Re: 1.2 Gameplay Changes derails into dev cycle

[khalsa]

The years between 1.1 and 1.2 should have been productive years filled with community feedback. We wouldn't have this problem today if that is how it went.

We have had public testing games with calls for community feedback for well over 16 months. That is how it went. Numerous things have changed due to the feedback we got, and do get.

[KamikOzzy]

The years between 1.1 and 1.2 should have been productive years filled with community feedback. We wouldn't have this problem today if that is how it went.

We have had public testing games with calls for community feedback for well over 16 months. That is how it went. Numerous things have changed due to the feedback we got, and do get.

The planned dev games topic has like 3000 views, but I'm sure everyone that goes to the dev games has viewed it many times themselves. Other than that topic, I've never heard a thing about 1.2 testing until I kinda started a shitstorm about it recently.

To cut it short cause I have to go: I think the testing was done primarily by an inside group and a few tagalongs. Some devs, some mods, some whatever. It's the group I always get in trouble for referring to as simply "MG". I personally knew about the dev games, but often when 1.2 is mentioned in game, people respond with "Oh that's actually being worked on?"

[khalsa]

I don't understand how more to make it public? There is several front-page Tremulous.net news posts. There are thousands of mentions in IRC. There is a Global Announcement in EVERY BOARD of this forum. They have been mentioned in tons of threads. Lot's of Bugzilla bugs reference them. They have been mentioned on TremRadio, the few tremulous podcasts. Several individual clan websites.

Just because one individual was unable to see the info in all of the above does not mean it was not disseminated.

Edit: P.S. The actual thread has 49605 views, while the announcement has 3000+

[Twofacedrat]

Meh, i have to second Ozzy to a extent. I have been playing trem for 4 years(or however long 2 months since its release), i heard talk about it when i started playing (or at least when i started being a regular),  after that it kinda died and when any reference was made to it the reaction was simply "there isn't going to be a 1.2" or "1.2 is going to take like 5 years" or something around those lines. Im not meaning to insult the devs, i know they have worked a lot on it / have their own life to live, but honestly the only positive news about 1.2 for me has been pretty recent (past 2 weeks maybe). Other than that it was all negative news/indications that its not coming out in the near future so i didn't really care so much about it. So really i have to second Ozzy that the vast majority of the trem players don't know much about 1.2, only what they have heard and that would be that its never coming out. Just my 2 cents.

[temple]

The feedback and progress has been public.  The problem isn't visibility of 1.2, its 1.2 itself.

[AppleJuice]

I don't see how it's possible to not have known about the development games if you visit these forums even somewhat regularly (even when I was visiting once a month, I knew about them). What makes this even weirder is that a bunch of people who are complaining now have known about these games, but simply said "1.2 sucks" and nothing more in-game, while refusing to give any constructive feedback/play on the dev servers for more than a few games (I'm not only talking about people who post here).

Honestly, even if the changes aren't ideal...people really want to keep playing 1.1? I mean, really? It's so damn old now, and if you're still discovering new things about 1.1 gameplay after so many years, you probably aren't as great as you think you are. I and a lot of people I know (who are also great 1.1 players) are eager for 1.2.

I BELIEVE IN CHANGE

(The planned dev games topic has almost 50,000 views; obviously a ton of people knew about it)

[Grape]

i agree bro

[temple]

Not all change is good change.  

....And it is not 1.1 that I'm bored of.  I'm not bored of Tremulous.  I've played it for 3-4 years for a reason.  What I'm bored of is the same issues that existed way back then never being changed or fixed.  

If you are bored; play an a large server, scrim, or play on modded servers...you can make the game fun in a variety of ways.  

The core of the public gameplay is lame for a few obvious reasons.  The devs are trying to throw a fresh coat of paint on a crumbling house.  Change the weapons, nerfing the aliens, throwing gimmicks in the building system aren't solving the problems making Tremulous boring to me.  

I absolutely love Tremulous until Stage 3 and have the next 20-30 minutes be the most frustrating or boring experience ever.  The Stage 1 and Stage 2 gameplay is pretty much the only reason I still play.  

[David]

Equally, not all change is bad change.

[Twofacedrat]

I absolutely love Tremulous until Stage 3 and have the next 20-30 minutes be the most frustrating or boring experience ever.  The Stage 1 and Stage 2 gameplay is pretty much the only reason I still play.  

Same
________________________

Im not saying that 1.2 sucks, im just saying that the reason why i just put in my idea was because i just thought of it. I just thought of it because i just had been playing on the SVN server. There has only been a SVN server within the past month or less (if i understand correctly). I knew there was progress on 1.2, but it was only available through text really. The dev server is practically always empty and i only play trem to scrim. Its hard to judge/test a game via text so i didn't and i had been waiting for the ability to actually play it then give feedback on it. I guess that's my fault for not taking the time to read all the changes and huge topics.

[mooseberry]

Meh, i have to second Ozzy to a extent. I have been playing trem for 4 years(or however long 2 months since its release), i heard talk about it when i started playing (or at least when i started being a regular),  after that it kinda died and when any reference was made to it the reaction was simply "there isn't going to be a 1.2" or "1.2 is going to take like 5 years" or something around those lines. Im not meaning to insult the devs, i know they have worked a lot on it / have their own life to live, but honestly the only positive news about 1.2 for me has been pretty recent (past 2 weeks maybe). Other than that it was all negative news/indications that its not coming out in the near future so i didn't really care so much about it. So really i have to second Ozzy that the vast majority of the trem players don't know much about 1.2, only what they have heard and that would be that its never coming out. Just my 2 cents.

You are arguing two completely different topics as one, which while perhaps logical to you, portrays a swerving train of thought to me, and probably anyone who tries to carefully understand what you are saying.

Idea1:

I have been playing trem for 4 years(or however long 2 months since its release), i heard talk about it when i started playing (or at least when i started being a regular),  after that it kinda died and when any reference was made to it the reaction was simply "there isn't going to be a 1.2" or "1.2 is going to take like 5 years" or something around those lines.

Or to summarize: I heard very little on 1.2 in the past 4 years of playing, so I don't think enough was done to publicize it.

So really i have to second Ozzy that the vast majority of the trem players don't know much about 1.2, only what they have heard and that would be that its never coming out.

(Posted after moving on to idea2) This is pretty simple.

Idea2:

Im not meaning to insult the devs, i know they have worked a lot on it / have their own life to live, but honestly the only positive news about 1.2 for me has been pretty recent (past 2 weeks maybe). Other than that it was all negative news/indications that its not coming out in the near future so i didn't really care so much about it.

Or to summarize: I heard that 1.2 wasn't going to be good.
It is also rather ironic that at the end you add "so i didn't really care so much about it." Which seems to imply you didn't bother to learn anything about 1.2, in which case how can you justify claiming that 1.2 wasn't publized enough?

I don't really see how anyone, Ozzy, twofacedrat or anyone can say that nobody knew about it, that topic has 50,000 views, there was announcments everywhere, as Khalsa said, and I saw many people from all places of Tremulous playing on the Dev server. Maybe people don't like 1.2 but if they even made any effort at all to learn about it, (like going all the way to tremulous.net) they would know at least something about it, how to play it, and more.

There has only been a SVN server within the past month or less (if i understand correctly). I knew there was progress on 1.2, but it was only available through text really.

If you mean the 1.2 dev server, let me show you a quote by Khalsa, who should certainly know:

We have had public testing games with calls for community feedback for well over 16 months. That is how it went.

Maybe try reading the replies above you? 

[Winnie the Pooh]

On the alpha release in the planned dev games thread, there is a news option that automatically retrieves an rss feed (I guess) from tremulous.net for any new news posts. This means that once 1.2 is out, no one can complain about not knowing about whatever.

[Twofacedrat]

meh, curse me for not thinking out my post...

Or to summarize: I heard that 1.2 wasn't going to be good.
It is also rather ironic that at the end you add "so i didn't really care so much about it." Which seems to imply you didn't bother to learn anything about 1.2, in which case how can you justify claiming that 1.2 wasn't publized enough?

What i meant was before maybe year ago there was very little talk of 1.2, it was just a myth (as you said moose ). This in turn means it wasn't in the near future which gave me no real motivation to go research it/try to find a way to test it to be able to gather enough knowledge to give credible/meaningful feedback. Now that i have been hearing about  it in the past month/few weeks, i DO have motivation to research it/find a way to test it (which i did via SVN server) i i believe i do have enoug knowledge around it that i can give meaningful feedback. Which is why i am only now giving my suggestions/feedback on the matter.

I don't really see how anyone, Ozzy, twofacedrat or anyone can say that nobody knew about it, that topic has 50,000 views, there was announcments everywhere, as Khalsa said, and I saw many people from all places of Tremulous playing on the Dev server. Maybe people don't like 1.2 but if they even made any effort at all to learn about it, (like going all the way to tremulous.net) they would know at least something about it, how to play it, and more.

I didn't mean to say nobody knew about it, i meant that no one heard really positive news about or that it was going to be released at sometime in the near future. This made the vast majority of Trem's population feel negatively towards it, which didn't give them  motivation to go look on the forums and read everything about it. Since society is lazy they would rather to believe Ozzy's word for it in game then to minimize, go to trem.net, find the whole summery of all the changes for 1.2, read ALL of them, decipher if they generally approve or disapprove it, then go back in game and argue with Ozzy. I know there are exceptions but still. However i feel that if you have played tremulous for long enough you are eager for a change even if its for the good or bad.

I don't really know what im trying to achieve right now by arguing, i think i have justified why i put in my feedback when i did soooo..................... yeeahhhh....

[KamikOzzy]

I wasn't really an arguer until very recently. MG servers ran their shit, and it was cool. That's because when asked, any of them will tell you "1.2 is not MG!" so I didn't worry about it. When Norfenstein started posting, I started taking this shit seriously. Before the "1.2 gameplay changes" topic, 1.2 was a myth in the minds of nearly everyone I talked to that wasn't an IRC kinda guy. Hell, we've been banning people "until 1.2 comes out" for a year to poke fun at something we all thought was vaporware.

I'm still not against change. I'm against a ton of change at once being forced into acceptance. Even unlagged came as a cvar for servers, and that split our community in half. I believe in small increments being tested and selected by the general audience, rather than a load of changes dumped all at once.

I could go into the numerous ways I believe the people in charge of 1.2 have tried to "force" acceptance of their mod, but I think I've said enough here, and I would like to retire from this topic unless someone calls me out on something.

[Undeference]

I'm still not against change. I'm against a ton of change at once being forced into acceptance. Even unlagged came as a cvar for servers, and that split our community in half. I believe in small increments being tested and selected by the general audience, rather than a load of changes dumped all at once.

Source control is for those tiny changes; new versions are the big feature dump because most people are too lazy to test current upstream code. Since you are clearly not one of the vast majority of users and you are so vocal, why don't I remember any of your bug reports?

[==Troy==]

I'm still not against change. I'm against a ton of change at once being forced into acceptance. Even unlagged came as a cvar for servers, and that split our community in half. I believe in small increments being tested and selected by the general audience, rather than a load of changes dumped all at once.

Source control is for those tiny changes; new versions are the big feature dump because most people are too lazy to test current upstream code. Since you are clearly not one of the vast majority of users and you are so vocal, why don't I remember any of your bug reports?

Point he is making, at least as far as I would interpret it (I could easily be wrong) is that instead of making one enormous gameplay change, as what happens with 1.2, instead, the devs would better release a new version, with major bugfixes and minor changes, and release it as a NEW VERSION. I.e. using the method of frequent updates. (and really, making an auto-updater for trem is not a big deal).

That way you do not have concervative part of your community rebelling, and most of the other players going "huh? wtf, this is a new game". Plus you would get enormous amount of feedback and bugreports from non-dev ran servers. You would have also received the information about most of the community, not just the dev servers and their dedicated playerbase.

[KamikOzzy]

Since you are clearly not one of the vast majority of users and you are so vocal, why don't I remember any of your bug reports?

I'm a player, not a coder, and as I said, I didn't figure anything MG (or even tjw) was doing was "official." I've encountered a number of things "wrong" with trem, but I skip the bullshit of the bug reports and just AIM laki7, since he gets things done and doesn't talk down to me.

[David]

We are making progress and development of the next version of Tremulous continues. Norfenstein is still testing balance changes with the help of the Mercenaries Guild, by playing on the }MG{ Development Server you will help us create the balance statistics we need to gauge individual changes - so play on the server today! Instructions on how to join are here.

I think it's pretty clear that it's testing for "the next version of Tremulous"

[temple]

The devs can't release changes piecemeal.  Tremulous is an open source game, its a mod, the community is savvy enough to understand the coding.  People already don't play vanilla Tremulous on a lot of servers.  Small changes will be ignored and people won't want to update their servers or whatever every time a month or whatever.  People already debate the hell out of small changes.

It is better for the devs to just release one big patch and call it Tremulous than to release a bunch of little patches that have to be accepted each step along the way.  

[==Troy==]

The devs can't release changes piecemeal.  Tremulous is an open source game, its a mod, the community is savvy enough to understand the coding.  People already don't play vanilla Tremulous on a lot of servers.  Small changes will be ignored and people won't want to update their servers or whatever every time a month or whatever.  People already debate the hell out of small changes.

It is better for the devs to just release one big patch and call it Tremulous than to release a bunch of little patches that have to be accepted each step along the way.  

1.2 is not just tremulous.h modifications. Mainly it is http downloads and guids.

[KamikOzzy]

I think it's pretty clear that it's testing for "the next version of Tremulous"

Yeah, and in those days there was some bullshit stage down feature and it sure seemed like nobody was taking it seriously.

@troy yeah, we know. Most people are okay with those parts of 1.2, and that's why we don't bring them into play in this topic (gameplay changes focus)

[David]

And stagedowns didn't work, so were dropped.  Lots of things were tried and dropped.  That's why people were needed on the dev server.

[==Troy==]

I think it's pretty clear that it's testing for "the next version of Tremulous"

Yeah, and in those days there was some bullshit stage down feature and it sure seemed like nobody was taking it seriously.

@troy yeah, we know. Most people are okay with those parts of 1.2, and that's why we don't bring them into play in this topic (gameplay changes focus)

It was about "small changed will be ignored" reply I got.


@ David. Problem is, needed is one thing, and whether you got them or not is another thing. (just to clarify, I am neither for 1.2 nor against it). The community that was on the dev servers was very biased, and hence at the moment, here, you are getting negative feedback from the "other half" of the community which was confused by
1) mg dev is not 1.2
2) 1.2 will be released on thursday
3) and expectation that 1.2 will be bugfix release, with maybe new models and prettier graphics, but, oh no, of course not gameplay changes, there is nothing to fix there anyway.


I would say that a number of people will agree that the dev time "wasted" on 1.2 gameplay changes could have gone into proper development, such as engine upgrades and renderer upgrades.

[tuple]

Khalsa, Thursday 19th of June 2008 22:33:42 GMT
Quick Update, and how you can help!

We are making progress and development of the next version of Tremulous continues. Norfenstein is still testing balance changes with the help of the Mercenaries Guild, by playing on the }MG{ Development Server you will help us create the balance statistics we need to gauge individual changes - so play on the server today! Instructions on how to join are here.

Khalsa and Dasprid have started a series of threads asking for input for the communities input on various topics, starting with the new website, so keep your eyes open for more of those and have your opinion heard today!

Well over a year ago, and I've seen it talked about in forums and on irc very regularly.  Since then there have been numerous forum threads.  Name of the server was even changed to Dev Server to clear up misconceptions (Which is that it was for MG only, when it was really hosted by MG but gameplay was changed at Norf's direction).  Its in my favorites list so I can play/help if there are people there, is it in yours?
W
T
F
?

I can understand people complaining about changes, its natural and all of us do it about one thing or another.  But come on, you can't blame lack of information or your own apathy on the devs, or anyone else for that matter.  We've all heard the 1.2 comes out just after Duke Nukem Forever jokes, and lets be frank, some of them are quite funny.  Meanwhile, existence continues to churn on.

There have been unofficial point releases, they are tjw's client, lakitu7's qvms and tremded, MGs client, and god only knows how many others.  Apologies for the many I have undoubtedly missed, but people have been using updated stuff for a long time now.  In that respect, a lot of the point release type stuff has been tested extensively, in that they're already in use.

Incidently, others merged their code with/from the MG Dev code base, so playing there wasn't just testing for trem, it was testing the stability of the code for anyone who merged from it.  Really, a couple games a week means that you were helping a whole host of people, and I might mention that you're helping by, uh, playing a game!  For some of you who play hours every day it seems a minor sacrifice.

And in conclusion 
Go play.  Don't bitch or tear apart every minor change, GO PLAY!  You think something isn't right?  Don't write a paper about it, SHOW IT!  GO PLAY!  GO PLAY GODDAMNIT GO PLAY
 

Seriously, how can you complain when you were asked to help by playing a video game?  Where else in your life, or anyone else's for that matter, is that gonna happen?
I'm old, and I'll tell you that it won't happen very often.  By not that often, I mean its really almost never gonna happen, like this is probably the only time it ever ever happens for you.

[kevlarman]

1.2 is not just tremulous.h modifications.

Code: [Select]

$ git diff --shortstat master --not $(git svn find-rev r1209)
 188 files changed, 36711 insertions(+), 4836 deletions(-)
i would hardly call that just tremulous.h modifications.

[==Troy==]

1.2 is not just tremulous.h modifications.

Code: [Select]

$ git diff --shortstat master --not $(git svn find-rev r1209)
 188 files changed, 36711 insertions(+), 4836 deletions(-)
i would hardly call that just tremulous.h modifications.

ehh, thats exactly what I said? Since most of the people here talk about the tremulous.h and some GUI changes. and are forgetting about a truckload of bugfixes and the important stuff

[kevlarman]

1.2 is not just tremulous.h modifications.

Code: [Select]

$ git diff --shortstat master --not $(git svn find-rev r1209)
 188 files changed, 36711 insertions(+), 4836 deletions(-)
i would hardly call that just tremulous.h modifications.

ehh, thats exactly what I said? Since most of the people here talk about the tremulous.h and some GUI changes. and are forgetting about a truckload of bugfixes and the important stuff

some asshole named comic book guy irreparably damaged my sarcasm detector

[tskuzzy]

The point people against 1.2 are making is essentially that the next release of Tremulous should have been primarily bugfixes and client enhancements rather than gameplay changes. I think we can all agree that we like and support the vast majority of HUD upgrades, cvars changes, etc. Those changes should have been made years ago and released as some kind of Trem 1.1.1. Now, I think the dev games have been well-publicized on the forums and such, but that's clearly not going to attract the majority of players. Instead, some kind of in-game news feed would have been helpful. I doubt most players who log on at Sat 3:00 PM would immediately think "Dev game time!". An in-game link at the home screen to the dev server would certainly have increased its popularity and thus quality of feedback.

After all, its kinda difficult to judge the success of something without having 10 newbies running around since that's an integral part of public games.

[KamikOzzy]

The dev games could be nice if kevlarman wasn't there to be an asshole at every turn, and if it wasn't 4vs4 ALLL the time. It's just not practical to test in that setting, and I sure wasn't going to do it when word on the street was "vaporware."

@tuple: Heck no the dev server is not in my favorites list. Shoot, your server was all but invisible until someone pointed it out to me. It sits right there with the Tremulous 1.1 Server(s) without any color, who's to be able to find that? Shoulda swallowed your pride and added some fkn boxes to your name. There are lots of games out there that want beta testers, hell even a lot of HUDs for Tremulous want beta testers, but you don't invest your time and effort into that unless you are expecting good results.

@tskuzz, or they could have just not been jerks and I woulda dragged 4-10 guys there every weekend.

@David: I do believe whatever I post you are going to take it upon yourself to tack on a counter-post, and it's going to be hasty and irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether it was dropped or improved or anything; my point was that it wasn't taken seriously by many, including me. The last time I heard of the dev server after the stagedown fiasco was St Anger saying he made the guys nerf mara by owning the shit out of everyone with it.

@ Everyone who's just dying to make a clever reply:

Okay here is ALL I've been trying to say regarding this whole topic, which keeps getting nitpicked:

Well over a year ago, and I've seen it talked about in forums and on irc very regularly.

And as I've said before the people who frequent those places include like twenty players and two hundred forum/irc kinda people, thus constituting "dev community input" or maybe "MG community input" or hell even "forum community input" but that's very different -at least to me - than saying your changes have been tested by a much broader "community input" as many of you are claiming.

[tuple]

Hey, if someone doesn't want to either read forums/sit on irc/read the front page of trem.net/listen to trem radio or anything to find out that dev games are taken seriously and being played, then wtf is there to do? Newspaper ads?  Just sit around and wait for people to show up late and bitch up a storm about how they're not being listened to, or how everything that they could freely have taken part of is off track now that they decide to acknowledge its existence?  The dev games were even scheduled for gods sake.

Lots of you people chose not to take part in dev games for various reasons I'm sure.  It'll never come out or its all MG or I hate it or I hate them or 4x4s suck or whatever.
Still, you chose not to take part.  Forgive me if I'm less inclined to listen to a bitchfest from people who chose not to take part.  No offense, believe me I intend none, but perhaps if many of you had shown up it wouldn't be 4x4 (incidently, I saw many many larger games and often games would run for most of the day >.> ) and many of the things you so despise would either be different or understood in its larger context.  I don't know, and we never will cause, once again, you weren't there to change it.

Others of you have been there all along.  Kudos.