Game Development: Under Pressure

[dageir]

Hehe. I havent checked yet, did we get 75 silver hand out from the devs?

[darnokpl]

The industrial age began from mass production.

Industrial age in 1600? First industries required mass work force?


Cookers and their timers are ******, but this updates are doing one good thing, small camps can not do everything alone right now, 2 farmers can not feed whole army of murder alts... because they have too much work for 2 people on farms with 4 elements, worms, bins, trees, coal camps and lime... and that is great

Time to build larger towns and recruit more people or trade with high purity products for other hp products

Can't wait to see mining system that will force miners to do only their job

[Dopefly]

Hehe. I havent checked yet, did we get 75 silver hand out from the devs?

Yes, yes they did.

[rustles]

Well I'm just about completely discouraged from playing this game anymore. When I first started playing, barely studied for tests or anything because I was so addicted to this game. Now I have to force my self to play and level up my skills so I can plant trees, and wait 7 days in order to increase the purity of boards by 0.01% and then demolish my compost bins to build slightly better ones.

These damn worms have been in bins for atleast 31 hours now and none of them have eaten anything at all. I'v tried several combinations of worms surrounded by several different herbs and stuff, and nothing.

Can't tell if they are bugged, or if we have to wait a week for the worms to eat something to increase their purity by 0.01%, because the devs could not be bothered to tell us anything about it except (they will food beside them).

Apart from that, it is completely unfair that food purity relied entirely on one factor and could be increased by up to 4% every couple of days, and then suddenly change it so you have to do 20 times more work to increase purity by a fraction of a percentage every week.

I'd say either wipe the damn servers, or change it back to the way it was before. "not intending" for it to be that easy to raise humours and then suddenly making it 1000 times more difficult for new players is just unjustifiable.

I also don't think I can wait in anticipation for another week just to find out if the devs fixed this non-sence. I don't want to put much effort into doing anything right now because I know in a week from now something major is going to change and there is a big chance it will turn out that my efforts were completely wasted.

[Mereni]

Not really. I prefer to keep the patch notes brief precisely because, again, I cannot anticipate and in advance correct every conceivable misinterpretation that might arise.

There are three easy ways to fix this so that your notes can be short and we can know what's going on to test it.

First, be more open about the math. Give us the equations and caps and whatever up front so we can test for you and see if it really works that way. If you'd said 'worms eat every 12 hours from the squares next to them', we would have known pages ago that the worm's not eating is a bug, rather than all this confusion. We're still not sure how we can farm anything above 0%. Can't tell if some of what is happening are bugs, or intended, because we have no idea how you expect it to work.

Second, talk to a few testers. Before you introduce a patch, get a couple people you know do a lot of whatever it is you are changing and tell them briefly what is going to happen. Listen to their questions and concerns and adjust your patch note accordingly.

Third, stick around a bit after the patch and read the thread you just made. People jump on that stuff and start playing with it immediately, and then they come here and discuss. If you make a clarifying comment or two right away, it would help a lot, not to mention making your testers less frustrated.

Any ONE of these will go a long way to making these patches go a lot smoother. Try to understand, this game isn't going to go anywhere if you don't talk to your beta testers, and help us help you. You say you can't anticipate how your mechanics are going to be used and misused and misunderstood, but most of the time, we CAN, very quickly.

[kruskdamangled]

Well I'm just about completely discouraged from playing this game anymore. When I first started playing, barely studied for tests or anything because I was so addicted to this game. Now I have to force my self to play and level up my skills so I can plant trees, and wait 7 days in order to increase the purity of boards by 0.01% and then demolish my compost bins to build slightly better ones.

These damn worms have been in bins for atleast 31 hours now and none of them have eaten anything at all. I'v tried several combinations of worms surrounded by several different herbs and stuff, and nothing.

Can't tell if they are bugged, or if we have to wait a week for the worms to eat something to increase their purity by 0.01%, because the devs could not be bothered to tell us anything about it except (they will food beside them).

Apart from that, it is completely unfair that food purity relied entirely on one factor and could be increased by up to 4% every couple of days, and then suddenly change it so you have to do 20 times more work to increase purity by a fraction of a percentage every week.

I'd say either wipe the damn servers, or change it back to the way it was before. "not intending" for it to be that easy to raise humours and then suddenly making it 1000 times more difficult for new players is just unjustifiable.

I also don't think I can wait in anticipation for another week just to find out if the devs fixed this non-sence. I don't want to put much effort into doing anything right now because I know in a week from now something major is going to change and there is a big chance it will turn out that my efforts were completely wasted.

Do something practical that isn't in danger of that. A wall is a wall. For the time being, it will keep you from DYING horribly. You can also focus on increasing your profs and skills.

[Azor]

Do I assume correctly, that if the highest natural rescources to be found are 10%, meaning they have about 50% in one element, it will theoretically be possible to harmonize natural rescources up to a max of 50% pure, by increasing a second element to 50% to match the highest, and draining the other two to zero?

50/50/0/0 is 33% pure and 4 multiplier.

[The_Blode]

Not really. I prefer to keep the patch notes brief precisely because, again, I cannot anticipate and in advance correct every conceivable misinterpretation that might arise.

There are three easy ways to fix this so that your notes can be short and we can know what's going on to test it.

First, be more open about the math. Give us the equations and caps and whatever up front so we can test for you and see if it really works that way. If you'd said 'worms eat every 12 hours from the squares next to them', we would have known pages ago that the worm's not eating is a bug, rather than all this confusion. We're still not sure how we can farm anything above 0%. Can't tell if some of what is happening are bugs, or intended, because we have no idea how you expect it to work.

Second, talk to a few testers. Before you introduce a patch, get a couple people you know do a lot of whatever it is you are changing and tell them briefly what is going to happen. Listen to their questions and concerns and adjust your patch note accordingly.

Third, stick around a bit after the patch and read the thread you just made. People jump on that stuff and start playing with it immediately, and then they come here and discuss. If you make a clarifying comment or two right away, it would help a lot, not to mention making your testers less frustrated.

Any ONE of these will go a long way to making these patches go a lot smoother. Try to understand, this game isn't going to go anywhere if you don't talk to your beta testers, and help us help you. You say you can't anticipate how your mechanics are going to be used and misused and misunderstood, but most of the time, we CAN, very quickly.

Detailed equations and such aren't needed but I fully agree a simple "Every 9-12 Hours" would have been immensely helpful.

[csnow]

[Champie]

Not really. I prefer to keep the patch notes brief precisely because, again, I cannot anticipate and in advance correct every conceivable misinterpretation that might arise.

*sensible stuff*

I think jorb's response is cowardly *****. He can drink the little brown tears dripping from my sphincter.