For what its worth, there is no formal roadmap now and no signs that there will be one for the foreseeable future. RW seems to very much be taking things very step by step and at their own discretion. There's still a lot to implement to get the game to be more of an actual "game". Collisions, more parts, mechanics like electricity/aerodynamics/thermals/docking. Eventually we'll see the custom fictional planetary system, an actual space center, possibly deeper agency management mechanics, more advanced vehicle systems.
Suffice to say, RW has enough to chew on for a good while and there are likely logical and technical paths to each new feature that they are uniquely and internally aware of. So we'd have to be past that point likely years from now where things become more of an open-ended plan.
My concerns around a community vote style approach to content center around having too many cooks in the kitchen, and likely the inevitable disappointment and enmity among the players. If RW makes all the decisions then we just have to live with that. But if things come to votes then there will always be people upset that their desired feature is "losing" to other stuff. Especially if the features that didn't get picked take significantly longer to implement or don't get implemented at all. You can end up with tribalism among players, even teaming up to consistently outvote a specific feature for whatever reason. The Minecraft Mob Vote, for example, had become a notoriously frustrating experience for players. Mojang has since retired the concept and now carries a long list of cool things that
"could have been" but may never be. Meanwhile Hello Games has been routinely cranking out substantial No Man's Sky updates where each one is a big surprise and the reactions are very positive.
If votes were to only ever be on things that were guaranteed to be added to the game and only dictated priority, then why not just RW work on them and implement them as they come. You'll wait the same total amount of time (in theory). And, again, technical challenges may drive certain things to take longer and can be hard to predict. What if a voted feature ends up taking weeks/months longer than expected? Surely they could release other/smaller things in the meanwhile but then what was the point of the vote? There's no sense in voting on implementing features already finished, just put them as they come! Developer utilization is another topic entirely, they all have different roles and specializations.
That being said, we already have a very transparent environment for the development of the game. Devs are always chatting in Discord and checking the forums to see the reactions to new stuff. There's a lot of open conversation. It allows us to see what's happening and share our thoughts, it allows the devs to be aware, and it lets everyone operate in their own lanes. The way things are let things flow much more naturally and avoids having to deal with the overhead of managing a vote system such as:
- Where is the vote held? Discord? Ahwoo? Socials? Not everyone uses every platform.
- Mitigation of gaming the vote systems with alts, etc.
- How long to run a vote for? 24 hours? A week? Variable?
- Do contributors get a bigger say, more votes, etc?
- If so, how do you make that feel fair to users that love the game but can't afford to contribute?
- Organizing, managing, promoting, and deciphering of the experience.
- How to manage community reaction and response?
- How to change the system based on feedback over time?
This all veers much farther into the "Community Management" side of things that RW has expressly avoided with KSA so far. They'd rather just make the game.
So I understand the idea, and maybe there would be instances where something like this could be fun, but I have doubts that it should serve as a staple of the game's development identity.
The Idea
Why This Could Be Powerful
Things to Consider
Possible Approach
What Do You Think?
