The Direction of this MUD

[f0xx]

2 minutes ago, Erelei said:

Why are we still bitching about it?

Because you are missing the whole point.

We are bitching because such weapons were allowed to exist to begin with. That was not a bug and please don't try to present it as one. That was a design decision.

People died to bards wielding those weapons, to the ninjas, to the feign warriors, to the shield warriors and now to the druids. They rage deleted their characters in which they invested many hours because it is simply stupid to play against something so blatantly OP.

They roll those new OP combos, just to have them nerfed and leave them as fast as they are created.

The whole environment of the game changes and you have to either play or avoid everything that has been recently reworked until it gets nerfed and balanced.

[Fool_Hardy]

In the example I sent to the Imms, they compensated for the break in the mechanics.

Is it the public consensus that the staff does not listen, because that has NEVER been the case when I bring something up?

An old proverb says the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but I am a mechanic, in my world squeaky wheels get ignored if grease doesn't fix it.

Keep your tone positive and constructive, several of you speak to E in ways former Imm's would have given you a vacation for.

Yet, he listens, replies as a real person, and continues to let you spout your verbal assaults.

But, that was missed by your ire no doubt, so we continue to plunge into the pit of negativity.

Well wishes to all, and Happy Holidays.

[Erelei]

6 minutes ago, f0xx said:

Because you are missing the whole point.

We are bitching because such weapons were allowed to exist to begin with. That was not a bug and please don't try to present it as one. That was a design decision.

Geez, this sure does put me in a spot. Deal with the bitching and fuck off. Noted.

People died to bards wielding those weapons, to the ninjas, to the feign warriors, to the shield warriors and now to the druids. They rage deleted their characters in which they invested many hours because it is simply stupid to play against something so blatantly OP.

Someone died. I'm certainly sorry that they had to deal with that. I'm sorry they decided it was better to delete their characters rather than help me balance the class with logs or be patient while my real life time allowed me to make said fixes and changes.

They roll those new OP combos, just to have them nerfed and leave them as fast as they are created.

A lot of these 'stupid nerfs' are because players like you complain about it. Want me to nerf druid because someone is able to execute the class to its fullest ability? This someone who has played over 5 different druids in the past year and a half, who logs 10-12 hours a day, and who has mastered this class? Am I supposed to go ahead and nerf the class? Because so far, that seems to be the fix everyone wants. I tried that. Kyzarius quit for 3 years. UNLESS it's their character, everyone wants change immediately. On top of that, I'm being unfair and changing things unannounced. **FYI, I send a note to the class when I change it "on the fly"**

The whole environment of the game changes and you have to either play or avoid everything that has been recently reworked until it gets nerfed and balanced.

I'm sorry I've put this environment into play. It's my fault entirely. I was so into making everyone happy, that instead, I pissed the last person I helped off, in a chain of events because I wasn't coached before becoming an IMM: not everyone will ever be happy with the state of this game, no matter what you do. 

 

[Anume]

Guys, let's all take a breather.

Erelei is one of the best if not the best coder fl has ever had. He's done more changes than other coders have done in years in a month or less repeatedly. Most of these changes have been vastly approved by the pbase as they were things YOU wanted to see for a long time. Erelei is also very skilled, so things are possible that were not possible before.

The integrity of the current staff is as good as it never has been before.

Let's not bring up issues that are not related to the current staff, that's just negative feedback that is not needed.

As to coding:

I've said it before and will say it again now here. We have a choice of either extensive testing (which will take months on test as most of the Imms are not available at the same time most of the week, nor are all of the Imms good pkers) and then putting a change in, in what we THINK may be a balanced way. It would 90% of the time still turn out to need further adjustments.

The alternative is that we discuss things as staff, put in changes (you do get a change log and we try to avoid putting in changes without notifying people, e.g. news to Ninja: this and this was changed right after a shift), and then both snoop  the changed class extensively and review logs submitted on prayer. Unfortunately, very very few people actually submit such logs. I know both Kyz and F0xx have done so, but you're in the vast minority here unfortunately.

I think the way we brought in necro changes worked best. Beta chars which are deleted after the beta phase and have a common subforum to discuss strengths and weaknesses. I think we should do this with other class changes as well in the future. Downside: those players playing the class at this time will not be able to play until after Beta is done AND their chars will be modified after the beta. Upside: we get a far better test result in much shorter time. The testers are not interested in powerhousing and wanting imbalanced chars so much as they know the char will be gone after testing regardless. This last issue holds up balancing enormously if it is not done in beta form.

To go back to instruments: yes, the staff at first thought this high average was fine as nobody saw how much maintain would stack and just how good the top instruments would become. Tweaking chances to gain nice materials made tweaking maintain necessary, which was done. We also did lower the average after watching the damage output some bards got in melee. This took more time than with necros due to the issues I already listed above.

 

 

 

 

 

[Zavero]

I think you guys have great suggestions on balance. However, your approach is terrible. Each one is like a veiled flaming against someone who does the work for free. He could leave today and we would get nothing but the same old shit we have seen for 20 years. Unless you are picking up a book to learn c coding?

[Killfiend]

This whole entire thread just pisses me off to an incredible degree. Hey imms screw your own lives, screw your own families, screw your own personal jobs. How dare you not take every minute of your day to make sure everything is perfect. -- That is all I read post after post. That shit makes me sick. these imms code build and fix this god damn game on their FREE time and don't get paid to do it. Calm all of your effing attitudes and be happy this game even exists. If it wasn't for the imms we have we would have it. Just be grateful for once. Hell I don't like a new class getting reworded and owning the pbase either. But any time one char is super strong, it doesn't matter what class/race it is, boom its OP. How do you expect to get valid results and proof of something being OP when that is all you hear? Hell that would just been that month after month something new is OP and just 'must' be fixed. End of Rant

[tassinvegeta]

Lately I noticed I barely have the motivation to play like I once did. While at the same time I know its all the new content Erelei puts in, that keeps me wanting to play and always checking change logs.

Nevertheless I've been a bit distressed over a few things that occurred to me that's difficult to forget;

Putting forth 400-600 hours on my dk to be tooled by bards that spent only a few days at 50.

I remember having to deal with a the new shield bash lore as my dk of which he was trying to avoid until it got changed. Let's just say that after he died, I found it so ridiculous I gave up one of my favorite chars.

I played a Paladin and noticed a couple minor issues with the class. I mentioned them on prayer and the feedback I got seemed like I had no idea what I was talking about. As if I was a noob not even a decent pk'er at all... I felt that the infrequency of Paladin's played over such long periods of time should've been enough indication to warrant more attention to what I had to suggest.

My dk came back and I had to deal with multiple classes that had edges over me and major world changes that affected his pk prowess. Loving my class and knowing I'm a great pk'er when putting forth the effort, I still gave it a shot, yet failed. Again, being one of the few (non-qrace) dk's to be successful over such long periods of time I felt it was obvious something needed to be done.

Then I had my sader and experienced changes to my class I had no idea about. That could've resulted in me dying, this took me awhile to figure out. Though I could understand and agree with the change, it was the manner in which it happened that really disheartened me and affected my fun here.

Later I noticed my sader somehow lost all of his gear. I brought this up and it never got resolved. Furthering my disenchantment.

Brought back my dk only to experience much of the same issues I've had previously. My spell-set was nearly useless and I found myself having to try to purely outmelee classes that are more innately designed for it. I've had to put in much more effort to compete against lesser skilled players but with seemingly stronger combos. I lost interest more quickly than before.

 

I was very devoted to these characters at some point, putting in minimum 300 hours and tons of rp and pk to the best of my ability. Looking back, I understand that no one is perfect and I can accept that my perception of some of my issues could be my own fault. I also realize the most beneficial way to resolve our issues is through a partnership with the players and work of the staff, especially with Erelei's amazing coding abilities. I've never wanted to say much about my experiences, maybe I'm making a mistake by making them known now. I just have hope we can use each other's examples to come to better understand each other's gripes and constructively come to better solutions. That said. I think waiting years for changes is to far on one side of the spectrum. A way we could minimize oversights could be public polls that imms and players could see and contribute on. Erelei's threads asking for suggestions help but they at times seem a bit one sided. I strongly suggest we better utilize the exceptional knowledge and wisdom of a wide range of great players and there styles. Kyzarius, Foxx, MF, H&R, Trick, etc.

[Erelei]

While I appreciate the suggestion, tassin, there won't ever be an open discussion about code or changes with anyone on the player base. While we appreciate suggestions, discussing new code and changes to be put in past the mechanic side stays on immortal eyes only. 

[Celerity]

I think almost all of the balancing/complaint problems can be dealt with by posting the class ideas/templates to the playerbase before/during implementation. The biggest issues will be spotted even before the coding process begins, and you don't have the awkwardness of the coder trying to fill in the lines in an underdeveloped design while coding.

The coder shouldn't be getting flak over design problems, because the coder should not be the (sole) designer. Erelei isn't the sole designer here, but he is one of the decision makers and certainly is the face of the implementation. As the staff have noted, the designs are internally agreed upon within the staff, so the staff as a whole is making these decisions.

I see no reason why players can't collectively design these changes because it gives collective investment into the change. No matter how experienced the staff is (and in PK, we all know they aren't always the best), when the players and staff work openly and transparently together, the result will certainly be far superior. Regardless, many of the changes originally come from players, not staff, designs anyways.

The downside is the 'spoiling' of new mechanics, but this is a very minor downside compared to major imbalance. Showing the design behind mechanics doesn't ruin the exploration factor: just think of how many new tactics are still being developed on mechanics that are a decade old.

edit: Erelei posted while I was drafting:

5 minutes ago, Erelei said:

While I appreciate the suggestion, tassin, there won't ever be an open discussion about code or changes with anyone on the player base. While we appreciate suggestions, discussing new code and changes to be put in past the mechanic side stays on immortal eyes only. 

This policy is the real problem.

[tassinvegeta]

6 minutes ago, Erelei said:

While I appreciate the suggestion, tassin, there won't ever be an open discussion about code or changes with anyone on the player base. While we appreciate suggestions, discussing new code and changes to be put in past the mechanic side stays on immortal eyes only. 

 

No problem. Though I'm sure there is a very good reason behind this, many of us may not understand why. I believe if we can get out of this mindset of us vs them it'll help this game so much more. I wonder, hasn't history shown that with new encryption algorithms, it is highly advisable that it be released to the public first, otherwise a single hacker can undermine all the work cryptographers have done and ruin a company. Perhaps you can at least elaborate as to why?

[sarcon]

Though I do agree there should be some transparency, it's very difficult to do that prior to launching something new. We've all worked for companies here and I'm uncertain with how many people have worked in a corporate environment, but there is a Hierarchy system in place for a reason. If you had a company, and you wanted to launch something new, or bring about some sort of change, you traditionally don't ask all your staff for their feedback prior to launch. Your C-level Exec's will draw up the initial blueprint, weight out the options, then roll it down to the director level, then management, then staff. 

Now, these new ideas/plans/changes could have sparked from ground level staff feedback/customer feedback/industry feedback or straight from the top (CEO,VP). Regardless, you couldn't put everything on hold, do a poll with the entire company, then consider if it should even be rolled out? Nothing would ever get done. The pace in which change/progress/enhancements would actually be implemented would be hindered greatly.

This entire structure is exactly what happens with FL. Imm's plan, implement, roll-out and then feedback begins. Is it perfect? No. Do things slip through the cracks? Yes. We spend all this time talking about what has gone wrong but barely talk about all the things that have gone right. Especially all the unnoticed stuff. Should we have a better BETA process, sure, I don't see how that would hurt, but to have FULL transparency before anything is rolled out could have serious repercussions on the implementation side. I personally don't want to wait forever just to have changes/enhancements/updates rolled out. Sometimes you have to throw yourself into the fire, even as a platform/company/game and see what works. 

[Izzy]

I really do not understand how this post got to where it did.  I feel like I am to blame for opening all of this up.  I agree there are indeed ways to improve the game, and feel that the players voices should account for something.  It would make things so much better and the players would feel more inclined to log because they would feel somewhat involved.

 

Saying that I would also like to express my enjoyment for getting to play this game for free.  I imagine coding is very hard.  I myself know nothing of coding and am stupid when it comes to all the mumbo jumbo.  I just want to say thanks to all the Immortals for allowing me to spend my free time here, learning and having fun.  Sometimes I sit around and do nothing, sometimes I am having a blast, yet something keeps drawing me back to this place.  So something is being done correctly.

[Kyzarius]

1 hour ago, sarcon said:

Though I do agree there should be some transparency, it's very difficult to do that prior to launching something new. We've all worked for companies here and I'm uncertain with how many people have worked in a corporate environment, but there is a Hierarchy system in place for a reason. If you had a company, and you wanted to launch something new, or bring about some sort of change, you traditionally don't ask all your staff for their feedback prior to launch. Your C-level Exec's will draw up the initial blueprint, weight out the options, then roll it down to the director level, then management, then staff. 

Now, these new ideas/plans/changes could have sparked from ground level staff feedback/customer feedback/industry feedback or straight from the top (CEO,VP). Regardless, you couldn't put everything on hold, do a poll with the entire company, then consider if it should even be rolled out? Nothing would ever get done. The pace in which change/progress/enhancements would actually be implemented would be hindered greatly.

This entire structure is exactly what happens with FL. Imm's plan, implement, roll-out and then feedback begins. Is it perfect? No. Do things slip through the cracks? Yes. We spend all this time talking about what has gone wrong but barely talk about all the things that have gone right. Especially all the unnoticed stuff. Should we have a better BETA process, sure, I don't see how that would hurt, but to have FULL transparency before anything is rolled out could have serious repercussions on the implementation side. I personally don't want to wait forever just to have changes/enhancements/updates rolled out. Sometimes you have to throw yourself into the fire, even as a platform/company/game and see what works. 

Your analogy breaks in this situation though.  Here we have, to use the same terms, a company putting out something that's broken (ninja change at release, bard at release) then adjusting it as customers complain. 

I think Tassin gave a perfect example. 

[Lloth]

Or, the more apt analogy...

A company that did not recognize a flaw in their product, which then did systematic recalls and redesigns in order to bring the product back into sustainable value.

Sometimes I think that a few of you want to be divisive, and will talk all day about how Anume, Erelei, Myself, Zoichan, Ulmusdorn, etc. don't try to see your perspectives at all - and yet don't acknowledge that we are allowed to be human too. We can make mistakes. And when we do, we fix them. But then it starts that "oh, you fixed it wrong" or "you're just nerfing my characters." On and on and on again. I like to be all jokes and smiles and kumbayah, but sometimes it's really hard. We can't share examples from prayer (nor would I if we could - that stuff's private), but I think if you saw what we see whenever any change is rolled out that affects anyone's character... you might understand the defensiveness. 

Most people do not post logs when they file complaints. We use logs to provide statistical and unbiased records of what transpires. They're critical to balance. Instead we get venomous remarks about how stupid we are, how awful at our jobs we are, how inconsiderate we are, or how we are creating these broken changes for personal gain. Straight up accused of leveraging changes for a boost to the ego. When we ask for logs to substantiate claims of what occurred, they are rarely provided, and usually by the players mentioned previously by Anume, with the addition of Fool_Hardy, who I am pretty sure even logs his time not connected to the game...  - instead, we get a bunch of verbal abuse and more of the above.

So yes, Erelei has every right to be defensive. Your concerns are legitimate though, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that I could have been Erelei's punching bag 8 days a week, 25 hours a day, and still been a piss-poor measure of how the changes to the aforementioned classes would play out live. It's a matter of numbers. Ideally, there would be a test realm where players could connect, break the game and code, and help us balance by choice. That would be freaking wonderful. Fact of the matter is, though, we don't have that. We don't have the spare port (we have test and main, and there's no way I'm giving free reign on the development port to everyone, or even most people - especially with how much cheating occurs already). We don't have the time between us to dedicate to monitoring another port full-time. We don't have the numbers to populate both simultaneously with players. For a game our size, the solution is not that simple.

I hope that provides a little more insight on why we do things the way that we do, and show that your concerns are, in fact, considered heavily.

 

[Pali]

1 hour ago, Kyzarius said:

Here we have, to use the same terms, a company putting out something that's broken (ninja change at release, bard at release) then adjusting it as customers complain. 

So they're doing about as well as many AAA gaming companies, except without the resources or pay?

 

I don't play them, so these are honest questions: how many MMOs are perfectly balanced upon release?  How many need to undergo rebalancing as they release updates and new classes/eq/areas?  How often do they need to patch again after players discover exploits or unforeseen combos?  Is the staff here really doing any worse, and without the incentive of a paycheck?

 

My favorite strategy game developer right now is Paradox Studios - Europa Universalis IV, Hearts of Iron IV and Stellaris have collectively eaten up well over a thousand hours in the last year.  They aren't my favorite because they put out great games; they are my favorite because they consistently support their games long past launch, reworking mechanics and features that weren't working as intended or adding new ones that they didn't have time to put in or just hadn't thought of before launch.  Are they perfect at addressing player complaints?  Hell no.  For one example, fleet organization and control in Stellaris has been a mess since launch, and far better systems exist in their other games for dealing with such; why they haven't been ported over (conceptually) is a complete mystery that gets bitched about constantly on Reddit and the Paradox forums. That Paradox hasn't addressed this is certainly an issue - but it doesn't stop them from overall being a fantastic developer that supports and works on its games long after most others would've just started work on sequels.

 

Is the staff here doing any worse a job?  I don't think so.

[ajwetton]

I honestly can't believe the level of venom, anger and absolute bullshit thats happening in this thread. I get people get upset and we are all human, INCLUDING the staff, which apparently some people forget. And to be honest I couldn't do what Erelei does even begin to comprehend how to do it. And even if the chief complainers could, I doubt they would its too much work and they see how people get treated when they give up their free time for a game. I would kill to be an Imm on this game, even just to do the mundane things like RP and do descriptions/journals/grunt work. I doubt I'll ever have the privilege but its on the bucket list, these staff members give up a huge chunk of their free time to do this.  Do I think they've done everything perfectly absolutely not, but I am not gonna tear into them like a little bitch because something happened to my character, I get that there is an extreme time investment in this game been playing it since I was a sophomore in high school but its A GAME! Pali brought up a great point, if major companies putting out MMO's can't get it perfect with the amount of resources they have at their fingertips then its an unrealistic expectation for a game of this size to do that. Gonna throw blizz out here, they have an extremely profitable long running game but for a multi billion dollar game they have some of the SHITTIEST releases, and make some of the poorest choices in how they "balance" things. Cut our staff some slack and if you think you can do it better start up your own mud and put your money where your mouth is. To the Staff, You're human youre gonna fuck up, but keep doin what you guys are doin and I am sorry you have to put up with this shit and I hope you keep making this game more amazing.

[Zhurong]

I'm just going to say this.

I thoroughly enjoy the changes. They bring life to our ancient game, but I do not provide any logs what so ever due to the fact that nothing has ever become of them.

 

[Pali]

All data is useful, whether it directly leads to a change or not.  Even data that supports the status quo's acceptability is worth having.

[egreir]

Just beat ffxv. i think erelei coded it. summons r op

[Mali]

I think a good gangbang could solve any transient druid problem. 

[Vaerick]

All of the issues revolving around changes inevitably end up in pk. To that, I can see two hits. Equipment and "bragging rights" for lack of a better word. Pretty much nothing can be done about the bragging rights issue- someone now talks smack for beating you, but that's a lot less of a slap in the face if you didn't just lose a full set. Point is, we need to get further away from armor dominating the game. RP points is a huge avenue that we can craft our characters as we want, and this should translate into full, permanent sets that rival any mob-gained set. Mob armor can be used in the interim from rolling to armor creation. Why write descs with armor and clothes and whatnot if it's always fluid anyway. If needs be we can add some other incentive for getting a kill- a power bump or something, whatever.

Point is, this whole argument wouldn't even be an issue if asshats who know they are OP fullsac their opponents. Let's be real, that's not the Staff's fault- that's the fault of asshats who want to be bad winners and abuse new things, and I say fuck all those people, and YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE (a lot of times people who cry the hardest on the forums). Bragging rights from a dick abusing a new thing is less painfull if they can't wreck all your work at the same time. So, let's just take that power away from the assholes, an then we can let new things roll out and work themselves out through the natural process.

[Kyzarius]

I just can't wrap my head around why people would not post logs to help with something they find unbalanced.  if anything this discussion has really changed my view on that.

I thought ninjas were out of control so I rolled something I felt was a very adjustable melee (blm) with the purpose of fighting them, logging them, and either dismissing or confirming my concern.

End result was several logged fights under different stances and conditions that resulted in a big change regarding their damage output, and another about stat debuffs.

I cannot gather how folks think their logs are ignored.  I have probably been the catalyst for dozens of changes most minor, some major, and others again simple quality of life.  All from prayer posts, and logs, and prayer discussions. 

 

[Ulmusdorn]

43 minutes ago, Kyzarius said:

I just can't wrap my head around why people would not post logs to help with something they find unbalanced.  if anything this discussion has really changed my view on that.

I thought ninjas were out of control so I rolled something I felt was a very adjustable melee (blm) with the purpose of fighting them, logging them, and either dismissing or confirming my concern.

End result was several logged fights under different stances and conditions that resulted in a big change regarding their damage output, and another about stat debuffs.

I cannot gather how folks think their logs are ignored.  I have probably been the catalyst for dozens of changes most minor, some major, and others again simple quality of life.  All from prayer posts, and logs, and prayer discussions. 

 

 

I think something we could be better at is acknowledging that we have read the post. 

 

This by no way means we are going to discuss the changes we are thinking about with you on your thread. But we should let you know that your ideas are being considered and added to the list. 

[tassinvegeta]

4 hours ago, Ulmusdorn said:

 

I think something we could be better at is acknowledging that we have read the post. 

 

This by no way means we are going to discuss the changes we are thinking about with you on your thread. But we should let you know that your ideas are being considered and added to the list. 

I agree. With my past gripes I may have been much more proactive in my logging and sending those logs if I knew my concerns were being taken seriously.

[Anume]

I'm sorry you got that feeling @tassinvegeta. We'll try to give more feedback. Also keep in mind that some of us are sometimes gone for a week here or there or just drown in our real life's work (evil, evil thing, taking so much mud time away!). Please bump your threat if you do not get any feedback. ESPECIALLY if you feel that the staff should do something about a situation and it's not a FYI thing. 
Things sometimes get overlooked, sometimes we also simply forget about a post where we wanted to look into an issue. BUMP BUMP BUMP.