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Avorion updates


Meesmaalt
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We all appriciate the updates for the game, sometimes so much we want to know whats going on each day as u and your team improves the game.

Which leads me to my concern/suggestion -

 

Here or elsewhere - create a place where you inform us about update progression and future stuff more frequently.

Me and many others feel like we could have more communication between community and the Avorion team.

Whether its giving more headroom for modding or just as previously mentioned - talking to us and saying whats going on with the game, where its headed and the updates between. I'm personally visiting ur twitter as much as 10 times a day when i have free time to see any new posts about updates so having them more frequent wont be unseen by all ;)

 

Nobody in their clear mind here wants the game to not get big. I personally hated space games but when i played it for 1 hour after my friend bought it for me randomly i was automatically addicted. So much that i played like 150 hours in 2 weeks including 20 hours of afk'ing and i cant stop playing it.

The base of the game is good but like most stuff - can be improved quite abit. I've heard u say somewhere that you have been looking for more developers but they are not easy to find as it would require for them to live in germany and work form there.

This could maybe be fixed by making the game open source or something else so that the mods which are made by community would be included in the main game. How it should all work out - i dont know but ive seen very good and in depth mods from people that could very well be well suited for all people.

 

 

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  • Boxelware Team

Okay, so first off: It's now 11:52 pm local time when I'm starting typing this. I'm not at the office, I'm at home, and I should be in bed. I saw this on twitter in a mention to me and I'm replying at this late time because this kind of topic bugs me. A lot. I will now give you some insights, and I'm hoping to be able to link to this topic whenever this issue pops up again.

 

So first off:

I've tried doing bi-weekly, (everything lower is just insane), or at least fairly regular updates, in the past. It didn't work out. For a multitude of reasons. And I've stated this a lot of times in the past already, and also at conventions while just talking to people. There is a very, very harsh reality about this.

 

Reason #1: So the first reason why we (or I) are not doing regular updates on what we're working on RIGHT NOW is simply: A lot of this stuff is experimental and/or may take way longer to implement than we originally thought. Also, plans shift. New ideas come around, priorities change. We're getting people's hopes up, and in the end the feature might not even be in the game. Or might get delayed. Or we find another option. Or something else gets priority because we realize that people actually want something else. Or we realize that the feature would break the game. And so on. But then we got people's hopes up, and disappointment ensues. Sometimes we're simply working on entirely different things, in order to code as efficient as possible we have to be able to work without interfering with one another, meaning that sometimes we're working on 3 different features that will be released in 3 different updates. And don't underestimate the amount of time bugfixing can take. Sometimes it's taken me up to 3 days to fix ONE crash.

 

Reason #2: Large amounts of people, I'd say even about 90% of the community, of the people playing this game don't realize these updates exist or simply don't care. We can see the amounts of views these kinds of updates get. It's quite the small amount compared to how many people play each day. (If you can prove me wrong about this one, I'd gladly see it, because this is one of the main reasons we're not doing this).

 

Reason #3: Whatever we say about the game's development, has to be correct. People have taken us by our word so many times in the past and called us out on announcements. When we cancel something we previously announced, we can't expect everybody to always follow as closely as you, dear reader, might do. So whenever we announce something, we have to make sure we want it, and that it will be in the game. Because if it isn't, there will be people saying "but back then [link] you said that you'd do this!".

 

Reason #4: Typing these updates take time. For the reasons stated above, these kinds of updates always take us a lot of time to type, even more so when we translate them into different languages. What I say has to be what I mean, and it has to be correct. It takes time to make screenshots that don't look shitty and that show everything we want to show. As a small feature, I will tell you at the end of the post what time it is when I'm done typing. Keep in mind that these are things that I've been thinking of a lot in the past, so luckily I can just type it out.

 

Reason #5: Not really a reason not to post updates, but something people might not understand: It's not as easy as "just hire more people". As you stated above, they have to be present at the office. I want to get to know them. I have to talk to them.  I have to trust them. I have to pay them. What do I do if it doesn't work out? It's not really morally okay to just lay them off, because lol, we hired too many and ran out of money. Especially if they moved here just for the job; once you hire people you have a certain responsibility towards them, and everyone who thinks otherwise is simply a shitty employer.

Those new people, once I found them, hired them, have to learn to find their way inside the project, this requires documentation, lots of it, and talking to people. Which takes time. Doubling the amount of people who work on something will not simply half its development time, that's just not how it works.

 

And then there's the litte things, like we're getting a surprising amount of negativity from some people who (as stated above) got their hopes up, or didn't get that one feature that they wanted. Or people calling us lazy for not adding the feature they wanted. Or calling us lazy because we don't work on the game 80 hours a week. Or people don't realize that a feature won't be in the game as mentioned in a dev update and negativity ensues. And it's easy to say "those people don't matter, don't listen to them!". But in the end, they're part of the community, and yes, in the end, they also do matter. But getting this kind of negativity regularly IS discouraging. It won't make us stop developing the game, and sometimes a reality check is important. But nevertheless, it is discouraging, and we want to stay motivated, because otherwise the game will cease to exist.

 

As a side note: I'm sorry, but making this game open-source is really, really not an option. The game doesn't contain micro-transactions and it doesn't require a fee to play. I'm a little surprised I even have to say this.

 

I want you to know that I, personally, have been working on Avorion for six years now. It's been part-time & hobby style the first 4 years, and I've been just messing around because it was a hobby. Back in the day it was never being developed on a professional level, like now. It's dev-speed has never been higher than today. But even if we don't post regular updates, you should know that we ARE working on the game, and that we do care about the game! Just like you, I don't want this to be another dead Early Access game, and it won't be, I promise to you with all my heart. But I'm also asking you to please give us some space, because we're just people, too. I'm a real person typing this, and I'm also reading nearly everything you send me. But I just don't have the time to answer, and I hope you understand.

 

I'm sorry if this comes across as a somewhat negative post, but I'm tired and there are some harsh realities (that I also had to learn) in game development.

 

It's now 1:02 am, posting this took over an hour, I'm tired and I want to go to bed.

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Okay, so first off: It's now 11:52 pm local time when I'm starting typing this. I'm not at the office, I'm at home, and I should be in bed. I saw this on twitter in a mention to me and I'm replying at this late time because this kind of topic bugs me. A lot. I will now give you some insights, and I'm hoping to be able to link to this topic whenever this issue pops up again.

 

It's now 1:02 am, posting this took over an hour, I'm tired and I want to go to bed.

 

Wow, you explained it well. Honestly after reading what u wrote and thinking about it - it all comes down to our lack of knowledge of how difficult game development is (being annoying and stupid too of course).

Atleast try not to get discouraged about whinybutts like me that don't understand how it all works :)

All i meant was that modders are pretty motivated to improve the game and somehow including them at reasonable level in the process would be cool imo :)

Thanks for explaining, all the best.

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So basically more and more excuses to keep going the way you are going..

 

The community has been declining hard, this forum DIED!

Not because of lack of interest from the players, but from a lack of involvement from the dev team.

Same thing happened to the semi-official Discord because you guys didn't have the guts to claim it and be there for the community.

There used to be more than a thousand players with more than dozens of players actually talking.

During the first whole year our own server Discord was 3x smaller than the Avorion Discord, now we are 6x the size with 3200 members.

That says enough about what happens when you involve your community just a little bit.

When have we seen a survey regarding our opinions ? NEVER. How many times have we seen now that you changed something about the game based upon what you heard a BLOODY convention? Cmon Koon, get your shit together!

 

Two community managers, who do what exactly?

Post some twitter and facebook posts whenever they feel like it?

 

This game has made 100-200k sales and what do we see in return? The same mistakes being made over and over again and no real structural changes to make up for it.

How in the hell are you planning on releasing this game in just a few months when 60% of the game needs more attention?

 

Since launch every feature has been rushed due to time limits, and every time the feature was half baked and promises made by the devs are not kept regarding update times and configurability of the content. Why the hell do you announce an update in a day or two while it takes more than 2 full weeks without any notice?

 

This goes on an on and the more you ignore the real community the harder it will drive away all the new players you so desperately get from slaving away at all those conventions. If you guys really do have so little time, then why waste it on prioritizing conventions over development and community interaction? You wouldn't have to waste your time on writing up excuses about not being able to work on the game due to being or working towards a convention.

 

If it really takes so much time to get everything done, why not open up most of the engine to the API so that the modding community can do that for you?

Look at all the input and fixes by the modders, they do so much more that you guys appearently can't make up for it with the lack of attention to detail due to the self-inflicted high workload that again, can't possibly be achieved due to the time constraints and choices regarding priority.

 

Point the finger at us all you want but in the end YOU are the one that has full responsibility over the actions of yourself and your company and those actions have consequences.

The community is mere the sounding board, not the ignorant masses you approach at conventions.

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After reading the messages, I also want to express myself.

Developers, we see that you are trying very hard for us, you are making a good game, but still in the game many aspects remain unfinished. And the commentator above says quite real things. I would be very sorry if this project will suffer the fate of other early approaches. And I beg you, listen to the opinion of the community, and communicate more with it. Of course, this sounds a little selfish, but we all see that things are not going very smoothly, and with that something needs to be done.

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Two community managers, who do what exactly?

Post some twitter and facebook posts whenever they feel like it?

There are two community managers ?

Last seven days there wasn't a single update from them in this forum :-X. Sorry to side with Devious on this one.

 

Maybe they're spending too much time moderating. There may be a need for one or two actual scheduled posting hours - the managers could relay each other too. Screenshots and other things are not needed, just having a "oh, we're still alive and doing this, and here's a random anecdote" kind-of-heartbeat, at least once or twice a week.

It's the little things and updates - Web 2.0/social networking rhythm.

And the weeks there's nothing to tell, we may have things like updated batches of approved features, or involvement in Suggestions, talking about the game balance to refine existing suggestions. It'll give us some information about where the game's going.

 

Also, maybe pretty important: a post with links to things the community managers do outside the forum !

We may be missing most of their work because we're on the wrong platform where all the action's elsewhere !

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Hence I would like to stress the need of a good interactive Discord server, with a relatively easy bot you could have all media sources concentrated into one by using RSS feeds and a lot more with the other API features Discord offers. It would be totally automated, no need to maintain and if the need arises community members could do it for you. Nothing would go unnoticed and we would see more of the actual work put in. I know a lot of work is put in but the community interaction and presence is not representing that, especially when priorities seem to lie towards visiting conventions and the image of the developers on Facebook and Twitter.  So unless that is exactly the image you want those players that do stick around to have, something needs to be done.

 

I would be totally willing to help out with that aspect but from what I've seen that isn't wanted.

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  • Boxelware Team
There are two community managers ?

Last seven days there wasn't a single update from them in this forum :-X. Sorry to side with Devious on this one.

Ny and Martin had to quit because they have to focus on their studies (they are both students) and don't have the time to work here any more. We're currently 2 ppl short and haven't been able to find matching replacements so far. So now we're down to one community lady, cepheni, who has been mostly dealing with mails, bugreports and crash reports so far.

 

Devious: While I understand where you're coming from, I'd ask you to watch your tone, alright? Instead of just calling us lazy, insinuating that we don't give a fuck, only make excuses and "don't have the guts to claim a discord" etc. you could provide us with concrete examples of what you'd like to change. You're welcome to either post here in the forum, write me on discord or send me a mail (but please talk to me like a normal human being, I'm doing the same). TBH I haven't been in the forum much because I've got tons of different things to do and sometimes I'd like to sleep as well. If you want to help, you're very welcome to do so. Just send me a message and we can get to talking.

 

Considering the forum and our interactions: I know that it's been silent from us in the forum, and all I can tell you is that we know that it's not good and it's on our radar. Improvements incoming.

 

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Then please find someone to be communiy manager, koonschi. So they could be a bridge between you and community when you don't have time yourself.

 

And I still vote for a public issue/feature tracker. You're saying that you're doing a lot and you don't want to waste time writing changelogs. Then show us your issue tracker, you'll not need to write anything. You're saying that this will enrage people, but people are enraged already.

 

Sometimes you (or Martin) respond to the community, implementing new API functions, discussing stuff. But you often leave it half-way.

For example after I spent some time trying to contact you, you opened "Entity():setToFlyToLocation(vec3 location)" for modders. But it's either bugged or there is something else, because it just makes the ship to spin around like crazy. We talked about it and then you just stopped responding. I know that developing takes time and you had other things to do, but you never returned to that topic nor any other member of your team.

 

I understand that you need to advertise the game, so you visit all these public events. But existing part of the community just leaves because game is still pretty unfinished. If Steam achievements work correctly, then something is definetely wrong, because less then 7% players got to Avorion and only half destroyed 5 pirate ships or equipped shields.

 

Please focus on fixing current bugs, otherwise they will snowball and it will be harder and harder to fix them in the future. And hire new community managers apparently.

 

And as a part of modding comminity I'm trying to help you in bugfixing. I write Bug reports and if bug is Lua-related I usually post ready-to-go solution, that you just need to check and integrate into the game. And other modders such as Hammelpilaw do the same. But you don't use our solutions. Did you know that Turret Factory doesn't properly check client data and you can build Legendary quality turrets  or without using any ingredients, just credits?

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I love the game and the overall direction of the game, I think wasting time on pandering to the most vocal people will not be beneficial in the long-run. And I have three friends who all own the game and are just patiently waiting for it to mature. None of them even for a second spends time on social media or on forums. In fact i registered just to post in this thread, and will likely never use the forum again.

 

The game is good with great potential, the potential that can only be reached through hard and consistent work. None of that potential hinges on populism.

 

My 2c is that people should chill the fuck out and let the game keep developing. Discord servers are just good places for one overtly vocal asshat to try and use social standing to play overlord on a project they themselves could not and would not do. The same with forums generally, you always have one guy that is super invested that thinks they can dictate the course of the whole 'community' even if the majority of players never (and will never) join aforementioned 'community'.

 

Do your own thing Koonschi, it is your game, it is your hard work, don't doubt yourself.

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Before I say anything I'd like to thank you Koonchi for putting all your blood sweat and tears into Avorion.  I understand having to divert your attention to the forums to talk about these subjects is taxing on you. But please try to understand us, we're like dedicated fans being ignored, and we don't like it.

 

 

Everyone will agree that this game has A LOT of potential and it could go on and on even after a release.  I think not just Koonchi has become passionate about helping making the game a success, but modders and a good part of the dedicated community too.  If we didn't care then we wouldn't be posting stuff like this, we would just outright ignore the game and move on, but people do care and want the game to progress and grow.  The Modding community goes to great lengths to add Quality of Life changes to the game, and im sure there could easily be a good relationship between the Dev's and the modders if kindled right.  And just as Rinart73 said, they could help alot with bug reporting/fixing, in fact I think those people are your best bug reporters since they may even know ways to solve the issue. 

 

Now about the main issue at hand (and this will come off a bit harsh maybe).

 

The Community feels largely Ignored..... You said that you have stopped frequent updates because it takes time...and well since there isnt a community manager anymore, that would explain why we've been ignored.  There isnt 2 Koonchi's to manage the community and Develop the game, no matter how much we wish there were.  One guy cant do it, like you said this is the harsh reality.  It's painfully obivous that you need some one dedicated to interacting with the community.  You cant expect a game like this to succeed if you let your forums die, there needs to be some interaction between the community and the Dev's.  Yeah, we're mad cause we've been ignored, but we also want to help shape the game, we have good ideas too you know.  I know it's not easy finding someone to be a community manager, but you obivously dont have enough manpower to Develop the game and Interact with the community.  We have much more well thought out ideas than the people at conventions and a few of them have even been put in with Lua mods to help progress the game.

 

The harsh reality is that we need some interaction, on at least a bi-weekly basis. Not just updates, actual communitication like this on the forums or Discord.  Where there are Polls done and responses to questions.  Where bad ideas can be shutdown.  Where the most annoying bugs for the community can be brought to light. (btw the most annoying thing in the UI is the lag when you have 1000's of modules and turrets in an alliance vault, it's almost impossible to use at that point). 

 

TL:DR    The game has alot of potential and we all want it to succeed. However.....No interaction = community ignored = mad/frustrated community.

 

Keep up the good work Koonchi!  Just keep us involved man!  We're here to help, let us help!

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Very well said Rinart and Valgrick!

I would also like to mention that the way I bring my concerns should be taken with an ounce of salt and vinegar, I can be very passionate about matters like this.

Koonschi has been doing a heck of a job under the circumstances, no blame there.  I'm also sorry to hear that Ny and Martin had to leave, they both did a lot from what I have seen. If we would have known this I'm sure it wouldn't have had come to this.

It just frustrated me  to repeatedly see so much potential going lost to hardly any interaction or communication while I stressed out the importance of those concerns a year ago already, and again a few months ago. Because we kept hearing hardly anything substantial, those concerns manifestated across a lot of us. Most just left/paused the game, and those that still see the potential stick around and help out in the community hoping to see the tides turn. That may be seen as vocal, but that doesn't make the concerns less grounded.

 

After a conversation with Koonschi we made some plans so once those are fleshed out you guys will hear more about that.

Now that these concerns are spoken out and adressed we can start moving towards a better future, hopefully building a sustainable community to support this awesome game in any way possible!

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I can only say that Avorion Fans have a role to play.

 

Devs too.

 

 

Just a tiny bit about “me” first, so you can appreciate where i am coming from ...

I started playing Avorion around update 0.11.  Immediately, fell in love with the game.

 

I built a few ships, played exclusively in solo Universes.

I left the game after playing for about 2 to 3 months (Feb to April 2017).  I KNEW i would be back.  And by leaving and returning October 2018, i can appreciate the improvements.

 

As an Avorion Fan, i get to come and go - when i please.

The Devs ... well, they get to slog thru thick and thin.

 

 

The game is massive, the economy is immersive and wondrously connective.  The combat is interesting.

There is a tonne of subtleties and nuances in the game that need to be balanced, reset, jiggled abd balanced again.

Then i suppose its - coding coding coding.

 

 

So ... The Roles

Casual Fans of Avorion can come and go, and have fun while they are here

 

Trolls of Avorion - can bitch and moan all they want.  Its possible they are as happy in life as they are in their gaming

 

True Fans of Avorion ...

True Fans can make suggestions, and bring forward constructive criticism.  True Fans of  Avorion can also be advocates of fair play here in the forums, in Multi-player and even in their solo games.

Also, True Fans who maybe take on a leadership role, here in the forum ... maybe be that voice for the Devs, if so appointed

 

The Devs

Just do what you do.  Media and communications takes time.

If Koonschi has someone to trust, to delegate some responsibility to, well great.

If not, that is just more on his plate, and those True Fans of Avorion can help out (i think) by being supportive in small and great ways.

 

 

Anyway ...thank you for reading this far.

I love the game, and look forward to multiplayer sone day soon.

 

And, now i am heading back to my drawing board ...

I need to build my next ship to one day have a complete set.

 

Cheers all !!

 

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I know Koonschi is not always on the forums much, but a while ago I did send him a message with some information on bots that we're running rampant on his forums and he took care of them right away. To me this is how fans can help and shows he cares but probably is tight on time. Startups are hard.

 

I also  gave some feed back on community managemt then. I would have offered some help as it is part of what I do for a living myself (free as I do not live in Germany), but I had just found out the wife (at only 33) had cancer ( hopefully I didn't sound  like too much of a #$&k when  I sent him the message) so work, kids and her were my priority.  I have been lurking for the last 10 months though as I did enjoy the game that much.

 

I had even dabbled in a little bug hunting and troubleshooting with hammmel who is pretty active on here as I am big fan of the game.

 

Anyhow, I was just wanting to say, while not always on, Koonschi does check these forums and makes an effort to read the suggestion threads even if he doesn't always reply.  And I can attest that replying in a professional, measured manner, can take time. Such as above where he stated it took a while to reply.

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