We have new devs - Do they actually care?

glortor · June 2015

After my first two months of playing this game it has become painfully obvious that the developers do not read the forums or only do so to point and laugh.
With this apparently new, or old team, I'm not even sure what's going on, I hope the horrendous communication will finally change.

Now without breaking the fourth wall and unwritten laws of development, I'd like to "suggest" something in case a random dev randomly reads the forum by some turn of accident! :biggrin:
Could we please get some manner of communication? I understand that deadlines (probably multiple deadlines at that) are glaring down the back of a limited number of team members hopefully doing their best to figure this heap out. Yet I believe it would immensely help the game's course to know what's going on.

I know one thing: They started to work on the game and they "broke" costumes - hopefully temporarily. Those who understand development know that this means they are trying to figure out how things work.

I just don't understand why they can't do that on the pts and only release things once it's been fully tested? It's not like they have to actually hire paid game testers, they have a whole community for it.

So the questions I'd like to request an answer for are:
- Is it new devs or old devs?
- Do they actually understand this game or are they still trying to figure things out?
- Could we get an ETA on the inverted tights fix? I don't care if it's September or next week just, set a deadline and please deliver?
- Could we get a run-down on the plans of things to come? We don't need to know your schedule until next Christmas (though it does help) but some level of candidness would probably go a very long way.

Thanks.

eiledon · June 2015

Your thread title is a bit inflammatory and probably insulting the the devs - they are people, in general they wouldnt do their job if they didn't care.

What is more likely the problem is they are simply not being given the time to familiarise themselves once more with CO's peculiarities (since they last played with it's spaghetti code), or spend time needed to finesse stuff to the standard we have expected while Cryptic North were doing the job.

crosschan · June 2015

I had thought of roughly 5-6 ways in which to handle a reply to this thread...and since I do not want to get banned I will simply do these two things instead...

...and...

This.

Ok, next issue. :cool:

glortor · June 2015

eiledon wrote: »

Your thread title is a bit inflammatory

Inflammatory means it either causes a skin rash or it's offensive and hurts somebody's feelings.
While I understand that people can get offended at many things, including what other people wear or what other people believe in, I doubt that "yo, old devs weren't even replying, how'bout you guys" is going to hurt anybody's feelings. Else I'd be more worried about having underage people managing this game more so than competence itself.

The word you are looking for is provocative. That was my intention.

they wouldnt do their job if they didn't care.

I have never seen this particular company's contracts but I am inclined to doubt that "...and definitely care what everybody says and thinks!" is part of their job description.
No, whether devs, mods, and other people care or not, is their own personal choice.
Devs that care make great games. Not going to advertise any on these boards, sorry.
Devs that don't care, make what's been going on with CO for the past who-knows-how-long.

What is more likely the problem is they are simply not being given the time to familiarise themselves once more with CO's peculiarities (since they last played with it's spaghetti code), or spend time needed to finesse stuff to the standard we have expected while Cryptic North were doing the job.

Yes, that's what a deadline is. I'm glad we see eye to eye then!

glortor · June 2015

crosschan wrote: »

I had thought of roughly 5-6 ways in which to handle a reply to this thread...

gandales · June 2015

Our deal as a players is with PWE/Cryptic. Devs are PWE/Cryptic employees. We do not know the particular conditions of their work or the priorities/deadlines set to them and they even might have some guidelines about how they can interact with players.

crosschan · June 2015

I tried to play nice...

So you basically lead off with insults and then switch off to begging for communication. Well, there's a new and unique idea that obviously required it's own personal thread so you can be so proactive(you might wanna reread that one...possibly multiple times). So, valiantly leading the charge with your idea nobody has obviously in the history of ever thought of, you step triumphantly into the spotlight to express your newfound wisdom which will obviously get an immediate reply on a Sunday because you're...just...that...special?

So, what was that about my ego? :rolleyes:

Also, could you just keep moving forward? There's probably 50 or so more people with this same unique idea who would like their turn as well.

glortor · June 2015

crosschan wrote: »

I tried to play nice...

So you basically lead off with insults and then switch off to begging for communication. Well, there's a new and unique idea that obviously required it's own personal thread so you can be so proactive(you might wanna reread that one...possibly multiple times). So, valiantly leading the charge with your idea nobody has obviously in the history of ever thought of, you step triumphantly into the spotlight to express your newfound wisdom which will obviously get an immediate reply on a Sunday because you're...just...that...special?

So, what was that about my ego? :rolleyes:

Also, could you just keep moving forward? There's probably 50 or so more people with this same unique idea who would like their turn as well.

Everybody has the right to express themselves on this forum and your supposed authority granted by who the heck ever you think you are actually doesn't work on people who realise that you just like attention. You have been given it. Now go on and mind your own business.

jonsills · June 2015

Since you've only been here a short time, I'll actually answer your question.

There was a time, back in the day, when the devs used to post about things they were working on, ideas they had, even concept art for possible future projects. The problem was that a portion of the playerbase began taking those as hard-and-fast promises for the near future, and flaming all over the forums whenever something either didn't work out (for instance, the time-travel mission to Victorian London) or didn't contain everything in the concept art (I still wish the Guitar Axe had been part of the Heavy Weapon update - had a character concept ready to go and everything). It got to the point where the simplest thing for them to do, in order to put out all the flames, was to just not tell us anything. It's harder for people to take something as a promise when there's nothing to take, after all...

Incidentally, "inflammatory" also means "words designed to inflame feelings" - the legal doctrine of "fighting words". And your initial post certainly seems to have been aimed at starting flames going toward the devs. Thing is, on this topic at least we're mostly out of flame. A polite question ("I notice the devs on here don't talk to use the way they do on game X", for instance) would probably have elicited less humorous responses.

crosschan · June 2015

Well said, Jon.

Glor, you're perfectly allowed to have your own opinions. You just need to learn some of that tact stuff. BTW, pretty sure "whoever the heck I think I am" is Cross and that apparently[Edit: Honestly, it's not worth it so I removed the rest of this post. Thundrax's story was cooler anyways. There's more than enough posts in this thread to explain the point without the rest of this one.] :biggrin:

canadascott · June 2015

Do they care? Here's a story for you.

During my last days at Interplay, I spent the bulk of my time working on a game called Descent to Undermountain.

DtU was arguably the worst game Interplay ever did. One of the worst RPG titles ever. A D&D game that used the Descent engine. It began quite well, then our lead programmer left for LucasArts to be lead on Dark Forces (no one blamed him) and we ended up hiring an aging, uncommunicative burnt out Navy programmer whose sole game experience was one "interactive movie" featuring Bill Clinton's brother. No code deserves what he did to it. Years were added to the project, and we chewed through producers like beef jerky. Add in some uninspired character models, and other follies, and you had a game that Interplay could not wait to wash its hands of. Morale on the project was so low that it acquired the in-house nickname of "Descent to Undermountain". By the project's end, even our most avid marketing guy didn't want to talk about it. The code was so bad that, when asked at the last minute to bolster the game's RPG elements, I was not allowed to change the armor classes because they were scared that a change to the datanase that big would break the build and make the game uncompilable.

And yet? At the end, Reg Arnedo still put in seventy hour work weeks to produce it, and did his absolute best to keep spirits up. Rob Holloway and John Deiliey made heroic efforts to salvage the thing, doing what they could for the code and the levels, working insane hours for a project that no one else gave a damn about because THEY cared. And DtU was Chris Avellone's first CRPG game design work, and Chris quickly became the gold standard for writer/designer combos in the industry. Our testers who got through the early levels almost wept, because they could see that it could have been a great game if things had gone a little differently.

But yes, the devs care. It's in their nature. They're crazy enough to pour their hearts and souls into games that are a helluva lot worse than CO. We just need more of them.

gandales · June 2015

canadascott wrote: »

Do they care? Here's a story for you.

During my last days at Interplay, I spent the bulk of my time working on a game called Descent to Undermountain.

DtU was arguably the worst game Interplay ever did. One of the worst RPG titles ever. A D&D game that used the Descent engine. It began quite well, then our lead programmer left for LucasArts to be lead on Dark Forces (no one blamed him) and we ended up hiring an aging, uncommunicative burnt out Navy programmer whose sole game experience was one "interactive movie" featuring Bill Clinton's brother. No code deserves what he did to it. Years were added to the project, and we chewed through producers like beef jerky. Add in some uninspired character models, and other follies, and you had a game that Interplay could not wait to wash its hands of. Morale on the project was so low that it acquired the in-house nickname of "Descent to Undermountain". By the project's end, even our most avid marketing guy didn't want to talk about it. The code was so bad that, when asked at the last minute to bolster the game's RPG elements, I was not allowed to change the armor classes because they were scared that a change to the datanase that big would break the build and make the game uncompilable.

And yet? At the end, Reg Arnedo still put in seventy hour work weeks to produce it, and did his absolute best to keep spirits up. Rob Holloway and John Deiliey made heroic efforts to salvage the thing, doing what they could for the code and the levels, working insane hours for a project that no one else gave a damn about because THEY cared. And DtU was Chris Avellone's first CRPG game design work, and Chris quickly became the gold standard for writer/designer combos in the industry. Our testers who got through the early levels almost wept, because they could see that it could have been a great game if things had gone a little differently.

But yes, the devs care. It's in their nature. They're crazy enough to pour their hearts and souls into games that are a helluva lot worse than CO. We just need more of them.

Gaming industry is not pretty good place for computer science related professionals. A lot of work, average salaries and low stability. Web design and ERP are commonly better salaries more stability, more realistic deadlines and less complains.

spinnytop · June 2015

glortor wrote: »

After my first two months of playing this game it has become painfully obvious that the developers do not read the forums or only do so to point and laugh.

I stopped reading here because my quota of "ridiculous stuff said on the forums" was already filled by this point.

championshewolf · June 2015

Well, because the average player of any game has a false sense of entitlement they feel that if a dev never responses to any of their posts that the devs don't listen or rest the forums, even if there is evidence to the contrary. Regardless of the situation, saying the devs don't care is a ridiculous thing to say, since you don't enter the gaming industry without a passion for it. Game development is a thankless job, and can be highly stressful at times with odd work hours depending on the situation.

If you were hoping to receive a response to your particular post, you aren't likely to.

decorumfriends · June 2015

eiledon must be from away:

- they are people, in general they wouldnt do their job if they didn't care.

While in this case I agree with you...you obviously haven't had much contact with the American work force. :biggrin:

championshewolf · June 2015

decorumfriends wrote: »

While in this case I agree with you...you obviously haven't had much contact with the American work force. :biggrin:

I wouldn't use a Wal-mart employee as the benchmark.

jennymachx · June 2015

glortor wrote: »

After my first two months of playing this game it has become painfully obvious that the developers do not read the forums or only do so to point and laugh.

Actually that's our job, only that we point and laugh towards people making wild, baseless assertions like yours.

decorumfriends · June 2015

championshewolf has the wrong movie:

I wouldn't use a Wal-mart employee as the benchmark.

I was thinking more of corporate drones. :biggrin:

xydaxyda · June 2015

Do they care about every single one of our personal grievances and/or are obligated to address every single one?

No. nope, not even a little bit.

They have a job to do and they're doing it(at least they are if they want to keep their job I guess.) They do not answer to us, they answer to their boss. They're told what to work on and they work on it... and if we're lucky we will all benefit when what they're working on is finished.

bwdares · June 2015

I would like to believe they care.m Though I cannot speak for them. I do think that they are held back by limitations placed by PWE, not to mention that we should expect that the new/old team probably do not have a lot of time with the game yet.

Also, I am not sure how much theyu "care" effects the work so far, I think that is just more the level of skill they have. I like the new tutorial so far, but their Robot was crap. So far, 50/50 so far.

I myself have posted angry and frustrated posts about the Dev's work thus far, but you need to know that we have not had a whole lot of communication from our Devs in a long time. Trailturtle is not a Dev, and Lady, well she has commented more on the test threads than I have seen in a long time. So you can actually say there is SOME improvements.

chuckwolf · June 2015

While I'm not sure exactly how the current Dev team on CO feels about the game. I would hope they are like some of the Devs on our sister game Star Trek Online, where several of the devs were actually players and subscribers of that game before being hired onto the dev team, because of their coding skills. They have helped improve STO, bringing out new content and raising the level cap over there. I would hope our own team as the same aspirations.

championshewolf · June 2015

chuckwolf wrote: »

While I'm not sure exactly how the current Dev team on CO feels about the game. I would hope they are like some of the Devs on our sister game Star Trek Online, where several of the devs were actually players and subscribers of that game before being hired onto the dev team, because of their coding skills. They have helped improve STO, bringing out new content and raising the level cap over there. I would hope our own team as the same aspirations.

That's the second time the level cap has actually been raised, in STO. And to be blunt about it, changing the level cap while involving work isn't a monumental task and is often used to reset the power levels of things and bring things into balance.

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl · June 2015

Everytime you raise the level cap in an MMO, all current max-level content becomes irrelevant ( at best it becomes a brief stepping stone on the way to the new level cap, at worst it never gets seen by anyone ever again ). I'm sure everyone can see the problem.

championshewolf · June 2015

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl wrote: »

Everytime you raise the level cap in an MMO, all current max-level content becomes irrelevant ( at best it becomes a brief stepping stone on the way to the new level cap, at worst it never gets seen by anyone ever again ). I'm sure everyone can see the problem.

Not always. Depends how they handle it, but since the devs are very fond of scaling content, that seems a moot point. They do it in STO, Neverwinter and have been doing it for a very long time in Champions as well.

jonsills · June 2015

In STO when they raised the level cap last, they also tossed in Delta Quadrant (and an improved AI that's slowly working its way into the rest of the game). If the level cap is raised here, we'll need some new missions, maybe out of the new hub we have in orbit...

championshewolf · June 2015

jonsills wrote: »

In STO when they raised the level cap last, they also tossed in Delta Quadrant (and an improved AI that's slowly working its way into the rest of the game). If the level cap is raised here, we'll need some new missions, maybe out of the new hub we have in orbit...

If the level cap is raised we would need new zones (that's plural) with more than just a few new missions. New team content to.

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl · June 2015

championshewolf wrote: »

If the level cap is raised we would need new zones (that's plural) with more than just a few new missions. New team content to.

And that's the kiss of death to any level cap raises.

championshewolf · June 2015

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl wrote: »

championshewolf wrote: »

If the level cap is raised we would need new zones (that's plural) with more than just a few new missions. New team content to.

And that's the kiss of death to any level cap raises.

Yea. Cryptic has the money to do more with Champs, but they would prefer to baby their licenses, for some unknown reason, instead of actually improving Champions and making it where it actually generates a revenue. I doubt Champions makes enough to make a difference if it was on or off. At this point I just bet Cryptic only keeps champs going because of pride if nothing else.

It's sad that the other games are getting all these features, stuff we've asked for consistently and would have actually reinvigorated the game (The Foundry, Supergroup HQs, basic communication) instead they continually just run off to coddle the licenses and leave Champions on the death bed, only paying lip service. It's almost like a bunch of parents who keep a kid on life support but refuse to give the proper medicine even though they can afford it.

nepht · June 2015

crosschan wrote: »

I had thought of roughly 5-6 ways in which to handle a reply to this thread...and since I do not want to get banned I will simply do these two things instead...

Mind if I tag in and halp ya facepalm!

captaincromulent · June 2015

championshewolf wrote: »

At this point I just bet Cryptic only keeps champs going because of pride if nothing else.

They've said publicly that it takes very little to keep this game going, so at this point I'll bet it's mostly because they pull a tiny bit of profit off of us. Far as I can tell, it's one of those "Why not, they're not hurting anything" scenarios.

championshewolf · June 2015

captaincromulent wrote: »

championshewolf wrote: »

At this point I just bet Cryptic only keeps champs going because of pride if nothing else.

They've said publicly that it takes very little to keep this game going, so at this point I'll bet it's mostly because they pull a tiny bit of profit off of us. Far as I can tell, it's one of those "Why not, they're not hurting anything" scenarios.

Honestly, the amount of money they make off us probably doesn't even justify the cost it keeps us running. I seriously doubt that's the case, and I still bank more on the pride issue.

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl · June 2015

captaincromulent wrote: »

championshewolf wrote: »

At this point I just bet Cryptic only keeps champs going because of pride if nothing else.

They've said publicly that it takes very little to keep this game going, so at this point I'll bet it's mostly because they pull a tiny bit of profit off of us. Far as I can tell, it's one of those "Why not, they're not hurting anything" scenarios.

I think it has more to do with the fact that they actually like the game and even if they don't have time to develop it they just plain don't want to ax it. We should feel lucky that pride actually isn't an issue; pride might have them do something stupid like overextend their budget or time on the game and cause its downfall. You know... pride... makes people do dumb things all the time.

championshewolf · June 2015

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl wrote: »

You know... pride... makes people do dumb things all the time.

Like keep a game open that they really aren't, and have no intention of developing for.

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl · June 2015

championshewolf wrote: »

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl wrote: »

You know... pride... makes people do dumb things all the time.

Like keep a game open that they really aren't, and have no intention of developing for.

Would you be super proud of them and singing their praises if they had closed it?

Cause I'd be super proud of you and singing your praises if you stopped playing it, since you clearly despise them for keeping it open and "forcing" you to play it... or something.

chalupaoffury · June 2015

I prefer option C: Snark about it to hide the pain, like Cryptic's smart-mouthed latchkey children.

championshewolf · June 2015

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl wrote: »

championshewolf wrote: »

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl wrote: »

You know... pride... makes people do dumb things all the time.

Like keep a game open that they really aren't, and have no intention of developing for.

Would you be super proud of them and singing their praises if they had closed it?

Cause I'd be super proud of you and singing your praises if you stopped playing it, since you clearly despise them for keeping it open and "forcing" you to play it... or something.

I'd be singing praises for you if you stop posting since you don't care about the game either since you only log in to remind us how much Champs sucks to log out a few minutes later.

As far as them closing it, wouldn't cheer, but it would at least save it's dignity, what little it has left instead of it being strung along on hopes and dreams they keep feeding every so often.

chalupaoffury · June 2015

sidenote: they really need to fix this word filter.

championshewolf · June 2015

chalupaoffury wrote: »

sidenote: they really need to fix this word filter.

Yea, I haven't really used a cuss word on these forums, but I keep getting some words bleeped. It's kind of eerie. I guess it could be worse though, Marvel Heroes likes to trade words for silly words like sparkle or some stupid like that.

jonsills · June 2015

championshewolf wrote: »

chalupaoffury wrote: »

sidenote: they really need to fix this word filter.

Yea, I haven't really used a cuss word on these forums, but I keep getting some words bleeped. It's kind of eerie. I guess it could be worse though, Marvel Heroes likes to trade words for silly words like sparkle or some stupid like that.

If you use too many "filtered" words in a row, does it make you sing show tunes?

championshewolf · June 2015

jonsills wrote: »

championshewolf wrote: »

chalupaoffury wrote: »

sidenote: they really need to fix this word filter.

Yea, I haven't really used a cuss word on these forums, but I keep getting some words bleeped. It's kind of eerie. I guess it could be worse though, Marvel Heroes likes to trade words for silly words like sparkle or some stupid like that.

If you use too many "filtered" words in a row, does it make you sing show tunes?

No. They like to replace their filter with a new word every now and then. And if it's a bleep it bleeps all words so if they changed the filter to say crunk, it would just be crunk crunk crunk or whatever.

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl · June 2015

championshewolf wrote: »

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl wrote: »

championshewolf wrote: »

KagamiTheMagicalCatGerl wrote: »

You know... pride... makes people do dumb things all the time.

Like keep a game open that they really aren't, and have no intention of developing for.

Would you be super proud of them and singing their praises if they had closed it?

Cause I'd be super proud of you and singing your praises if you stopped playing it, since you clearly despise them for keeping it open and "forcing" you to play it... or something.

I'd be singing praises for you if you stop posting since you don't care about the game either since you only log in to remind us how much Champs sucks to log out a few minutes later.

As far as them closing it, wouldn't cheer, but it would at least save it's dignity, what little it has left instead of it being strung along on hopes and dreams they keep feeding every so often.

Yeah yeah I know, that one time like a year ago I said that GunZ 2 is a better game action-wise than CO and you've never forgiven me for it. I care about CO just as much as a reasonable person should - I care enough about it to log in to play it when the fancy strikes me, just like any other game ( oh and all the money I spent buying those freeform slots that people claim are too expensive for anyone to actually ever buy, and those costume sets people claim are too unfairly priced for anyone to ever actually buy ). I may not make big dramatic shows of trying to "fix" the game via giant forum posts, followed by a descent into bitter demands for them to shut it down and "put it out of it's misery", but I don't think that disqualifies me from caring about the game.

Also, video games don't have dignity. People don't either. That's just ego wearing a disguise.

starjumpersix · June 2015

So, I heard that the returning team was better than the team they're taking back over from. Though seeing all the "WTF they don't care!"/Random rage got me thinking.

The returning team is coming back from some time of something else. That's some time the departing team has had to do code and design. It's entirely possible the returning team is looking at the departing team's code and going, "OH MY GOD WHAT DID THEY DO TO OUR GAME!?" Which would explain why things are not improving drastically right off the bat.

I just wanted to get that out there.

nextnametaken · June 2015

Unlikely, the previous team's updates went to Cryptic's offices before they went to the Live server, so any code changes were known about in their meetings as they worked. Trailturtle was in California the whole time, the game has hiccups from time to time but Cryptic North, outside of wasting their lifeforce on vehicles, did a good job.

The most recent previous change to the tutorial was in 2012 long before Cryptic North came along.
Goofed up robot costume doesn't have anything to do with Cryptic North.
Obvious lack of testing of the overlapping voice over work in the tutorial is also not Cryptic North's problem.
Changes to the female files...you guessed it, all on Cryptic in California.

However they also fixed a bunch of bugs, that were pretty old bugs from 2012, from the other other other team.

We have new devs - Do they actually care?

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