Dear Masterbrainbytes

  • I think what is causing angst at the moment is simply from not knowing when the next update will be. Tomorrow? 2 days? Next Friday? A fortnight away? Next month?

    No one knows at the moment and it's causing people to wonder what is happening.

    Honestly, I think if you say we will get a scheduled updated every week/fortnight on the same day at the same time at least people know that they will be getting an update at that time. It will cause a lot less worry in the minds of your supporters and a lot less discussion wondering what is happening.

  • I really wonder why CM and MMB do not respond here to this problem ?( Looks like they are ignoring our suggestions and complaints. So please!, CM with MBB don`t be so cocky and grow some balls and tell us what do you think about this whole comunication situation. Just a bloody simple answer to this thread, just a hint that you are with us, just a word, few sentences how you see the situation from your perspective. No?? ok. :| I am not mad or something but this is just pathetic. I don´t know what you guys think, but I think its time for dear CM to end this drama.

  • Johndeere167 wrote:

    DrPhibes wrote:

    Johndeere167 wrote:

    @masterbrain was just online and their last activity was reading this thread, so let's see if they listened to our frustrations.

    @Memphis has also been online for some time now but with no comment for us.


    Edit: If the EA has not been released by end of august, then I will seriously consider pulling my funds. That's 30 € I could spend on something more tangible and satisfying. I do not want to do this, but after 5+ months of delay it would be hard to continue supporting CNC.
    Not that I don't understand your disappointment or anything, but if you look at other successful games on Kickstarter you start to see a pattern. So far, I've only supported a handful of other games and every project experienced delays ranging from a few months to years. But as of now every game turned out to be fantastic.That's why basically every team brings up the possibility of delays in the "Risks and challenges" section.
    This is the third game I've supported. In the past I supported a train simulator game where it turned out the devs had no idea what they were doing and it took over a year and some threats of lawsuits to get my money back. I also supported Spintires, and if you know the story than you know how well that turned out (devs could not deliver on their promises after almost a decade of development by my math). So I've been burned twice now, which I feel gives me the right to be more than concerned about CnC's development and what is being done with my money. I almost did not support this project because of my past experience. I know game development is hard and unpredictable (I've done it). If MBB would have been more than forthcoming with information about delays and progress, then we would not be having this conversation. I hope this will not turn into another Spintires (stuck in years of silent development and in the end was never finished), because I'm getting that feeling all over again.
    Yeah, Spintires was something else. Dev and Publisher actively working against each other. I'm glad I've never went beyond playing the demo.

  • Regarding the Community Manager:

    I, as Community Manager, am still in my initial period and have joined the Cattle and Crops team in the middle of development. Therefore I can’t give you direct answers to content-related questions yet, meaning I have to coordinate with other team members to correctly depict certain features and content. At the same time I am responsible for direct support - emails, Facebook messages and private messages in the forum. This takes up a lot of my time. It also means that I can’t instantly or in a timely manner react to every topic. This will get better over time - especially after the start of the Early Access phase there will be more time for direct answers.


    Regarding updates:

    We would love to shower you with news, but even if an update seems to be very small, it costs resources which takes away from development and further delays the release.

    The reason is that we’re just a small team and we don’t have our own marketing department. The team members that are responsible for the creation of texts and updates are mostly also the programmers of CnC. So when we draft an update or a longer text, we are not able to code during this time. A text in which you have to mind what you write, how you write it, what you reveal, and all that in different languages - you can’t just do that off the cuff. Furthermore everything has to be posted: mails, homepage maintenance, all of this takes time, partly because we built and maintain all of the infrastructure like the comprehensive account system or the forum integration ourselves.

    During the Kickstarter campaign we had such a strong response that we decided to do very frequent news updates. This meant that during that time the development slowed down strongly, because - as mentioned above - the work wasn’t done by a marketing department but by ourselves as developers. Subsequently we had to dedicate ourselves to the development again of course. So it’s nowhere near laziness or even ignorance towards the community, but an active decision to put our resources into the development. In addition it’s important to us to avoid substantially redundant screenshots or texts. Instead we want to provide you with real news with every update. New content, new gameplay, new features - quality over quantity.

    While all of this describes the current situation, we are simultaneously planning - after the begin of the Early Access phase - to deliver more news and content. I think we all generally agree though: the release of Cattle and Crops has the highest priority at the moment.

  • Thank you for explanation. I thought, the situation is some like you say. Maybe it just could have been explained or described earlier and people would then be silent and this little mutiny :) wouldn't exist.

    It's enough for me. I fully understand the reasons and trust all of the dev team. I'm patient, so I'll wait until whole work is successfuly done.

    That's for me.


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  • Memphis wrote:

    Subsequently we had to dedicate ourselves to the development again of course. So it’s nowhere near laziness or even ignorance towards the community, but an active decision to put our resources into the development. In addition it’s important to us to avoid substantially redundant screenshots or texts. Instead we want to provide you with real news with every update. New content, new gameplay, new features - quality over quantity.
    This is good to hear, this gives me a much clearer picture og what to expect and how to deal with my expectations towards MBB and your policy on communication is at the moment. Glad to hear you are planning on a stronger presence in the future. I will look forward to that :)

    Thank you for answering the call! This is good community managing :D

  • Thank you so much for your response @Memphis that's all I wanted, a proper response that clears up the haze between us in the community and you the devs, letting us know why things are working the way they are and so on. So again thank you so much and I would consider this the end of this thread so if you want you can lock this thread, unless someone else has something they want to say / get off their chest.

    i5 4690k - 3,5 Ghz, EVGA gtx 1070 ftw hybrid - 8 gb vram, 16 gb 1600 Mhz ddr3 ram

  • @Memphsis and @MBB, thanks for the response on this thread.

    It puts into words important understandings that need to be written out, once in a while.
    @Memphsis, this pool doesn't have a shallow end does it?
    For what it's worth to you, uou have my support in your role (and I know I am not alone in saying that!). Now get swimmin'!


    @MBB, hopefully, this thread, during your review, has not rocked your ship too much ... and moreover, I hope you have been able to recognise that as a community, you have a following that may be demanding but generally respectful and mature and is able to get it's point across without drifting across the line.

    You've acknowledged the need to improve your comms and highlighted the reality behind the scenes. This is big. Thanks you.

    Jeytav, specifically to you, thanks for the posting the OP. I hope you got your answer and thank you as we all benefit.

    To the community, again, another example of class ... we can have discussion and even disagree some without any big issues!

    Looking forward to the EA experience hopefully later this month and the engagement and interaction with MBB and this community that follows.


    S!
    Go Handy & Give 'er Lolly

  • Memphis wrote:

    Regarding the Community Manager:

    I, as Community Manager, am still in my initial period and have joined the Cattle and Crops team in the middle of development. Therefore I can’t give you direct answers to content-related questions yet, meaning I have to coordinate with other team members to correctly depict certain features and content. At the same time I am responsible for direct support - emails, Facebook messages and private messages in the forum. This takes up a lot of my time. It also means that I can’t instantly or in a timely manner react to every topic. This will get better over time - especially after the start of the Early Access phase there will be more time for direct answers.


    Regarding updates:

    We would love to shower you with news, but even if an update seems to be very small, it costs resources which takes away from development and further delays the release.

    The reason is that we’re just a small team and we don’t have our own marketing department. The team members that are responsible for the creation of texts and updates are mostly also the programmers of CnC. So when we draft an update or a longer text, we are not able to code during this time. A text in which you have to mind what you write, how you write it, what you reveal, and all that in different languages - you can’t just do that off the cuff. Furthermore everything has to be posted: mails, homepage maintenance, all of this takes time, partly because we built and maintain all of the infrastructure like the comprehensive account system or the forum integration ourselves.

    During the Kickstarter campaign we had such a strong response that we decided to do very frequent news updates. This meant that during that time the development slowed down strongly, because - as mentioned above - the work wasn’t done by a marketing department but by ourselves as developers. Subsequently we had to dedicate ourselves to the development again of course. So it’s nowhere near laziness or even ignorance towards the community, but an active decision to put our resources into the development. In addition it’s important to us to avoid substantially redundant screenshots or texts. Instead we want to provide you with real news with every update. New content, new gameplay, new features - quality over quantity.

    While all of this describes the current situation, we are simultaneously planning - after the begin of the Early Access phase - to deliver more news and content. I think we all generally agree though: the release of Cattle and Crops has the highest priority at the moment.
    Thank you @Memphis for revealing your story and point of view. I am sure now everybody will understand MBB and ther strategy! I am really grateful that you responded.

  • ChiloopaBatman wrote:

    b101uk wrote:

    much ado about nothing..... :rolleyes:
    That's such a cognitive bias thing to say! You might not care, we are some that do, please be respectful about that. So please keep you snotty remarks to yourself in the future, we don't need this kind of salt in this community.
    Although I do agree with you Chiloopa, with the fact that this thread may not anything to b101uk but it apparently means something to a lot of other people besides just me and I made the because that's how I felt and I knew I wasn't the only one and if you want to be heard you need to say something. With that out of the way, I don't feel the need to "attack" someone for having a different opinion no matter how much that persons response may trigger you :)

    i5 4690k - 3,5 Ghz, EVGA gtx 1070 ftw hybrid - 8 gb vram, 16 gb 1600 Mhz ddr3 ram

    The post was edited 1 time, last by Jeytav ().

  • ChiloopaBatman wrote:

    b101uk wrote:

    much ado about nothing..... :rolleyes:
    That's such a cognitive bias thing to say! You might not care, we are some that do, please be respectful about that. So please keep you snotty remarks to yourself in the future, we don't need this kind of salt in this community.

    "we don't need this kind of salt in this community"

    :rolleyes:

    Some of you guys should look no further than some of your own comments in this thread, some real facepalm stuff in places, its like having kids in the car on a journey asking "are we there yet?" constantly because they are board/impatient and you haven't provided them with a comic, colouring book or other form of simple distraction every 20mins.

    sure there are many eloquent people in this thread and some good comments too, but this thread is nothing more than the usual suspects making a lot of noise stamping their feet, winding them selves up on the subject even more with every post creating a bigger pile of salt and negativity to the point a CM has to make a comment.

    then once a CM has made a comment (that many other people would have guessed along the lines of anyway) you all naturally capitulate after some warm air has been wafted up your collective arse.

    or in short, thus thread was:

    b101uk wrote:

    much ado about nothing.....

  • Well those aren't the kind of responses I was looking for/want to see.

    @Memphis @masterbrain would you be a dear and lock this thread and delete post number 48, 50(my own) and 51, because I fear that this thread will just go down the drain otherwise.

    While we wait for that I still want to ask you guys to keep this thread friendly. It's not that hard ;)

    Everyone is allowed to have an opinion, all I ask is that you wording of your opinions in a friendly and classy way in my threads.
    When you start becoming "hostile" with your opinions towards others etc you remove the peoples focus from the topic at hand and they start to respond in a manner that's related to the topic and that only leads to a less happy and constructive place, meaning that less people will contribute to the community, be it with threads where you ask developers why they aren't communicating and tell them how they can improve or threads where you praise the work they have done etc or relevant comments where they come up with arguments either against or for the topic that is being discussed.

    i5 4690k - 3,5 Ghz, EVGA gtx 1070 ftw hybrid - 8 gb vram, 16 gb 1600 Mhz ddr3 ram

    The post was edited 2 times, last by Jeytav ().

  • Hey mates, let it be. Situation was solved and it is uselles to argue. It has no sense.

    Please don't write again and tomorrow the heads will be calm.


    CPU Type - Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz
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    Win 7 64bit

  • b101uk wrote:

    ChiloopaBatman wrote:

    b101uk wrote:

    much ado about nothing..... :rolleyes:
    That's such a cognitive bias thing to say! You might not care, we are some that do, please be respectful about that. So please keep you snotty remarks to yourself in the future, we don't need this kind of salt in this community.
    "we don't need this kind of salt in this community"

    :rolleyes:

    Some of you guys should look no further than some of your own comments in this thread, some real facepalm stuff in places, its like having kids in the car on a journey asking "are we there yet?" constantly because they are board/impatient and you haven't provided them with a comic, colouring book or other form of simple distraction every 20mins.

    sure there are many eloquent people in this thread and some good comments too, but this thread is nothing more than the usual suspects making a lot of noise stamping their feet, winding them selves up on the subject even more with every post creating a bigger pile of salt and negativity to the point a CM has to make a comment.

    then once a CM has made a comment (that many other people would have guessed along the lines of anyway) you all naturally capitulate after some warm air has been wafted up your collective arse.

    or in short, thus thread was:

    b101uk wrote:

    much ado about nothing.....

    I think this is probably the most truthful statement I've seen to date on this forum/topic, well said b101uk, I think there are several reasons people are getting frustrated/itchy feet, call it what you like. I guess in a way It's hard for these guys to fully understand some of the issues mentioned above as they aren't aware of what is involved in making a complex game such as C&C which isn't perhaps there fault. This could be down to the fact they are purely just game players or just young enthusiasts. Anyway I think everything's been mentioned today by Memphis on what needs to be said

  • I don't know but it seems to me that MBB are over their heads with this development of C&C. From the looks of the that video they released it doesn't look very promising IMO. I will still give them the benefit of the doubt, but I am really concern about the finish product now. I want them to succeed very much but the lack of communication tells me that things ain't going so well..I hope I'm wrong.

  • nestoche wrote:

    I don't know but it seems to me that MBB are over their heads with this development of C&C. From the looks of the that video they released it doesn't look very promising IMO. I will still give them the benefit of the doubt, but I am really concern about the finish product now. I want them to succeed very much but the lack of communication tells me that things ain't going so well..I hope I'm wrong.
    What in the video? They have release a couple. And what worries you about the video?

    Concerning the communication, it has actually been improved since this post was made. The community manager is more visible and it seems that our concern have been taken to heart. That tells me these guys are serious and they care dearly about the community. These improvements has given me some peace of mind and restored a lot of faith in the project.

  • ChiloopaBatman wrote:

    nestoche wrote:

    I don't know but it seems to me that MBB are over their heads with this development of C&C. From the looks of the that video they released it doesn't look very promising IMO. I will still give them the benefit of the doubt, but I am really concern about the finish product now. I want them to succeed very much but the lack of communication tells me that things ain't going so well..I hope I'm wrong.
    What in the video? They have release a couple. And what worries you about the video?
    Concerning the communication, it has actually been improved since this post was made. The community manager is more visible and it seems that our concern have been taken to heart. That tells me these guys are serious and they care dearly about the community. These improvements has given me some peace of mind and restored a lot of faith in the project.
    Well, that good news they are communicating now. Thanks, I didn't go through this thread just the first few pages.

    The only video I know of is the one that had the tutorial missions. It looked a little choppy to me but maybe it was just the video. Also, the animation of the people looked funny but I know and hope that is just an early look and will improve later.

  • nestoche wrote:

    Well, that good news they are communicating now. Thanks, I didn't go through this thread just the first few pages.
    The only video I know of is the one that had the tutorial missions. It looked a little choppy to me but maybe it was just the video. Also, the animation of the people looked funny but I know and hope that is just an early look and will improve later.
    I think it looked fine, the people animations aren't the best, but honestly, I don't care. This is a farming game with a high focus on the realistic farming simulation experience (that being from driving a tractor, animal production or soil conditions) and not a GTA, Battlefield or The Witcher shooting or RPG style game where npc animations are important for immersion. Also, I doubt people animations are a high priority right now. machine, tool and soil work animations are more important at the moment.