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Please send this feedback to @NitroGlitter as it's relating to the Known Issues & Bugs list.

I have brought up to the relevant person that the support page & purpose of tickets should be communicated to players better. In response, I've been advised to tell everyone to submit tickets and all questions to direct you to this post under the support forum.
I am still continuously asking to get this communicated to you, the players, better.

Totally agree with this. See above quote reply ^

I'm currently discussing potentially of a Q&A and the best way to go about it in a social aspect to reach the widest of audience.

Apologize if I misunderstood your original post. This last paragraph (quoted) its useful and thanks for saying this is what you're looking for.

I'm currently in discussing about how Playground can potentially portray a roadmap to let you know the short term or long term plans. This makes an interesting point and I'll make sure to take the specific topic into consideration.

See my above response to @DarkWolf

Edited by user Wednesday, January 30, 2019 1:53:27 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Since there are other forums beside this one for Horizon 4 would it be possible to build a poll system into the game itself? Maybe incentivise players to take part by giving them a small reward such as credits or forzathon points for casting a vote.

Interesting suggestion regarding a potential in-game feature. Please submit this under the "feedback & suggestions" form

Some while ago Max did a post regarding the Car Wishlist in which he listed the most wanted cars, like a ZR1 or the Huracán Performante. What I´d like to see is if the developers actually care about that by saying something like "We know you want car X" followed by either "We are working on bringing that car into the game" or "We cannot add that car into the game because (reason)". Because right now I don´t even know if the developers know what the community wants.
This would not only help the players, but also the developers and publisher: I know that after Motorsport 7 some players did not want to buy the Car Pass because they were not sure if PG/T10 actually know what the community wants since in FM7 they added... questionable cars while ignoring the wishlist. And I´m sure that more people would have bought the Car Pass if they knew about cars like the ZR1, the NSX-R GT or the Agera RS.
This obviously does not only work for the Car Pass (since there are only 2 cars missing) but also for Forzathon cars or other free cars. I understand that some people may want to be surprised, but I personally would just like to know if PG actually tries to get the cars from said post or if they simply add what they think the community might like.

This is an interesting take. However it can lead people to believing such aspects are 'coming soon' whereas the real downside is it takes a long time to get a car into a game due to licensing & other factors. Also, taking the factor that the forum only has a specific amount of the audience & player suggestion on the games, so it would be interesting to have a more open global social list to make this as accurate or demographic as possible within the community.

Edited by user Wednesday, January 30, 2019 5:54:57 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I absolutely understand that adding a car to the game does take some time, that´s just something the players have to accept. I also agree that the forum does not show the whole community, but I believe that the forum should be T10/PGs number one place to look for community interaction. A possible solution to this would be to show some cars the community asks for (maybe 2, not more) and talk about these cars in a livestream. That way more people would be able to get an insight to what the studios are working on in terms of cars. Thus more people would come to the forum and list their wishes, this allowing T10/PG to have access to a much bigger part of the community.

That's so brilliantly put!

1. Assign a mod to collect bugs, strip away individual prose and put them in a growing list only maintained by mods in order to keep it neat and tidy.
   
2. Assign submit button to each bullet point, and a counter behind, that outputs the amount of submitted confirmations
   
3. Assign a star rating system (0-5 stars, or danger signs hehe) to each bullet point for users to express how important a fix would be for them (0=minor bug to 5=severe game breaker)

Based on how many confirmations a bug harvested in its stats (from the list) and on the severeness of the problem that bug causes (star rating in the list), devs and community people can pick their Monthly Top 3 to look into or fix right away (e.g. if a fix can be done super quick -> get it done).

The remaining bullet points: monthly user poll to figure the next 3 bugs to be worked on as soon as the devs have capacity to do so. "Dev's Bucket List"

I've seen systems like this work brilliantly for indie devs (not gaming though) that were confronted with a rapidly growing user base. So efficient once personal prose is stripped away due to moderated streamlining. So much less individual tickets and descriptions for the support staff and devs to read through and interprete.

Bonus: if a bug turns out to be tricky to wrap one's head around and needs more Q&A/discussion -> just open a moderated thread like this one here and LINK the corresponding bullet point to reference it.

We could do the same with suggestions: a nice list and polls to figure out the most pressing for most people.

The post at that link doesn't really say much of anything about tickets (other than we can submit them if we need further assistance), and the link to the support page on the post doesn't provide any information on ticket usage whatsoever. The support page itself isn't very user friendly either with the option to actually submit a ticket not shown at all on the main page and buried at the bottom of some of the articles.

I can understand the logic of wanting people to submit tickets if they need specific assistance or want to make sure the devs see specific feedback, but the way you and others have jumped into player discussion threads and thrown around the words "submit a ticket" for nearly everything has really confused me (and judging from other responses here, a lot of other people) for what tickets are really for.

To me personally, in many cases it's the new forzafb@microsoft.com. The canned answer that's often thrown out to nip discussion in the bud for certain topics followed by the thread being locked. I know that's not always the case (you want that content to be sent directly to the devs where someone might be able to do something about it rather than just having players vent on the forums) but when it's frequently used in this way it feels like a form of censorship to keep certain content off the forums. In which case, like another user said, what's the purpose of the forums then if there's a high chance of having our threads locked and just being told to submit a ticket for anything and everything instead of being able to have discussions?

And yes, before you tell me to submit a ticket on this, I've already submitted a ticket on my feedback on the ticket system.

Edit: On the topic of transparency, maybe when asking players to submit tickets or when locking threads, always explain briefly why this is being done. Occasionally I see this done, but if it were more consistent it would go a long ways towards helping players understand why they're being asked to submit a ticket or why a thread is being locked instead of just feeling like random censorship. For example, if a player makes a random post with a great suggestion, then it's appropriate to politely acknowledge the suggestion and ask the player to submit it as a feedback ticket so the devs can see it. Same goes for bug reports or other issues and politely reminding players to submit a ticket if they haven't already, but in all cases state why the "submit a ticket" words were thrown out, and especially why threads were locked. The worst are when the last post of a thread is "submit a ticket" (or previously, send your feedback to forzafb@microsoft.com) with no explanation given and the thread is now locked. That right there feels more like censorship than anything else.

Edited by user Wednesday, January 30, 2019 1:43:32 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Ticket submission update

1) Mods should not be dealing with bugs, this is for Turn10 and PG (or more specifically the support team) and also the reason to why the support page has been developed. (And why I've been told to direct you all to the support page)
2) I like the idea of a 'counter'
3) This is 'prioritising' bugs, which is actually done internally. The only issue is that our priorities do change constantly and what might be high priority, can become low all of a sudden, and vice versa. But I do agree that it would be nice for you the players to have some visual. I'll look into this as I have some ideas.

Q&A - I'm currently looking & in discussion into the best way to do an Q&A so that it can be efficient.

List/Polls - Also looking into as Polls are a good way on getting quick and direct data. However I don't know if this would be a forum aspect but more of a Twitter aspect. This would be as polls are made for data collection and not necessarily discussion. Twitter would allow to keep that to a minimum plus if discussion was to be made, it is done in 'bite size' chunks.


(I snipped the rest due to it being a large paragraph but I will address all of it still)
I do not deal with the support page. I've just been told to direct everyone there as a 'help/support desk' and personally I just answer the suggestions & feedback tickets. All information or discussion regarding the support page should be sent to @NitroGlitter.

In terms of the support page, I personally think the post which I've been told to direct you all to isn't enough. And I am (still) trying to get the support page communicated better to you all. Hopefully this will change soon so that everyone can get a better understanding.

In relation to threads being locked without a full explanation - I will look into making this better moving forward.

Edited by user Thursday, January 31, 2019 1:20:48 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

The devs have done this in the past. They don't do it regularly, but there have been times in some of the official streams where they've noted some of the top cars in the 'Car Wishlist' threads here on the forums and then added them to the games some time later.

This has been a problem since shortly after the move to the current forum... The mods have always seemed quite eager to shut things down and direct the posts to the "dump" threads or that garbage-bin forzafb email.

In some cases it is the right thing to do of course. Some people do just spam the cars they want or some track they want like in a dump thread. Those dump threads rarely have any actual discussion in them because they are just people ignoring everyone else and posting what they want, so obviously we don't need multiple threads full of lists of things people want...

...But when we do have real, friendly discussions about the merits of certain vehicles or locations or features or whatever, where we are making points and counterpoints (aka discussing), why lock the thread up in such a hurry? It just puts an end to constructive/friendly discussion and sends us off (with a bad taste in our mouth at that) to post in the other (usually more argumentative) threads. I remember one particular thread way back when the idea of a Hot Wheels cross-promotion was initially rumored (FM4?), we were several pages in with people actually having friendly, back-and-forth discussions about ways the tie-up could be leveraged to benefit the series in a constructive way and how it could benefit Hot Wheels as well and about community events/contests they could lead to... Until one mod came along and locked the thread, telling us to "post in the wishlist thread." One or two of us tried to continue the conversation there, but it was broken up with those "I WANT TEH NEW FORMERLR 1 CARZ DAT WUD B SIK" posts and we just gave up.

Another side-effect of premature locking is that it doesn't give the community a chance to work through the bug together. There's some smart people playing these games and I've seen a few threads where people did their own testing and worked together to find a work-around or alternative, or at least something to help us get by until it can be fixed. I've seen threads about issues that I knew how to work around that were locked so I couldn't post the solution, and threads where I was experiencing a similar issue and did some experimenting and couldn't post my findings because it was rush-job locked.

Been this way for nearly 10 years now though, can't expect it to change now. I just do my constructive discussion elsewhere, which leaves this as the place where I post snarky comments about bugs/DLC packs/poorly thought out "features" and so on.

Edited by user Thursday, January 31, 2019 3:14:48 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

This is why I compiled developer quotes into a FAQ thread which is linked from the Car List thread pinned above:


JONK's comments on those questions are included in that thread. This leads to a counter question: how can the community be better informed that questions they keep asking have already been answered, and that it would be an inefficient use of team time to keep reminding the community to read stickied threads?

You are not alone in these thoughts. This is a growing concern for a good number of us. One of my greatest disappointments is exactly what you descibe in the ".Another side-effect of premature locking is that it doesn't give the community a chance to work through the bug together." paragraph.

In regards to your last paragraph, where do you contribute you constructive dicussions, if not here?

Edited by user Thursday, January 31, 2019 7:27:24 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

It's really nice to see people trying to help each other out and test 'work-arounds.' And I do think this should be encouraged within everyone.

"Been this way for nearly 10 years now" - This is exactly why I am trying to make a change or more so improvement.. Unfortunately, not everyone likes or can adapt to change but hopefully I can make change for the better and continue to move forward to where it needs to be so it's not left behind. However, this does include your own constructive discussion. I can't improve transparency and communication if you, the players, don't discuss with me how you would like it to be. As much as I'd love to be, I'm actually not a mindreader. "this as the place where I post snarky comments" is the exact reason why the audience and amount of people that either stay away or left the forums and became inactive users. I would like to encourage this to be a helpful and ideal place for players to come regarding a source of information. But I cannot do this all on my own, I need everyone on the forums to come together.
If you only come here to post snarky comments, then this isn't the focus and aim of this forum, and you may want to leave and go to wherever you place the constructive discussion. But as mentioned, I can't improve factors if you don't provide me with the constructive ideas. I bet you have good ideas, so let's hear them.

Edited by user Thursday, January 31, 2019 7:37:48 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Perhaps I’m missing something, but it appears in every thread I’ve read (snarky or not) the core of what players have been asking for is more information. The common response is “the developers are aware…” or “submit a ticket”.



Members come here (and all forums) because they can remain anonymous while posting snarky remarks. If you want members to change, you’ll need to change the rules (no snarky comments) or you’ll have to get rid of screen names and require real names. Then posters will be a bit more cautious of what comes out of their keyboards.

Those answers are in relation to issues/bugs. This thread is discussing the point of transparency & communication.
However, I do get where you're coming from.

Just wait for a "RetroKrystal follow up" subject

Outcome of already so many things shared on the forum, single place where I can find the list of burning subjects for community, subjects the game team is working on, the weekly outcome of community (would be nice to have very few lines each week of what you consider were the community top topics of the week. Not a discussion thread, just RK thread.

My main issue with these forums has been pointed out by Mobid, when users are able to discuss a workaround for a bug or issue the thread is rushed to be locked with a reply to submit a ticket. Honestly I find that really irritating. Also with letting us discuss things out to find a workaround atm seems the best course of action since most the time submitting a ticket rarely receives an answer or it takes them weeks to reply, that there is what is causing users here to be snarky when posting imho. SO for now I wont be submitting tickets and will be trying to talk to other users in threads for workarounds as it seems to be the best course of action for us atm.

Also if there was a thread specifically showing what the team is aware of and/or working on that would help as well. As far as i know nothing like that exists, unless i am overlooking it.

Edited by user Thursday, January 31, 2019 9:48:21 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

There is a thread in the support section of the forums which links to FH4 Known Issues.

Often times you will also see a [INVESTIGATING] or [ANSWERED] in the title of a thread where a developer has responded to the issue/topic, which, to be fair, they do frequently.

Whether or not this method of acknowledgement or the time it takes to do so is adequate for you as a customer is, well, up to you. That's what this thread is for.

Well other forums are sort of trailing off at this point since FM7 seems kinda dead and FH4 has been a disappointment to a lot of people, so I don't contribute as much since they are nearly dead... But in the past it has been GameFAQs/GTPlanet/Forzacentral/NeoGAF, but for me now it's mainly smaller private league forums/chats as those are still active because the "hardcore" community is still playing the game in organized leagues multiple times a week.

Wasn't my intent to make it sound like I was some paragon of Forza knowledge/assistance or something though.



I was being a bit self-deprecating with the snarky comments bit, but I've been playing these games since day one of FM1 and coming to the forums before that even released, and it's tough not to get a bit jaded over the years and feel like a lot of discussion here is futile, so while it isn't necessarily my intention, my comments have leaned more that way lately.

I suppose it's no excuse, but for me the snarkiness comes my frustration/disappointment with the various parts of a series that I've been with for nearly 14 years now and, outside of skipping FM5 (during which time I still played FM4 weekly), have been playing pretty much non-stop organizing and competing in community events/series. I know others that are in the same boat as they are people I have been racing with/against and organizing events with and have become friends with over those 14 years, as well as friends that I have missed racing against since they gave up and moved on to other titles. For some of us the criticism and frustration does come from a place of love for the series, although admittedly it can be pretty hard to tell sometimes and for some of us who have been around the longest, we are the most cynical. Feeling like our input is actually valuable is a big encouragement for us to be more articulate, as when it feels hopeless it's just too much easier to make some sarcastic post with fewer words.

I can't speak for the others, but for me the most important aspect of the "transparency" part is addressing things in a manner that helps us understand why the decisions that have been made were made. Sure, there will be some that still yell about how stupid some decision was despite that, but I think for a lot of us understanding why something was done and being able to discuss it with that knowledge can help us be patient for the fixes to come. Obviously there is too much going on for devs to address every question/complaint/request, and there is a lot that can't be discussed (some of it for good reasons I'm sure, some of it is probably unnecessarily secretive). Of course, it's good to know that "we're working on it" or whatever too, but that doesn't help us understand so that doesn't really change the tone of the discussions because then we just get the same speculation mixed with people telling others to be patient... which generally leads to hostility.

A good example would be the whole Team Adventure debacle. We played it and wondered "how could anyone think this was a good idea?" and were frustrated with it for months with no comment other than a vague "it didn't turn out quite how we wanted" type acknowledgement. Later on, it was addressed and explained that they thought it would reduce ramming as you would have allies in the lobby and so on, and it made more sense and gave some insight to the thought, so we could at least understand why the mistake was made and see that it was made with good intentions rather than ignorance or indifference. Being more upfront with explaining decisions can help us contribute our thoughts earlier in the process, instead of waiting months until we are all reaching our limit and about to give up and go play something else. It also helps morale to avoid the loss of hope that leads to the snarky commenting.

Moving forward, an example of another topic to be addressed could be the logic behind leaving D through B-class out of online Adventures. This has been discussed a bit in the forum in multiple threads, and has been requested a fair number of times... Yet I haven't even seen a dev comment acknowledging the request (of course I could have missed it though). Maybe there is a good reason why they left them out to start, or why they still haven't been added in despite the requests... But we don't know what that reason is, so we can't understand it. When we can't understand and we get ignored, it just leads to wild speculation about the reason, and frustration from the community from feeling ignored... then that frustration often leads to arguments and more work for the moderators to clean up.

There are other subjects too of course, like "Trial" events pretty much always being open to S2 that lead to extra rubberbandy AI and harder to drive cars that the community are all forced to use to be competitive and are left grouchy (like the one to earn the Mosler), why we can't choose a discipline when looking for Adventures, why we can't choose specific classes while looking for Adventures, why the auction house is so blatantly leaned towards painters/tuners ensuring that the "rich get richer" and so on.

I do understand that it's a tough balance and isn't so simple as just telling us everything, and I do appreciate the fact that there seems to be some effort being made (for both the Horizon series and Motorsport series). It's just that we have had a long time to grow cynical and that can't just change overnight, especially when things are happening like the whole "some games that don't have motorsport in the title have more motorsport than us, and we take that personally... so here's some Hot Wheels cars, a show-truck offroad Bronco and some Forza Specials hot rods" thing from FM7 that give us reason to wonder if we are just being fed lines in an attempt to placate us.

What also can't change overnight is the lasting damage the neglect has done on the tone of the forum... There are a lot of forum users here who come to the series for different things, and some are completely satisfied with certain areas while others are disappointed to the point they are praying for a new console racing title to show up. Being left in the dark to speculate amongst ourselves for all these years has changed the tone of the forum for sure. A dev addressing a concern and potentially starting a dialogue can give that concern/complaint validity, which can help turn the concern/complaint into an actual discussion rather than the "positive side" accusing people of being whiners while the "negative side" accuses people of being casuals or whatever.

This thread is a great example of that... We have talked about the lack of communication stuff for years on here and some of the threads haven't been so nice, with one side screaming about how T10/PG don't care about us and threatening to go play another game or whatever. Meanwhile, the other side is calling them whiners and babies and accusing them of not understanding how NDAs work and "they are too busy making the game for you ingrates to answer your stupid questions" and so on. In this thread though, you see people putting in well thought-out posts, responding to each other and such, instead of making one-line posts using soft insults and accusatory comments. It's just like service industry stuff... As a waiter/waitress, you will always have some customers that make demands and won't be reasonable or understanding, but you will also find many are understanding and can be patient when they are acknowledged and addressed properly.

Great post Morbid, I haven't been around the forums as long as you but that pretty much sums up perfectly my frustration with the current situation as well.

Sadly, I see this exact same situation play out time and again in "official" game forums. The worst part of the cycle seems to be when players are especially unhappy with a particular aspect of the game. In many cases the dev's response is radio silence (or worse, putting down the players for "playing the game wrong"), which is about the worst thing that could happen since it just breeds speculation and frustration and makes the players wonder if the devs even care about them or fixing that particular issue.

When players are frustrated, this is when good communication is most desperately needed. Not a putdown like in the first livestream after launch where players were unhappy with the wheelspins and the devs tried to downplay it and pretend it was an imaginary problem ("wheelspins are good because they give more credits than they used to and you're all just a bunch of complainers" is effectively the message I received from that livestream), but an honest acknowledgement of the problem and as much information as can be publicly shared on what is being done to fix it, or better yet, start a discussion with the players to brainstorm how things could be done better if it's appropriate for the issue at hand.

Everyone makes mistakes, and I personally have a much higher opinion of people who are able to acknowledge when they've messed up than those who try to pretend it didn't happen or cover it up.

Edited by user Thursday, January 31, 2019 7:10:23 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Thanks for these ideas. I like the suggestion of "Community topic of the week"


I find it really positive how players try to help each other with workarounds and I'd like to continue to encourage this.
As previously mentioned, I've been advised to direct everyone to the support page. But I know the support team are working to reduce the response time for tickets. This is still a new procedure that is slowly improving.


This is a brilliant post and exactly what I needed. But also explains all the reasons why I made this thread in the first place - I want to improve all of this.
"In this thread though, you see people putting in well thought-out posts, responding to each other and such, instead of making one-line posts using soft insults and accusatory comments." -- Creating a warming atmosphere which everyone can work with and all of these comments are worthwhile facts which I've took into consideration. My aim to make all threads like this or move towards this aura.

Being the first community role at PG, and now settled, hopefully we can take all these facts, change everything for the better and keep moving forward.
Let's continue this productive momentum in which this thread has.


Noted! I'm currently looking further into how we can note everything to the players including our choices to move/delay/not continue with aspects of the game etc alongside updates.

Edited by user Friday, February 1, 2019 1:24:37 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

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.

So thought I'd give a quick update as I've been looking into all of this. I'm hoping to write an official documented thread with everything within the next few weeks but this will remain the thread to keep further discussion.

~

Current Issues:
Issue: Finding an Ideal Transcript for the stream.
Fix: Move forward with alternatives such as Stream Summary/Update videos

Looking Into/Moving forward:
- Stream Summary
- Dev and/or Stream Update videos

Backlog for future discussion:
- Q & A (I would put this in the above section, but further discussion is needed to 'how' we are going to do a Q&A appropriately)
- Roadmap (similar reason to Q & A)
- Polls
- Lists of the top information = "Top 5"
- Forum Status (as it's not under my control)
- Support page (as it's not under my control but I'll keep asking for this to be communicated better)

Edited by user Tuesday, February 5, 2019 3:55:35 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified