ADHD game design and doodads

[DocHolliday 366]

I am looking at this from a macro perspective.  Not just this particular game and developer.  This game isn't as simple as most.  I don't know of many persistent MMO's as massive as this one.  Its a monumental undertaking and judging by the issues and player responses I understand why most companies won't touch this genre.  Dare to be different and get beaten into a pulp in the process. 

I'm torn.  While some of the issues do seem like obvious ones I look at what they are trying to do.  What so few have tried to do and even fewer have succeeded doing and give them some slack.

Ask me about this in 6 months or a years time.  Maybe I change my mind.   

 

EDIT:  After the last couple of responses I can tell there is a ton of angst here.  Sounds like a lot of you are Ark players and bring a lot of bias into the development of this game.  I've been around a lot of early development for games over the years.  Been gaming since the 80's, I know some developers who worked on AAA titles, but this is the first time I jumped on a Steam EA because I know what an alpha looks like and plays like.  If you bought this expecting to have a fun and fulfilling experience you bought it for the wrong damn reasons.  I bought it because I wanted to support a very ambitious project. 

Edited January 22, 2019 by DocHolliday

[Chucksteak 279]

1 hour ago, DocHolliday said:

I think the issue here is this is EA (Alpha release years from release) and people are looking at it as a polished game.  They expect it to run smooth, play balanced and go overboard when it isn't. 

Like it or not we are the QA.  I'm sure they do some in-house, but the time it takes to do this properly can be quite time consuming and it slows the release of new patches, content, etc.  From what I can tell the company working on this game does not have a large team and a limited budget.  This is not a AAA title.  This is not run by Chris Roberts and a huge kick starter budget.  It is what it is and I like it.

I love the fact we are getting updates fast and furious.  We get to see the inner workings of a game under development.  All the tweaks, balances, screw ups, and fixes.  I've always thought this is how it was done (most keep it in house because consumers SUCK) prior to game releases or public betas, but never was apart of it until now.  Yeah it can be frustrating at times, but when it is I just remind myself where this game is at in its life cycle.  The game we see now will most likely be quite different a few years from now. 

Keep making suggestions to balance issues.  Bug reports.  Exploits.  Going on tirades about broken gameplay elements at this stage just appears childish to me.

 

Holy shit, there is a logical person here after all

This game is in Early Access. The majority of people are complaining about problems that exist in early access. There is a reason we paid less than half of what this game will retail for when it is finished. Think about that.

I never played "ARK" so I am not bias against Grapeshot for employing members of a former development team. 

I did however;

- Play an Early Access game that I paid less than half of retail for.

- Built on the UR4 engine, absolutely beautiful

- Produced by a newer smaller company that lacked resources. (A big reason a company would use EA)

- When it first launched, there were so many problems, ESPECIALLY with net code and cheating.

- They kept adding shit in the game, saying they fixed the coding, when it wasn't fixed.

- People bitched and bitched and bitched. And the small company kept working at it, slowly fixing shit, always adding shit. Always setbacks getting more attention than fixes. No one complains when shit works you know.

- Sound familiar yet?

Just over a year ago the game launched in retail. Almost everything people bitched about had been fixed. You can find PUBG with the highest peak playerbase most days on STEAM. So far today on a random Tuesday, already near a million. 

https://store.steampowered.com/stats/Steam-Game-and-Player-Statistics?l=english

Think about that!

-CS

Edited January 22, 2019 by Chucksteak

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

17 minutes ago, DocHolliday said:

I am looking at this from a macro perspective.  Not just this particular game and developer.  This game isn't as simple as most.  I don't know of many persistent MMO's as massive as this one.  Its a monumental undertaking and judging by the issues and player responses I understand why most companies won't touch this genre.  Dare to be different and get beaten into a pulp in the process. 

I'm torn.  While some of the issues do seem like obvious ones I look at what they are trying to do.  What so few have tried to do and even fewer have succeeded doing and give them some slack.

Ask me about this in 6 months or a years time.  Maybe I change my mind.   

 

EDIT:  After the last couple of responses I can tell there is a ton of angst here.  Sounds like a lot of you are Ark players and bring a lot of bias into the development of this game.  I've been around a lot of early development for games over the years.  Been gaming since the 80's, I know some developers who worked on AAA titles, but this is the first time I jumped on a Steam EA because I know what an alpha looks like and plays like.  If you bought this expecting to have a fun and fulfilling experience you bought it for the wrong damn reasons.  I bought it because I wanted to support a very ambitious project. 

My hobby is gaming. Gaming is what I do for leisure, for fun. Explain to me again why when I pay $25 for a game, EA or no, I have no right to expect it to be fun? The way you are attempting to frame the parameters of discussion implies that expecting this is unreasonable on my part. I respectfully submit that I have every right even when a game is marketed as EA, that it should be fun.

Additionally, I dislike your attempts to dismiss what I view as cogent, reasoned arguments as”angst”. No one in this thread is engaging in such overblown handwringing. On the other hand, you failed to address my direct question regarding whether design choices about weight and crew limits and sinking are competent. Your rsponse seemed to be a hand wave saying “oh this game is complicated on a massive scale, they can’t get everything right upfront.”

No one is expecting such things, but especially in view of a team that very publicly claimed to have learned a lot from their mistakes on Ark, I consider this a prime example of something any competent developer should have caught from the beginning. It’s just not a defensible design choice for a development team that has produced a game noteworthy for the level of exploiting.

Edited January 22, 2019 by boomervoncannon

[Chucksteak 279]

My advice,

Don't bitch about new content, it was planned a long time ago or it wouldn't be implemented next month. Everything so far that is in game is super fun, submarines sound like a blast, and gliders are not OP,  just very utility and there really is a need for them. Obviously some things will be implemented in increments over several patches and will/should be polished at retail launch.

Bitch about the net code and server side performance. It is 2019 after all. There really is no excuse for every server to not be able to handle 1000 players. This is not to mention the world should hold 40k  and the totality of all servers is around 20k, not good enough IMHO. This process could take a year by the way.

 

-CS

 

[Winter Thorne 696]

A couple of you guys are just missing the point.

 

2 minutes ago, Chucksteak said:

Holy shit, there is a logical person here after all

This game is in Early Access. The majority of people are complaining about problems that exist in early access. There is a reason we paid less than half of what this game will retail for when it is finished. Think about that.

18 minutes ago, DocHolliday said:

Something similar that he edited out

 

This thread is not complaining about bugs and problems.  It is complaining about priorities and lack of planning.  We are very used to getting an incomplete system, network and performance issues, and  bugs in the code in EA.  Everybody knows those are going to be there.  We don't care about that.  The two complaints, restated are:

Design and planning -  How could you possibly not anticipate this or imagine this would turn out well?  This applies to the claims system, grief-sinking boats with weight, the day 1 network issues and land rush, and other things like that.

Focus - Now that the initial rush is over, what's next?  The upcoming patch notes are full of little unconnected new things which won't matter a lot, while we feel we are sitting here in an unworkable mess.  You all jumped right on the network stuff and made a number of improvements to it.  We'd like to see the same focus on getting the game basics finished and working before you start throwing out little new things (that also don't work right).  We would also like to see you think things through more before putting them out.  How could this be exploited?  Could this cause a network/performance problem?  How will this affect players joining 4 months from now?  Does this make sense for both pvp and pve?  Does it break some other system already in place?

 

We are not complaining that there are bugs in the game.  Please reread the thread to avoid debating that strawman.

33 minutes ago, DocHolliday said:

I am looking at this from a macro perspective.  Not just this particular game and developer.  This game isn't as simple as most.  I don't know of many persistent MMO's as massive as this one.  

I'm torn.  While some of the issues do seem like obvious ones I look at what they are trying to do.  What so few have tried to do and even fewer have succeeded doing and give them some slack.

Are you kidding with this?  UO, EQ, WOW, the Funcom games, ESO, (and I'm sure I'm forgetting a million others here).....  none of those were as "massive" as this?  I remember all those launches, and despite all the (now) hilarious things that happened, you could tell the developers at least sat down and talked through the design..how it could be implemented, how it could be abused and griefed, and how they were going to support the games, handle bugs and code violations.

Of course some of these issues were obvious.  They've been obvious for decades.  And still, you know what?  I can excuse this launch,  because I'm also familiar with the marketing and release pressures for gaming companies.  If somebody tells you, "We have to have something new out in 6 mos. or you're gone", then what's happening is perfectly explainable.  What's not explainable is what's happening now, where instead of buckling down to make some order out of the chaos, they're just making more chaos.  I can almost guarantee you that there are some in that meeting room pushing to just go go go and get cool looking stuff out because the reviews are dropping and people are looking unhappy, and others in the room advocating for the more boring course of fleshing out the systems and getting the bugs nailed.  (Which is why I'm writing this in support of more stability and better systems)

If you think any of this is groundbreaking, you're mistaken, and if you think the thread is whining about a buggy EA, you're mistaken again.  It's the focus and direction.

[cloWandering 21]

2 hours ago, Winter Thorne said:

the first requirement for Q&A is that you tell the testing team how something is supposed to work.

This this this!  I want the FDD!  If I am going to be QA, great, just tell me what the expected behavior is!  This would make it so much easier for us to make useful bug reports.