Hello folks. Been resting PP for a few months - amazed to see this thread I started back in August is still running. I’ve read about the latest update, but I’m not sure I’m really feeling this game anymore - my will to persevere with it might have dried up.
Are we any further along with balance issues?
Honestly, if you think you need a will to persevere, maybe u should wait more.
I finished the game in veteran in the last version, and I loved it. But i can also see that is certainly not for all, and most of the complains about difficulty and pace have a grain of true behind them. For what I have read, the game is going in the right direction.
Personally after 130 hours of gameplay to finish my first run in vet, I will wait for the new DLC to take it again. But im eager to do it, as I really loved the experience.
If you are unsure right now, just wait, till you feel like it, im sure the new DLC will come out soon enough, and will bring a lot to the table. Maybe something that will make you again excited to try it.
I think I can safely say that the Community Council spend most of their time telling the devs in extreme detail everything they think is wrong with the game - though we do it from a position of great love for the game.
We want it to improve, we want to smooth out the balance issues, most of us actually want Legendary & Heroic Difficulty to be harder and all the stupid skill exploits to go away, because as it stands the game becomes a cakewalk in its latter stages unless you aggressively self-limit the way you play.
But a lot of our discussion is also about how the game needs to be easier and more intuitively understandable to new players and those who want to play on Easy or Veteran.
But anyone who expects us to be able to force or instruct the devs to go in a particular direction has no idea of how the CC works or is supposed to work. We are only a consultant body, telling the devs what we think and reporting back trends that we spot in the discussions on these forums.
Hell, if it worked the way that NoStas seems to think it should, we’d have Second Wave Options, all the Terminator Builds would have been eradicated and Easy would be really easy by now; because that’s what I’ve been incessantly calling for over at least the past 2 years.
There is you, there is me, there are likes under your post. Just no Live Feedback from Devs. There is a plan, 1 - try to wait for an answer in this post (which is doubtful), 2 - make a topic with key questions (possibly on reddit) and put them on the ticket to Canny. I don’t think this will change much, but it should Explain a lot.
There are two problems, the first is that Devs is uncommunicative, and the second is that the PP Community cannot get together.
Maybe it is a resource problem, but to tell what they aiming for, what vision they have would help a lot.
It is not a surprise if you merge wizard builds with realistic or simulation mechanics. I don’t know if the majority like this combination, but I like only the second part.
First, I want to say that I think SG could and should do a better job on this front.
However, it’s also not so easy…
It does take up resources, because the people doing the communication and the people working on the game are not the same; in other words, the devs need to take time off what they are doing to explain what it is they are doing to the people who will then communicate it to the players
communicating with players is not easy because passions rise quite fast and these efforts can easily backfire; I think most of us who have been here for a while have fond memories of UV and appreciated his involvement and frankness, but even so it’s not like his efforts were always universally appreciated by the community
giving a vision or a roadmap is a recipe for disappointment and charges of unfulfilled promises. PP is being developed in an iterative manner; bugs are fixed, new content added and some content changed all the time. Something works, something doesn’t. A feature or a way the devs want the game to play a year from now might be scrapped in 6 months for a variety of reasons (players don’t want it, unexpected difficulties, devs stop liking it)
As I said, I do think that SG can do a better job at communicating with the community.
On the other hand, having spent a few weeks on the Steam forums myself I have to say I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to engage with that crowd 
To be objective, I do not have the life and business experience of a skilled person. But the weekly meeting / report was what was effective. Analyze this in a month and filter it through the PR department, and then approve it at the next meeting / report.
Imo, there are two main things here, Inbound and Outbound. And IMO it can be different people.
Incoming communication - note-taking, grouping and analysis.
Outgoing communication - Regularly share your plans, and respond to problematic and main things from the Incoming communication list.
Plans always change, and the one who wants to leave will leave. The main thing here is to explain everything well, for those who want to stay. The situation with the “explanations” for the exclusivity of the EGS is criminal. This should have been done in good time, frankly, with respect for yourself and those who believed you.
Imo, at least 50% of the negative is legitimate, as a result of the SG’s mistakes. And another 30% of the negativity is legitimate, as a result of avoiding / not correcting these and other mistakes of the SG. Of course, you can close the studio and go to earn manual labor. 
Procedures, meeting, reports, etc. is necessary for running a business, but we are players (consumers), not managers, employees or investors. Would it be a good marketing decision to share this kind of info (edited, of course) with consumers? I don’t know, I can see reasons for and against it, but what I’m certain of is that as a player I’m not entitled to this sort of thing.
That sounds great in theory, but in practice… Every piece of information provided by the devs is immediately subject to heated discussions, with a part of the players necessarily feeling neglected or left out, their wishes unanswered all of this before they had a chance to see the idea implemented.
Or they can choose to do the game they want and hope that players will like it.
Look, as I said, I do think that SG could do a better job at communicating with their playerbase, and I hope that they will do something this year like they did last year with the Snapshot “suggestions” on Canny.
But you can’t have your cake and eat it too: you can’t say “devs, stop worrying about what half of your playerbase wants, just do a great game… Which it would be if only you would follow the directives of a miniscule, but vocal group of self-appointed representatives of a minor subset of all players (who being all of 3 still can’t agree among themselves on what they actually want)”
Well said, but in the end it all depends on success. The player doesn’t care about the internal processes. What counts is “fun” and “challenge”. If both are not right, the game will not be successful. It’s as simple as that. Whether CC are useful or devs listen to players will show where the journey goes. I don’t see any significant improvement so far. Let’s hope for the best. That goes for both sides.
You forgot to add that this is your personal point of view. And that it might not be right for others.
In practice, lies will be made public… and Respect will be reinforced by the Truth. (Sounds pompous, but short and clear.)
Your proof? Otherwise, it was discussed.
Why then do you write here on the forum? Why vote for Canny? Let everything resolve itself. (And Devs will strangle the PP and open the countdown for PP2)
There is a difference between doing nothing and doing one-way communication (giving feedback), while in both cases you “hope for the best” from the devs’ side, one of them has a significantly higher chance (more than zero) to influence things. You might still not get what you want, but at least you tried (and doing that in a respectful, constructive tone helps that, being rude to the people who you just gave your ideas to is less effective).
If in general it is written sharply, then part of this is “bad translation”, but another more Important part is below
From your point of view:
So it is now:
CC - Feedback + Free testing + Suggestions for changes
Community - Feedback + Free Testing via F10 + Suggestions for Change via Canny
(imo, Modding = + 30%, instead of negative)
In response, can the Community count on Live Feedback from Devs?
- Why was Modding promised and ignored now?
- Why are there no Custom Game Options?
Because priorities change all the damn time in software development, and working on new features should be after the current ones are without painful bugs and design errors, as long as they are worked on by the same people.
If your “more 0% effective” means “more than 0%”, then yes, because it has a chance of devs compiling feedback from forums even without you actually knowing about that. But giving feedback doesn’t mean they will act upon it, even if they personally agree with it, the “bigger design/priority goals” can overwrite lots of “little” things.
If the “Community” bought the game as a promise, then they should trust the devs, that’s the reason they bought the game for (mostly fig and pre-launch buyers). You can ofc be disappointed with what they delivered, but you gambled on a promise with the knowledge that it can fail.
If the “community” bought the game as launched, they decided it was worth their money in that state at that time, so every improvement is a boon. Can they hope for an improved game? Of course, that’s why giving your feedback is important, so that the devs know about your problems, which might not be what “most others” have. Yours might still not get “fixed/made better”, but as it is normal on the internet, you can find every possible direction as “recommended one” for any one problem, and resources are finite, they can’t just do everything.
But this is wildly off-topic, again…
Leaving the “Template” here is really no respect. There is too much difference between the abstract “X” and the reasons for ignoring Modding. And the lack of explanations for do Not introduce Custom Game Options. If you don’t give a damn about it (by inserting a formulaic excuse), it’s Not so for many others.
To discuss what is below from your post, I lost the desire.
add
Be consistent, buy a couple of starships in Star Citizen. What if this is your chance? 
Resources are limited and AFAIK either you build from the ground up to support modding, or later it’s difficult to implement. Also, and this especially goes for this
While the game is nowhere approaching a finished state this is a wasted effort.
Edit: doesn’t mean that there might not be modding support and custom options at some point. I’m pretty sure that custom (“second wave”) options will happen eventually, and I hope that so will modding support.
I wrote this to you around a month ago, probably you forgot:
Custom Game Options are the same as any other feature, they need design, development, testing, all the usual stuff, and will not fix buggy gameplay, just make it a differently buggy one. That’s why first they should work on the painful bugs, so that they can then make new stuff.
JulianGollop Lead Designer 3 years ago
It was at the Base. (And every time this promise was confirmed.)
This is your Personal (Comfort) point of view.
Parodying VOLAND,
@VOLAND , forcing me to dig out antiquities, you make the question even hotter. You obviously don’t want to hear the answers. And you put future “Agreements” in an immoral position. I won’t ask why.
@Potkeny, maybe you know well how it was there and here. But until the Devs themselves have explained their position / problems and their way forward, this is just speculation.