The Lack Of Communication Is Beyond A Joke Now

Don't give me hope that they will fix the UG. But seriously, this needs to happen. I feel it would be amazing if corrupted dungeons were even slightly different from their original counterpart. It wouldn't even need to be something big, just use that wall jump instead of ANNOYING slime parkour XD

 

Content being scrapped without the community knowing IS the problem. The content is hidden and unannounced, yet teased and hinted at. The community keeps guessing and getting it wrong. The CT needs to control the community's perspective better. The first step to that would be communication with the community. We don't need to know everything about the update or even the title, but more than a cryptic post with people jumping or emeralds scattered around would be nice.

 

Right, I just want to point out that this week, Destiny 2’s game director, Luke Smith, posted a three part, 12000 word essay detailing not only some things to come but also talking about what worked and didn’t work over the past year. Bungie also released a stream showing off new armor changes, some sandbox changes, and new gameplay mechanics, and then attempted to assuage any concerns about it.

In contrast, Respawn developers called their Apex Legends players asshats and freeloaders over micro transactions.

The reason I bring this up is that most communication we get is on the respawn side; refusing to acknowledge faults and often surrounded with an air of smug superiority. This shouldn’t be the case. We should get communication not only about new stuff, but also apologies when the CT messed up. The current method of the staff acting as the gods of the forums, rarely coming down and smiting people when they do, is unacceptable.

 

im still waiting for that single pixel on a dernic mob’s skin that i was promised would be shown on the forums

 

Unfortuntely, I doubt this thread will change anything

This has been a problem ever since Gavel or so, but even then, we got some communication. There was, of course, Grian’s livestream showing Corkus (which, I’d understand why they wouldn’t want to do that again, because it did spoil a lot about Corkus), Grian posted a thread telling the story of the Corkians and Avos, the Gameplay Update’s changelog was posted in small parts over the course of a month, Grian posted a thread a few months after Corkus to tell us about the direction of the next update, etc.

Now, it’s a huge problem, and no matter how much we nag, it’s just not changing anything. For one, we always never (oxymoron, I know) know about the upcoming update. For example, in said thread I mentioned above, Grian said that 1.18 would be RtD, but didn’t specifically say what the upcoming update would be about. The livestream a month ago was a step in the right direction, but even then, if you’re not revealing anything interesting or new, what’s even the point? I didn’t tune into the livestream because it didn’t interest me.


The communication over the past year has been a joke. Have we’ve gotten an official response as to why the shoutbox has been removed? Why did we not know about what was going on with JP until Crunkle came along? Also, let’s not forget the legendary thread by Grian, saying that the next update wouldn’t be RTD, responded to absolutely none of the comments on the thread, and then said, “Nope, you’re all wrong, fuck you all” and locked it.


Also Also, the strategy of underhyping things so we can’t be disappointed is bullshit imo. If we support the server, either by playing it or supporting it monetarily, we’re entitled to a good update, yes? While it is subjective on what makes an update good, it feels like whenever a lot of us are unhappy with an update, we’re supposed to shrug our shoulders and say “oh well” because the CT “worked hard”. I bring this up because Corkus and 1.18 are excellent examples of this.

 

Just want to point out that Jp did confirm that the next update is RTD or the guild update. But we'll get the RTD update, since Jp left Wynncraft the one who is responsible for the guild update.

I'll put some links that will explain a few things:
Things about 1.18 update
Why Gavel was a mess, Shoutbox, mythic etc.

 

Lack of communication is what killed the game for me. The last time I felt really hyped for an update was Gavel, since then I've found it hard to get hyped for any update Wynncraft brings out. Granted it could just be the passage the of time, but I do believe lack of communication is also a factor. For example most of our knowledge of new updates comes from changelogs which come out about a week before the update. Difference with Gavel was they dropped little hints and teasers overtime to keep the hype going and to keep building the hype. I find that building up excitement over a longer period of time kept people speculating and playing over a long period of time. Now that we get our information of updates in bulk a week or two before the actual update, it kinda kills the excitement of theorizing and speculating. To Wynn's credit they have done similar stuff like this recently such as the potatoes dotted around the world, but interest in it slowly died down as nothing new was ever teased not to mention these come once in a blue moon. With Gavel we had tons of teasers to speculate on which would only build up the hype such as teasing airships, teasing Bak'al, teasing the realm of light, a link between worlds video(I think that was what it was called I can't remember) ect.. Nowadays we just get the info and wait a week, the fun of speculating on how features would be used or how quest stories would work are gone, and I find that that is what kills hype for updates.

 

what is that

 

What is what? You mean the content team? or dern? or?

 

I can certainly see where many people on this thread are coming from. In fact, a little while ago, we had a lengthy discussion about this on the CT stream, especially in regards to RTD. But I think what we said there bears repeating.

While it may on the surface seem very easy for us to give progress updates on what's going on, the update-making process is a lot more complicated than that behind the scenes. The reason Road to Dern didn't happen in 1.18 as promised is the most emblematic of why we can't really discuss updates until very close to release. Internally, Road to Dern was thought to be a lock. We figured if nothing else, Road to Dern would be the thing we released. However, things took a turn as we discovered it finally became feasible to do the Economy Update features we wanted to do. As time went on though, it became clearer that the Economy Update's main features would require a lot of work on the Content Team side of things. And many of the CT members became more gravitated to working on what was needed for those features rather than Road to Dern. And that's given us time to rethink and refine our vision for Road to Dern for the future, and the area will be better for it. But our vision can easily change and evolve during development. What little you have seen of the area hardly represents what it's become now.

The purpose of that story is to show that the creation of an update is a lot more abstract than you might think. No update springs fully-formed from our heads. So attempting to discuss an update too early could lead to people getting a very different idea of what the update is compared to what it ends up being. And there have been many times where we've promised something that doesn't end up panning out. So while the idea of constantly updating everyone on an update's progress sounds appealing, it's not as simple as saying that an update is, say, 70% done, because the amount of stuff we actually want to include can increase or decrease as our vision evolves. Content is rarely finalized to the point where it's presentable until not long before the update's released. (See the Gavel teaser, even two months out certain things didn’t end up panning out).

Many games fall into this trap and show something too early and are forced to work it into their game even when it harms the overall experience. Or on the other end of things, you have No Man’s Sky, which promised a lot of things and ended up not delivering on them come launch. It took years for them to turn the game into what they wanted. And while many will say the game is a massive improvement now, it’s undeniable how long many were left in disappointment.

This is why occasionally you'll see out of context or vague teasers of what we're working on, such as our recent tweet. Because outright promising certain content can easily lead to us trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, forcing content into an update that detracts time and effort away from what we feel is more important. A lot of the time there’s a lot more that we wanted out of an update, but an unforeseeable variable gets thrown into the mix. For example, someone who’s working on an important project may be lagging behind which means others may have to come in and help make sure it gets completed, leaving content we deemed to be lower priority to be saved for a later update. And this is just one of several types of wrenches that can be thrown into the mix.

All this is to say that the update-making process isn’t as easy to fill you guys in on as you might think. And hopefully all of this starts to make it a bit more clear why a lot of promises aren’t kept and why we’re so hesitant to make any more before the time is right. However, even if we can't talk about major updates much, we've been trying to do smaller pushes in the meantime such as /skiptutorial and the new objectives feature to help fill the drought. That being said, the next update is coming along nicely, so you’ll probably be seeing some glimpses of it Soon™.

 

We don't need to see presentable work, it's in development anyways. Presenting it as "WIP" or "Testing" and "subject to change" would go a long way. At least we'd be seeing something rather than nothing or a cryptic "we're working". Planning out what the community is seeing and focusing on the unfinished assets that your team is interested in the most or most confident in completing would improve morale and keep people relatively on track, staff and community. Vague teasers are not always helpful.

 

Thanks you for addressing this so succinctly :D I do understand the situation; however, the point I am trying to make is that it's now been over 7 months without any news, which I think seems a bit long to wait without news. Surely there must be something in the upcoming update that is 100% complete (Like a quest, mob, item or ingredient?) that could be teased without there being any risk of spoiling too much. I understand the long periods of silence to some extent, but usually around the 6 month mark, I start to get impatient.

Again, thank you for letting us know the situation :)

 

Game development (and this goes far beyond just Wynncraft) is a tricky business where all the planning in the world ultimately can't concretely determine what will be included in the final product by the end. It's an ironic process where the things we'd feel most confident with showing end up being the things that have to be saved for a later update due to the aforementioned unseen circumstances, as mentioned with Road to Dern.

 

but you can still post the single pixel on a new mob's skin right

im willing to die happy after i see that

 

I feel like you're dodging my point. You don't have to post anything as "concrete", instead you can make posts aimed at keeping the community in a similar mindset to your team, but a few steps behind to build anticipation for upcoming content constructively, rather than ignore the community again. If you make posts like a changelog, that's "concrete". If you make a post that says "hard at work" with a gif of people jumping around, that's the opposite. Maybe find a middle ground? I can't tell you what content to spotlight obviously, but you're using a bipolar metric for something that is not Black or White. There's a middle ground and none of the CT are willing to compromise on this "game development is hard and communication is good or bad and nothing else" theory. This is irritating.

 

agreed

 

IMO the content team is doing good with the contents. Let's not forget that the content team needs to continuously put out content, so it's not as easy as many of us no job havin ass would think, let's give a round of applause to the content team real talk.

 

I think its important to put this into perspective. The community was aware that Dern was going to be a major expansion even before Gavel came out (And I'm not talking about the dern island that was in old old old wynncraft). we knew that there were going to be 4 continents in wynncraft: Wynn, Gavel, Fruma, and Dern. Gavel came out in 2015... It's been four years and the only news we've gotten about Dern from the CT was the few pictures they used in order to say sorry for not getting it out sooner, and the anonymous video posted online (and thank god for whoever posted it). And honestly, it's not our place to say how long it should be taking the CT to make it, minecraft is a unique game engine which takes time to develop into a functioning MMO.

But for fuck's sake tell us what the hell is going on. We are entitled to know what happens behind the scenes. We are the ones funding the server and keeping it alive, it's our right to be kept up to date. We're ready to experience the changes that will happen while an update is being developed, most of us are sensible enough to understand that the CT isn't perfect and the view of an update might change, which will shift expectations.

But the level of communication that exists now between CT (mostly salted) and the community is not only unbearable and unforgivable, it's also hurting the game. In game trade market and guild wars were closed for 3 months and we still to this day (~4 months after the fact) don't know why the hell that happened. Several of my friends quit playing the game during that period and haven't returned. For TWO YEARS i was stuck in my inactive guild simply because i changed my username while in the guild. When I tried to talk about the lack of communication on the forums, the thread was locked and silenced as if i was living in communist russia during stalin's reign.

Lack of communication wouldn't be a problem if wynncraft wasn't continually fucking up, but it would instead give us a reason to understand why it was happening, and maybe also allow us to be less angry.

I hope you do call me entitled, because I am. I've spent hundreds of dollars on this game and grinded for a thousand hours. It's my right to call out bullshit when I see it.

 

Okay; I’m gonna stop meme-ing.

I definitely agree with the CT when they say they’re scared of leaking things as it may change. Wynncon’s given me some insight into this as we went from a winter theme of Pakiwaki (or whatever it’s spelled like) to a full on Sky Islands section (which has been extremely fun to build compared to the other theme. By the way, tomorrow at 2-5PM est you can tour the map and see what we’ve built so far, just to plug that in.). And we’ve cut many different things already as we’ve been working towards December.

But.. leaving us in the dark has created a giant rift between a CT and the average community member. It’s not healthy for the content of the game, the community, or the CT itself for there to be giant voids of radio silence. It’d be great if the Admins found a way to still keep up hype for new updates without risking things such as features getting cut last minute. With Pretzule gone, and Pepo having mostly discontinued community events (like Karaoke) there is nothing to bridge together the Content Team and the Community.

And there’s another thing: the CT is overestimating what we’d be satisfied with being teased with. Many of the teasers have been cryptic, or massive mechanics, and then there was a picture of the new crab model that we were happy with. Even small teasers, like a new model design we would be happy with. Anyone demanding for more is always going to demand for more. Don’t listen to them.

TL;DR hey ct respond to our snaps

 

I remember when the beta for 1.18 released there was a CT member that teased something as "A potential solution" with a video presenting when a player walk to the left door of Ragni, an NPC will appear telling him to focus on 1-2 professions because its very hard to do all of them at once and then vanished. But sadly, when I tried to search for it I wasn't able to find it, it probably got removed.

My point is that things like this will be (maybe) enough to hype the community.
You don't need to tell what is the next update or a new feature.
just something as simple as what that CT member did.