A Call for a little transparency, just a touch.

[DR_Mechano]

Alright, I know this topic is probably going to be unpopular with JUST about everyone, fellow players AND devs a like. It's also going to be a long one, so grab yourself a cup of Yorkshire Tea Biscuit Brew and settle in. If this is too long for you to read...eh...probably skip over it.

 

I want to preface this with the following statement:

This is, in no way, meant to be an affront to the devs, I love what they've done so far and what they've done so far has been, frankly, absolutely amazing. They've fixed things that even the live dev team couldn't fix either through lack of time or lack of motivation to do so (The MM pet changes being the largest obvious one). Homecoming is amazing and I'd would much rather be on this server than any of the other server clusters, I like the changes like not having to grind out iTrials and the Phantom Army mirror options for example. This is not meant to spark a witch hunt.

 

Now, with that out of the way.

 

Firstly, I understand WHY nobody wants to do a roadmap. Firstly despite what people could repeat a hundred times that the items on there are not promises they're merely a 'we're looking in to it' you would still get people saying that 'oh we were promised X by Y' and as such, lets not do a roadmap. Firstly it plans too far ahead. For example the Rage changes went through about four different versions on Pineapple alone without the probable internal testing that the devs did on their own. Nothing seemed to work and they were pulled because A) Nobody could agree on what was the best outcome and B) they weren't happy with the changes full stop and as such decided that Super Strength needed an entire overhaul (at some point in the future...).

 

Its for things like this that a Roadmap isn't really a great idea.

 

HOWEVER what would be nice is if we could simply have a monthly update on "what we're working on" "what we're thinking of working on" and "what has been put on the backburner for now". This all stems from posts made by myself and Vileterror about wanting explanations as to WHY certain costume parts that are fully functional, in the correct categories, non-signature and don't cause horrendous model wonkiness haven't been transfered from dev to player yet. The answer we got was a simple "we want to do this right, we have a lot on our plate at the moment and we have no ETA". I get that, you want things to be perfect BUT that doesn't explain any of the issues that we, as non-devs, can see.

 

What are the problems with the particular parts in question? Do they cause ingame problems when you load into a populated server with them? Is it not the case that you simply have to change a flag from dev only to player access but something a lot more complicated? It will use the quote, attributed to and supposedly made infamous by Stalin, "Better is the enemy of good enough". To an outsider like myself, the parts all seem fine, they don't clip, they're all in the correct place (seriously the PPD Hardsuit stuff has it's gloves in head detail 1...why...I'll never know since it COULD just be in gloves like an actual set of gloves. The 60s Arachnos outfit has problems as well which would require a lot of work to make sensible) and it seems like it should be an easy job to enable them...so why isn't it? I'm curious to know the details. It seems like your seeking perfection for perfections sake when...you really wouldn't need too in this case.

 

And before I get the 'we don't want to bore you with the details', no please do, bore the hell out of me with those details, I want to know.

 

I'll swing round to the post about what are the plans for the future. We don't know what's coming next. I know controller pets were going to be looked at now that the MM changes in place so Phantasm would stop suiciding into AoEs when it has no melee attack. I don't know WHEN its going to be looked at, I just know it is. We know that a Super Strength revamp is being looked in to thanks to the whole rage problem, we don't know if it's being looked in to right now or at some point in the future, how far up the priority list is it? SS as a set is still pretty damn functional even with the rage crash still in effect, it's not broken so has that lowered it down the priority list?

 

Is it just one dev for ALL of the power balancing or are there two or three helping out? I'm not asking for names. Is There a separate dev for costume stuff or is it just a 'eh someone will get to it' type of deal where it's handled by the group? We don't know because we're never told.

 

I personally feel that our team, as great and awesome as they are, are playing things FAR too close to their chest. Compared to Ourodev which is pretty much open source at this point (though I'm not actually keen on the people who run their servers...the work they've done is undeniable) and has things far more out in the open. As someone put it they operate more like an open public think tank, which I honestly thing helps them do the more out there stuff. As mentioned a simple monthly topic with a "working on" "thinking about/prodding at" and "on backburner" would be lovely. These things wouldn't be ETAs, they would just be a 'what we're doing right now' sort of deal.

 

While yes, our dev team have focused on backend stuff in order to make sure that this game can be played on modern systems and not encounter problems hit when people stop supporting 32-bit systems BUT did that take every single developer? If it did, well fair enough then.

 

If you made it to the end of this post, congratulations. Give yourself a snack of your choice as a treat.

Edited January 26, 2020 by DR_Mechano

[summers]

Unfortunately the general public are ravenous monsters and any vague comment about what is being worked upon is spun into a 'it's coming tomorrow, nerdrage if not" kind of thing. I'm sure a lot of people were burned pretty hard when the servers came up and the community turned into raging Supatrolls getting their first 'dyne hit in 7 years.

 

I'm just pretty happy this game is running, and incredibly grateful that we have people putting their time into it.

[DR_Mechano]

1 minute ago, summers said:

Unfortunately the general public are ravenous monsters and any vague comment about what is being worked upon is spun into a 'it's coming tomorrow, nerdrage if not" kind of thing. I'm sure a lot of people were burned pretty hard when the servers came up and the community turned into raging Supatrolls getting their first 'dyne hit in 7 years.

 

I'm just pretty happy this game is running, and incredibly grateful that we have people putting their time into it.

Oh don't get me wrong, I VERY much appreciate what the devs are doing. But we've had vague comments like "Controller pets are going to be looked at" and "Super Strength is going to be looked at" and nobody was like "oh my god they're doing it right now!" it was just "Being looked at" and everyone understood WHY the Rage changes were pulled, surprisingly civil about it in fact, so it shows we can handle our 'nerd rage' if something doesn't work out.

[DougGraves]

We do know what they are working on.  They have it on the beta server and post about it.

 

It is very likely that with a small dev team they are only working on what is in beta.  They may be thinking of other things, but they are not working on them.

[VileTerror]

I don't like to make blanket statements, particularly about people.  I do it more often than I should, and I know it's a terrible habit for a lot of reasons . . . 
*sighs* BUUUUUT
Some people are just going to misinterpret anything.  Doesn't matter what's said, or how; it won't be received by everyone the way the original speaker/writer intended it to be.

 

With that said:  A "roadmap" isn't a series of promises, and the chance that anyone might treat it as a promise should not prevent the use of a "roadmap."  The benefits of having documentation of plans and intent are clear and undeniable.  Even if they aren't set in stone, they provide context and history which allows for greater depths of discussion when things inevitably change.
I find it incredibly unlikely that there isn't any kind of internal documentation of plans between members of the Homecoming Team, even if it's informal.  I think the entire community would benefit from having that documentation publicly available.

 

I harp on this topic often enough, so I know I'm failing to make my case.  It would be wonderful to have a chance to sit down and hash it out, and figure out where the blockage is happening.  What's needed to make the improved communication a reality?  What are the specific reservations?  What can be done to provide sufficient mitigation to presumed risks?

 

I'll acknowledge the possibility that I'm wrong ... but all my experiences up to now lead me to conclude that secrecy in this sort of context is invariably more of a detriment than a boon compared to open and clear lines of communication regarding intent.  If there are risks which I'm not aware of, I welcome the opportunity to be educated.  
I steadfastly hold, though, that "people will assume it's a promise" is not (at all) a reasonable potential risk.

[DR_Mechano]

5 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

We do know what they are working on.  They have it on the beta server and post about it.

 

It is very likely that with a small dev team they are only working on what is in beta.  They may be thinking of other things, but they are not working on them.

If that's the case then I would love to be informed of this. However the Mastermind changes had to come from somewhere, someone had to be working on them prior to them being put up to Beta. We know that a user named William_Valance was looking into the MM pet AI and actually got very deep into it before he suddenly went radio silent and then, a few months later we get the pet changes. Did his work help them out in this regard for example? Was it something they were looking at independently and it just so happened to coincide with what William was doing. Was he bought in to the Dev team which meant he could no longer talk about it (that last one is kind of crazy I know)?

[Queen Nefertiti]

I think a roadmap is a bad idea to be honest. I understand why some people would like to know what's being worked on, but it's always going to lead to some people getting annoyed because it's been months since a particular change was discussed and then nothing further is heard. It's quite a modern idea to have a roadmap anyway. It's something triple A games come out with to try to make players stay with a broken game that should have been held back a year until it was playable. Anthem being one, Fallout 76 being another. Both games have suddenly produced a roadmap which isn't a nice friendly set of things coming down the line, the roadmap is a cynical attempt to try to prevent the hemorrhaging of the player base.

 

These aren't professional devs employed by NC Soft to work on the game. These are players who are tinkering in their spare time. One might be looking at a particular power set, another might be looking at costumes. At some point someone sees something they "think" might be easily changed for the better, so they concentrate efforts on making it workable. After some considerable internal play testing its released onto the beta server and if viable to live. Sometimes with quite unexpected results. The tank/ brute changes took a long time, and have been shown not to be as straightforward as first thought. 

 

I don't imagine there is any kind of future plans more complicated than "I think this might be a good idea". If it looks viable then it will move forward. If it breaks the private server game it will be dropped silently never to be mentioned again. Telling us what they are doing means they are creating expectation that most times will be disappointed. "But you said you were bringing in new mastermind pets. What happened to the squid set you said you were working on?". We want it, and we want it yesterday. If you so much as hint at the merest possibility of something coming at some point there will be people who take it as a cast iron guarantee and demand you explain why they can't have the new shiny toys.

[DR_Mechano]

Lets not get hung up on the roadmap idea.

 

As I said in the original post a monthly post with a list of things they're tinkering with with HUGE IN BOLD DISCLAIMERS that these things are not set in stone, that way if people get uppity you can point them to the disclaimer at the very top of the thread. It being monthly would also allow them to change things if some things don't work out and moved to the "on the backburner" section. Like I said just three separate sections with "Actively in internal testing" "tinkering with" and "on the backburner" I feel would suffice. Heck even throw in a section with "tested but proved too problematic" and a reason as to WHY said thing turned out not to be viable at all.

1 hour ago, VileTerror said:

I harp on this topic often enough, so I know I'm failing to make my case.  It would be wonderful to have a chance to sit down and hash it out, and figure out where the blockage is happening.  What's needed to make the improved communication a reality?  What are the specific reservations?  What can be done to provide sufficient mitigation to presumed risks?

Really just have an opportunity to hash everything out like Vile Terror says.

[RubyRed]

What would you even do with this information? Other than just satisfy your own curiosity?

 

I get it, we all want to get hyped about "what's next." But I can't in any way see such a thing, even with huge bold disclaimers, doing anyone any good. Until it's on the beta server, it's probably just speculation, and too many people take a "we're working on this" type of post as promises of future delivery. I'd rather just wait to see what gets posted on Pineapple and talk about the things we can actually test and play with rather than speculate about how some bit of development is going or isn't.

 

Adding a reason why something is not viable is even worse... a lot of time it just opens the floodgates for uniformed rebuttals that go round and round in circles.

 

In short... no thank you.

[VileTerror]

We're not in a publisher-dictated developer studio paradigm any longer.  We're a community with MANY talent people, with skills that can compliment one another.

We're poised on the precipice of OpenSource greatness.  The more open discussion there is, the more information that becomes available, the less room there is for uninformed rebuttals.  Things can only improve with more information flowing more freely.  Even if there's ultimately very few people making the final decisions; they can be more informed themselves by sharing their information with a wider audience.  It's an upward spiral.  Share knowledge to gain knowledge.

 

The only context where secrets play out to someone's advantage is when it comes to manipulation.  a.k.a.:  Marketing.  That's why publishers have been so adamant about driving this narrative to developers that it's somehow in their favour to keep secrets from the end users.  OpenSource development has demonstrated that keeping the userbase informed allows for some terrific advantages in ensuring progressive design iteration.  Expanding and diversifying the userbase does that as well.

 

We have a level of transparency on the donations that's pretty damned good.  I want to see that level of transparency spread further.

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, DR_Mechano said:

This all stems from posts made by myself and Vileterror about wanting explanations as to WHY

Not so much "wanting" as "demanding" and then being upset when those demands weren't met with answers in great detail, in a timely fashion, and in a manner which satisfied the person(s) asking the questions.

Setting aside the time question...  (Who expects the dev team to spend any significant time on a Saturday answering such questions while they're fixing the flaws in the last major patch?)  It's last bit that's the key - the devs provided answers, but the folks asking the question didn't like the answers they got.
 

1 hour ago, VileTerror said:

I steadfastly hold, though, that "people will assume it's a promise" is not (at all) a reasonable potential risk.

Twenty plus years on gaming forums...  and I agree with you.  "People will assume it's a promise" isn't a risk.  It's an absolute dead certainty.
 

[VileTerror]

Seems I phrased my statement poorly.

Let's try this:
What harm does it do when someone mistakes a plan as a promise?

[Vanden]

3 hours ago, VileTerror said:

What harm does it do when someone mistakes a plan as a promise?

People heap abuse on the developers trying to make something nice for them, draining any enjoyment the developers get out of making things, and causing them to stop trying.

[Jimmy]

I think there's two different threads of thought here. One is us posting what we're doing, and the other is the why.

What are we working on?

This has been covered somewhat extensively already in the thread, and while I agree with the general sentiment, I think there will be some room for flexibility in the future. As you're all aware the focus of our (currently) very small team is quite split right now between our goal of becoming legitimate, back-end work (being able to retire safe mode), and actual development. When the first two are dealt with everything will become a little more streamlined.

 

We aren't being secretive just for the sake of it right now, it's simply because our attention is so split that we don't want to get anyone's hopes up about exciting stuff and then us have to shelve it for six months. Just look at the Tanker patch and how (understandably) restless the community was over that. Now imagine that if there were some new powersets, features or story arcs stuck in limbo! Wouldn't be pretty.

 

I believe that with some careful management and engagement from the community it is possible to improve this without some of the risks mentioned above, but we're not quite in the position do so at the moment. There is cool stuff on the horizon - just be patient!

 

Why do we make the decisions we make?

This one isn't as simple. I'm going to quote something from the other thread and post the answer here as it's more relevant.

12 hours ago, VileTerror said:

In short:  

Please provide clear goal posts.  

From here, I can't see any.

You simply aren't going to be able to get this - because you're right, quality is an opinion. Game development is highly opinionated. Any worthwhile creative endeavour is.

 

We've stated our guiding principles as best we can, and if we tried posting anything more concrete at the moment it probably wouldn't be entirely honest. Remember this isn't a commercial operation, so we have no reason to sugarcoat or spin anything (which is what you're used to experiencing from almost every other development team, regardless of their intentions). We're just going to stick with the truth as we see it - if we aren't sure about something, we aren't going to pretend that we are. If we (for the moment, anyway) only have loose guiding principles, then that's what we're going to tell you. If something changes, we'll say so.

 

And in the interest of honesty - the discussion in the other thread was somewhat off-putting. Having to re-state the same answer three times because it seemingly wasn't the desired answer doesn't encourage us to spend time engaging. But we still do, because we love the game and the community as much as you do. Please just keep the above in mind when reading something you may not want to hear 🙂 

[Bionic_Flea]

But Jimmy, why can't you give me specific statements of what's going on so that I can pick them apart and destroy you with my logic and semantics!?!?

 

[DR_Mechano]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

But Jimmy, why can't you give me specific statements of what's going on so that I can pick them apart and destroy you with my logic and semantics!?!?

 

Yes that's why we want to know whats going on, obvious to pick things apart...or maybe perhaps we want to know whats going on so we know where the server is heading in the future and we're curious about the development process?

 

Or you know you could make a post like that to score some easy points and make yourself look smart but whatever...

 

As for what Jimmy has said. I get you, right now your focus is heavily on backend work and that's fine but as VileTerror mentions, you've got people out there that could help you on numerous things. It doesn't just HAVE to be your small dev team anymore. I understand a lot of you guys are probably from the SCORE days and are a very tight knit community using only people you know you can trust.

 

I also understand that, with competition in the wings (as much as it is...seriously if those servers weren't run by 4chan people I think they'd probably provide a more competitive option than they are right now especially if they were running on Issue 25/26 code and not issue 24...but hey...they're still competition) that keeping things close to your chest is also another good reason. The points you made about not wanting to disappoint people and the fact people got restless over the Tanker changes taking almost half a year to get put through and what it wouldn't be pretty if something as high as a powerset got cancelled I understand.

 

You guys cancelled the much awaited Rage changes because they didn't work and the community didn't suddenly explode in a fit of rage, we understood that all the explored options weren't satisfactory but then that was with a set that worked.

 

Still I know if I keep pushing this all I'm going to do is upset people more than I already have so perhaps it's time I just backed down, kept these things to myself since it seems it'll turn me into the social Pariah on these boards.

Edited January 26, 2020 by DR_Mechano

[RubyRed]

7 hours ago, VileTerror said:

What harm does it do when someone mistakes a plan as a promise?

I'll illustrate it with your own words from the other thread where you're borderline harassing the devs.

Quote

I can't let the sleeping dog lie.  I really want to get in there and help City be the best it can, and the best which I can do right now is help in the ways which I know how.  My background in game design was very much in the "high design and philosophy" end of the spectrum.

"High design and philosophy" isn't a spectrum of game design. That's not a thing, as there is no discipline of game design (on any successful game) that isn't fully involved in getting one's hands dirty and actually implementing things and trying them out. What you're describing is the speculation and the "uniformed rebuttals" I was talking about earlier. When the devs share info, it tends to go quickly into this area that isn't useful or enjoyable for them to engage with, and I don't fault them for not sharing details about what they're working on specifically to avoid "helpful feedback" that falls into this category.

But, the first sentence, "I can't let the sleeping dog lie" is more illustrative of what the problem is with someone mistaking plans as promise. Highly engaged players in a community space simply cannot let something go. They will keep reposting and reposting the same positions and try to browbeat devs into getting what they want out of the conversation: either to relent on implementing the thing that was "promised", or to admit that they "lied", and either route devolves into a toxic cesspool, especially as it happens again and again over years of development.

In short, I'm not surprised a volunteer group of devs isn't any more willing than "publisher-dictated" (🙄) devs to engage with players in this manner. Bringing it back to the current environment, I think that the Homecoming team has done an amazing job of balancing the players' feedback while trying not to rush in and implement things that would make it unrecognizable to those who played on live. And until they show some signs of actual incompetence in this area, I'm personally willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[Fan Mail]

What's odd to me is that everyone keeps talking about the Development team being just a few/small.  Dozens of people have offered their talents.  Yet the team remains small.  Is this a trust thing?

[Lines]

1 minute ago, tafilr said:

What's odd to me is that everyone keeps talking about the Development team being just a few/small.  Dozens of people have offered their talents.  Yet the team remains small.  Is this a trust thing?

 

I'd hazard a guess that it's more how legitimacy is shaping the operation. I imagine the team is currently under NDAs right now, so adding more people into that fold carries risks. Possibly costly ones.

[Fan Mail]

God forbid someone leak something.  lol

 

Ok, I'm not adding anything positive to the thread, so I'm done.

[VileTerror]

I apologize for still failing to express myself precisely enough to get to the core of what I'm asking here, Jimmy.  There appears to be a disconnect.  You said that you had to give the same answer three times; that tells me that I'm still failing to express the question in an unambiguous way.  The question I'm ultimately trying to ask seems to be a step removed from the questions I've apparently been communicating.

I also apologize that I've said some things which I have apparently done some harm with.  I do not want to cause undue stress or waste your time; I know you're stretched thin on a volunteer endeavour.  If it's of any help, the urgency my language may imply isn't meant to push an immediate response beyond "I hear what you're saying, and considering it" (which, of course, is a platitude, since without an active line of communication for error correction, we get in to this sort of scenario anyway).  Something, upon reflection, I clearly didn't think through thoroughly enough.  I guess that's another "+1" point toward a CR or GM position that can help filter and translate.

 

I thank you for taking the time you have here, and your request to be patient is echoed in the other direction as well.  With the addendum of "continue."  As some other users have expressed, there is a social energy tax which these exchanges can exact.  I do appreciate your commitment and the time you've spent engaged here.  Thank you.

 

I would like to know where I'm going wrong, so I welcome feedback from any observer or participant (either here or in private) on how to choose better language; words that are impactful to the point, rather than to negative feelings.  I do not want to waste any Dev time or energy on trying to sort out my failing (though naturally, I welcome their feedback as well).

For example, I am not intending to sound as though I am making demands.  I want to be able to explain the benefit and the importance of the level of cooperation I'm proposing.  That could be a good place to start.

 

 

[MTeague]

Another good reason to NOT have a Road Map is sometimes, hopefully not often, but sometimes, you will find that what sounded like a good idea is simply not feasible in any realistic timeframe, and the idea, however good it might be from the end user point of view, has to be put into the trash can.  Not simply shelved or "maybe we can look at it later" but, "Sorry you have no CONCEPT of the amount of code rewriting that would have to occur, we are not spending 3-4 years on just this one idea, we just ain't gonna do it."

 

Now imagine if they had to say something like that AFTER it had appeared on a road map?

No matter how many disclaimers were on that road map?

The rage (however irrational) would be legendary.

[Jimmy]

2 hours ago, DR_Mechano said:

It doesn't just HAVE to be your small dev team anymore.

 

1 hour ago, tafilr said:

What's odd to me is that everyone keeps talking about the Development team being just a few/small.  Dozens of people have offered their talents.  Yet the team remains small.  Is this a trust thing?

Recruiting, inducting and training people is another one of those things that takes time 🙂 We also want to clear up as much technical debt (the recent powers updates and the upcoming retirement of safe mode) as we can before that happens, otherwise a good chunk of that training could go to waste. And the talks of course do have an impact, it's much more preferable to us that we are able to be more open and transparent when recruitment does finally begin.

I am planning to post up a "What you can do to help" thing soon-ish, as the original development recruitment threads were put together in a rush many, many months ago.

[jubakumbi]

2 hours ago, DR_Mechano said:

Still I know if I keep pushing this all I'm going to do is upset people more than I already have so perhaps it's time I just backed down, kept these things to myself since it seems it'll turn me into the social Pariah on these boards.

 

IMO, this boils down to people with curious minds that have passion for this game and therefore cannot make the train of thought be quiet.

I have one, some have called my curiosity a ballistic missile.

At the start, I got to be the paria because I wanted concrete data on the business front, and I would not back down on several points with which I have differing real-world experience.

It's fun!

 

From my PoV, HC in this case is very on the mark.

There is simply nothing to give, or the volunteers that are 'doing the things' happen to like to 'do the things' and not write book reports on the things they do because that's not what they volunteered to do, or that they are not trying to add any hype to the pile which will just create more llama-drama, and/or all of the above are great reasons for them to just do the things they like to do with their free time and nothing more.

 

In every endeavor I have participated like this, volunteering my time and energy on a larger project for the fun of the group or community, the fun got sucked out of it like a black hole had appeared at a matter convention when the participants started wanting updates like my hobby was my life. No way, was out in a hot minute.

 

IMO, we should all be taking what we get from them and and asking for nothing more, and I mean nothing more on the creative front.

Let the creative parts do what they do, unhindered by hype and everything that comes with it.

 

If you want to play on HC, play on HC.

If you want to play on We Have Cake, play on We Have Cake.

If you want ... then do what you want.

 

Asking these things to try and help someone choose between servers is really silly as well IMO, they have no obligation to advertise anything in an effort to gain players.

Play on them, decide what you like better, do that thing.

 

I hate book reports, I have to do enough of them in my job, would never do one as a hobby - and my wife even reviews books for fun, finally had to stop due to things like this - it just makes more llama-drama, even though the curious minds want all the minutiae, IMO.

Edited January 26, 2020 by jubakumbi
words are hard

[siolfir]

3 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

In every endeavor I have participated like this, volunteering my time and energy on a larger project for the fun of the group or community, the fun got sucked out of it like a black hole had appeared at a matter convention when the participants started wanting updates like my hobby was my life. No way, was out in a hot minute.

Truer words were never spoken, but...

 

4 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

IMO, we should all be taking what we get from them and and asking for nothing more, and I mean nothing more on the creative front.

Let the creative parts do what they do, unhindered by hype and everything that comes with it.

...if they ask what we want, don't feel bad for telling them. Just don't expect everything you ask for to happen, let alone expect them to give you a when, where, why, and how while working on the what.