Seriously, enough already

[Drogo1]

Maybe so - but I think fishing had a lot of interested players when it first went live. In fact, if I remember right, it was one of those things that people had asked about for some time that actually was implemented. I think the reason it flopped though had more to do with its lack of functionality than with a lack of player interest. Anglers pressed a single button over and over again only to fill up their severely limited inventory spaces with dozens of garbage items (including the fish) that had no use and vendored for 1cp each.

I'd just love to see Turbine fix some of the things that players are constantly asking (even complaining) about rather than see another new, possibly half-finished, feature that will, after a month or two (or even a day or two for the more hardcore players) simply get added to the list of things players are complaining about.

Yes, there are always going to be someone who complains no matter how things get fixed. But there is a palpable difference in the way it affects game/forum atmosphere when the complaints are aimed at "you nerfed uberattack!" compared to when the complaints are "awesome new horse... which is screwed up to the point that I can't get one... again". One is a disagreement with how powerful a feature is; the other is Turbine can't seem to get its act together.

Those two things have very different effects on player morale.

You have some points, although I feel your characterization of the current mess with Will Peartree is a bit unfair - everyone will have a chance to get the nifty new festival horse - just a bit later than anticipated.

The removal of Will to avoid damage to the in-game economy (yes, there are still those of us for whom 10+ gold is a large amount of gold - and I'd hazard a guess that it's still a large majority of the player base to boot) was a swift reaction - driven in large part, I'd guess, by past experience with such issues where they did NOT remove it and then had to deal with the repercussions to the in-game economy.

It's interesting to see someone else's take on the same events and come up with such a different interpretation of what's going on.

[FutenCake]

I will assume you are referring to this press release?

http://www.lotro.com/news/pressrelea...ge-of-mirkwood



Even though you may have a point about Class Quests***, you are dead wrong about skills and virtues. Look:

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Relea...neral_Gameplay

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdia...skill-upgrades

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Relea...s.2FReputation

So, in short, if we take class quests out, I got this:




Instead of this:




For my $20? Gee, kinda puts it into perspective, huh?

***EDIT: BOOSH! Even class quests technically got an update, look:

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Relea...icial#Questing

Intro Class Quests – In certain cases, a few skill based objectives in the NPE would not activate when the player landed a critical or devastating attack. This has been fixed. All skill executions are now counted correctly.

QED.

Wow, you work really really hard at this don't you? You can't even bring yourself to admit that the press release (which many of us based our purchase upon) was false.

Nothing you linked there is a new class quest, new trait, new skill, or new virtue.

"Upgraded" skills are not *New* skills. The upgrades in many cases were little more than changes they should have made to the skills anyway. Or changes that make a useless skill...still just as useless.

Where in those links were the New Virtues and New Traits even supposed to be?

The point isn't the $20. The point isn't just that these things are not in the expansion. The point is that they raised the level cap, but didn't bother to include any character advancement with those 5 levels. The point is that they sold this expansion to people on false pretenses, and 4 months later they still haven't made it right.

The fact that you will even try to defend this blatant and obvious mis-truth that they haven't even attempted to address either by communicating to the community or by actually including the advertised features really cements your fanboy reputation. Good job.

[LilFeet]

Seriously enough already....

Reading the same rants from the forum warriors (for both sides) is getting old. Learn to state your case, disagree and move on.

[Analog-Man]

I don't understand why every month (it seems), we, the community, are asked for feedback on new systems / revamps / etc. we would like to see.

How many times do you have to ask this question(s), or better yet, how many times do you have to reword the same question(s)???

I say enough already. Either respond / create / update / revamp / tell us never to the answers we post repeatedly everytime these questions are asked, and stop beating the horse... IT'S BEEN DEAD for months, if not years!!!

Hmm, well I for one am encouraged by the recent TTCT posts asking for feedback, and so far they have covered just about all the major problems instead of asking fluff questions.

I see this as an official avenue to add my "vote" to the issues at hand. And while individually my opinions won't change anything, hopefully when the people at Turbine analyze the data they will get a good feel for what people WANT out of the game. From there, they need to decide what the can or are willing to do to satisfy the majority.

Wil things change in the near future? Not a chance. But I do believe that they are making what changes they can for the next paid expansion. The timing feels about right to me assuming a late fall release. Some of the changes, while having a big impact on game play, are probably not overly difficult to impliment. I imagine changing Radiance to a virtue is a lot easier to impliment than the combat changes that came with Mirkwood for instance.

Regardless, I would rather voice my ideas when asked than be left in a void. At least this way I believe they are trying to change the game to make it better, and it can only help to have an official outlet to post your desires.

[Khafar]

If you don't want to provide feedback, fine. Don't. But telling them to quit asking is the height of stupidity, IMO. What, exactly, will that achieve? They'll have less data to make decisions with, and have less data they can use to defend the priorities of work already underway.

As people have mentioned, the development times for many of these things are long. 6 months minimum to get through planning, prioritization, design, development, testing, and deployment. Often it's going to be a year or more, at least for anything "big". So the faster and deeper they can gather information about what their customers want, the sooner we'll get to see changes we hope to see. And if something big gets postponed past a certain window (which is probably heading toward closure for any expansion in the fall)... well, then we might get to wait another year for it.

Bottom line: contribute, if you have something constructive to contribute. Otherwise, STHU.

Khafar

[Kreegan]

As people have mentioned, the development times for many of these things are long. 6 months minimum to get through planning, prioritization, design, development, testing, and deployment. Often it's going to be a year or more, at least for anything "big"...
Khafar

To emphasize Khafar's point (speaking as an old engineering manager, director, and executive at different stages of my career -- couple of more years and I can retire for good and play all day long...):

Unless they're using some variation of so-called "extreme programming" (God forbid -- that's a great way to produce a **** product), they will be going through:

Requirements analyses
Concept development
Preliminary design
First Review
Detailed design
Second Review
Implementation
Test and Evaluation
Rework
Re-test and evaluation
Release

(The above is a so-called "waterfall" process -- see below.)

All through that process, quality assurance has to interject themselves to insure that the product of each stage of development meets certain standards or the product cannot advance to the next stage.

For a small company like Turbine (their whole company is smaller than the last development program I managed in Silicon Valley, years ago), they most likely use an abbreviated process (there are many schemes out there) designed to minimize cost and schedule (at, unfortunately, a sacrifice of product quality -- but that's a deliberate trade-off), but the various stages of development still all exist. Even a "simple" review can take a week (if done right); the other stages take months for any significant effort. And, like pregnancy, throwing more bodies at the problem doesn't get the job done any faster.

It's pretty clear (from my perspective in having "been there, done that") that they have rushed a lot of their recent work. That has been a major mistake on their part since product quality has suffered and they have impacted the satisfaction of their customer base (a "bozo no, no"). The responsibility for that falls on their producer -- not the dev's.

I'm an old goat; I have the "patience of age". My suggestion to everyone is to back off -- if you don't, I can pretty much guarantee that the job won't get done right. When marketing starts dictating schedules -- as they will, if the clamor gets too overwhelming -- products go to hell in a handbasket. Again, been there, done that...

If you are really upset, vote with your pocketbook. If not, be cordial on the forums (and when using the GMs). You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, as they say... although I have no idea why you'd want to catch flies to begin with.

[FutenCake]

Hah, Waterfall. I'm guessing you are either:

A. threatened by the lack of a traditional project manager role in Agile software development, or

B. you have been involved in some project that used some Extreme Programming practices, mixed with Waterfall, and maybe a dash of Kanban (which failed miserably)?

Waterfall may work for manufacturing, but for the inherent chaos and unpredictable nature of programming it has proven itself to be to inflexible to really produce the right product. There is a reason most of the software industry is moving to agile practices. You may want to educate yourself a bit if you still think that Waterfall results in quality code.

That aside, I'm pretty sure that at least some of the teams at Turbine are using some flavor of Agile programming. I do believe I read "Sprints" in one of the developer diaries.

Not that it means much. When you start mixing Waterfall with Extreme Programming and add a dash of Scrum in there it isn't really a recipe for success. Most of the mix and match development styles are doomed to failure.

Edit: Yeah, this could get off topic really fast. If you want to debate this we could take it over to off topic.

If you are really upset, vote with your pocketbook. If not, be cordial on the forums (and when using the GMs). You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, as they say... although I have no idea why you'd want to catch flies to begin with.

Can't vote with pocketbook, lifer. I have incentive to voice my dissatisfaction with the game.

PS: Waterfall is bad.

[fallohide]

You have some points, although I feel your characterization of the current mess with Will Peartree is a bit unfair - everyone will have a chance to get the nifty new festival horse - just a bit later than anticipated.

The removal of Will to avoid damage to the in-game economy (yes, there are still those of us for whom 10+ gold is a large amount of gold - and I'd hazard a guess that it's still a large majority of the player base to boot) was a swift reaction - driven in large part, I'd guess, by past experience with such issues where they did NOT remove it and then had to deal with the repercussions to the in-game economy.

It's interesting to see someone else's take on the same events and come up with such a different interpretation of what's going on.

The spring horse is just an example. It's more about the collected big picture of issues. I'm not super upset about having to wait for the new horse. In fact, (and I may be inviting bags of flaming poo on my doorstep with this one) I'm one of the people who actually reported the bug. Although, I did tell them that I'd be ok if they left the price at 3s

As to the economy, I definitely understand. 10 gold is a ton for me too. I think I have about 25 total, across all 9 characters.

[Khafar]

There is a reason most of the software industry is moving to agile practices.

Turbine has, and so as my company, although I have some gripes about that process too . Still, even though Agile helps to parallelize certain aspects of development, to require some better processes, and to first find and then make adjustments to solve problems sooner... you're still going to be planning, designing, implementing, testing, beta testing, reworking here and there, testing some more, and releasing. It's no "magic bullet". Big features are still going to take a year or more to get to market from ideation to deployment. Only fairly minor or trivial features will travel that road in 3 months or less.

Khafar

[Grodo]

For my $20? Gee, kinda puts it into perspective, huh?

This is your opinion and therefore your argument is false and completely wasted my time. Negative rep for not posting the facts.

[Calabar]

As a fellow lifer having been playing since release I understand your frustration, but I disagree with your aversion to the "community" threads. I personally appreciate that the community managers give us a place where they ask us specific questions and we can be assured that our answers, however silly or contradictory, will be read & considered by the development team. I don't expect that my every suggestion will be implemented in the game, but I appreciate greatly knowing that my suggestions will get some small piece of the dev teams' attention and may contribute to the overall changes that are made down the road.

…

I agree. I appreciate being given the opportunity to voice my opinion. Granted, I voice it anyway on the forums. But it’s nice being asked. *grins*

[CaptainBoots]

To answer the original poster, not everyone jumps in on every single post. Some of us delay suggestions to have a better way to phrase it or just out of pure laziness. Also, new people start using the forums steadily too. (new players, and old players who never before bothered) It's valid to ask the same question so that others will get the chance to answer.

In addition, even those people who are just repeating themselves do not have to do so. People are clearly encouraged by Turbine to come up with other remarks on ANY idea they'd like to see implemented to improve the game. As it has been pointed out, they do try to steer people from heavily discussed topics, it's just that some players ignore the attempts to veer from their hobby horse. If you're not able to think of something new, no worries!

As for this . . .

. . . text deleted . . .

Requirements analyses
Concept development
Preliminary design
First Review
Detailed design
Second Review
Implementation
Test and Evaluation
Rework
Re-test and evaluation
Release

(The above is a so-called "waterfall" process -- see below.)

. . . text deleted . . .

Geez, Kreegan, I get enough of that at work!

[GregJL]

Turbine is not going to waste time to make a thread asking for feedback with no intention of analyzing the responses. I mean, seriously.

I can think of a lot more things to get frustrated over than a "tell the community" thread.

Like people who post threads about how annoying TTC threads are?

[ericlewis]

I don't understand why every month (it seems), we, the community, are asked for feedback on new systems / revamps / etc. we would like to see.

How many times do you have to ask this question(s), or better yet, how many times do you have to reword the same question(s)???

I say enough already. Either respond / create / update / revamp / tell us never to the answers we post repeatedly everytime these questions are asked, and stop beating the horse... IT'S BEEN DEAD for months, if not years!!!

I'm a lifer. I haven't logged in though since shortly after Mirkwood (no need to at that point). I completed most of what it had to offer pretty shortly after release, and choose not to grind to do the gated material. However, I do check the forums often.

I'm amazed at how many times the devs seem to ask the same thing over and over again. If they haven't figured out by now what the community wants with all their questions, polls, surveys, etc... it's time for them to move along to another company / field / unemployment.

Phew... rant off for now. I'm sure others can agree with me here. Have a great day!

I agree 100% they asked all the questions, then said dont ask us againg. They keep skirting around trying to find anything to work on but removing radiance from the game and fixing the LI Lotery mess. Instead they seam hell bent on ignoring those hundres of post on radaince and LI's and keep asking what else would you like us to work on.

The answer is Randiance remove it, LI's remove the lotery. Pure and simple. To bad they are too dense to understand that, and they have faulty data pointing that folks love these systems.
/rant
One day the guy who created radiance will be standing tall before the man to answer fo it, and then he going to get a surpise when he takes off his cloak and he finds the man has a pitchfork, and a forked tounge with fire and brimstone.
/rant off

[Hammerfast]

It sounds to me like the OP needs to just take a break from the forums, and perhaps from the game. There's no dead horse here. A topic has to be dead to be considered a dead horse, and the topics discussed in these threads are typically hot items and are very much alive for both the devs and the players.

I personally like the way Turbine asks for feedback and gives us the opportunity to offer suggestions that appeal to us. I realize that things have been a bit sparse over the last year or so, but Turbine has shown repeatedly that they listen to their players and they like to implement things that players would like to see - particularly those items that are in high demand by many players.

I hope they keep asking for the feedback. I hope they keep asking for suggestions and creative ideas. That's how good things happen.

[Nymphonic]

Like people who post threads about how annoying TTC threads are?

I didn't get it at first then I started laughing. That was a good one!

+1 rep!

[erikthe10man]

I don't understand why every month (it seems), we, the community, are asked for feedback on new systems / revamps / etc. we would like to see.

How many times do you have to ask this question(s), or better yet, how many times do you have to reword the same question(s)???

I say enough already. Either respond / create / update / revamp / tell us never to the answers we post repeatedly everytime these questions are asked, and stop beating the horse... IT'S BEEN DEAD for months, if not years!!!

I'm a lifer. I haven't logged in though since shortly after Mirkwood (no need to at that point). I completed most of what it had to offer pretty shortly after release, and choose not to grind to do the gated material. However, I do check the forums often.

I'm amazed at how many times the devs seem to ask the same thing over and over again. If they haven't figured out by now what the community wants with all their questions, polls, surveys, etc... it's time for them to move along to another company / field / unemployment.

Phew... rant off for now. I'm sure others can agree with me here. Have a great day!

I'm a lifer as well, and while I haven't been the most satisfied customer in recent history, the recent feedback threads from the forum moderators are a welcome change. Any feedback left on the Tell the Community threads absolutely has to be noticed. Why would they go through the trouble of compiling all this data if it wasn't part of the creative process? Complaining about a chance to give an official opportunity to vent about what needs to change is utterly crass and foolish.

[Unique]

They keep skirting around trying to find anything to work on but removing radiance from the game and fixing the LI Lotery mess. Instead they seam hell bent on ignoring those hundres of post on radaince and LI's and keep asking what else would you like us to work on.

Wow they are doing a horrible job of ignoring the "Big" questions then



2/18/2010 they asked
You are given the opportunity to make two changes to Radiance Gear. What are the two most important changes you would make?

2/11/2010 they asked
You are given the opportunity to make two changes to the Legendary Item System. What are the two most important changes you would make?



So just because they exclude a couple possible answers from some Tell the Community threads doesn't mean they are ignoring the issues.
Most reasonable people know that changes take time and just because it's been discussed for a long time doesn't mean they can or will make the changes that you think they should instantly.

[ericlewis]

Wow they are doing a horrible job of ignoring the "Big" questions then



2/18/2010 they asked
You are given the opportunity to make two changes to Radiance Gear. What are the two most important changes you would make?

2/11/2010 they asked
You are given the opportunity to make two changes to the Legendary Item System. What are the two most important changes you would make?



So just because they exclude a couple possible answers from some Tell the Community threads doesn't mean they are ignoring the issues.
Most reasonable people know that changes take time and just because it's been discussed for a long time doesn't mean they can or will make the changes that you think they should instantly.

I will answer with this, have we seen anything at all? Yes they asked the questions but we have recieved no feedback from the answers. yet they keep asking more and more questions. Same thing no feedback. To me it seams they giving us a chance to speak out, but on the other hand have not even bothered saying hey we got it were going to take it under advisement.

It is a two way street, and so far all there getting is recomendations, we have yet to hear anything at all. I dont expect we will it would take months of programming but they could at least say ok were getting what you say.

Im just saying were not getting any communications on anything from them. I fully expect that once we get to rohan you will have to have 200 rad if they keep it up at this pace.

The lack of commuication from the dev team on the tell the comunity posts is very disturbing, its like they dont give a rats rear end.

[Maxal]

If you do not wish to help make the game better, then do not. Most people like the idea of giving real feedback not flaming the boards all the time.

I stated this on another thread. When a marketing department, and believe me it is the marketing department that is gathering this data, stops asking questions about something, they have ALREADY made a decision.

They have been very careful to say tells what to do except for LI, Housing, and I can not remember right now.

This means they have taken enough suggestions, good and bad, discussed it with all departments of the team and have made a decision on what they are going to do with these aspects of the game.

Now if they decide to do nothing, this is also a decision. I know as I was a VP of marketing for a very large company and many times doing nothing is your best and only real choice.

I am sure they have made a decision on several items but we will not see it for some time.

[Khafar]

I will answer with this, have we seen anything at all?

No, and you won't. Not until they've made a set of changes, playtested them internally, etc. They're not about to say anything about that until it's a long way down the road toward getting on the live servers. Then we'd probably get a dev diary about it. Players seize on anything they say as some sort of "promise", and they absolutely don't want to talk futures until they can at least say "Soon".

I don't need anyone patting me on the head and reassuring me that they "hear me". I already know that. What I'll be looking for is that dev diary, but I don't expect to see it until the next expansion is close to going out the door.

Khafar

[Differential]

Turbine has very limited resources(I've heard that ZC is the only class dev left...Idk if this is true, but it would make sense considering the fact that they decided to instead of add new skills, copy-paste old ones with a few changes) compared to some other MMOs out there. Give them time. At least they've been asking the community some good questions about what they want to see. Hopefully they'll take this feedback and use it well(although I was kind of surprised that they left out LIs as a possible system revamp...maybe it's because they're already working on it...or maybe it's because they know it'll take a ton of time and don't want to spend that much of their resources). I'm quite happy that they were asking about PvMP. Unfortunately, there is more than one thing that needs to be fixed with PvMP, but at least it's a start

Although there does need to be more communication on the forums...I hate to say it, but even Mythic has more communication with their player base than Turbine does. There was a period long long ago where Jalessa was actively communicating on the PvMP forums. But that has since fallen off. I think that there needs to be a bit more of that not only in PvMP forums, but in the LI, instances and other forums

[Bio-Flame]

There are a number of things that have happened in game as a result of questions asked in the Community Team threads. They are never instant and often the Community Team threads are the starting points, not the end points.

I can point specifically to the removal of a number of legacies from the game and changes to others that came as a direct result of the team asking us to please include a specific question. It wasn't an overnight change, the data collected was compared to other data and was used as a basis for more investigation. In the end, the decisions were made based on the total data gathered, but the end result was a change that started in the Community Team threads.

So as others have said, the change my be slow, but the feedback is never ignored. It all goes into the information pool we use to make decisions.

Thing is, you guys ask but you never reply, never say anything. You never comment on what we say, never explain what you guys think, never share your views about what we said.


It's kinda like being asked something from a Stone wall...it never replies back, makes the whole thing rather de-motivating.



PS - Not to mention that you guys don't really listen to us. The community has said for a long time that gating sucks (not just radiance). But you dno't listen

[Khafar]

I think that there needs to be a bit more of that not only in PvMP forums, but in the LI, instances and other forums

How much communication you get in a certain area depends on the individual developer(s) responsible. It's entirely voluntary, so how much they post is a function of their professional and personal judgement of how important that is. In order to sustain public postings for long, they need to A) believe that lurking simply isn't sufficient, B) believe they're not getting enough interaction via the NDA testing program, and C) have pretty thick skins. Most developers who do post on public forums will burn out on it, sooner or later, and fall back into 'lurk' mode.

In any NDA testing program I've ever been in, there's been more developer interaction than there is on the public forums. Often a lot more. Two of the primary reasons for that are:

1. The feedback and interaction tends to be much more focused on what they need.
2. Civility is required, or you can be removed from the program. They don't have time or energy to waste on problem children, so those are likely to get weeded out.

In any case, I really doubt Turbine is ever going to make it a job requirement to post on the forums, for a fair number of reasons. One of which is that many developers aren't terribly tactful .

Khafar

[trebizond]

Seriously, you people are pathetic with all this complaining. You whine that Turbine doesn't care about your needs, and when they try to gather data on what you actually want you complain too. Do all of us a favor and close your account. It'll make everyone happier.