Wing_Leader
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Well, of the new trials, I'd say MoM has the weakest set of "better rewards". Not counting Astral Merits and components for badges (which all the trials award), here's what we get: Keyes has the 2/1 Empyrean Merit schedule and a higher probability of a Rare or Very Rare component drop. UG has the 2/1 Empyrean Merit schedule and guarantees a Rare or Very Rare component. TPN has the 2/1 Empyrean Merit schedule and 60 threads for getting past phase 3. MoM only has the 2/1 Empyrean Merit schedule.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
The reward increases for Keyes and UG have made both of them more popular choices - while TPN and MoM having better rewards right form the start has also made them popular choices.
Now, I've read quite a number of posts here in which folks have said they really like MoM. I don't understand why, honestly. It is tedious, though not to the same degree as UG, but at least if you commit to UG and succeed you are guaranteed a Rare or Very Rare for your efforts. Completing MoM yields less than a Keyes, on average, and Keyes isn't so reliant on taunt control and ranged dps, making it more doable for arbitrary league composition
Personally, I'd run Keyes and UG all day if I was after the bigger rewards. BAF and Lambda for the common stuff. MoM is sort of a waste of time to me, and TPN is one I am willing to just wait on until my local (i.e., Virtue) trial community has it all figured out and can lead it with reasonably high expectations of success (the one and only time I went on one I did everything right for the job I was assigned--Telepathist eradication--and yet the trial failed in the final stage anyway). And that's only if I really want those 60 threads...otherwise, what's the point (aside from the vague illusion of variety)? -
Quote:One obvious issue is character name collisions. I don't know how many mechanisms (nooks and crannies of code) assume/require unique character names within a server/league/team, but I can imagine it is many. Name collision resolution is probably a very thorny problem for the current code base. Just my guess.Originally Posted by MisterD
I am sure its completly unrealistic..but it would be nice if maybe the LFG tool (not for a league that is formed by invites) somehow worked cross server, creating a temporary shard for the duration of the Trial itself.
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Quote:Well, despite the size of the DoD-related government contract industry, the impact of their practices appear to have had little to no effect on programming in general, at least not in the US. Of the hundreds of programmers I've met and/or spoken to in three decades, not one of them has ever programmed a single line of ADA, been subject to the standardization methods articulated by ADA, or known anyone affected by them. The view from my 30-year perch is that ADA was created for, and used by a single isolated industry (non-financial government programming) and had virtually no bleedover into other software domains. Not scientific, not educational, not commercial, and certainly not entertainment. C and C++ dominates computer programming the world over; and I see no evidence that there are any hard and fast rules for best practices adopted by the majority of those paid to do it.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
If you could why don't you explain how having the largest customer for software in the world demand that all its new software be written using a language that forces certain practices on the programmer doesn't affect the profession ?
I used to work for a company that made very specialized real-time hardware for the civial aviation industry. In many countries civil aviation is actually a government-run entity, subject to whatever standards those countries have chosen to impose on such things. Not a single one of them, as a customer, dictated the language to use, the coding practices to employ, or the testing procedures to undertake in order to win a contract. And this included U.S. airports under the aegis of FAA custodianship. We programmed in C and C++, we adhered to our own (certified) ISO9000/9001 documentation requirements, and we had our own in-house QC department with its own testing protocols. The existance of ADA did not have a single bit of influence over how we wrote our code, and I am pretty sure nobody on the team, aside from myself, even knew the language (though I'm sure some of them had heard of it).
The only reason we had any stringent practices at all, such as they were, was because without a reputation for reliability and performance, we had no customers. Contrast that with the entertainment industry that I work in now where any "professional practices" remotely like I knew from my previous experience(s) are utterly alien concepts. I can only conclude that ADA had a profound and lasting influence on professional programming only in the minds of its architects, who nurture a fantastical notion of its legacy. -
Quote:I'm sorry, but I don't know what that means. What is autocomplete?Originally Posted by newchemicals
Honoree mission: Autocomplete is the trick.
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Quote:I can't really say I've been a huge fan of all that stuff. Croatoa was definitely a waste of a zone for me. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't add that stuff now and then. I expect it, and welcome it to a certain degree. It doesn't have to be City of Captain America, but it shouldn't be City of Swords and Sorcery either (that's called World of Warcraft, btw). Speaking of which:Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Yup. Oh, and the Midnighters, can't have all that magic running around ruining things.
Oop, better get rid of Cimerora, that's all swords and monsters, right?
Croatoa, can't have witches and mythical creatures and redcaps and-
Quite so. However, it is worth noting that WoW does not allow you to customize the look of your character to the point of making him look like Superman. If you could, and you did, you can very well imagine what the player population would think, say, and do about it.Quote:Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
WoW didn't invent fantasy.
I suppose we all have our own notions of what constitutes a given genre, but as far as I'm concerned "superheroes" is not a synonym for "anything you can think of," because while superhero comics have featured just about anything and everything you can think of, it is nevertheless dominated by one particular aesthetic motif. You know what it is, so I won't repeat it. Anyone can defy that motif, to the extent to which the game allows it, but when a lot of people do that, the game world starts to lose its strong genre identity.
All of this is a by-product of the flexibility inherent in the COH costume creator. It is both a boon and a curse. No other MMO genre has anything like it, and no other MMO genre suffers from such dilution of its core aesthetics as a result. Players of Aion can't make characters that look like Captain Jack Sparrow, no matter how much they may love the Disney movies, and by and large the Aion community is probably much appreciative of this fact. But I suppose that a dozen Captain Jack Sparrows could appear in Paragon City and nobody should find it the least bit odd since the superhero genre can, and is meant to, support any character ever thought of, and in any quantity, without so much as a questioning blink, right? -
Quote:Apparently not enough?Originally Posted by Scythus
.....
Um... how much of the Rikti content have you actually played through?
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Quote:Yes, I see your point.Originally Posted by Captain-Electric
I mean this in the nicest way possible, from one flag-waving four-color superhero fan to another, but I'm not sure you're helping. I get why you're irritated. When a comic book hater complains about comic book stuff in our comic book game, I'm just as puzzled. But, stop getting distracted by other people's tastes for a moment, and focus on your own. This is your game too, and by making posts like the above, you're shooting yourself in the foot. You're shooting a lot of people in the foot. Stop arguing, and start brainstorming.
Praetoria Was a Step In the Right Direction
I think the Praetorian stuff is/was a huge step in the right direction for this game. It didn't exist, except in the form of the Maria Jenkins story arc, back before I stopped playing for a few years. I was thrilled to see how they had expanded upon it when I got back into the game.
So I would definitely petition/encourage the devs to add more like the Praetorian content. Where the supervillains look like supervillains. And the content is, more or less, high tech-y and/or super science-y at its core. Adding some magical/supernatural elements for extra flavor is quite welcome, just so long as it doesn't start to feel like we've stepped into Azeroth on every mission.
I've seen people mention underwater realms, and while I think that has a lot of potential, I'm trying to wrap my head around how you'd make that playable. Same goes for zero-G outer space stuff. I mean, it all sounds very cool, but I think the implementation of it would be bizarre at best.
The Rikti Are Not Alone
So how about a new Galactic Empire out there, perhaps having had run-ins with the Rikti just to tie things together nicely, with its own heroes and villains that comes into contact/conflict with ours. Kinda like Praetoria, but instead of it being an alternate dimension with evil versions of established heroes, it is an entirely new race with both hero and villain enemies, and hero and villain allies. New zones could include alien battlcruisers, or other planets (where gravity is near 1G and the atmosphere is either breathable or survivable with temp powers or something).
I sort of feel that the Rikti are played out since they never really did much with them except have them invade Paragon City a couple of times. Besides, something more like the Shi'Ar or Kree Empires would allow lots of Aliens Among Us storylines and such. -
Quote:I can see a conflict between game design philosophies possibly arising from this. One philosophy says that the content is the content and it is up to the players to formulate teams with the necessary resources to accomplish all the goals. This is certainly true for the Incarnate Trials. But I think that philosophy can fail utterly for solo play.Originally Posted by Energizing_Ion
At some point, I think, there will have to be some sort of dynamic where once you accept a mission (or whatever) it "scans you/your toon" and sees that you have all heal powers and 1-2 weak attack powers...maybe then you'll get either less enemies or maybe you'll get more "heal/rescue" type of missions/quests.
Whereas, if it sees that you have a lot of debuffs/buffs/control you'll get a diff. type of mission and/or more mobs (or higher lvl mobs/etc...).
Who knows if and when it will ever happen but...I think that would be nice.
The other philosophy is to tailor the content to the composition/abilities of the team, even if it is a team of one. Some will dislike this as it smacks of a game system deliberately making everything equally "doable", with the danger that nothing would ever be a challenge unless some key set of abilities is missing and players must be forced to find tactical workarounds.
But I think the only long-term hope for making content that is both usable for soloists and large teams alike is to have a sophisticated system for generating enemies based on the abilities brought in to face them. I'm not saying it would be easy to implement; in fact, it is probably very hard. Improved mob AI is hard to code too, but that is not reason alone to stop researching it, IMO. -
Quote:No, I'm not against any of that. But the proportion of that element in the game seems to really exceed the boundaries of the genre. There are probably ten times as many (if not more) mythological demigods, dark sorcerers, and ancient warlords (Barbarian costume pieces? Seriously?) in COH as you'll find in any of the primary sources. And that's not because the game engine itself encourages or promotes those character concepts for any particular game or internal mythos reason. It is mostly, I suspect, because the player base is skewed away from the game's core genre motif.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
So, of course, you are totally against Thor, Hercules, Loki, any character in Super Hero comics who is clearly too 'Fantasy'-ish for your liking?
Oh, and Steven Strange, he's far too magicy, can't have magic in comics, thats a fantasy schtick...
Yes, of course it is 100% opinion. That should be rather self-evident. If that was a mystery to anyone before now, then I'm glad someone puzzled it out for the rest. And I'm allowed to vent about what I don't like as much as anyone else. Mostly I was trying to point out that the observation about the whether or not "superhero stuff being added to the game" would actually help it feel more like a superhero game is flawed in its basic premise. It isn't the options themselves as delivered (or intended) by the devs that determines this, but what the players themselves do with it. And by extension, adding more "superhero stuff" won't necessarily help the game look or feel more like a superhero game, at least as most would come to understand such a thing by reading, oh I dunno, conventional superhero comics.Quote:Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
So, really, all of your post boils down to 100% opinion. Which, while fine, doesn't give you any damn right to poo-poo what other people do or do not like in game.
Well you've kinda come to the wrong game then, I think. I mean, look at Statesman. Or the Freedom Phalanx in general. Look at the classic COH image below and tell me that the game wasn't intended to represent the classic spandexy superhero genre that you think is so lame. Most folks I know of who think that motif is lame don't read comics, don't go to superhero movies, and don't play COH.Quote:Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Personally? I find spandexy super heroes for the most part incredibly ******* LAME.
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Quote:But does it have to be that way? I mean, do the devs really have to make these assumptions (and be wrong half the time)? I've been on trials which was 95% melee, and only 5% ranged/support/control. And I've seen solo toons that have a little bit of everything at their disposal. In an ideal world, the content would adjust itself to the characters more dynamically. Simply scaling up the number of mobs, their level, or the EB/AV toggle isn't really adequate, as this issue clearly exposes.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The reason why a solo incarnate path has to be much less difficult relative to the combat strength of the trials is that with the trials you can assume getting some mix of stuff: melee and squishies, buff and debuff, melee and ranged damage, offense and control. With solo missions, you have to assume the player could have just one or two of those, for all reasonable combinations of those.
It seems to me that the game needs a smarter way of encoding a character's "combat DNA", if you will. A way to account for all a toon's abilities (and weaknesses) and adjust missions accordingly. But I suspect that it would require too great a leap in design innovation to implement something like that. -
Quote:Consumers have little choice but to use commercial software as provided, bugs and all. It's not as if they can just write their own word processor, spreadsheet, browser, or MMO game. They can, on the other hand, treat themselves with over-the-counter remedies for most everyday ailments, and balance their own checkbooks or do their own taxes. I think most software companies are keenly aware of the complete control they have over the features in, and quality of, the software they produce. The consumer is complacent out of any lack of alternatives (moving from one crappy piece of software to some other crappy piece of software is something of a Hobson's Choice).Originally Posted by FourSpeed
What I think is more common, is that the *consumer* doesn't seem to hold software
companies to the same standard they'd hold an accountant, doctor, etc. to,
except in certain areas (banking, being an obvious case), and if the customer
isn't concerned about it, the developer is less concerned as well.
Now, I will definitely agree with your observations regarding the quality of software "lately", but then again for me "lately" has been in effect for over 20 years. I wouldn't have hired 90% of the Computer Science students I graduated with, and that was in 1990. How much has really changed since then in this respect? -
I'm so glad this thread is just a joke...
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Quote:Well, not to repeat what some others have suggested, but I definitely think that having symbols applyable to other things (masks, helmets, belts, capes) would be good. As is the call for cowels. But in terms of costume improvements, the first thing I would ask for is for all the old pieces to be graphically revamped up to current standards. The name and basic idea of these pieces would remain the same, but there would be more textural and/or geometric detail provided. I like many of the older costume pieces for their classic simplicity, but many of them have details that don't compare favorably in the quality department to the newer pieces.Originally Posted by Captain-Electric
So, anyway, how about those Superhero Pack/Zone ideas? Got some, Wing Leader?
In terms of zones:
- Orbital Base
- Ancient Pyramids
- Alien Planet(s)
- Elemental Realms (Fire, Water, Earth, Air)
- Post-apocalyptic Future
- Pre-historic Past
- Competing Galactic Empire with its own Supers
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Quote:Perhaps. But I think there are certainly cases where the devs got it right and cases where they didn't. I think there is a clear case of the former: the new Twinshot low-level story arc concerning The Shining Stars is fun, engaging, and full of classic superhero drama. And it is completely soloable. More like that I say!Originally Posted by Paladin
The charge of being poorly written is going to be tossed around at anything the Dev's come up with.
I don't think tropes that make no sense and fail basic logic tests are tropes that anyone really enjoys. At best readers merely dismiss them and look for the storyline to recover some dignity.Quote:Originally Posted by Paladin
It may not something you'd enjoy, but it's a trope I find fun. If it helps deal with the egos people have grown while playing their characters, so much the better.
And taking players "down a peg" should never be the goal of the devs, should it? What is the value in making players/toons feel less like superheroes just for the sake of crushing egos? -
Quote:Many folks out there may think that Street Justice underperforms, but if it does I haven't noticed. My 50+3 StJ Brute is doing just fine and I'm having more fun with that powerset than any other in the game (and I started with issue 2). In fact, it seems to me that StJ is so good--and so much fun--that it could be in danger of a nerf in an upcoming release. And that would make me very, very sad.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
It seems to me that both Titan Weapons and Street Justice strike pretty much the right balance in both gameplay complexity and numbers. I find both sets to be incredibly powerful, yet many still see them as under-performing. That in itself suggests they're just right.
Sorry for the threadjack...don't mean to turn this into a StJ discussion... -
Quote:A staple of poorly written superhero stories perhaps. Not exactly the branch of the source material that I would advocate emulating.Originally Posted by Paladin
I don't know about infusing power into Maelstrom, but I looked at it as a staple of the superhero experience.
Could you elaborate on this?Quote:Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
The Honoree was another story. He two-shotted many of my characters. I usually auto-complete that mission due to his presence. When I do play it, I also cheat and run the objectives out of order so I'm not facing waves of adds while dealing with a flying, unmezzable, unknockback-able, Elite Boss with stuns in his attacks and the ability to kill me in two lucky hits.
The Honoree mission is the only one that I go out and actively recruit help for because I can't seem to solo it with any of my toons. That last room with two Elite Bosses and a horde of Conscripts (with, what, four portals? spamming the room with more Rikti) makes it utterly undoable. What is the trick? -
It seem like a lot of players were once WoW players who have switched engines but who kept their Azeroth-oriented character concepts intact. This, for instance:
Very cool looking, but if I didn't know better I'd think this came from WoW or Aion or some other fantasy game, not a superhero game. Everyone is of course free to make their character look like whatever the costume creator allows, but if you want examples of why the game looks/feels less like a classic superhero comic book world, you need look no further than (the countless) toons like the one above.
I don't think the problem is one of costume piece/set selection, or even power set selection (though I think we could have done without guns and maybe even swords), but of players who have no particular love for four-color superheroics. They are anime fans or fantasy fans or just plain fans of immature irony. They have probably logged more hours watching Full Metal Alchemist than reading The Mighty Avengers (if they read comics at all).
I love the classic superhero comics so much that I often tend to model my own toons directly off of recognizable icons. Five out of the six toons listed in my sig are pulled from the comics: NOR-RAD was originally meant to look like Green Lantern, Nikki Stryker looks like Batgirl, Iron Marauder is a straight up Iron Man clone, Lion of Might is a Captain Marvel tribute (minus the lightning blasts), and Darling Nikkee spends most of her time in her Hit Girl outfit. Ice Giant Kurg is pretty much yanked from Thor, which is basically D&D dressed up like superheroes, but I don't play him much and I feel weird when I do.
Honestly I don't think that adding more spandex-y costume options would help Paragon City feel more like a classic four-color superhero comic book world. For that you'd have to almost exclusively recruit a very particular gaming demographic (the staunch superhero nerd, like me). But then you'd probably have 60% fewer players to team up with. -
Quote:Or better yet, make the trials doable by cats, without having to specially train them before hand.Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Indeed! This is a videogame, not a boot camp.
If league leaders can't deal with herding cats all the time, then maybe they should stop being league leaders. -
Fascinating thread!
The Three Phases of Trials
I am of the general opinion that the iTrials are not always fun, but are necessary evils for anyone wanting to acquire Incarnate abilities during their natural lifetimes. For me, my personal relationship with any particular trial goes through the following phases:
- Phase 1: I don't know what I'm doing and the whole thing is a dizzying, stress-filled exercise in just doing what the team leader is doing (or tells me to do) in the hopes of not dying and not doing something that results in trial fail. This is not fun for me. I hate the Lamda acid/nade run, for instance, because everyone zips around like mad, leaving individuals or ad hoc teams of two or three to take down each chamber/container, leading to a lot of time coming back from the hospital.
- Phase 2: I have a good handle on what I should be doing and find the doing of it challenging, but not frustratingly impossible. Thanks to these trials being a large group effort, however, the presence of newbies still stuck in phase 1 themselves undermines the fun factor of this phase. If I am on a team of experienced players of the trial, and things go smoothly, then this is fun. But it only lasts for a couple of such runs because we then enter...
- Phase 3: The trial has become routine. Which for me means rather boring. The only reason to continue doing a trial after it has reached phase 3 is for the quick rewards. Not because it is fun anymore.
I'm Not a Superhero, I'm a Game Piece
I also have a problem with the "immersion factor" of these trials. Normally I only run each mission with a toon once; the narrative logic breaks down after the fourth time you've gone out to save FrostFire's butt. That's why I don't like grinding content, be it Tips or Trials. But the game requires you to do so since they are the only way to acquire the drops and rewards necessary to restore a sense of steady progression to a level 50 toon. But this doesn't feel like a comic book to me. It feels like a game just trying to copy what WOW does (repeatable content with gimmicks of questionable in-game logic that everyone grinds, not because it is fun to do so, but because that's the only reasonable way to obtain the rewards needed to maintain forward momentum on character development).
It's Not the Leader's Fault
The frustration with trial leadership is, I think, a direct outgrowth of the way the trials are designed. They aren't designed such that they make "sense"; they are designed as weird puzzles that you either figure out and intuit quickly or you just die a lot. This doesn't resemble any superhero comic book I've ever read. Trials shouldn't be designed such that you have to do them repeatedly before you figure out the trick(s) and are then able to succeed. That is just WOW-inspired puzzle-based get-it-right-or-die raid design mentality. It is disappointing to find that the devs couldn't think of any way to deliver "high-end" content without resorting to that. And I don't blame leaders for being forced into leading players through this kind of content with mixed results (and I don't find it the least bit surprising that few players want to try their hand at leading in such a situation).
Was That Maelstrom or Galactus I Just Fought?
Oh, and does anyone else find it bizarre that Maelstrom is a solo'able wimp in the Hero Tips mission, but a one-shot killing machine in the TPN Campus trial? Really? This is the same guy? What explains his sudden cosmic jump in power level? At least the other trials had an explanation: BAF makes you face two AVs simultaneously, Lambda makes you face a Marauder juiced up on super-formula, Keyes makes you face an Anti-Matter with "expanded powers" thanks to the reactors and killer satellites he taps into, and of course UG makes you face a mini-Hamidon (no explanation needed, really). But the incongruous leap in power for Maelstrom doesn't even have an explanation, does it? -
I take it there is no color available to choose from that is the same as the default color (blue I presume)?
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Quote:Why do you suppose they are prioritizing new material over fixing (certain) old bugs?Originally Posted by Ironblade
Isn't it obvious? They are prioritizing releasing new material. There seems to be a consensus building that the priorities need to be adjusted slightly.
Personally I think the consensus you refer to is but a squeak in a hurricane of indifference, but that's just one opinion battling another I suppose.
Well, given that people beg, plead, and cry over being granted beta access to every new game (or game release) that comes down the pike, the reasons should be pretty easy to enumerate. But I'll let the chronic beta testers speak for themselves.Quote:Originally Posted by Ukaserex
This is where people lose me in this debate. Why would anyone want to play untested, unreleased content?
This has got to be the most bizarre thing I've ever heard an MMO player say.Quote:Originally Posted by Ukaserex
I don't see the point in having new content.
Sadly so.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
We have *never* as a profession even *pretended* that we aspired to that level of basic competency.
And it shows.
Reminds me of an old observation I read once that "software engineering" barely deserves the moniker, because if we built bridges the way we build software, nobody would drive over them. -
Last night I watched a BAF form, with a league leader turning down +3 melee toons for reasons unknown. Said leader was walking from toon to toon, looking them over as if it was a costume contest, and then resorting to rewarding the final two spots on the league to whomever could answer somewhat obscure game-based trivia questions. I've never seen a BAF league with such peculiar membership requirements.
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I have to say that I sympathize with Rubberlad quite a bit. I come from a tabletop superhero RPG background and am somewhat spoiled by what is possible in that format. I am fully aware of the limitations of the computer game format, but I think that the MMO as a game platform has become way too calcified in old paradigms. Unfortunately, COH is not the place to seek significantly new game ideas given the age of its design and the inertia of its 7+ year old code base.
Nevertheless, I too wish for a superhero MMO (hell, any kind of MMO for that matter) that feels less like WoW and more like its source material (in our case, a comic book). I can't tell you off the top of my head what that game design would entail, but I like to think that there are some awfully bright minds out there, unencumbered by an existing design, who could rethink much of this.
Of course in the mean time, I will play COH until it bores me (again), since it is still the best MMO I've ever played. -
Quote:Out of curiosity, what is your explanation for why Paragon has not implemented this painfully simple and obvious strategy? If it is so simple, surely they would have considered it themselves. If they rejected it, what could the possible reasons have been?Originally Posted by Ironblade
Actually, I do have enough knowledge and experience to suggest a solution. It's quite simple. Shift some resources from new features to fixing old ones that are broken.
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Quote:There are also the issues of the cost of tighter quality control vs. the expectations of the target consumer. Take, for example, the two domains I'm familiar with:Originally Posted by FourSpeed
Sadly, the field is becoming
more of a lego block process, but that's also a different discussion altogether.
Fault Tolerance is King
When the customer is an airport where smooth, unhindered operations are the highest priority (even over passenger safety), resources go towards systems that reach fault states as infrequently as possible (as opposed to systems that more accurately detect security risks). Guess where debugging priorities go for that application domain. A zero-tolerance policy towards known, possible fault states is expensive but necessary, and "affordable" only because the extremely high price tag of the product has that sort of testing discipline built into it.
Experimental Features are King
On the other hand, when the customers are a company's own in-house artists, fault states are highly acceptible as long as new features are being made available as quickly as possible (a new pyro solver that only works 50% of the time is better than an old pyro solver that works 99% of the time but doesn't look half as good). Do you think programmers in this second case are encouraged to spend time debugging fault states? Or do you suppose their priorities always seem to fall on side of new features? What do you suppose this does to the culture of rigorous quality assurance as a programming philosophy within a company?
Like I said before, I don't know what the testing philosophy is like within today's video game companies, but I have to believe that they take into account the consumer behavior/expectations of their customer base (and not just the vocal minority that log into the forums to kvetch about it). It is quite possible that the greater population of players are far more tolerant of bugs than we think, and this steers production priorities to a great degree. -
Quote:Agreed.Originally Posted by Ironblade
I don't have to be personally able to do a better job in order to have a valid opinion regarding the quality of a product.
However, I think that folks who believe they understand all the intricacies of the situation, and think they have viable solutions, with the experience to back it up, would be far more valuable to the process by actually being in charge, than merely by talking about it here. On the other hand, if they don't possess those skills and experience, then I have no confidence in their conclusions about what is or isn't an easy bug to fix, what the production priorities should be, what the development cycle should look like, what resources should be assigned to what tasks, etc.
In other words, any opinion offered is only as insightful and valuable as the direct knowledge, skills, and experience that back it up. Saying "I see crap!" is not nearly as useful as knowing how to clean it up. Personally, I think we need far less of the former, and far more of the latter.