Epoch wrote on Oct 12^th, 2012 at 11:27am:

Who do you blame?

Epoch wrote on Oct 11^th, 2012 at 11:10am:


I'm going with Meh again.  A new game is like a new job, new house, new car, new baby, new girlfriend, whatever.

There's always that period of new-ness and everyone is happy and excited.  Then reality sets in and you see the flaws.  The boss is still a selfish, arrogant jerk.  The hot water doesn't last long enough and the AC doesn't keep up in the summer.  The gas mileage is for shit and the seat belt indicator beep is fucking annoying.  All you do is pay the bills and clean up someone else's shit.   (That applies to the last two).

Give it a year.  They will miss a deadline on a release.  They will introduce content that is Meh.  They will let a bug slip into production.  For competitive balance, they will have to alter the skills/stats in a way that nerfs some builds.  No thing, person, game or company is perfect.  That doesn't stop consumers from expecting the perfect experience from everything.  And getting bent outta shape when they don't get it.  Especially that hard core gamer that has WAAAAAAY too much emotional investment in the game. 

Asheras wrote on Oct 12^th, 2012 at 2:03pm:

I totally agree with everything you said Ash.  I played DDO for 6 years and, sure, I wasn't happy about certain things, but I was willing to overlook them because I geniunely enjoyed the game.  I never found another game that came close to replacing DDO for me until Guild Wars 2.  GW has and will have plenty of issues, but, like DDO, if I'm having fun playing, I don't really care.

In GW, you get cheddar for clearing maps.  To clear a map you need to get every waypoint (rez points), point of interest (explorer areas), vistas (points of interest but on the top of a mountain, roof, whatever with a fun little cut scene to show your surroundings), skill points (either a fight or a place to commune with to obtain a skill point), and heart (quests).  There have been a few instances since launch that some of the skill points have been bugged, so those maps could not be completed.  Some events have gotten stuck halfway through.  Is it annoying?  Hell yes.  Can I still go do something else and have an awesome time playing?  Double hell yes.

As long as the fun factor is there, I'm happy.  I'm having an awesome time playing a new, shiny game with content I've never explored before.

Asheras wrote on Oct 12^th, 2012 at 2:03pm:


stainer wrote on Oct 12^th, 2012 at 3:00pm:



The game is great, this is coming from someone who still plays ddo over it.  The combat system isn't really my style though, I prefer ddos enough over it to play ddo instead.  I play gw2 when I am bored, that is about it.

Noone said they were perfect, in comparison to ddos development process, they are amazing.  There were bugs when the game first released, lots of them.  They were putting out bug patches every day.  When was the last time you saw ddo do that after a  release - that wasn't an exploit?

Asheras wrote on Oct 12^th, 2012 at 2:03pm:

I believe that DDO's problem remains Turbine's communication skills, or lack thereof. I am likely jaded, and bitter, but when I think about Turbine, the following words pop into my head:

Secretive. Opaque. Uncommunicative. Deceptive. Greedy. Grasping. Out of touch. Clueless. Incompetent. Unaware. Uncaring. Dismissive. Intolerant. Inconsistent. Visionless. Directionless. Unresponsive. Shoddy. Incomplete.

I am sure that many vaulties have a similar list of adjectives to describe Turbine. How did they get to that point with so many players? Vast and Mysterious was before my time, but the hidden nerfs, the constant breakage, and the poor product quality have added up. U14 had a hard release date that would have been ugly to push back regardless of how much it needed another six months to polish, but what kind of moron would release U15 knowing the quests were broken?

Turbine has shot themselves in the foot over and over again. Yellow dopant could have been a huge win for them, but the price and drop rate was so badly managed that it harmed Turbine's reputation with the playerbase more than it helped them. Some developer put weeks of their life into a feature that they have a right to be proud of, and then yellow dopant got mismanaged into being the bastard child of a malicious joke and a cash grab. That same scenario has been played out over and over and over - from releasing artificers without the ability for subscribers to unlock, to the double nerf to challenges, to the most recent raid.

Actually working to be responsive, transparent, and communicative goes a long ways. My exposure to GW2 is limited to this board, but from the sounds of it, they're making fewer mistakes than Turbine, and are doing a better job communicating with players. I don't get the impression that ArenaNet are going to cave to every player whim, as that would make any game suck. However, all you have to do is listen to the customer (and make sure that they believe that you're listening), respond in detail why you cannot do what they want, tell them what you are doing instead and why, and even nerfs or unfixable bugs go down more smoothly.

They have new content coming out already.
http://www.guildwars2forum.com/threads/13119-Guild-Wars-2-Halloween-2012-Overvie...

Imagine if DDO had been run by ArenaNet.

What server are you guys on again?

stainer wrote on Oct 12^th, 2012 at 3:00pm:


You can get a good look a t-bone steak by sticking your head up a cow's ass.  Or you can take the butcher's word for it.



May not be relevant, but it felt like a good time for a Tommy Boy quote.

Basically, though, you are correct.  My experience with GW2 is lacking.  My experience with multiple existing games over years of wasting time playing video games on the PC, Internet, and consoles, however, is that the cycle you go through is similiar, regardless of the game or the developer. 

Terebinthia wrote on Oct 16^th, 2012 at 5:18pm:

I always assumed that LOTRO was much better run, is that not the case?

Similar to the Turbine set up
[quote author=Redit]
We’re doing a group AMAA and we have most of the programming team behind Guild Wars 2 here to answer your questions. This isn’t a marketing exercise, we’re looking for technical questions and we’ll give you technical answers! You’re welcome to ask about anything, although we reserve the right to clam up about anything we consider to be our secret game development sauce. Guild Wars 2 is a big game and its development touched basically every area of game programming – ask us about engines, servers, web, tools, gameplay, you name it.

It’s worth pointing out upfront that we’re programmers, not designers! So if you want to know why your favorite skill was changed or when you should sell all of your hoarded butter to maximize gold return, we probably won’t be able to help.

Our programmers are here to answer as many answers as they can in the couple of few hours, so ask away! [/quote]
Example
Q.
    What programming methodologies does your team use? ie. agile, scrum, etc.
    What do you use for source control and how do you handle refactoring code for optimization? Or do you try for best optimization on the first pass?
    What standards and practices do you use?
    How does someone that is a new graduate get into the game programming job market when most jobs require being part of a published title already?
    What is your engine written in?
    How often to you dive down to the bit level of data manipulation?
    Ever have to write Assembly code?

A.
    This depends on the phase of the project which we're in - during "normal" development (like now!) we use a customized scrum-based project. When we're finalling we tend to go back to a traditional team-based just-fix-the-bugs process.
    We use perforce for source control. We have a few branches which we can work in to do refactoring (for optimization or any reason) so we can roll things out when they're ready.
    Game development is actually pretty normal software development - we use technical design documents, coding standards, code reviews, etc, etc.
    Write games in your spare time! They don't have to be massive, just small polished games. People who are passionate about game development can't help themselves - they write games no matter what. That's how I got into the industry - I wrote a Game Boy emulator.
    It's mostly in C++
    Very often
    Sometimes, although these days it's fairly rare


http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/11mz4k/i_am_a_programmer_for_guild_wars_...

I got every Halloween achievement other then the clock tower.  That kicked my ass.  Over the event spent about 2 hours trying to do it.  I consider myself a pretty good twich skill type player, but just could not get it done.  Loved it.  I have no issues with failing, except when its cause of broken stuff or game mechanics.  This was just flat out to hard for me. 

Did not like Act IV.  After Act III where you go into his lair and fight him, I was expecting more then a game of Simon says.  Did get a cool witch hat. 

Was surprised about the Nov 15th update, as they will be doing another one a month later for Christmas.  Hope they keep the updates into the new year coming quickly.  They have mentioned a new Protagonist, in the form of an 'evil guild'

MMORPG.com's Guild Wars 2 New Content Preview with Pokket and Colin Johanson.
http://www.twitch.tv/mmorpgcom/b/337726366

Quote:


You screech in vent basically all the time.