Greetings from your new CM - Fluse says "Hello"

Dear Mayors,

I’ve been working as your community manager behind the scenes for a little while now. As some of you might not know me yet, I would like to introduce myself: My name is Simone (Nickname: Fluse) and I’m the new community manager for RisingCities.

Here at Bigpoint in Hamburg, I am sitting between the developers, the graphics guys, the game designers and the producer; so I am involved in almost every decision and I know what is going on.

My mission: To give feedback to the Development Team concerning updates, new features, events and to present your ideas to the team – that means I am collecting your feedback and am your voice within the Development Team.

On the other hand, I am trying to provide all the information that you need. And I am forever bombarding the Development Team with questions about anything and everything. Furthermore, I take care of RisingCities’s social media channels: So if you write to us on Twitter or Facebook, you can be pretty sure that it’s me who is replying to you.

As I speak only German and English (and a little French, but not enough to moderate), I ask for your understanding that I can only read and maybe post something in those two forums, not in the others. Your Board team will be happy to forward to me all questions and community feedback from your country and I’ll try to find answers and solutions together with the Dev team.

I’ll try to provide you with information about what is coming up next in the game and even if we cannot create a regular community letter anymore, we’ll let you know when something new will appear on our game. Since I would like to moderate this channel and talk to you directly, it is easier for me to do this in English only. This guarantees that all of you get the same information.

You might have noticed that we are currently working on the game and that we already fixed some little bugs here and then. We know that you are all waiting on something new and unfortunately, we are still not at the point that we can realize huge new features. But step by step, we immerse into the code and we are really willing to push RisingCities forward.

As for my part, I will help as much as I can to support you as well as our Dev team so that we can realize some of your wishes – and even if we are only advancing little by little, we are nevertheless trying to make you – our community – as happy as we can.

I always look forward hearing from you!

Kind regards,

Fluse

 

woow!

 

Welcome to the family "Fluse". We have known that things have been getting fixed and did not know who to thank. Thank you Fluse and can not wait till we get through this fix it stage.

Keep us informed and we will be happy to assist.

 

Hi Fluse, welcome to our forum, it has been a long time since we have had any communication from our CM. Many of us have been wanting bug fixes for a long time, were also looking forward to getting something new. keep up your good work

 

Hello Fluse

 

Hi Fluse. A little more information on what is happening with the game is really nice as it will give us something to look forward to.

As billyjim wrote Please do keep us informed

 

Yes Fluse, please, please keep us informed. We do not need a great big dramatic letter. Just a line or two every few weeks or months. Please do not let us go two years with out a word.

 

Hello everyone

Thank you very much for this warm welcome. Yes, I will try to keep you informed even if there won't be any regular community letters anymore. But as soon as there is something new to announce, you will get an information.

At the moment, we are still working on implementing something new. But since we have to implement an update with the language files in the background, we have to do that first. And after having fixed this code thing in the background, we can hopefully go ahead with something new.

At the moment I would like to thank you very much for your patience.

Cheers

Fluse

 

Thank you for the quick note. If we get something like your last post every so often makes us feel like there is some contact back and forth. Thank you again and keep up the good work.

 

I could not have said it any better billyjim. Communication with the players does go a long way.

 

Hello, Simone. I'm glad to see some communication again, as the lack thereof was the most concerning thing. I feel it's perhaps more immediately important than simply adding new content. That said, I think you'll have your work cut out for you stepping into a discontent player base (at least on the forums), so good luck.

As this seems more like your introduction thread I'm unsure if it's best place to engage in Q&A, but as there is no dedicated thread I'll take this liberty. Feel free to move it.

Why is it that BP never felt the need to say anything to alleviate the concerns of the players before now, in over a year, especially in the face of so much demand for such? And then why do they suddenly start implementing fixes nonchalantly as if there was never a communication problem to address?

Why won't there be regular announcements anymore? Though I can get that there isn't much to report on that might interest most players, the fact that you specify that they won't be as regular must mean something. Is RC a back-burner project? Too little resources? At the end of its product life but marginally profitable? HTML5 rewrite? RC 2? Or is it simply that the code is an abject, undocumented mess that is taking longer than expected to work through?

Those are the questions we've been asking ourselves. The people that do post on the forums may not represent a large percentage of players, but you can easily see the decline here in active users and mood over the years and such demands came to be pretty numerous. A few words now and then, given to us straight and clearly, would have avoided a lot of grief and speculation. I think the majority of those that have expressed such concerns would be understanding, and it would have made it a lot easier to be patient for some, including those that seem to have given up on the game already.

Frankly, I think the players have been more than patient given the circumstances. Wording such as 'code thing' may sound like a good idea to use if one assumes that most players won't understand (or care for) more complicated terminology, but I for one appreciate detailed explanations, changelogs and patch notes. The vague mater-of-factness that BP employs in general in such wording does not help them seem at all serious and makes it even harder to understand why the game has stagnated for so long.

It's hard for me to imagine most of the evident code issues to be especially difficult to resolve. I do have some experience with programming, so it's not like I can't envision these things, so I fully understand that it can be more complicated than expected, which is exactly why such continuous communication and transparency is valuable.

While the show of willingness to improve the game is indeed good and welcome, the lack of any real explanations or regard for the players on this issue of this long silence unfortunately dampens the otherwise good news.

When you combine silence with the often failed attempts at fixing critical bugs (Mood/Energy and Castle Carlson especially), seemingly rushed attempts at adding 'new' buildings for holiday events that look graphically inferior to others (please fix the Chateau Amor), and the inability to even simply add the newest permits to the booster rewards, some have had the impression that RC is hanging on by a thread/being milked, so it's not without reason that some uncertainty remains.

This isn't the first time a big announcement has been made after all, with the last failing to deliver on some rather big and especially anticipated promises (workshop and social features).

Of course I generally enjoy the game and would like to see it improve, which is why I'm still here (which is surprising as browser games don't usually hold my attention) and willing to wait and write so much, and also why what I perceive as unprofessionalism is especially exasperating.

Thank you for your time.

 

Simone (Fluse)I second Arsuru thoughts and suggestion. Please keep the lins of communicaion open.

 

RC2 is a very interesting notion, Arsuru. (Do love your posts, by the way, so please keep them coming!)
Could be a logical reason as to why there's been no major updates in, well, a very long time!

It's great to see more open communication, Fluse, and I hope it will remain that way.
More specifics, as Arsuru mentioned, would be welcome too, if at all possible.
There's a lot of patient players on here who deserve that communication.
I don't really play the game any more due to the lack of new content (along with the previously poor communication - I do hope that Seph is alright), and when you get to a certain stage, there's not a lot else to keep you going.
Hopefully that can be rectified, but for now, improved communication is a fine place to start.
Will keep an eye on any further developments.

I hope you enjoy your stay on here, enjoy reading the posts, and hope you last a little longer than the other 2 - third time lucky?

 

Hey guys,

Thank you very much for your comments. I would like to answer to them in short to avoid long postings but I would like to let you know that I will answer your questions step by step but not all in one posting. Otherwise, I would have to post a veeeery long text which might be difficult to be understood in detail by all those who don’t speak and understand English perfectly.

Anyway, I am not an English native speaker and this is why I would like to apologize in advance for any syntax mistakes or wrong vocabulary that I might use. I’ll do my very best to write in correct English.

Now, I would like to answer the following question first: Why do I only discuss with you in our English speaking forum and not in the other language forums?

This question was raised by our board teams who sent me the reactions of their language forums. Here’s an explanation: As you know, we have a lot of different language forums in RisingCities. And all those players around the world are claiming to get the same information. Now imagine that I discuss different topics with only one community, e.g. the German one. Then the information cannot be understood easily by all international players. And this wouldn’t be fair and it would be very difficult to switch around from one forum to another to stay up-to-date. And if I also started communicating in our French forum, it would get more and more mixed-up.

This is why I decided to present myself in the English speaking forum and to discuss with you about different topics in one language only - here.

Every community is invited to gather their questions, e.g. by a player who speaks English and who is willing to ask them here in the English speaking forum. Concerning the problem to understand the answers: I think today it is quite easy to use one of the translation tools the internet provides to understand in general what we are talking about here in this thread. It is not necessary to have a perfect translation to understand the essential points of this discussion.

So I would like to invite all of you to sign up here in the English speaking forum to discuss with me or just to read the information that we provide here.

I will continue to read through your questions and to answer them step by step. So stay tuned and come around from time to time to read some background information.

Cheers

Fluse

 

This would be much easier if one could access all of the forums from the forums themselves. One used to be able to go the the root of the forum and choose any language's sub-forum. Someone decided to remove that luxury, for what one could only guess is to make it harder to communicate, because there is no good reason to have done so. So now, even if I have the same ID between forums, my profile is completely different.

As you cannot log into the forums without logging into the game, the only way to access the other forums while being logged in is to change the language of the game. While one can probably find their way around in an unfamiliar language, this is not at all user-friendly or encouraging. I contested this change immediately, as I would look at other boards, especially since I'm proficient in French. Might be a good time to revert that change.

 

I totally agree with Arsuru. I really like to read your messages Fluse, but I don't post a lot replies here. If you don't select the English language immediately, it will costs you a lot of mouse-clicks to end up here, so I don't post here often.

A few weeks / months ago I saw that you're able to login at the Shards of War board. Isn't it possible to integrate this function in the RC boards? It will be way more easier for all the players to visit and post in the English board, if you're able to login at the board.

I really hope you're able to help us and make it possible to swich easily to the English board.

I hope you will enjoy your stay here and I am looking forward to read your new messages!

 

i also want to add my voice to urge a return of the ability to easily move from one forum and another. I am not fluent in other languages but I can get the general idea of postings in several languages.

Simone do not worry about getting the grammar and wording correct. As long as we can understand your messages we are happy. We are a motley crew and we all come from various cultures and backgrounds. So we are used to figuring things out. If we need clarifications we will ask you for them.

Thank you for responding so quickly. Keep up the great work.

 

As always, the extra information is always appreciated Fluse/Simone.

I do, however, have one query I would like to pose to you.
What is the purpose (or 'mission' which appears to be a common word from the Rising Cities folk) for the posts?

I ask because your very first post seemed to suggest (to me) that you would like to keep us up to date on what was going on. (eg, one way in terms of you relaying information to us)
Whilst your most recent post suggested more actual 'discussion' could take place.

If more discussion is able to take place, I would like to pose you a(nother) question, if I may?

Many moons ago, Seph (I believe) expressed a mission on here of 'developing a metropolis spawning several playfields' or something along those lines. He also added lots of other stuff, which didn't appear to come to fruition, or not yet at least.
I know you are unlikely to be in a position of revealing all of the Rising Cities plans, but would you be able to give us an idea of what the future holds?

Whilst not wanting to stray off-topic (but I am going to do it, anyway!), there was a similar thing happening with Skyrama a few years ago.
Nothing new was happening for an age, or so it seemed. Weeks turned into months, which turned into a few years of nothing major being added, just a few new events. Then all of a sudden, there were changes, some big, some small, and recently there's been a very big update, which has created a lot of interest, and probably revenue for Bigpoint, too!
That, in itself, makes me believe that there will be a future for Rising Cities despite the long delay. I just don't know what the future is though.
Maybe that is where you could help?
What is the long-term plan for Rising Cities?

 

hey how are u

 

Hey guys,

When I'm reading through your postings, there are really a lot of questions to answer, phew. Since the last answer I gave was concerning the fact that I am posting only here in the English speaking forum, this next one will directly refer to your suggestion to return to the old forum structure - with the possibility to switch easily between different language forums and game forums.

Unfortunately, the decision about the general forum structure cannot be made by every game team but the administrators of all game forums are responsible for those kind of decisions. And therefore it isn't possible to switch back to the former structure by just one game team.

Thanks a lot for your understanding but we are bound by rules and this decision is not up to us alone.

Anyway, I hope that we will have a vivid exchange.

Cheers

Fluse