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Take this Nerf and shove it.
neuronomad
Member Posts: 1,276
Okay I played every class in Vanguard besides the three defensive fighters to at least level 8. I took my time finding a class that I really enjoyed (the Disciple). They weren't the best healers, weren't the best buffers by any means, didn't have anywhere near the best DPS but they were fun to play and I could solo them very well. Well last night Sigil nerfed the heck out of them. Some nerfing is fine, but dang it if you are going to nerf a class at least fix the things that are broken about them too. And maybe before you nerf them to hell you could say fix things that not doing primetime reboots, fix the zillion broken quest, fix the invisible mobs, fix the fact that on even on a fairly decent machine that can run pretty much any other game out there on at least balanced that I can't even play on the lowest settings without it turning into a slide show.
I realize that all of the classes have issues, but Sigil you are wasting too much time nerfing than actually resolving game breaking bugs.
I realize that all of the classes have issues, but Sigil you are wasting too much time nerfing than actually resolving game breaking bugs.
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Currently Playing: Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile
Quit: Eden Eternal, Wakfu, DDO, STO, DCUO, Sword 2, Atlantica Online, LOTRO, SWTOR, RIFT, Earthrise, FFXIV, RoM, Allods Online, GA,WAR,CO,V:SoH,POTBS,TR,COH/COV, WOW, DDO,AL, EQ, Eve, L2, AA, Mx0, SWG, SoR, AO, RFO, DAoC, and others.
www.twitter.com/mlwhitt
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Comments
Which is why I argued SO hard for some sort of spell respec for sorcerers and bards while I was in the DDO beta, but everyone said it was not in the P&P game so there was no need for it in the online one, idiots…
Nerfs do suck and it is fairly clear that they are still balancing the classes in Vanguard. In a couple of months it should be much more clear what their final form is going to be.
Devs should work on the progress of their game in this order.
1. Functionality/Performance Issues
2. Bugs/Exploits/Duping
3. Quest polishing; fix rewards, adjust difficulty, etc etc
4. LASTLY, Balance.
You don't swing the nerf bat before the ball even starts rolling, Sigil.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Agree, agree, and agree.
You could get away with the nerfbat back in the days of EQ1 because people didn't have options. There are HUNDREDS of MMOs out there, many of them free. We have somewhere else to go if we don't like a game, if we can't log into the game, if our xp and items go missing, if our class gets nerfed into unplayability, etc.
I know Sigil has invested YEARS in making this game. I think it has the potential to be the greatest thing we've ever seen in the genre. But not if you alienate your customers on the first week with unnecessary class nerfs, when thousands of people can't even log in to the game consistently.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
If they had the first items you mentioned at least halfway resolved I would be fine with the balancing act. But to have your class nerfed to heck all the while glaring problems and performance issues are hitting you in the face it makes it hard to stomach the game.
For Pete sakes they can't even fix what should be a simple issue like those of us with station pass not being able to access the extra four character slots we are paying for. And that is even a minor issue to the performance issues that we are seeing in the game.
But to take the servers down at 5pm PST for 2 hours to place nerf patches all the while leaving other game breaking problems is a joke.
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Currently Playing: Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile
Quit: Eden Eternal, Wakfu, DDO, STO, DCUO, Sword 2, Atlantica Online, LOTRO, SWTOR, RIFT, Earthrise, FFXIV, RoM, Allods Online, GA,WAR,CO,V:SoH,POTBS,TR,COH/COV, WOW, DDO,AL, EQ, Eve, L2, AA, Mx0, SWG, SoR, AO, RFO, DAoC, and others.
www.twitter.com/mlwhitt
www.michaelwhitt.com
2. Agree, but a sever imbalance in class power i would consider an exploit. The longer they take to get it at least reasonably balanced the more "unfair" it gets.
3. Agree
4. Agree, but they need to have it kind of close to start with...
It's the first week of the game being released, so there are bound to be some adjustments. All the mmo's I've played have had nerfs at one time or another, so this is nothing new.
Not saying that is definitely that case - BUT - not every developer is going to know how to do all 4 from your list there; Cymdai. They most likely have teams of devs. assigned to each of those areas depending on what they know.
When a team is done with a batch of their assignments, it gets included in the patch; and they start working on the next batch of assignments.
So, in this instance; perhaps the team that was working on Balance, thought they had a finished batch, so they included it into the patch. That doesn't mean that #'s 1-3 weren't/aren't being worked on at the same time. It just means that the team assigned to those areas isn't done yet.
I don't work there, so I have no idea how it actually gets assigned and work orders completed. However, for anyone that has worked in the computer industry with a semi-large staff KNOWS that you don't have everyone working on the exact same thing. It's spread out amongst teams, each team has a leader, each leader, has a dept. head, and so on and so forth.
So, when the team assigned to your #'s 1-3 gets stuff done to be included - it will be. It's not like they haven't addressed any of those items. They have a lot more work to do, yes; but to say they haven't done anything on those top 3 - is a LIE.
Not saying that is definitely that case - BUT - not every developer is going to know how to do all 4 from your list there; Cymdai. They most likely have teams of devs. assigned to each of those areas depending on what they know.
When a team is done with a batch of their assignments, it gets included in the patch; and they start working on the next batch of assignments.
So, in this instance; perhaps the team that was working on Balance, thought they had a finished batch, so they included it into the patch. That doesn't mean that #'s 1-3 weren't/aren't being worked on at the same time. It just means that the team assigned to those areas isn't done yet.
I don't work there, so I have no idea how it actually gets assigned and work orders completed. However, for anyone that has worked in the computer industry with a semi-large staff KNOWS that you don't have everyone working on the exact same thing. It's spread out amongst teams, each team has a leader, each leader, has a dept. head, and so on and so forth.
So, when the team assigned to your #'s 1-3 gets stuff done to be included - it will be. It's not like they haven't addressed any of those items. They have a lot more work to do, yes; but to say they haven't done anything on those top 3 - is a LIE.
However, as a lead programmer, you've got to know which priorities to assign your co-workers too.
In my opinion, and mind you I'm no programmer, I'd assign the most devs to those fields. Sigil's team is pretty large, right? 45% on Functionality performance, 25% on Bugs/Exploits/Duping, 20% on Quest tweaking/rewards/difficulty, 10% on balance.
Keep in mind, you could always re-assign these folks once certain issues are taken care of. However, in my opinion, after release, that's the way I'd want my labor divided.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Not saying that is definitely that case - BUT - not every developer is going to know how to do all 4 from your list there; Cymdai. They most likely have teams of devs. assigned to each of those areas depending on what they know.
When a team is done with a batch of their assignments, it gets included in the patch; and they start working on the next batch of assignments.
So, in this instance; perhaps the team that was working on Balance, thought they had a finished batch, so they included it into the patch. That doesn't mean that #'s 1-3 weren't/aren't being worked on at the same time. It just means that the team assigned to those areas isn't done yet.
I don't work there, so I have no idea how it actually gets assigned and work orders completed. However, for anyone that has worked in the computer industry with a semi-large staff KNOWS that you don't have everyone working on the exact same thing. It's spread out amongst teams, each team has a leader, each leader, has a dept. head, and so on and so forth.
So, when the team assigned to your #'s 1-3 gets stuff done to be included - it will be. It's not like they haven't addressed any of those items. They have a lot more work to do, yes; but to say they haven't done anything on those top 3 - is a LIE.
However, as a lead programmer, you've got to know which priorities to assign your co-workers too.
In my opinion, and mind you I'm no programmer, I'd assign the most devs to those fields. Sigil's team is pretty large, right? 45% on Functionality performance, 25% on Bugs/Exploits/Duping, 20% on Quest tweaking/rewards/difficulty, 10% on balance.
Keep in mind, you could always re-assign these folks once certain issues are taken care of. However, in my opinion, after release, that's the way I'd want my labor divided. I agree with those percentages. The part that we don't know, and this is where Brad should be firing/hiring if that's not the case. Are 45% of the devs. capable of working on Functionality performance?
I seem to remember he said they has about 100 in their team, and that's a nice easy number to use for the sake of comparison, so let's go with it.
Of that 100 a certain percentage is going to be working on future projects, such as expansions. What percent? Haven't a clue. But let's take a low number, about 10% = 10 devs.
Another percentage is going to be working on getting stuff into the game that was intended to be there, but got pushed back because of time constraints. Things such as the Berserker class, quests, items, etc. Again purely speculation, but let's go with the 10% = 10 devs.
So, of the 80% of the devs. that are left; what percent has the expertise to work on the performance side of it? 25%? 50%? All of them? I don't have a clue. I do hope it's close to that 45% you used. I kinda doubt that it is though.
From what I know of computers and networking, that's the one area that's the hardest to nail down. Even with people that are experts in that field, it's a daunting task at times. You have to remember, that a lot of these performance issues don't effect people EVEN WITH THE SAME HARDWARE the same way. Should a lot of these problems have been worked out months or even years before the game was released? Probably so. Doesn't change the fact that they weren't.
Bottom line is that we know Vanguard was released with some work yet to be done. If you can have fun, despite it having some problems; great. If the problems are killing your fun, or you don't want to deal with problems; then it's probably best to wait a few more months. For me, I'm having fun; so I'm willing to pay to play.
Frankly after the debacle of SWG, I said that SOE would never get another penny from me for an MMO. And they haven't
I'm fine with that. I don't care how LONG it takes me to reach the cap. I just want to be able to play the game, do the quests that I have been given that aren't flagged as 'group' quests, instead of spending hours of my life standing in town looking for a team.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
Software = Sigil
Hardware = SoE
If I didn't have to work for a living and could pay VG all day, I could turn on my /lfg flag while crafting or harvesting. Sadly I have mouths to feed, as it were and only get to play a few hours in the evening, a bit more on weekends. Because of my limited play time I need to be able to solo in order to experience the game. Population levels are not high enough and the areas are too spread out especially at lower levels to realistically find a team in any sort of reasonable time frame - particularly as a disciple who weren't much wanted in the first place and now that they're even more useless I'm sure will be even LESS wanted.
I thought this game was to have something for everyone - looks like we've been deceived.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
Yep, those damn devs, always doing everything assbackwards, when, if only they listened to the experts over here at MMORPG.com, their game would have been done in half the time, for half the money, and entirely bug free.
My question is, since so many of you are clearly so capable of doing a superior job of designing, coding, and running an MMO, what the hell are you all doing griping here, when you could be unleashing your video game masterpiece on an unsuspecting world, and subsequently rolling around naked in the huge piles of money that you'd make?
And to think, back when I was young, and naive, I wanted to get a job in the game development industry. Now I wouldn't take that job if it came with a guarantee of immortality.
If they had the first items you mentioned at least halfway resolved I would be fine with the balancing act. But to have your class nerfed to heck all the while glaring problems and performance issues are hitting you in the face it makes it hard to stomach the game.
For Pete sakes they can't even fix what should be a simple issue like those of us with station pass not being able to access the extra four character slots we are paying for. And that is even a minor issue to the performance issues that we are seeing in the game.
But to take the servers down at 5pm PST for 2 hours to place nerf patches all the while leaving other game breaking problems is a joke.
Not to defend them , but I think they are working through a really long list. I just got an email today replying to a request i put in on 1/28 concerning the "registration" error message that a lot of people were getting. It says :
"We have not heard from you concerning your request for support in the 72 hours since we sent you a response. In the hopes that this indicates a resolution to your problem has been provided, we are tentatively setting your incident status to solved. If we are mistaken in this assumption, please update your incident via the Service History tab of the support site. "
Which to me translates to:
"You haven't bitched about this issue in the last 72hrs so we're just going to assume the issue is fixed cuz we got a lot of shit going on over here"
Its probably hard to prioritize when there are so many things F'd up... for all we know they had 300 bug complaints that Disciple was overpowered and some idiot said.. "well this has the most complaints... it must be priority"
Although.. I'm sure w/e the adjustment was made you would have been unhappy.
Not saying that is definitely that case - BUT - not every developer is going to know how to do all 4 from your list there; Cymdai. They most likely have teams of devs. assigned to each of those areas depending on what they know.
When a team is done with a batch of their assignments, it gets included in the patch; and they start working on the next batch of assignments.
So, in this instance; perhaps the team that was working on Balance, thought they had a finished batch, so they included it into the patch. That doesn't mean that #'s 1-3 weren't/aren't being worked on at the same time. It just means that the team assigned to those areas isn't done yet.
I don't work there, so I have no idea how it actually gets assigned and work orders completed. However, for anyone that has worked in the computer industry with a semi-large staff KNOWS that you don't have everyone working on the exact same thing. It's spread out amongst teams, each team has a leader, each leader, has a dept. head, and so on and so forth.
So, when the team assigned to your #'s 1-3 gets stuff done to be included - it will be. It's not like they haven't addressed any of those items. They have a lot more work to do, yes; but to say they haven't done anything on those top 3 - is a LIE.
However, as a lead programmer, you've got to know which priorities to assign your co-workers too.
In my opinion, and mind you I'm no programmer, I'd assign the most devs to those fields. Sigil's team is pretty large, right? 45% on Functionality performance, 25% on Bugs/Exploits/Duping, 20% on Quest tweaking/rewards/difficulty, 10% on balance.
Keep in mind, you could always re-assign these folks once certain issues are taken care of. However, in my opinion, after release, that's the way I'd want my labor divided.
I can tell your not a programmer for sure.
But you do not assign a larger number on certain issues. There is such a thing as overkill. Just because you got 30 guys doing something doesnt meant it gets done faster then 10. Another issue is the more people you have working on it the higher % there is for error. Or someone missing something. Trust me no one is perfect, you try programming and tell even if you did it 24 hrs a day for 10 years you could do it without missing something or making an error here and there. You have to have a concentrated effort for that task and let them do there work.
Another issue is not all programmers can do that work, they are hired to work other areas of there knowledge not that certain issue.
However, wouldn't you be able to divide up the coding that needs to be re-evaluated into smaller, more distinct chunks, and then let each programmer handle each specific section? Or would that be counter-productive.
I think of it like a group project. Let's use avatar creation as an example.
Have 1 guy work solely on the head, one guy solely on the shoulders, one on the left hand, one on the right hand, etc etc.
Is that even possible, or no? Enlighten me.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
The problem is that player feedback, while important, shouldn't be the end-all do-all decision making tool. People whine that such and such class is overpowered, devs nerf it. Next week people whine that such and such class is underpowered, they give them a bunch of extra stuff. Class balance goes crazy. Next thing you know, everything is all out of whack.
Don't the Devs have enough confidence in their own ideas, their original plan, to put their feet down and say no, this is how we want the classes to be, we aren't going to change something just because a few people screamed and cried about it?
Apparently not.
I'm not saying that people should completely disregard player feedback, but I am willing to guarantee you that 90% of all complaints about ANY class come from people who have never played that class - they saw someone of that class do something that they couldn't and automatically assume the class is overpowered since they are in denial of their own lack of skill as a gamer. Thats like me playing a mage and saying ZOMG THAT PLATEMAIL WEARING PALADIN CAN TANK THIS MOB AND I CANT, ZOMG NERF. Apples meet oranges.
Many of us who DO play disciples admit that there were some things that could be toned down slightly. Increase the endurance cost by 5 or even 10 (this is still a 20-30% cost increase!) It doesn't need to be doubled. Decrease the amount healed by a reasonable amount, like 10-20%, not HALF of what it was. These are tweaks. What if you logged onto your ____ class and found that say, all of your damaging attacks had been reduced to 25% of what they were? (Because my DPS is effectively 25% of what it was, with the crit nerf.). You know that nuke you had that did 300 points? Hah, it does 75 points now. Its a significant decrease.
Many of us who DO play disciples admit these changes would be for the betterment of the game as a whole and would have no problem with them. But our feedback is lost in the ocean of wailing cries of nerf by people who are just plain uneducated about what they are talking about. And this is the result. I really hope all of those people are happy, because as everyone else gets knocked down and knocked down, eventually YOUR class is going to be the one sticking up by itself as "over powered" and your nerf will come.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
Well its not as simple with one the Unreal Engine that is heavily modified in this game. You could change how a monster responds to something then have to deal with 10 other bugs created by what you just changed.
Say I make a program im 30% done and your hired to do the rest. Well you cant continue from where I left off. You have to start from the begining to know what your getting yourself into. You have to understand everything and how changing that one line effects all aspects of the code.
Let me phrase this another way. Let's assume Sigil is employing about 100 programers, at say $45,000 average per year, annual wages are $4.5 million, monthly wages are $375,000. How many of us on these forums that would like to design a game can foot the bill for one month's game design labor alone, not counting rent, utilities, office furniture, and equipment? And how many investors are willing to trust that kind of cash to an unproven developer? Basically, not a hell of alot of us. So can the "if you can do it better, do it" crap. This is why you don't see alot of independant devlopers.
Now for some hard, cold facts. Sigil has already stated that they were running out of money, so the game had to go retail now. At $4.5 million average for wages, over the life of the devlopement, how much money do you think they spent? The retail box sales of $50 per game have to cover advertising, packaging, artwork, manual, DVD manufacture, wholesaler distribution, and retail markup. Sigil is actually lucky to be making any money on the retail box sale at all. If 50,000 gamers pay for one month, Sigil will make $750,000 gross, and out of that pay expenses, which now include a hardware maintenance fee to SOE. And each patch Sigil pushes through requires SOE staff hours to run the patch on the servers. And with the number of patches being pushed out, Sigil appears to be paying their employees overtime. Not counting the costs for borrowed SOE developers/employees. Not a pretty picture folks.
Sigil must successfully run this game for a few years in order to provide the return on investment necessary for continued independant developers to survive. Going retail at the end of January was their hope to keep this game afloat, not some malignant idea of SOE. With 50,000 paying subscriptions for March (February is free, remember) Sigil may just pull it off. Right now it is one hell of a crap shoot, fixing the game to keep 50,000 subscribers while holding off the wolves that want payment before March. Not a pretty picture folks.
Now you know why I don't want to be an independant game developer.
People only think of themselfs not what a game cost to develop (some 40 mil for this) and then monthyl upkeep of this game. With what brad has said they kept all developing staff and added an expansion staff. So its more then 100 employees at lets be honest 45k a year is low to what it prob is. That is ALOT of money guys, and unless your gonna pay there bills let them do what they want. You pay 15$ a month, they pay 500k + a month to keep the game up.
I miss DAoC