More communication with the community
complete
Slaynash
Hello! I think there is still a huge problem with the game communication. We don't really often hear news or planned feature on the discord, and it's very difficult to talk to an admin if this doesn't really help impact them.
The last game update was two weeks ago, where some little features were implemented, but it's been like forever since we ever heard something about some features that much people are waiting for (like VRCUdon and many more).
It's also been 8 months since the last Developer Update (youtube), and 2 months since the last Twitch stream.
You can also notice that many member of the VRChat team have them Discord DM closed (except Tupper and Gunter as far as I know) which isn't really normal in a social game like VRChat.
One other problem is that most of the time we don't get any response to our mails. This is true for the mails to apply for a job, but also for the mails to moderation@/hello@.
I also think the team should play a little more in public worlds. It's been more than a year since I started playing, and I have like never been in the same room as one of them (maybe I haven't been lucky).
So, at least try to communicate a bit more on what you are doing, so the community know how far you are on each planned feature, maybe try to hire another (discord) community manager so Tupper don't have to do all the work alone, and (this is a little bit off-topic) try to take more in consideration the security problems that outside devs/modders report to you
I really hope this will make things better. Have a nice day o/
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Tupper - VRChat Head of Community
complete
Since this post, we've greatly expanded our methods and frequency of communication. Since there's been no comments or posts in here for over a year, let's call this complete!
As a side note: as someone who leaves their Discord DMs open,
do not expect VRChat development team members to leave their Discord DMs open.
That's my personal choice, and I actively encourage team members to close theirs if they get overwhelmed with messages. There are proper ways to communicate with the dev team-- these feedback boards, help tickets, etc.As a sidenote to a sidenote: Developers having their Discord DMs open to messages from anyone is by far and large
not
normal in any game, social or not. :PAev
Merged in a post:
Listening better about what the community wants
FuzzyFoxe
I was suggested to make a canny post about this from another issue that was brought up that I had posted on. So here it is.
Many people have been noticing that many very simple features have been either on hold (for a long time), being absolutely ignored, or "we know what's best for you, we want to solve it -this- way".
When 800+ people upvote something on here, and you outright say you're going to do the opposite of what was requested, people get upset. (Ex. manual volume controls for individuals, not auto)
This is not the only issue, but it is one that's still fresh in my mind.
All it takes is looking around the canny and seeing what has been replied to by developers and what was decided, to see what has been going on.
Many have been deemed unnecessary or in-progress. Some just have no response.
We get it if it's not possible in the current system, we can understand. However, if you don't respond with transparency, many end up just thinking you're jaded and don't care.
This is a social game. Many social features however, have not been implemented, either at all, or -very- poorly.
Many more people complain about it in-game than they do on the canny because they either lack the capability to put it out in text, or simply are too lazy to make an account. I'm looking to speak for them over these issues.
If the devs are having problems, let the community know. Make it public. We're far more forgiving if you act like humans. Crap happens. But if you keep staying mostly silent, no one will know what is going on. You need to talk to the public more. People don't think you care.
I'm giving you guys the benefit of the doubt at this time. That's why I'm not drilling hard about assumptions. But obviously something needs to change. There's many talented and -very- knowledgeable people in the community, and it would be a shame to not listen to what they have requested. We're not just a bunch of kids whining, there's many adults who have jobs and many of them actually work doing coding, social media marketing, and even have their own businesses. You're not the only ones capable of managing a community.
If the devs are unsure how to achieve something, just say so. Someone might be able to suggest something. Make this more open to technical discussion. But above all else, don't ignore your community. We know the game is free and all, but that is no excuse to ignore the community you have started.
Lucifer MStar
I Think they need to not hide as much info as they are and share more in detail. I think they have been trying to make the effort with the streams but there isn't much information in them.
I'll upvote this just for the idea of better communication.
ElfMom
more communication with the community on it's needs and what the community wants would be nice too. They've been extremely bad at this. very much the "no, we know what's best for you, screw what you want or what you think" in regards to many things the community at large seems to be concerned with or want
ElfMom
I feel you. I have never seen a dev team this out of touch with the community, and in a SOCIAL game, no less. Which makes it especially embarrassing. The last big dev stream was literally just stuff we already knew, "udon soon tm" and Ron talking about hopes and dreams. No real communication was had. And all the while Tupper is stuttering around like a stop motion puppet because the networked IK was poorly rushed out the door to meet the Questchat release. And I dont really recall that being addressed in any significant fashion.
Hell. It's been just past one month exactly, since the Networked Ik was reintroduced, and it's gamebreaking, literally gamebreaking flaws have not been addressed outside of "we're aware of it." Sure, I get it, fixes don't grow on trees. But you;d think for something this big a deal they'd find
some
way of patching it up in less than an actual month. When they broke fullbody, you can bet they fixed that within the day.It always seems like the only things that ever get any proper attention outside of their own internal ideas and concepts, are things their investors want, (Im convinced the Quest port of vrchat is solely due to some kind of investor request, I refuse to believe the dev team would be that out of touch as to have decided that themselves) that streamers want or benefit from.
Things such as introducing an actual class system in a social game, and in fact, blocking and moderating viewable avatar components by class. And they are totally tonedeaf when people tell them it's a bad idea and only causes classism
And just overall, again, the communication is real bad. Sure, I might know that someone working on that UI asset refresh they did some time ago doesn't mean people aren't also working on something else. But they sure don't communicate that effectively at all. It's bad optics when people complain about serious gameplay issues, and instead of having them addressed in any meaningful way, or have some token effort put to it, "surprise! we've been working on a brand new platform port that has nothing to do with you, the majority playerbase we actively need to retain, and in fact we broke the game in favor of that new platform! Isn't that cool?"
And this is all aggravated by what seems to be an egregious lack of proper testing. beta testing is probably one of the most important things, yet many updates seem like they are barely beta tested, if they are at all, (like the first time they tried networked IK and decided to rush it out before Christmas after not even a few hours in open beta)
not to mention it seems to me, in my honest opinion, that a problem with their testing is that they are still treating closed tests the same way they were when the game had all of 100 people on it. it's a group of friends, and their friends' friends. and test things in small groups. I'd love to know what the ratio of actual vr users are in the closed beta, not to mention fullbody users. Or If they ever actually try to properly stress test an update with a full instance for several hours with a mostly vr lobby with lets say half and half fullbody. Or if it's just 4 vr users, (maybe 2 of which are devs themselves) 1 fullbody user, and 5 desktoppers, 3 of which are only there because their buddy is friends with a dev and are just excited to get the attention of the dev team and will never actually contradict them or say "no this actually sucks"
I wonder. I feel they probably need a much better and wider selection of closed testers. You need to get a good chunk of people who will max out a lobby and really push it to report back bugs.
You know how when you release a patch to open beta, particularly a really important patch, everyone flocks to open beta and you often get some really good stress testing? That's the kind of attention closed beta needs.
I get it. It's closed for a reason. But considering the amount of bad ideas and broken ideas that manage to get past the closed beta stage, clearly something isn't being done right there. And I seriously don;t think they are getting accurate and honest feedback. because the closed betas are, to wrap this up back into Foxe's point, not about what the community wants, they are often just about the dev's ideas and nobody is going to tell Ron to his face, when by his graces you are even in a closed instance with him, that an idea he thinks is really good, might actually be really stupid. And not when he'll then get a defense squad of people defending the idea just to curry favor.
TL;DR, I agree. You really need to listen to what the community wants better, and learn to engage and interact with them better. Because at the end of the day, the only reason VRChat has remained stable and on top, is because there isn't any serious competitor out there that can come close to offering the something on the same level. That's it. That's all it is. And the moment something better comes out, vrchat will start slowly dying.
Don't rest on your Laurels, VRChat.
FuzzyFoxe
ElfMom: You make a lot of good points about the beta testing stuff. They should take a look at how Space Engineers did their massive optimizations and take notes. They got the community at large to participate and run some controlled testing with large numbers of users and kept making improvements and tested them repeatedly until it performed better.
I know many people's gripes are with performance. And it's not related to the user created content most of the time, rather, how the game is managing to handle the content. Space engineers is another good example, since they have collision for damn near EVERYTHING. Instead of telling players to stop breaking their game (equivalent to telling vrchat creators to optimize better) The space engineer devs decided to make the game less breakable.
An example phrase I also hear being thrown around a bit: "Why is vrchat telling people to optimize better, when they don't optimize their own stuff?"
Kizzy
ElfMom: You're only wrong on one thing: They don't fix fullbody within the day at all. Your hips still move every time your head does and looks horrible, this has been bugged for like 7 months at least now.
B
Beanow
I feel this applies to more than
just
updates about what's in the works. As a (world) developer I find the situation very unfriendly and uncertain to developers.For example the short heads-up time before the major unity upgrade and getting instructions to fix problems on release day. Or spending about a full day testing with several people to get detailed bug reports in the canny and having to comment on that canny yourself when it's been fixed instead of getting a thanks and closing it.
But worst of all, I have tried to reach out to the dev team multiple times about making calls to the API for various interesting tools such as discord bots or global matchmaking groups, because they're in a EULA gray area and wanted to build something in a proper way. I received no reply for months and instead later got hit with a modified client ban. Trying to get in touch to sort this out I was treated with a very curt "we don't negotiate with terrorists"-like attitude on moderation@ if I even got replies at all.
Kizzy
I have to agree, there seems to be so little communication between the devs and this community which I think is leading to a growing disconnect between what the people playing this game want and the people developing it are doing.
The dev update videos were nice and I think those should start up again.
Tupper - VRChat Head of Community
in progress
Communicating VRChat's progress and plans in the right way can be quite challenging, as we don't want to overpromise or have to change schedules on projects or features after we've talked about it. We've been pretty busy, so that tends to get in the way as well.
That being said, we're attempting to find the best way to communicate with our Community and share where VRChat is headed. This is an ongoing active effort, so we appreciate your patience while we develop a communication pipeline that works well in both directions.
a
aytimothy
Tupper - VRChat Head of Community: Thank you very much for addressing all our concerns, and replying so kindly to my message.
PixelatedLTD
Tupper - VRChat Head of Community: yall hiring? i dont mind quitting my day job as a welder
Mic_Sounders
Tupper - VRChat Head of Community: I think people are looking more for something as simple as a few heads up here or there. Most of the time when people are getting new information (and a way misinformation spreads) it's from other users either in the main VRChat Discord, or other community discords.
Latest example is worlds not going public for about 3 and a half days a few weeks ago. There was no "Hey guys, don't submit any more because your world probably won't go up and will be private for however many days", and I had to personally tell my friends about it, who then told theirs, etc. just so their worlds could stay public.
Lucifer MStar
I agree with some of this post. I dont think the mods should play more in public worlds etc.. but the vrchat team defaintly need to communicate more with the community on features and security and if they are/actually care about things that are happening. I feel they rely a little to much on their "friend group" community members and i know for a fact they have meetings and invite community members. If theyre relaying on these members to spread information it is completely failing and stupid.
bit 01
I don't know about public worlds, but I see them in friends plus worlds hanging out with everyone quit a lot. They've been online and engaging with the community on various things.
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