Rudi Rennkamel shared a video a few days ago where he talked about Frontier's new efforts in rebuilding trust with the Community. While I myself admittedly am somewhat wary, I think it's still very good to listen to what he has to say...

I saw this the other day myself.

It's nice that they are finally recognizing that they seem to have lost some (or perhaps all) of the good will of the community, and they want to make that up. In my mind, it's a too little too late.

Of course, in the final analysis, it will all come down to economics. I believe they have sold less than half the numbers on PC2 as they did PC1. The base game is now going for 40% off. Not sure what the numbers are on the new DLC, but is it profitable? It's great to talk about a long laundry list of new DLCs, rides, and what not, but if they don't make the projected numbers Frontier desires, they could just drop the project and move the staff onto something more profitable.

It's a shame they didn't seem to want to engage the community during the first whole year the game was available.

Sorry, but this just sort of reeks of desperation to me.

And for the record, I like the game! So imagine what the nay-sayers and doom and gloomers are saying!

Edited October 8Oct 8 by citytrader

Mixed emotions here.

On the one side, independently from the video, lately I got the feeling that PC2 could be on the right way.

On the other side, I remain skeptical.

But I guess we can allow ourselves a bit of hope.

My speculation: Maybe they focus on the biggest updates and DLCs ahead of Christmas, and maybe that's why there has been just a little over the whole year. But maybe that's wishful thinking.

I share those mixed feelings myself. The recent updates and the DLC were hopeful signs, as is the effort to renew community ties, but...

As Citytrader pointed out, it still comes down to economics. With Frontier looking at two new simulation games coming in the next couple of years, when will they reach the point where their focus shifts to those new games and away from playing catch-up with PC2? I don't see them hiring on large numbers of new people to work on upcoming projects, but instead they may well shift people from one to another. Yes, they may well have some nice things already planned for PC2, but 'planned' isn't the same things as 'released'. The developer's intentions may be honest, but other factors can trump those intentions, even the best of them. If their efforts to get the game back on track don't bring the interest and sales, then the bean counters could still pull the plug. The great unknown is "WHEN"?

Right now I get the feeling that they are trying hard to salvage PC2, but let's face it - it's not going to get anywhere near PC1's numbers. The damage has already been done, it's now too little - too late. It's like an auto after a car wreck - sure you can patch it and repaint it and even add extras like new floor mats, seat covers and one of them smelly tree-shaped air fresheners, but the fact is it still was wrecked and has less value than before the wreck.

Can they still make a much better game out of it, even if the sales numbers don't come in that they expected? They certainly CAN, and perhaps they will as their efforts of late show.

Maybe working to overcome some of the bad vibes many people still have against the company is worth also doing if it removes those bad vibes from clouding other future Frontier game sales?

One thing I did see on this video was somewhat encouraging - while they continue to still just have contact and conversations with certain creators - it was good that they included creators who are more than just fan-boi types who are willingly blind to problems, but instead included people who have been vocal in pointing out flaws.

I'm still waiting for them to start to engage with the community. I visit their official Discord server daily. There is no engagement going on there. The Suggestions thread must have about 300 entrees or so and I'm wondering when or if we will ever see a single one of these added to the game. I can't imagine the devs or any of the higher ups are actually taking the time to read through this massive list. There is absolutely no response nor even acknowledgement from Frontier regarding any of the suggestions. And so many bugs and glitches are being posted that have gone unresolved since the game was released. And sadly, new ones introduced by many of the updates.

Rudi states how Frontier wants to open up communication lines with the community, but they don't seem to understand that communication is a two-way street.

21 hours ago, citytrader said:

Of course, in the final analysis, it will all come down to economics. I believe they have sold less than half the numbers on PC2 as they did PC1. The base game is now going for 40% off.

I know the Steam sales for PC2 were much lower than PC1, but the game is also sold on Epic Games as well as being released for Playstation and Xbox. So this probably diluted the Steam sales. So it's possible that overall sales numbers were higher than what what you'd gather if strictly looking at the Steam numbers. According to Frontier's financial reports, the game did "okay" but not what they expected. So things may not be quite so dire as some may think. On the other hand, 40% off for a game less than a year old is not encouraging.

Edited October 9Oct 9 by shyguy

I honestly dont know what to think of this. Most of times i realy dont like to give any galue to influencers or content creators who directly with the company. Humans are humans, they are biased in their views if they want or not. I also dont see why i should value the words of someone who is already claiming that and unreleased game is gonna be game of the year. For me this was exactly one of the many issues with planco 2 release. We had content creators getting inside infos, hyping us up to the max only to then get a broken and unfinished product delivered. They even hyped us for switch tracks, but nobody even had the thought of asking or researching for us whether those would be limited to certain ride models or in the way they could be used, just to give an example.

For those reasons, i realy dont watch any planco content creators anymore.

Regarding the future of the game, in my personal view and opinion, i still think frontier is far off from the path they need to take to truly make the game better.

We see this in basically every sspect of the game and still feel the consequences of the botched release. The game still suffers from so many gameplay related issues and game mechanics simply not working as they should. Instead of focusing on fixes and improvmenets it seems we ate back to the normal schedule. And update every 3-4 months, some 26 bugfixes, a dlc to sell alongside the „free update“, and vacuum during those months inbetween. And lets not forget that we still have qc issues where each update breaks anohter 5 things that were actually totally unrelated to the dtuff mentione in the patch notes. I just cant wrap my head around how they simply are ok with leaving ride triggers broken for 5 months now.

The fact that game was just on its 9th sale in just 11 months is very telling that the financial success is far off from their expectations. I think this is exactly what we are feeling with the current situation. I dont see wny other logical explanation than budget cuts. Forum closed for budget cuts, the focus now being back to dlc and less updates might be due to budget cuts. The fact we havent seen any realy improvement on quality control might be due to budget cuts. The fact that there is basically near zero communication might be due to budget cuts. The fact we are not seeing any expansion on the restaurant feature and the gift shops tells me there might be also budget cuts hindering them to put ressources forward to this.

another aspect i think that is not doing the game any favor is the partial „toxic positivity“ i see sometimes. The discord has had much more discussions lately regarding certain issues and bugs, yet for some reason a part from the community still persists on the point that there arent any real issues and the game is perfectly fine the way it is. Most of times these tend to be mostly people who only play the game for content, for creating blueprints or who simply just like to paint a nife themepark wuthout actually playing the game. I often find myself in the position where im bringing forward something i experienced only to get people telling me 100 different excuses on why i should not be bothered or why i should be more patient. Asking for updates on a bug related to the issue trackes itself i get told its not that deep and it probably already got fixed. Asking about when the next update is i get told to be more patient. Asking for patch notes regarding an update i get told „if they dont share it probably wasnt that important“. It seems people tend more snd more to be way to lenient and less demanding on certain things that simply put should not be viewed that way, especially when said company has already burned the community with a flopped release, false promises, misleading advertisement and constant lack of quality control. That in the end tends to send the wrong signals not only to the devs, but also to the community itself where they start to think they are not allowed to discuss anything critical.

Im still not sure what to think of his game and frontier overall. The many lies that we got told, the many deceptions, the feeling of lack of care and attention towards the game… it all just makes me feel like they know they effed up and they dont even want to bother that hard anymore. This is not to disvalue everything they done so far, but they keep showing again and again that they seem to very picky about what feedback they take to heart.

Im still building a bit on my park, but just this week i decided to open my park again just to enjoy it a bit. Sadly this once more showed me clearly that at certain points the game just starts to completely fall apart in all its aspects. It has many great features, but none of those realy feel complete and rounded off.

15 hours ago, shyguy said:

I'm still waiting for them to start to engage with the community. I visit their official Discord server daily. There is no engagement going on there. The Suggestions thread must have about 300 entrees or so and I'm wondering when or if we will ever see a single one of these added to the game. I can't imagine the devs or any of the higher ups are actually taking the time to read through this massive list. There is absolutely no response nor even acknowledgement from Frontier regarding any of the suggestions. And so many bugs and glitches are being posted that have gone unresolved since the game was released. And sadly, new ones introduced by many of the updates.

Rudi states how Frontier wants to open up communication lines with the community, but they don't seem to understand that communication is a two-way street.

I realy couldnt agree more with you. The suggestions seciton is flooded with repeated requests, theres no moderation or merging of threads and it all just seems like a huge mess. Ive also noticed that out of the 100 questions in the stream question thread, they seemed to have only picked out 2-3 from there, locked the thread and told us „maybe in the future we get to answer more“. Sorry but that just created the impression of trying to make us feel involved when we are actualky not. Also out of all the suggested rides they decided to waste a dlc ride slot for the gale force, and that is at a time and point where they NEED players back in the game.

Again it just creates this feeling of „hey we are trying to involve the community but realy were just doing our own thing anyway“.