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MO is a "small team" give them a break....
Picklebeast
Member Posts: 273
The main excuse MO devs/fanboys continue to repeat is that "MO is a small team". When anyone askes why X isnt finished, why Y is half working and a placeholder and why Z cannot be implemented until B and C are done- The answer is always "MO is a small team".
Broken AI after a year and a half? "Mo is a small team"
UI not proper and still a placeholder? "MO is a small team"
Failed bug killing people? "MO is a small team"
Raining inside my house? "MO is a small team"
-You get the picture...
This has been an excuse since Beta Block B (probably longer, I began hearing this excuse at that time) and is the "one size fits all" answer to MO's problems.
...BUT, MO recently (a few months ago I think) layed off some of its dev team and thus made this "small team" even smaller.
MO is also the most expensive MMO sub I have ever seen (over $15 USD/month) which is AAA quality price. Would you not think that since clearly and admittedly "MO is a small team" and cannot tackle problems/fixes/content in a timely manner (or at all) because (as they keep telling us) they are a "small team"- Shouldnt the price reflect less overhead from this "small team" who can only do 1 thing (slowly) at a time?
This far into release (about a year and a half) does this excuse fly?
If the "small team" couldnt fix things in a timely manner in the first year, and then let some of this "small team" go, how can this excuse be used any longer? In other words, the reason they have BEEN STATING for slow fixes, slow content, etc. was made worse by them laying people off and now they still use this excuse.
If this "small team" has been working hard for this long and accomplished so little, yet continues to use the excuse "its a small team"- How could SV not have known they were incapable of doing this game right from the start? Incompetence? Someone not understanding the man hours it would take? Someone not understanding the "skill" of this team?
My question is, does this excuse hold merit anymore? I mean, if they were using this excuse in the Beta, and couldnt deliver and then made things worse by getting rid of devs- How can they keep using this excuse?
Does a small team with less overhead and an unfinished game merit AAA (over AAA) monthly prices?
-Discuss.
Comments
I think the fanbois really want to say inexperienced team but ofcourse they are fanbois so it gets translated into a small team, Lets face it. It is not just because they are a small team. The CEO himself has only 2 years of schooling and no experience besides some modding. And no business experience either. I do not think this team can do a game of this magnatude. I am sure they are realizing it they want a cash injection to hire someone that can fix the game.
a small indie team does not necessarily = bad product.
for example, look at M&B, Minecraft, etc.
but when you're working with limited resources, you need to make smart priorities.
trying to acchieve too much with a small and inexperienced team could lead to disaster.
I totally agree. There are indie teams out there that can make a good game. Imagine if the M@B guys tried to do an MMO instead of what they did. They are smart they did what they new they could do. They didn't shoot for the stars because daddy was paying the bill.
Very good point(s).
What do you think about using the "small team" as an excuse for all of MO's problems a yer and a half later? Especially when they made the probem worse by their decsision to lay off staff.
-I think you really hit the nail on the head though- They promised too much, bit off more than they could chew, didnt have the skill to implement a basic framework for the game, didnt have their priorities straight , tried to achieve too much and thus...Disaster.
I am just in awe that tis is still MO excuse #1... That would be like me telling my boss that I cannot work because my internet bill wasnt paid. A year and a half later my internet bill isnt paid, my boss is pissed and I shrug my shoulders and say "But Sir, I have not had internet in a year and cannot afford it." yet I have bought a new Car, a Harley and a big screen TV. In other words, I made the problem worse and this excuse wont fly anymore.
I don't think the excuse is valid anymore.
the devs make the design decisions and the prioritites knowing how small their resources are.
if they can't accomplish what they set out to acchieve, it's their own fault.
so they shouldn't be surprised that people won't pay for undelivered promises.
after all, MMOs are business projects, not charity.
MO is a small team of inexperienced young adults who are in way over their head
Notch is one guy, and he made millions on his first game before Mojang formed. Kinda invalidates the fanboy argument.
i wouldn't even care about 80% of bugs in this game if the combat it'self was at least reliable and acurate. it simply is not.
when you get killed by a guy swinging a sword 20 feet away from you with his back facing you...... when have to shoot at horses's feet to hit the rider...... when you pull out your weappon only to be holding thin air......when your spells fizzle with your target standing still 3 feet away......when you get hit by thin air ( ghost player) because players are not loading.......when you can block swords/arrows with you bare hands......it is time to find a different game.
there is no PvE in this game and the PvP STILL sucks more then a year after release.
^^ this pretty much, but i beleive if the devs had double the number of developers things would obviously get done quicker, if they hired more experienced developers stuff wouldnt be so broken come patch day.
there are 2 types of mmo, imitators and innovaters.
I don't think you understood what Cyde said. He is saying that the MO fanbois who are saying give them a break it is a small team are pretty much goofballs.
I agree Death... But what are your feelings that "its a small team" is still the #1 excuse for al of MO's problems a year and a half later and AFTER they layed off devs and made the team even smaller?
Obviously more devs would make things faster and competent devs would make things "less" broken- This is clear logic. BUT, I am more interested in peoples opinions as to whether this excuse is valid anymore?
The state of this game is constantly being "excused" by the fact that the Dev team is small- Yet the price is higher than any other MMO that I am aware of (sub wise) AND they had layoffs....Yet still use this as an excuse for a broken game.
Fair or not?
A Kung Fu MMO...make is so!
The small size of MO's dev team is certainly a factor. If it was the only reason for MO still feeling like a beta a year and a half after release then the solution would be to hire more people and get a manager who can set priorities. However, it seems to me that the devs we do have suffer a fundamental lack of talent to draw from. So I think incomptence is the main issue. This would actually be acceptable to me if the monthly cost to play MO were cut in half.
SV are a small team of inexperienced developers who are way over their head and developers like notch are pretty much proof that a small development team can work perfectly fine when applied to an indie title.... wait isnt this eaxactly what cyde said? or am i missing something
picklebeast i dont bleeive the small team is the biggest excuse anymore really, Simply put the devs ran out of money and released the game 2 years to early. Right now the game should of been in closed beta not released. But the reality is that developers do run out of money and in order to survive the game had to release with a subscription fee. The devs inexperience combined with small size is the main problem not their small size alone. Im not going to make an excuse for them come patch day, if the TC patch is broken then its broken by their own hand, when i know other indie companies would have released a patch like that in a better state, i will obviously make allownace for some bugs but certainly not game breaking bugs./ But that doesnt mean i think MO is a bad game or that SV are the wrong developers.
some people critise notch and minecraft, but the reality is no other developer could of made it, had you given the same funds to some other welll established indie developer you can guarantee the game they would of made wouldnt of been anywhere near minecraft, same as if you gave the funds sv had to some other indie developer the result wouldnt of been a game with the same ideas and probably of been more of a wow clone.
there are 2 types of mmo, imitators and innovaters.
Being a small team does not require you to write bad code.
The size of their team has NOTHING to do with the quality of their game. Realistically, the quality of their team (piss poor) and the quality of the management (lol) is what truly contributes to how good or bad the game is. When you have code that is not object oriented and classed properly, then when you introduce new code, old code breaks because it's not objectized to be untouched. And this is the case of MO's entire codebase. Every time a new feature came out, old bugs would make a re-appearance. In a good design team, all components are written as classes and objects, with their own namespaces (google it) so if you update that one part, then it doesn't affect anything else because of the WAY you've written the code.
The size of their team is irrelevant, at this point. The matter of fact point here is that MO has no ability to program, they hired a 'script monkey' (you can google that too) to write the majority of the game, and it shows. It shows even more when the one piece of programming they really had to do outside the Unrealscript was the launcher/patcher, and it DID NOT WORK AT ALL. They had to give it to a fan to write, and even THAT code is poor.
When you can't write even a simple launcher properly, and have it update game files, then what hope is there for the rest of your game? Again, it has nothing to do with the size of the team, and everything to do with the EXPERIENCE of the team. That's why Notch made a great game by HIMSELF, because he was a good programmer, and Minecraft is a game that requires solid programming skills to make, because you can make a PROGRAM inside minecraft (like inception!). But MO is an atrocious piece of software that runs mainly because it's 99% unrealscript, and no real programming. Otherwise, the game would probably not even load.
i beleive that MO was the wrong sort of game for a first time indie developer on a budget, hell most experienced develoeprs would struggle to make something along the lines of MO. Something like eve is prefect and ccp played to their strengths as a first time developer, In space very few animated props, no humanoid modeling required, most thnigs made from rather simple shapes, almost completely spreadsheet based with a strong economic leaning which played to the developers strengths. MO on the other hand was doing alot of things that hadnt really been done in an mmo before plenty of ambition but a lack of funds, man power, experience and competance means its been an exremely bumpy ride until this point.
there are 2 types of mmo, imitators and innovaters.
The root cause of MO being so bad is not so much the inexperienced devs but rather Henrik's delusion in thinking he could handle such a project which was so mure more than he could chew.
When you are a small indie company, you do what you can and try do it best, but when it comes to Skyrim-like projects, you leave it to Bethesda.
thats true raff, but in the current MMO market, companies like bethesda make WOW clones until an indie developer has some success and then they clone that. I beleive even the rumored Elder scrolls mmo will feature tab targeted combat nad not the more visceral combat we are used to from an elder scrolls game (the same company who make edlerscrolls are not making the mmo)
there are 2 types of mmo, imitators and innovaters.
Uhh, why is this a thread? If it's in response to a particular post, post it there... if it's NOT a response to a particular post, it sounds like OP is setting up straw men arguments... I'm guessing we're not too concerned about this though.
Is it a valid excuse? Yes to a certain degree. Are the people whining about stuff not working at all aware of what it takes to run a game? No. I love when little kiddies complain and whine about a game, thinking solutions to everything is simple when I couldn't trust them to program a hello world program, nevermind a game.
Its fine to bring up problems, its not fine to be expecting so much and just so blindly labelling someone as incompitant for something you couldn't even dream of doing yourself one day.
Bad argumenbt. They are charing premium price for a sub-par product. People have a right to complain. And as far as the tired ol chestnut of "don't complain if you can't do it argument", that is pure rubish. We are not the ones claiming we can program a game and charging full price for it; SV is. If they make the claim "we can make a good game" and then don't deliver, people have a right to call the incompetent. Here, let me help you with the definition:
?adjective
1 not sufficiently skilful to do something successfully.
2 Law not qualified to act in a particular capacity.
SV claims they could make a succesful, working game. Many have doubts this is what they delivered, ergo they refer to them as incompetent.
Ok kiddies, class dismissed.
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
Using the "small team" defence would be acceptable if SV had proven before that they can release content or patches that don't royally fuck their own game, or if they had released a full, feature complete product to begin with. The fact of the matter is that there's absolutely no standing evidence that I can find which would lead me to believe that this team is making any progress what-so-ever, and I think the state of their population and the sort of spin doctoring you see around these forums in particular are fairly substantial proof of that.
If they had already shown they could release content in a stable, adequate manner I wouldn't mind people trying to stave off the negativity by directing those individuals to the small size of their development team, but that's certainly not the case. Never say never, but I think in this situation it would probably be reasonable to assume that the trend will continue.
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
Thread bothering you? feel free to stick to MO official forums where those kind of threads would be immediatly censored.
It's something many fans have said about SV, something I even recall you saying at one point. With that said I don't think it's qualifies as a straw man argument.
So according to you, to which degree can this excuse be considered valid? When a player has got to pay more than $15 Per Month for this game then the bar is set VERY high.
Better to save your tolerance towards senseless excuses for those who deserve it rather than for liars and thieves.
Just to make this clear, Ive got some experience in knowing what it takes to make a game run. Im no bona fide game developer but me and a few of my buddies tinker with editors to make game content and have been doing so for quite a long time. I have worked with the Aurora toolset (NWN1 editor) and DA toolset (Dragon Age 1 editor) and Ive modded a little bit with my senior collegues with stuff like War3 editor (Warcraft III) and the Counter Strike toolkit for 1.6 and CZ. So your point about people whining about stuff not working is not only moot but very ignorant to have even been made in the first place. Besides, the playerbase who PAYS for a game dont have to give a flying duck about what it takes to run the game, they pay for PLAYING the game.
After all you dont go a restaurant, pay a premium price and order the risotto and when you get a few grains of rice floating in a bowl of crap you dont say "Awww its a small team of chefs and since I dunno how to make risotto I`ll just eat this bowl of crap that I have already paid for and bad mouth anyone who seems to have a problem with shoving down crap!"
So, by the standards you yourself have set, I have the right to call them not only incompetent but a buncha lying incompetent thieves since Ive been modding games right from when I was still a teenager and its not something I "couldn't even dream off" either.
But come now, Im just a fanmodder who puts up content for free. Henrick and Co. who themselves are modders should have put up their mod, called Mortal Online, as some form of freeware in collaboration with a Real gaming company and taken it up from there after getting some experience in the field and getting pointers from Real devs about how to actually run a MMO.
So first things first, get some therapy for loving kiddies who whine about games before you act upon your deranged priorities and land yourself in real trouble. And then after that, go take a few classes on programming (C++ will do) and you probably are a smart person who got half a functional brain so you will then be able to call the BS on how badly SV has coded MO. And then who knows, maybe someday you can start dreaming about something you could never have dreamt before.
The thread has been won.
That paragraph I highlighted is actually most of the experience the team has. So you can go out and make your own MMO.