Most people are complaining now.
It's been a long time since some of us started to ask for a better communication and a better engagement of the community in the process.
It's just a shame that they never give us any kind of "informations". They promised a feedback about the data they gathered monthes ago but I guess the community doesn't deserve it.
They analyse our data, they read our feedback and suggestions and even on small things : they don't answer. The community involved in the game doesn't deserve any kind of communication.
We're turning in circle talking about the same things again and again, trying to think about everything, racking our brains, to fine-tune our suggestions but they obviously just don't care.
We are just tools that they use at their convenience and nothing more
It certainly seems that way.
Engagement could be better. We can't claim that they don't listen at all, they do seem to address common complaints with their patchnotes. I believe, a more guided moderation in this forum towards certain themes and problem-solutions would yield significant better feedback, and it would be fairly easy to implement, there are certainly volunteers on this board that would agree to do so for no cost. The administrative extra effort would be minimal. In other words, it would be very efficent.
With warm regards
-Ben Thunder
There's
a lot of very common complaints that haven't been addressed.
I was thinking about this, and the more I thought about, the more I figured there's no upside for larian to engage directly. No matter what they say, there will be pushback, etc., and it's just a time-sink that could well make people more frustrated.
It's a lose-lose position for both us and them, what we have now is an L for us, and if they did engage, it's probably an L for everyone. Not engaging, while frustrating, might be the least-worst option
Why use Early Access then?
Community involvement is a cornerstone of Early Access, and collecting game data doesn't suffice.
I agree with Colin18 that there’s no upside to direct engagement for Larian. Not just because it would take resources away from other projects, but because communication implies commitment.
At this point in the process, I don’t think the devs are sure what will be included in the final game. They’re probably trying out systems, re-writing story arcs, designing areas and charactes that could end up being cut. In a GDC conference about DoS2, Sven said Larian had to cut the scope of the game by two thirds in the final months.
Coming out now and making declarative statements about what will come in EA hampers Larian’s abilities to change their minds, which is a crucial aspect of game development. Especially (and I’m guessing, here) with a couple of years left in the development process.
Not saying I like it. Just saying I get it.
There are things that very likely won't change in the final game, yet they won't improve them based on feedback, and apparently, people mentioned the same things when Original Sin II was in Early Access.
As for making statements about what will come hindering their ability to change their minds, they could just say, "We're thinking about doing this or that, but we're not sure" or "We might drastically change some things later".
As I am still waiting for Patch 6, I have been reflecting on the EA experience.
I'm also waiting for Patch 6, so I long for more communication.
Patch 7?
Regarding how Larian takes their feedback, this is something I wonder about. How many people actually post here on these forums, on a regular basis? I feel like I keep seeing the same names over and over again. There can't be *that* many people here giving feedback. Compared to say, something like Youtube, where individual channels can get enormous numbers of comments, both in live chats and in the comment fields. I imagine Larian is probably taking a lot of feedback from those comments, if only because there's *so* many of them.
And surely Larian's taking feedback from how people are actually playing the game. Kind of a passive level of feedback, right?
Which leaves this place. Sure, there's probably more depth to the feedback here, but I don't know that it's inherently more useful to Larian than other sources they have at their disposal.
There are people giving feedback on the Steam forums as well, but they don't seem to be given much consideration there either.
Which brings up another problem: where should people be giving feedback on the game, or rather, which place is being mainly looked at by Larian for feedback?
Here? The Feedback link in the launcher? Steam? Twitter? Discord? YouTube?
As for Larian taking feedback from how people are playing the game, I doubt that's very helpful when there are problems with the UI, systems and dialogue.
It probably just tells them that few people are making certain dialogue choices, a spell isn't being used often, an action is being used a lot, an area is too difficult, etc.
