starkerealm wrote: »

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Yeah, even with direct access to the team, as a player, you can argue for your position, but it's entirely possible the answer will still be no.

As it should be, most of the time. Still, it's frustrating - even infuriating - that certain inexplicable deficiencies affecting certain classes should be fixed and would be easy to fix, but are nonetheless ignored by the combat dev team. Templar, for instance, has severe deficiencies in far too many areas: mobility, CC, DPS, sustain, ultimates, access to buffs, etc. The one thing we have going for us, heals, is a constant target for nerfs that can only be explained by incompetence or malice. Healing Ritual costs FAR too much and the secondary heal on BoL is a joke now. I'm sick of hearing this crap about how long it takes and how hard it is. I single-handedly coded the entire combat system for an indie game in under two weeks. Small adjustments to balance an already-existing system are easy, and the class reps made it even easier by spoonfeeding them a really good summary of the exact problems that need addressing. (Really, from the notes of the first meeting it's clear the class reps did great.) A semi-competent monkey with a keyboard could fix it all, given the chance.

Then this concept should be familiar to you:



Just because you think it's simple and straightforward doesn't make it so. You were working on a small indy game. Not, you know, an MMO. Scale is an important factor, and it's easy to miss just how much is going on under the hood until you find things breaking.

I remember another MMO. Star Trek Online, in fact, that made some, "minor" changes to ground combat balance to "improve the experience" which rendered substantial chunks of the game completely unplayable for over a month.

Yeah, sign me the **** up for that ****. That's the stuff!

Oh, wait. No. Screw that.

And, to be fair, I've been there on frustrating issues. The gear deterioration bug was infuriating. The bar swap delay bug (when it couldn't be worked around) was aggravating.

However, in conversations, one thing I've learned is that, as players, we do not have a complete picture of the game. We have what we see, and the way we look at the game.

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

But they don't, for the reasons below:

starkerealm wrote: »

Their job is to what's best for the game and its players.

More and more, I'm realizing just how untrue that is. Their job is to increase player dissatisfaction because dissatisfied people spend their time and effort hopelessly attempting to achieve satisfaction. It's a cheap psychological manipulation to make more money. If you can't get what you want on one build, you switch to another, investing more of your time into playing the game which creates more Crown Store purchase opportunities for the company.

Okay, here's a fun piece of trivia for you. In the last four years, the only time I've ever had my gear invalidated by an update was The Imperial City, when the level cap went from v14 to v16. That's it. The only time.

Amusingly, you've actually got this backwards. The job of the player is to optimize their position as much as possible. There's a quote from Soren Johnson, a developer on Civ 3 and 4 (that I've been attributing to Jake Solomon for almost two years now.)

Many players cannot help approaching a game as an optimization puzzle. What gives the most reward for the least risk? What strategy provides the highest chance – or even a guaranteed chance – of success? Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.

That's the problem here. Players will look for the most effective possible solution, and abuse the hell out of it. In the process, they will sacrifice the fun. This means making choices that are directly antagonistic to the player's goals. It's not about creating "dissatisfaction," because if you truly find a game dissatisfying, you will leave, and it's not about some petty ploy to grab your wallet, because, again, if you're not having fun, you (usually) won't throw money at a product unless it promises to fix that.

Players will optimize the fun out. They'll find the optimal solution, that requires the least risk, the least effort, and then they will follow that, regardless of the fun. Take, for example, the vAS+2 exploiters. They're standing there, literally, for hours, spamming one ability, to slowly whittle down the boss in order to get the skins. Is that fun? Really? Spitting out Caltrops or Lethal Arrow every few seconds for hours? No, but it was easy, so people did it.

That's why I said, the developer's role is semi-antagonistic to the player's goals. Their job is to make sure you don't get bored. If you're getting slapped around, it's because you tried to optimize the fun out of the game. I fully understand that, in the moment, this sucks. It was part of what got me to leave Guild Wars back in 2005. However, given time, distance, and perspective, I do understand. It's not about screwing you over. It never was. This is about making the game a better experience. And, yeah, that means making you uncomfortable sometimes, so you don't slip into a narcoleptic coma of trial grinding, and score runs.