Dev Diary - Piecemeal's Workshop of Horrors

[Jimmy]

21 hours ago, Piecemeal said:

I can't unsee the nipple piercings being the eyes on a very strange shaped head. It looks like a Pokemon.

[Ruin Mage]

Nah, it looks like a Digimon.

[TygerDarkstorm]

3 hours ago, Jimmy said:

I can't unsee the nipple piercings being the eyes on a very strange shaped head. It looks like a Pokemon.

Shit those are nipple piercings? I knew my vision was bad, but I didn't realize it was that bad. 😅 I thought they were eyes... Shows you how often I make Male characters, lol.

[Piecemeal]

5 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

Nah, it looks like a Digimon.

After I mis-made it, I realized it looked familiar. From an ooooooold animation back in my time, which became a show. Which nobody needs to watch.

[Patti]

Trippin' the Rift.

[BurtHutt]

Piece, glad to see someone step up for the Redsiders! I am wondering, was creating this mission arc so time consuming because you put in some new features into the mish? I would prefer to see more content (missions, TFs etc) over powers and the such so I'm curious as to how difficult this process has been for the current Dev team. It seems these arcs may have been TF/SF worthy?

 

I'm also constantly knocking at the door to help out the Dev team. Maybe one day. I have ideas!!! 🙂

 

 

[FoulVileTerror]

Will Freaklok be on the streets anywhere, in any Newspaper or similar missions, or strictly just these story arcs?

[Piecemeal]

5 hours ago, BurtHutt said:

Piece, glad to see someone step up for the Redsiders! I am wondering, was creating this mission arc so time consuming because you put in some new features into the mish? I would prefer to see more content (missions, TFs etc) over powers and the such so I'm curious as to how difficult this process has been for the current Dev team. It seems these arcs may have been TF/SF worthy?

 

I'm also constantly knocking at the door to help out the Dev team. Maybe one day. I have ideas!!! 🙂

Imagine if you will, that you volunteered to be part of a team to create a meal. A cheeseburger and fries. For a very important customer, who was patient, but waiting. You love this customer dearly, and you love cheeseburgers just as much. You and the team plan the meal, and then the chef goes on family leave and the only other people who know the kitchen are keeping the lights on and maintaining the building. The meal planners move on. You're sitting there with your silly chef hat going "Heywaitaminuteguys" realizing you're the burger team now.

 

Your job was to cut the lettuce. Now you're responsible for the entire meal prep. You have to learn how to work the grill, the fryer, the plating... and you have to learn how to properly butcher the cow for the correct meat. Out of respect for the cow, you want to do it right. The farmer has lot of cows, and the customer is getting lots of appetizers from the menu that's still being built.

 

To be fair, this has been a learning project, and I don't want my first trip out into the world of criticism to be a ruinous experience, either. It just so happens that certain things behind the scenes have been fortunate to allow the deadlines to be fluid. I'd say the heaviest lifting happened because of COVID-19 for me. I have had massive stress and panic attacks about how long this has taken precisely because I never thought it was good enough, or the logic needed work, or because the invisible mainfestation of the playerbase inside my head would say "That's a cheap trick we've seen before, make something unique."

 

After looking at the data, there was the structure of a workflow left behind. So I posit that this work is on par with what a minimum of 4-6 people, working full time, for a AAA dev studio, with the right tools and documentation could accomplish in 2 months. And I had to do it with a minimum of oversight, with minimum instructions on how anything worked, and a massive amount of detective work and trial and error and realizations of how things could be done.

 

Around here, the mantra is that knowledge and quality is borne from breaking it until you understand it. I believe that in certain cases, I broke things into a fine silicon powder. For other things, I basically hammered square pegs into round holes and now I'm cleaning that up for release. I now have Stockholm's Compiling Syndrome, most likely.

 

I wholeheartedly endorse the next project having a team with me. The scope of the projects for the future really insists that I don't grind myself down into a fine dust.

 

 

4 hours ago, FoulVileTerror said:

Will Freaklok be on the streets anywhere, in any Newspaper or similar missions, or strictly just these story arcs?

I can neither confirm nor deny any of that, but I can tell you that the red-side story is indeed in two parts and a second part is still coming after this release. And I am actively figuring out the best answers to those questions internally with the team.

[unblocked]

Although I'm somewhat disappointed that this isn't Warriors content; on account of Warriors being the lamest, the dumbest, the boringest, the suckest and therefore the most in need of improvement; I'm glad to see any kind of new content getting added to this game. Nevertheless Vahz->Freaks is a great idea and I approve of it and hope the result will be cool and entertaining. Also Freaklok is the exact sort of dumb name dumbos like Freaks would adopt. Flawless.

I am even more glad that this isn't more incarnate endgame nonsense because incarnate stuff is just dumb on a conceptual level and was a mistake from the beginning and hope nobody adds any more nonsense on top of it.

[FoulVileTerror]

Sorry to say, @unblocked, but we just got word that exactly -that- (regarding your sneaky text) is what the core team are pursuing.  I'm there with you; I am FAR more interested in seeing Piecemeal's work than balance passes in the name of a nebulous extension to an endgame that's already deeply unappealing to me for a variety of reasons.

But, we both should accept that there are a lot of players who -are- interested in that bitter gelatinous blob which is the Incarnate content, and that happens to include the core Devs.

I don't begrudge either them or Piecemeal for pursuing the content which interests them.  And that's something which I've seen a few players complain about, and I feel it's unfair.  The Devs are going to do what interests them; they're volunteers!  

On the other hand, I do hope that they get -someone- on the team who has the same interests as me some day, or change their recruitment requirements so I can toss my hat in to the ring.  It's disappointing to see even low-hanging fruit for roleplay Quality of Life improvements being wholesale ignored, but if none of the volunteer devs are roleplayers, it's not surprising that these concerns are either invisible to them or they don't comprehend the scope of impact related to them.

 

I would like to see an overhaul to the development process so that directed feedback can enter in to the process earlier.  Such an overhaul would include stricter adherence to constructive criticisms from the community, since "I wanted you to use your free time and passion for something I want, not what you care about" isn't a criticism and isn't helpful to refining the work which -is- being done.  

I think there are members of this community who could use a guide on how to provide constructive feedback (some more than others, too).  Maybe that would help.

[Ruin Mage]

51 minutes ago, FoulVileTerror said:

I would like to see an overhaul to the development process so that directed feedback can enter in to the process earlier.  Such an overhaul would include stricter adherence to constructive criticisms from the community

This does not sound pleasant at all - it comes off as if you're asking for the devs to listen solely to the community and no one else. There doesn't need to be an overhaul to the process or anything. Development takes time, and HC is not as behooved to implement everything / anything the community wants. I think they hear us loud and clear on the various ideas the community (in a person to person sense rather than the larger community) has - but implementation may take time. It may take some hours of work and figuring it into what they - the developers & runners of HC - want to do with their servers.

At the end of the day, it is their servers. They can and will do what they want with them. Community input can be important, but it is not the end all be all to the Homecoming servers.

[Lines]

2 hours ago, Piecemeal said:

To be fair, this has been a learning project, and I don't want my first trip out into the world of criticism to be a ruinous experience, either. It just so happens that certain things behind the scenes have been fortunate to allow the deadlines to be fluid. I'd say the heaviest lifting happened because of COVID-19 for me. I have had massive stress and panic attacks about how long this has taken precisely because I never thought it was good enough, or the logic needed work, or because the invisible mainfestation of the playerbase inside my head would say "That's a cheap trick we've seen before, make something unique."

 

Just by doing anything at all, you're giving us more than we deserve. The community shouldn't hold you to any deadlines and shouldn't ask you to push harder than you're comfortable. Your wellbeing absolutely comes first, without exception.

 

People might get critical, but behind all that we love you guys so much for what you're doing keeping this game alive. ❤️

[Piecemeal]

2 hours ago, FoulVileTerror said:

Sorry to say, @unblocked, but we just got word that exactly -that- (regarding your sneaky text) is what the core team are pursuing.  I'm there with you; I am FAR more interested in seeing Piecemeal's work than balance passes in the name of a nebulous extension to an endgame that's already deeply unappealing to me for a variety of reasons.

But, we both should accept that there are a lot of players who -are- interested in that bitter gelatinous blob which is the Incarnate content, and that happens to include the core Devs.

I don't begrudge either them or Piecemeal for pursuing the content which interests them.  And that's something which I've seen a few players complain about, and I feel it's unfair.  The Devs are going to do what interests them; they're volunteers!  

On the other hand, I do hope that they get -someone- on the team who has the same interests as me some day, or change their recruitment requirements so I can toss my hat in to the ring.  It's disappointing to see even low-hanging fruit for roleplay Quality of Life improvements being wholesale ignored, but if none of the volunteer devs are roleplayers, it's not surprising that these concerns are either invisible to them or they don't comprehend the scope of impact related to them.

 

I would like to see an overhaul to the development process so that directed feedback can enter in to the process earlier.  Such an overhaul would include stricter adherence to constructive criticisms from the community, since "I wanted you to use your free time and passion for something I want, not what you care about" isn't a criticism and isn't helpful to refining the work which -is- being done.  

I think there are members of this community who could use a guide on how to provide constructive feedback (some more than others, too).  Maybe that would help.

For what it's worth, I understand where you are coming from. And it's not anything like how you perceive it to be, at least in my opinion. We all want the same things, but for all of us behind the scenes I think we acknowledge that it would be building on a very unstable foundation.

 

We're building the house on solid ground, and sometimes that looks a little ugly before the ground is leveled and the trim goes on. 🙂

 

I ask you to remain positive. There are so many factors involved!

[Piecemeal]

Oh and before I forget, I acknowledge that the Warriors need love, which is very close to the top of my list, since they're involved in the near future...

[Bionic_Flea]

4 minutes ago, Piecemeal said:

Oh and before I forget, I acknowledge that the Warriors need love, which is very close to the top of my list, since they're involved in the near future...

dun, Dun, DUN!

 

[unblocked]

HYPE!!!

 

 

To not be an utterly pointless post, I'll say that I believe making the worst stuff in the game better is way better than adding more stuff on already good stuff. Like, Cray is good. Nemesis is fine. Council, CoT, they're all over the place with varying degrees of goodness. We don't need any more of those. Warriors are utter crap. Hellions, trolls, outcasts, goldbrickers, corallax all suck. Increasing the lowest bars is definitely the best way to go about adding value to the game.

tldr: I hope more content will follow.

[FoulVileTerror]

I apology that I am unable to find the words I'm looking for.

It's not my intent to ever tell the volunteers "hurry up," nor to say "your opinions don't matter on the things you're working on."  I'm genuinely unsure where I need to make adjustments to my criticisms to stress that isn't my intent.  So, if anyone would like to help me by pointing out problematic phrasing which I'm using, I would appreciate that.

I realize that the existing feedback process is "good enough" or even "great" for many people who post on these forums.

I strongly disagree with that assessment, though, and I would like to work toward something which I believe would be more productive, less stressful, and (most importantly) more inclusive.

The Homecoming mission expressly states that they want the game to be welcoming to everyone.  I may be shooting myself in the foot here . . . repeatably, but I do mean to take them to task on that.  I like the sentiment expressed by that mission.  I feel the execution of it needs work.  I criticize because I care about seeing things improve.

If the Homecoming Team feels the current modus operandi is sufficient, I would propose they change the mission statement to reflect that instead.  If this really is "their server," for them and their friends, okay.  I'll accept that.  I'd just like them to be upfront about it right there.

 

With the building analogy, it's not so much that the ground looks ugly . . . it's that from this side of things there isn't any ground to see at all.  We only get to see the house after-the-fact.  It's a loose metaphor to be sure, but I am only able to infer an existence of a foundation.  And when I see something shaky with the finished product, I'm unable to meaningful comment on whether it was the foundation or the building materials that needed to be addressed.

 

AND I realize . . . I'm totally hijacking your thread, Piecemeal.  I'm sorry for that.

If this post is too off-topic, I understand if it needs to disappear.  But I do hope that I'm making progress in expressing my desired point more clearly now.

[Ruin Mage]

33 minutes ago, FoulVileTerror said:

If the Homecoming Team feels the current modus operandi is sufficient, I would propose they change the mission statement to reflect that instead.  If this really is "their server," for them and their friends, okay.  I'll accept that.  I'd just like them to be upfront about it right there.

They are pretty up front if you read enough dev messages - and the fact that it's what the truth is. At the end of the day, said or unsaid, this is their server and what they want to deliver is ultimately up to them. I am going to have to disagree on you on taking them to task - when we aren't owed a thing or that they don't need to do diddly squat for / towards us. What I'm trying to say is that your statements may come off as if you're asking for the devs to listen only to the community / primarily. That is a very very bad idea given the state of the Suggestions & Feedback forum & various other threads. There's so much that is / should be filtered from those - as people will disagree with other's ideas.

EDIT: What I mean to say is that there's going to be vehement disagreement from my end on what you're asking for. We don't need to be an integral part of every path of development. The Beta / Testing shards and the forums are enough - if the idea is good enough, it will likely make its way through the Pages. Development is likely not easy - going off Piece & Jimmy's replies over the period of these new threads. The community doesn't need a major impact on that or huge insights into how that works. They don't need a massive say in it from the get go. The way things are seem to be just fine - the devs work on what they can, they produce it when they can, and the game continues on.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Shadeknight

[Patti]

OH MY GOD!

THEY'RE SO CUTE!

Can I keep them?   Can I?  Can I? Can I?

[Troo]

On 9/22/2020 at 3:49 AM, Piecemeal said:

Imagine if you will, that you volunteered to be part of a team to create a meal. A cheeseburger and fries. For a very important customer, who was patient, but waiting.

dammit, no cheese.

joking! we'll take new content. i love you

 

On 9/22/2020 at 3:49 AM, Piecemeal said:

And I had to do it with a minimum of oversight, with minimum instructions on how anything worked, and a massive amount of detective work and trial and error and realizations of how things could be done.

we're sorry. just sooo excited

 

 

On 9/22/2020 at 3:49 AM, Piecemeal said:

I can neither confirm nor deny any of that, but I can tell you that the red-side story is indeed in two parts and a second part is still coming after this release. And I am actively figuring out the best answers to those questions internally with the team.

it puts the lotion on it's skin or it gets the hose again. don't you worry about no Stockholm's Compiling Syndrome.

you're doing awesome

 

 

[Sigma7]

Please consider doing something with Praetoria at some point.  Those zones are under utilized and I like the moral ambiguity of that world.  The way the heroes have a polished public persona but are corrupt and power hungry behind the scenes almost reminds me of The Boys from Amazon Prime.

 

Edit: Also, I can't overstate how much we appreciate all your hard work! 

Edited September 24, 2020 by Sigma7

[Piecemeal]

8 hours ago, Sigma7 said:

Please consider doing something with Praetoria at some point.  Those zones are under utilized and I like the moral ambiguity of that world.  The way the heroes have a polished public persona but are corrupt and power hungry behind the scenes almost reminds me of The Boys from Amazon Prime.

 

Edit: Also, I can't overstate how much we appreciate all your hard work! 

Problematically, the world of Praetoria was destroyed as you know it by the game's lore before sunset. The Hamidon has won, save for one single bastion of humanity left. If and when we go back, it'll be about closing up that story thread.

 

I have an ambitious idea, since Devouring Earth are my all-time favorite villain group. But I believe it's going to take some time before you actually see Praetoria again.

 

Edit: That doesn't mean Praetorian stuff can't come to Primal, of course. They're everywhere now.

[FoulVileTerror]

Although, @Piecemeal, it does seem to bear stating that time travel and alternate-alternate dimensions exist too.  After all, we could add Flashback'able Praetorian content!

But based on majority feedback, it does seem like there's no shortage of player who also has Praetoria Fatigue.  So, perhaps, there are other settings that might spark more interest overall.

[Bionic_Flea]

51 minutes ago, Piecemeal said:

Problematically, the world of Praetoria was destroyed as you know it by the game's lore before sunset. The Hamidon has won, save for one single bastion of humanity left. If and when we go back, it'll be about closing up that story thread.

 

I have an ambitious idea, since Devouring Earth are my all-time favorite villain group. But I believe it's going to take some time before you actually see Praetoria again.

 

Edit: That doesn't mean Praetorian stuff can't come to Primal, of course. They're everywhere now.

Devouring Freakloks!

[Lines]

10 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Devouring Freakloks!

Sky Devouring Freakloks!