Transparency & Communication Discussion

[RetroKrystal]

Following from a few directed posts to me within this forum, I thought I’d open up a discussion about transparency as I would like to hopefully better the transparency & communication between everyone. Just to keep all the ideas in one place.
This is to discuss all feedback, including what you like so far, how we could improve this, or brand new ideas or options. Feel free to even suggest what you may have seen other companies do that you’ve liked & thought was productive.

Currently, I’ve had a lot of positive feedback regarding our streams and how this is opening up another way in which you can receive information. Following this, on the other hand, I’ve also been given feedback that although this is useful, it is not necessarily directed across all our social media for those that couldn’t make the streams.

I can’t promise that any of the feedback will be put into place going forward. Especially as this will be a long and slow process.
But I’m going to try my best to improve this.

~~

(These are regarding Forza Horizon. For Motorsport, see the Motorsport Forums for social information)

Here are the current social medias & information sources:

Discord - BRAND NEW. Discuss everything Forza
Forums - Week in Review, Blog, Discussions
Twitter - Short Summary, In-Game Assets/Visuals
Instagram - Short Summary, In-Game Assets/Visuals
Support Page - Helpful Articles
Support Page: Submit a Ticket - Bugs, Issues, Queries, Suggestions & Feedback
Mixer - Mixer Streams & VODs of the streams
Twitch - Twitch Streams
Youtube - YouTube streams, Trailers

~~

For any bugs/issue, please see our support page.

Please Note: Any posts which are not helpful or relating to the game directly, e.g “Fix the game” or “Why is xxx like xxx” will be edited and pointed to the support page or the appropriate discussion within this forum. This thread is about ideas for communication between developers & the players.

Thanks,
RetroKrystal

[DELTAprime]

The only thing I’d suggest is putting the information Max provides on the forums into the game in information panels.

EDIT: I just realised a UI element I thought was just a flourish was actually A list of everything to earn each season.

An easy to access car checklist of all the cars in the game like in FM7 would be a great piece of information to have access to.

Otherwise, you guys do a great job of communicating everything I care about in FH4.

[V12_SprungBoss]

I would love to see more open communication to devs to players, good example abaout this was last stream that when tell that brake caliper paint option is not yet coming because it take so mutch work or how @JONK1969 tell us something here in forums, for example he’s answer in series 5 update topic. And overall better communication what we may have see or may not see in future (instead of totally ignoring all questions or just saying that we cant say nothing because NDA)

Also would be more usefull if “known issues” would actually show all issues that is currently known. When i look known issues page right now it’s look like “this game runs totally fine on my xbox and dont have any problems” but sadly that is not reality when actually playing the game.

[Grim_Kidaver]

@V12_SprungBoss

I would love to see more open communication to devs to players, good example abaout this was last stream that when tell that brake caliper paint option is not yet coming because it take so mutch work or how @JONK1969 tell us something here in forums, for example he’s answer in series 5 update topic. And overall better communication what we may have see or may not see in future (instead of totally ignoring all questions or just saying that we cant say nothing because NDA)

Also would be more usefull if “known issues” would actually show all issues that is currently known. When i look known issues page right now it’s look like “this game runs totally fine on my xbox and dont have any problems” but sadly that is not reality when actually playing the game.

I have never seen a dev post on these forums myself tho I’m sure they exist but with other games (WoW being the one to come to mind) when dev posted in a thread it noted by changing color that a dev had responded by changing title to blue or such. That would be nice as you’d see threads with a dev response and not have to go thru pages of posts.

[PTG_Wildcat]

NM

[Rayne_SE]

I would love to see some kind of roadmap about what is coming in a manageable time frame and which long-term aims are planned. Both for singleplayer and multiplayer. To this date I still don’t know where you want to take “Online Adventure”, “Rivals” or “Co-Op/PVP-Horizon Life Events”. Maybe provide insight into features that are being worked on like “painting brake calipers” which turned out to be too time consuming (which is totally fine). I don’t know how severe your NDA-policy is and what can be made public within the current restrictions but if it is too strictly maybe overthink it.

To quote a roadmap from a different company (Rockstar for RDR Online):

"More updates are coming soon including new Races and Showdown Modes and new clothing and emotes, as well as some additional changes based on player feedback including:

[Detailed list of features]

More to Come
We are working on lots of new content that we will be releasing this year. Just a few of the updates in the works are:

[A general scheme of what is being planned and where to take RDR Online]"

As I said above I don’t know if something like this is currently doable for you but that’s the way I would like to see. The place to provide this kind of information should be here, the streams and other social media (like reddit). T10 started this with FM7 with things like race regulations or experimental drag and I higly appreciated the open and honest approach.

[Ti_Hsien]

Streams are an annoying way to get information. I only catch useful info from them if it filters onto the board in a few useful seconds of reading rather than untold minutes of video blither.

[RetroKrystal]

@Ti_Hsien

Streams are an annoying way to get information. I only catch useful info from them if it filters onto the board in a few useful seconds of reading rather than untold minutes of video blither.

What would you advise instead?

[audiodrifter]

@RetroKrystal

@Ti_Hsien

Streams are an annoying way to get information. I only catch useful info from them if it filters onto the board in a few useful seconds of reading rather than untold minutes of video blither.

What would you advise instead?

A newsletter players can subscribe to?

[Shakes_McQueen]

@RetroKrystal

@Ti_Hsien

Streams are an annoying way to get information. I only catch useful info from them if it filters onto the board in a few useful seconds of reading rather than untold minutes of video blither.

What would you advise instead?

A “Stream Minutes” post here on the forums would be good, summarizing the major points of what was said in the stream.

[RetroKrystal]

@Shakes_McQueen

@RetroKrystal

@Ti_Hsien

Streams are an annoying way to get information. I only catch useful info from them if it filters onto the board in a few useful seconds of reading rather than untold minutes of video blither.

What would you advise instead?

A “Stream Minutes” post here on the forums would be good, summarizing the major points of what was said in the stream.

A few people have mentioned this. As previously said on the thread, I did go and start a post relating to this but deleted this due to potentially cross overs of this thread.

Moving forward, I will be bringing back my original post but in an updated format. Although I am looking of better (or several) ways in which we can summaries the streams for you.

[Potbox]

@RetroKrystal

@Ti_Hsien

Streams are an annoying way to get information. I only catch useful info from them if it filters onto the board in a few useful seconds of reading rather than untold minutes of video blither.

What would you advise instead?

I’ve only watched one stream and it seemed mostly about cheerleading and back patting. The last thing I want to see in a stream is a bunch of self-congratulatory-we’re-so-awesome dev speak after FH4 destroyed multiplayer and rivals, the things I loved most about previous Horizons.

The stream I watched also didn’t seem to be well-planned or well-structured. Take an example from your local nightly news, where the show is segmented into national happenings, local happenings, weather, sports, etc. If streams were segmented into clearly discernible topics they would be more likely to provide useful information instead of aimless marketing drivel. Try segments like “What’s Happened In Horizon So Far” and “What’s Coming Really Soon” and " What’s Coming Eventually" and “Cool Things You Can Do In Your Car That You Might Not Know About” and “Problems We Know You’re Having That We Hate Too and That We’re Trying to Fix” and “Gameplay Changes We’re Considering” and etc, etc, etc,

Then, put a transcript or summary of each segment on this forum that we can read.

[RetroKrystal]

@Potbox

@RetroKrystal

@Ti_Hsien

Streams are an annoying way to get information. I only catch useful info from them if it filters onto the board in a few useful seconds of reading rather than untold minutes of video blither.

What would you advise instead?

I’ve only watched one stream and it seemed mostly about cheerleading and back patting. The last thing I want to see in a stream is a bunch of self-congratulatory-we’re-so-awesome dev speak after FH4 destroyed multiplayer and rivals, the things I loved most about previous Horizons.

The stream I watched also didn’t seem to be well-planned or well-structured. Take an example from your local nightly news, where the show is segmented into national happenings, local happenings, weather, sports, etc. If streams were segmented into clearly discernible topics they would be more likely to provide useful information instead of aimless marketing drivel. Try segments like “What’s Happened In Horizon So Far” and “What’s Coming Really Soon” and " What’s Coming Eventually" and “Cool Things You Can Do In Your Car That You Might Not Know About” and “Problems We Know You’re Having That We Hate Too and That We’re Trying to Fix” and “Gameplay Changes We’re Considering” and etc, etc, etc,

Then, put a transcript or summary of each segment on this forum that we can read.

This is a really good idea. We do actually have a “contents” that’s gets shown in stream explaining the upcoming sections or information within the stream that we are going to talk about.
However, this would be really good to coincide with a post-stream information topic such as the one earlier discussed in the early posts within this thread.

[Ti_Hsien]

@RetroKrystal

@Ti_Hsien

Streams are an annoying way to get information. I only catch useful info from them if it filters onto the board in a few useful seconds of reading rather than untold minutes of video blither.

What would you advise instead?

A lot of people seem to like the streams, so I wouldn’t suggest an “instead”. It’d be nice if key points were more reliably filtered to the boards in easily digestible text, though.

[luckeydoug1]

@Ti_Hsien

@RetroKrystal

@Ti_Hsien

Streams are an annoying way to get information. I only catch useful info from them if it filters onto the board in a few useful seconds of reading rather than untold minutes of video blither.

What would you advise instead?

A lot of people seem to like the streams, so I wouldn’t suggest an “instead”. It’d be nice if key points were more reliably filtered to the boards in easily digestible text, though.

I am in total agreement. I do not have time to sit through the streams. A digest version of the information presented in the streams posted in these forums would be greatly appreciated by some of us.

[RetroKrystal]

@DELTAprime

The only thing I’d suggest is putting the information Max provides on the forums into the game in information panels.

EDIT: I just realised a UI element I thought was just a flourish was actually A list of everything to earn each season.

An easy to access car checklist of all the cars in the game like in FM7 would be a great piece of information to have access to.

Otherwise, you guys do a great job of communicating everything I care about in FH4.

Max is just a Moderator here on the forums and therefore the only information he has gotten is from that in the game itself.
If he does receive information from elsewhere, I am unaware of this.

A car checklist is an interesting idea. The only problem is if there is anything we’d like to add but can’t reveal yet. For example, Mitsubishi has only just been announced which meant I would have needed to add this then to a checklist which has most likely already been edited in the first place.
To fix this, maybe a virtual checklist would be ideal?

@V12_SprungBoss

Also would be more usefull if “known issues” would actually show all issues that is currently known. When i look known issues page right now it’s look like “this game runs totally fine on my xbox and dont have any problems” but sadly that is not reality when actually playing the game.

If you’re relating to Release Notes & Known Issues then you will need to speak to @NitroGlitter.

Although Known issues relates to the issues which we are currently working on rather than every single known issue mentioned on social media/the forums.

@Rayne_SE

I would love to see some kind of roadmap about what is coming in a manageable time frame and which long-term aims are planned. Both for singleplayer and multiplayer. To this date I still don’t know where you want to take “Online Adventure”, “Rivals” or “Co-Op/PVP-Horizon Life Events”. Maybe provide insight into features that are being worked on like “painting brake calipers” which turned out to be too time consuming (which is totally fine).

It’s great that you’ve mentioned this. I’m currently in discussion about roadmap(s) (one of the reason why I started this thread) and would be interested in the thoughts. So thank you for the feedback

[DELTAprime]

@RetroKrystal

[quote=DELTAprime;1047265

A car checklist is an interesting idea. The only problem is if there is anything we’d like to add but can’t reveal yet. For example, Mitsubishi has only just been announced which meant I would have needed to add this then to a checklist which has most likely already been edited in the first place.
To fix this, maybe a virtual checklist would be ideal?

I don’t know if you ever get to play FM7 since you’re on the Horizon team but there is a checklist like function in the main menu UI called “car collection”. They update it with patches, so it doesn’t reveal cars that T10 doesn’t want people to know about. I use the FM7 list to see what’s been added by the T10 team. For someone like me that cares about the cars, it’s a great little piece of communication about what to keep an eye out for, even if they don’t think of it specifically as a communication function.

[Lazzzzie]

Just wanted to say that, while there are some things to improve upon (not to mention dealing with entitled people who demand silly things), you’re doing a solid job keeping things boiling Krystal.

[RetroKrystal]

@LAZARUSceelai

Just wanted to say that, while there are some things to improve upon (not to mention dealing with entitled people who demand silly things), you’re doing a solid job keeping things boiling Krystal.

Honestly, I’m not too sure what “Keeping things boiling” means but I’ll take it as a good thing

@DELTAprime

I don’t know if you ever get to play FM7 since you’re on the Horizon team but there is a checklist like function in the main menu UI called “car collection”. They update it with patches, so it doesn’t reveal cars that T10 doesn’t want people to know about. I use the FM7 list to see what’s been added by the T10 team. For someone like me that cares about the cars, it’s a great little piece of communication about what to keep an eye out for, even if they don’t think of it specifically as a communication function.

Ahh you were referring to an in-game checklist. I was visioning this as a social checklist for the forums/social media.
This thread is for discussion on a social and forum base than in-game.

@luckeydoug1

@Ti_Hsien

A lot of people seem to like the streams, so I wouldn’t suggest an “instead”. It’d be nice if key points were more reliably filtered to the boards in easily digestible text, though.

I am in total agreement. I do not have time to sit through the streams. A digest version of the information presented in the streams posted in these forums would be greatly appreciated by some of us.

This is a good idea. I did look into doing this recently but it crossed over slightly with this thread. However, I’ll look into doing a stream specific/only thread.

@Grim_Kidaver

I have never seen a dev post on these forums myself tho I’m sure they exist but with other games (WoW being the one to come to mind) when dev posted in a thread it noted by changing color that a dev had responded by changing title to blue or such. That would be nice as you’d see threads with a dev response and not have to go thru pages of posts.

My posts are usually have an orange border.
Although this doesn’t differentiate me from the Moderators so maybe this is something I could look into this with Turn10/the team that designs and organises the forums

@King_Cobra_Mi6

So I think bringing back something similar to the Promo Mode List, but just for Player Cars , under a “Car Checklist” tile (maybe by using the same “List” as you get in Blueprint Mode when you decide to manually chose the Cars you want to be Eligible for Your race from the Games entire Collection, as that updates with patches, and, despite the odd Error, such as accidentally listing Cars such as the Austin FX4 “HS” , does a Pretty good Job of keeping Most of the Forthcoming Cars a Secret!) in the “Cars” Tab in the Pause Menu, might be a good way to bring in a sort of Car Collection Checklist system like People Want

This thread is for ideas regarding a social manor, rather than in-game. But see my response to @DELTAprime.
A checklist is still an interesting thought that we could transfer to a social asset

@haulmarc

in regards to tickets…

I’m going to stop you there. Everything support page/ticket related needs to be messaged to @NitroGlitter as feedback.

[Rayne_SE]

@RetroKrystal

@Grim_Kidaver

I have never seen a dev post on these forums myself tho I’m sure they exist but with other games (WoW being the one to come to mind) when dev posted in a thread it noted by changing color that a dev had responded by changing title to blue or such. That would be nice as you’d see threads with a dev response and not have to go thru pages of posts.

My posts are usually have an orange border.
Although this doesn’t differentiate me from the Moderators so maybe this is something I could look into this with Turn10/the team that designs and organises the forums

I think Grim Kidaver meant something along the line of this:

The threads in which a Blizzard employee answered are automatically marked with the blue “Blizz” logo while threads in which “Community MVPs” (somewhat comparable to Max or Hiero) replied are automatically marked with the green “MVP”. So everyone can instantly notice which thread has an official reply or confirmed information.

After clicking on a thread there is a clickable icon on the right side to instantly jump to the Blizzard answers:

This makes navigating to official answers very easy and comfortable. On these forums here threads aren’t automatically marked if you, JONK or Max replied neither are we able to directly jump to yours posts.