Why would you think they have documents to this effect internally? How big do you think this organization is?
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Whether that would be less work and angst than dealing with the bursts of outrage accompanying nearly every issue you'd have to judge internally.
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It wouldn't. WoW's patch notes are much better than CoX's. They also typically get announced even further ahead of time than they do here. What this results in is whinging that starts much earlier and lasts much longer.
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If you chose you could involve the playerbase in doing a lot of the work for you, with Q&A discussion threads in the AT forums, perhaps. The forum community has shown itself quite capable of responding favorably to requests to help collate and organize information in the past, and to gain a clear statement from the developers on just what it is they are trying to accomplish with each power I rather suspect they'd jump at the chance to do it again.
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I personally would love to have pre-announced Q&A sessions with the developers, openly on the forums, once a year or so. But I think the net effect of that would be a bunch of players who each have their own vision of how things should be -- and yes, I myself am among them -- questioning the developer's decisions. For that, we already have this forum. Even if we managed miraculously to get a good, friendly, informative discussion going, the best it could do is temporarily quell the blind, directionless rage that geeks endlessly seek to sate on the Internet. There would be no long-term benefit to this.
Accept that the developers can't address each individual complaint, and that they do address large-scale complaints. If they didn't, you wouldn't even have had the fodder to write this up in the first place.
Before I respond, please define "recent development history" and "large portion of the playerbase" as you are using them in your OP.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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Most of the players have (I thought correctly) been assuming that any implementation of powers which survived internal testing, closed beta, and open beta to reach live WAS "working as intended".
[/ QUOTE ] This is your first MMO isn't it.
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Even if we managed miraculously to get a good, friendly, informative discussion going, the best it could do is temporarily quell the blind, directionless rage that geeks endlessly seek to sate on the Internet. There would be no long-term benefit to this.
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Personally, I think the "temporary quelling" you mention is a pipe dream, unless you're talking in terms of a few hours at best.
Agreed, Memphis_Bill, it likely is a pipe-dream. Most things worth doing are when somebody first suggests them, and the majority remain that way. On the off chance it isn't, I'd like to see the devs tell us what their design vision for powers is.
Actually, I'd like to see their thoughts on powers regardless of whether it would accomplish that particular goal. The few times I've seen them discuss an individual power their comments have been fairly well reasoned and at least internally consistent.
Hard to judge if that's just the excellence of the individual developer who happens to be posting, but since its been commented several times that they have constraints on what they CAN tell us, clearly there are internal guidelines and discussions and staff meetings. Like we needed that hint to tell us there would be.
And, no, this is not my first rodeo... er, MMO. Sixth or seventh, maybe more, depending partially on definitions. I'm old and wise enough not to post often (though not quick enough on the uptake to have avoided MMO forums eating my life before (grin)), though I've been reading nearly since I subbed... 30 months ago? Gah, has it been so long? I kinda like CoX, think it has a lot of potential and can really develop into something even more special than it currently is.
I lived through the death spiral that was SWG, and hung on far past the point I knew the place was dead. And that perhaps makes me particularly sensitive to sweeping changes and the Neverending Nerf Cycle. Since I've several times seen one developer or another speak about how they thought a power should be working, thought it worth a shot to see if they'd share their ideas.
I doubt they can make the time, they got this game to develop I hear. But I also have seen what the forum community and places like ParagonWiki, Badge-Hunter, and the Titan network have accomplished. I do not think it is entirely implausible that some sort of joint effort COULD create better explanations of each power than the in-game text and real powers numbers and player experience seem to give us. (shrug) The idea is out there, and I'm sure the forum crowd can vastly improve the notion if they deem it worth the bother.
Hunter's Forty-Sixth Rule: If your head explodes, you were thinking too much, otherwise you shouldn't worry about the possibility.
The issue is if they need to tone something down because of a bug and they start blabbing about it before trying to fix it they might as well start a thread called "Official Exploits!"
That's not even the issue.
What was the "vision" in issue 0?
How about issue 5? 6?
The "vision," as you want to call it, is always changing. Whether through staff changes, finding new ways to work ideas in (or just plain ideas that come up,) ideas that look like they work one way on paper but, after some time seeing it live, are broken, or - as in the recharge bit so many are up in arms about - an elegant solution doesn't fix a problem, other solutions don't, so another that affects even more ends up being what is adopted.
Will the players care about any of this? *Very* few - the rest will scream (as is already happening) "You said THIS! This is carved in stone, written with the very hand of $deity! you lied to us! DOOOM!"
ANY design document in a constantly evolving product such as an MMO must, by needs, be a living document, one that must allow for change continually. Asking them their "vision" is only their "vision" at this particular moment in time (not to mention probably stupid as far as "Show the competition what you have in mind.")
The developers don't "need to publicly tell us their vision for powers" - or anything else to do in the game. In fact, it's probably a *horrible* idea to do so, as any such comment will be taken as a sworn-on-holy-book, unbreakable promise... even if it's only a comment, with a disclaimer (see "Single server environment" for an example of this. Or, even better, Jack/Statesman's "We don't have any more wholesale changes to powers planned" after the GDN... and people calling him on it with ED. To him, from what he said, he was telling the truth - they changed how enhancements work, not powers. Now, admittedly, Jack generally shouldn't have been allowed to say much at all at times - and ED was, IIRC, already in place internally - but still.)
Again, Memphis_Bill, not much argument there. I am not sure were I running things I'd want to nail myself down quite so much, though I do feel pretty strongly that the basic ruleset needs to be both stable and "published", for lack of a better term. I give the current team on CoX pretty high marks on keeping us more or less up to date on how things work... not so much on rule stability, though still pretty darn good overall.
Keep in mind, though, that we have on more than one occasion of late been given explanations of why changes are being made that involve what I'm referring to as their 'vision" of how a particular power works. I forget if any of them have ever used that particular term, but they've certainly referred on more than one occasion to a power not working as they intended. So what are these intentions they keep breaking things (from some of our admittedly narrow viewpoints) to satisfy? Inquiring minds wanna know and all that.
And as you've already pointed out, people are ALREADY seizing on any little scrap of comment and trying to hold them to it. Look at how many folks have various quotes from developers about one power or game change or another in their sig, usually with an editorial comment. Might be nice for THEM to at least be held to what they actually meant at that time, rather than some snippet that they intended to mean something entirely different.
I submit for consideration the notion that, perhaps, MORE information might be better than the model up to now. The collected wisdom of the players in the form of the forums, guides, wikis, and website has certainly helped enhance MY experience of CoX. Makes no never mind to me, I'll survive whatever happens, it IS just a game, after all. (laugh)
Hunter's Forty-Sixth Rule: If your head explodes, you were thinking too much, otherwise you shouldn't worry about the possibility.
I think the "vision" would be the pursuit of game balance to provide adequate challenge while providing maximum entertainment.
However, on one hand, you have game mechanics, and on the other, you have the players. Players who tweak builds like race cars, study AI and develop tactics to "Make difficult things look stupidly easy" or whatever.
You have fire/kins who can take out huge numbers of groups all by themselves. You have /FF and /Storm controllers soloing AVs. Many tanks can stand against a slew of +6 foes and not get scratched. And when the novelty of such things wears off, people get bored and leave. So the Devs sometimes need to step up and make things a little more interesting.
I remember hover used to provide KB mitigation. I remember in the description it even said this, and that if you got hit with a KB power, you'd spin in place, recover, then could attack again. But then the devs lengthened the recovery time and said "it was never intended" to give KB protection. For 10 issues it worked this way, but suddenly, it "was never intended"?
See, I could live with it if they said "We've noticed that characters with hover are over-performing against certain foes, using a level 6 power to gain an unfair advantage and mitigate that foe's only defense against a more intelligent human being, so we've decided to tweak things to ensure players are adequately challenged". That may come off as cooperate BS, but at least it wouldn't be a lie that spits in the face of 4 years of how a power worked.
Also, now that you can get a KB protection IO, plus the fact that getting KBed with hover on is still less detrimental than not having it, this isn't a huge issue in particular.
However, in the spirit of the thread, i must say that I have grown weary of "Yeah this power was never meant to be this good" and wish the developers would either make up their minds, or be more forthcoming about adjustments they plan on making... OR, give us something in return.
The pet recharge thing springs to mind. The only efficient way to fix the AI was to prevent them from recharging too fast. So, ok, they don't attack as fast now, BUT, they also can't be slowed down, and now they'll fight more effectively, which (this has to be tested more thoroughly) may increase their overall damage. That's okay (for the most part... there are some psuedo pets that this will only count as a nerf for), but YMMV
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
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I remember in the description it even said this...
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Screenshot, or it didn't happen.
Please do not be an example of precisely the kind of player that is a demonstration of why they don't state that kind of thing.
Dawncaller - The Circle of Dawn
Too many blasted alts to list, but all on Virtue.
Precisely, 'Steele. The hover change was one that irritated me immensely, even tho it really was a pretty minor change. A LOT of my heroes had used hover for KB mitigation. It really irks me to have something work one way for YEARS, then suddenly change to a different set of rules.
This development team is FAR better at communicating with the playerbase than most whose games I've played. Which makes it even more mystifying that they make these sort of poorly communicated changes in the first place, then scramble to mend fences afterward. My suggestion is made in the spirit of disclosure they seem to (eventually) end up reaching in the end, anyway.
As someone noted, there are going to be concerns of exposing exploits, though the level of info I am suggesting they disclose I don't immediately see any danger of that. On the other hand, people find the damndest things to exploit. (shrug) I wish development teams would be as accepting of players being clever as players are of devs changing things constantly.... hmmn, perhaps they already are. (grin)
Anyway, to your main point. I, too, am rather tired of the flux and flow of the definitions of powers. I actually DO tend to believe that the team has a consistent idea of how they want things to work. I really do NOT think they are just winging it, and that there DO exist documents and guidelines for how it all fits together. Given the nature of software development, and to a lesser extent any big project, at the very least someone will have scads of notes and emails saved recording what they decided in staff meetings.
On the other hand, we've seen clear cases where "somebody didn't read that memo", so to speak. We saw a good example of that in the pet recharge issue ongoing right now. Castle conceded that the person who wrote the patch notes on the change didn't know the full story, and consequently wrote a note that left out a lot.
Despite REALLY disliking the pet recharge nerf, the reaction of the development team to this one I found somewhat encouraging. Castle responded very quickly, and immediately made it clear that there'd been a mistake and the patch note WAS misleading. Then he waded right into an exposition of why they felt the change necessary, and why it was not open for discussion.
Again, I don't agree with the change, nor the reasoning behind it. But they DO seem to be moving toward a more open dialog about the way and the reasons they do things, which I think is healthy. Now if we can just figure out how to convince Castle that the Nerf power is grossly overpowered and "not working as intended"... (grin)
My biggest complaint about the pet recharge change is not the decline in combat power of many sets. It is the process, AND the loss of customizability. We have combat power to spare, for most AT/powerset combinations.
But we're losing options and viable alternate character building paths at an alarming rate. And to my mind that is far more valuable than some extra damage or higher attack rates, and a LOT less likely to be datamined and rebalanced at some nebulous future date. Not that I discount the nuts and bolts DPS "adjustments", I just suspect that the diminishing options will do a lot more to drive large numbers away.
Hunter's Forty-Sixth Rule: If your head explodes, you were thinking too much, otherwise you shouldn't worry about the possibility.
[ QUOTE ]
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I remember in the description it even said this...
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Screenshot, or it didn't happen.
Please do not be an example of precisely the kind of player that is a demonstration of why they don't state that kind of thing.
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Just out of curiousity, do you take screenshots of every power description just in case they are silently changed at some point? My recollection matchs 'Steele's, not that it means a lot. I was rather surprised that the description DIDN'T mention hover working against knockback when I checked after that change was announced, and am left unsure whether my memory of it saying that is faulty, or if it was silently changed in anticipation of the change.
I kinda hope somebody DOES have an ancient screenshot of hover's description floating around, just because I'd like to know one way or the other. Though as many others have pointed out, what does a screenshot really prove, anyway? Anyone who is halfway decent with photoshop can make a screenshot say whatever they want. But I know whatcha mean. Hmmmn... how many screenshots WOULD it take to record all the power descriptions.... (grin)
Hunter's Forty-Sixth Rule: If your head explodes, you were thinking too much, otherwise you shouldn't worry about the possibility.
No, but my recollection is that knockback was never, ever mentioned in it, and that the power description focused on the fact that it was slower, cheaper than regular Fly, and provided defense. I also point out that while hovering no longer completely negates knockback, it still mitigates against it.
If it happened, someone will have a screenshot, somewhere (and yes, it's theoretically possible to photoshop it, but someone would have to be a huge jackass to do that, and it would essentially prove my point). Not attempting to be brusque, but if someone makes an assertion, then it is up to them to back it up.
I'd actually like to see that description, to be honest, out of sheer, morbid curiosity.
Dawncaller - The Circle of Dawn
Too many blasted alts to list, but all on Virtue.
Well, the description on ParagonWiki for Hover looks very much like what I remember. But that proves absolutely nothing, because anybody could have edited in anything they want on a wiki, and clearly there's text in there which did not come from copying the game text. It was such a minor nuisance from a play standpoint I never went looking, I bet people posted screenies at the time if there actually was a change.
Hunter's Forty-Sixth Rule: If your head explodes, you were thinking too much, otherwise you shouldn't worry about the possibility.
That's part of the problem with searching powers on the wiki - sometimes there needs to be a clear demarcation where Official Description ends, and Player Commentary begins. >_<
Oh well. I might as well get my shovel on.
Dawncaller - The Circle of Dawn
Too many blasted alts to list, but all on Virtue.
I dug around and found my original paper manual, and a copy of the PDF version dated July 26, 2005. Both of them read precisely as the current in-game text. Does not entirely rule out there having been text added at some point and then taken back out, but that seems quite unlikely. I think we can at least tentatively put that into the busted myth category.
Oh bother... we just threadjacked my thread, didn't we? Oh well. The search for truth is worth it.
Hunter's Forty-Sixth Rule: If your head explodes, you were thinking too much, otherwise you shouldn't worry about the possibility.
I dug around the history of the Wiki, and saw the line I think you both might have been referring to - but again, the lack of obvious difference between player commentary and in-game description makes me think it's someone commenting on the power, not part of the actual description.
(Yeah, sorry about the threadjack. >_<
Dawncaller - The Circle of Dawn
Too many blasted alts to list, but all on Virtue.
Oh, no worries, I'm a pirate at heart anyway. (grin) Not too sure but what it was me who did the actual threadjacking anyway, too lazy to look up that far. We could probably steer the discussion back to the original topic if we really wanted to, but I can't think of anything interesting to say at the moment. Maybe I'll go start an "Intention of the Brawl power" somewhere and try to get Castle to explain the tao of Brawl. Gotta start somewhere, and if things get outta hand and the discussion causes a nerf, I doubt all that many people will scream and chase me with pitchforks and torches.
Hunter's Forty-Sixth Rule: If your head explodes, you were thinking too much, otherwise you shouldn't worry about the possibility.
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I dug around the history of the Wiki, and saw the line I think you both might have been referring to - but again, the lack of obvious difference between player commentary and in-game description makes me think it's someone commenting on the power, not part of the actual description.
(Yeah, sorry about the threadjack. >_<
[/ QUOTE ]The wiki text regarding knockback is not and never has been part of the in-game description.
Also, the main reason Hover got changed was not because it was "never intended" to grant KB mitigation (it wasn't really intended, but that's not the point). The main reason was because they finally realized that during Hover's KB animation, the player was free from rooting, which is one of the core limitations of many powers.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
The 'vision' never intended for Black Dwarf mire to be the awesome power it is. The 'vision' never intended for Siphon life to deal the damage it does. And in both cases - no you can't have them back.
Then don't publish them live in the first place. And CERTAINLY don't wait 2 and 3 years to make such jarring changes to correct problems only the devs are even aware are an issue.
Honestly, did ANYONE besides the dev team ever even consider that hover was not rooting? It wasn't a priority to watch for such comments, and I only read a half dozen forums or so exhaustively, but I certainly can't recall EVER seeing a report that hover was not rooting. Probably because nobody had a clue it SHOULD. Which quite neatly brings us back to the concept of "vision" or "intention" descriptions for each power. (grin)
I hadn't the slightest idea, my heroes would twirl in midair and go on with the fight. That and the other changes around the same time to enforce animations had a VERY noticeable impact on the flow of combat. There's a very distinct jerkiness as each of these "corrected" animations grabs your hero.
These changes in timing are non-trivial, because the thousands of repetitions of hitting your powers keys in certain sequences has been programmed into your motor memory. Ask any trainer of any physical skill - it takes far MORE training to "unlearn" any sequence of motions and "program" a new one to motor memory than it does to do so on a "clean slate".
Now, full disclosure, I know enough about ergonomics and training physical skills that I've deliberately set up my control scheme for playing CoH to take advantage of the way your mind and body learn repetitive tasks. So I am quite likely a lot more sensitive to subtle changes in the flow of things than other players. On the other hand, I've seen people discussing keyboard and window layouts in the forums, and several folks advocate layouts very similar to mine.
Anyway, that's the root of my complaint about the continual dull roar of changes to the basic gaming systems. For what I perceive as at best minimal improvement to some esoteric aspect of the game, they keep changing basic elements in such a way as to change the flow enough to badly throw off timing. Took me quite a while to realize why little changes like the hover correction or the recent changes to kheldian shape-shifting were so jarring to me. It is almost a subliminal thing, but every time they put one of these changes in, the game becomes markedly less enjoyable to me for a while. And they'be been doing it a LOT in the past couple of issues. I rather suspect that it has never occurred to them either just how subtly annoying tweaks which change the flow and timing of combat can be.
Yeah, you eventually learn the new flow, and it seldom rises to the level of more than a nuisance. But I think it DOES impact people's enjoyment of the game. At the very least, though, if they're going to insist on putting us through that kind of irritation on a regular basis, it would be polite if nothing else to explain WHY it is so important to them.
Go wade through all 90+ (combined) pages in the two biggest threads of the current brouhaha about pet recharge inheritance. Notice how the tenor of comments changes drastically once Castle started sharing information. You see that effect very often in these tempests in the forum teapot.
I sadly doubt that even taking the entire code base of the game open source, sharing the drives of all their computers, and putting webcams through all their offices would completely cut down on the screaming and yelling when they make changes. But there does seems to be a pretty direct correlation between their judicious sharing of information and goodwill from the player base.
Hunter's Forty-Sixth Rule: If your head explodes, you were thinking too much, otherwise you shouldn't worry about the possibility.
I was going to post my thoughts... but then found that Bill did it better then I could have expected to (once again - Curse you, Bill!).
To be slightly cheeky, Bladesnow, your idea sounds good on paper, but my experience suggests that the actual implementation of such would not go as you planned it to.
As cold and pessimistic as that sounds, in regards to the community at large.
Yeah, my observations of Bill over the years lead me to agree with ya. (laugh) Your point is quite true, Miko, things might not work out. But, then, the same observation is true of an MMO based on superheroes, and that has seemed to work out fairly well. Some of these things you can't tell 'til ya try. I'll just observe that CoX seems to have a markedly better cut of player than a lot of MMOs I've been involved in, and I think there's at least a chance that some variant of this idea could help in several ways. Probably at least as good a chance it could be a spectacular failure, too, luckily tis not up to me to decipher how to proceed on this or any other topic.
Lets face it, what WE think of any idea is not as important as what the developers think. Which was my entire point in posting the notion in the first place; the hope that they would look at the idea and think about it. We keep hearing from them that they made this, that, or the other (apparently) unpopular change because of how they think a power should work. What I've referred to as the "vision" of a power, and they've often referenced as "intent" or "design". Tao may well be a better word for it. (laugh)
My main point is that if they are going to keep trotting the way powers were intended to work out as reasons for changes, it would be nice to document just what they mean. They have already graciously given us an ingame description, the real powers display, and empirical testing of powers to figure out how powers ARE working. If that differs vastly from how they are INTENDED to work, some warning of that difference might go a long way toward maintaining player/developer relations at the level of semi-civilized restrained seething resentment rather than full scale tooth and nail, bloody war. (Humor impaired warning applies)
Hunter's Forty-Sixth Rule: If your head explodes, you were thinking too much, otherwise you shouldn't worry about the possibility.
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Yeah, my observations of Bill over the years lead me to agree with ya. )
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o,O
*closes blinds*
Originally buried in the "Pet Recharge Inheritance Change" thread started by Castle. Thought the notion worth cleaning up and posting as a suggestion so it has some chance of being seen.
For the third time or so just in recent development history, a sweeping change has been made to powers that at least a large portion of the playerbase views as negative and seems wildly unpopular with them. (see "nerf") Once again, the developers sent into the lion's den to explain their reasoning used phrases like "... powers which were never meant to have ..." and the much despised "not working as intended".
My proposal is simply this: the developers need to publicly tell us their "vision" for the powers. Most of the players have (I thought correctly) been assuming that any implementation of powers which survived internal testing, closed beta, and open beta to reach live WAS "working as intended". And the design philosophy & vision could be deduced by observation and testing - apparently another incorrect assumption. Thus their understandable (to me anyway) annoyance when years later it is suddenly announced that some power or game subsystem is "not working as intended" and is going to be "adjusted".
Much of this could be avoided and/or mitigated if you told us HOW you think each power should work. If the vision of the power is so important to you that you're willing to seriously annoy large numbers of paying customers, it should be important enough to tell them about BEFORE they are annoyed and while they are still paying customers. A developer prepared (or at least approved) statement of design intent for each power seems to be one way to (perhaps) head off some of these misunderstandings.
Yes, I understand the magnitude of what I'm suggesting. I have to assume you have at least some documents like this internally, but they almost certainly would be nearly as much work to rewrite for release as starting from scratch. Whether that would be less work and angst than dealing with the bursts of outrage accompanying nearly every issue you'd have to judge internally.
All you have to do is browse the player guides section of the forums and pick out one of each guide for each AT/powerset combo to get an idea of the sheer volume of text involved. Of course, that very exercise of looking at the player guides for that notion of size shows a possible path to making the task reasonable. If you chose you could involve the playerbase in doing a lot of the work for you, with Q&A discussion threads in the AT forums, perhaps. The forum community has shown itself quite capable of responding favorably to requests to help collate and organize information in the past, and to gain a clear statement from the developers on just what it is they are trying to accomplish with each power I rather suspect they'd jump at the chance to do it again.
I will also comment in passing that, though I've come to believe such a series of documents would probably be a good idea, indeed nearly a necessity at this point, that I myself disagree with the design philosophy apparently behind the need. There seems in my view to be an increasing drive from recent development cycles to strait-jacket character designs into fairly narrow channels, though that perceived net effect may well not be the intent of the development team. Be that as it may... I have some hope that more experienced members of the community will think over the idea and provide further refinement and critique in the inimitable fashion so well beloved by all.
Hunter's Forty-Sixth Rule: If your head explodes, you were thinking too much, otherwise you shouldn't worry about the possibility.