City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Discussion: Issue 19 Launch Update

Airhammer

By Airhammer,
Posted on: 2010-11-17 24:10 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bloodspeaker View Post
Yep, you're absolutely right; they SHOULD stop giving us release dates.
But they won't, because no company will stop advertising the new stuff they've got coming because they want to retain their customer base. Maybe they'll stop giving specific dates, and keep using stuff like 'after thanksgiving' instead (like they've done in the past with phrases like 'first quarter', 'late summer', etc. But even in those cases, if they say 'after thanksgiving', it would need to come out soon after thanksgiving, not some time in january or february. Sure, captain semantics can say 'hey they said 'after thanksgiving' and february is after thanksgiving', but the implied meaning is still clear, and they'd still be late in delivering on their implied release date.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nethergoat View Post
point of order:

as the people who set the agenda and given their historic reluctance to specify dates they can't really be 'late'.


can they produce content at a rate you personally find unimpressive?
yes.

does that make it 'late'?
no.
Point of order, lol?

OK, your honor, the devs clearly indicated the alpha slot would be in GR. It wasn't. Now it's in i19 (whenever that releases), and late. They said they were shooting for the 16th. They missed that date, now it's later still. So, yeah, they absolutely can be 'late' on stuff they tell us they are releasing, and they are most certainly late in getting out the first incarnate slot.

Is it the end of the world? Of course not. But to claim they're not late on something when in fact they clearly are, is nothing less than fantasy.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cyber_naut View Post
Point of order, lol?

OK, your honor, the devs clearly indicated the alpha slot would be in GR. It wasn't. Now it's in i19 (whenever that releases), and late. They said they were shooting for the 16th. They missed that date, now it's later still. So, yeah, they absolutely can be 'late' on stuff they tell us they are releasing, and they are most certainly late in getting out the first incarnate slot.

Is it the end of the world? Of course not. But to claim they're not late on something when in fact they clearly are, is nothing less than fantasy.
Not only did they miss the date, but the "apology" post from WW was put out a day AFTER the tentative live date. At least when they (Positron if I remember right) announced that the Alpha Slot would not go into GR as previously promised they said something a good LONG time before hand, not the day after it was supposed to go live.

To be honest I am still OK with them holding this until they get it fixed, I am just not so happy about the history of tardiness this company has.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Schismatrix View Post
Don't worry, you'll eventually encounter some of the posts by people like Championess who do in fact insist that the current Dev team is doing nearly everything wrong.

[Citation needed]
And on these forums, I seem to run into even more posters who claim the devs can do no wrong, even to the point of trying to claim they are not late on things they clearly are late on.

They said they were shooting for 4 updates this year. At best we're going to get 3, and two of them consisted and/or will consist of parts that were originally supposed to be in GR. The biggest part of i17 was ultramode, which was released to stall for time to finish GR. GR was supposed to be out in july, but ended up coming out in august, minus the promised incarnate level, which was delayed to i19. A big part of the free i18 content that was released with GR was the repaired COP trial, that's been broken and out of the game for... 4 years.

Again, not claiming its the end of the world, but they have been late with releases, and not connecting on their goals and promises. I can see an argument as to degree, but seeing people imply that they don't see the devs missing their marks defies reality.

I love this game and think the devs overall do a great job, but I don't think its blasphemy to criticize them for missing on goals they themselves set.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by GMan3 View Post
Not only did they miss the date, but the "apology" post from WW was put out a day AFTER the tentative live date. At least when they (Positron if I remember right) announced that the Alpha Slot would not go into GR as previously promised they said something a good LONG time before hand, not the day after it was supposed to go live.

To be honest I am still OK with them holding this until they get it fixed, I am just not so happy about the history of tardiness this company has.

Why did she apologize, according to some posters here, they're not late on anything... lol.

If you go back, you'll see that I too understand that the delay was necessary, because you cant release an update that cripples an entire AT. Of course that doesn't mean they're not late releasing the incarnate material, and even later still after this bug, and it doesn't make being late ok and something that doesn't deserve some criticism.

And to be fair, this company is not unique in being late on release dates, it's actually pretty common in the software industry, but as a customer that also doesn't really make it OK.

Again, not a huge deal, but lets not pretend there's nothing here to discuss. Glad to see that I'm not the only one who sees an issue here.

 

Posted

Not going to hit on the issue of if the issue being delayed is good or not, just address a few things that have come up.

The idea that i19 being late is analogous to us as players wanting to be late with our payments isn't really a direct comparision. It would be like us, the players, saying we were going to start paying NCSoft an extra dollar a month and then saying that we were going to be late starting that. When NCSoft is late delivering us expansion content, they're still delivering us the vast, overwhelming majority of the rest of the game that is paid for. If we didn't pay our fees, we'd be giving NCSoft nothing at all. So, apples and oranges as far as the comparision goes.

The 40% of the player base thing in regards to PVP'ers. I get that the point ACTUALLY wasn't that 40% of the player base at any one time was made up of PVP'ers. The point was that the number of PVP'ers back in the day would be equal to 40% of the population now. Also, that they'd been willing to honk off a number of people equal to 40% of today's game population making (apparently) icky changes to PVP. However, the way it was presented was a bit dodgey and left many with the implication that the statement was indeed that NCSoft had screwed over 40% of it's player base. Very... Fox News. ;D

Lastly, it all comes down to this: NCSoft and Paragon Studios is a corporate entity designed to make money. If you don't like the way you're being treated by said company, stop giving them your business. I got fed up with constant rate hikes with my Cable and so I dropped them. Cable, like the game, isn't something I need to surive. Also, if you're serious about motivating change then making complaints on the forum isn't really all that productive. You're a paying customer at that point, and even if you're an annoyed paying customer you're still paying, which is what said corporate entity really cares about (sorry to say it, but it's true). The way to make a company stop doing business the way it has is to make it less profitable for them to continue doing business that way. The implication made is that the company isn't as profitable as it has been in the past, but aside from the look-in audience that the game got in Q3 of 2005, there doesn't seem to have been these huge fluctuations in the earnings even looking at the provided graph. Yeah, there was a downturn recently because the entire economy turned down. People were worried about being evicted from their houses, losing their jobs, etc. But the City franchise seems to be doing about as well as can be expected. So, unless they see a serious drop off they're probably going to keep on keepin' on. The bottom line is this: If they're not doing what you think they should be doing, why keep paying them?

Edit: OK, I lied. I will mention one thing about the delay, and it being good or bad. I'd rather have had KOTOR2 late and complete instead of on time and being what we got. So, that influences my feelings on delays more then a bit. :P

 

Posted

*Reads the later posts in the thread*

Hmm, a bunch of people that have never worked in Software development talking about release dates, and puntuality.

Also, people ignore games and other software that have very early release dates that companies stick to that end up being rushed, very buggy, barely usable products and then complain about their 'problems'

Delay something in order to get it working as well as it can be before release and you get yelled at the by the population for the delay.

Wanting something pefectly on time and working pefectly is not a desire that is grounded in reality.

"An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This individuality stuff is a bunch of BS." -General George Patton

-Lord Azazel

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cyber_naut View Post
Why did she apologize
pretty standard, even if it wasn't promised on the exact day, that's what they hoped to have it ready by.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Thanatos View Post
*Reads the later posts in the thread*

Hmm, a bunch of people that have never worked in Software development talking about release dates, and puntuality.

Also, people ignore games and other software that have very early release dates that companies stick to that end up being rushed, very buggy, barely usable products and then complain about their 'problems'

Delay something in order to get it working as well as it can be before release and you get yelled at the by the population for the delay.

Wanting something pefectly on time and working pefectly is not a desire that is grounded in reality.
+1 this is why being a game developer is a lose/lose situation

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Championess View Post
This does not change the fact that this game has been dissappointing one after the next. Changing one of the "main" features that was to be included when you purchased GR to the next issue so it became just one big new tutorial, then 3 months later it's only HALF of what the "first level with Going Rogue" meant, at this pace we should have the 10 levels by i40. Not to mention all of the other bugs and broken stuff that has been allowed to persist (Bases, PvP, etc..).....

They can't keep postponing stuff and reducing it, somewhere they have to say something, do it and get it out when there's an expectation for it.

I am more or less upset about the fact that this bug has been prevelant since the beginning of their closed beta testing and they have JUST now gotten around to acknowledging and listening to all of their beta players.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fanty View Post
The 40% of the player base thing in regards to PVP'ers. I get that the point ACTUALLY wasn't that 40% of the player base at any one time was made up of PVP'ers. The point was that the number of PVP'ers back in the day would be equal to 40% of the population now. Also, that they'd been willing to honk off a number of people equal to 40% of today's game population making (apparently) icky changes to PVP. However, the way it was presented was a bit dodgey and left many with the implication that the statement was indeed that NCSoft had screwed over 40% of it's player base. Very... Fox News. ;D

Lastly, it all comes down to this: NCSoft and Paragon Studios is a corporate entity designed to make money. If you don't like the way you're being treated by said company, stop giving them your business. I got fed up with constant rate hikes with my Cable and so I dropped them. Cable, like the game, isn't something I need to surive. Also, if you're serious about motivating change then making complaints on the forum isn't really all that productive. You're a paying customer at that point, and even if you're an annoyed paying customer you're still paying, which is what said corporate entity really cares about (sorry to say it, but it's true). The way to make a company stop doing business the way it has is to make it less profitable for them to continue doing business that way. The implication made is that the company isn't as profitable as it has been in the past, but aside from the look-in audience that the game got in Q3 of 2005, there doesn't seem to have been these huge fluctuations in the earnings even looking at the provided graph. Yeah, there was a downturn recently because the entire economy turned down. People were worried about being evicted from their houses, losing their jobs, etc. But the City franchise seems to be doing about as well as can be expected. So, unless they see a serious drop off they're probably going to keep on keepin' on. The bottom line is this: If they're not doing what you think they should be doing, why keep paying them?
The trouble is, I actually don't want this game to go under, the cost isn't all that relative. ESPN can be had in lots of different mediums, there's not real much vested interest in lots of corporate entities, but the characters I have spent so much time building and playing won't transfer over to that new Superhero game coming.

It's the boredome that has arisen the last few years that has been troubling.

I want them to know that outside of the people smothering praise on anything they say, they have to do business better. They are a bunch of IT people trying to also maintain a business structure, because lets be real, if you can't sell it, it will be hard to keep making it. Their business abilities are hindering their IT capabilities.

To blame a mass exodus of people all on the economy and not owning up to at least half of it on short-sightedness is detrimental to the overall sustainability of this game. I love hearing how the economy is the root of all evil and why something is doing bad. "The economy is the reason for GM's downfall!" No, if they actually took it upon themselves to adapt to changing habits they would have been better positioned with the competition out there. Quite a few other automakers did just fine for themselves these past few years. With the new influx of competition coming I hope these guys step up their game, I would actually like to get the 10 incarnate levels I was sold on when I purchased the "expansion".

If this game was proactive in trying to keep players with all of those people that have left in the past year and a half I don't see how not listening to 20-24k people seems to help them give a clear picture on how to maintain their business. (I used the PvP crowd as a base of reference as it was a pretty substantial amount to not listen to.)


Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord_Thanatos View Post
*Reads the later posts in the thread*

Hmm, a bunch of people that have never worked in Software development talking about release dates, and puntuality.

Also, people ignore games and other software that have very early release dates that companies stick to that end up being rushed, very buggy, barely usable products and then complain about their 'problems'

Delay something in order to get it working as well as it can be before release and you get yelled at the by the population for the delay.

Wanting something pefectly on time and working pefectly is not a desire that is grounded in reality.
Bottom line is getting something out there to make sure a rather large chunk of their customers would enjoy, no matter if the "I could care less if this game EVER added content" crowd doesn't see the big picture (the more people the longer the game you like to enjoy survives).

I understand issues arise and programming can be rather tough. But my point up top is that they seem to be ignoring the main ingredient for what should ensure this games future. Gauging the pulse of their customers. They have this large forum for their customers to congregate to, give players beta invites and yet they don't pay attention to someone posting that their Kheldian no longer works since the beginning of closed beta and they JUST now got to soliciting insight of what's going on because it seems like it is more game breaking than just to the one specific guy that happens to play a Kheldian in their beta, why does someone get invited to "closed beta" if they're not going to be listened to?

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Championess View Post
and yet they don't pay attention to someone posting that their Kheldian no longer works since the beginning of closed beta and they JUST now got to soliciting insight of what's going on because it seems like it is more game breaking than just to the one specific guy that happens to play a Kheldian in their beta.
Or they were trying to track the bug down themselves, just like they do with so many other bugs.

@Golden Girl

City of Heroes comics and artwork

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
Or they were trying to track the bug down themselves, just like they do with so many other bugs.
And that's the problem!

If they actually did give this person's bug report serious consideration can be left open to discussion another time.

It's the fact that they are making it much harder on themselves than they have to if they actually were trying to fix it themselves. It's not until they focused on it and solicited many peoples insight did they finally get an understanding that the inherents messed with the already auto functions available to ATs. Maybe they should solicit MORE player feedback, outside of just the fanboi's and girl, to see what direction that they should head their game. But their attempts at that usually end up in the rubble that is now PvP.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Championess View Post
And that's the problem!

If they actually did give this person's bug report serious consideration can be left open to discussion another time.

It's the fact that they are making it much harder on themselves than they have to if they actually were trying to fix it themselves. It's not until they focused on it and solicited many peoples insight did they finally get an understanding that the inherents messed with the already auto functions available to ATs. Maybe they should solicit MORE player feedback, outside of just the fanboi's and girl, to see what direction that they should head their game. But their attempts at that usually end up in the rubble that is now PvP.
Ummm, what? Clearly they were listening to the guy complaining about his kheldian seeing as they delayed the release cos of it and had the patch out for it pretty quickly after. You seem to be assuming that the bug was ignored until the last minute when it's more likely they we unable to find the cause easily, or fix it easily, and so had to delay.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Schismatrix View Post
Don't worry, you'll eventually encounter some of the posts by people like Championess who do in fact insist that the current Dev team is doing nearly everything wrong.

[Citation needed]
Your forum thing indicates you've even been here longer than I have.

What citation, beyond your own memories, do you need to be made aware that this dev team tends to overpromise now and then?

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Diggis View Post
Ummm, what? Clearly they were listening to the guy complaining about his kheldian seeing as they delayed the release cos of it and had the patch out for it pretty quickly after. You seem to be assuming that the bug was ignored until the last minute when it's more likely they we unable to find the cause easily, or fix it easily, and so had to delay.
A patch to open testing went through on the weekend prior to the 16th. Then a week later they get a patch with the situation corrected once they realized things weren't right. So within one weeks time they were able to figure out what was going on how? Because it was a major bug that had huge implications and now they had to listen and fix it. I guess they were too busy copy and pasting all of those "new" alternate animations from KM, DP and Demons into prexisting powers all of those 3 months that they couldn't aleviate the game of any "showstopper" bugs in the meantime. Funny once they realize they are overlooking something how swiftly it can be thought out. If it were my job I'd hope I was listening to everyone on MY beta forum providing useful information this whole time, even if they were condescending or purred on my lap with any acknowledgement. Guess the lightbulb went from dim to bright in a week huh...

Peoples inherents are broken.....we added new ones with inherent fitness....hmm lets get a detective, better yet lets talk to the people who are playing and reporting these broken features to see what insight we can gain from them because this is what we should have been doing anyways.

We'd be celebrating on the 16th-ish that i19 was released per their hopes (and ours), not after thanksgiving-ish.

All this has me looking forward to i20 in 2011-ish!

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Championess View Post
A patch to open testing went through on the weekend prior to the 16th. Then a week later they get a patch with the situation corrected once they realized things weren't right. So within one weeks time they were able to figure out what was going on how? Because it was a major bug that had huge implications and now they had to listen and fix it, if they had taken it seriously throughout the 3 months or so previous during their closed beta that it was reported and asked for insight just like they did this past week sometime within those months then maybe it would have been fixed and we'd be celebrating on the 16th-ish that i19 was released, not after thanksgiving-ish.

All this has me looking forward to i20 in 2011-ish!
Again, you are assuming they ignored it. So it took 2 patches to sort out. It still could have taken 3 months to find the cause, find a work around, internally test it, release it, discover it didn't work, figure out why, test it again. We only see the end results of this process. There is a shedload going on in the background that we don't see.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Diggis View Post
Again, you are assuming they ignored it. So it took 2 patches to sort out. It still could have taken 3 months to find the cause, find a work around, internally test it, release it, discover it didn't work, figure out why, test it again. We only see the end results of this process. There is a shedload going on in the background that we don't see.
The work around was to completely change how fitness was inherent. It's good to know that they can be completely befuddled about something, have no insight, then in a weeks time figure out the root of the problem and redo how inherent fitness became available. Seems like they have gotten a lot accomplished in one week if they weren't ignoring it all of these 3 months. Patching in a faulty version of inherent fitness if they would have been working on the cause of the bugs of the inherents in ATs just one week previous would seem counterproductive if they had known there was a gamebreaking issue with it.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Championess View Post
The work around was to completely change how fitness was inherent. It's good to know that they can be completely befuddled about something, have no insight, then in a weeks time figure out the root of the problem and redo how inherent fitness became available. Seems like they have gotten a lot accomplished in one week if they weren't ignoring it all of these 3 months, patching the way how fitness was faulty just one week previous.
I give up, you fail to acknowledge that something you see in a patch likey has been in the works for longer than a day or two.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Diggis View Post
I give up, you fail to acknowledge that something you see in a patch likey has been in the works for longer than a day or two.
What's there to acknowledge?

I think someones failing to comprehend.

If they REALLY had been looking into the root of the problem as you're saying then nowhere in that 3 months would they not have corrected the issue of how inherent fitness interacted with your character and put the right patch in like they did a week later once they WERE looking into it?

If they had reason to suspect there was gamebreaking issues with toons and were working on fixing inherent fitness would they not have held up that first patch to test if they were already reworking it? Would they not have solicited ideas, like they were the past week, on beta this whole time if they had not been ignorant of the issue to ATs inherents to get it right before it went to open testing?

I think it's good that you are giving up! We've had a conversation before about some shady practices going on with this games server perceptions and you basically made my case for me, this topic isn't one where you want to try and get retribution.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Championess View Post
What's there to acknowledge?

I think someones failing to comprehend.

If they REALLY had been looking into the root of the problem as you're saying then nowhere in that 3 months would they not have corrected the issue of how inherent fitness interacted with your character and put the right patch in like they did a week later once they WERE looking into it?

If they had reason to suspect there was gamebreaking issues with toons and were working on fixing inherent fitness would they not have held up that first patch to test if they were already reworking it? Would they not have solicited ideas, like they were the past week, on beta this whole time if they had not been ignorant of the issue to ATs inherents to get it right before it went to open testing?
Maybe that the patches you saw were the end result of the 3 months work? That it could have taken that long for them to track the cause of the issue?

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Championess View Post
If they had reason to suspect there was gamebreaking issues with toons and were working on fixing inherent fitness would they not have held up that first patch to test if they were already reworking it? Would they not have solicited ideas, like they were the past week, on beta this whole time if they had not been ignorant of the issue to ATs inherents to get it right before it went to open testing?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Diggis View Post
Maybe that the patches you saw were the end result of the 3 months work? That it could have taken that long for them to track the cause of the issue?
3 months work to get the faulty inherent fitness to test. 3 months and one weeks work to get the correct version of inherent fitness to test...

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Championess View Post
3 months work to get the faulty inherent fitness to test. 3 months and one weeks work to get the correct version of inherent fitness to test...
You are clearly right. The Devs decided not to even look into a problem with their new issue for 3 months and then fixed it in a week.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Diggis View Post
You are clearly right. The Devs decided not to even look into a problem with their new issue for 3 months and then fixed it in a week.
Seems much more plausible with the way they have been feverently working the past week being able to focus on fixing this one thing than saying they have been inept in figuring out how to fix this "gamebreaking" bug for the past 3 months all the while patching a known faulty version of it just a week previous for the heck of it. Which brings us back to the realistic situation of it all, they didn't really pay any attention to the Kheldian guy, if they had one thing would have led to another and inherent fitness would have been this latest version, not the one they had pathced a week previous because in that 3 months they couldn't figure out what it took them one week to figure out.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Championess View Post
I would actually like to get the 10 incarnate levels I was sold on when I purchased the "expansion".
Me 2.

Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.

 

Posted

We need to quit dilluting the dissappointing state of this announcement and recent trends of this game with this bickering when it's obvious one of us just doesn't want to open up to facts and common-sense.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Championess View Post
We need to quit dilluting the dissappointing state of this announcement and recent trends of this game with this bickering when it's obvious one of us just doesn't want to open up to facts and common-sense.
Of course. Whenever your ready, dear.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.