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shrach posted:LFG. We're supposed to believe that renaming the tab for "dungeons" to "dungeons and raids" and then having one subcategory for all the dungeons and renaming all the other old dungeon sub categories into raid bosses would be a multi-month job. That's either true or a lie, really not sure which would be better. Not gonna lie, even before I started working at Anet this has always been a sticking point for me since it shows kind of a fundamental misunderstanding on how software is developed. Let's say I give you the task to write a program that outputs "Hello, world!". Pretty easy, right? This is usually the first program people will ever write. You can do it in one line of code, in some languages! Now let's say you're upgrading to Hello World For MMOs, where you send every online player the message: -It must support being consumed by up to one million players at once. -Every player must get it at about the same time. -It can't put any undue stress on the servers. How frequently is it being ran? It might be okay if it's just once a day, but what if it's once every minute? During peak hours? Will you need new hardware to support it? -It must support non-ASCII characters for players in locales like Germany, France, Mexico/Spain, China, etc. -Any outward-facing text needs to be professionally translated into German, French, Spanish, Chinese, etc. -If a player has chat hidden, do we want to unhide chat so they can see it? Do you even send it to them? Do you display it as a UI pop-up instead? -The packets need to be encrypted so malicious players can't sniff them and learn how to send spoof Hello World packets to other players. -Everything above needs to be QA tested to hell and back to make sure things don't violently explode when it's made live. Every above step will have some assumptions made to it, or perhaps some clever engineering to make it run better. Instead of sending "Hello World!" to every player, you can just store that text locally when they patch and just send a message saying "Please display the Hello World text." Hey, cool - instead of sending 8 bytes, you send maybe just one or two! Hey, good job, you improved the bandwidth usage fourfold on your end at a minimal static cost (around 8 bytes) to each player. Then a few months pass, requirements have changed along with the game, and you learn you need to rework it to send arbitrary messages to players. Whoops. You can't store arbitrary messages on each player's machine anymore because that would take approximately infinity bytes to store every string ever, and so you'll need to rework the system. That means you have to go through every one of those requirements again to make a new and improved Arbitrary Hello World For MMOs system. Believe me, I totally understand the sentiment. It's super frustrating as a player to see that the end of the day, nothing significant appears to have changed, but just because the end result looks close to the original doesn't mean there wasn't a significant amount of work on our end to actually make it look and feel like it did with those new features too. Edit pages later: eh, probably no one is gonna actually come back and read this, but I didn't get that he wanted to keep the functionality the same as it is now - I figured that also implied adding the squad UI. It's not trivial to change strings, I swear! 
Pseudoscorpion fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Mar 29, 2016 |
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Mar 26, 2016 19:11
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Pseudoscorpion posted:Believe me, I totally understand the sentiment. It's super frustrating as a player to see that the end of the day, nothing significant appears to have changed, but just because the end result looks close to the original doesn't mean there wasn't a significant amount of work on our end to actually make it look and feel like it did with those new features too. That's the part that Anet doesn't get. I'm pretty familiar with software development, I'm not saying you're wrong. But what matters for a paid software product with a ton of customers, is the perception that customer's have of progress. And that's where Anet has completely hosed up and still does not get. It doesn't fuckin matter to the customer that you've made internal progress or done a ton of work, if that progress and work doesn't manifest in new content, fixes, updates, etc. And it definitely hasn't.
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Mar 26, 2016 19:20
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Yeah you can explain as much as you want and it doesn't matter if the customers don't actually see any progress it doesn't matter. gently caress I was taught this running food in high school.
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Mar 26, 2016 19:30
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CLAM DOWN posted:That's the part that Anet doesn't get. I'm pretty familiar with software development, I'm not saying you're wrong. But what matters for a paid software product with a ton of customers, is the perception that customer's have of progress. And that's where Anet has completely hosed up and still does not get. It doesn't fuckin matter to the customer that you've made internal progress or done a ton of work, if that progress and work doesn't manifest in new content, fixes, updates, etc. And it definitely hasn't. This is a little harsh. The content, fixes and updates are there all the time. They're bad, incomplete, disappointing, poorly thought out, and sometimes straight up non-functional, but they're there, except for the ones that aren't.
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Mar 26, 2016 19:33
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MooCowlian posted:This is a little harsh. The content, fixes and updates are there all the time. They're bad, incomplete, disappointing, poorly thought out, and sometimes straight up non-functional, but they're there, except for the ones that aren't. True, I should have said "new content, fixes, updates, etc of acceptable quality"
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Mar 26, 2016 19:37
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Other video game developers seem perfectly capable of making changes/adding content on a steady and satisfying basis. Maybe there are good reasons why GW2 is not capable of doing so. I don't care about those reasons though.
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Mar 26, 2016 19:56
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Look, as far as the slow content and all that, that's easy to explain. With another person taking control it will be a bit before we see anything of it. At this point there will be an internal shift and readjustment of things. Nothing you will see externally, but new stuff will grind to a halt while all this is happening. Like, previous work needs to be finished and perhaps some stuff might need retweaking. You also need to get the team(s) up to speed on design philospophy changes. Even something like going to an already released game mode, looking at casual player vs heavy player time spent to reward given and figuring out how to make that better for everyone can take a lot of time. If this is the kind of stuff anet is doing at the moment, then I'm ok with them taking time. As for stuff like hey making new armor types is harder than outfits, look we all know it is better for the casual consumer to have varying armorsets to toy with. But as we all SHOULD know, those outfits do sell, and anet probably has 0 reasons not to keep pumping those out. I hate to say it, but poo poo sells. Is that good for people like me who don't whale? No. Does it make good profit? Apparently. I do fully believe that the focus on outfits needs to change to armorsets. I really want that to happen. But in the end anet may not find the justification to it.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:10
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Sprite141 posted:As for stuff like hey making new armor types is harder than outfits, look we all know it is better for the casual consumer to have varying armorsets to toy with. But as we all SHOULD know, those outfits do sell, and anet probably has 0 reasons not to keep pumping those out. I hate to say it, but poo poo sells. Is that good for people like me who don't whale? No. Does it make good profit? Apparently. I do fully believe that the focus on outfits needs to change to armorsets. I really want that to happen. But in the end anet may not find the justification to it. So you're saying I shouldn't bother playing
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Mar 26, 2016 20:17
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Pesterchum posted:So you're saying I shouldn't bother playing I'm saying man I'd really like more armor sets, but anet is getting rewarded with outfits. Them saying armor sets are too hard cause poo poo clips is kinda dumb poo poo and wrong and they need to toughen up.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:19
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Apart from anything else, it's just demoralising. GW1 is by far my most played game of all time, I don't think I've ever been more excited for a game than I was for GW2 four years ago, I've sunk thousands of hours into the game and hundreds more into talking about it and telling people about it and answering peoples questions about it, and all I've really got is incredibly disappointing content flowing out at the speed of incredibly cold treacle. The actual combat system is fun, and the dressing up is fun, but all the good bits are the same good bits that were there back when I first installed the game, and they're hampered by a whole heap of bad poo poo on top. I really, really want to love this game, but I don't know how much longer it can skate by on the fact that hitting people with true shot is kind of entertaining. It's all very well to say it's difficult and they're in a transitional period and I've already got £35 worth out of it, but at the end of the day I'm just sitting here with a big old pile of disappointment and frustration wondering how much more of this poo poo I actually want to deal with. If I hadn't got friends playing it, that answer would definitely be no more. Meanwhile, they're shifting people away from promised content to work on an expansion they've given me negative a billion reasons to buy and a living story I have zero confidence in being good. I trust anet to make decent looking weapons, and just about nothing else at this point.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:24
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Vargs posted:Other video game developers seem perfectly capable of making changes/adding content on a steady and satisfying basis. Maybe there are good reasons why GW2 is not capable of doing so. I don't care about those reasons though. Yup. This is a problem that has been solved before, through 2 decades of MMO development. If Anet is unable to fix aspects of their game within a proper timeframe, I'm gonna go ahead and say this is the fault of either the Anet devs, or the tools they have to work with. Look at something like FF14, they're able to release much more content much faster, with far fewer bugs, on top of a terrible legacy engine that almost bankrupted their parent company. MooCowlian posted:Stuff This is pretty much me, except I decided to cut my losses a few months after launch.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:25
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Sprite141 posted:I'm saying man I'd really like more armor sets, but anet is getting rewarded with outfits. Them saying armor sets are too hard cause poo poo clips is kinda dumb poo poo and wrong and they need to toughen up. I want to know how making armor is too hard when they've made the thousands of race/size/gender versions of armor pieces already in the game
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Mar 26, 2016 20:31
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Outfits can be made three times as quickly as new armor sets, and don't we wanted more frequent content updates? Seems logical.
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Mar 26, 2016 20:39
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The clipping justification is hilarious because outfits clip anyway
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Mar 26, 2016 21:07
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In the AMA, they said it took something like ten times as much work to create armour. Therefore gently caress it, let's just not. Like fixing SAB or making legendaries, the solution to something difficult is to not. Pseudoscorpion, I appreciate you're probably right in that it's much more complicated than it appears. But thus far, from the perspective of the vast majority of your playerbase, the Anet answer seems to be to just not. Shift people away, do something else, drop your ideas, it's all that ever comes out of anet.
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Mar 26, 2016 21:12
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And that is why having a new lead (or whatever) is exciting. This same do not could be a design philosophy from higher up. With a new guy in charge, we could very easily see a shift in direction when it comes to anet's decision making.
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Mar 26, 2016 21:27
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Most people bothered to even do expansion zone meta events for the legendary crafting materials. It will be interesting to see if anyone even bothers considering those mats are good for like 4 new weapons now. In fact the entire reward structure of the game is currently centered around that so a lot of what people have been earning may feel worthless to them. I feel like this takes away a pretty big incentive to play for a lot of people. Like way more now that I have thought it over a little.
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Mar 26, 2016 21:44
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i was actually looking forward to seeing what the new hammer legendary would look like, because it's nice to have long-term goals every now and then and i didn't want to decide on anything without seeing my choices first. now i have...next to no reason to actually care about the expansion meta stuff because the new legendaries so far either look bad or are things i have genuinely no interest in making.
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Mar 26, 2016 21:50
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Sprite141 posted:And that is why having a new lead (or whatever) is exciting. This same do not could be a design philosophy from higher up. With a new guy in charge, we could very easily see a shift in direction when it comes to anet's decision making. Mike isn't new, he's Anet's president and co-founder. And he's only the new lead until he finds someone else to wear the hat.
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Mar 26, 2016 21:58
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Generic Octopus posted:Mike isn't new, he's Anet's president and co-founder. And he's only the new lead until he finds someone else to wear the hat. Ah. Well until then. Still, he's expressed concern for change.
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Mar 26, 2016 22:05
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I'll probably never get a Legendary, but I mean that is another direction they could have taken it. Making them more accessible instead of a super bullshit grind, but I guess that would have upset another group of people. It kind of sounded like that was their goal with the new collection thing for them, but then nope! Some of them are even worse than just trying to make it normally somehow????? I don't get it ANet. And the whole thing with only Outfits and Black Lion Chest weapons being the only new stuff is kind of wearing real thin.
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Mar 26, 2016 22:16
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How about instead of new legendaries, we get new armour sets
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Mar 26, 2016 22:27
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CLAM DOWN posted:How about instead of new legendaries, we get new armour sets Sure, some new outfits coming right up
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Mar 26, 2016 22:32
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Eltoasto posted:Sure, some new outfits coming right up *slams fist into wall in furious anime rage*
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Mar 26, 2016 22:34
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i'm still confused as to why both a set of weapons and armor couldn't be made for each zone in the expansion
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Mar 26, 2016 22:47
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CLAM DOWN posted:How about instead of new legendaries, we get new armour sets as much poo poo people give you, you were pretty much right about HoT and what was wrong with it. I agree with you that once they decided on raids, gw2 went downhill. That raid team should have been the dungeon/fractal revamp team imo, didn't really see any mechanics in the 1st wing that couldn't have been applied to a 5 man dungeon. we'll see how gw2 pans out, but prob wont be for months until we see actual change
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Mar 26, 2016 22:50
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Johnny Joestar posted:i'm still confused as to why both a set of weapons and armor couldn't be made for each zone in the expansion I think there is almost as many sets as maps in HoT. You have vb, ab, the chakk place, ds, the two guild maps and also the raid. For armor we have blade, ley-line and a third armor set I think but can't remember the name of for the basic maps. We also have two different guild armors for the guild maps and finally legendary armor (to be released I suppose) for the raid. For weapons we have machined, chakk and the gilded weapons. Not to mention two different guild sets. Ok the guild sets aren't all that different. But anyway 6 armor and 5 weapons for 7 maps. I probably have that wrong. Still, it feels very tiny.
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Mar 26, 2016 23:10
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I'm sure they'll get their poo poo together eventually. It's still a game that we all loved at some point, for one reason or another. Rather than feed my growing disappointment, I'm stepping away for a bit. I caught a horse in BDO today. Named it Aiyyi. Now I just need to figure out how to butcher it.
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Mar 26, 2016 23:11
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Sprite141 posted:I think there is almost as many sets as maps in HoT. You have vb, ab, the chakk place, ds, the two guild maps and also the raid. For armor we have blade, ley-line and a third armor set I think but can't remember the name of for the basic maps. We also have two different guild armors for the guild maps and finally legendary armor (to be released I suppose) for the raid. For weapons we have machined, chakk and the gilded weapons. Not to mention two different guild sets. Ok the guild sets aren't all that different. But anyway 6 armor and 5 weapons for 7 maps. I probably have that wrong. Still, it feels very tiny. the reason why it feels tiny is a probably a large portion of the player base doesn't even have most of these skins; they're way too grindy to obtain
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Mar 26, 2016 23:54
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also the bladed armor looks like poo poo and it feels like they pulled it out of their rear end and tacked it onto verdant brink
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Mar 27, 2016 00:11
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CLAM DOWN posted:*slams fist into wall in furious anime rage* 
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Mar 27, 2016 00:24
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What a journey!
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Mar 27, 2016 00:41
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Good work! You're now a proud member of the 0.5% of the playerbase holding back the true design potential.
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Mar 27, 2016 00:45
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Pseudoscorpion posted:Not gonna lie, even before I started working at Anet this has always been a sticking point for me since it shows kind of a fundamental misunderstanding on how software is developed. I was literally talking about changing text with no functional change. What kind of horrible spaghetti monster of code is GW2? What if there had been a typo? Do typos take months of man hours to fix? I think we're getting to the root of the issue here.
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Mar 27, 2016 00:56
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Lyer posted:as much poo poo people give you, you were pretty much right about HoT and what was wrong with it  e: 
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Mar 27, 2016 00:59
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Sprite141 posted:I think there is almost as many sets as maps in HoT. You have vb, ab, the chakk place, ds, the two guild maps and also the raid. For armor we have blade, ley-line and a third armor set I think but can't remember the name of for the basic maps. We also have two different guild armors for the guild maps and finally legendary armor (to be released I suppose) for the raid. For weapons we have machined, chakk and the gilded weapons. Not to mention two different guild sets. Ok the guild sets aren't all that different. But anyway 6 armor and 5 weapons for 7 maps. I probably have that wrong. Still, it feels very tiny. How many maps, weapons, and armor sets did I get when I paid $60 for the base Guild Wars 2?
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Mar 27, 2016 01:13
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2012: A player's first dungeon run is them being carried through AC by four experienced guildmates in zerk meta. "These dungeons are terrible, all you do is stack up and kill things before they can hit you" 2015: A bipedal frog pulls out a knife and kills an afk player in Verdant Brink. "Clearly these raids are the downfall of Guild Wars 2"
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Mar 27, 2016 01:20
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Vargs posted:How many maps, weapons, and armor sets did I get when I paid $60 for the base Guild Wars 2? How many dungeons? How many dungeon paths? Look at what they did with dungeons. They revamped the rewards. We were told they had all sorts of data available and they would calculate the rewards and adjust them appropriately. This apparently meant AC paths and Arah 3 = 1.5g, rest of Arah = 3g and everything else 1g. Never got changed once. Then came the expansion where everything was lowered by a factor of three. This is now considered a mistake by the new guy. But apparently it's impossible to change these again because there has never been a dungeon team? Which rogue anet employee adjusted these values and is now incapable of adjusting them again?
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Mar 27, 2016 01:25
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yeah, i don't think raids exactly have anything to do with the rest of HoT being lackluster. with how long it's taking them to come out with content for them it's not like they put all their effort into raids and left everything else barren. mostly the opinion i've seen of raids so far is 'they're alright but some sort of easy mode would be cool' which i feel might actually come sometime in the future. hopefully. along with maybe dungeons getting their rewards back. maybe ???????????????
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Mar 27, 2016 01:26
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You don't understand, man. What if they need new hardware to support the gold value change? And then you have to rigorously QA test these changes...it's just too much time that they don't have.
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Mar 27, 2016 01:30
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