"More communication" - what exactly?

[BezKa]

This plea for more communication from devs keeps appearing, and is a bit puzzling to me- devs make games, not reports to their fans.

But I have been less invested in certain updates than others (skill trees don't interest me at all) and maybe the need really is dire. The thing I wonder the most however, is what exactly do you want the communication to be.

Do you want more Klei streams, where you can ask them direct questions and hope for an answer?

Do you want weekly reports from Klei with everything they've done at work?

Do you want every change in a hotfix to have an addendum explaining why it was made?

Do you want blog-style info posts about certain design choices, methodologies etc?

How often do you expect info from Klei?

This is not a poll, because I'd like to get detailed responses of how You think proper dev-fanbase communication should look like. I also would like you to consider how long such update as you imagine would take to write.

 

Keep in mind, a method to send requests and Klei politely denying or approving each and every one is not viable for many many reasons. Use the Suggestions and Feedback subforum to make suggestions, and remember you will never get a response. That's how it's meant to work.

Also, goading the Klei team to step in when forumites start to insult each other is a great way to distract them from more important stuff, not to get communication.

Klei telling us what they're specifically gonna do before an update is done/largely done is also out of the question. Things in game dev are often very fluid and have multiple iterations before the final design (be it artistically or mechanically) is implemented. Promising they're gonna do something only for the natural development process to transform it into something else is the prime method of making the community upset over "broken promises".

You can already look at the bug reporter to see what devs are doing regarding various issues. And here, you can help! Writing more detailed, descriptive reports will make the work easier for the person attempting to fix the issue. If you see a report of something you encountered and think might be harder to reproduce, make a comment, attach logs and a savefile if relevant.

Just to be clear, I am only curious. I'm sure people have already spoken about this in other threads, but I'd love to have it all in one place to read and think about.

Have a fun day, whichever form that fun takes!

[Edible Coal]

some cheery pick Q&A

[BezKa]

27 minutes ago, Edible Coal said:

some cheery pick Q&A

Do you mean Klei posting a thread where you can ask questions, and answering ones they decide to answer? Kind of like on stream, but in text form?

[Mysterious box]

Interestingly they actually did step up their communication during the beta though considering how that blew up in their faces I imagine it won't happen as much in the future.

[hyoton123]

I want klei to pop out of the sky and tell me what I want to hear.

Just now, Mysterious box said:

Interestingly they actually did step up their communication during the beta though considering how that blew up in their faces I imagine it won't happen as much in the future.

Yeah, it was a classic example of why listening to the fans can be actually bad.

[WilsonHiggs]

With a monthly or every 2 months post talking about little features, items or hints of what they are sure to add

[SilverSpoon]

It was good that the developers shared their thoughts on Wendy's changes in the last beta. If players knew why the developers made those decisions, it would help to balance what the developers wanted with what the players wanted.

 

Post-Beta, to be honest, I couldn't understand sense of the current series of nerfs to Wendy doesn't, Seriously, Why are developers doing this?

[Guille6785]

I want Klei to consult ME specifically for every change they make because all of my opinions are objectively correct (I am the baseline for opinions)

[DVGMedia]

I always just think of why things are happening especially with beta testing. Since having constant hap hazard updates doesn't work well 

I would like to see more of a plan before it's in beta so that way we can see what's going to happen and are quickly able to decide what may be bad. Without spending dev resources on it

Since klei doesn't have dedicated testers and relies on the public to test I would imagine it would be helpful to be clued into what will be coming out so that way we are not in development hell like last update

[Uedo]

Nothing much, just a public stage-play in Vancouver of the most recent developments - it doesn't have to have more than 2 Acts. I'm a reasonable man.

[Mike23Ua]

A company that consults or over listens to their fanbase too often is a company that will make very bad and bizarre design choices, this implies to me that they are developers making a game- Yes… but they aren’t making that game with their own vision for it, but rather what they THINK their fans expect from them for it.

A LOT of DSTs past updates are evidence of this, where they’d start an idea with a clear intent and purpose (lunar horror mobs, moon glass, Wonkey curse etc…) and then they’ll just abruptly kill it so it ends up going no where or tweak it to met “fan demands” to the point that it no longer feels like it serves its original purpose.

Some of the best games in the freaking WORLD are the ones that developers built with their own choices in mind, did not consult their fanbase on every little thing they intended to add and just made their game, their way.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have that Developer-Gamer Interaction, and it’s extremely satisfying (& cool) when something we suggest, ends up in the game, but.. there is a such thing as listening “too much” to your fans, and that’s when companies ruin their original intent, to try to model their game around “whatever the most popular suggestions are”

Heres the thing about that though: if you made a gritty survival horror game with puzzle elements & Permadeath, with punishing character downsides and this game was only EVER going to appeal to Niche group of targeted audience of gamers, that game should not try to “Bend its identity” to cater to players it wasn’t originally designed for.

[Gashzer]

Klei did ask for long real gameplay during the beta. I 100% believe the 2 hour clip of me playing day 1 to 17 helped klei rework walters skilltree to V2. Some of the stuff I mentioned got added to the V2 and my gameplay probably highlighted other issues to them.

I think the forums needs to chat less and show less gameplay with spawned in items and more "real" gameplay. Klei can't understand how you play by you explaining it on the forums, you need to show them real footage.

[DVGMedia]

7 minutes ago, Mike23Ua said:

THINK their fans expect from them for it.

"And we didn't think that was the style Wendy players were looking for. So for the moment, that skill and it's partner have been removed "

I mean they already kind of do this I think people would have loved a glass Wendy since it's something different.  I felt skill trees should have given more playstyle options 

[Mysterious box]

8 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

Klei did ask for long real gameplay during the beta. I 100% believe the 2 hour clip of me playing day 1 to 17 helped klei rework walters skilltree to V2. Some of the stuff I mentioned got added to the V2 and my gameplay probably highlighted other issues to them.

I think the forums needs to chat less and show less gameplay with spawned in items and more "real" gameplay. Klei can't understand how you play by you explaining it on the forums, you need to show them real footage.

Not even just gameplay the dps thread for Walter showed a full breakdown on the slingshot dps was used for tweaking his slingshot such as the hitstun nerf or the pure brilliance rounds duration increase for example.

 

33 minutes ago, DVGMedia said:

I always just think of why things are happening especially with beta testing. Since having constant hap hazard updates doesn't work well 

I would like to see more of a plan before it's in beta so that way we can see what's going to happen and are quickly able to decide what may be bad. Without spending dev resources on it

Since klei doesn't have dedicated testers and relies on the public to test I would imagine it would be helpful to be clued into what will be coming out so that way we are not in development hell like last update

This just seems incredibly inefficient and honestly if they ever reached a point where they need to get the player's opinion on what they're allowed to implement in their own game before they work on it I think they'd just be better off ending the game completely.

[Auth]

I would appreciate Klei giving more detailed patch notes at times but they're generally fine for the most part (but stuff like "Added Blongus" gives people no idea what blongus is or how it should be used) but the main thing for me is that I wish Klei would state their intention or design philosophy behind certain ideas.

Like "We're adding/changing X because we feel it will expand upon Y, here's a brief rundown as to how we're hoping it pans out" so that players know what kind of balancing to expect from such a decision. If the devs say from day 1 that X is deliberately designed to be under/overwhelming because of Y and Z reasons, then players know the general ballpark of where Klei is going to be expecting and listening to feedback, and players can more constructively challenge said ideas if they disagree by being able to offer alternatives directly to what the devs are currently thinking.

This isn't really necessary, though. And I feel a few bad apples would eagerly take this as an excuse to dig in even deeper with their already existing bad-faith arguments.

[DVGMedia]

57 minutes ago, Mysterious box said:

This just seems incredibly inefficient and honestly if they ever reached a point where they need to get the player's opinion on what they're allowed to implement in their own game before they work on it I think they'd just be better off ending the game completely.

It's important because klei doesn't have testers and they do look to us to test updates. It is not like a waste of much effort just have them say their idea. And then can get feedback and klei continues forward it's not inefficient at all. It instead would be a roadmap for every update Instead. I missed when klei would show what they were working on in the past before it was even in the beta 

 

They don't do that anymore and it does kind of show in the combative nature of these past updates. 

I miss this as it gave at least something for us to expect 

[Evelo]

What I want most from Klei when it comes to communication is areas of focus. What do you want to players to focus on and comment on during a beta. It is obvious it is about the content that is being introduced in the beta, but I am more referring to Klei actually stating "Hey, we wants you to focus on X." and give us official polls to gauge feedback. We have always had a very chaotic feedback system that is very very open and broad. Narrowing it down and inquiring from the players what you want specifically is best to fulfill the outcome.

I'll use an example: After somewhat recent Controversy Creative Assembly has received a ton of hell from the playerbase. Most recently one of the major concerns of their is the AI and how it functions. So they opened a beta branch and gave a button for in game feedback poll. It is awesome and a great thing they have done recently which is what I personally look for with effective communication between developers and the play testers (or in this case the player base).

Trying to boil it down to as simple at possible, "How do you think of this?" is a bad question. "How do you think this new thing feels specifically when it comes to that thing?" is a good question.

[Uedo]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

A company that consults or over listens

over listening isn't a thing. You should always listen if you can, you don't have  to agree - but everyone could do with listening.

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

 

A LOT of DSTs past updates are evidence of this, where they’d start an idea with a clear intent and purpose (lunar horror mobs, moon glass, Wonkey curse etc…) and then they’ll just abruptly kill it so it ends up going no where or tweak it to met “fan demands” to the point that it no longer feels like it serves its original purpose.

Some of the best games in the freaking WORLD are the ones that developers built with their own choices in mind, did not consult their fanbase on every little thing they intended to add and just made their game, their way.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have that Developer-Gamer Interaction, and it’s extremely satisfying (& cool) when something we suggest, ends up in the game, but.. there is a such thing as listening “too much” to your fans, and that’s when companies ruin their original intent, to try to model their game around “whatever the most popular suggestions are”

Heres the thing about that though: if you made a gritty survival horror game with puzzle elements & Permadeath, with punishing character downsides and this game was only EVER going to appeal to Niche group of targeted audience of gamers, that game should not try to “Bend its identity” to cater to players it wasn’t originally designed for.

Or as is most likely, they changed their mind and now you're not respecting their choices and demanding they 'over-listen' to you?

[Well-met]

I want klei to post their thoughts when they dont agree with ideas or suggestions

[Mike23Ua]

5 minutes ago, Well-met said:

I want klei to post their thoughts when they dont agree with ideas or suggestions

Klei isn’t just a singular person, it’s a group of persons each with their own individual ideas, opinions & thoughts about their project.

I just wish that more of the dev team would actually play their game as if they were gamers playing without mods or admin commands.. so if for example: they notice you can quickly move items from your inventory to a storage box, or quickly move items to repair and upgrade pearls hermit house, they should see where newer content (like Wurts amermory structures or putting things on Wobys new drying rack upgrade) do not have that same simple tap of a button fast interaction, and in fact: it feels slower and more cumbersome.

[gaymime]

maybe i am leaning too far against my history of being on the other side of the devs/fans line but most of us are absolutely rubbish at "helping" and "communicating" in a way that is good for game development. like, myself included but also almost all of you as well, we don't talk to the dev team in a way that is useful for game production & development, we dont consider coding and cohesion and tying together old scripts to not buckle under new ones, we dont think about sprites and math and all the crunchy bits of game-making we just look at the front-end and say "hm, dunno, feels too little like the thing i already like....nah, dont want it" and if we elaborate at all it is usually around gut feelings and soft metrics like "feeling floaty" or "feeling inorganic" or "feeling like a waste" which and be extrapolated on but not really used for super fine-tuning. sometimes we do better and say things like "the fps dips here n' here" or "this is identical in gameplay to this much more used thing" but still that does require some guess-work on the part of the devs. this being said i dont think it helps for everyone to go out and learn about weighted math and i dont think there is no value on soft gut-feeling communication i just think it is not a =bad= thing that klei doesnt usually say anything to the specific people posting these things and when they are couched in overly personal sentiment it is probably for the best that klei doesnt publicly reply at all

 

griping aside i like when we get devnotes and hosted streams and marks on the bug forum. i think the devs COULD communicate more but i dont think it is necessarily to their benefit to do so since that is time and labour being taken away from other places and it opens people up to feel free to share all of their thoughts and opinions(no matter how poorly thought out or contridictory) and then feel justified over getting angry when they were not "listened to" because their fav char didn't get +50 unblockable non-elemental raw dps when using hambat on cc or a minion that could fully negate all sanity loss or a new recipe that is 3 twigs and a mon meat that gives 60 health.

 

tldr? i liked when dev-team interactions were infrequent, done through a stream/notes and then they bounced for a while to work on more stuff because when they listen to us users in a public way we keep using it as an opportunity to be mean and/or weird

[Cassielu]

I don't see many people asking for this... but if that's true, I think the point here is not what kind of communicate people want, but that more and more people want to have more communicate.

This means things developers are offering is deviates from, or even contradicts, the expectations of a growing number of players, so people expect developers to think more about their own expectations than the direction they are currently heading.

[Tranoze]

I would like for dev to casually drop weekly official pools/question for players for things they want to implements.
So we can feel more like we contribute to the decisions dev make, instead of dev just drop stuff out of nowhere.

[DegenerateFurry]

17 hours ago, BezKa said:

This plea for more communication from devs keeps appearing, and is a bit puzzling to me- devs make games, not reports to their fans.

But I have been less invested in certain updates than others (skill trees don't interest me at all) and maybe the need really is dire. The thing I wonder the most however, is what exactly do you want the communication to be.

Do you want more Klei streams, where you can ask them direct questions and hope for an answer?

Do you want weekly reports from Klei with everything they've done at work?

Do you want every change in a hotfix to have an addendum explaining why it was made?

Do you want blog-style info posts about certain design choices, methodologies etc?

How often do you expect info from Klei?

This is not a poll, because I'd like to get detailed responses of how You think proper dev-fanbase communication should look like. I also would like you to consider how long such update as you imagine would take to write.

 

Keep in mind, a method to send requests and Klei politely denying or approving each and every one is not viable for many many reasons. Use the Suggestions and Feedback subforum to make suggestions, and remember you will never get a response. That's how it's meant to work.

Also, goading the Klei team to step in when forumites start to insult each other is a great way to distract them from more important stuff, not to get communication.

Klei telling us what they're specifically gonna do before an update is done/largely done is also out of the question. Things in game dev are often very fluid and have multiple iterations before the final design (be it artistically or mechanically) is implemented. Promising they're gonna do something only for the natural development process to transform it into something else is the prime method of making the community upset over "broken promises".

You can already look at the bug reporter to see what devs are doing regarding various issues. And here, you can help! Writing more detailed, descriptive reports will make the work easier for the person attempting to fix the issue. If you see a report of something you encountered and think might be harder to reproduce, make a comment, attach logs and a savefile if relevant.

Just to be clear, I am only curious. I'm sure people have already spoken about this in other threads, but I'd love to have it all in one place to read and think about.

Have a fun day, whichever form that fun takes!

I'd like it if we could just get some kind of general roadmap plan like they've done in the past. Maybe they could tell us things they plan to do this year - for instance, "we plan to implement skill trees for Warly, Webber, and Wickerbottom before summer", or "a major update to the caves is in the cards this year", or even "we're going to spend some time focusing on performance and optimization instead of content this time around".

[qwp18]

On 3/28/2025 at 1:48 PM, BezKa said:

Do you want weekly reports from Klei with everything they've done at work?

To me as a player, one of my favorite things is just tiny teasers, whether a sprite, or maybe a piece of dialogue, I think it's super fun to get a teaser. Even if once a month, it'd be super fun to speculate and come up with things it could be as a commiunity. Even though we all obviously know there's more to come and look forward to, having something very clear like that infront of our eyes makes that feeling much more present (:

Something as small as them showing off the webber idle animation in an update before his rework, was just a cool thing to see. This is generally what I'd love to see more of in the future but things like hearing their reasoning and methodology would be extremely intresting and would probably make more hardcore players happy to see. Explaining what they're going for and why let's players provide feedback that goes in that direction rather than opposite, and will let for a different perspective to have on issues with certain content.