What's the plan, ScottyB???

[Parazight 1594]

"ScottyB," the DayZ PR and Brand Manager doesn't have an account on the DayZ official forums.  You'd think the public relations guy would at least have posted here once.  I'd be tempted to ask him directly via Direct Message, but I don't know if that's possible.  Further,  I guess he shows up at the DayZ podcast occasionally.  Strange that the PR manager uses a discord channel podcast to relay information to the public, but I guess that's acceptable.  I tried to find a point of contact at the Bohemia Interactive website, with no luck.

I think some answers to relevant questions are overdue.  

First, let's point out this article that discusses his podcast conversation. https://www.gfinityesports.com/dayz/2022-roadmap-bohemia-interactive/  

Quote

 

In terms of when we'll get the Roadmap, ScottyB first joked that it would be "Not months, weeks," before elaborating further:

"I would say it will be likely in the middle of January, we’re looking at something that would formulate the looks of a roadmap. I’m not going to say it’s going to be exactly in detail but I’ll be enough or in line with what we did in the previous year."

 

So, the first update of the year is now on experimental and we have no roadmap outline.  "We're looking at something that resembles a roadmap" is a non-answer.  Typically, first quarters of businesses start at the beginning of February.  That date has come and gone and we still have nothing.   We know that this first update is mostly about establishing a bug fixing platform, and that's great and all, but can we get something more than the typical rhetoric?

 

Where is the roadmap?

Are we going to have server wipes with this update?  Can you post the answer to this with the experimental release update post?

Will the public relations guy interact with the community outside of random podcasts?

Can we get this information posted to the 'Official' forums instead of relying on checking twitter all of the time?

[ImpulZ 2491]

The primary source for all information is our website at dayz.com, other relevant information like changelogs and server maintenance times are posted here. If you are asking for hints when the roadmap will be dropped, then I'm sorry to tell you that we do not consider this prime information that has to be shared across all of our public channels, even if it seems to be enough for some websites to write an article about it. In 2021 we released it in March, and we hope to have it earlier this time.

[Parazight 1594]

During the last 4 updates, on day one, I've asked if there was going to be server wipes and if the information could be listed on these forums, with the new Experimental threads.  It's really not asking too much.  I'm just assuming that the answer to this question is known to the development team at the time the experimental posts are created.  This is what I've been asking for and is the most important question asked.

Right now, the dayz dot com website focuses on mostly Community Spotlights and responses to fan questions.  I guess this is the primary information?  I'm not really interested in searching through random gifs and fan comments from Twitter/Facebook/Youtube/Twitch to find partial update information when all of the details could be posted in one spot (here).

 

So, Primary information = Community Spotlights and 2 days of Twitter feed.

Not Primary Information = Development updates and server wipes.  Got it.

 

 

[Parazight 1594]

What's the plan ScottyB?  I have my doubts that the PR guy for DayZ will create an account to reply on the official forums, but here goes..

https://dayz.com/article/developer-updates/DayZ-in-2022

Quote

 More likely than not, Update 1.17 will serve as the first wipe of the year. The reasons for this are purely balance related and we’ll be making all relevant announcements beforehand.

"Purely balance"  yea, okay.  Cleaning up the server data has nothing to do with it.  New map additions also has nothing to do with it.  Right.  Anyway, I'm wondering about the wipes for the year.  In your article, you say that a wipe is more likely than not but here we are, well into 1.17 Exp. and no beforehand announcement.   What's the plan with wipes?

Quote

 

We’re in the process of importing the latest version of vehicle simulation from a newer version of our Enfusion engine. We hope this will bring some much-needed stability to vehicle simulation in DayZ and expect to perform some public testing in the coming weeks.

 

This statement was made on February 11, could you elaborate on what you mean by 'coming weeks'??

[Parazight 1594]

Dear ScottyB, as someone who has worked in marketing, I took it upon myself to review your work. You have no engagement with your consumers.  It is my professional opinion that you still suck at your job. 
 

good job not doing anything. 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Parazight

[Parazight 1594]

What's the plan, ScottyB?????

Where's the roadmap?  Where's the information?  Where on earth is ScottyB, the brand manager?   I've made several submissions to the missing persons department because the BRAND manager has had zero communication with anybody, ever.

Quote

 

Greetings survivors!

The time has come for update 1.18 to be released to a stable branch. We’d like to thank everyone who joined the experimental servers and helped us by playing and providing their feedback. We’d also like to offer some info regarding the update to the vehicle simulation. While internal testing is in progress and the results look promising, we were unable to include it in the build for 1.18. we'll keep the community posted on the progress of Experimental servers in near future.
Now let’s get to the rather explosive content of this update.

 

Okay, Kyiara.  That's great and all.  What happened to keeping the community posted to the progress?  It's been SEVEN MONTHS since the initial announcement and NO information has been given.

Quote

The primary source for all information is our website at dayz.com

The primary source for information is community content and nothing related to the lies of keeping the community posted.   Why is it that the 'official' information is mostly community content?  Is this some sort of joke?  Please update whatever business model you think you're using to something the rest of society uses.

[Parazight 1594]

“Not months, weeks” was said about a roadmap. It’s been over half a year. Y’all planning on releasing the roadmap for 2022 maybe late November, at the earliest?  What about vehicle simulation?  You teased about that, then nothing. What about the under promising and over delivering premise? When does that start?  
 

Maybe you guys should replace the fictitious brand manager with a real one. 

[John Carlos Rebelo 4]

They don’t care about the community

Edited August 29, 2022 by John Carlos Rebelo
Grammar

[THEGordonFreeman 664]

On 8/23/2022 at 11:52 AM, Parazight said:

“Not months, weeks” was said about a roadmap. It’s been over half a year. Y’all planning on releasing the roadmap for 2022 maybe late November, at the earliest?  What about vehicle simulation?  You teased about that, then nothing. What about the under promising and over delivering premise? When does that start?  
 

Maybe you guys should replace the fictitious brand manager with a real one. 

And you haven't been put in DayZ Jail yet? This system is rigged, much like our own Justice System here in the States.

[Parazight 1594]

I try to be fair.   This thread is genuinely aimed at this “ScottyB”. Software developers don’t go into gaming development in order to deal with forum public relations. Obviously. They should be coding, right?  Where is the brand manager on the official forums??
 

We need a face to give us answers. We wait forever. I can see that they developed the title and made sacrifices to performance in order to implement security measures.  Now, the performance sucks with cars ….and there’s a dumpster full of security issues anyway!!!  So, that sacrifice for security is totally pointless!  No explanation!!  
 

Tell us how you messed things up and explain the mistakes that were made along the way.  Right now, BI doesn’t own up to their end of the Early Access bargain, IMO.  

[scott.bowen 13]

@Parazight Hello 🙂 
Sure you are more than welcome to reach out to me anytime (DMs or any socials) Don't hesitate to tag me 🙂 
Yes, I cleared up my Job role selection on the forum to better communicate my role. (Thanks for pulling up)
I do have an account here but not under my Discord title. That's why I didn't pick up the @scottyB Tag

As you touched upon, We have updated news about the vehicle simulation on forum and Bog posts with the last Update 1.18 (June 14th)
(Further mentions have been made on our frequent stream also - Please give us a follow ❤️ -https://www.twitch.tv/dayz)
Forum post 

Article 
https://dayz.com/article/game-update/DayZ-Update-1-18

I empathize with how long the development has been and am happy to update you on the current state. 
The vehicle simulation update is a work in progress, more to be announced soon™. In general, you can assume that no update means that the previously announced state (in this case, it's WIP) hasn't changed. We've iterated before that vehicle simulation is nothing easy, and so it took longer than expected.
As this entire thread is on the topic of the "roadmap" for this year, I'm happy to say that, currently all improvements to the game teased in that article are still planned to go live this year.


As you have already touched upon. my presence is on all socials of DayZ and I have amazing support from our community managers @Kyiara & @lynn.zaw also new Brand manager joining forces with us from Mini DayZ 2 @Bestius

I would also like to correct you on this statement (You know how to trigger 😄 )
"I guess he shows up at the DayZ podcast occasionally.  Strange that the PR manager uses a discord channel podcast to relay information to the public, but I guess that's acceptable"
I am active across all social media of DayZ including 3rd party Social groups/communities (Fan made FB groups, discourds etc..) 
I am watching/involved in the show (DayZ podcast) and many like it every time. The community is well aware of the involvement I have across all socials 🙂 

I will take your feedback on and expand during our Mkt team retrospective and see if something more can be done with presence here on the forums ❤️ 
Big Love and thanks for reaching out 
Scotty 
 

[scott.bowen 13]

On 8/23/2022 at 6:52 PM, Parazight said:

“Not months, weeks” was said about a roadmap. It’s been over half a year. Y’all planning on releasing the roadmap for 2022 maybe late November, at the earliest?  What about vehicle simulation?  You teased about that, then nothing. What about the under promising and over delivering premise? When does that start?  
 

Maybe you guys should replace the fictitious brand manager with a real one. 

DayZ in 2022  🧡
https://dayz.com/article/developer-updates/DayZ-in-2022

[Parazight 1594]

1 hour ago, scott.bowen said:

DayZ in 2022  🧡
https://dayz.com/article/developer-updates/DayZ-in-2022

Yea. Okay. I commented on the announcement thread. It’s fine that you didn’t notice. Linking that thread says shows that you really didn’t read my posts as I reference it. 
 

And NO. I have no interest in following ‘socials’. I come to the Official dayz website. I’m not interested in non official sources OR having to negotiate multiple, multiple sources.  
 

Your above posts say nothing relevant. 
 

I won’t be addressing issues via DM or socials.  I’ll continue to address them on the official website, where they logically belong. 
 

I’ll have to continue waiting for action instead of Mkt retrospective meeting reports that we’ll never see. 

[Parazight 1594]

My post got hidden because of a link or content??

 

EDIT. OH, hidden. I posted a dayz dot com link.  Lol

 

Edited August 30, 2022 by Parazight

[THEGordonFreeman 664]

@Parazight There has been this huge push to get people away from the forum and have everyone move over to their podcast, where they literally can screen questions and not have to take difficult ones like we ask.   And they are calling the information about the update for 1.16 the roadmap.  They give political answers. Uncommitted and void of details.  So there you have it, you were patted on the head and summarily dismissed... LOL!

[DefectiveWater 491]

49 minutes ago, THEGordonFreeman said:

And they are calling the information about the update for 1.16 the roadmap

There's a part in that post (dayz in 2022 post) that clearly states: "As for the rest of the year: ....." and then they give several bullet points about what they want to do this year.

That's a roadmap if you ask me, maybe a general one without clearly set goals, details and deadlines, but it still is a roadmap.

Edited August 30, 2022 by DefectiveWater

[Parazight 1594]

6 hours ago, scott.bowen said:

I would also like to correct you on this statement (You know how to trigger 😄 )

No. My statement is accurate. You don’t communicate. This is the official source.  Not socials. The narrative is here.  
 

You can call it trigger. Or whatever. I prefer to call it holding people accountable. responsible. It works great for successful companies. 
 

This thing that is hard to fix because it is fundamentally flawed.  Suspension is hard. Give me a break. 

[THEGordonFreeman 664]

38 minutes ago, DefectiveWater said:

There's a part in that post (dayz in 2022 post) that clearly states: "As for the rest of the year: ....." and then they give several bullet points about what they want to do this year.

That's a roadmap if you ask me, maybe a general one without clearly set goals, details and deadlines, but it still is a roadmap.

No, it's not.
https:// gtfothegame .com/ roadmap  (remove the spaces)
That is an example of a publicly digestible road map.  The details, goals and deadlines are CRUCIAL in understanding said roadmap.

[scott.bowen 13]

6 minutes ago, Parazight said:

No. My statement is accurate. You don’t communicate. This is the official source.  Not socials. The narrative is here.  
 

You can call it trigger. Or whatever. I prefer to call it holding people accountable. responsible. It works great for successful companies. 
 

This thing that is hard to fix because it is fundamentally flawed.  Suspension is hard. Give me a break. 

OK I'm trying to digest your accusations towards me and concerns from multiple forum posts here. 

Overall you are asking for two vital pieces of information (And thanks for posting in the missing person cases 😄): 

1. Road map and the incompetence of posting within your terms of timescale and expected format? 
2. Frequent official news on Official Website? 

Both of these are communicated on Forum as top pinned posts.
(And on front page of official website) 

Webiste does show latest information (including Twitter iframe)
Wipes are communicated also within our expected time frames.

If i can assist with other topics please let me know. 
(Not being condescending or patronising, I'm genuinely reaching out for collaboration)

"I’ll have to continue waiting for action instead of Mkt retrospective meeting reports that we’ll never see"
Yes, I would like to review with my team to see if we can identify more ways of engagement with playerbase here on the forums/Website.  

 

[Element47 2480]

Man, peeking in now and then, I see BI comms continues to be a clusterfuck. What a shame. 

I am torn on the topic of a roadmap, too many people seem to misunderstand them as contractual obligations rather than statements of intent that may or may not survive the next retro. But whether you have a public roadmap or a backlog or a kanban board that you share with your community or not, some way of communication is crucial. 

The last Status Report on the official website is from July 2019. Why do we have monthly "Community Updates" which regurgitate content from creators for marketing purposes, but no proper monthly dev blog? The official BI products blog offers little more than vague PR pieces. We are getting dev streams on Youtube now, which is a great first step, but I will reserve my judgement until we see if this is an actual reliable comms channel or something that will be gone in three months again.

But as Parazight rightfully states, you need to have a single point of truth in which you consolidate your information streams, and you need a communication channel with the community. This would be the official website and these forums. Both fall painfully short of that requirement at the moment. 

[THEGordonFreeman 664]

It's a long standing problem for BI to have communications all over the damn place.  A roadmap is not a promise, it's intent, what, and when.  Things change, we are in post-live period, this shouldn't be hard.

[DefectiveWater 491]

1 hour ago, THEGordonFreeman said:

No, it's not.
https:// gtfothegame .com/ roadmap  (remove the spaces)
That is an example of a publicly digestible road map.  The details, goals and deadlines are CRUCIAL in understanding said roadmap.

So essentially something like the old Trello board? I would like to see something like that (or something like you mentioned), if it's possible.

I checkout the feedback tracker once in a while for some insight, but something simpler and easier to digest would be nice.

Edited August 30, 2022 by DefectiveWater

[Infernales 16]

Why is it so funny to me? Probably because I worked in IT for too long, in particular as a systems and software engineer. Seriously?

Do you want a roadmap? For what? To once again hear from the developers: "Sorry, we screwed up!". Why?

Because all these roadmaps are empty promises. Want a real roadmap? Open the bug tracker and see what the developers are really focused on.

P.S. Dear employees of Bohemia Interactive, I'm not trying to shield you, your hands are still melting out of your ass and I'm still waiting for a stable version of the server for Linux.😆

[Parazight 1594]

3 hours ago, scott.bowen said:

Yes, I would like to review with my team to see if we can identify more ways of engagement with playerbase here on the forums/Website.  

This would be great.  Really, I harp on these issues because I want the title to succeed.  It's a unique game and offers freedom like no other.  Also, I appreciate that you take the time to respond!

 

3 hours ago, scott.bowen said:

Overall you are asking for two vital pieces of information (And thanks for posting in the missing person cases 😄): 

1. Road map and the incompetence of posting within your terms of timescale and expected format? 
2. Frequent official news on Official Website? 

1. No.  Road maps are dumb.  I've stated on these forums 7 years ago how a roadmap (linear path) is the worst possible way to describe non-linear game development.  PM for a link. 

2.  Yes.  Let your official website be our source for your information.  Socials are not interactive at all, Bohemia Interactive.  Twitter does not offer the same structure as a forum environment.  No, everyone in the community does not actually know about your socials.  I look at the dayz website and see nothing of your podcasts, even.  Not everyone 'appreciates' social media.  Searching for information on these forums is much easier than digging for 3 year old content on any social media website.  Stickied threads over 8 years old still have relevancy.  Directing people to the website lets you control the narrative.  All of the content posted on socials could be posted here.  When someone is directed here, they get all of the information you want them to have and a link to purchase this, and other products.  The company has completely squandered this website.  This is why I started this thread, because I can't do this on social media platforms.

This is the most obvious place to go for information.  Why are we being directed to go elsewhere?  

11 hours ago, scott.bowen said:

The vehicle simulation update is a work in progress, more to be announced soon™. In general, you can assume that no update means that the previously announced state (in this case, it's WIP) hasn't changed. We've iterated before that vehicle simulation is nothing easy, and so it took longer than expected.

This quote hits pretty much all of the questions.

Okay, vehicle simulation worked great in Arma.  Cars were client side. Long time customers know this.  Vehicle simulation was moved to server side because of security reasons.  This is my understanding so far, right?  Please help me understand.

So, a simple person like me asks... Why are you guys changing something that worked fine?  Now it doesn't work at all.  Why are you compromising performance for security reasons when security is completely compromised anyway?  Why make this code if you've hired BattlEye to be the security?  Why not let BattlEye deal with car-using cheaters instead of making the cars not work?  In addition to Official servers, I play on a private network where players can control the cheaters.  So, BI seemingly sacrificed performance for nothing.   If this game were to be played as an e-sport, it would be 100% code performance and 0% cheating issues because it's a controlled environment.  Please explain why this wasn't done.

We can see the mistakes.  It's obvious that losing 4/5ths of your development staff before the project is complete is not ideal.  Just being open with the community is a great start. 

Like when you say that you're wiping purely for balance reasons.  Is that for real?  This makes it hard to believe what you say.  You said this in that article you linked, that I'm not going to read again.   So, when you change the terrain in an area, this has nothing to do with wipes?  What an amazing coincidence it's been so far then.  Servers don't need to be wiped of data for the health of the hardware/software anymore?  Really?   It's that optimized?? 

What I'm asking for regarding wipes is that you announce it immediately on the forums.  That's it! This is immediate, relevant information to the inhabitants of your official servers!   It answers the question of where your group is going to progress.  Should you plan a new base or not.  Do you hold on to good gear or do you take more risks.  Should you farm more, or engage more.   It's particularly frustrating because knowing whether there will be a wipe or not is something the developers know when they make the next patch announcement.    All I wanted to know was if you were going to wipe or not with the next patch.  I don't even care either way, just share the inevitable info right away, so I don't have to ask every single patch.  Share this right away on the website.  Even if nothing else changes, tell us in the patch notes if there is a wipe.  Seems like patch notes information, right?

thank you

 

[steam-76561198014522175 0]

On 8/30/2022 at 7:46 PM, Infernales said:

P.S. Dear employees of Bohemia Interactive, I'm not trying to shield you, your hands are still melting out of your ass and I'm still waiting for a stable version of the server for Linux.😆

This!