FirePlug

[ QUOTE ]
Getting nostalgic for my main already, I haul out Martial Master and go on the Sister Psyche Task Force, if I remember right. We exit a mission, and even though we were warned at one point, when Babbage comes around the corner, I literally freeze in real life and gape. Time freezes. A second later everyone is scrambling to dog-pile on him. A teammate laughs and admits he froze too.

[/ QUOTE ]

THis reminds me of one of my proud moments in the game, which happens to be at exactly the same point in the same Task force. Why was I proud?

I um... Didn't freeze.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming any superiority here. In fact, I get startled and freeze so often, that this is one of the reasons I'm proud of the moments when I don't. It makes me feel like a "Man of Action" or something.

I think my AT is why. I had been grouping for a few levels when I did this TF with my SG. I'm the only tank, and by the time Babbage ambushed us, I had my role down pat.

Whatever happens, no matter WHAT, get aggro. Get it NOW, get it QUICK, and KEEP it until the SG can figure out what's going on. I'm a tank, this is my job.

After a long night of endless missions (we had to start over twice), we were all a bit dazed when we left the building, and in a few seconds, the familiar crackle of a Clockwork attack filled the air, and I saw the lightning flash by my face. I'm sure FirePlug could smell Ozone at that point.

I had no idea what happened, but I snapped around, spotted something BIG firing, and immediately ran up to it and taunted. It got ONE shot in at one of my teammates before it was so mad at me it ignored them until it died.

Nobody in the group said anything to me, hell they probably never noticed, but a tank, when he's good, often never gets noticed. I believe it was Sun Tzu that said (paraphrased) that when a true leader has done his job, everyone thinks they did it themselves. I will always quietly be proud of how quickly and decisively I acted at that moment, and I like to think I saved a teammate or two.

FirePlug

Raph?

Ingot Head

[ QUOTE ]
As for the Invulnerability, Kheldian, Burn, etc. feedback - all of it was read and considered. We were pleased with the data we received and thought that the changes met our goals. That isn't to say that we might not tweak these things further - but by and large, we are happy with the changes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you for clarifying that you do not care about your players.

I'm sorry, but this has changed me from a staunch supporter of yours to a bitter player that has lost all confidence in the integrity of the people running his game. I no longer have any faith that I can spend time building a character and not have it eviscerated due to the moods/whims/convenience/political climate existant at the Dev. offices.

Please enjoy being happy with your changes, and I hope your Christmas was as care free as mine was fretful due to this.

FirePlug

[quoteAlso, they share the same head. Still not the same person, though.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well of course... Not many offices have private bathrooms for everyone.

Sorry, just sticking with the nautical theme...

Ingot

Heal up between battles.

Really! I know people like to get on a roll and keep it going, but if you don't have a healer in your group, then you are going to have to wait and heal now, or later. You may as well take a lot of short breaks and be fully up snuff each time in case things go south, than to go into a lot of battles progressively more injured, then take a LOOOONG break to heal.

Ingot

I had the privilege of exchanging a few messages with Dr. Bartle in Rec.games.computer.ultima.online back in the old days. I believe Raph had mentioned him, and he spotted the thread on a Google search, and dropped in. He really has done some very interesting sociological work pertaining to muds. (I even got an account to his Mud from him, but failed to use it...)

Many of his initial ideas have been expanded to the point where they look simplistic now, but the guy who invents Algebra is always going to look simple to the folks who use algebra to invent calculus. He's quite an interesting and amiable man to talk with, very intelligent, and open minded.

If I were blunt with myself, I would say that back in my most addicted online game periods, I was achievement oriented. It was some GOAL, that kept me playing long hours, grinding my way to some achievement. I eventually found that this was NOT the way to play these games. (at least not for me).

What I found is that the whole time I'm grinding and working, I'm NOT enjoying myself, but WORKING. When I finally achieve my goal, there are one or two days of exhilaration, which is generally followed by depression and eventually me quitting the game.

You see, to keep myself working toward the goal, I'm always telling myself that this is what needs to be done before I can "start enjoying" the game. Everything will be alright when I get there, it's where I need to get before I can start earning lots of money, or some other such...

THe problem is, achieving the goal rarely produces the expected rewards, and many times just as I got there, the game developers changed things so that what I had achieved became useless.

So, with the massive time sink it involves, and the undependable and short lived rewards, I've decided that I've been playing these games wrong. I now play to enjoy the JOURNEY, not the destination.

I play to explore, to socialize, and to help others. I like chatting with friends, I like hanging out at Blyde Square because lots of people run there for help when they get overwhelmed, and I like to do things just for the sake of doing them. (Last night I managed to get to the top of the Blyde Square Statue with only my super-leap power. This took some work!)

Ingot

Good plan, I like it.

I like the simplicity, the logic, and I like the fact that I see hints of some of the board's suggestions in it.

My mind is reeling with "But you should"'s... Like, "but you should check the endurance to make sure all the tankers can LAST long enough while punching, many of them just sit passively as a punching bag to keep their defenses fired up", or "But you should make sure the tank has enough defenses to stay alive this long" etc, etc, etc...

But, since you HAVE designed and built this game, I guess I can trust you to pay attention to the balancing details!



Thanks a lot! Can't wait to see it!

Ingot

[ QUOTE ]
So what are you saying here, Ingot? Good job on a good game? That's great, but has nothing to do with posting on these boards or communication.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm saying that ALL of the things they get hit with, they are doing better than any other MMORPG dev's I've seen.

Does that mean they're perfect? No. Personally, I agree with some of your points, I think they play things a bit close to their chest...

But I understand why they do that. They don't want the entire process out there in the open, because every time they say "Hmm, that's an interesting idea", 100 people take that as a promist that they're going to DO it, and they get ripped a new one when it doesnt work out.

I truly don't think we disagree here. You might be thinking I'm saying the dev's decisions shouldn't be criticized...

Nothing could be further from the truth. I think the DEV'S should be treated with respect, and if they bonehead an idea, then the IDEA should be criticized...

Or at least rationally discussed.

Again, I've had my frustrations, but these guys have been better than almost any other dev I've watched on a public board.

Ingot

[ QUOTE ]
If so - can you help me w/ my football pool picks? B/c you're obviously a mind reader w/ the gift of prophecy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well... I dunno...

You're not going to teach me about broken games, even if this is one. I'm sorry, but I was an OLD time Blacksmith in Ultima Online when it was the only game in town. I worked for seven months to build my Grandmaster Blacksmith (and I was NOT a casual player back then, it took that long for heavy players).

When I got finished I was one of the extreme few, Grand Master Blacksmith. Almost NOBODY went through the tedium necessary to do that in UO's early days. We were an honorable group, because we'd put in a LOT of time building our characters, and if you got a reputation for dishonesty, your Blacksmith was just flat out finished. Nobody would trust him with their stuff.

Then I watched as PVP got out of hand. I watched as other players were allowed to wander around and kill the blacksmiths at will. I watched as they were allowed to drag the blood soaked ore they looted from their fellow players back to their houses, where they would set up a macro that would get them to Grand Master Smith in a few weeks of 24x7 macroing, using materials they stole off the bodies of the REAL Smiths and Miners.

I worked hard to get around it. The miner killers flooded all the mining spots, even the ones on the ocean that required a boat. I started losing count of the number of times per day I got killed trying to mine enough ingots to make the weapons and armor my friends had asked for.

One week, I kept track of every piece of ore I mined vs. every piece I managed to get home past the griefers, the player killers, and the thieves. The ratio was greater than 100 to 1. I had to mine at LEAST 100 ingots to manage ONE ingot at home.

I was also the best known Blacksmith on Usenet. I posted in rec.games.computer.ultima.online. I was an old timer, and everyone knew my name. People created characters on my shard when "creators marks" went in, just so they could own a weapon marked "created by Ingot Head".

So, as one of the Blacksmith's most famous voices, I complained. I complained bitterly, and long, and hard. I was passionate, I was logical, I was everything I could think to be trying to save my profession.

But I wasn't abusive.

This game hasn't EXISTED long enough for you to suffer the same level of lost work, reputation, and emotional attachment I've suffered in some of these games, and if I wasn't abusive I think I can say that others can bear at least what I did before they become so.

Of course I can't remember every post, but I CAN tell you that I tried VERY VERY hard to not get personal, never never call the devs names, despite Raph saying things that insinuated the craftsmen needed to be helpless so the other players could play like heroes and rescue us. (Which they never did)

Now, if I held my tongue through that, if I remained civil while I watched YEARS of work wiped out, and the very people that were killing my character multiple times a day taking over my profession who's reputation for honesty and charity I was so proud... If I could watch them turn that profession into a gaggle of scam artists and macroing exploiters, and still not toss names at the devs...

Then I think more abusive of the folks here can be a bit more constructive in their criticism, and I think I've deserved the right to say "good job devs" without being called a butt-kisser.

Ingot Head of Minoc
Atlantic Shard

My my, this is illuminating...

Although I specifically pinpointed abusive behaviour, and noted that disagreeing with the Dev's decisions was ok, even to be expected, the thread was immediately called "buttkissing", and became filled with comments like "They have to expect it" or "It's a service I pay for".

A man walking down a dark alley is not responsible for the mugging, the mugger is. There is no excuse for incivility, only rationalizations.

And deriding someone elses opinion as "Buttkissing" is a bit of a giveaway.

In any event, I have no intention of debating civility with the entire board, that's not my job. It's poor CuppaJo's. I made a case for civility, and tried to reassure the devs that most of us appreciate the job they are doing in an attempt to keep them talking to us. I'll just leave it at that.

Ingot

Ok, I've been doing this for awhile. I've played multiplayer games since my MOO days. (Love the multiverse!) Things changed a bit though, when the Devs started to have to talk to a broader audience, and not just the people geeky enough to enjoy text computer games...

I was a participant in rec.games.computer.ultima.online for years, and I saw Raph Koster get beat up on daily. Everything he said was twisted and mangled to prove that he was satan himself, and one of his reps (Boomer) had the same problem. While I had some SERIOUS problems with some of his design ideas (I was a Blacksmith, and getting slaughtered several times a day), I thought he was consistently patient, informal, and empathetic to our concerns.

But eventually, he left. So did Boomer. Nobody can be asked to withstand that kind of abuse indefinitely.

In EQ, the developers hid behind their legal and PR departments, only peeking out from behind them briefly on rare occasions, and then only to snarl menacingly at the players. There WAS no decent communication with the Devs, and the atmosphere was both adversarial and even vindictive, with people losing their GAME accounts for saying something that a Whineplay board moderator didn't like.

Most other games, the devs never showed their faces. All you ever got was "official" release that had been run through so many lawyers that there was no actual information left in it.

The fact is that anyone that has to deal with the general public, runs into the laws of averages. 99% of the people you deal with either will never bother to make an impression one way or the other, or will be pleasant... BUT, that 1% is so nasty and so insulting, that they can ruin your day and make you think the human race deserves to be extinct.

I just came from a thread where someone called all the Dev's "Tossers". Ok, so this isn't exactly one of George Carlin's seven words, it is STILL an insult, and shows a lack of trust and respect. In my mind, that only indicates the ignorance of the person that wrote it, but I'm sure it isn't pleasant to work on this stuff all day, read all these messages trying to help your customers, and run across someone that insults you.

To you posters without the maturity and intelligence to understand that the devs are trying to help (even if you disagree with their decisions) and deserve to be treated with respect, I'd suggest you just play the game and not read the boards until you learn to be civil.

You have NO idea how good we have it here.

To the Red Names... Remember the 99%. You are NOT under seige, the vast majority of us understand and appreciate what you are doing. Don't let that 1% ruin it for all of us.

Ingot

/agree
/signpetition

Yes, I'd rather Handclap be a provoke (barring the upping of the provoke abilities on ALL of SS's attacks), but compromise being necessary, I support this petition as something we could all live with.

I still have issues with so many psionics running around, and us not having ANYTHING we can do to defend against it, and the rooting of U.S. still annoys the heck out of me...

Ingot