I’m going to be direct and maybe overly transparent because the tone of this thread warrants clarity.
As much as I can get on board with the idea that some additional transparency from our part is needed. A lot of claims have been made here about “dictatorships”, “secrecy”, “broken promises”, and “devs not caring”. These are exaggerated, untrue narratives, and they don’t reflect how this community is run or how development actually happens.
1. We are improving transparency - but realistically
We are not opening the door to “tell us every idea, every plan, every internal discussion.” - That isn’t healthy for any community and really isn’t viable for development.
Here is what we are doing, and these are concrete changes:
Changes to how we process suggestions
- The suggestions category of the forums will be maintained a lot better than it has been in the past.
- Suggestions will be processed faster than they have been, whether that be accepted or rejected.
- Where possible, we will try to provide a good reason as to why - this is not an invitation to arguments/debates regarding the outcome
You may have noticed over the last two months that the open suggestions have dropped from 60 pages to 9, which we are continuing to process. This wasn't because 'we didn't care' - many of the open suggestions had already been reviewed and implemented, but in all honesty, we became sloppy and forgetful in processing the originating posts.
This increases transparency substantially and puts minds at ease regarding uncertainty around suggestions being left open for long periods of time.
Looking at returning the newsletter
Some of you might not be familiar, but we used to post a newsletter a few years back - but we're looking at bringing this back. We'll be looking to include some news/updates as well as some highlights of what the Dev team is working on - this wouldn't be everything we're working on, but would include the more major things, kind of like teasers, etc.
The one important thing to remember is that - whatever is teased in these posts CANNOT be guaranteed to be implemented, as many factors can weigh into delays and/or development stopping on a feature.
2. Public roadmaps are not going to happen (it's unrealistic)
This expectation is unrealistic for a volunteer-run project like RPUK. A proper roadmap requires planning, regular meetings, prioritisation of work, milestones, timelines, revisions, coordination, thus a shite load of admin overhead. All of which would take a substantial amount of time away from actual development being done on the server.
The reality of this is that RPUK devs are not paid employees. We are volunteers with jobs, families, and real lives. It's an extremely unfair ask for us to take on the administration load required to keep a public roadmap accurate and maintained.
You may not agree with that, but it is the boundary - we cannot provide something like a public roadmap when we know it cannot be delivered sustainably.
3. Development is not linear, and volunteer work cannot be forced
Some posts here assume our development works like a factory line. It doesn’t.
Individuals in the Dev Team work:
- When they have time.
- In the areas they specialise in and are familiar with (code, mapping, modelling, etc)
- At the pace that their other commitments allow them to.
That means some things progress faster than others.
It also means some concepts and ideas may be explored internally and never actually released - because either they weren’t good enough, were too time-consuming for the outcome, or didn’t fit the direction of the server, but that's just some examples. That is normal for any creative or development environment.
4. The narrative that “nothing changes” or “devs don’t listen” is inaccurate
We've pushed more changes in the past few months than many other servers would do in a year. I understand the 'updates' are not huge releases each time with a load of new content, but this is by choice in that we'd prefer to drip-feed content regularly to you guys rather than providing irregular 'big updates', and I'm sure for the majority that is favoured.
We have also made many changes stemming from community feedback - you can see this for yourself by looking through the changelog for linked suggestions or through the Implemented Section under Suggestions.
I completely understand that some changes that are implemented might 'shaft' a particular side of the server (for a period), whether that be crims or the police. That is not intended, but sometimes a consequence, but when something is added like that, that changes server balance, I can assure you it is closely monitored for potential tweaking using the tools we have available, such as logs, spectating, etc.
5. Finally - Tone matters
Feedback is heavily welcomed and encouraged - without it, the community couldn't function or improve. Every single one of yous opinion, matters it doesn't matter if you're not staff or dev - your opinion still matters just as much, that I can assure you - which is why Staff are still required to suggest content changes via the forums the same way everyone else does.
However, hostility, personal attacks, and the whole “dictatorship”, “they don’t care”, “fake promises” - is not constructive and does not move anything forward. RPUK isn't a Political State, it's an online community of people who ultimately want the same thing - for the community to grow and improve, we're all on the same side.
We will always listen to constructive feedback from anyone, but we won't tolerate the feedback being delivered in a toxic or abusive way.
That being said, you should begin to see some positive changes regarding transparency, as detailed in my first point. We really do appreciate the passion behind the discussion and the genuine care many of you have for the community, so we will be trying to do more on our part, but in a realistic way.
