Things the team is doing wrong

[Daywolf]

Two points I'd like to address:

- spineless - the Team as a whole has not taken a clearly defined stand or enforced their stand on certain important issues to our game community. Issues like macro'ing, foul language, multi'ing, money... The recent stand against macro'ing is commendable. The open and ongoing debate about multi'ing is good, but we need a stand against it. A lack of proper censorship in chat, and even swear words in NPC dialogue leave us very vulnerable to FCC violations, offending players and losing players. EnB needs to be family friendly, and kid friendly. Money... this issue keeps coming up way too often, for way too long. Clamp down. Firmly establish the "LAW" here that EnBemu is free in all regards, no subscriptions, no rewards, NOTHING but donations of free will for "a server" and nothing at all game-related.

Multiboxing is common. If multiboxing were discouraged or even a violation, this would be the only project to do so. I have seen this addressed in the past, and it was approved but with a recommended limit of three multiboxed accounts. It's even more difficult to do so here than all the other games since you need multiple physical systems or to run a virtual PC to play more than one at a time. Most other mmo's you can just run multiple client windows on the same system. It's not that they never addressed it, but that a few people want to keep debating it, bringing the subject up repeatedly.

- playing - many devs both now and since the project started spend a majority of their time playing in-game rather than dev'ing. I took great offense to this while I was a dev, and never went in-game, not even to visually inspect placements (I knew this was minor, and could be done much later on at a more complete stage), but some devs "live" in-game, and while they think they are doing their "work" by maninpulating and positioning certain content objects, or checking a chat tree... they get distracted, and are "playing" not working. Checking object positions and chat trees or vendors is the job of beta testers and players, not devs.

Maybe that happens more with EMU projects. If they are doing that, they would probably get kicked from any commercial/non-commercial indie dev team. You see the situation is usually reversed, dev's like to develop more than they like to play. It's fun to develop, but if it's more fun to play than maybe they really aren't cut for development. I'm not taking sides here on that, not commenting on he said she said stuff, I'm just stating a fact.

[bondct]

you can all say what you want... but with only 51 replies this thread is still only 2nd best on this forum... a long shot away from the monster 92 reply macro thread

[Marco[IS]]

- playing - many devs both now and since the project started spend a majority of their time playing in-game rather than dev'ing. I took great offense to this while I was a dev, and never went in-game, not even to visually inspect placements (I knew this was minor, and could be done much later on at a more complete stage), but some devs "live" in-game, and while they think they are doing their "work" by maninpulating and positioning certain content objects, or checking a chat tree... they get distracted, and are "playing" not working. Checking object positions and chat trees or vendors is the job of beta testers and players, not devs.

While I don't think a Dev should spend their entire time "playing," if it wasn't for the fact that the Devs loved playing the game, the emulator would never have come into existence. If you never checked your work, then that explains why Cookoo had to fix the old Mercury Sector and make it playable.

A Developer should check their work, otherwise they will not be able to learn how to refine their creation skills. This way there should be less bugs with new generated work.

- Marco

[Daywolf]

Actually that is what Testers are for. Commercial companies hire people just to test and that's all they do so to free up devs to do what they like to do, develop. That's what we do here, the players are actually testers. That's why it's good for us to know when changes are going into place, the specifics, because in a way, alll members are a part of the dev team at this point. I'm not trying to crack a whip, just stating the obvious, that when devs mostly play, then their testers, because that is what they like to do rather than develop. To really test something, that is usually beyond the time frame for developers that like to develop, because testing requires repitition and in various situations. I'm not speaking in extremes, developers make initial tests, but beyond that, there should not be enough developers to really test something.

But I stand by that, that developers like to develop, it’s what they spend most of their time doing with a game. Yes developers play, but to love a game is to love developing it. If you find it more fun to develop than to play, hah well then you are probably a developer. Of course you don't want to take it to the extreme and disconnect, but that is more often the case with million dollar AAA commercial game projects.

Of course don't get me wrong, I'm not taking sides on any dispute, just commenting in general.

One other point, about the ~100% turnover. Well that is common. The project is three years old. Ultima Online has one developer (programmer) that has been there from nearly the start of the project (1st year after launch), all the others are gone and no one is left that was there from launch. A lot of companies even only contract for a period of time and then it's time to move on. To stay with a project for a few years is actually a lot of time, even for an mmo. Well... unless you have a cushy job developing Duke Nukem Forever hehe

[crimzonblood]

ok here is my .02 in regards to this topic

1. Communication

2. Communication

3. Communication

We need to know what is going on and have updates constantly... I have posted a number of valid questions in regards to guild controls that have gone unanswered. Is it broken or not... who knows, as no one is saying, but someone must have coded it so someone knows...

Also, I think that we need to rethink the term players... No one here is a player... we are testers and just as much a part of the development team as any coder is. As such we need to be treated accordingly.... and again communication is the key here. To be effective we need to know what is going on and in game actions by coders should revolve around what the game needs to do at that time, because "There are no Players"

i agree with this. i would have also love to know what they where testing last night with all the level 66 mobs. dieing didn;t bother me but i would like to know why. with all the GMs on last night could they have just said what they where testing so we could more help test it.

[Kyp [LDEV]]

If every last person could be trusted to fully describe their issue (and search to make sure it doesn't exist already) we would probably leave mantis more open for example. The simple fact is, the majority while professing that they would/currently do so, when we left it open we got simple threads that didn't describe an issue thoroughly.

What we need to know is HOW you went about doing something step by step and what your expectations were as well as what actually happened. Chances are, if a ticket you write is less than 250 words (being very lenient), you didn't describe enough to help.

This is part of the reason we do a bit of our own testing, but then again as organization has come together the beta team has properly formed under its own lead and things are beginning to progress. There are several things coming down the pipes, but right now we're trying to make sure most of the major systems from live are there (for example, Jobs)

How would people feel on the idea of having a bi-weekly content feature of some kind? Many of us don't have a huge amount of time or are having to work extra for other reasons (me for example, to afford continuing college as well as an internship I have to get done with a professional game design firm)

Kyp

[Kenu [CDEV]]

I don't see too many devs in game when I am online, so I don't think them playing enb instead of developing is a problem, and I when I play I usually am sitting around answering questions or have it minimized in the background.

In fact I think developers should play enb more. playing helps us connect with the community. We can see their opinions better than we can on the forums since in the forums, one player can post their opinion in many threads. Also, more players play the game than post on the forums so it's a better representation of the community.

besides, it's better if they're playing enb than other games like EVE and STO. Even if they aren't working they are still interacting with ENB, which helps them keep up with what's going on.

[Tienbau]

while not wanting to spark off the trollbot that pipes in with a 'devs closing ranks' post, I agree with Marco.

Are you seriously suggesting that we as devs shouldn't log into the main server here and there to check how it's running?

It's through logging into the server, getting feedback, asking people to do things etc that the server is in the state it's in now.

This isn't a commercial project, all the devs take days/weeks off, I like to log in and do some mining, join a group etc now and again for inspiration. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And you know what happens next!

Also saying we're spineless for not enforcing certain playing styles is a little unfair. Who are we to dictate how people play? To be honest I don't really care if someone wants to macro, especially at this stage of the game. Also if they want to dual box and find that fun, go for it, I don't enjoy playing that way but I don't have a right to dictate that someone else shouldn't. Yes I do think there shouldn't be as much advantage to macro playing as there currently is, but at this stage we are still developing.

It's very easy to point out the mistakes that we've all made - I've made TONs of design mistakes, I've introduced loads of bugs, two of which resulted in a rollback and a player wipe. Yep I should have been more careful, but it's all a learning curve. In a perfect world I'd have sat down and coded up the system we've got now to begin with, it's quite logical and definitely simple, but there you go.

We've had people in the teams do weird things and throw tantrums and so on, and yeah the original team were talented too, but I think we're starting to view them in rose-tinted nostalgia-o-vision a bit. Reading through the old forums random posts from before I joined the team there was still just as much criticism back then too.

All I'm saying is, we're people too you know, and people make mistakes, it's OK to have threads like this, I can see how people on the outside of the team would say 'why the heck did they do that???'. Usually it's the result of misinterpretation of something someone said, classic chinese whispers.

A little sense of humour regarding the various team blunders is essential for maintaining sanity for both the team and the players. The more active people are the more blunders we'll make! The more progress we make the more face-palming fails will happen. Don't think the blundering is over by a long shot either! There's plenty more where that came from!

[Daywolf]

Also, more players play the game than post on the forums so it's a better representation of the community.

Or you can press the "credits" button while in-game