Suggestions for Development and testing

[Rigged]

1 hour ago, Shadeknight said:

Given how that's how its worked?

 

No, I asked this because it is in fact not how it's worked. There have been many balance changes in patches between pages until I27 Page 5. We usually get a bunch of balance patches in between issues. This recent gap made me wonder if we lost a bunch of devs, especially since I recently found out the new Vahz arc will never be resolved due to the dev leaving. Guess I was mistaken.

 

1 hour ago, Shadeknight said:

Five and Six have come out much faster than prior pages

 

See, this isn't exactly encouraging when you consider that Page 6 took six months, and Page 5 was stated to be unusually short and light on content because Faultline was projected to be unavailable.

 

1 hour ago, Shadeknight said:

They cannot push patches without Faultline, and giving the power to push changes/patches to anyone else is likely a non-starter due to what that could cascade into.

 

OK, I accept this as the reason why we have had an unusually long drought of balance changes. I am now just guessing you are wrong (no offense) about the attachment to Pages and this is the real reason there were no balance changes for six months. However, this feels very worrying. In any project such a single point of failure would be considered a major breach of business continuity. Also, is Faultline losing a laptop capable of blocking all patch work from being done, no emergency backup person? Like, what if his laptop gets stolen again?

 

1 hour ago, Shadeknight said:

No one is being barred from joining!

 

1 hour ago, Shadeknight said:

Now anyone can post their credentials or whatever in the Future Volunteer threads. The devs can, in time, check those out and maybe pick up one or two people every so often.

 

These two statements are incompatible. If, like most people, we lack credentials, we have not a hope of even starting to learn and are effectively barred from joining. As I said, lots of top modders are amateurs. The Venn diagram of game development credentials and COH fans has low intersect and every day the numbers dwindle further. If they want to sustain a dev team, they will have to grow it from the existing COH community, because video game professionals are not going to join the dev team for a game they have no interest in. Seriously here, the player community may dwindle slower due to new players, but the number of those who have game development credentials and are willing to work on the game is going to be miniscule. The best way forward would be to encourage modding the client and then recruiting modders.

 

Because honestly, that's what a HC dev is. A modder. They are modding COH. Every HC addition is a mod.

[Number Six]

3 minutes ago, Rigged said:

If, like most people, we lack credentials, we have not a hope of even starting to learn and are effectively barred from joining.

 

It has nothing to do with credentials and everything to do with attitude, passion for the project, and ability to work as a team. One of the things we look for when recruiting are driven people who either already have skills that they've developed from looking at the various resources that are out there, or who have the ability to learn from example and figure out how things work without needing a lot of handholding.

 

All of what we know has been reverse engineered from the leaked code & data, and while we do have experienced people who can help newcomers, they have projects of their own and don't have unlimited time.

[Wravis]

5 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

Given that they've only made Electrical Affinity, Seismic Blast, Symphony Control, and now Storm Blast? I'd say all of them. Used means even a few people play them, but perhaps we differ in definitions. Subjectivity is fun like that! Of those, I think the least played by my experience is Seismic but your experience differs from that.

Seismic Blast, Symphony Control, Sonic Manipulation, Sonic Assault, Earth Manipulation, Electric Affinity.

How often do you see any of these?

Earth manipulation sometimes. It's forgettable but not bad. Electric Affinity is the only one I ever see.

[Ruin Mage]

16 minutes ago, Rigged said:

There have been many balance changes in patches between pages until I27 Page 5

Having gone through the Patch Notes between 4 and 5, this is false. I'd dig for between 3 and 4, but I have work soon.

EDIT: Page 3 to Page 4 & Page 4 to Page 5 saw bug fixes, emote additions, and content balancing. Nothing about powers! Curious. Very curious!
 

 

 

16 minutes ago, Rigged said:

Page 6 took six months

Why would this be an issue? That's pretty quick given prior releases and if you consider real life. What, you want these devs to slave away for your enjoyment? Is that what you want?


 

16 minutes ago, Rigged said:

Also, is Faultline losing a laptop capable of blocking all patch work from being done, no emergency backup person? Like, what if his laptop gets stolen again?

Number Six answered this the page behind - there are people possible once it reaches Open Beta. If its still in Closed Beta, it seems less likely.

 

16 minutes ago, Rigged said:

this is the real reason there were no balance changes for six months.

Alternatively, the devs save power balance for Pages OR they don't feel anything needs to be adjusted.

 

16 minutes ago, Rigged said:

These two statements are incompatible.

Wrong. I said that no one is barred from joining (aside from banned players but that's an obvious one) - but I also said they aren't adding people all crazy like. Number Six replied to you about this too.

 

8 minutes ago, Wravis said:

Electric Affinity is the only one I ever see.

Subjectivity at play across one Shard through the use of 'I ever see'.

 

8 minutes ago, Wravis said:

Seismic Blast, Symphony Control, Sonic Manipulation, Sonic Assault, Earth Manipulation, Electric Affinity.

Oop, I forgot about Sonic and Earth. Go me!
 

8 minutes ago, Wravis said:

How often do you see any of these?

Given my playtime is sparse and I'm only on Everlasting? As often as I manage a team that isn't a Hard Mode. I've played with all of those sets while on my other 50 Scrapper, but its been a couple months. But so long as its being played it is a success. Which I can only assume data of the devs show that they are being played.
 

Edited April 26, 2023 by Shadeknight

[TheZag]

The closed beta isnt exclusive.  Go apply to be a tester,  probably some rules to agree to,  and get accepted.  Its not an exclusive club,  just a tester group that requires the tiniest amount of effort to be a part of.

 

[srmalloy]

46 minutes ago, Number Six said:

And as for storm blast, I agree with the team's consensus that while it's early days, we're pretty happy with the performance of the set in practice so far.

 

It's not top DPS in every situation, and in no universe should it be. It does decent damage and is fun to play.

And, at least in my opinion, it's better to roll out a new powerset knowing that it will probably be performing a little below where you want it to be than one that overperforms your goal; you get enormously less hate and discontent from boosting the effectiveness of a powerset than from reducing it — too many people get overly invested in their absolute DPS numbers and treat any reduction as world-ending.

[Number Six]

5 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

you get enormously less hate and discontent from boosting the effectiveness of a powerset than from reducing it

 

Truth.

 

Just look at how absolutely insane people got over Aim not being added to Assault Rifle, and that's something that was never even live for a second, just considered.

[Rigged]

22 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

OR they don't feel anything needs to be adjusted.

 

This is plainly not the case because they proceed to do balance changes in the next Page, many of which are not the variety that requires complex coding. But I do very much appreciate the clarification that there are more people than assumed working on powers. At 6, I can imagine that a larger team would start having their work conflict with each other.

 

-----------------

 

Now, I don't want to interject into your conversation with the other guy, but you did reply to both of us in the same post:

 

10 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

Oop, I forgot about Sonic and Earth. Go me!

 

There's also the Earth Mastery APP. The earth theme is now very well-represented across the powersets and ATs. As I did say earlier, I am quite fine with the pace of powerset addition. I admit I am not entirely objective in this because I don't actually care much for new powerset concepts (which tend to be for more niche character concepts and have annoying mechanics) and am instead much more interested in older sets being made viable (because the older sets tend to be for more popular concepts - like the AR buffs letting me create more viable Natural Origin characters) as well as the new story arcs. I am still a bit sore that the Vahz story hook will remain unresolved eternally.

 

12 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

Given my playtime is sparse and I'm only on Everlasting? As often as I manage a team that isn't a Hard Mode. I've played with all of those sets while on my other 50 Scrapper, but its been a couple months. But so long as its being played it is a success. Which I can only assume data of the devs show that they are being played.

 

This is odd to me because I group at 50 a lot on Everlasting and I have honestly never seen anyone play Symphony Control or Sonic Manipulation. I actually had to look up the visuals in the creator to see if they would fit a concept I had. (BTW If any dev reads this: I have no idea how to effectively slot Reverberant. Please consider letting us put ATOs in it, because it's not viable to slot it for 6 different controls). I am pretty sure, however, I have seen at least one Seismic Blast and Electrical Affinity. But like you said, all this is anecdotal and hence not admissible as any kind of evidence. For that matter, whether a new powerset is popular is not important, because the only person to whom it should really matter is the responsible dev, who decides if the uptake justifies the time they spent on it. If they are satisfied, that's good enough even if the rest of us don't care for it. I imagine that powerset development does not affect any other part of development anyway, since they are different things.

[Captain Fabulous]

1 hour ago, Number Six said:

A set that's fun to play despite not being the best at absolutely everything and not slavishly used automatically by min/maxers is every build is in absolutely no way a failure in our book.

This needs to be repeated over and over and over again, on a loop, whenever new powersets are being tested.

[Captain Fabulous]

18 minutes ago, Number Six said:

 

Truth.

 

Just look at how absolutely insane people got over Aim not being added to Assault Rifle, and that's something that was never even live for a second, just considered.

I recall the Paragon devs always seemed to follow the same progression when releasing new powersets: release it as massively OP (gets people back into playing the game), then after a few weeks nerf the hell out of it (to a cacophony of whining, crying, and other assorted nastiness from the players), and then a few weeks after that bump it up to where it should have been from the beginning (and where it was always intended to be), which made it appear as though "they listened to us!" It was a ridiculous way of doing things, and thankfully it's a process that's not being repeated here.

[JasperStone]

3 hours ago, Puma said:

 Then a: Out of  3 previous sets, only one gets regularly played.  That's not a great record (though we have no actual data on this so we can't know for sure)
b: IF that's true, then these developers should be taking a page from those ones.  This system is serious flawed, for the reasons I pointed out.  

I have never played Electric Affinity, just don't like it.

I play all the others you mentioned.

Preference.

[Wravis]

7 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

Anyone saying that those testing in the 'alpha' environment knows better is letting their presence in the tester discord get to their head. Which is a hilarious thought given it's no super secret cabal type of thing.

And yet it's always the same few cheer leaders who come in to these threads and talk like they are the/an authority on the subject.
Even when they admit

Quote

Given my playtime is sparse and I'm only on Everlasting? As often as I manage a team that isn't a Hard Mode. I've played with all of those sets while on my other 50 Scrapper, but its been a couple months. But so long as its being played it is a success. Which I can only assume data of the devs show that they are being played.

They don't have much experience with the things being discussed.

And they don't seem to realize that

Quote

Subjectivity at play across one Shard through the use of 'I ever see'.

Their opinions are also subjective.

For example you may think

Quote

Given that they've only made Electrical Affinity, Seismic Blast, Symphony Control, and now Storm Blast? I'd say all of them. Used means even a few people play them, but perhaps we differ in definitions. Subjectivity is fun like that! Of those, I think the least played by my experience is Seismic but your experience differs from that.

That if one person plays the powerset that it's a success, but that's your subjective opinion.

Mine is that if they are going to spend time and effort on things, they should strive to make sure those things are good and used for longer than the 2 week rush when it's novel.

If they are going to put things up for testing then they should listen to feedback, and not just dig their heels in. And if the answer is always going to be "we already tested this, this is final" then why put it out for the whole player base to test? It only serves to frustrate the people that aren't alpha testers who try to help make things better.

[Captain Fabulous]

34 minutes ago, Wravis said:

If they are going to put things up for testing then they should listen to feedback, and not just dig their heels in. And if the answer is always going to be "we already tested this, this is final" then why put it out for the whole player base to test? It only serves to frustrate the people that aren't alpha testers who try to help make things better.

Just because they don't implement every suggestion made, and that a powerset ends up being not exactly what YOU want it to be doesn't mean they don't listen. It just means what they want the set to be is different than what you want it to be. And that's OK. No one is ever going to like everything.

The main goal of beta testing is to find bugs, make small adjustments, and to test changes the devs might be on the fence about. If they tell us up front that things are unlikely to change in any significant way the frustration you feel is your own fault for having the hubris to believe you know better, that they're somehow obligated to make changes because you and a few forum randos whined endlessly for 24 pages, or that they're incompetent because they don't.

Yesterday while playing my new Storm/Storm Corruptor I saw people playing Seismic Blast, Symphony Control, and Electrical Affinity. Just because YOU don't see them doesn't mean people aren't playing and enjoying them.

Edited April 26, 2023 by Captain Fabulous

[Wravis]

9 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Just because they don't implement every suggestion made, and that a powerset ends up being not exactly what YOU want it to be doesn't mean they don't listen. It just means what they want the set to be is different than what you want it to be. And that's OK. No one is ever going to like everything.

The main goal of beta testing is to find bugs, make small adjustments, and to test changes the devs might be on the fence about. If they tell us up front that things are unlikely to change in any significant way the frustration you feel is your own fault for having the hubris to believe you know better, that they're somehow obligated to make changes because you and a few forum randos whined endlessly for 24 pages, or that they're incompetent because they don't.

Yesterday while playing my new Storm/Storm Corruptor I saw people playing Seismic Blast, Symphony Control, and Electrical Affinity. Just because YOU don't see them doesn't mean people aren't playing and enjoying them.

Do you read what you say before you send it? Do you realize how all of this applies to you?

My last post in the Storm thread was on page 7. You're the one who kept thumping your chest for 27 pages. Sorry it upsets you when people don't agree with you. 

You incited a lot of the arguments in that thread. You came in and acted like your opinion was correct and insulted the people who you disagreed with. The frustration you felt is your own fault for having the hubris to believe that you know better. Maybe 27 pages of disagreements isn't whining. Maybe it's 27 pages of legitimate opinions and your contribution is being a contrarian and pretending you're better than us and riling people up.

[SeraphimKensai]

4 hours ago, Faultline said:

As Shade indicated, the deadline was set by me because starting today I have a series of appointments for a ton of immigration-related paperwork that are very time intensive and I'm unlikely to be able to give COH the required attention for the next few weeks; small patches is fine to fix issues, but the big page publish definitely needed to be yesterday.

Good luck. The bureaucracy of immigration requirements can definitely be a pain in the ass.

[Bionic_Flea]

I didn't have time to test the Storm blast changes before now, although I did try to follow the feedback threads.

 

But I did roll a storm/storm corr last night and got him to just shy of 30 running DFBs and the TFC task forces.  It seems to be about middle of the road to me.  It does not appear to be "OMG it's terrible" or "OMG it's the best" at least the way I am playing it.

 

Regarding testing in general: I sympathize with folks who tried something out, voiced concerns, and those concerns weren't addressed.  I have certainly been in that group before and it's not pleasant.  But I also realize that just because things don't change the way I want them to doesn't necessarily mean that I was ignored.  Rather, the devs may disagree or may want to see it in the wild with many players trying out crazy combos before seeing whether a change really needs to be made.

 

I have also been one whose suggestions have been taken a time or two and been accused of being some kind of insider or teacher's pet or something.  *Shrug*  As my wife tells me, I'm always wrong so I should just get used to it.  But I prefer to rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[Oubliette_Red]

3 hours ago, Wravis said:

<snip>

Mine is that if they are going to spend time and effort on things, they should strive to make sure those things are good and used for longer than the 2 week rush when it's novel.

If they are going to put things up for testing then they should listen to feedback, and not just dig their heels in. And if the answer is always going to be "we already tested this, this is final" then why put it out for the whole player base to test? It only serves to frustrate the people that aren't alpha testers who try to help make things better.

 

The thing is, no development team, paid or volunteer, can sit on content until it's "good and used" because only a tiny fraction of any game's player base will invest the time to test updates, a far greater percentage of players that take part in 'Open Betas' are there to look at the new shiny. This is not a rogue server, all volunteer development thing but an industry-wide thing. Regardless of how vast your player base is, a developer will never get enough eyes on their product to thoroughly test everything and test cases can be made to account for a lot of stuff there are always outliers because players sometimes have vary unique ways of breaking shit. All this coupled with deadlines that need to be met.

 

When pushed live, there will be considerably more eyes on the release and things will be found by players that weren't noticed during testing, weren't reported during testing, or were deemed not critical enough to prevent the update from being pushed to be fixed later. There are also metrics that can be collected during game play that shows up when 10k people are playing vs 20 people playing.

 

I recall there being a period of 12 years without an update, if the all-volunteer Homecoming team manages to get out two a year, I'm okay with that.

 

[Rudra]

@Rigged, I'm reading through the thread and it looks to me like the devs have actually responded as to the why for a lot of your comments. Yet, you keep arguing with @Shadeknight. So I have to ask, and I apologize for insinuation here, but are you reading the dev responses? If you are, why the continued debate with @Shadeknight?

 

Personally, I'm glad to know that the development process doesn't work as described in the OP. I'm also glad to find out that if an individual makes the effort to teach themselves how to mod or create content for the game, there is a process through which they can apply to join the volunteer dev team and possibly become a dev. If a person wants to mod a game as broken in code as CoX, then I agree, a very good step would be to find the available materials and show that the person in question is willing to take the time to go learn and work with the system for himself/herself. In some businesses, showing initiative to get something done isn't just appreciated, it is required for employment.

 

As for the devs? Thank you for taking the time to respond in this thread. I think more in this thread than any others so far, your responses were needed to help find a resolution.

[Puma]

7 hours ago, EmperorSteele said:

I think the problem with OPs suggestions are that they fall into a "too many cooks" situation. Letting people whos only contribution would be reactionary opinions aid in development would be a TERRIBLE idea.

 

And while I'm very aware of Power Creep and the need to keep it under control, the powers devs do seem to lean towards being a bit too cautious. 

 

But either way, I think the HC devs are doing a good enough job that we don't need to emulate thunderspy's "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach, as OP seems to want.

Please cite where I every said anything that implies this. 

 

 Because I most decidedly did not.  

[Puma]

3 hours ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Just because they don't implement every suggestion made, and that a powerset ends up being not exactly what YOU want it to be doesn't mean they don't listen. It just means what they want the set to be is different than what you want it to be. And that's OK. No one is ever going to like everything.

The main goal of beta testing is to find bugs, make small adjustments, and to test changes the devs might be on the fence about. If they tell us up front that things are unlikely to change in any significant way the frustration you feel is your own fault for having the hubris to believe you know better, that they're somehow obligated to make changes because you and a few forum randos whined endlessly for 24 pages, or that they're incompetent because they don't.

Yesterday while playing my new Storm/Storm Corruptor I saw people playing Seismic Blast, Symphony Control, and Electrical Affinity. Just because YOU don't see them doesn't mean people aren't playing and enjoying them.

This is hilarious coming from you.  You were LITERALLY attacking several of us pointing out the very demonstrable, numericly backed problems this set faced because you said it was fine and wanted it out right away. That's not my take, that's your words.   -YOU- were the only one demanding the set be what you want. You literally had your posts deleted for being off topic by attacking others.  None of my posts got deleted. And as I posted above, the very first thread on the testing page says that ARE open to changes.  If that's not correct, that needs to be changed.  

Also...I'm hardly a "rando".  I've been with this community, in all its forms, probably longer than you have.  

[Puma]

6 hours ago, Faultline said:

As Shade indicated, the deadline was set by me because starting today I have a series of appointments for a ton of immigration-related paperwork that are very time intensive and I'm unlikely to be able to give COH the required attention for the next few weeks; small patches is fine to fix issues, but the big page publish definitely needed to be yesterday.

Understandable, but in the future, it would be nice to know the deadlines as testers, since some of us are taking time out of our days to purposefully test things with various iterations, datamine, etc.  It would be helpful for all of us, AND probably the Devs, if we all knew the deadline we were working for so expectations could be realistic for all sides. 

[Puma]

6 hours ago, Number Six said:

 

You don't need to give people an excuse. Sure there are other issues that would make testing more difficult (though not impossible, once we were in open beta we have others who can absolutely run the merging and build process if you got hit by a truck, even if they normally prefer not to). But even if there weren't, setting deadlines and sticking to them is a Very Good Thing.

 

If there's one thing we've learned about the development team that has been assembled from the community and is continuing to grow, it's that scope creep can be a real problem, and if we want to get more than 2 major releases out a year, we need to set goals and deadlines and reasonable standards, and not get caught up in trying to make everything perfect before release.

This is PRECISELY why asking for player input before you set the goals of a page would be helpful.  Some of the issues that come up would have been addressed before you even began. 
And as I said, a simple Google Form would take 10 minutes to set up and poll people about their feelings and feedback on a concept/direction you're thinking of, and if the results are private, you won't get a single page of bickering or forum fighting.

Just something to think about.   

[Puma]

6 hours ago, Number Six said:

And as for storm blast, I agree with the team's consensus that while it's early days, we're pretty happy with the performance of the set in practice so far.

 

It's not top DPS in every situation, and in no universe should it be. It does decent damage and is fun to play.

 

A set that's fun to play despite not being the best at absolutely everything and not slavishly used automatically by min/maxers is every build is in absolutely no way a failure in our book.

I'm curious:  what data do you use for "fun to play."  The Focused Feedback thread had several people who said that they really wanted to like it, and loved the animations, but in actual play it was =not= fun because of the flaws. And I don't recall any of them being about pure DPS, so that's a red herring.    But seriously...what metric did you use to decide "fun to play"?  How many people found the set good to go versus had problems?

 

[Captain Fabulous]

2 hours ago, Wravis said:

Do you read what you say before you send it? Do you realize how all of this applies to you?

My last post in the Storm thread was on page 7. You're the one who kept thumping your chest for 27 pages. Sorry it upsets you when people don't agree with you. 

You incited a lot of the arguments in that thread. You came in and acted like your opinion was correct and insulted the people who you disagreed with. The frustration you felt is your own fault for having the hubris to believe that you know better. Maybe 27 pages of disagreements isn't whining. Maybe it's 27 pages of legitimate opinions and your contribution is being a contrarian and pretending you're better than us and riling people up.

You're clearly thinking of someone else because I did nothing of the sort. All I did was remind people the things they were repeatedly asking for ad nauseum weren't going to happen. Or that things they claimed didn't work actually worked just fine. Not because it was my opinion but because we were told by the devs they weren't going to change. My frustration came from those who ignored it and kept blathering on even after they were asked by multiple people to stop repeating the same things over and over and over again.

And here we are with y'all STILL complaining about how you were ignored, the system is broken, blah blah blah.

[Wravis]

Just now, Captain Fabulous said:

You're clearly thinking of someone else because I did nothing of the sort. All I did was remind people the things they were repeatedly asking for ad nauseum weren't going to happen. Or that things they claimed didn't work actually worked just fine. Not because it was my opinion but because we were told by the devs they weren't going to change. My frustration came from those who ignored it and kept blathering on even after they were asked by multiple people to stop repeating the same things over and over and over again.

And here we are with y'all STILL complaining about how you were ignored, the system is broken, blah blah blah.

Deleting all of your posts doesn't hide all the times your posts were quoted. Good try though.