Development Philosophy and Community Servers

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2 minutes ago, Dynastyjay said:

Literal definition of a sheep. Where did the OP ever state anything about power gaming? That assumption was simply made by someone who was incapable of providing an intelligent reply and instead decided to ignore the ENTIRE post which tried to steer this debate in a constructive direction. 

Incapable? Nice.

 

To @Doomrider's actual post, I would say that much of these conversations seem to go back and forth and back and forth and don't get anywhere, because they are largely based on anecdotes, personal opinions, and not hard, raw data. The devs have access to the raw data from the game. They know who's playing what. They have all the data about what powers have what numbers. If I recall correctly, Castle actually used to have an Excel sheet where you could feed in a power's stats, and it would spit out the power's "power rating", which you could then compare, in an impartial and unemotional way, to other powers' power ratings. If the HC devs have access to that sheet, or can reproduce a similar one, then all discussions about what sets and powers are "better" and "worse" goes away, and what we're left instead with is the stuff that's hard to quantify - namely, how "fun" the powers and powersets are. How enjoyable they are to play. THAT is opinion, and THAT and that alone is all the the devs REALLY need from us as players (aside from finding bugs due to things not working as intended since the codebase is spaghetti).

 

So, all of this talk about "what should the devs be saying, what shouldn't they be saying", it's an interesting conversation, but it's one with no final outcome - it'll be an endless debate, because there is no end point. Because it's all subjective opinion. And when we get down to subjective opinions, it'll end up with one of two results:

• Flame wars, or...
• ....

Oh, wait, sorry, I was wrong. It's just flame wars. It ALWAYS ends with flame wars, because people, in general, have a hard time disagreeing like adults and seeing people having different opinions than themselves without taking it as a personal insult that someone doesn't agree with them.

 

So, I'm gonna stay away from anything that I think looks like it might head that way - any conversation which I don't think can be possibly be solved by numbers.

[Frostbiter]

Are we giving feedback on future changes we want ingame? Because I would like a balloon animal skin for all weapons.

[Oubliette_Red]

1 minute ago, Frostbiter said:

Are we giving feedback on future changes we want ingame? Because I would like a balloon animal skin for all weapons.

The sfx for those would drive me crazy.

[...]

15 minutes ago, Dynastyjay said:

Literal definition of a sheep. Where did the OP ever state anything about power gaming? That assumption was simply made by someone who was incapable of providing an intelligent reply and instead decided to ignore the ENTIRE post which tried to steer this debate in a constructive direction. 

Might be time to lock the thread. 

[Dynastyjay]

8 minutes ago, subbacultchas said:

Hmm, that hardly seems productive to be taking pot shots at another person's character, intelligence, or presumptive motive rather than the argument. Are you sure this is the route you want to take over this?

There was no argument to take pot shots at. Just a misconstrued response to someone making an attempt to get the conversation heading back on the original path. 

[Dynastyjay]

1 minute ago, Vooded said:

Might be time to lock the thread. 

I’d say so. 

[Saikochoro]

The community is not running the show, nor should they. This is the devs game and we are along for the ride. 
 

Server costs are run on donations, but their time is not compensated. And honestly their time is likely the most important part of keeping homecoming alive. They have been plenty engaging and plenty transparent.  Honestly, requesting them to be more so is too much in my opinion. We are lucky they do as much as they do already. 

 

We may not agree with everything they do. But we shouldn’t forget that they are volunteers and are thus not entitled to their time.  I would think differently if they were actually compensated. Though even in that case I still wouldn’t agree with the community running the show. 

[Oubliette_Red]

23 minutes ago, MetaVileTerror said:

<snip>

 

However:  I think that one of their next "hires" should be an individual (or small team) with publisher/marketing experience AND (crucially) who is not interested in pursuing "Best Practices" established solely for commercial consumer games.  Someone who works/worked in the industry, and sees how terrible the working conditions and culture are in a lot of places, and wants to actively provide their experienced services as a volunteer in a capacity that will help mitigate that widespread industry toxicity.  Someone who is willing to explore new or retired methodologies for community engagement to see what works best in this volunteer environment.

 

<snip>

First-hand experience for me is that most development teams work with and should work with "best practices" which generally is meant to keep their production goals on track, rather than being set back by someone's actions. Like working in main rather than branched code and merging. Rolling up your windows before going through the car wash comes to mind.

 

The "toxic environment" is not generally on the shoulders of the devs (engineers, designers, artists, animators, etc.) but on the corporate/managerial side of things, the bean-counters and the ones that control the purse-strings.

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Oubliette_Red
edited because I hate repeating my own phrases, epsecially in the same paragraph. -.-

[Marine X]

There has been a lot of ground covered here, some of which was not part of the OPs subject matter

We owe the Homecoming Team for the fact that we have CoH back to play at all. This could still change, at any time. "HC Devs are Gods, don't anger the Gods".

They have often said how much they appreciate reading the suggestions, how much they appreciate test server reports and have a good rapport with the community.

 

"Most are uninformed, few are educated, but only a handful are angry chimps"

Wow, really?, if you somehow know everyone's IQ, and level of education, I would think you'd be able to realize how Elitist and Arrogant that statement sounds.

Remember the old saying: " You attract more Flies with Honey than Vinegar ".

 

I hope that the community can be patient enough to see what the future holds

I'm sure that there will be surprises, I hope there will be surprises. We don't need to know everything going on to play the game, if they put it on the test server evaluate it and let them go from there. If you want to put out a Topic on the boards with your wishlist, have at it, if they realize a lot of people want something it's probably more likely to get attention. I would like to believe they will satisfy the things they can and at least look at the rest. Just try to keep the Hostility out of it, it IS counter productive.

 

 

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Marine X

[Oubliette_Red]

16 minutes ago, Vooded said:

Might be time to lock the thread. 

Agreed

[Abraxus]

Realistic expectation. 

 

The Devs have attempted to set things according to that concept IMHO.  However, there is a lot of interpretation happening on exactly what constitutes "reasonable".  They tell us, to the extent possible what's happening.  They do their best to give us new things in the game with the resources at their disposal.  All the while, still negotiating with NCSoft, so there are probably some paths of development they are either not willing to commit to without that being completed, or the lack of agreement keeps them from pursuing.  We obviously can't know things like that, because they can't say.  But, we ask anyway, and when they can't respond satisfactorily, we criticize.

 

For a game that was gone from this Earth for 7 years, was miraculously reborn, and given back to us to play, I think it is doing pretty well.  We so easily forget how against the odds it is that the game is even here for us again, and once past that fact, we start to think of it like any other game out there where it becomes "What have you done for me lately?".  After just 9 or 10 months, we lose perspective on how fortunate we are to have a second chance at all, and start to want more of this, and more that. 

 

Personally, I think they're doing great. 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Abraxus

[Burnt Toast]

I am 1000% against a roadmap. Not because I do not want to know that Power X is planned for a Fall 2020 release, but because I know how a lot of people react to PLANNED road maps that do not meet dates. If they stated Power X was slated for Fall 2020... Come December 1, 2020 when Power X is not in the game a lot of people will complain that HC is not fullfilling their promises, are lazy, don't know what they are doing blah blah blah. I have seen it in many smaller games that provide these roadmaps to appease players. 

 

I know players now who complain that HC isn't pushing out wind control, the other power pools etc.. all complaining. You can even find people complaining aboout Electrical Affinity because Power X should have been before it. All a roadmap will do is give ammunition to those who think they know better and who demand too much from a volunteer group of persons who spend countless hours creating and maintaining this game. 

 

Why would they tell people what is coming? So the boards can be filled with "They are so slow..they said they are working on this..when when when when???" HC is more transparent than most development teams.... The sense of entitlement is crazy on these boards. 

[ScarySai]

46 minutes ago, Frostbiter said:

Are we giving feedback on future changes we want ingame? Because I would like a balloon animal skin for all weapons.

Hire this man, HC.

 

As an aside, I really don't understand the hostility and misrepresentation in the replies to this thread. It's completely unwarranted, and frankly a pathetic showing from such an otherwise great community.

Edited March 4, 2020 by ScarySai

[Lines]

4 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

As an aside, I really don't understand the hostility and misrepresentation in the replies to this thread. It's completely unwarranted, and frankly pathetic.

I kinda agree, besides the last part.

 

I think the OP is coming from a more neutral place than perhaps is being suggested. I didn't read it as demanding nor entitled, though I broadly disagree with the sentiment.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Lines

[GamerRick]

4 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

Ultimately it will come down to the people who do the work (voluntarily, keep in mind) doing the stuff which they have a desire to do.

I code for a living and coding new stuff is where I find the most fun in my job. Maintenance and bug fixing is tedious and boring.  These developers are volunteers and we want them to keep having as much fun as they can to keep our game going.  Giving feedback and letting the developers decide what they would enjoy doing is the best option. 

[MetaVileTerror]

I'm not certain, @Oubliette_Red, but it feels like I failed to be clear with the bit of text you quoted from me in https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/16180-development-philosophy-and-community-servers/page/4/?tab=comments#comment-174681

 

Was your reply meant to reinforce what I was trying to say, or did I fail to adequately explain my point of view and wound up getting a rebuttal which actually ends up agreeing with the message I was -trying- to send?

[Oubliette_Red]

8 minutes ago, MetaVileTerror said:

I'm not certain, @Oubliette_Red, but it feels like I failed to be clear with the bit of text you quoted from me in https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/16180-development-philosophy-and-community-servers/page/4/?tab=comments#comment-174681

 

Was your reply meant to reinforce what I was trying to say, or did I fail to adequately explain my point of view and wound up getting a rebuttal which actually ends up agreeing with the message I was -trying- to send?

 

The way I read your comment was "publishing/marketing GOOD",  " 'best practices' = BAD and the bane of all developers". If I got that backwards, my apologies.

It appeared that you were equating "best practices" with a toxic work environment.

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Oubliette_Red

[MetaVileTerror]

Sorry.  I meant to imply that the best practices forced upon developers by publishers' for the publishers' benefit are bad.  I put the term in quotation marks originally to imply that they weren't -real- best practices, but instead the publishers' version, which (I think our mutual first hand experiences) end up saddle-bagging or sabotaging the developers' efforts.

[Oubliette_Red]

3 minutes ago, MetaVileTerror said:

Sorry.  I meant to imply that the best practices forced upon developers by publishers' for the publishers' benefit are bad.  I put the term in quotation marks originally to imply that they weren't -real- best practices, but instead the publishers' version, which (I think our mutual first hand experiences) end up saddle-bagging or sabotaging the developers' efforts.

 

This clears it up, thanks.  🙂

 

I've gone through too many instances where marketing and/or publishers set the schedule in direct conflict with standards or best practices. It never ended well.

 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Oubliette_Red

[MetaVileTerror]

Yes, exactly.  I've been there too . . . on the other side of it.  I've posted about my experiences in the industry in some other threads here too.  The short of it:  As someone with experience in the field, marketing and publishing teams -could- provide great benefits to the developers when said teams work in a supportive role.  When the marketing and publishing teams run the show, however, we end up with the current state of the industry as a whole.

 

So, naturally, the pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction these days.  While unionized work environments are still a pipe-dream and crunch is still an abominable plague, we see a lot of indie dev teams making great strides and having success all over the place!  I think, however, that things could be even better if those teams had dedicated and helpful public relations agents and administrative assistants.  

On small side-scrolling dungeon crawlers, drunken detective character studies, and faster-than-light space simulations with amazing story content, a whole marketing team is probably not needed so badly (or at all, clearly).  But on a beast the size of City of Heroes, with an active and on-going development cycle . . . well, I'll be the first to admit that I could be gravely wrong here, and the possibility that I'm just trying to imagine a games industry where I have a place that -isn't- inherently destructive . . .

But I still think it would be worth the effort for the Homecoming Team to consider investing in some folks who are dedicated to being practised mouthpieces, here to absorb the shock from community backlash.

[DR_Mechano]

1 minute ago, MetaVileTerror said:

But I still think it would be worth the effort for the Homecoming Team to consider investing in some folks who are dedicated to being practised mouthpieces, here to absorb the shock from community backlash.

To be fair we did see an example of this with the discussion over the name of Shock Therapy as we had one dev who clearly loved the name and I'm assuming it was their baby of a design project come out and say how shock therapy was misunderstood and so on. Which, since they are a professional in the field, is understandable BUT it had to be covered by GM coming in and quickly providing context and also saying that said dev doesn't speak for the entire HC team.

 

Now my own personal problem with the set aside (I literally have zero interest in playing it, elec powers suffer the problem of end drain being a non-issue for most NPCs so it's a very lacking secondary effect and the name DEFINITELY needs changing as it doesn't fit the theme of all the other power names. Shock Therapy sounds like it should be a power name, not a set name) you can clearly see it is someones pet project and that's what we're going to be seeing from the devs. They're a very small group that for reasons like NDAs on the talks etc. cannot or will not bring new people on to the project so instead we're going to be seeing more pet project style of development and this makes sense. You're doing this for free, you're not going to donate your time to work on something you don't like.

 

I mean I question the choice of Electrical Control. I honestly didn't see massive callouts for it but that's just me and as such I get WHY Electrical control was developed I can just go 'ok...fair enough' since me saying I personally don't want it isn't going to magically get all that time suddenly invested in to something else and I'm sure there are people out there who DO want Electrical control.

[Septipheran]

I'm not sure how constructive it'll be to continue posting, but I feel like I should at least clarify my position. I'm not trying to stir up any sort of anti-HC or anti-dev sentiment in the least. In fact, I love playing here and dedicated the first paragraph of the OP to discussing just that. 

 

I think it's pretty unfortunate that this post has drawn out the level of negativity that it has. It seems like people are taking this as something it was not intended to be, and getting surprisingly defensive as a result. 

 

My position is essentially that it would most likely be in the best interests of everyone not to nerf sets people enjoy playing. A lot of the thrill of COH is in nostalgia, and I'm concerned about turning the game into something that we wouldn't recognize. I also made the case that with the abundance of under-performing support sets that we have in place already, roleplayers and theme players have a bunch of options to choose from. For those of us who like to play the game a little more seriously (not saying that one approach is better than the other) I simply made the point that it's a bit of a wasted effort from our perspective to develop something like a pure support set. It sucks to feel like Rad and Cold are the only viable options, but that is presently the case most of the time. I'm sure it'll be fun to level up, but at level 50, myself and everyone I play with build self-sufficient characters. We are not, as they say, "lf healz." I just hate to see development time go to waste on non-debuffing support sets because frankly, in the current meta they are worthless for serious play. I would understand it more if the game was lacking sets that provided this kind of functionality, but that's not the case at all. 

 

Overall though, the sentiment I want to communicate is that I love what HC has done for us, and I actually agree with the majority of their decisions. Having talked to a lot of people who play this game seriously, there is a definite consensus among a population that doesn't necessarily tend to engage in the forums about these sorts of issues. There are valid concerns about the direction that development is taking and I don't think it's necessarily fair to crucify anyone who dares suggest that things could be done a little differently. 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Septipheran

[Abraxus]

We are free to ask for whatever we like.  I think the major differences come in our reactions when the answer is not what we want to hear.  Again, I stress realistic expectations, which hopefully precludes us from being so invested in something we want, that we are angered, or severely disappointed when it can't, or doesn't happen. 

Edited March 4, 2020 by Abraxus

[VileTerror]

Heh, but if you ask a roleplayer, Septipheran, you'll see that there are a LOT of ideas which simply don't have options to support them yet.  I mean, I have a very different view, I think, from you.  I want more and more and more and more and MORE Sets and Archetypes, or full-out Freebuild, because the game -mechanics- just aren't complex enough to engage me on a level of serious play.  I will gladly take a Set that is so under-performing as to be indisputable garbage, so long as it's different and interesting as far as what I can do with it as a tool for roleplay.

 

I think the Homecoming Team are presently aiming in the middle of your point of view and my point of view.  Frankly, I think they're leaning in your direction far more, considering the careful and deliberate pace they're moving at with the addition of new content.

I think you'll be okay, Septipheran.  Like I said earlier; I -get- being passionate about this game.  I really do.  So, yes; by every means!  Share you feelings.  And yes, it totally sucks that some people have used your thread for some really shitty behaviour.

But at the end of the day . . . I think you'll be alright, and that your needs will be fulfilled by the Homecoming Team.

[ScarySai]

See, why couldn't we start out on a positive note like this?