I just am not as invested in them personally. My Public facing personality is not based around how infallible TFP are.
Your point being that I am a public facing personality based on the infallibility of TFP. In my opinion, your motivation in accusing me of something like this is to discount and dismiss anything I might say as merely a talking point. No, see, THAT is what a community manager does: damage control, customer appeasement, company prepared announcements, etc. A community manager would literally be the public face of the company.
Now what I am is personally friendly with the developers. I see them as people and I read their daily interactions with each other. I don't see them as faceless "developers" and instantly assume the worst possible motivations for what they do. I know they make mistakes and I don't agree with everything they have chosen to do with the game but I also know they are doing their best, the love this game, they love it when players are having fun with their designs, and they care very much about putting out a quality product that is successful both financially and as a lasting form of entertainment that many people will play for many years.
So I don't go right to, "They lied!", "They're lazy!", "They're just doing what's expedient", "They're scamming their customers", etc. I know that that isn't them after interacting with them daily for over 7 years. Do I think they are infallible? Of course not. Do I think they are real people and have respect for the creative process? Yes I do.
I don't WISH for them to be doing dismally. If you paid attention you'd see that I keep asking them to do things that would HELP THEM. like actually communicating. or hiring a community manager to do it for them.
The thing is they are not doing dismally. They don't need your HELP. You've shown your true colors about communication. If they communicate anything specific you use that against them if something changes or if there is a delay and accuse them of being deceitful about it. When a member of staff attempts to bolster morale you criticize that communication and ■■■■ on their thread. You just seem to want a specific person to attack and the ammunition to use.
The fact is the game is doing great, TFP is doing great, and your help is not needed. There is nothing dismal or failing happening here. There was one spike of negativity and TFP took notice and addressed it and now things are moving back to positive again from, you know, the rough numbers.
Not acknowledging that I am right about the road map...doesn't help.
But you're not right. Your position is that the whole thing is meaningless and not only that but that it was intentionally deceitful in its inception to scam console players into buying it. You are wrong. Why should TFP acknowledge such drivel?
The roadmap as a schedule is currentlyu outdated and meaningless. That much is true. But there was no malfeasance in creating those dates. They just got behind and are continuing to do so. There are and continue to be unforseen factors that cause delays. That is simply the nature of software design.
The roadmap as a milestone of content addition is still valid and very useful to help customers see the progress that has been made and to also know what is still to come. It is the most useful part of the roadmap, in my opinion. So the roadmap is not completely meaningless as you assert.
People widely regard the development schedule of this game as a joke...that got played on console.
Source? It is obvious that everyone everywhere discounts the dates at this point. But so far the content slated for each update has been spot on. Sure, people everywhere probably prefer that we get these things sooner rather than later. Only you take it the extremes you do.
Right now, it just looks like they are trying to do whatever is expedient, as long as PC can still fully mod it...it is good enough.
That is your own bias and fully an assumption based on no real evidence at all. It is what you choose to believe. Why is that explanation what you want to believe in?
In a many ways, what they have is genius, they have spent years building half a game...promising more...and letting modders fill in the blanks.
next year, change something up, add a few skins, some new poi (which i acknowledge are important to PC users because they have not gone thru each one 50 times yet) and let the modders build new stuff to fill in the new gaps.
rinse repeat...never really getting closer to finishing the game because...why would you? the people participating actively seem to really enjoy THAT instead of a finished game.
I reject your depiction of the years while the game was in early access. All one needs to do is watch a video of Alpha 5 gameplay and then Alpha 21 gameplay to see the real evidence of what was accomplished during those years of "rinse and repeat". This statement right here shows that you are not arguing in good faith because it is such huge mischaracterization of what the developers accomplished. Since 1.0 they have been following the roadmap to the letter as far as content is concerned so again your claim that they just add skins and POIs is just flatout wrong.
Then out of the blue they dropped a comprehensive road map and a release date for console.
Out of the blue? It was planned long before it happened. I'm not sure what you are trying to insinuate with this statement. There was a lot of communication about the new console release months before it happened.
Unfortunately they seem to think they can just plow thru the 18 months, not even get 2.0 finished, and some of us would not be looking at them funny. Like maybe they should change their bs.
I've noticed you make this claim that "2.0 isn't finished" several times now. I don't agree. 2.3 is a different build than 2.0 was. 2.0 was finished months ago. You might be holding off playing until 2.6 but that doesn't make all these new builds 2.0.
Just so you know, internally the version all these changes come from are 3.0. They cull safe changes from 3.0 and push them out as a 2.x feature. So technically, 2.x updates are closer to 3.0 than they are 2.0.
I suspect that what you're doing is building a narrative for yourself that "2.0" wasn't actually released until whatever future date the final 2.x update drops all so you can claim the developers lied even harder about the roadmap dates. Sorry, no. 2.0 released in July.
I'd should also add...the majority of the 20 million...did not buy in until what 2017-2018? it's not quite as long as you have asserted, maybe the last 7-8 years 16-18 million people bought in...likely at a severe discount on steam and left.
So what? Okay, let's say 2 years. How many games in our libraries do we still regularly play after 2 years? The point is that 7 Days to Die has immense replay value and the numbers show on Steam charts that it is still very much a part of many many gamers' playtime even years after they bought it. Do many other play it once and then move on to other games? Of course they do-- just like every other video game they own.
It isn't a failure for people to play a game once for 20 hours and then move on. That is descriptive of almost every game in the industry. But in addition to that, this game seems to have real staying power for many gamers.
i am just using the publicly available numbers...as rough as they are...and NO I don't want it to be true. maybe it's only 14-16 million....it's still the greater bulk. I'd take you seriously if you actually addressed the content, but, you rarely ever really do. Just cherry pick and dismiss. We both know I am not entirely wrong, but, if you won't argue in good faith...what's the point in engaging with me?
It is because they are rough that it is telling how you would like things to come down. It is telling for me. I'm hopeful and optimistic and so when I see the rough numbers I see how they show success and good things for the future. You are angry about the direction and pessimistic and believe the developers are dishonest so you see the rough numbers and interpret them to show failure and doom.
To each their own, I guess.
