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This is going to be long, so buckle up. But don't worry, I'm not going to be asking for anyone's paycheck totals or a breakdown of the weekly schedule of anyone on the BI Staff. But I do want to address something I've been thinking about a long time, and something that sorely needs to change.
Last week's Status Report highlighted what has been an increasingly growing problem with DayZ's development, and it's the issue of Developer Communication vs. Fan Expectation.
Hindsight is obviously 20/20, and a lot of things could have been done better or differently over the course of Early Access from The Devs, but I've been coming to this subreddit off and on since EA launched, and while I don't claim to speak for the community, I feel like I've been around long enough that I can point to some common areas of communication breakdown, community outrage, and Developer misstep (and success!) regarding both.
This will not discuss how The Devs should develop or fix the game, or what content should or shouldn't be prioritized, but rather, some ways that this information can be better relayed to us, for the benefit of everyone, The Devs included. So, if you're going to chime in asking why helicopters aren't in the game yet, don't bother. Make another thread.
ISSUE 1: ROADMAPS
One of the most common complaints I see regarding The Devs, and what are often viewed as "broken promises" (quoting not to undermine the validity of that frustration, but to paraphrase it) is the issue of Roadmaps. Development Roadmaps, for the community, sound great on paper. It's an estimated list of features, goals, or whatever, that The Dev Team hopes to implement in the future. For the community, the idea is that we get to see what The Dev Team has planned, and ideally, can follow along as features get implemented or not.
Here's the problem: Roadmaps are bad.
This is not to say that, internally, they don't serve a purpose, but for The Community, they ultimately do more harm than good. Why? Because, no matter how much you tell us that "Roadmaps are Goals, Not Promises!", it is not going to matter. They are ultimately going to be viewed as a listed of Fulfilled Promises or Broken Ones, particularly if a lot of those goals are seemingly absent in the 1.0 release.
Roadmaps are a community placebo designed to assure us that content is planned, and coming, but it's also not unreasonable for us to view it as a benchmark for the game's progress, because we need to have an idea of when The Devs feel the game has reached a state of completion. Ultimately, Roadmaps boil down to "telling, and not showing", and at this point, as we are now Post 1.0, that is not enough.
Last week's Status Report, actually felt like a step in the right direction, but it's still ultimately a Roadmap Rather than listing a set of hopeful goals, it addressed most of the community's concerns, and roughly, how The Devs plan to tackle them. But it wasn't perfect. Which brings me to the next issue with communication.
ISSUE 2: We Want Specifics, but Mostly Content
There's sometimes a sense in The Community that if we don't see what The Devs are doing, then they must not be doing anything. Lulls in communication, and limited feedback, coupled with seemingly minimal results in game, often result in sometimes feeling like "nothing has happened." People sometime have a tendency to feel as if their problem is ignored because it does not garner a response on reddit or twitter, which is silly, but it happens. The very nature of DayZ, being a game with permadeath, also makes any bugs that facilitate permadeath, or hinder progress, INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING.
These issues, paired with a very noticeable lack of content, mean that Status Reports have to fulfill a lot to make most people happy, and in all likelihood, they are going to fail to do so as a result. Also, not knowing what to expect each week creates a self-defeating "hype cycle" that usually only spawns more frustration or outrage.
Looking at last week's Status Report, the top issues plaguing the game right now, according to The Devs are Server Performance, Persistence, Server Browser, Animation Issues, Modding, Weapons, Vehicles, Consoles and Communication. Let's ignore Consoles right now, since there's another subreddit for that.
While some players might argue that Persistence should be number one, Server Performance is arguably much worse. The Status Report highlights this multiple times, but not everyone in The Community agrees on that. That doesn't matter, however. The point is, everyone in The Community is going to have a different idea of what is more important and what deserves more focus. Some people might say content is more important, others will focus on bug fixes. In every case however, we want specificity, which really ties into the Communication aspect.
Telling us that there is a plan to tackle Persistence and begin the implementation of Weapons is great! But, which weapons? Giving us some insight into that plan is also great! But, what specifically?
Under Promise, Over Deliver is exactly what we need right now, but illustrating progress is not a promise. It's ok to show us stuff, we crave it! Obviously, we all want new content to enter the game as fast as possible, but we, as A Community, also need to have our expectations tempered and controlled, and satiated, if not met, and consistency in communication is the best way to do that. But what gets us most hopeful that any of this stuff is actually going to happen, is videos, or granular and specific detail.
We waited a long time for the last Status Report, and none of knew what to expect, but I feel safe in betting that the longer the wait, the bigger the hope, and the bigger the need to have our specific needs addressed in the Status Report.
Show us more of the content in progress, regularly. Give us more specific insight into how things like persistence are going to be tackled. The Servers that we can hop into and provide proof of in game problems is great, but we need just a bit more detail on that progress.
We also need consistent (I do not necessarily mean frequent, or daily) but consistent communication channels, which brings me to the biggest red flag of the whole thing. Knowing we are going to get updates every 2 weeks is actually a good thing. This place RIOTS when we don't when to expect an update.
ISSUE 3: Keep the Bi-Weekly Status Reports and Stop Depending On Streamers to Deliver Us News
From the most recent Status Report:
With many internal changes in planning and how we approach update releases overall, we will also need to be rethinking how often and in what forms we're communicating with you. We still have a lot of brainstorming to do, but it's very likely that the frequency of development Status Reports will no longer follow the 2 week period. Instead, we'd like to think of ways how to more actively work with what's happening in the community, engage in the events organised by community server owners, and improve the direct communication across channels.
First, as much as people malign them sometimes, the Bi-Weekly Status Reports can be incredibly helpful, but they sometimes lack clear focus, and that's really what bothers a lot of The Community. I could be wrong, but it sounds like there's going to be a shift to allow community server owners, and possibly streamers, if past actions are indications, to serve as channels for development updates, as well as bringing more news about the game "in-game".
No offense to any of the hardworking streamers out there, but I don't want the news about this game's progress to be delivered piecemeal across multiple channels or events to get a clear access of what I can expect and when. This move, is seemingly misunderstanding "The Community" and where it all takes places. I would wager a good majority of us don't participate in Community Events or watch Live Streams.
We play the game, come to the subreddit or DayZ Forums, and read the Bi-Weekly Status Reports. I would argue that even more players, don't even do that. They simply play the game, and get news from it, or Steam, or more probably, incredibly outdated google searches or wikis.
I suggest the following:
- Keep the Bi-Weekly Status Reports, but break them up into 2 categories, one in the first half of the month, the other in the latter half. A "Content" Status Report, and a "Stability" Status report.
This does two things: it gives The Community (and The Devs!) a clear focus of what kind of content to deliver and expand on within the SR, so that we can see a more granular and detailed focus on what is being worked on and planned, but it also helps control our expectations. Rather than us pinning all of our hopes on "maybe we well get guns in this one!" we will know, each week, what kind of content we can expect to be discussed and shown.
"Content" Status Reports can highlight gifs and videos of in progress material, and touch on any issues with implementing. Previews of in game models, textures, game play mechanics; all the stuff we desperately want to see more of.
"Stability" Status Reports can be a bit more technical, focusing on challenges that occurred each week and with the game in general.
- All relevant news about DayZ and it's progress should also be accessible via an in-game menu.
Pretty self explanatory, but we shouldn't have to depend on platforms like reddit, twitch, or twitter, to server as conduits for essential communication, because many players don't frequent any of them.
- Patch Notes Need to be DETAILED.
No more "let's see what we can find in the Patch Notes!"
No more "fun surprises!" Tell us everything we can expect to find, including details regarding fixes. This game is too large and time consuming, as well as random, for it to be fun to wonder if a much needed piece of content is supposed to be in the game or not, or if it we simply aren't finding it.
Ultimately, our expectations for this game are always going to be high. We are here, because we love it, and we want it to be the best possible game it can be.
The only way to meet (and temper) those expectations is to deliver content, or news about content, regularly, and clearly.
We aren't always reasonable, and we aren't always patient, but I'd like to think we are forgiving. Last year was not The Year of DayZ. Maybe this one will be.
TL;DR
Roadmaps are useless for The Community, Keep the Bi-Weekly Status Reports but break them up into "Content" and "Stability" with a focus on each every two weeks, Show us more videos and gifs of in-progress content. Gives us detailed patch notes, with no surprises about what's in each update.
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