Newsletter 8/23

Pawain

Stingard said:

At least we got a name for a fall event.  Treasures of the Feudal Lands.  No real information about it at all, but a name . . .

You need more info?  Lets see, you kill stuff in the designated area, get drops, turn the drops in for rewards.  Like all the Dynamic Dungeons have been.  When it is close to opening, you can see the drops on TC or Origin if you need a sneak peek.

Grimbeard

Pawain said:

Stingard said:

At least we got a name for a fall event.  Treasures of the Feudal Lands.  No real information about it at all, but a name . . .

You need more info?  Lets see, you kill stuff in the designated area, get drops, turn the drops in for rewards.  Like all the Dynamic Dungeons have been.  When it is close to opening, you can see the drops on TC or Origin if you need a sneak peek.

I hope it's like the original tot where you can kill anything 

Pawain

I don't, I hate that.  It's a multiplayer game.  We would all fit nicely in the Dojo.

Stingard

Pawain said:

Stingard said:

At least we got a name for a fall event.  Treasures of the Feudal Lands.  No real information about it at all, but a name . . .

You need more info?  Lets see, you kill stuff in the designated area, get drops, turn the drops in for rewards.  Like all the Dynamic Dungeons have been.  When it is close to opening, you can see the drops on TC or Origin if you need a sneak peek.

Pawain, I know you are the unofficial, self-appointed,  apologetic mouthpiece for the development team, but  they could release real information like the rest of us in the software development world do when we announce a feature or future version.  Its a very small ask. 

All of the events haven't been the same. Caddelite weapons were required for Khaldun and Sorcerer's Dungeon had rotational rooms and bosses to defeat.

Pawain

They are not going to give advance notice if you need things.   No one in the software development world would do that. Gabby will have a thousand of whatever by day 2 of knowing.

Involving other templates would be nice. 

Stingard

Pawain said:

They are not going to give advance notice if you need things.   No one in the software development world would do that. Gabby will have a thousand of whatever by day 2 of knowing.

Involving other templates would be nice. 

Everyone in the software development world who gives a poo about their customers does whatever they can to make their lives easier. They don't care that Gabby is a go-getter.   The problem here is, with their business model,  there are no large customers to hold the developers accountable. 

 All of the customers are a $10 a month transaction and seen as replaceable.  If there were 30 million dollar contracts for data-center jobs with people like Google and Microsoft, they would crawl all over themselves to provide information or lose those contracts and be fired. 

Pawain

Here are the credits for Diablo IV.  Over 8000 people takes 37 minutes to show them all.


They also did not post teasers.

Maybe if UO had 3000 people working on it, we would hear more.

Stingard

Diablo was new development and newer code bases are enormous compared to UO.  Diablo also did live beta's  a couple of months in advance of release.  They didn't post to a test center a week out with no expectation of making changes unless there was a severe bug found. 

Our product is far more complex. We have several hundred developers, but our sustaining department is 6-9 people, 2-3 of which are rotational off of the new development team.  With those 9 we maintain hardware, software, and firmware including backwards compatibility to hardware built in 1991 and are often pulled into "new development via sustaining" projects. 

We also deal with our share of Gabbys. Ours is just named Gary and he will always stress a new release in ways we never thought of during development.  We added Gary to the Beta team and often give him advanced firmware releases and software patches.

Informing your customers can be done, and you can mitigate the Gabby's of the world too.  The Khaldun caddelite event was a good example.  They could let people know now that crafters will be important to the next event, and even show why, but not release the critical component, in this case caddelite ore, until the event releases.  This allows existing and new players to get ready for the event without actually ruining the event.

A ton of things can be done like that with smart design, and they have shown that they could do it in the past with their existing team. 

keven2002

Stingard said:

A ton of things can be done like that with smart design, and they have shown that they could do it in the past with their existing team. 

@Stingard - Keep in mind that the Khuldan & Sorcerer events were pre dynamic events. Ever since dynamic events were introduced, it's been pretty cookie cutter on what to expect with the only exception being where/what (where it's located and what extra monsters we kill). Personally I don't mind the same old ToT style event but given how cookie cutter they are, I think we should get them at minimum twice a year but really more like 3-4 times. 

That said, I get where you are coming from and I agree there seemed to be more variation coming from the Dev team in the past compared to now but supposedly we have NL to blame for that. Once again though I go back to running the same dynamic ToT a few times a year... they aren't reinventing the wheel to run these so it would give people some variation of where/what they hunt while giving a few new rewards each time. But here we are... not getting a new dynamic event until October which is 4 months from when the last one ended with absolutely nothing else different to do. The level of effort on Prod shards does seem to be at an all time low. 

Stingard

keven2002 said:

 Personally I don't mind the same old ToT style event but given how cookie cutter they are, I think we should get them at minimum twice a year but really more like 3-4 times. 

I agree.  If they aren't adding new content, they can give us the cookie cutter events running in different places, or even reprise the old events like Khaldun, and Sorcerer"s.  A person can only run Roof or Underwater so many times . .. . .

Grimbeard

Stingard said:

keven2002 said:

 Personally I don't mind the same old ToT style event but given how cookie cutter they are, I think we should get them at minimum twice a year but really more like 3-4 times. 

I agree.  If they aren't adding new content, they can give us the cookie cutter events running in different places, or even reprise the old events like Khaldun, and Sorcerer"s.  A person can only run Roof or Underwater so many times . .. . .

Simply updating older items Simply removing doubloon cap simply adding new  rewards to black market and monger quest or ostrich management...

Stingard

Grimbeard said:

.

Simply updating older items Simply removing doubloon cap simply adding new  rewards to black market and monger quest or ostrich management...

It does all seem like low hanging fruit. 

Seth

Simply updating the reward list is low hanging fruit, just a low res graphic and some specs and tada, its done in less than 24 hours.