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Keenan

Regarding our silence

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Hello all.

 

First, let me apologize for the lack of communication from all of us here. The fact of the matter is that we’ve all been quite busy dealing with life issues, which isn’t an excuse for not communicating. 

 

Second, I want you all to know that we hear you.

 

It’s frustrating for all of us, customers and developers alike. Life can hit you hard, and with how small of a team we are, we simply do not have the resources to cover things like medical emergencies and deaths of friends. Things that require time off, often times suddenly and without warning.

 

We continue to keep a keen eye on the forums for your feedback, and regardless, we are very grateful for it. We have developers, volunteers and contractors alike, who have been working diligently on new and exciting projects behind the scenes. I can’t share them yet, but I do want you all to know that work has not stopped. Slowed, yes. Stopped? Not at all.

 

The last thing I want to say is just a reminder to everyone that we’re all people here. I’ve seen a lot of hate and vitriol thrown at staff, some of whom have nothing to do with the frustrations at hand. I’m not saying you can’t express your feelings, but I am asking for some civility in doing so.

 

That’s all from me,

 

Please stay safe.

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18 minutes ago, Rhianna said:

Thank you Keenan, update much appreciated.

+1  🙂

 

Yes.  Thank you, Keenan.

 

Maybe a lesson that could be learned from this is that GCG needs a "pinch hitter" from among their staff, who can simply and quickly step in when stuff happens to inform the customer base that service is disrupted and it is temporary.  We have no right to expect details, so the notification could be one sentence long - followed up at reasonable intervals.

Edited by TheTrickster
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Thank you for sharing this with us. I've been silently following the issue for a bit and am glad to see a resolution that hopefully everyone can enjoy. 

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1 hour ago, TheTrickster said:

Maybe a lesson that could be learned from this is that GCG needs a "pinch hitter" from among their staff, who can simply and quickly step in when stuff happens to inform the customer base that service is disrupted and it is temporary.

 A communications representative would certainly help

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Thank so much for the transparency we've been wanting. ❤️ This is a great step and I hope to see it more. 

 

4 hours ago, Keenan said:

It’s frustrating for all of us, customers and developers alike. Life can hit you hard, and with how small of a team we are, we simply do not have the resources to cover things like medical emergencies and deaths of friends. Things that require time off, often times suddenly and without warning.

Please just keep us posted on these things. I don't think it needs to be specifics, but at least a post from a dev saying they need to take some time off for real life problems would be a fantastic step towards improving transparency. As customers we really want to know how much the game that we pay for is being worked on, and as a bonus how it's being worked on.

 

4 hours ago, Keenan said:

We have developers, volunteers and contractors alike, who have been working diligently on new and exciting projects behind the scenes.

Could you talk about at least one of these? I'm not sure the behind the scenes strategy is a beneficial approach for any of us. Sure it's cool I guess to be "surprised" when it's all done and dusted, but the journey is what we've been complaining about and under a behind the scenes system we're just going to be in the dark the entire time and then complain when it releases cause it seems to have lacked simple testing and there are bugs causing terrain to change elevation randomly causing huge harm to everyone. Feels to me like the "behind the scenes" approach is one of the problems in transparency between us.  

 

 

[ESPECIALLY with a big update causing a LOT of problems. That is the BIGGEST time for transparency like this.]

 

Thank you again for everything that you do for the game ❤️  and I hope we can all work together civilly to improve the space that everyone seems to have been complaining about for a long time.

 

Additional pluses 

- More responses to Bug reports such as "Added to our TODO list", "Could you please provide more information about how to replicate this bug?", "We are currently looking into this.", etc.

- More responses to Feedback such as challenging the idea, asking for more thought in certain areas, explain what concerns the team has for some ideas, mention how it will be added to a TODO list, mention that it's currently being worked on, etc.

- Polling the community more often for something like the direction of development "Hey guys based on your feedback we're thinking about making the next update one of these 5 ideas. Which would you like to see?"

Edited by Zuelatak
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3 hours ago, TheTrickster said:

+1  🙂

 

Yes.  Thank you, Keenan.

 

Maybe a lesson that could be learned from this is that GCG needs a "pinch hitter" from among their staff, who can simply and quickly step in when stuff happens to inform the customer base that service is disrupted and it is temporary.  We have no right to expect details, so the notification could be one sentence long - followed up at reasonable intervals.

You're referring to a community manager, which wurm has had for the past uh, almost six+ years, and before that it was Public Relations. It's only been the past couple of months with RL getting in the way of general communication. 

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9 minutes ago, Archaed said:

You're referring to a community manager, which wurm has had for the past uh, almost six+ years, and before that it was Public Relations. It's only been the past couple of months with RL getting in the way of general communication. 

No, I am not.  I am specifically referring to someone other than a community manager.  Or at least other than our community manager.  We have ONE community manager, and it is not fair to that one person to expect that when their world is tilted that they be the one who has to come here and explain that they are currently unable to come here.  It is commonly called contingency planning  - a part of risk management that is vital to continued enterprize.

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6 minutes ago, TheTrickster said:

No, I am not.  I am specifically referring to someone other than a community manager.  Or at least other than our community manager.  We have ONE community manager, and it is not fair to that one person to expect that when their world is tilted that they be the one who has to come here and explain that they are currently unable to come here.  It is commonly called contingency planning  - a part of risk management that is vital to continued enterprize.

Agreed. If Demona is incapable of doing her job because of real life problems then there should be at least one person that can step in to give us a post like this, but much much sooner. Her not being available is not an excuse to stop updating us about what's happening. 

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5 hours ago, Zuelatak said:

Agreed. If Demona is incapable of doing her job because of real life problems then there should be at least one person that can step in to give us a post like this, but much much sooner. Her not being available is not an excuse to stop updating us about what's happening. 

Assistant Community Manager to step in in case something happens? This is kinda the same issue I have at my current company because they refuse to hire additional staff, I'm the single person working in my department. If I get sick or can't go to work, there's no one to step in and do my job, at least not as efficiently. 

This is a general company issue that fails to see the need for failsafes or backup plans, not the fault of a dev or the CM himself. 

We all go through ###### in life and at one point we simply can't do our jobs, or by doing or jobs we'd actually make our personal situation / trauma worse (by avoiding it).

 

But I appreciate the response and I hope we'll get more transparency in the future. The pandemic has also affected the playerbase not just the staff, and everyone is on edge as a result. People come into Wurm for fun and escapism and for many that fun can be soured when you see the AH lottery rolled against you or you login just to  slaughter more baby horses. 

Not trying to defend / offend anyone just stating facts, people are at an all time high in anxiety and nerves due to how things are in RL.  

Edited by elentari
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What I wonder is why isn't the team using Slack/MS Teams/etc.. for communication/meetings etc, afaik both are free or with some mild limitations for small groups.

(I'm not really asking, rather suggesting if that's not a thing so far and if in-team communication can help - there are probably plenty of other apps offering free service for small teams)

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Thank you Keenan for sharing this....

Life always comes first!! 

Nobody has to justify himself for medical emergencies or deaths of friends, etc..

 

There is so mutch to do in Wurm that new content is not so important in times like this.

 

Thanks to the team for what you have created until now!

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Just want to send love to you all. And thank-you for maintaining and updating this great game, we all appreciate what you do. ❤️

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i don't browse the forums as often as i once did so have only just caught up.
if there's been any nastiness from people that know what's been going on please.. take the time to consider what's actually real and be humbled by it.
show some compassion.

Edited by Steveleeb
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I don't look to close on the forum for 4 days and the whole thing have caught enough fire and flame that we get more staff response than in the last 2 month? Damn to late for popcorn I guess. But good to hear from you, personal life of course come first, and I hope you all do well. But with this massage, can we anticipate that things are getting back on track now? How does the current schedule look? I guess fixing the problems with the AH update is top prio but is there a timeframe for this or is it so complex that it's hard to pin down what have going wrong that it's not to say when it is possible to implement a fix?

For the improvement of communication, how about a monthly/quarterly Dev report? A lot of Indi Devs do something like this since they can't produce updates in a fast pace to show off some of the working processes, getting early feedback of a few things  and calm their communities by showing that there is at least slow progress towards the next thing.

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5 hours ago, Steveleeb said:

i don't browse the forums as i once did so have only just caught up.
if there's been any nastiness from people that know what's been going on please.. take the time to consider what's actually real and be humbled by it.
show some compassion.

 

Well said Steve.

 

The nastiness directed against Demona was uncalled for.

 

A lot of folks were upset by Animal Husbandry update and pain it caused, but that is not an excuse to abuse the PR person, who's job it is to announce what she is given to announce.

 

There is a constructive way to request the Dev's to remedy an "improvement" that is causing game wide upset and discontent, and to get them revert it back to what made the long distance travel aspect of the game enjoyable.

 

Speaking as a Former CA Staff member, the non-constructive way of throwing a temper snit and becoming an abusive Troll, who resorts to name calling, rudeness and more deprived behavour is just NOT acceptable.

 

We, players and staff alike, do have Real Lives.   I do fully understand how RL can demand the attention of a person and cause them to set Game Playing aside.

 

Skyefox and I are undergoing this distraction at this time as we spend each weekend moving from our old house to our new house over the next six months.  Our thanks to folks who have been patient and understanding of the few delays in updating the Albia Roads Map of Indy over the past 4 months this has caused.

 

In closing, Thank you Keenan for your response.  Welcome home, Wurm's been waiting.

 

Fraternally yours,

Hughmongus

Industrial Paramedic (in RL)

Cartographer of Indy (in the gaming world)

 

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I think the frustration for me and the reason I stopped playing is, as a Dev in the finance industry, I constantly have to show my customers what I am working on and provide status updates.  Even if those updates are why we are dropping the process completely due to either it not being possible or it just being to complex an ask for the value created.    Small updates on what is being done, like the fort night updates go along way to giving us the feeling of inclusion and not being in the dark. 

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This is a business model that has customers buy in.. why does it seem so personal?

Internal issues should not be an issue that us customers need to be affected or aware of.

I think this is alittle untidy and comes off more as if customers are hitting nerves.

(Where i do understand your focus is the community -- but thats more from a point where data/feedback
is generated to ensure future updates align to customer satisfaction.)

 

This is a business model guys -- if you guys are facing issues IRL -- guess what -- we all are?!

Its about managing your time and deliverables...

 

Sorry i dont really give a damn but these last 2 posts have nothing to do with the game...

 

I appreciate all the hard work and effort of the team irrespective.

 

Looking forward to timeously updates.

Edited by SirEvo
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pretty much the same post over and over again. just lock this out.

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55 minutes ago, Holar said:

pretty much the same post over and over again. just lock this out.

There's hardly any toxicity at the moment. It's good to see the posts over and over again because it shows how many people share the same frustrations and how much we want change. Honestly I don't even understand why threads get locked. If there are certain posts that lead to the decision of locking a thread then can we just address those specific posts instead of shutting down all further discussion? If we don't get the opportunity to voice our thoughts and feelings then how will we ever be heard?

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23 hours ago, Keenan said:

First, let me apologize for the lack of communication from all of us here. The fact of the matter is that we’ve all been quite busy dealing with life issues, which isn’t an excuse for not communicating. 

Actually something I forgot to add in my first post, but can you provide us some insight on how you plan to improve your work environment so that this doesn't happen? If you admit that this was a problem and apologize for it then the next step should be taking actions to prevent it. Otherwise, we're bound to be here again for the same reasons in a few months. 

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