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My issue with transparency isn't so much the livestreams (although I do agree with the others who have mentioned that it would be awesome to have written transcripts of the streams available shortly after they finish so I don't have to watch a bunch of random unscripted talking just to get a few tidbits of information), but rather with how opaque the whole ticket system is.

There needs to be a central place where players can go to see a list of support and feedback tickets submitted by others. Most of the time support and feedback feels like a black box, previously with the forzafb email address and now with the ticket system. We as players can't see what others have submitted, yet moderators have been instructed to (fairly aggressively sometimes) lock threads with posts directing players to submit their feedback to what is effectively a black hole, making it feel at times more like censorship than moderation.

As others have mentioned, I would love to see a proper public ticket system where when players are creating a ticket, it suggests existing tickets with similar titles and encourages them to upvote those tickets to indicate they're having the same problem or feedback rather than creating an entirely new one for the same thing and creating more work for the dev team to process the duplicate tickets.

These public tickets should have a public status indicating where the devs are at on each particular issue, such as investigating, confirmed, fixing, fixed, unable to reproduce, not enough info, etc. If a player accidentally duplicates a ticket, then their duplicate can be closed and linked to the main ticket for that issue so the player at least knows where to look to see the status of the issue. Feedback tickets could have statuses such as acknowledged, implementing, implemented, postponed, etc so players at least know their feedback was heard even if the devs haven't had a chance to act on it yet.

I've seen many other companies do systems like this, and it seems to me that it would help a lot with transparency. There should still definitely be a way to privately submit tickets (reporting abuse or cheating for example), but these could be limited to a specific subset with most tickets being publicly viewable.

What I've been reading from this thread, I can agree to a lot of these.

Most of all, the ticket system could be better. As explained by posts before this one, it would be nice to see if others had similar problems and be able to upvote them, or make them more seen in general. If there's a group of problems, let's say there's Problem A, B, C... Z, the current sysyem to my knowledge sounds like they have to sort through the entire alphabet. But if players were able to flag a problem that they've also experienced, it could be narrowed down to the important problems. So instead of a couple people going from A to Z in problems, they could just look at the problems flagged the most and say "Problem G and Problem F probably should be sorted out."

Edited by user Saturday, January 26, 2019 9:10:42 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

This sounds like the UserVoice system used by Xbox Ideas:
https://xboxideas.uservoice.com/




Another approach for keeping users informed is at Xbox Live Status, where an issue is summarized and given a date and time for the last status update. I haven't watched lately but their pattern has to been to update the status at regular intervals (in the case of Forza a longer time scale might be more appropriate, like once a week). By setting a time for the next status update this releases users from hitting refresh every hour and wondering when or if the issue is being worked on. Even if the status repeats "We're still working on this." at each interval, it still shows that the issue is on the radar. This could be a standard used for both trouble tickets as well as popular feature requests such as the increase in garage size.
https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-live-status


Overall, I think there's been a reluctance to announce a date for anything until the point that the developers can deliver on that date. But as experienced in the past, even when you're almost sure you can deliver, something might come up at the last moment to delay. The takeaway from those instances is not to move away from announcing target dates, but to embrace the chance for something to change with caveats: "Our intent is to deliver this [next month, next quarter], subject to the development process." Movies change release dates all the time and it's not the end of the world. From my observation the community would appreciate more advance date information - even if rescheduled later - than waiting and waiting and giving up waiting in the absence of any light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm not sure more transparency is a good idea. You guys do a good job of laying out and sticking to a road map, and having more transparency can lead to more frustration in the fan base.

I look at myself and the two biggest issues I have with the game currently.

1. Why can't I create my own single player championships like in Forza Horizon 3?

2. Why do I have to be forced into the server season when playing offline? Why can't I just choose my own season?

The issue here is that from my perspective, these seem like super easy fixes, but I know very little about programming video games. There could be very good reasons why these two things are not in the game, but explaining them to me is just going to come off as disingenuous to me, even though I recognize the fact that I may not truly understand the difficulty.

Providing me with transparency and answering my questions is a noble gesture in theory, but unless the answers are "these changes are coming in the next patch" it's kind of a no win situation in practice. Having to deny a fan an aspect of the game is a hard truth that needs to happen, but is always messy, especially in a public space.

Ok, i have no understanding in coding either, but from my point of view its clear, that things which were in the last iteration of the game which are now removed isnt because they cant do it or it is to hard to implement it. They removed it or didnt put in it, because they thought it would be better to rate it, as RetroKrystal said E for everyone. One mode, plug and play. I think It is a decision from the management department. This is my guess. I hope nobody gets offended. I could be wrong. Or they didnt bother, which would be even worse.

I can be a harsh critic and that is partially because I care about the franchise and the direction. Some of the biggest issues that cause a lot of frustration is some things that should be no brainer easy wins but seem to get lost in the shuffle of development cycles.

For example it seems like their is no dedicated PM to get good business requirements from the start.
Q#1 - How many total cars will be in the life of the game and do we have a garage space for each one for each customer? Same for number of tunes and paints. If you can't paint every car you own why bother having painting at all? I understand people that love duplicates and such but that is more a management issue on their end not yours, 1 slot per car with maybe 5% pad is a business requirement at the start of the project.
Q#2 - Will the uneven game balance ever be addressed? No matter what the fan boys say, there is rubber banding and while it is not as bad as in the past when it rears it's head it just breaks enjoyment.
Q#3 - Why is there an "Unbeatable" difficulty when by definition that would mean no chance of winning no matter what?
Q#4 - Why are some simple database things so cumbersome? If your car doesn't get sold at auction why not have a report button to run it again? Some better sorting on the garage would be welcome also, after all it is just SQL Select statements to query the database and return results, unless it is all managed in some other fashion?
Q#5 - Couldn't we finally get a refreshed paint tool so you can paint sections of cars other than just the hood, mirrors, wing and wheels? Dealing with the decals is not how I want to spend game time just because I would like a paint scheme of one main body color and a contrast color on the doors or fenders. Sure there would have to be a break from supporting old paint files from previous games but backward compatibility for eternity is simple madness. It is a racing game not a painting game after all.

The Forza franchise is the main reason I have an Xbox and I want it to reach full potential. Some seemingly small details as above would go a long way. If they are not possible an explanation why would also go a long way.

You can submit all Suggestions & Feedback here

This is really interesting, thanks for these points.

Paradox - I'll take a look at this. Dev diaries/videos is something I have considered and actually discussed for future communication.
Streams - See my other posts regarding the matter. I did once start a stream summary, but took it down due to a mods request of overlapping this thread. However, I'm looking into writing up the post again with more details following the feedback/requests here.
Known Issues - Contact @NitroGlitter regarding your feedback
Community - I hope to bring a more open friendly relationship. Unfortunately it won't be an instant and more "over the next year" process, but hopefully we can improve this.

I'll take a look further into this and mention it to the team behind the forum design going forward. It would be better to have a bit of a colour differentiation.

All feedback regarding the known issues & bugs like should be sent to @NitroGlitter.

Personally, I really like the idea of a button saying "I'm experiencing this too."

I was told by @NitroGlitter herself that I should just ask players to submit a ticket or direct everything feedback relating to the support page to her, hence why I keep suggesting this. In regards by the tickets, these are dealt with by myself, all the T10 community & support team with each member specialising in a certain ticket type.

I really like your "investigating" idea. I think currently, this is what "Pending" is under but maybe this is not defined well enough for you players. "Investigating" does seem more appropriate.

I'm aware podcasts can be transcripted as I've done this before but live streams are a little different.
But for everyones information, I have started to look into this and hopefully can find a solution.
In terms of the bullet points, there is a content page/agenda which is shown on each stream. This would potentially make a good guide line for the 'different sections' which you have mentioned.

See my reply to @Chilli Duck

All suggestion & feedback should be submitted under a ticket

All suggestion & feedback should be submitted under a ticket

Edited by user Monday, January 28, 2019 3:07:05 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I also think we should have a dedicated feedback and suggestion forum in which we can post independent threads of what features we like. Added to this would be a rating system 1=poor/bad and 5=excellent. Each vote would be anonymous and each person would only be allowed one vote. Devs could then see what is most popular and it would massively reduce the need to submit support tickets.

Moving forward we are all looking for everything to lead to the support page regarding tickets. However this is a good idea, specifically the idea of the rating system.

*EDIT* - Seeing as it's essentially a feature just like reddit, it would be interesting to where we can take this. I know this has been in discussion by those who present/design the forums. The best option would be to have a "rate up" such as you can "like" a post on here currently and not involving anything negative like a vote down. But that aspect won't be up to me.
Everything forum and support page, I'm not involved with, However, I'm more than happy to bring up any feedback if its necessary.

Edited by user Monday, January 28, 2019 9:03:09 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

A lot of the replies say submit a ticket, but that is the opposite to transparency. We don't want to submit tickets if the problem is already known about, and we don't know if the problem is already known about because of the lack of transparency.

So 'Submit a ticket' actually identifies a problem with transparency.

And to add to that, AquaPainter168, there have been several times over the years with Forza where I have had an issue that was solved within minutes (ok, maybe within an hour or so) by other helpful forum members.

I work in IT and totally understand and support the idea of a help ticket. I also support the idea of forum discussion where the solution to a problem is already know by someone who is willing to share that solution with you.

Voting for/rating of posts of others was a feature of the forums back in FM1/FM2 and had to be removed due to abuse.

Barring a fundamental change to the notion, it's likely we'll end up right where we were when it had to be removed.

Edited above post (best to keep it together as it's related)

Perhaps promote and encourage the usage of your HUB app by more people. It used to be a big thing back then.
And consider putting a suggestions box or run polls every once in a while when you feel you need the community input about something.

We've discouraged polls on the forums for ten years now as they simply cannot be representative of the player base as a whole and like voting/rating posts, are subject to abuse and distortion, leading to arguments.

We've got likes now and they perfectly serve the purpose of anonymously registering approval.

I'm talking about bugs in the game, you can't talk through a bug in a game... Like EA Sports say... it's in the game.

I'll give you some examples...

1/ The Auction cars are often the wrong colours which is bad if you are trying to sell Liveries.
2/ My Bids doesn't delete bids when you collect the money even after the bid has ended.
3/ Mountains disappear like on the Goliath for example.

None of those are in the XBox list of problems, but nearly everyone has those issues. With transparency they would be mentioned in a list of known bugs.

How do helpful members help with those... all the replies say get a ticket.

Sorry for my poor English.

I think we have to talk about the bigger picture. It's not about a certain bug, about one strange design-decession - it's about the hole picture.

Two examples.

In Forza Motorsport 7 leagues are offline since Feb. 27th. No communication about that. Not ingame, not here. It is okay to discontinue this feature, maybe it is a bug, but why is there no communication? It seems that in T10's eyes it is not important to inform the customer. And this behavior is a major problem - even with PGG.

Fortune Island, seasonal events. Why are there only 12, what's the idea behind this? This single - in the eyes of many people strange - design idea isn't part of this discussion, but why is not even a single developer explaining it. The players have to do a little quiz show: Is it a technical problem? Or game design? After three weeks, common seens is that it's meant to be the way it is, but why is there no communication?

Why have we never got an explaination about team-challenges? (Offtopic: Why aren't there locked at A-class, so teamplay can work, because nobody has to handle a S2 car?)

My opinion: The problem is not the optimized or not optimized use of social media. It's a question about seeing the player. Are we players people, who has to pay money year by year and enjoy the plan of the great game designer. His idea about timing, when we have to play with certain cars? His mastermind about game currency, the ability to play special cars, wear silly shoes or dance, even if nobody asked for it? Or are we player partners, who give you money, because we feel entertaint, but also because we feel treated well? As partners, who have not to be teached about playing a game, not have to be aducated?

Without changing the view about customers, nothing will change. I understand that nobody can talk about negotiations with Mitsubishi, but stick to the fortune island example. In the moment it feels like: Let's give them some leagues. Most people will be happy and after four weeks it's no more work for us. Let's just repeat them. Most people will not see it and the others will be silent if we give them a new color-scheme of a Hoonigan Ford. Please don't get me wrong, it's not my intention to offend you. It's just a feeling I and others have when thinking about the T10/PGG-customers-relationship.

Edited by user Monday, January 28, 2019 2:19:14 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Thank you for briefly summarizing the fundamental problem with the current ticket system. There's nothing wrong with asking players to submit tickets, but if there's no way for players to see what issues have already been reported or what common feedback has already been given, then you're going to end up with a LOT of duplicates that wastes both the dev's and the player's time.

We moderators have a private chat where we complain about and make fun of most of you all day long.

Not really, but we do have a private where we discuss things related to the forums and the games. A few days ago, Max was telling us that he was within four pages of the end at that point and had tallied over 1600 posts with over 17k requests in the car wish list thread. How many tickets should we break those requests into?

Contrary to what appears to be the prevailing opinion, tickets are not the one-size-fits-all solution to every issue.

Edited by user Monday, January 28, 2019 4:29:03 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Other people are already discussed on the first page, but if the point of streaming is officially posted as text, it will be useful for users who do not live in English-speaking countries and who can not speak English.
Even if it remains in English, we can convert it to we mother tongue by translation services on the web etc, so it is easier to obtain accurate information than youtube's erroneous automatic subtitle translation.

And this is a system that I care about personally, but once as one of the reasons the car is continued / deleted in the next series, the T10 replied that player statistic information etc. exist It was.
I want more open information about this "statistics".
For example if the T10/PG is only looking at driving time and race usage rate, Forza Edition cars with credit/skill boost etc will be advantageous.
Or a convenient S2 class hyper car or Hoonigan cars for Forzathon.
Also, for vehicles such as prize cars and DLC that are not available to all players, it is statistically more disadvantageous than other cars.

For example my garage has many Terradyne Gurkha and Mercedes-Benz Unimog. I like these strange cars and are upgrading to be available in multiple classes.
But these cars are slow. They can not faster run like Ferrari, Urus, WRX.
I like these cars but I will not actively drive these cars online racing or Forzathon.
I use Hoonigan RS 200 in Forzathon and use other cars like WRX in online racing.
In this case, will my statistical data become "Hoonigan RS 200's enthusiast"? Actually I like Gurkha.

It goes without saying, these investigations are important to influence whether our favorite car can also be used in the next Forza.
Everyone wants to use their favorite car all the time and we do not want to waste livery and tune we made hard for those cars.

It may be difficult to publish everything about what kind of statistics are done.
However, if T10/PG tell us more specific information, we can better actions for our favorite cars.
And it will be more accurate player statistics.

When I think of “transparency” I think of a Q&A session.

What about starting a thread where forum members can post a question; one question per post. The number of “likes” each question gets can determine which ones are addressed at the next Live Stream or Q&A Stream.

@RetroKrystal I think you failed to see the point of my post. I already submitted a ticket about my 2 issues with the game a long time ago. My point was that transparency can be a double-edged sword, because no answer other than "these changes are coming in the next patch" was going to provide a positive emotional response for me, so in some ways telling me nothing is better.

I mean, case in point, you just breezed over my post and made a knee jerk response of an answer without fully understanding what I was trying to communicate. Luckily, I have the emotional maturity to understand that you may not have the time or emotional energy (likely both) to provide full and in depth responses to every post. I just hope you can understand how giving the generic answer that shows you didn't even fully read the post was a poor PR move that could have easily backfired.

Let me be clear: I am not looking for a response to this, or even my previous post.

I am trying to communicate that transparency is a noble idea in theory, but a dangerous mess in practice.

Try to stick to your roadmap. Don't lie when you know some promised feature is going to be late. Keep reading submitted tickets. Beyond that, be very careful when interacting with the community, and don't be afraid to take a step back on occasion.

Itd be great to just get a dozen questions answered with clear and concise statements from a senior developer.(not strangled by an NDA) My burning question would be

"what are your short term(60days) and long term(6 months) plans for the online multiplayer functions of this game. I'm referring to the ghost town pvp/coop system, total lack of choice in race type,class in adventure, and the rampant abuse of wall riding?"

That's it. Just stand up, put ur big boy(or girl) pants on, and tell us what's going on. It's great that retrokrystal and our moderators have all engaged us in this way, but I'm waiting for a senior, or lead developer to look us in the eyes(figuritively) and tell us SOMETHING. Not 2 hours of fluff in a livestream dodging serious questions in chat, not some vague statement about assessing options, or looking into possibilities.

Currently we have almost absolute transparency between us, and retrokrystal and the mods. But it seems theres little to no communication at all beyond that. I was personally muted in a livestream back in December or November for asking about multiplayer.

I think it's fair to say that we've asked enough questions, and our ideas, and suggestions have been sufficiently expressed in thoughtful forms(and tickets). The ball is in playground's court. Were all listening. Start talking to us.

Edited by user Tuesday, January 29, 2019 4:02:35 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Its pretty annoying to have the game freeze up just tabbing between the menus. I couldnt even queue up another adventure because it froze before I could get there. UGH

I'd like to see T10 and PG do something similar to what Wildcard did during Early Access for ARK:SE with the ARK digest. People would submit questions for the devs and they would answer as many as they were able to along with their immediate future updates/plans. This could easily be done in the stream and then transcribed and posted here for those of us that don't watch the stream. Just don't avoid the hard questions. For example, I want to know if rivals mode will eventually resemble what it was in FH3. I don't want to hear that they are still discussing what to do. If it's getting added then they need to say so. We don't need to know when things are being done, just that they are going to happen. That's the biggest issue I've had with T10 and PG. They know people want answers yet they say nothing and people just get angry. You've helped since you've been here but there's still a lot that could be improved.

I'd also like to see more allowance for feature request topics here instead of them being closed constantly. Most people only post here and considering this is the FH4 Discussion board, topics discussing what we'd like to see or how we'd like the game to be fixed should be allowed. One person saying "fix this" is meaningless if there's no other input. Merge topics if need be but stop censoring discussion just because it isn't in the correct topic.