Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Look what is in store for us in Publish 8... emote: cry
I think the whole point to TK's argument is the fact the DEVs are avoiding "Foot-in-mouth" syndrome. If they say something now that sounds awesome, yet it doesn't end up being exactly that, we will then call them hypocrits, asses and whatever you can come up with. If they say something that we don't like, yet may not show up in live servers, we will jump down their neck now.
It is our fault. We scared them away when we went ape-wild (yes, that should be another word, lol) about their idea for CH/DC. It was a bad idea, but many of us (myself included) attacked them in unecessary ways many times about it.
Think about the job you do. Whether it be school or work. At school for example. Would you want the teacher to give you an "F" on a paper you were still working on and had not yet completed? Would it be fair for the teacher to give you an "A" when you haven't yet written your final statements or closing paragraph? For work example. Let's say you flip burgers. Do you want your boss standing behind you and b!tching at you about putting on the pickle when you haven't even put the ketchup on yet? Or if you are an architect. Do you want the customer to come criticize you when you haven't completed the design yet? OH AND WHAT ABOUT THIS?! What if you were a programmer and your clients or bosses came and complained about something you haven't even finished programming yet?
It happens to me all the time, and I hate it. I am sick of telling people: "I am not done yet, let me finish & then tell me what you think." Why do you hear the infamous introduction to many speeches that say: "Please hold all questions until the end." ??
Are you beginning to understand? As far as wanting to know what they are doing, I am as guilty as the next guy. But, I can also understand their position.
Message Edited by Barfalomue on 03-25-2004 03:26 PM
Kilarny wrote:No, I don't want the development team to spend all their time on the forums answering questions. I didn't ask for that, either.
What I do want is to get some idea of what sort of things they are fishing for ideas on - if any. Some boundaries to work around. A dust speck to accrete water around, forming a raindrop or snowflake. A shred of information.
I don't want the damn Publish notes - that's useless. I would like a little direction. Shian asked for it, I'm asking, and we've been asking FOR WEEKS for this. In the absence of information, I can assume that SOE was not serious about wanting and valuing the feedback of the gaming community.
You are caught up and hypnotized by your new perspective, TK - it strikes me that you have lost your understanding of OUR perspective down in the trenches. We've not been told a damn thing about Publish 8 and there has never been a general community discussion about the role of droids in SWG. And now we can blame you along with SOE apparently.
One thing has definitely turned out true so far. To paraphrase, "Utility...isn't going to happen."
We don't have your access to the Correspondant forum - we're down here in the dark with the BS.
/equip bucket of warm spit
*slosh*
-Kilarny
Yes we are not getting as much information as we would like to get. Yes it would be nice if we had more guidelines to make ideas form. However, I do not think this means that we should be *this* negative. I think that TK is on the right path, and that things aren't as bad as they seem. I think we need to continue to come up with ideas that match up with what the dev's had said they are looking for. And most of this I am taking from Runesaber's posts since the DE community and ThunderHeart seem to have issues communicating properly. A.k.a stop quoting TH, I don't think it means what you think it means.
1). New Droid modules need to add something *new* and unique to the game. Things that can *enhance* the other professions
without *rehashing* their or anyone elses skills. Simply put, droid abilities should not step on toes and make players redundant.
2). At this point in time new professions aren't going to happen anytime soon. So that means that if better combat droids are going to be added in they need to adhere to the following rules. It *must* cost skillpoints to get them. Certifications are not likely to be done because it is hard to balance them effectively without going through the too-powerfull, nerf combo, which greatly upsets players when the nerf part hits.
Fortunately the hybrid idea seems to fit pretty well with #2. So we are left with focusing on #1.
StrayCat1212 wrote:
What I am worried about in Publish 8 is that we have seen no DE stuff materialize in the Update Notes for TC. We have a TON of bugs out there. Some minor to fix. If they aren't working on the bugs (which is a huge part of making this profession work) then what are they doing? I'd say that they don't want to work on bugs. I'd say that they are working on new content cause it is exciting. That leads me to believe that the DE profession is not the primary focus of this publish as it was stated. That once again, things are being done half-assed. Think on this: 2 weeks before the publish is released, they start work on the few (count it 3) new modules that they want to put in. One week later, it gets into the TC. It gets barely any testing, is riddled with bugs, publish gets pushed to Live, and now we got new modules with new bugs on top of the bugs we already have. Publish 9 is dedicated to something else and we get shafted for another 9 months because our time in the spotlight is over.
Screw that! They need to be talking to TK, letting him release more information to gather community support+feedback,and checking in those bug fixes. The 73% of the publish that was talked about in that Dev letter that detailed other changes need to be toned down. SOE needs to put their chin up, step up to the plate, and play ball. If they get hurt, take it in stride...that's life. Nothing hurts a customer more than the hidden costs they incur. I guarantee you that this community would turn around 180 degrees if they were kept in the loop and treated with respect. And you can't tell me that they did respect us because if they did, they would not have just ignored the problems we have. To be broken is one thing, to be ignored is totally unacceptable.
uhh, they haven't pushed any of the publish 8 stuff to TC yet. Right now it is all still in development or on the internal test/dev servers. All thats being fixed now is stuff they worked on last publish and corellian corvette stuff (and the wookie armor which is slated to come out shortly).
Jenden wrote:
uhh, they haven't pushed any of the publish 8 stuff to TC yet. Right now it is all still in development or on the internal test/dev servers. All thats being fixed now is stuff they worked on last publish and corellian corvette stuff (and the wookie armor which is slated to come out shortly).
StrayCat1212 wrote:
Maybe they havea totally different process than what I am thinking then. I was under the impression that fixes and new content was pushed to the Test Center prior to packaging it up as a Publish, provided it has passed internal QA. Maybe I am just very skeptical. But everything in my gut is telling me that this publish is going to be as lack-luster as the last publish. I pray to God that I am totally wrong.
TheRealTK421 wrote:
From the perspective I have now, I don't want them posting here (much). I want them to keep their noses to the bug-killing, content-building, balancing grindstone.
What I would like to see the devs start to do is to write down what their changes to the code are expected to do before they start coding. It isn't nearly as important that they show it to us, as that they do it internally so that there is some accountability for the actual results.( Of course once they did that, it would become easy to edit a version for our consumption.) One of the big discoveries in Computer Science over the last couple of decades is how much this helps in ending up with a satisfactory software product.
I really like a couple of the ideas that they did mention (the Barking and Exploding modules) but am really concerned from the sketchy descriptions provided so far that these could be big disappointments when delivered. I posted already about what I thought some of the key points were, but had to guess at what they actually had in mind.
That's the point I read into Kilarny's post -- we can't contribute very well in a vacuum. If we knew more about where they were, we could say more about how to further develop it. Sometimesone minor feature (like how far away a dialog box stays open) combined with another (like letting Barker Droids patrol) can result in an unexpected disaster (you can never read the text). We are in a better position to catch such things than Devs in many cases. Their history hasn't been great on getting things just right.
But, at least, I would like to know that they are actually committing to text what they are planning to do instead of letting the coder describe it with arm-waving. The most convincing way to show that would be to post some substantial details. Without that, I would feel like the decision on what we get is going to be determined entirely by the coder, and the quality we see will bemore dependent on how her girlfriend has been treating her than on what SOE's objectives were.
If we see details enough in advance so they look like design specs, not test results, it will convince me that their process is halfway decent. Ifthey did that, I would hope that the forum could provide constructive suggestions in a polite way.