A lack of information and AWOL CMs

Let's open the floor to speculation and conjecture, since the CMs won't give us much to work with.

Where is the post-mobile plan?

If this even existed to begin with, I expect it has been obliterated due to being wildly out of synch with the post-mobile reality. There are loads of bugs in the mobile (some of them quite serious) and they need to be resolved. Also, after the initial high-fives and champagne following the successful launch of the iOS version, 22Cans are probably starting to panic that revenue is now dropping and the next major content update to maintain player retention is not in sight.

When is the PC sprint?

One of the CMs mentioned on the Steam forum a few days ago that they still don't really know what they're going to do with the PC version, so there's the answer to most questions really. Some horrible slapped-together bits and pieces will be pushed out to the PC over the coming months to try and prove they haven't forgotten about it but I imagine we'll largely be stuck with the balancing tool (when and if that emerges) for a very long time. The PC sprint is on an indefinite delay while the mobile gets sorted.

What design work has been done for the PC sprint?

None.

Where is hubworld at?

Asks the finance manager of 22Cans, tugging nervously at his collar as perspiration runs down his face. Last we heard about this they hadn't even figured out how Hubworld is all going to fit together, let alone implemented it in a workable way.

Where's the communication gone?

A combination of focusing resources on testing/answering support calls, and not wanting to deal with the community as they don't have answers to any of our questions (at least no answers they dare to confess).

@Gmr Leon - I don't know what you're using to back up your assumption on their post-mobile plan. But given the information I have available to me, they infact do not have any significant plans outside of "We really need to work on our player retention and get more iOS players to do IAPs."

This isn't even speculation on my part, this is purely going off of observation. The extend to which they may or may not have gone into working out these problems are something that we can't really go into - as that results in a lot of speculation on whether or not 22cans has indeed formulated more of a plan there by now.
But I've yet to see any indication that they do have something worked out regarding the generation of new content.


Simply put, from where I'm sitting the 22cans design team has forgotten to (or purposefully chosen NOT to) design a game while they were designing their monetization.

Much like many additions and changes before, they are focusing on quick-fix bandaids to deal with problems at hand rather than spending some time and effort on resolving the underlying issues that caused those problems.
The balance tools being a GREAT example for that. We have balance issues because the game effectively is a collection of loose and disjointed game mechanics thrown together in a box.

Now rather than taking these individual mechanics and making them work together. 22cans intends to give *US* the ability to alter the balancing to make the game more playable. While ignoring the larger problem of these disjointed mechanics and lack of content.
Granted, doing so would potentially give them time to generate that lacking content while buying time as we occupy ourselves with these self-management tools. However that isn't necessarily conclusive.


Regarding your mention of Matthews stream - I'd recommend visiting his twitch channel and look at his past broadcasts (you can watch some of it back that isn't muted by twitch's latest attempts to make VODs copyright friendly).


Now if you ask me. There are a handful of major problems that 22cans has to deal with.

• First and foremost there's the elephant in the room called Hubworld. Nobody really knows what is going on - but I think its safe to assume that the problem lies with connectivity. Getting people to be able to play together reliably.
  
• Problem #2 is mostly a PC one, though is also present on mobile going forward. Which is balancing. Getting the loose and disjointed mechanics to work together and then balance them to get an entertaining and cohesive whole. Balancing is tricky when lacking some (most?) of your final content however.
• Which brings is to #3 - the lack of game content. The focus so far has been to generate more of what is already there to occupy people. But more voyages and more expansion will only get you so far. Without introducing new game mechanics and better game mechanics into the game. People will inevitably get bored. Some just take longer to get there.
  
• And lastly, the one that spans the crown above the former 3 points. Communication. Something we've all been trying to drag out of them for the duration of development and probably the core issue that has resulted in all the negativity surrounding Godus.
  

That's what I think too. I wish they'd just admit it and stop hiding like they promised not to do.

I did not make a mistake, I backed a game. I offered input.  I was not given what was promised. I got ignored. I offered input. I got ignored. I won't say I made a single mistake, unless you count backing on good faith.

I'll make an effort to post more often, here and on all the other forums too. We might not always have much to offer in terms of extremely detailed updates, but we generally try to be present even if it means sometimes we're just lurking. Some of this stems from the fact that we've been looking at what our next steps and sprints are going to entail and since that was being discussed there wasn't anything final to really compose any posts or blogs about. I did chat about us having these discussions around the Steam forums I think, but today was the first time I even got a look at what the next sprint even encompasses. And George was out of the office for a couple of weeks and then last week was playing a ton of catch up from that, which is totally understandable. Not trying to throw you under the bus, George, I promise!

I read the forums a lot but I don't always reply to each and every post. So I totally appreciate that there's been an appeal in how 22cans communicates in the last week, which Jack replied to via one of the members heading much of that up (Gmr). That, plus the aforementioned settling back in the office going on as well as finalizing all the details of the next sprint so that might be why things seemed a bit more quiet than usual I suppose. Which isn't so much an excuse as it is me just giving an update on the lack of updates I s'pose. Oh, and as far as I know we're still interested in providing an updated roadmap.

That said, please please continue the current spirit of communication that recent threads and posts have been trying to promote. Although these wheels turn slower than we or even I would sometimes like, they are turning. Evident by Jack chiming in like he did. Other than Jack, we also have more 22cans staffers posting in the forums than has ever happened before. While they don't always post daily, in the last month we've had Conor, Dave, Fabs, Aynen, Muir, myself, and George popping up in various discussions here and there. And we'll probably be able to get a few others to swing in and post.




No worries, Gmr! And yeah, we were pretty chuffed about getting the balancing tool stuff considered and approved. I don't remember the exact words George used when he shared the news with me, but it was along the lines that it was a sign we were starting to truly embrace what Early Access could be. Which can't happen just from the release of this one mod tool; I'm not trying to position this as the golden goose, but rather as a positive step and eventual lead up to however the PC sprint is handled.

*smokes bubble pipe*

My assumption is grounded in the roadmap. Simply because it's outdated doesn't mean that the content laid out there isn't still planned. As I said, I don't know what details they have worked out, but it's stupidly simple to imagine what they intend for the content side of things. More ages, more voyages, more gifts, and so on. Left unmentioned but a good possibility given mobile feedback is expanding the Homeworld size, giving the Astari proper depth and balance to not make it almost entirely necessary to kill them all, and so on.

The problem lays in how they want to deal with the details of these different elements and how to roll them out to us in any way that won't just have us bashing them some more. Otherwise the content's mostly a no-brainer, it's just a matter of getting to it and working out all the details. This fits in precisely with your own thoughts. How do we improve retention? Give them more Homeworld to expand across. How do we get them to use IAPs more? We make a slightly cheaper gift to buy to place around to boost Happiness. Following all this, move on to the bigger stuff like ages.

In general I think we agree, it's just I'm more comfortable seeing broad strokes as being somewhat substantive in their indications of what's up, whereas you want more of the meat which is entirely reasonable...Well, in normal situations. In this situation, I feel the reasonable response is the roundabout nearly irrational, but patient, response. Like I've said before, trying to think of this in average terms leads you astray, you gotta think like a madman or something. (Attending Whispering Rock really did teach me something!)

And this is the bulk of it. Those of us who have tried to be patient with the situation aren't really to blame, besides standing on the sidelines nodding to every angry rant that popped up because, well, it's not like we were terribly happy with how things were going either. While I'm not sure to what extent many that have been about the community are accustomed to the brashness of online discourse (if you can call it that), those of us that have been around forums/comment sections for awhile had no real reason to expect this to have any huge effect on development, especially considering plenty of games catch this sort of flak on a daily basis. Even more, it's Molyneux, we figured he was extremely used to this kind of trashtalking by now, considering how his past works have gone over with people and how he always seems to rebound eventually, admitting the faults in his decisions albeit often awhile afterward.

That doesn't excuse either some of the community's behavior (much of the worst of which have grown tired of mocking the whole development and have left by now, for the most part, from what I can tell) or 22cans', but I think it makes it somewhat more understandable. Who would have expected this from a seasoned veteran of the gaming industry? It's one thing for some relative newcomers to the industry to retreat away (e.g. most recently, Notch, semi-infamously, Fez's creator), but for someone many like to call a top game developer and even a legendary designer, it seems incredible. It'd be like if Sid Meier kickstarted a game and withdrew from some utterly nasty rants about his game, people wouldn't believe it. I think that's why much of the community has such a hard time with this situation, it just seems thoroughly unbelievable.

That being said, we've got nothing much to lose from trying to improve the situation so that we can maybe see where this game is going and maybe get ourselves heard more so that we may influence its development. After all when you go into a Molyneux venture, I think it's safe to say that you must be ready to experience the thoroughly unbelievable, whether that's in what's found in the game or, it would seem, the developer to community interactions.

I know you're not looking for a response from me or anything, but from my perspective, I don't think things will fully reset until we pass off the questions to them and then not rip them to shreds over what we receive in return, despite however much we may find ourselves wanting to. I realize that's also probably not what you want to hear, but I think that's sort of the situation we find ourselves in, much to our dismay.

No worries, hardly, no offense taken. Part of the docs I looked at today included a plan for the next few months (around three) and according to that doc Hubworld is a few sprints away. I imagine the design of hubworld will start to become a bit more evident once we approach the hubworld sprint itself. These docs are current as of the last 24 hours, so I don't think there's any risk of hubworld getting the axe. Though, to be fair, its associated sprint is further down the pipeline than I think any of us intended when we first starting talking about time frames with the community some months ago. So I completely understand if this "new and updated, no really, for realz" time line spurs some raised eyebrows, but I'm just reporting on what I saw in the docs I read today. 

Regarding the relationship reset and its associated proviso, are we talking about Gmr's latest thread? That was posted five days ago (September 10th) and Jack sent a personal email to Gmr two days later (September 12th) and it seems that right now they're organizing a series of questions to send back for a half hour Q&A video. Also, now that a handful of the most recent docs were put in George and I's hands for the first time today, I suspect we'll be able to provide some additional updates now that we've had a day to comb over all the info.

Trying to usher in a culture shift in communication is great and I've been pretty vocal about how I do genuinely hope it'll do some good. It'll just take more than 5 days to turn it completely around though. And yes, the sooner the better. Totally. But as awesome as the community team can often be, there's some things that are out of even our hands.

Well, there's long sprints and short sprints, and we've actually got two sprints that are in progress as we speak. So it varies as to how many sprints we can knock out in any given three month period. I'll probably have more granular detail to share tomorrow on the next three months once I get through all the docs and once everyone starts comparing notes tomorrow.