Do the developers read the official Steam forums?

[eobet]

Just asking, because I left a bunch of feedback on those forums, and then I began browsing them and couldn't find a single developer response...

[JoeW]

Not too often, we read them but we don't reply very often especially to feedback. We don't generally reply to feedback here either and usually about technical issues or more high level conversation not directly related to any specific point of feedback. 

Let me direct you to a recent post I made about this same question. http://steamcommunity.com/app/322330/discussions/0/1482109512302195013/?ctp=2#c1482109512305233314

Quote

Developer responses tend to end conversation and shape them in a way that is not constructive to providing feedback. Valid opinions that are against what we believe (or would have posted) are completely shut down by other players who reiterate our posts and the community doesn't get to have that conversation. 

What you will find instead is that we respond to player feedback by addressing it either in official posts we make, or in the game content itself. When we do post directly it's to clarify something we aren't looking for feedback on. (Like your post)

In this case, because as we said previously, we are looking for feedback on The Forge. A thread like this one provides us a lot of information about why people would like it to stick around and why others think it shouldn't. So a reply would directly change that conversation and a reply will come when we are no longer looking for that feedback.

 

[GuyPerfect]

I would like to make a suggestion regarding the "responding to feedback" policy...

If a developer should take in any feedback from a player post, please at least reply to acknowledge that the feedback has been noticed. It doesn't have to be one of those aforementioned conversation-ending yes-or-no mic drops, but something along the lines of "We acknowledge your feedback and have taken it into consideration" would go a long way to benefit the dialog that the feedback process requires.

Think of some other community you've been a part of, where you had suggestions to make and the powers that be would not respond in any way. Did they get your message? Did they ignore it? Did it get lost in the shuffle of all the posts coming in? Did they bother to check for feedback in the first place, or is that just not something they do? The developers and community staff understand what's going on, but when the communication is strictly one-way, the community of players is left in the dark.

The main drawback to refusing to acknowledge feedback is that it discourages leaving feedback in the first place. If my words are going to fall on deaf ears, then I could go shout it into the grand canyon instead of posting them on a message board. At least that way I'll get the exercise, and I'll get to visit the grand canyon!

[PhailRaptor]

3 hours ago, JoeW said:

Not too often, we read them but we don't reply very often especially to feedback. We don't generally reply to feedback here either and usually about technical issues or more high level conversation not directly related to any specific point of feedback. 

Let me direct you to a recent post I made about this same question. http://steamcommunity.com/app/322330/discussions/0/1482109512302195013/?ctp=2#c1482109512305233314

 

I can completely understand not wanting to shape, direct, or end conversation on a topic you are looking for feedback on.  The best games are ones that adapt organically to things the player noticed and made use of, that the developer did not necessarily intend originally, but came to like and supported.

 

That said, the absence of any sort of dialogue with the playerbase will inevitably lead to a scenario where the playerbase kind of gives up providing feedback because they feel like they are being ignored.  You are also losing out on the opportunities to focus a given discussion, that has developed in a healthy manner, onto a single common point that runs through the background of a majority of the responses throughout the discussion.  It also produces a sizable rate of repost of the same issues.  Players do not know that an issue is being looked at, because there are no dev responses regarding those issues.

 

My personal example, fixed temperature outputs of buildings feels like an exploit.  Because I don't watch the streams on Twitch, I had no way of knowing this was intended.  I treated it (and for the most part, still do) like the exploit it appears and feels to be.  I still hold on to hope that in the long run, as the game becomes more complete, this will be changed.  But were it not for a number of other players informing me in threads, both here and on the Steam forums, that it was indeed intended behavior, I would never have known.

[eobet]

7 hours ago, JoeW said:

we read them

Thanks, this was the most important bit.

[JoeW]

3 hours ago, PhailRaptor said:

My personal example, fixed temperature outputs of buildings feels like an exploit.  Because I don't watch the streams on Twitch, I had no way of knowing this was intended.  I treated it (and for the most part, still do) like the exploit it appears and feels to be.  I still hold on to hope that in the long run, as the game becomes more complete, this will be changed.  But were it not for a number of other players informing me in threads, both here and on the Steam forums, that it was indeed intended behavior, I would never have known.

Sure, but all that is to assume that we always know the correct solution at any given time. And we don't always. And we change our minds a lot. We talk and reformulate plans a lot. We change things based not only on direct feedback, but indirect feedback as well. And once we are sure of something, it's implemented and ready to go. We watch feedback and we adjust.

You should check out this article on Mark of the Ninja, I think it does a lot to explain how we think of things.

This is the way we have done things for quite a while, and I think it's worked out pretty well so far. 

All that being said, I think it's a good time for some updates across the board on what's coming up. I will see if we can get those going before Holiday break. 

[BlueLance]

3 hours ago, JoeW said:

All that being said, I think it's a good time for some updates across the board on what's coming up. I will see if we can get those going before Holiday break. 

I posted in the road-map pinned topic, A lot of the players worried would be alleviated if you kept the roadmap up to date, it is still showing information from the oil update. 

Also replying to every single thread etc would be too much, but I think it would be a good idea or helpful towards the community to have a weekly or fortnightly Q&A thread where you put up a thread and pin it, and let people ask questions, and the next day a dev goes through them and answers relevant questions. No doubt there will be multiple people asking the same question, but it meant that the devs are informing us to some degree of what is going on.

For instance; Will this be getting released on PS4, The only answer we need is Yes, No, It is not planned for this time. This means that people who have paid attention and read these can then inform newer members that these questions have been answered before instead of it seeming like they are just being ignored. 

This is just for answering questions and has nothing to do with suggestions etc so you would not be having to change how you want things to go. But it gives us an idea of where you want it to go.