Dev Chat Highlights, September 1: Quick, distract them while the servers are down!

I'm not really talking about the tech involved though. We know they have the tech for Back items now, because we're getting them.

I'm talking about the decision not to have jetpacks because of clipping issues that either don't exist on temp powers, or are tolerated on temp powers. I don't understand it, and would appreciate a more detailed explanation as to why we can't have jetpack costume items from the devs.

My argument, which I think is yours too, is that technically they've -always- had the tech to have back oriented costume items. That's never been a valid excuse even though the Devs have occasionally tried to lead us to believe that over the years.

Apparently the only REAL reason we haven't gotten back costume items until now is that the Devs were unwilling to give our collective ability to tolerate some clipping a chance. I believe they generally underestimated our desire to have these items -regardless- of the problems involved.

Sure I'd like to have back items that don't clip. But if it's a question of having back items with some clipping versus no back items at all I think I could safely say for most people that we would have always preferred to have the flawed items available.

When I first started reading this I was wondering if you would bring up the banning.

Things like the weekly ustream and participation on the boards are what made me make the comment. The team as a whole seems more connected now than in the past. This could be because there is more of them, and that NCsoft actually cares about the game, where as Cryptic just shoved it to the side. No disservice was meant towards Cuppa, but I will admit I like Zwill better.

A lot has changed though. The general attitude of the devs seems to have gone from "It can't be done" to "It can be done, but would take massive amounts of time" this is a good change IMO. I miss some of those who have departed like BABs and Castle, but the current team seems to have a fresher outlook. Again, a good think IMO.

Shoot this is a 7 year old MMO that is still relevant, and I can only think of one other that can make that same claim. I feel it can continue to be relevant with the team that is in place. I hope Freedom floods in enough cash that even more people need to be hired, and what we want will get here even faster. For me that means they need to hire more people for the art team.

I think it is more an issue of bang for the buck. Freedom allows to make these things piece meal, and not have to dedicate weeks to nothing but back details. They have made it clear that we will get more costumes faster because they no longer have to release them in huge packages.

You're not really likely to get a satisfactory detailed explanation because there isn't likely to be one. The explanation is that life's a compromise: much of what we get is a compromise between the devs' professional desire to do it right or not at all, and the devs' practical motivation to give us something rather than nothing. Those two tend to operate in opposite directions much of the time, and its up to designers and producers to find a balance point between those two. That balance point will be based solely upon their best judgment, and tends to be decided on a case by case basis.

This *should* be enough of an explanation, but I don't think it will be for many people, because of the way players tend to view the responsibilities of the developers.

I'll certainly agree that the new "A la carte" Paragon Market model has probably made these kinds of things easier to justify. Still, I don't really count that as a stonewall excuse because, for instance, the backpack example we see at the top of this thread could have easily had a legitimate place in the "Natural" Booster Pack.

Wasn't the natural pack the Martial Arts pack? I am not sure any respectable ninja would wear that. :P

I do see where you are coming from, I have wanted quivers and scabbards forever.

Yeah, I realize we're combining apples to oranges here, but I can see your point. But I also know that there wasn't a thing like ustream as popular back then for Cuppa to be on at the drop of a hat when the servers are down. It's great that Zwill and staff does this and we have a site that makes it easy to do so.

Cuppa, for as much as she was restricted by the dev team she was community repping at the time, at least did a lot of side things like guest on w00t Radio on her own time to help promote the game and answer players questions.

But yeah, there's really no loser here in this debate. This game has had a history of great community reps... with the exception of one... the one with the banhammer... *cough*

As a software engineer I can understand the trade offs our Devs probably dealt with in this case. As a player of this game I will always believe they were a wee-bit too conservative in their desires to keep us "safe" from costume items that clip.

One could probably make the observation that they called it the "Martial Arts" pack to draw our attention away from what -should- have been included in a "Natural" Booster Pack - back oriented costume items.

Right, I know. I was speaking to the general opinions of "Wow, the art looks great! If they had implemented it just like that there wouldn't have been any issues!" In my opinion, the art (while being very nice art) had some of the same thematic issues as the pre-updated game versions.

I know it's a compromise. I don't expect the explanation to satisfy me in terms of "oh, now I'm happy that we're not getting jetpack costume pieces". I expect it to explain what the clipping issues are, and why they feel the issues are a problem when temp jetpacks aren't a problem. That's all. Then I could say if I agreed or disagreed, and move on, but right now, I just want to understand. I don't think that's an unreasonable request.

That doesn't mean they have to respond, but there's nothing wrong with me asking, and then clarifying my point when it appeared to me that Lothic didn't understand what I was saying.

This is assuming a Hive-mind again. There are no "the-devs." Each individual developer reads some percentage of the forums which is different for each dev, up to and including zero. Separate from that, each individual dev might only *remember* some segment of what they read, and that's factoring in the fact they work on this game every day and it might be harder for them to remember every single idea brought up on the forums when they themselves have to try to remember every single idea brought up *internally* that they might actually have to work on.

I once made a suggestion on the forums and had Castle *respond* to it, only to have him tell me six months later he didn't remember it. The devs see and hear so many ideas about the game every day that it can be difficult to keep track of them all. For that matter, most players don't either: if "the forums" can continue to think the devs said power customization was "impossible" when no dev ever said that, ever, I think we can cut the devs a little slack for every single individual dev not reading and retaining all the information that gets kicked around on the forums.

Its also possible, by the way, that a dev might hear an idea, think about it, decide its not worth pursuring, and then a year later hear the same idea again, and this time think it is worth pursuing, but not remember the first time they rejected it. Again: they are exposed to a lot of ideas, and separate from not remembering all of them they might not even remember passing one over in the past or precisely why. Having a photographic memory is not a prerequisite of working at Paragon Studios.

One last thing: my memory is very good, but why do I remember all the times inherent stamina was discussed, all the debates about rooting, all the suggestions to change knockback, the I Love My Blaster threads, the 100 uses for MoG threads, the change from power rating to brawl rating to DPA - why do I remember all of those things going back seven years? Not just because I read them, but because I *participated* in those discussions. Its far easier for me to remember discussions I actually participated in, than ones I only read. That's just how memory works. Now consider the devs do not participate often in suggestion threads.

We, "the community," concur.

What makes you think the clipping problems with temp jetpacks aren't a problem? Maybe the art and animation people *always* thought it was a problem, but in the case of temp jetpacks specifically that objection was overridden by the design need to have temporary jetpacks.

That's what I mean by compromise. Compromise presumes that the problems always exist, but sometimes those problems are set aside when other higher priorities supercede them, and sometimes they are set aside as part of a general compromise to sometimes set them aside and sometimes not set them aside to balance that consideration with other considerations equally important.

Part of the problem with coming up with an explanation other than "because" is that it probably involved multiple people with different and possibly opposing viewpoints that were mediated. But the devs are never going to say "John didn't want to give them to you, but Mary fought for at least these two, but then Frank said those would be the only two exceptions." They rarely expose such internal processes publicly. But without that context, it can seem like one individual person making randomly conflicting decisions.

The Cryptic Devs, once Jack moved on, were very responsive and continued to be even when NCsoft purchased the IP and created Paragon Studios.

But then, the power shifted from the Design Devs (who, at Cryptic, called all the shots since NCsoft was more of a distributor and the Cryptic administration become focused elsewhere) to the Producers who were more accountable to NCsoft, the new sole owner.

While Design retained a lot of freedom in design, Production took over in calling the shots and the overall direction. And they were not communicative. After training the Design Devs to be responsive after all those years (), we lost access to the people making the broader decisions. And the Customer Rep staff at the time seemed incapable of bridging that gap (whether they weren't trying, or they were being rebuffed, I don't know). Then the lead Customer Rep decided to disengage from direct contact with players on the forums altogether and focus on... I don't know what -- the handful of expos and meet and greets?

Today, we have the lead Customer Rep who is extraordinarily engaged and the Producers have gotten over their fear of interacting with the players and are now comfortable with leveraging player feedback and testing. Which is a very good situation to be in. Heck, we are in contact directly now with GMs, QA, and NCSoft technicians. We have a very engaged Design Team, Production Staff, and Customer Reps making Paragon Studios the best gaming studio out there.

I didn't make that assumption, though my wording in my last post makes it look that way because I was trying for brevity. In the post I made before the one you first responded to, I said "assuming there is a problem with them, why is it okay to have temp powers that have this issue, but not costume parts?" Which leads to:

That's the exact kind of thing (though I'd like to know what the clipping issues are) I'm asking to hear from them, if it's the truth. What's so wrong about asking to hear it from them? They sometimes give responses.

I know what you mean by compromise. I'm not stupid. I knew decisions about compromises were involved before posting my first post on the topic-- I just want to understand the reasons behind the decision.

There's nothing wrong with asking, I just responded because I know in this case you're not going to hear that directly from them. They just don't do that. Ultimately, some *one*, like Positron say, will simply take overall responsibility for the decision, and not expose the decision making process of the overall team to the public in that manner.

But if you don't want an explanation, you want an explanation directly from the devs specifically, you should PM them instead. They still might not respond, but the odds improve substantially.

I agree. The costume pieces are what I'm looking forward to the most in Issue 21. I don't mind not getting the fancy back pieces and belts that the bosses wear but the tailcoats and large collars would be perfect for one of my characters and I was looking forward to getting them the most.

I'm hoping that, as they were made on PC models, we can get at least everything the minions and lieutenants wear... Though I do want the gloves that the Ruin and Death Mages wear.

According to the costume panel, the clipping they're talking about is how a back-item jetpack would clip with a temporary-power jetpack (e.g. GvE Jump Pack, Raptor Pack, Steamjet, etc.) They have no way to make the temporary-power jetpack not show up and animate alongside/inside/overtop of the back-item. And thus it looks really bad.

Although to be honest, the back items we have now look really bad with temporary-power jetpacks. They're just not competing for the same animation "style" (e.g. two flight packs, vs a backpack and a flight pack).

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

THIS, so very much this.

Despite all the "grief" I give them about unfinished stuff, I'll be the first to say they also say: "We have a very engaged Design Team, Production Staff, and Customer Reps making Paragon Studios the best gaming studio out there."

We'll have to.

At the time though we had some very "interesting people" . . . screw it we had some straight up idiotic trolls that were pulling some jerk moves. Understandably so as that was (if my memory is correct) during the Issue 13 era. (for anyone who doesn't know what was going on, just go take a look at the old issue 13 patch notes and you can figure it out) The forums were an TOUGH place at the time. (one of many times)

IMO we needed someone tough to get the job done.

Right now the forums seems to be a much more friendly place because the overall team (as Zombie explained) changed.

I would still say Lighthouse did a good job if I had been temp banned at the time. (not saying you're saying he didn't cause you got banned).

I can honestly see why some didn't like the guy, but I honestly think he did well . . . especially with some of the stuff going on on these forums at the time.

Thank you so much for sharing this, this is completely different from what "clipping issues" brought to my mind, and never occurred to me. I understand completely.

I still want jetpack back pieces, but at least I understand the reasons.

That being said, did they say anything about temp jetpacks clipping with plain backpacks? Are they accepting it because only one animates (I assume you mean the VFX by "animates") as you are suggesting?

Thanks. This is actually a highly abridged version of the art. Will try to post a bunch of concept after Freedom launches, and you can check out the complete version then.

Have you guys ever considered consolidating this stuff with various lore bits and development notes into some kind of limited production City of bible?

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.