Will we ever see the new things that Cake is getting?

[Oubliette_Red]

On 11/4/2019 at 9:57 AM, Jimmy said:

Now, to answer to the OP!

There's a few reasons for the apparent slowness. Some others have touched on the reasons but I'll provide a bit more detail.

1. We've been focusing a lot on underlying technology before content. There's been massive behind-the-scenes changes whilst we get ready to start working on new stuff - the 64-bit client is the most obvious public-facing example.
2. Attention is taken up by things not directly related to development. Yes, the talks are one of those things, but we're also having to manage, maintain and moderate a far larger and more complex infrastructure. These things, and others, take up time and energy.
3. The team contains several professional game developers and software developers and as such our quality bar is very high, and we're matching the quality existing content as closely as we can. There's plenty of new stuff in the pipeline, we just want to put more time into it before we're happy to push it out for wider testing.
4. The team is still small. We absolutely will be recruiting people and growing the team in the future (we've had many, many, many people express interest), but it's not quite time for that just yet. We're focusing on tools and infrastructure first.

Hope that all makes sense.

 

[Haijinx]

20 minutes ago, RubyRed said:

I don't think anyone needs to "get over it," new things like ATs and power sets and whatever else are certainly exciting and can only help the longevity of the game. I get excited about the possibilities myself! But I would hope that everyone could also realize that the other part of ensuring the game's longevity is not just throwing new things in the mix just because we can, since that could easily disrupt the stability and balance that players want out of a live service game that we hope will run for many more years.

Its like you start a new game and it has a bunch of classes. 

 

You keep wanting to try them all out, see what they can do.

 

Eventually you played them all ... but that feeling of wanting to try new classes stays with people.  Some more than others.

 

You get prestige classes or special classes or combo classes or hybrid or kits .. anything to keep the treadmill going. 

 

But designing new classes that work inside a game that was designed without them?  That's not as easy as it sounds.

 

In COH we have ATs that still need fixed (Khelds, Sents)   Powersets that still need fixed (EM, etc) and so on. 

 

By get over it, I didn't mean never should there be another AT ... but I did mean if you try to add them to keep people happy, you will never add enough, and most of them will be badly designed. 

 

 

 

[MTeague]

7 hours ago, Soloshot360 said:

I would just like to see the people running HC come down from the clouds and say "YES, WE WILL MAKE THE SEXY HAPPEN TOO...."  

I think that would be a reasonable expectation if this were a AAA gaming studio of large developer teams who focused on this as their primary job to pay their bills.

I think it is a very human and very understandable want, but still unreasonable to ask the same of the HC dev team.

 

They're focused on untangling the spaghetti code.  I am a programmer. I don't work in games, but I write code for a living.  In the last 23 years I have seen source files you wouldn't believe that most people I work with, myself included, were loath to touch for fear of breaking things in all kind of critical and interesting ways.  Sooner or later you DO have to bite the bullet and get it done, but it's always a hard sell to get people to understand how that many man-hours were legitimately spent with absolutely no customer-observable impact and defend that time spent as a "Good Thing" to observers who want to see something flashy.

 

If they do nothing for the first YEAR but just scale down the technical debt and make the code more modular and supportable and performant, then they will have spent that year wisely and well.  Will some folks go to other servers in the meantime?  Possibly.  Does that mean the gaming experiance will really be better on those other servers.  *very* arguable.

 

Me personally, I'm content to say here because this is the one group looking to get above-board and negotiate a legal standing with the actual legal owners of the game.  Perhaps that doesn't matter to you, but I'm able to make a living as a programmer specifically because of copywright laws. I'm fully aware that I'm being a massive hypocrit playing what is essentially a pirated game, and donating money to said pirates on a semi-regular basis. I can square that circle in my head by talking very fast and not looking at it long 🤣, but mostly, by telling myself that they're TRYING to achieve a legitmate and aboveboard deal. That counts for a very lot to me on a moral and ethical level.

[Myrmidon]

The Homecoming team will do what the Homecoming team does. Even if the updates that we have had here were all that we got from now til Kingdom Come, I don’t give one damn what any other server does.

Edited February 7, 2020 by Myrmidon

[jubakumbi]

I think any attempt at any level of in-fighting and animosity between server runners is silly and shows everyone just how much the COH 'community' is willing to eat itself.

 

I think comparing what occurs between server runners is a natural and reasonable thing for players to do.

 

I think this idea that HC 'owns' COH at this point is perhaps the absolute worst of it.

 

I think the continued message that HC is 'better' because of thier choices is just lemmings following the herd.

 

I think that none of this is any different than any other rogue servers for any games, just useless llama drama.

 

The only reason these things cannot be shared is that time and energy are a limited resource.

All other reasons are just people being people, IMO.

I overcome much larger technological hurdles in my day job all the time, this is not a technical problem, it's vanity and fear holding everyone back, IMO.

 

Happy Friday!

[Corruption]

14 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

I think any attempt at any level of in-fighting and animosity between server runners is silly and shows everyone just how much the COH 'community' is willing to eat itself.

Do any of the other servers even have an active community? I don't have personal experience, but from what I've read, they all seem to be pretty dead. 

[jubakumbi]

16 minutes ago, Corruption said:

Do any of the other servers even have an active community? I don't have personal experience, but from what I've read, they all seem to be pretty dead. 

There are people that play, everyday, on those servers.

I think equate 'active' with 'enough people playing that I feel like I made the right choice of servers.'

Not everyone thinks player population matters, planty of us love quiet servers.

Most Popular does not equate to Best in my world.

Watching sports is far more popular than playing COH, for example, and IMO is a terrible way to spend time.

 

Thinking being Number 1 is all that matters is a dark rabbit hole to go down, IMO.

[DR_Mechano]

25 minutes ago, Corruption said:

Do any of the other servers even have an active community? I don't have personal experience, but from what I've read, they all seem to be pretty dead. 

Not sure on the Issue 24 servers but We Have Cake is slowly getting more and more popular, not in huge strides but it's basically now being seen as a more direct alternative to Homecoming because

A) It's using Issue 25 code.

B) It's not related to 4Chan and the problems that come with it.

C) They're focusing on stuff that is very much an crowd puller, new powersets, new ATs, new Incarnate powers, new costume pieces. All the stuff that gets asked for a metric butt-ton around here but because of the reason Jimmy gives, have been put on the backburner until who knows when the backend stuff is all sorted.

D) People love an underdog. Homecoming is seen as the 'big enemy' by the other server groups. Ourodev and Leandro have had massive arguments in the past which has led to the two groups generally refusing to work together and We Have Cake is sort of part of the Ourodev group but not the Issue 24 group, if you catch my drift. It's seen as a small up and comer with a more freewheeling indie attitude vs Homecomings more corporate monolith sort of deal. Now both teams are basically tiny Indie teams but this is Homecoming's success and links to NCsoft being used to put them in the corporate space instead of the indie space.

Edited February 7, 2020 by DR_Mechano

[Apparition]

The important thing, IMO, is do any of the other servers run 64 bit clients and servers like Homecoming?  32 bit is a dead man walking.

[DR_Mechano]

1 minute ago, Apparition said:

The important thing, IMO, is do any of the other servers run 64 bit clients and servers like Homecoming?  32 bit is a dead man walking.

True and once that change happens, I imagine they'll be a panicked rush to get a 64 client in place unless the other dev teams are already working on it (which they may very well be, I wouldn't put it past them to have something in the works). Like I said, currently they're using a lot of stuff which will draw people to those servers, new general content like Powersets etc. and you can't argue with giving people what they want as a means to draw people in.

[_NOPE_]

22 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

Cake, for what it's work, uses the same base that HC does, AFAIK.  The other two main communities did stick to the i24 code, though.

Of course, as development is done on both, that base may have sufficiently separated anyway.

Yeah, it's been my understanding from comments made by the HC team (I think @Number Six and @Cipher mostly), that for the upgrade to 64 bit operation, and the changes that they made to the underlying code cleaning it up and porting it over to the newer versions of Visual Studio, the code that they have now barely resembles the leaks that Cake would have gotten way back when. So, two roads diverged...

 

That's not to say that Cake's stuff CAN'T be implemented, it's of course possible, the question is - how much work would it be. And only the HC Devs can answer that one, since they are the only  ones that know their own code.

 

Edited February 7, 2020 by The Philotic Knight

[Apparition]

2 minutes ago, DR_Mechano said:

True and once that change happens, I imagine they'll be a panicked rush to get a 64 client in place unless the other dev teams are already working on it (which they may very well be, I wouldn't put it past them to have something in the works). Like I said, currently they're using a lot of stuff which will draw people to those servers, new general content like Powersets etc. and you can't argue with giving people what they want as a means to draw people in.

 

You can argue when they draw people in and they have no plan to deal with the 32 bit apocalypse (some of which has already occurred), so those affected have to go elsewhere.

[jubakumbi]

7 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

You can argue ...

That's the whole friggin' point, why argue?

Why not just try and work together and stop making boxes full of Us and Them?

We are a community after all, right?

Isn't the whole point for the game to be played, not making judgements on whose way is better?

[Corruption]

13 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

There are people that play, everyday, on those servers.

I think equate 'active' with 'enough people playing that I feel like I made the right choice of servers.'

Not everyone thinks player population matters, planty of us love quiet servers.

Most Popular does not equate to Best in my world.

Watching sports is far more popular than playing COH, for example, and IMO is a terrible way to spend time.

 

Thinking being Number 1 is all that matters is a dark rabbit hole to go down, IMO.

Number 1 isn't all that matters, but having a healthy population is certainly important. It's less important for a non-commercial game like this, but server costs need to be covered somehow. I was just curious because I've heard it's nearly impossible to do some content on other servers, which is obviously a non-starter for a lot of people. 

 

As far as people preferring low population servers, I don't have an issue with that.  I just personally don't think there's really a downside to high population servers because it's easy to ignore people, do your own thing and stay in your own little group of friends. 

 

[DR_Mechano]

5 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

That's the whole friggin' point, why argue?

Why not just try and work together and stop making boxes full of Us and Them?

We are a community after all, right?

Isn't the whole point for the game to be played, not making judgements on whose way is better?

Sadly humans, as we both know, are rather tribal. The SCORE/Homecoming team and the Ourodev team do NOT like each other. HC dislikes Ourodev since one of their number was responsible for the leaking of the original secret server, I imagine this is where a lot of the trust issues come from and Ourodev dislike the SCORE/Homecoming team because they say they were responsible for essentially keeping the game out of players hands for six years and feel like it was a betrayal of trust.

Edited February 7, 2020 by DR_Mechano

[jubakumbi]

3 minutes ago, Corruption said:

Number 1 isn't all that matters, but having a healthy population is certainly important. It's less important for a non-commercial game like this, but server costs need to be covered somehow. I was just curious because I've heard it's nearly impossible to do some content on other servers, which is obviously a non-starter for a lot of people. 

 

As far as people preferring low population servers, I don't have an issue with that.  I just personally don't think there's really a downside to high population servers because it's easy to ignore people, do your own thing and stay in your own little group of friends. 

 

Healthy Population is completely and totally subjective.

That's the point.

If it's a non-starter for some people to play on a server where they cannot get thier fix, that's fine, it's just another sub-group, why is one put above another?

 

I realize to the masses Healthy Population means one thing and to quiet old introverts like me it means something else entirely.

But we all like to play the game.

 

As @DR_Mechano points out, it's human nature I am fighting here, but I tilt at windmills all the time, but there is simply no need to put down other servers the way players do, beyond just being mean people, IMO.

[Corruption]

7 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

That's the whole friggin' point, why argue?

Why not just try and work together and stop making boxes full of Us and Them?

We are a community after all, right?

Isn't the whole point for the game to be played, not making judgements on whose way is better?

It has nothing to with us vs. them. This thread covers the technical challenges of servers working together on new content. Others have also brought up the apparent animosity between the different groups running these servers. 

 

The 64-bit client is just another factor people will use to consider which server to play on. I can't imagine going back to 32-bit and the performance hit that comes with it.

[Snarky]

Let say you bave a group of like minded folks. Lets call them villains. But some already want to be rogues. Sigh

 

then you got the tow the line villains ( or pretend to toe the line ) Arachnos

 

then you got cult followers of a specific dream. CoT

 

then you got other folks trying to save the world ... er Vahzilok. Hey full disclosure here that is their party line.  Ot even sure how they got there. Drinking their own embalming fluid?

 

then you got the very motivated yet completely off the rails Freakshow

 

i am not even going to try ti fit Carnival in beee

 

point is everyone wants something different. Whether they are fully bought into their gangs way of doing something or are just surfing a movement is individual. But they are all rolling hard to what they think is right

 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

The beauty of this request is that the OP can see what’s happening on the other servers RIGHT NOW.  There are no costs, no barriers to entry.

 

Go join up on other servers if you want, and report back if you want.

[jubakumbi]

2 minutes ago, Snarky said:

point is everyone wants something different. Whether they are fully bought into their gangs way of doing something or are just surfing a movement is individual. But they are all rolling hard to what they think is right

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Attributed to Edmund Burke.

 

The only thing I want is for this supposed 'community' to pool resources and work together on both the technical and politcal aspects to keep the game running, attractive, and fun to play, rather than fighting over minutae most of them don't really understand.

 

I realize the mini-tribes within the community are hell-bent against that happening, because people are people.

 

Won't stop me from talking about it bluntly and openly in an effort to get more people to work together on solutions.

 

The only reason we don't have more crossover productivity is Egos, not Technology.

[NNDeepdish]

21 minutes ago, DR_Mechano said:

Sadly humans, as we both know, are rather tribal. The SCORE/Homecoming team and the Ourodev team do NOT like each other. HC dislikes Ourodev since one of their number was responsible for the leaking of the original secret server, I imagine this is where a lot of the trust issues come from and Ourodev dislike the SCORE/Homecoming team because they say they were responsible for essentially keeping the game out of players hands for six years and feel like it was a betrayal of trust.

Ay can we not make assumptions and speak on behalf of entire groups of people here? You'll never see anything from the HC team stating that they dislike any other server "group" for any reason.

Stuff like this is how bad rumors get permeated.

[Arkasas]

28 minutes ago, DR_Mechano said:

Sadly humans, as we both know, are rather tribal. The SCORE/Homecoming team and the Ourodev team do NOT like each other. HC dislikes Ourodev since one of their number was responsible for the leaking of the original secret server, I imagine this is where a lot of the trust issues come from and Ourodev dislike the SCORE/Homecoming team because they say they were responsible for essentially keeping the game out of players hands for six years and feel like it was a betrayal of trust.

What? The Ourodev people aren't the ones in conflict with Homecoming, and the guy who leaked A) cannot, to the best of my knowledge, code and B) has left the community altogether. Many of the servers that run Ouro's code don't like HC very much, particularly coxg, but they're not Ourodev.

[Jimmy]

I feel I need to chip in here and drop a quote from our open letter to the community that was posted back in May last year. A distant memory now, but it still holds:

On 5/27/2019 at 12:22 AM, Jimmy said:

Firstly, I’d like to open by presenting our mission statement:

Quote

The Homecoming Team is a group of individuals from across the City of Heroes community dedicated to creating a friendly, stable and long-term version of the game for everyone to enjoy. The key is in the name: We want this to feel like the home we all lost, and we want everybody to feel welcome.

To break that down: Our prime directive is to keep the servers online and available to everyone. Every single decision we’ve made has been in support of that goal.

We aren't out to get anyone or one-up other servers.

 

We're here to achieve the goal we shared with the community nearly a year ago. Nothing more, nothing less.

I know many motives have been attached to our actions over the past 10 months, but there's no need to speculate. It's right there in black and white (or blue and white, I suppose), and has been since May.

[Bionic_Flea]

But Jimmy, why can't I have my cake and eat here too?

 

[Luminara]

One team or server group laboring under the necessity to be all things to all players will, inevitably, crumble under the weight of expectations.  Different teams and server groups can offer different things, and adopt or discard ideas from one another as befits each and to the benefit of the players supporting them.

 

It's not a competition, beyond the obvious need to attract enough players willing to assist with server expenses.  It's offering all players more options.