Before we get into the actual letter, we just want to clear some misconceptions that happened this afternoon that seemed to stir up a lot of unnecessary drama. Earlier today there was a supposedly letter to the developers thread that was not supposed to be posted that earlier.
The user who posted the unfinished letter earlier has apologized for this situation, and as so, we wish you to read the complete version of this letter, and share your thoughts on it. Our goal is to start a conversation between the developers, the group of people who wrote this letter, and the rest of the community. Thank You!
Dear Developers,
On behalf a small select group of people in the Gmod Tower and Tower Unite community (But for the sake of this letter, weāre going to simply refer to it as the community. We arenāt referring to every single individual in the Gmod Tower and Tower Unite community, just a specific amount of people who just happen to have the same views)
When the project started, both the community and you, the developers, had high hopes and dreams for this new game. Promises of amazing new features, a full boardwalk with a variety of rides, and customization system beyond belief that left most of us in awe and really excited for this project. But that was the past. Looking at the Trello and at the progress made, we feel like a lot of the original vision that was promised became lost overtime. Yes, the game has been out for only about three days, but we, right now, are looking into the future of the game as well.
As the game stands right now, a lot of the features we do have and the features we donāt have seem very scattered in terms of priority and we are worried that the main focus and sight of the game is being lost. It seems unusual that we have a set of less valuable features like a Confetti Gun working, whereas other core and high priority features such as voice chat settings (that are being improved on right now) which should have been introduced much earlier, as well as other features such as lobby-condo communication were left completely absent despite some of them being previously tested, as well as several bugs, some of which game breaking, which were supposedly patched on the version prior to the early access release. This lack of priority is what we expand on in the next paragraphs.
Thereās a missing sense of priority right now, especially on delivering what the community thinks is necessary. In fact, right now, thereās a lack of communication between the development team and the core community that has both backed your game on Indiegogo, as well as currently helps keeping it alive. Right now, weāre just being told to wait and expect fixes while we would appreciate it if the developers would talk with the community to pin-point what the most important things to fix are at the time, as well as to start worrying about whatās next.
We also believe that you, the developers, are working too hard on Tower Unite. We wish that you all to take it a bit more slow. We understand that this is the game you guys are really hoping to complete and have so many aspirations for it, we understand that 100% and support you guys. But as it stands, a lot of you are working too hard and arenāt giving yourselves enough time to relax and chill out, making it even harder to establish a conversation without feeling as if weāre causing more stress. The community understands that you really want to complete this game and get everything out of the way but weāre starting to be concerned that youāre not giving in the full effort because of stress, tiredness, and pressure.
The community doesnāt want to be a burden. We want you to let us help you guys create an awesome game which we can be proud of. We understand you guys have needs, visions and dreams for this project, but we helped create this game as well as helped keep it alive, and we want to support you guys in the next steps of the game.
To conclude weād like to refer back to the main points weāre trying to make overall. Weād like to see the developers deliver better community engagement, perhaps revisiting developer streams once again with a select user base involved arranged by our community manager - Caboose, to give us the opportunity to vote on whatās important by returning with āPriority Pollsā on the forums, effectively allowing the Tower Unite community to vote what should be prioritised first and what should be prioritised later.
We want you to hear our ideas; we also want to be open to your ideas as well, both sides have amazing ideas, but we feel there has been a small disconnection in terms of community and developer feedback. We donāt ask much of you, just know that we want to be as accepting of your ideas as you are to ours.
We feel that these points could benefit your work ethics and allow you to work more efficiently, without wanting to overload you with work. We really donāt need that next novelty object or feature (Pool, Bowling, Roller Coasters and Bumper Cars) at this current moment in time.
Thank you for reading.
With Love,
The Community (or this small group of people).
Please donāt push yourselves too hard guys. Thereās a huge community of people thatāll support you all the way.
Whipping out a patch to fix things almost everyday since EA is pretty baffling to me since I have never seen an early access game get this many fixes in such a small frame of time.