Homecoming game changes: The process, and who decides what must be changed?

[wjrasmussen]

Thinking about this for a while and wondered about the process of making changes to the game.  When I made a new character, I'd run around and grab badges for XP, Merits, and the accolade.  Often wait until 8th or 9th level to hit atlas park, kings row, and echo atlas/galaxy.  Could get a level out of it, 20 badges, the accolade. 

 

Then someone changed the game and those badges stopped giving XP.  Perhaps something thought badge xp made it too easy to earn xp.  We don't want anyone to level 10 in a hour and that should prevent that.

 

But the point is, how did the decision to make this change come about?  Does a random dev just get to make changes he wants to do?  Is there a committee that approved it?  I feel like I might have missed a poll about it.

 

For those who want to reply reading this:  IT IS NOT ABOUT THE XP FROM BADGES.

Edited March 30 by wjrasmussen

[Rudra]

The reason for the explore badge reward change is provided in this thread. As for the rest? It can pretty much be summed up as whatever the dev team decides is their direction for game development drives the game changes.

 

Edited March 30 by Rudra
Edited to add non-link response.

[Luminara]

29 minutes ago, wjrasmussen said:

But the point is, how did the decision to make this change come about?  Does a random dev just get to make changes he wants to do?  Is there a committee that approved it?

 

Various members of the HC team have stated that everything is discussed amongst the team.  They also have an outline, a plan, for progressing.  They don't talk about it much, but it's been referenced a few times (the tease for Issue 28 here, for example (near the bottom of the post)).  It's evident if you look back over the updates over the years, and note the occasional mentions of things they'll be working on in the future (example: it's implied here that dominators are under the microscope).  This tells us that they're not simply a group of independent people making unilateral decisions to do this or that and asking for permission to add what they've done to the game, but instead, they're working from a roadmap that allows them to tackle what they feel like working on, as long as it fits within that roadmap.

 

From the explanations given over the years, it appears to be an informal arrangement with each contributing independently within his/her area of expertise, but consensus has to be achieved before something can be changed/added/removed.  They each have autonomy to work on what they want to work on, within the framework of the Grand Plan, but they channel that autonomy into a group effort.

[wjrasmussen]

4 hours ago, Rudra said:

The reason for the explore badge reward change is provided in this thread. As for the rest? It can pretty much be summed up as whatever the dev team decides is their direction for game development drives the game changes.

 

THank you for the input.  As I stated, it wasn't about badge xp.

[wjrasmussen]

3 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

Various members of the HC team have stated that everything is discussed amongst the team.  They also have an outline, a plan, for progressing.  They don't talk about it much, but it's been referenced a few times (the tease for Issue 28 here, for example (near the bottom of the post)).  It's evident if you look back over the updates over the years, and note the occasional mentions of things they'll be working on in the future (example: it's implied here that dominators are under the microscope).  This tells us that they're not simply a group of independent people making unilateral decisions to do this or that and asking for permission to add what they've done to the game, but instead, they're working from a roadmap that allows them to tackle what they feel like working on, as long as it fits within that roadmap.

 

From the explanations given over the years, it appears to be an informal arrangement with each contributing independently within his/her area of expertise, but consensus has to be achieved before something can be changed/added/removed.  They each have autonomy to work on what they want to work on, within the framework of the Grand Plan, but they channel that autonomy into a group effort.

That is a clear, concise, and well put together statement of facts. I appreciated 100%.

 

[lemming]

Luminera explains it well.    The devs do listen to the testers.  They don't always modify based on the feedback, but they do listen.  Which is fair.