Issue 7 Press Release on MMORPG.com
By
Aaron123,
Posted on: 2006-01-30 15:05 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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CoV is suppose to have it's own development sadnbox; we were told this in the beginning.
That way both games get updated, not just one.
The Devs changed their minds (without telling us) however, and people are irate about it.
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Who said both games aren't getting updated? Who said the development teams aren't different?
Could it be that the teams are on a different release schedule and they've chosen to release the updates independently instead of holding up the CoV updates until the CoH updates were finished? Could it be that States even said that they chose not to wait? Could it be that people are making a lot of assumptions?
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So, bascially, we have NO idea what's still being worked on for CoH. Perhaps a list of the top five things currently being developed for CoH would help us. It could be updated monthly or bi-monthly, perhaps with explainations as to why things drop off or move up.
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Thats asking an awful lot Bounty. As it is we're lucky if we get patch notes that aren't filled out mostly by players. Then there's the whole Known Issues section of the site that is grossly incomplete...
As someone pointed out Jack, anything to do with bases is NOT CoH content nor should it be touted as such unless you also plan to open bases up to people that don't own CoV, otherwise it's CoV content as bases in general are.
And these temp powers/buffs....how temporary are they gonna be? 2 minutes? 5? 10?
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What about the people that only have CoV? Don't you think they are elated to get new content after having a toon stalled at 40 for 4 months while their hero counterparts are strolling around at 50?
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My complaint is that it took em 4 months to create A zone. They could have put that 40-50 zone in there at the end of November or even after the Holiday event ended. This would have given people a chance to get to 50 and try out other powers until the pvp junk got plugged in.
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It's been four months because the bar is set higher. CoH just had to install the 40-50 content at first. Taking all its other updates into consideration, CoV has a lot more to add than just a few new zones and missions. The Patron Powers surely required a fair bit of development, as do the new villain power sets.
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yeah so Patron powers could have been added in Feb. then PvP zone in March, so on.
My complaint isn't based in that it's all CoV an no CoH, granted thats a part of it. It's the fact that it took em 4 months to even HEAR about what was coming.
If you're going to take longer to actually give us updates then atleast tell us what you're doing for em. I mean good lord by this time last month they should have and probably did know for sure that Grandeville and Recluses Victory would be in this update. Hell we all knew months ago they'd be in there. The powersets and Mayhem were the only surprises. We should have been getting back story for these zones and screenshots for them and maybe even examples of the new powers since Dec. at the latest.
And just for the record there was/is an entire civilization that did/does worship cats...therefore throughout history there have been untold numbers of people whom vicariously worship Miss Kitty. With avatars of cute girlie cats like that I'm proud to count myself among them.
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The Devs changed their minds (without telling us) however, and people are irate about it.
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No surprise there. That's why I'm jaded and cynical 
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Is the plan to make CoH a "finished" game, because that's not what I expected from an MMO.
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Ok, this is the sort of conversation thread that is going to cause the devs to roll their eyes at us.
CoH isn't "finished", and the devs have no illusions that it is. CoV did need the lion's share of attention in I7, for all the reasons stated multiple times by various people in this thread.
(...)
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Exactly. Anyone expecting a "finished" MMO anywhere will be dissapointed, because there are always changes.
Prime example: SWG's "Updated" combat system (released almost two years after launch)
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We shouldn't have to share the development sandbox.
CoV is suppose to have it's own development sadnbox; we were told this in the beginning.
That way both games get updated, not just one.
The Devs changed their minds (without telling us) however, and people are irate about it.
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I sometimes think I'm the only one who's not the slightest bit irritated by this dev quote (if it is a quote, I've never been able to find it).
Why?
Because it's a bad idea. Totally disparate development teams working on an application with this much shared code is an express train to Nightmare Town (for the developers involved) with a stopover in Bugsville (for the end users).
It's the kind of idea that software company managers with no experience writing actual code come up with, announce at annual employee meetings, and which gets quietly buried by the worker bees within three months in order to keep the process working.
(There, I said it. Sorry, the programmer in me had to gripe for a minute. )
Edit: Two separate content teams -- design, art, dialogue, etc. -- that I'll buy. But not development.
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No, if this were Everquest 2...you'd have to pay for six expansion by now...AND the Devs would ignore you AND completely change the gameplay despite loud angry customers.
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The EQ 2 devs post on the order of three times as much as these devs, have added a like amount of free content, have only had one paid expansion and two paid adventure packs and the combat balancing was certainly no worse than I5 and ED.
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Big change since EQ(1). Glad to see the competition is actually competing as far as customer support is concerned, especially with WoW and CoX at their heels.
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Now that I will agree with. SOE doesn't always get it right (often they don't), but they try as hard as these devs do. I've met members of both the devs teams of EQ2 and CoH/V and without exception I've found them to be passionate and genuinely interested in making a fun game. Remember they're players too!
Now that said, that won't stop me from whining for what I want for one second! 
The City of Heroes Community is a special one and I will always look fondly on my times arguing, discussing and playing with you all. Thanks and thanks to the developers for a special experience.
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I would rather content and cool toys to be released as they are finished. That way we can be only slightly dissapointed an update at a time rather than just one huge dissapointment every few months.
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I would rather they just stop disappointing us.
I agree with you about releasing as it's done. Paying to wait for nothing gets old pretty fast.
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Guys... as a software developer, and TESTER, I can assure you that you do NOT want stuff released 'as it's done' for one very good reason.
It will break stuff. A lot.
This game has already demonstrated that there are a million odd interactions that you have to watch out for. Minor fixes to costume bugs have resulted in completely broken costume operation in many many places - and you really do not want the supergroup-costume-cannot-be-accessed bug to come back, nor the 'I lost your face, here's a generic one so you have to spend 90K inf to get your old one back' bug, etc. etc. etc.
The only way that this stuff works right is when it's bundled into a correct build, tested on the internal test servers, then moved onto the public test server, then fixed, re-tested, and then moved to regular.
EACH build has to be correct and precise. Cryptic has already proven that each developer is working in their own branch of the code tree, which may or may not be integrated with the baseline, and that the re-integration process does not ever go smoothly.
They're not currently organized in a fashion that will allow weekly micro-releases. Maybe, once a month, if we're lucky, they might issue bug fixes, but whenever they try to slip in new stuff it creates problems. The current "issue every 3-5 months" schedule at least lets them work around their process issues to generate a well-integrated product.
Hey guys. I dont know about you but I am starting to miss my scrapper. Is there a chance we could make an archtype that is similar to the scrapper? And another think i have an idea for a elite archtype. Shapeshifter. Like khelidan you can change forms but this one you can change into animals. just a thought
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Now that I will agree with. SOE doesn't always get it right (often they don't), but they try as hard as these devs do. I've met members of both the devs teams of EQ2 and CoH/V and without exception I've found them to be passionate and genuinely interested in making a fun game. Remember they're players too!
Now that said, that won't stop me from whining for what I want for one second!
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Noted I also agree that Cryptic doesn't always get it right, but it's probably trickier as a younger MMO developer. Every company out there is looking for the right balance. Now that the field is more crowded, it's a hard competition.
Carry on 
Grr. I've written like 5 different long post about how annoyed I am but it doesn't matter, I just seriously wish they wouldn't have called this Issue 7 if it wasn't seriously going to have some CoH stuff in it.
Not to mention once again we're hearing we just need to wait. Yay for waiting.
If only I would have seen this a month ago I wouldn't have renewed for the next 3.
What happened to a team on each project? What happened to fixes for Claws in Issue 7? New powersets for Scrappers in I7? New base stuff for CoH? Well that's great for people that have CoV because you can't access bases if you only have CoH. Too bad I am paid for 6 months
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Because it's a bad idea. Totally disparate development teams working on an application with this much shared code is an express train to Nightmare Town (for the developers involved) with a stopover in Bugsville (for the end users).
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Different software teams--bad: agreed.
Different design teams: different story.
The design teams cover things like look and feel, visuals and such. Having different teams for those areas is perfectly fine.
And, it's not uncommon to spin off a software group to work on cutting edge stuff, then roll the updates back into the base. Overall, though, I'd agree that the two teams need to collaborate or it's going to be chaos.
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Different software teams--bad: agreed.
Different design teams: different story.
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Yep, you caught me. I added an edit to that effect, but apparently not before you read it.
I've just heard this (mis?)quoted to apply specifically to development so often that I finally broke down and griped about it.
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The design teams cover things like look and feel, visuals and such. Having different teams for those areas is perfectly fine.
And, it's not uncommon to spin off a software group to work on cutting edge stuff, then roll the updates back into the base. Overall, though, I'd agree that the two teams need to collaborate or it's going to be chaos.
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Especially if one team is overhauling large chunks of the code base, as would be necessary in order to add 41-50 villain content.
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Who said both games aren't getting updated? Who said the development teams aren't different?
Could it be that the teams are on a different release schedule and they've chosen to release the updates independently instead of holding up the CoV updates until the CoH updates were finished? Could it be that States even said that they chose not to wait? Could it be that people are making a lot of assumptions?
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Could you explain the reasoning for this? Because it sounds like you're saying the CoV team is better than the CoH team. Because you surmise that they chose to put CoV ish 1 out now because CoH 7 wasn't ready yet and they didn't want to wait...
So with two additional months of development time as compared to CoVs team they couldn't even put together a single zone? Or could it be that there's one team and they did the CoV stuff first and didn't wanna wait til they finished the CoH stuff to launch both?
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Guys... as a software developer, and TESTER, I can assure you that you do NOT want stuff released 'as it's done' for one very good reason.
It will break stuff. A lot.
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Well as it is even when we get stuff it breaks alot of stuff. They bring out an update and have to patch it to get it to work. Go play CoV with an ATI card. Or go back to Oct and try getting half the badges...many of which are STILL getting fixed.
I think I'd rather get new buggy stuff quickly to go with the old buggy stuff than have to wait and not get the wow factor and then sit and see the old buggy stuff and realize how buggy it really is :-p
Keep me wowed so all the bugs aren't as noticable. "Oh this mission is bugged? Hell we got like 50 other new ones to get lets move on an come abck later"
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Especially if one team is overhauling large chunks of the code base, as would be necessary in order to add 41-50 villain content.
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Missed where you have to overhaul code to add more levels...aside from lvl 40 contacts directing you to level 41+ contacts...
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If they are going to be sold separately then they should be supported separately...to an extent.
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But where is it written in stone that they need to be supported equally. And, for that matter, what defines equal?
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(boggles)
What defines equal? Get thee to a dictionary.
OK, perhaps the original poster would be better off using the word 'Fair' instead of 'Equal'.
Comments have already been made that the content going live with I7 is primarily focussed on CoV, and that unless you own CoV you get nothing, because the temp power/buff thing is not available without a supergroup base.
There are two simple fixes for this.
First, enable bases for CoH only purchasers. This is trivial to do. Currently, CoH and CoV are the same damn program. If they want to make buying both packages necessary, then make base raids (and PvP zones if you really want) require both packages.
Second, make a place in the university, or at the first player contact, where the CoH guys can get access to the new temp power and buff creation stuff. CoV, make it a broker.
Or put it into the PD somewhere.
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Nope. Temp powers/buffs.
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ooh - are these Empowerment Stations some of the affordable items for smaller SGs that you've mentioned in the past?
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Doubtful
You MAY be able to use see them once if you get into the largest SG in your server, you know, the one that is forced to have a 48 hour log in rule or you get kicked because they have so much activity.
Might we see an end to the arguement over the internal makeup of the offices at a place I wager none of us have ever seen, much less worked in? Could we please stop arguing over Schrodinger's Cat now since we'll never really know exactly what the day to day work inside the company is like nor have any real idea what the structure of the place is, much less have any say-so over the workload division?
You are not arguing whether what is being done is right or wrong, you're arguing over whether some ignorant player's assumption of what things might be like inside a place he's never seen in a company he's never worked for, is right or wrong! He doesn't know any more than you do, so it might be a nice idea if we dropped the massive egos and talked instead about something we do have information on, or opinions about: the game.
You can argue fictional management techniques until you're blue in the face, it has nothing to do with anything. Statesman isn't going to read a post and decide, "by golly, he's right, what a fool I've been - my entire department is mis-managed!" (Well... he might, but I think it's highly unlikely). If you worked for the company and can tell us exactly what each Developer spends his time on, how many work on what game for what portion of their work-day, and what their priorities are - then maybe we've got something to work with. Otherwise all this is becomming is a massive ego-fest over opinions.
Or carry on, I guess. Though it seems silly to me to get all upset over something you have no knowledge of, (though if you do have experience in such things it might be nice to point out that NONE OF US KNOW WHAT THIS COMPANY IS UP TO, so we can stop other people from taking ignorant assumption as certified fact).
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A more boring and far more likely guess would be an enhancement store. If I'm wrong, I'll be happily surprised.
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Nope. Temp powers/buffs.
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Yaaaay!
Now if only SG bases weren't so horribly expensive! 
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And didn't require CoV
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Oh yea, you do can scratch that from the pure CoH list of features for I7, i totaly forgot about that bit.
Did you read? There is some CoH stuff in it. Just not enough for you and others that focus on CoH.
By the by, just because you may have read something on their workflow model does not mean you really know what it's like.
Believe me I can try to explain ours here in the insurance industry and I wouldn't do it justice. There are so many loops and twists and management systems that it can make your eyes bleed.
And the person who spoke of not releasing material as it's done, BRAVO!
Doing QA in the past I loathed when we patched off schedule to "fix something". It just meant more things would break because of a hasty fix or improvement.
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What happened to a team on each project?
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I keep seeing this, so I have to wonder if I was the only one who presumed the different teams were only existing before CoV was released? Or, more specifically, that the resource allocation and design deadlines were kept distinct only until CoV hit the shelves?
I never thought they'd keep the games completely isolated once they both existed, coupling together in a PvP frenzy. I'm sure different people are assigned different coding tasks -- some CoV, some CoH -- but as an ongoing, perpetual situation? Hardly.
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Will the mission sharing feature for completing the same mission on a team at least make it to V7? At least give us some kind of table scrap from 4 months ago. 
Please don't make us wait 6-10 months for this also.
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Someone probably already posted this but.
States posted a few months ago that "Newspaper" missions and joint mission completion are linked. Don't get one without the other. And we won't be getting Newspaper missions in I7.
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Well as it is even when we get stuff it breaks alot of stuff. They bring out an update and have to patch it to get it to work. Go play CoV with an ATI card. Or go back to Oct and try getting half the badges...many of which are STILL getting fixed.
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Welcome to the world of PC development, where there are 100 configurations you can't test on for every 1 you have available to you.
Bugs happen. Honestly, I think the CoX team does a better-than-average job keeping the game running and playable, under the circumstances. (Obviously, you have the right to think I'm nuts.)
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Missed where you have to overhaul code to add more levels...aside from lvl 40 contacts directing you to level 41+ contacts...
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Well, for one thing, it's quite likely they're adding a few new villain groups... who will probably have combinations of powers we've not encountered before. That will, in turn, result in interactions between AI and PC powers that haven't been seen (or, in some cases, anticipated) by developers, which will in turn require some changes to one or the other, which will impact other AIs and PCs... etc.
I could outline similar thought processes for mission maps and city zones. And then, outside of what can strictly be called "41-50" content, there's the ripple effect that the addition of Mayhem Missions and new villain ATs will have on the rest of the game.
Make no mistake, I7 is very likely to involve significant changes to a lot of common code. There's no such thing as a "trivial change" when this many additions and updates are visible to the end user.
An argument was implied where none existed. If the tone of the post implied that, it was completely unintentional and I deeply and sincerely apologize to those parties who were under teh false impression.
In other words, I was just being snarky - sorry
On another note - lunch time
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A more boring and far more likely guess would be an enhancement store. If I'm wrong, I'll be happily surprised.
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Nope. Temp powers/buffs.
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O_O don't suppose the idea for this came from ppls posts in This thread! did they o.o
I am Sleepy! Hear me Yawn!!
Veni, Vidi, Dormivi!
-Alpha Kitty of the Guardian chapter of the Legion of Catgirls
Never forget--Sleepy could conquer the world, if she could just stay awake long enough. =) -Llanwe
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You are not arguing whether what is being done is right or wrong, you're arguing over whether some ignorant player's assumption of what things might be like inside a place he's never seen in a company he's never worked for, is right or wrong! He doesn't know any more than you do, so it might be a nice idea if we dropped the massive egos and talked instead about something we do have information on, or opinions about: the game.
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Which is, at the end of the day, all I'm doing -- pointing out reasonable explanations for why the developers' decisions aren't based on idiocy, malice, duplicity, or favoritism.
Is my view of the way things work within Cryptic/NCSoft accurate? I have no idea. But I think it's a lot more likely than some of the hysterical conspiracy-theorist postulations that I've seen crop up in this thread (and others), and just this once, I decided to step in and (gasp) defend the devs. Because, honestly, I think they've been doing some good work lately.
It's NOT about ego, it's NOT about me bring right. It's about asking people to at least think about some of the paranoid crap they're spouting, and actually consider the possibility that the devs might have a good reason for operating the way they do.
Edit: Geez, could I have made a worse typo than "It's not about ego, it's about me bring right" if I had tried? 
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Is the plan to make CoH a "finished" game, because that's not what I expected from an MMO.
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Ok, this is the sort of conversation thread that is going to cause the devs to roll their eyes at us.
CoH isn't "finished", and the devs have no illusions that it is. CoV did need the lion's share of attention in I7, for all the reasons stated multiple times by various people in this thread.
Once and for all, just to make myself 100% clear... I'm not walking away from the game (I did, once, for six months, for better reasons). I'm not going to bash the devs for their decisions about what and when to release (especially since I know how the software business works, well enough to know that some of these decisions were likely made by people higher up the food chain). I'm not going to call Jack a "tard".
What I am going to do -- what I'd expect users of the code I write at my job to do -- is to make it clear what is and isn't working for me, in terms of gameplay, communication, and release schedules.
I greatly enjoy CoH, and I will continue to enjoy it even if there isn't a true PvE content update for the hero side until November. But I'd enjoy it a lot more if Cryptic/NCSoft could find a way to "soften the blow" of the (justifiably) disproportionate attention that CoV is receiving right now.
Jack himself said that there were CoH-specific pieces considered for I7 release... so, fine. Throw the heroes a (small) bone, one that won't disrupt I7 and I8 schedules too much. Pick one nifty piece of CoH functionality that's close to release, isn't mired hip-deep in balance issues, and can be easily "broken off" from the rest of the I8 development (and QA) effort. Then, bend the unwritten rule that content updates get saved for updates, and work that chunk into a patch when it's finished... preferably, no more than a month or so after I7 goes live.
There. Done.
That's all I'm asking for right now, the rest can wait. Is that such an unreasonable request? I don't think it falls under the heading of "Issue Hysteria".