Lack of Developer Communication Hurts the Community

[Eric Ravenwind]

Rarely do I see UO developers posting here. In my opinion, this hurts the community. It makes me feel like they are not interested in the game or the community.

I know they are "busy", but I've noticed the amount and quality of the communication in the game "Neverwinter Online" by Cryptic Studios, that is still in closed beta, the developer communication is very frequent and detailed, and interesting (quality). With all the work that's going on in closed beta, they still find the time to answer questions, and incorporate community feedback into the game - I hope this NEVER changes..

Ultima Online developers could take a lesson from the Cryptic team, and start making themselves available for even casual posts.

 

[Shakkara]

Either that or round up some players to do the work, like EVE did with the Council of Stellar Management. Helps tremendously to get a lot of quality feedback to the devs with a good signal-to-noise ratio. If EVE could do it when they only had 200k people, so can EA. It's an awesome marketing tool too.

 

[hen]

We has signed pumpkins! What more do you want?

 

[Petra Fyde]

Try reading here:
http://stratics.com/community/forums/uo-developer-feed.551/

To be honest, trying to put together the Ask & Answer lists I'm finding most of the questions that come in aren't asking for information, they're asking for game changes. Everyone wants the game customized to suit them.

 

[Shakkara]

Try reading here:
http://stratics.com/community/forums/uo-developer-feed.551/

To be honest, trying to put together the Ask & Answer lists I'm finding most of the questions that come in aren't asking for information, they're asking for game changes. Everyone wants the game customized to suit them.

Customized to suit me, well well, wouldn't that be awesome, if I had the luxury of having developer attention available to ask for features I want.

At the moment, all I'm spending my time on these boards and on the feedback form for is preventing this game being destroyed by inept game design. Like refinement imbalances, mage armor fail, properties which come with severe disadvantages, messed up resource bonuses, swing speed decrease when hitting someone's armor, weird manaphasing platemail, cities that eat the governors funds for no reason, city loyalty that decays for a whole year before there is actually a system in place where loyalty can be used, everyone's leafblades and daishos being rendered useless, them introducing 240 different unstackable crafting components, need to go on? Boy, I wish they had time to add a single feature I actually want to the game, but I fear that they're over their heads cleaning up their own mess first.

 

[Petra Fyde]

I don't even pretend to understand the nuances of game design, but I know the devs are genuinely trying to make the game fun to play. Refinements are something that's only of interest to the purist who has to tweak his suit to be exactly right for what he's doing. They were asked, repeatedly, 'Make metal armor useful again' They've done that.
At least they're telling us what's intended.
Remember the 'We have a new combat system you're going to love' for age of shadows? We had no idea what was in store for us until we got it. It was all shrouded in secrecy.

 

[Shakkara]

I don't even pretend to understand the nuances of game design, but I know the devs are genuinely trying to make the game fun to play. Refinements are something that's only of interest to the purist who has to tweak his suit to be exactly right for what he's doing.

Ultima Online is not a singleplayer game. If people can (ab)use refinements to make certain end-game content more trivial, it affects everyone through the economy. Not that the economy of the game is very healthy as it stands, but still.

They were asked, repeatedly, 'Make metal armor useful again' They've done that. At least they're telling us what's intended.

In a less than optimal way, yes. Half the metal ingots are still totally useless, dragon armor is still not viable, spined leather has issues (and as a result leather/bone/studded has)... Yes the LMC and stamina stuff was nice, but the rest of it makes me very disappointed. They can have all the good intentions, but the execution is quite flawed.

Remember the 'We have a new combat system you're going to love' for age of shadows? We had no idea what was in store for us until we got it. It was all shrouded in secrecy.

That expansion certainly lived up to its name...

 

[Lady Storm]

Petra there is Too much secrecy in the works.. its why players yip so loud.....
I can understand some of it... a secret for a ooooo and ahhhhh from players is good. But when you think your talking to a blank wall for 6 to 18 months on a small subject...
You tend to junp the minute they talk of it...

I know they are so busy over there, with Phoenix getting the axe, and them sending GrimOmen off to the netherworlds too... the staff is looking rather thin and thread bare.
To do the amount of work even with modern code and systems, how much spare time do they have?? This is the crux of it all.
We expect the dev to do miracles... but they have so little support from EA its not funny.
Mesanna use to come on here and jabber all the time till she took on the top role which is not to say she wasnt working hard before the title change she now has 10x's more headaches. I would love to see more of them on stratics talking of whats cooking... but I am a realist and know thats not how it will go....
We want stuff done now...well somethigns have to give for that to happen... with less people its double or triple the work load now on a smaller number of shoulders.

 

[Tazar]

47 Posts by Dev's from last Friday to now. It looks like great communication to me - but I understand some people just can't get enough and no matter what is done there will be complaints.

 

[Frarc]

47 Posts by Dev's from last Friday to now. It looks like great communication to me - but I understand some people just can't get enough and no matter what is done there will be complaints.

http://stratics.com/community/forums/uo-developer-feed.551/

 

[Eric Ravenwind]

LOL! I didn't know about the "Ask the Devs" forum until just now. Thanks for pointing it out for me!

 

[Tina Small]

LOL! I didn't know about the "Ask the Devs" forum until just now. Thanks for pointing it out for me!

I think they've been trying to communicate, Eric. However, with Phoenix being laid off, I'm sure everyone was extra-busy the last couple of months sitting with him to pick his brain and learn as much as possible regarding all the systems/projects he's worked on over the years. And we really don't know if anyone else on the team or someone in another department that interacted with them a lot was also laid off at the same time. They've probably been swamped.

 

[Tazar]

LOL! I didn't know about the "Ask the Devs" forum until just now. Thanks for pointing it out for me!

The "Ask a Dev" forum is for posting questions that later go into the A&A or occasionally get answered here or elsewhere. The UO-Developer-Feed basically tags each developer and automatically copies all of the Dev Posts into one location so that "official" posts are easy to find.

 

[Lord Nabin]

47 Posts by Dev's from last Friday to now. It looks like great communication to me - but I understand some people just can't get enough and no matter what is done there will be complaints.

I agree they are paid to develop not to be keeping track of everything here on the forums.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

They are being paid to develop

But this type of largescale, still seemingly profitable game going through so many constant changes/updates demands that someone be in constant communication.

Leaving it up to the players to work out the bugs and then not addressing all those bugs(ingame or on these boards)is kinda a joke

 

[Flagg]

The fundamental difficulty with such communication is that no Dev wants to make major announcement on anything at all in some ordinary forum post among others. So usually any and all forum dev chat is doomed to orbit outer rims of anything remotely interesting. GL ever seeing a Dev give some actual big, non vague reply to some big, genuinely important question. Like " Where do you see UO 5 years from now?" This applies to all games. On the other hand, if you just have to know more about polygons and devs favorite hobbies and which dev designed graphs for which clownmask or whatver then it's all good. I never cared of any of that!