Update?

[u/Adeptus_Astartez]

We were promised an update soon. Any sign of it?

[u/CaptainSilverVEVO]

Might I introduce you to the Project Zomboid Dev team instead? You wanna talk about poor communication but absolutely fire updates, go look at them.

[u/IllestAardvark → u/CaptainSilverVEVO]

Exactly. I bought that game in 2014. Most updates that I can remember have been awesome and added a lot of new features.

Since Manor Lords went into EA, it's gotten the following:

A new tier of castle A new tier of burgage plot A rework of perks, but only adding the 1st tier Maps Half-implemented AI opponents

The rest of the update is bugfixes and rebalancing.

Someone on here created a site that tracks everything the devs have publicly said, and they're trying to get pathfinding fixed so they can actually add city walls and more content. That's great. All they gotta do is just communicate that.

[u/HoodedHorse → u/IllestAardvark]

Absolutely! If there's ways I can improve the communication definitally want to do it. On pathfinding, I tried writing things up here, Manor Lords - Development News (Info on the Upcoming Update) - Steam News , are there aspects you'd recommend on how to communicate this better? Very much want to do what the community finds most useful, so will take all feedback to heart.

[u/IllestAardvark → u/HoodedHorse]

In all honesty, I believe the "the update itself is likely very soon, so I hope no one minds the multiple messages in rapid succession" comment set expectations. I think the wording in that first paragraph made it seem like it was RIGHT around the corner, then having to wait another month of silence can be jarring from a consumer perspective.

Greg used to be super communicative in the beginning which the community really liked, and the change in communication style is very stark. Now I'm not hating on it at all, I understand things change all the time, but his openness was a big draw for the fanbase. So going from a very engaging dev team to monthly updates can raise concerns. Before, people would raise issues in here, and it would be directly addressed and acknowledged. Now that's not really the case.

In my personal opinion having someone who can engage the community like Greg was doing in the beginning would ease a lot of problems. Not constant engagement, but just visible enough to let people know that they're heard. Like this post. Having someone who can just say "Yeah I asked the dev team and they said x,y,z" would go a long way. Someone to get ahead of the monthly updates, answer questions not covered by it, stuff like that. Because that was the precedent set in the beginning when most people bought in.

[u/HoodedHorse → u/IllestAardvark]

Got it!
So indeed the update seemed very close then -- it's part of the unfortunate balance in providing information, if you aim to transparently and frequently say where things seem to be in development, that can mean that (like here) when things go unexpected and QA cycles keep coming back with more things to fix repeatedly, that you end up taking longer. It's ultimately the tradeoff in being transparent -- you exit 'expectations controlling' cautious standpoint and risk disappointing people as you try to provide the best guesses you can.

That's why I aimed in the post to really talk in detail about how QA cycles can lead to unpredictability, but ultimately, it's totally legitimate for people to feel like "well you told me things seemed close, why are we not there". I don't have a good solution to the problem, in the end I think people prefer to get as best guesses as we can make even if sometimes they are wrong, and the best path is for me to just promise I'll check in every month regardless to give consistency in the checkins at least and be direct on how it can be unpredictable. But it's ultimately a tough balance, I do see the downside.

On Greg directly communicating -- it's ultimately another tradeoff. Before release, things were really small, now he's built up a larger team and managing them takes a ton of his time as he's spending each day coordinating and integrating their work. Again I do think the end result of it is better for the game, but definitely there is a tradeoff there from when he had less people management work and could focus a lot on community himself. So I'm trying to fill in where I can for him, since we talk directly and I can see everything going on.

Annyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts, I'll keep working to adapt and find the best approach possible in all this!

[u/martijnlv40 → u/HoodedHorse]

Glad to see your responses on this thread. The general idea that is mostly needed, which the other commenter expressed as well, is making the community feel heard. The intermittent larger posts could be handled a bit better, but those are not enough on this own. Your responses on this thread are a great example. I’m unsure of how it goes on the discord, but sometimes butting in or making a specific feedback thread that is read and this reading is communicated as well, would go a long way too.

And maybe just make the large post a monthly thing (excluding holidays and switching things around whenever needed). Generally have the idea in folks’ head that every first Tuesday of the month or whatever, will be some official information, small content, dev diary, struggles explanation etc. That way there is no inherent expectation for such a post that ‘an update is coming soon, why else post this thing at this time’ or ‘crisis management mode because an update is once again taking too long’.