Producer's Letter 01/2014

Hello Mayors!

This is where you can leave feedback on this Official Announcement.

Please keep comments constructive and any new ideas for the game should still be posted in the Update and Idea Pool thread.

Any off topic posts may be deleted.




Thank you,

Your Rising Cities Team.

 

Hi Sephiroth and welcome on board.

I'm glad you're mentionning a messed up code as this is what I have suspected for some time to be the main reason behind this fishy alibistic rhetorics in the past. And having some background in this "trade" I can immagine how hard and tedious it may be to get the code right. So thumbs up and good luck on that.

Your description of "user story" is so base and simplistic ........ erm ..... I nearly considered it a joke or an insult to my inteligence. I would certainly expect a bit more refined view from the top man on the team.

Now this statement is very important for me and I personally will challenge you to live up to it. My gut feelings tell me this might mean real change, but due to our many bad experience with Mr Moritz's empty rhetorics followed by non-existence I will restrain my excitement and wait for the actual delivery of the promisse. Don't disappoint us as your predecessor did.

There is a lot to improve both in-game and in terms of the team reputation. This puts you in both bad and good position. Bad becouse you might face some skepticism from us at first. Good as it is not that hard to perform better then Mr Moritz did.

Other then that, good luck. Just do it right.

 

I like the sound of that!!

 

Well, if you've written it in a polite and respectfull tone it's a shame somebody shoud perform such a censorship when people express their honest concerns. We could hardly even start to talk about opennes and fairnes whith such things happening. You probably need to try to talk to your forum admins about that and possibly make a complaint if they don't change their approach as this would really be a joke then. I personaly have high hopes for Mr Sephiroth honesty and good intentions and don't think he would aggree whith such censorship, although I'm not sure how much power he has over what is happening on forums. Give it a try and if you don't succeed switch over to here. English mods I think are fair and helpfull and openned to polite constructive criticism.

 

Please keep discussion on topic.

 

pleased to meet you.i do hope to hear from you on a monthly basis as it will help forment excitement for the game, otherwise we start to feel lonely. It's good to know what your ideas are for the game on a regular basis. Perhaps if you are too busy like the previous mr. Moritz you could delegate the responsibility to someone who knows what is going on; just a 'hello we are working hard on fixes and new stuff' once a month will do wonders for players moral.

 

that sounds like a good idea a brief update once a fortnight and a more detailed report monthly

 

Let's not settle for underperformance as we have seen it in many areas so far. Bugs should be admitted, followed through and the progress and fixes reported immediatelly, not in regular fortnightly, much less monthly reports. These should be reserved for more conceptual info. Otherwise, good post Dollars.

 

I do not normally comment here but I must say we are honored to have \-Sephiroth-/ as our producer.

He is the best the entire company has had for a very long time and I can say this with some authority as we have worked together in other games for a long time.

This is a huge step forward for our game so welcome to the team mate really good to have you at the helm.

Best Regards Pirate.

 

Welcome to the new job, I hope it works out for you well

In your letter, you often mention the community around the game which makes me hopeful that there is going to be a closer connection between players and developers. I too have been missing someone (other than the forum mods) to at least plop in every now and then and say hi. At times I was actually seriously wondering if there was still a team working on the game, or just a sort of caretaker who merely watched out that the electricity was still on in the server room.

I understand that regular communication can be tricky due to the amount of forums and languages, but it would still be cool if there could be a regular lil something that gives players the impression that things are being developed and worked on. Even if it was just a sort of check list with bullet points a la 'mood/energy problem > being worked on, but tricky, so will take a while'.

I personally don't even care so much about smaller issues, but as a long term regular player it is very important to me to have the feeling that the game is still being developed in a broader way, e.g. that new playfields are on the planning list as well as additional (bigger) features that will keep the game being interesting.

 

I'm happy to hear they finally alocated the best man to do the job as I suspect that's what this job needs judging from past experience. And thanks Pirate for your encouraging words. I know we can trust your judgement. It boosts my expectations and I'm really starting to look forward to the future of this game. Nevertheless I will still hold my reserved position and wait for the delivery of the promisse before getting overly excited.

Cheers mate.

 

Hey,

nortoncommander - a User Story is meant to be very high-level and a little "dumbed-down" (as it were) - apologies if you felt it insulted your intelligence. However, from a User Story we pull basic design pillars and then work on much more detailed topics for features. Anyways, the team and myself hope to change the game around a little ;-) In terms of bug reports, we want to get the info out as soon as possible and try to get better at our communication with you all. I hope that you give us a little breathing room whilst we try to improve.

skippyroo1980 - I will try to do bigger updates once a month as a minimum (vacation pending, even I have to take holidays you know...) but I will be replying to feedback and giving an update on things to come. I want to be as open as possible about the roadmap for Rising Cities, but obviously not committing to dates.

PirateLee - as always you are too kind, I think it is the other way round for me. You started as a mentor for me back in my mod-days if memory serves

Bababandos - I will do my best, I want to be open with everyone about what is being worked on. In conjunction with the Community Managers, I am sure we will get all of the information possible out to you. (*whispers*: The energy/mood bug is being looked at, it is on our priority list)

Thanks to everyone for taking a read, and especially replying. Keep the feedback coming.

Best,

 

Hello Sephiroth,
wow... a few days ago I would bet that next time we hear from somebody else than local mods, will be maybe second (political) letter after a month or never... Just your reply here makes me belive there will be some change improving the game and communication with players. That someone will care about the game itself and players, not just the income sheets and global numbers.
So thank you and good luck.

 

This reply alone is an improvement. Replying like this was for me really unexpected. thumb up
You have inherit an unfair uphill work with building trust but on the other hand more or less anything you do will be consider an improvement.

"I hope that you give us a little breathing room whilst we try to improve."
Absolutely, I don't expect you to turn around this ship for a wile, info/feedback is a good start.
Although you could say that we already have waited for quite a wile it would be more then unfair to hold that against you as you just started.

 

the turn around has started, so we wait (patiently) for the improvements
thanks for the reply Sephiroth

 

What can I say other then "good luck" and "thumbs up"?

Since you need to clear the messed up code first it spells a lot of invisible work before you can efficiently work on visible changes so I don't expect miracles from you and a complete turnaround in the game in two weeks. Just keep us posted about what's going on. We don't need much more at the start to feel a lot better about the team and the game.

Thanks for responding honestly to our comments. I think it's the best move you could have done. I like you already.

 

I do too, as I have bought up almost all the available land and the buildings I still have permits for will require a lot more land to put out. Love the game and would hate for it to stall out for lack of playfield to play on.

 

Why \-Sephiroth-/ only in the Englishforum makes comments?
The absolut biggest community is the german and the users there have a lot of questions...

Anyway, I will see delightful in the futur.
Your letter was a good start...

 

Hey,

English is a more "universal" language that many people from many Countries understand, so posting here makes the most sense. Also, you would not like to see my written German, it is really terrible. Sadly learning the language to a competent level has eluded me so far, I am still trying to learn it though. However, don't worry - the admins will collect all feedback and send it to me, I will reply to it in my next letter in a couple of weeks

Best,

 

Ok.

You are right and all this is better than nothing...

I will keep an eye on this.