
Which is their prerogative, they’ve still made a purchase of your game, and if their response is only based on their first impression then that is still feedback on how your first hour of the game has affected them. If they’re not bothered about your game beyond that it’s because the game hasn’t hooked them within that first hour, and you still gain valuable feedback on that basis.
The flipside of that is players who have made multiple play-throughs of the game, put in hundreds upon hundreds of hours and are suggesting changes to the game which will enhance their playing experience of the game from a position of understanding many of the game’s finer nuances.
If your 1 hour players who give up after an hour sit at the beginning of your normal curve of gamers, then your hardcore players sit at the opposite end.
I would if that review said ‘the acting was so bad in the first 10 minutes that this movie wasn’t worth watching beyond that point’ - And more to the point other people would pay attention to that review also.
There’s three YouTubers who cover gaming that I tend to keep an eye on to discover new games and/or gain a fair second opinion on games that I’m considering purchasing. One of those three is SplatterCat whose modus operandi is to only play the first 30 mins or so of Indie games, he covered Phoenix Point here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yakgnhD0D8Y and took in nearly sixty thousand views.
Again, as I stated previously, all feedback is still considered.
This very thread is a great example of why not all feedback is useful.
The Community Council hasn’t yet begun. No one has yet been invited, no one has been given the full details of how it’s going to work, yet people are already demanding changes to it based on their own assumptions.
True, it may not work the way we want to it, and if it doesn’t, we will change it. But this is something that has been done to great effect on many other development projects. We’re not working in a vacuum. We’re networked with many other developers both on the dev side and community side, and we share our experiences and results using tools like this.
I’m not demanding any change, at the end of the day what you do is up to you guys. But as this is a public forum I am entitled to have and share an opinion, I think you’re going down a bad route here, and as I care myself about the games that you produce it’s something I felt that I wanted to highlight, if you don’t want to view that opinion as useful then that’s your prerogative.
Others appear to think that a community council is a good move, it’s equally their right to have that viewpoint, though one thing that I would ask you to consider is; how many of those who think that a community council is a good idea are those self same people that have applied to be on it?
Well, I applied and I have no idea if it’ll end up being a good implementation or not. Best way to avoid it being a shitshow is to actively participate in stopping it becoming said spectacle de merde for oneself. I agree with Mike, you should apply
Just have to chuckle, this thread indicates exactly why Snapshot is doing what they are doing, to eliminate a lot of the chaff to get to the heart. Almost time for a mass dose of chill pill folks. The proof will be in the pudding, and we all know what too many cooks can produce.
Streams and Letspleys. Should you ignore the opinion of the person who watched the letsplay and share your opinion before playing yourself?
Some errors and inconsistencies are better seen from the side, it all depends on the argument. An interesting and smart streamer + eccentric chat, can sometimes duplicate a Brainstorm.
Also, a person can be active in social networks and give a generalized opinion and ideas, again it all depends on the argumentation.
I’m not condemning it, and I sincerely hope that you get what you want. However my nature, as I’d suspect with many on this forum is to strategize, we’re a group of individuals who look not just one, but many steps ahead. So whilst I do hope that this council works for you in giving you the feedback that you’re looking for, I also hold concerns about the other effects that it will have.
I am absolutely sure that changes are needed immediately and that the Devs decided to be active and take on more responsibility, inspires hope for a Happy End.
When you watch at a average outcome then yes. But most successful were monarchies with good council of advisors when there were right people in right places.
Are you sure about that? What if the council will have people with the same arguments like most of the community?
Yes. The same people. All customers can’t be put in Research & Development division of the company. It is decision of the company how they want community to influence their products. I think ‘voice of people’ is not the best choice in this kind of development.
Interesting. They did some?
And how do you know it will be hardcore nerds?
Regarding this point. I suppose it is better for the product that experienced people will fix that need to be fixed than some people who just came by. Those casual people could pay even 1 million for their copy of the game, but still would not be interested in the project to follow it in longer run, so should they have impact more than those dedicated players?
If some players can’t handle more than 1 hour of gameplay I suppose they should refund and don’t come back to that title. Just like people who watch 10 minutes of the movie. Should they really have impact on the title? Or is it just not for them but for some other audience?
Not is Snapshot does it right. Let’s say they pick 6 Advocates. They’ll all have expressed their opinions many times on these forums, and while those opinions will be very wide-ranging, for the sake of this argument, we’ll break them down into their most simplistic stances:
1 thinks Squad Skills are too OP
1 things that Panda numbers etc should be nerfed - and that ‘acid is insane!’
1 thinks the game is just about right
1 thinks that there isn’t enough variety in weapons or armour within the game
1 thinks the Pandas aren’t powerful or varied enough to provide a challenge
1 thinks that the open Skills sandbox is the best thing in the game and shouldn’t be touched.
Even in just those 6 over-simplified caricatures, Snapshot has pretty much covered most of the bases that get touched upon in many more than one way, shape or form on these forums. And I’d say about 80-90% of the silent majority will have at least one articulate advocate for their unspoken views in just those 6 voices.
As I say, it works if Snapshot deliberately picks people who between them give voice to all sides of the spectrum, not just one narrow view of the way the game should evolve.
From what I’ve seen, they’re a true representation of the vast gulf in opinion of any given group. And I don’t think that’s very helpful for what Snapshot seem to be wanting to do.
I may be proven wrong, but it seems to me from Canny and replies on this forum, that Snapshot have been listening hard to precisely the beta-group that you’ve been talking about (us forum members). Not only have they been listening, but they’ve been formulating a plan for how to take that whole mess of contradictory and chaotically expressed opinion and turn it into something that has value in terms of the design of the game. But rather than put it out there and get the usual cacophony of reactions to the next ‘patch’ so to speak, they are looking for a small and dedicated group of players who have proven from their participation on these forums that they can look at the game in a fairly objective fashion and say: ‘This works for this type of player, but it doesn’t work in this situation because of X. However, if you do Y, it should achieve the outcome we think you’re looking for.’
In my opinon, that’s a great way of going about things, and I really hope it works. I certainly think it has more chance of giving them valuable and usable feedback than simply throwing it in front of a mass of casual (and not-so-casual) beta-testers and trying to filter out the white noise.
Successful for who? That monarch and their advisors maybe, but not so great for the other 99.9% of the population.
No, it’ll be people trying to give the impression that they speak on behalf of the rest of the community, perhaps even believing it themselves, when in actual fact they don’t, because a small select group can’t possibly represent the diverse view points of a larger population, they can only abstract it.
Yeah, they did a couple. One early on, and one shortly after release.
Oh come on, of course it’s going to be hardcore nerds, whole else is jumping on a request like that within a couple of days of the post being made?
It’s better for those few experienced people.
But it’s actually that greater majority of casual players that need to be given great consideration. If you can find out why people are walking away from your game after an hour and resolve that issue, that’s how you improve a game’s success, not to mention that you reduce the number of refunds that are being processed. The likes of you and me, Snapshot have already got our money, but when a new player walks away in the first hour, or doesn’t make a purchase due to a first impressions video or a poor review score, that’s lost income.
I suspect people overestimate how much sway “Community Council” will hold over the development. If I were to guess, the comparison to guinea pigs might be more apt, then royal advisors.
I struggle to have any strong feelings about this project, aside from hoping it will be of help to them. I can see the benefit of gathering a small, eloquent and passionate group of fans who understand the experimental nature of the builds.
UV, Snapshot Games’ approach to Phoenix Point sounds more and more each day like the approach Hello Games followed/is following with No Man’s Sky. That game has gone through amazing changes, at no cost to the original game purchasers. It sounds like Phoenix Point is heading that way and it sounds good to me.
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