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Reflection of dev team size?
devtracker
Posts: 66 Arc User
I've read plenty of posts talking about how small the CO dev team is in comparison with STO or NW, but I've never seen anything to really back it up besides well reasoned speculation.
Now I'm not saying this is any solid proof, but I did notice something interesting when comparing the CO and STO forums. If you take a look at the CO dev tracker, you will see it is set to track the posts of 11 people:
http://co-forum.perfectworld.com/search.php?searchid=31171771
On the other hand, the STO dev tracker is set to track the posts of 32 people:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/search.php?searchid=51725171
They said that the STO team now has about 50 people on it, so they are obviously not all listed on the dev tracker. However it looks like at least half of them are. So if the dev trackers are any reflection of team size, then it would seem that CO has a team that is only 1/3 as big as STO.
Again, I'm not saying this is any solid "proof", but at least it is something real to look at and compare.
PS: NW's forums dont work the same way as STO and CO, so there are no names listed on their dev tracker, so there was no way to compare over there.
Now I'm not saying this is any solid proof, but I did notice something interesting when comparing the CO and STO forums. If you take a look at the CO dev tracker, you will see it is set to track the posts of 11 people:
Search: Posts Made By: pwebranflakes or trailturtle or darthpanda16 or gentlemancrush or drannic or ravenakurei47 or nisdiddums or splosions or stokeman or mctrinket or lordgar
http://co-forum.perfectworld.com/search.php?searchid=31171771
On the other hand, the STO dev tracker is set to track the posts of 32 people:
Search: Posts Made By: pwebranflakes or farktoid5000 or rehpic or tacofangs or borticuscryptic or darthpanda16 or archoncryptic or isomorphism or jheinig or goatshark or trailturtle or cryptickestrel or coldsnapped or lcdrmiller or salamiinferno or captjamjamz or flyingtarg or cryptifallingsky or zer0niusrex or crypticgeko or mrodds or dastahl or jfinderdev or crypticfrost or crypticttc or crypticcliff or commanderander or adjudicatorhawk or hithereyou or v4liance or crypticpoz or dezstravus
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/search.php?searchid=51725171
They said that the STO team now has about 50 people on it, so they are obviously not all listed on the dev tracker. However it looks like at least half of them are. So if the dev trackers are any reflection of team size, then it would seem that CO has a team that is only 1/3 as big as STO.
Again, I'm not saying this is any solid "proof", but at least it is something real to look at and compare.
PS: NW's forums dont work the same way as STO and CO, so there are no names listed on their dev tracker, so there was no way to compare over there.
Post edited by devtracker on
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By this logic and STO having 32/50 people that can use the forums (doesn't mean that all of them on the tracker neccesarily post regularly)
with 11 on CO's tracker that would mean that co has about 20? Which isn't bad. My current project only has 5 and we can pull off alot. With 20 I'd actually be able to take a break and not feel bad.
But at the same time all of them work out of the same building so....technically there could be way more. I mean we don't know how they schedual and opperate their workloads, they could have one graphics team that opperates on all 3 games (from my experience it totally looks like it, yeah I'm talkin to you mister "I like to use the same hunched over running animations for everything with huge muscles. Also mister "buttflex while jumping with a gun, and mister "When aiming a large rifle you must shoot from the hip and never aim down the sights")".
Its not as bad as people make it out to be.
*pours out a 40 and sheds a tear*
[SIGPIC]http://co-forum.perfectworld.com/image.php?type=sigpic&userid=93012404000&dateline=1344025336[/SIGPIC]
Also we have confirmation from outside sources that some of those devs have been transferred to other games that are not Champions Online.
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Smart work, Thank you.
If there's 20 (or even 11), what the hell are they all doing? They've got to be the laziest, sorriest bunch of them all.
They aren't lazy! Don't you realize it yet? CO is the Cryptic game used to train the interns! :biggrin:
Caliga's PRIMUS Database! --XXX--The Caliga Build: Threatening Haymakers! --XXX-- Caliga and Conquer fanart!
So they're all too busy fetching coffee for Jack Emmert to spend time coding?
What with all the time spent in the Intern-In-A-Hampsterball(tm) that powers their servers (or the "Corporate Fitness and Health Centre" as it is known to the Accounting Department, for tax purposes) it's a wonder that they have any time to fetch coffee at all!
'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
Flipping back through those posts...the only ones I see are trailturtle's and lordgar's. TT's not a developer, he's a community rep. (Sorry for the mistake if you are actually on the development team, TT.
Lordgar's postings are confined for the most part to PTS and live updates.
gentlemancrush posted on 11-16-2012 to refute the rumor of drop table alteration.
There's also two other posts from "developers", and it seems to be right around the time Reloaded launched. Going back from that point, there seems to be a small amount of communication/general conversation about the upcoming changes associated with that release.
But yeah...that's 13 pages back. And four months ago to find a single post that -is not- from TT. If that doesn't scream "back burner", I don't know what does.
Given the cherry picking of questions that Cryptic answered and the general nature of said answers....I'm still going with skeleton crew dev staff. Maintenance mode.
Occam's Razor makes the cutting clean.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Yeah Brou, I have to go with roughbear on this one.
After NWO launches, Project X will then be the main focus of development. And I don't foresee Cryptic shifting many devs from STO or NWO, so that leaves CO on the short end of the stick... again.
We may get a dev or 2 back.
I hope I'm wrong and we get all our devs back.
I really hope I'm wrong.
CellarRat33 :: formerly Bsquared
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"The great thing about glory unending is that it's dirt cheap!" - Tateklys
From the Adventures of Thundrax (canadascott)
***
This is what we get.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Post status quo is after release. It hasn't been released yet, so any resources pooled into it on the graphics department, sound guys, aka the pretty people. All of your pretty people might not have anything else to work on full time like before, so you can spread them to another project. I highly doubt cryptic pays any different depending on what project you're working on, it'd be a dickish move, so with that said, there's plenty of incentive to move around and fluctuate, and honestly I love working with game design myself, but after looking at the same **** for 6 months to a year, I start hating life lol. It turns into work more than artistic expression.
But they have no reason to keep the pretty people locked down, coders though....sure you can lock them down all day, and leave them in the dungeon to tick away at their keyboards its how they operate best. I'm fine with that.
Put each desk in a timed cage, no one can escape the cage until writing 200 lines of code within 60 minutes, each failed attempt results in a 10 minute penalty to the cage reset until the cage becomes sealed forevar!
Project X was cancelled.
Once NWO leaves beta, the devs will then begin to work on the first post-release update. Similar to STO, NWO will require regular updates to keep the IP owner happy.
A friend of mine is a dev (actually a project leader) over at DDO. IP owner requirements are no joke.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
I'm not quite sure yet if that's a good or a bad thing.
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Exactly.
Devs will move from NWO's initial release to regular development, like they did for STO. Devs may help out CO from time to time after that, but they belong to the new IP now. Unless more folks are hired, I think that is the new state of the game.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Thanks Brou, I wasn't aware of it's cancellation.
Like Shieldtower, I'm not sure what that indicates and how it might impact CO.
CellarRat33 :: formerly Bsquared
***
"The great thing about glory unending is that it's dirt cheap!" - Tateklys
From the Adventures of Thundrax (canadascott)
***
Y was cancelled 2011. It was Creatures of Night. Linkylink.....
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And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
Until NW tanks. I can't imagine it doing nearly as well as STO*, especially given that with DDO alive and kicking the D&D-specific fanbase (as opposed to the generic fantasy fanbase in general, which is already split between several 800-pound gorillas and the elephant in the room) is already taken. Doesn't help that it's based on the version of D&D that's already getting scrapped due to poor reception and a version of the Forgotten Realms that approaches being in-name-only.
Does it mean that any NW refugees will be shuffled back to CO? Still probably not.
*Not that this is a compliment aimed at STO, which depends 100% on its IP to have any customers at all.
Interesting history there.
Also, the D&D edition wars were/are real. I don't think NWO is going to do well.
Alas.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Where in lies my confusion.
Perhaps I should not have said Project X but Top Secret Project in development.
Has it been cancelled?
CellarRat33 :: formerly Bsquared
***
"The great thing about glory unending is that it's dirt cheap!" - Tateklys
From the Adventures of Thundrax (canadascott)
***
Yeah, it would have been better-positioned if it had tied in with the Forgotten Realms relaunch.
Heck, I never even liked D&D but I got drafted into the edition wars by 4. Before it came out, it sounded like it was going to fix most of what made 3.5 annoying for me... but actually laced the straightjacket tighter.
Now I march for Pathfinder. It's too bad that the Kickstarter pitch for a Pathfinder MMO was almost exactly what I wouldn't want to play.
...because of ALIENS.
Rumor has it that they got abducted by some federation star ship.
I see what you did there.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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I'm a veteran of City of Heroes, as a player, and reading the forums left me feeling negative about the game, even when it was going gangbusters. So when it started to get me down I just stopped reading the forums, played the game and felt a lot happier.
Thus, I can't imagine anything more unmotivating to a developer than reading and responding to the things people write on forums like these. If I managed the development group for the game, I'd assign one or two thick-skinned people to read the forums and relay the useful input to the rest of the development team.
It's nice to hear from the devs occasionally. But I would much rather have them making new things for us, rather than wasting their time and energy worrying about and responding to the flamebait people post on these forums.
Oh please, if you really were a CoH vet, you'd know that the Freem 15 did better than that.
That's why devs don't generally read forums. TT has mentioned that, and a dev friend of mine at another game says the same thing.
The main job of a communications person (like TT) is to take the psychic punishment of forums and sort through what's important. Kinda like the Press Secretary for the president.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Regardless of how devs for other game companies may behave in general, the simple fact of the matter is the devs from Cryptics other 2 games(STO and NW) are actively having discussions with their communities on the forums. Champs is the only Cryptic game where that isnt happening.
So, what makes Champs different? Lets start with NW: it is obvious that games under development get a ton of attention. That is basically a no brainer, so not much more needs to be said there. How about STO? Apparently STO is not just Cryptic's, but PW's best performing game:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/02/21/stahl-star-trek-online-is-perfect-worlds-best-performing-game/
So NW is the new hotness in development, and STO is the top money maker for PW. Champs seems to be slowly fading away, and games like that dont get much attention unfortunately.
It doesn't hurt that there is pretty much no existing game that does space combat/ground exploration even remotely LIKE STO. SWTOR comes closest, I guess, but it's inherent design and logic is very different (particularly the very limited rail shooter space combat), and then there's EVE, which lacks any ground component (other than DUST, I suppose).
Also, re: D&D... agreed. 4e did so poorly they are rushing out another edition. Which is... pretty impressive. While I'm not a fan of 4e, I am not claiming the game is objectively/inherently bad. But whatever the reason, it's not a promising angle on Neverwinter's success.
I like Pathfinder, Squid, but have you seen Dungeon World? $10 epub thing that's ... amazing. Just got it yesterday, and am avidly reading it. Feels like old style D&D, but with a lot of very smart, light rules without fundamentally changing the game (a lot of microlite/etc rules either end up clunky or make the game feel utterly different). It also has some amazingly smart framing rules for GMs to create campaigns/adventures/maps/monsters as you go.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Trek fans alone arent responsible for making STO Perfect World's best performing game:
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/02/21/stahl-star-trek-online-is-perfect-worlds-best-performing-game/
Believe it or not, there are a lot of Trek fans who dont even know about STO. Certain devs have attended Trek conventions and commented on how amazed they were that many of the fans didnt even know about the game, or knew very little.
It doesn't hurt STO either that TOR finally gave us a sci-fi ground combat system that made STO's look good by comparison, but it's still pretty haphazard.
STO does have a market space distinct from Eve, 'space combat MMO that doesn't take place in a Hobbesian anarchocapitalist forced-PvP cesspool', but I just can't see it being taken seriously as a product without the Star Trek label. It's a muddled mix of 'tall ships' and 'fighter jets'. While I like the idea of abstracting standard ship systems like tractor beams and assorted higher-level technobabble into more standardized MMO terms, the way they've handled it has tended to be a muddle.
Yeah, for me it was the mismatch between their publicity about the system before its release and the actual product. Instead of something that got rid of arbitrary use limitations for some classes and increased character flexibility, came arbitrary and extremely stingy usage limitations for every class's combat abilities and 'balance' created by squeezing everything together into a bunch of samey powers that seemed to be assigned and sequenced by an RNG instead of coherent design.
I've been vaguely looking for a system that supports easily slapping OpFor stats together on the fly without just having to fudge things, so I might look that up.
Being PWE's best-perfoming game (not PW as a whole, where the awful grind&shop-fests that are PW's original offerings are wildly popular in the Asian market) doesn't necessarily imply overwhelming success, given that the NA ports of PW games which constituted PWE's portfolio prior to the acquisition fared poorly. STO is certainly doing better than it used to, but it would be hard for it not to. STO being PWE's best performer doesn't surprise me.
A lot of Trek fans aren't gamers, period, but that's true of any culture-spanning IP. Star Trek is a massive cultural phenomenon, and that adds a lot of weight.
So, ok. I'll revise that to "Without the Trek IP, I think STO would be worse off than CO."