A few hours ago Thomas did his 3rd E2 community stream on his twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/itsfrommy)
Some key take-aways below :-
About the stream? Thomas: This stream is about E2 - about 80-90% of time I'll be talking about E2 and answer a few questions. Also because we think we need some improved communication with the community. So I thought we'll do this stream to communicate and provide updates. The community has so many questions - about countries, when resources, what's the update, about internal/external communication - so we said lets build a list of all these and talk about this. The idea of this stream is to get community feedback in real-time.
Is Wolfgang still on the team. What about Marco? Why devs wont talk to the community?
Thomas: Yes Wolfgang and Marco are still working full time - all good. If you don't see Wolfgang/Marco that's because we are working on a logic where community talks to the CMs and CMs talk to the developers. We are trying to work with this logic. Developers are working in the background and no one is leaving.
About internal communication? T: Mods and CMs communicate everyday, and Mods receive regular updates about bug fixes and updates.
Why Bugs are not fixed promptly?
T: We try to fix bugs as soon as we identify them, however there is a process to fix them. We have devs working on bugs and fixes all the time. If you ask me whether we can hire more devs to fix bugs - it doesn't work that way because many times you have devs fixing bugs or writing code to the same single file. So multiple devs working on the same bugs is not always possible.
About specific bugs - e.g- right click not working? T: Right click we are trying to push the fix maybe by next week. All these different bugs are being addressed by different devs and when we will combine this code text it will be released as a hotfix. Therefore sometimes we need time to push these updates together because we cannot push fixes to single bugs and every time we push updates it needs testing. Therefore a bunch of these fixes are combined together as a hotfix.
Why there are bugs with every update?
T: Yes that's been the case. But that's also true for most of the games - even when the new update is tested. However when you merge the update with the new build that creates some unforeseen errors/issues. That's why we need these hotfixes.
About Resources?
T: We will explain why we don't yet have a date for resources, that's because we are working on 'foundation features' first. If we release resources prior to other key features we believe it may create some confusion which you may not be happy about. We want to first deploy or test some of these features before we get to resources - so that's the logic we are working with at the moment. We do have an internal road-map which we are following which is relatively complex.
Why has Shane gone silent? T: Because he is working extremely hard every week, even on weekends. Just to talk to me sometimes he had to stay up late at nights. He practically works all 7 days. We are pushing as hell and in background more things are developing which you guys don't know yet. I trust him completely, so far he has always surprised me and I hope he will surprise you as well.
About Adverts?
T: We updated adverts some-time ago adding some more links. However we are working on a new system that will allow us to update ads in real-time as quick as 5-10 minutes, and so we don't have to wait for an update but you can simply input the ad in the system and it will update on the map.
About glitch countries and locked countries?
T: The countries issue will need more time honestly and I'll update you once I have anything to share. Bugged/ closed countries we are still figuring and its hard for me to answer at this stage.
When Essence will be tradeable?
T: Not anytime soon or maybe sooner, but we don't have a specific time-frame for this.
Any plans for first anniversary? T: This is a hot topic for discussion internally and hopefully we will prepare something for you. About blockchain/ crypto?
T: I'm not working on this aspect and wont have any updates to share about it. Frankly I do not understand crypto too well myself. I really don't have any insight on this topic and how its going to be deployed in E2.
Earth2 free to play? T: We are aiming to do, but the game will be so big therefore calling it simply free-to-play doesn't really define it. Its a completely different game, a new type of game - hard to call it even a 3D game maybe you call it the Metaverse. Its hard to say what the future will call it.
About APIs? T: I'm going to write this one down so I can answer it later, and I'm noting a bunch of other questions to get more updates. Things which I'm not directly working on its hard to answer.
Road-map?
T: There are some features planned before end-of-year and I can use this stream to share updates on-going basis. We are also aware of some of the issues and obviously we are trying very hard to improve the user-experience. We have the internal road-map which is more technical, the external one is differently presented which is at a higher level and more as a vision. There are plans connected to it so that's why there is some delay (in updating it).
Has Shane approved this stream?
T: Yes. But he cautioned me to not divulge confidential information say about phase-69 lol.. even as we are trying to update the community as much as we can. I will hopefully come back again with more updates next week.
Backdating resources with holo-buildings?
T: I don't have more details about this one, I will note this query down and hopefully come back with an answer. Its important to receive feedback so that I can come back with the updates.
EPLs & Mega-cities:
T: We recently assigned the EPLs for mega-cities and we informed the users from whom those EPLs were transferred from. We are happy that we maintained this promise to mega-cities and projects.
Nathaniel's video?
T: I know we promised this but it has been delayed. I will discuss this with Shane in our tomorrow's discussion. I m adding this point to my list.
About Jewels?
T: Jewels are worth something, there are plans.
About Holo-Building Editor?
T: There are plans to build improvements in being able to search properties using more filters, and we are working on this.
Using community feedback for new features, concepts.
T: For example - Do you guys like the idea of say badges assigned to profiles, for example, saying this guy is a Youtuber, a mega-city developer, etc. It's ideas like these I want to get some feedback and suggestions for new features, which I could use to create concepts and whether the community thinks a new feature is cool or not. It will help us build the feedback in the new features. We may not be 100% sure if we will indeed develop all these ideas, but having feedback beforehand could be massively useful during the development process. I'd love to do some designing live on stream with the community esp. if we have the tools to do it - and I would like to explore this more.
Future Streams?
T: I know I promised regular streams earlier but something happened and I couldn't do it. However going forward I'd like to keep doing regular streams and I will be announcing future streams on discord and twitter. The plan is to do weekly streams. I'm just happy to be here and work on an improved communication system.
Thomas also sought feedback on the layout of the current web-site and some potential enhancements. He also spoke about lessons learnt from other games and the importance of getting feedback from veterans who know the game in-out and also balancing with inputs from new users. There were several queries and feature requests that Thomas took a note of and promised to ask the developers about these and update us hopefully in future streams.
He thanked the community and ended the stream saying, "If you compare us from some months ago, I feel we have improved a lot - Ticket management, withdrawals, website update logs, news, communication, more features!"
More more details you may watch the replay of the Stream (https://www.twitch.tv/itsfrommy)