Devs Communication

So, I have been growing tired of this game and ventured out to check some others. I noticed many of these other games update and inform the player base of what is in store for the near future. CoX has been my only game for a while but I started straying...I still....hope to stay here but I digress. These other communities get news about what's coming out ; why don't we? Where are the dev letters or state of game address? It would be nice to see the game head in a fresh direction as it is rather repetitive.

You do know that as a VIP you can read the beta forums and see much of what is coming up, right? And also that there's already quite a bit of information about issue 22, even though it is currently at most in closed beta? Would it be that much better if all of this information were conveyed from developers and not from players? I'm glad they're spending a lot of their time working on the game, myself.

We get them periodically, unfortunately since Paragon is a small studio and the game code is... let's say "special" being handed along to so many different devs in its time, that they really can't promise too many features ahead of time for fear that they won't work as promised or they simply won't come out. Players react very negatively when promises don't come true, and will often harp on the devs repeatedly for missed deadlines even when the deadlines are presented with caveats.

So, as aggravating as it is, they just don't tell us because we string them up worse when they do and bad things happen. We do get fairly frequent updates on what's coming down the line and what's planned and the devs are pretty good about hopping into the forums personally, and we have community leaders like Zwillinger to act as company liaisons and give us the heads up on a lot of stuff. it's there, it's just not as straightforward as it could be oftentimes.

Ya know, you say that the developers don't tell us whats on board next. that is a claim that i find patently false, the don't give dates to things, but given how dates slip and users are not always a forgiving lot, I feel that the general time-frames keep us about as in the know as i was on the other mmos i have played. I would also add that I have played a quite a few mmos(its funny, i hate the genre, but its kinda what pc gaming is increasingly about... when in rome) , and i do see a great deal more direct discussion here between players and developers. Babs and castle werevery good for discussion, David has directly asked me, individually about things i asked for while posting on the weekend, didnt see that in swg, didnt see that in ff XI, nor pso nor any of the many games i have tried (will give props to tumerboy over on the competition online, he does the legacy of babs and such proud). paragon is in the interesting position of being just big enough to actually be able to respond to us, within reason, and small enough to be able to care without having to poll massive numbers of people and moving large, difficult to alter schedules. so as for your first point, I simply do not see it, we get state of the games, we get q&a sessions(which can be limited in info, but sometimes you have to ask the right question to get the right answer.), we get producers letters, and we get the ustreams which often are significantly informative. I know everyone is nuts over glow-stick wow, and maybe they have all this interaction too, but we are still getting it 7 years on, this isnt a 3 month fling, its a marriage.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Zombie man, Mr Knowitall

Everything Zombie said is right as usual...
But the OP has got a point, Im missing dev letters and state of the game...
But thats just because I like to read more about the game, not because I feel I lack information about whats coming.

And I like they save some surprises too.
I hope they are secretly working on Pools and Epic power customization, updates of old iconic heroes costumes and powersets, tons of backparts, etc...

What I miss the most is Noble Savage posts...
I cant even find the All things art: Costume suggestions thread.
And they should close the Sexy Jay thread now he is gone forever

You think City of Heroes has bad developer communication? Seriously?
They WEEKLY have coffee talks, answer questions and actively comment on the forums. We are spoiled as hell.

If you want to see bad developer communication, head over to Warhammer Online. Even our very own Andy Belford left it to rot and die, for CoH.

another note: every game is repetitive...

and...aren't State of the Game Address' a once a year thing?

I know that we were getting a monthly Dev letter/State of the game letter for a portion of last year, but like always, it has stopped. I do have to wonder if they are not focusing too much on the Freedom Friday thing on Facebook, which a number of people who are working during the day, cannot follow, and by the time you get home, it becomes a long mish mash of things to go through.

Lack of communications though? That I would have to disagree with. All you have to do is look at the Dev and Community Digests to see how often they communicate with us.

I don't always like what they do, but these devs "DO" communicate much more than some other communities. If they were acting like EA has been for the past decade, then I think you would have a point.

As a long-time player and a card-carrying curmudgeon I have had plenty of complaints over the years, but communication is typically a positive trait of the developers of City of Heroes.

The only time I can say that communication was really poor was during the dark days when it looked like Cryptic was going to put the game in a dark corner and let it wither in favor of working on new projects (and most especially the theoretical Marvel game that never materialized).

It IS true that we don't have as much direct communication with the developers as we once enjoyed. I can remember making a suggestion to Chris Bruce of one of those items that we players always think of as "as good idea that should be easy to implement". He wrote back and didn't just say "No, that won't work." He took the time to give concrete examples of the inner workings of the game engine to say exactly why it wasn't nearly as "easy" as I had imagined it must be. My appreciation for the dev staff and their job of coding the game increased a great deal after that.

These days, upper management (meaning NCSoft) seems to have mandated more insulation between the players and the devs. Despite that, the Community Relations team is quite active and we still get to interact with Matt (Positron) and many of the other development staff via the video chats and the Facebook question/answer sessions.

Honestly, while I wouldn't quite call Paragon Studios an open book, I would put them miles ahead of most other game studios when it comes to keeping communications open between the studio and the players; despite the fact that their parent company has made some efforts to curtail that communication in the past.

Winterminal, don't lie, you were just looking for an excuse to use that picture.

This is easily the game with the BEST track record for developer feedback and information.