Umm....devs, where'd you go?

[droid327]

I'm around! A lot of us needed some time to breathe after the Feywild expansion release (plus we just had the December holidays). Now I'm (personally) working on things that aren't quite ready for public eyes yet, like the upcoming Bow Combat Style changes. I'll be a lot more talkative once those are ready for prime time and I don't need to focus on giant grids of timing math so much.

Well you were already the only one still posting here...so you werent the problem

And I know you cant talk about new things till things are ready to talk about, but it was nice back in the day having devs regularly participating in discussions...clarifying things about the game, explaining design choices and philosophy, giving little peeks under the hood about game mechanics, or just plain being here talking about whatever so we felt like the devs were accessible and part of the community.

[archest]

ton of stuff need work, the forums not one of them.
maybe move some servers around the world so we aren't connecting to china to play the game and publishing server ping so we can make a choice of the closest server.
got to love the nsa having to inspect all your conversation for each battle.
after all you could be a terrorist.

[dennisck2]

If I were a dev, there’s about zero chance I’d post here. The DDO forums are the most toxic and unpleasant official forums I’ve ever been a part of. DDO devs and artists and producers would have a better experience on the DDO Vault and that’s really saying something.

(that’s not a compliment for the Vault, by the way)

No offense, Hung. I usually agree with most of your posts. And what you say is true. However, while trying not to be unpleasant, there is a reason people are getting miffed. We love this game, and want it to run the way it should. When it doesn't, and we voice our opinions, and it's met with silence or the same old generic responses, we are going to get annoyed. I don't want the devs to feel like they can't post on their own forums. But they, being the devs, shouldn't expect to come to the forums and us pretend like the issues don't exist. It's not folks trying to be toxic. It's people who gaf about the game and want to see it be better.

[Evean]

No offense, Hung. I usually agree with most of your posts. And what you say is true. However, while trying not to be unpleasant, there is a reason people are getting miffed. We love this game, and want it to run the way it should. When it doesn't, and we voice our opinions, and it's met with silence or the same old generic responses, we are going to get annoyed. I don't want the devs to feel like they can't post on their own forums. But they, being the devs, shouldn't expect to come to the forums and us pretend like the issues don't exist. It's not folks trying to be toxic. It's people who gaf about the game and want to see it be better.

Would you rather the devs spend time chatting with you, or fixing lag? It’s unreasonable to expect both.

[droid327]

Would you rather the devs spend time chatting with you, or fixing lag? It’s unreasonable to expect both.

I'd rather they take 5-10 mins in a day to take a break from fixing lag or whatever they're doing and come hang out and say hi, yes. Especially the ones that have nothing to do with fixing lag because they're not systems designers :P

It's unreasonable to think being a little friendly is going to make that big a difference in how productive they're going to be. I absolutely do expect they could strike a balance for both.

[Evean]

I'd rather they take 5-10 mins in a day to take a break from fixing lag or whatever they're doing and come hang out and say hi, yes. Especially the ones that have nothing to do with fixing lag because they're not systems designers :P

It's unreasonable to think being a little friendly is going to make that big a difference in how productive they're going to be. I absolutely do expect they could strike a balance for both.

Try to see this from a dev’s perspective:

“When I go to the forums, people complain about lag.”

“When I leave the forums to fix lag, people complain about me not spending enough time on the forums.”

“When I ask ‘Which do you want?’ they respond ‘Both’.”

———

Your inability to recognize the unreasonable (and paradoxical) nature of the request is likely another reason why a dev would rather not interact. That said, if there were a formal “15 minutes a week” one could argue the point. However, all parties would require reasonable expectations of precisely what can be expected from 15 minutes of time. A likely estimate would be they could read three posts—not threads, individual posts—and respond to one of them. Even then, I’d much rather they spend that 15 minutes searching code for mistakes.

EDIT: And even if the devs, and the population of the forums, did agree to 15 minutes a week, you can almost guarantee that instead of “Thanks!” they’d get “Why didn’t you respond to MY posts?!?” It doesn’t matter what they give you. You only focus on what they aren’t giving you. I don’t know about you, but if that was the crowd at the party, I’d stay home too.

[HungarianRhapsody]

No offense, Hung. I usually agree with most of your posts. And what you say is true. However, while trying not to be unpleasant, there is a reason people are getting miffed. We love this game, and want it to run the way it should. When it doesn't, and we voice our opinions, and it's met with silence or the same old generic responses, we are going to get annoyed. I don't want the devs to feel like they can't post on their own forums. But they, being the devs, shouldn't expect to come to the forums and us pretend like the issues don't exist. It's not folks trying to be toxic. It's people who gaf about the game and want to see it be better.

I hope I'm able to say this in a way that won't earn me any infractions.

I don't think that it's the people who complain about bugs and who demand improvements to the game who are toxic. The moderation seems to do mostly okay in keeping the level of bile in check from people who criticize Turbine/SSG. But people who defend Turbine/SSG's actions and policies and efforts (even when those are sometimes seriously flawed) seem to be able to keep acting as nasty as they want to without having anyone step in to say, "Hey, it's cool that you want to stick up for SSG, but maybe don't do it in that way."

[kanordog]

I hope I'm able to say this in a way that won't earn me any infractions.

I don't think that it's the people who complain about bugs and who demand improvements to the game who are toxic. The moderation seems to do mostly okay in keeping the level of bile in check from people who criticize Turbine/SSG. But people who defend Turbine/SSG's actions and policies and efforts (even when those are sometimes seriously flawed) seem to be able to keep acting as nasty as they want to without having anyone step in to say, "Hey, it's cool that you want to stick up for SSG, but maybe don't do it in that way."

There's a thread about something not working as it should be. The opposing argument is about the person who did the tests (ad hominem).

[myliftkk_v2]

Try to see this from a dev’s perspective:

“When I go to the forums, people complain about lag.”

“When I leave the forums to fix lag people complain about me not spending enough time on the forums.”

“When I ask ‘Which do you want?’ they respond ‘Both’.”

———

Your inability to recognize the unreasonable (and paradoxical) nature of the request is likely another reason why a dev would rather not interact. That said, if there were a formal “15 minutes a week” one could argue the point. However, all parties would require reasonable expectations of precisely what can be expected from 15 minutes of time. A likely estimate would be they could read three posts—not threads, individual posts—and respond to one of them. Even then, I’d much rather they spend that 15 minutes searching code for mistakes.

EDIT: And even if the devs, and the population of the forums, did agree to 15 minutes a week, you can almost guarantee that instead of “Thanks!” they’d get “Why didn’t you respond to MY posts?!?” It doesn’t matter what they give you. You only focus on what they aren’t giving you. I don’t know about you, but if that was the crowd at the party, I’d stay home too.

If SSG ran anything like a modern software shop, we'd never see the devs at all, and that would be totally normal. There would be an effective project or business manager dedicated to keeping tabs on the status of development trajectories and reporting out those statues and impacts to the community and gathering feedback. Devs should already be giving status updates to their management anyhow. It doesn't take a genius to repackage those for users, but it might actually take some communications skills.

Instead we've got a streamer who chats on the side and more worried about 'managing' the community than anything else.

[myliftkk_v2]

I'd rather they take 5-10 mins in a day to take a break from fixing lag or whatever they're doing and come hang out and say hi, yes. Especially the ones that have nothing to do with fixing lag because they're not systems designers :P

It's unreasonable to think being a little friendly is going to make that big a difference in how productive they're going to be. I absolutely do expect they could strike a balance for both.

Not a reasonable ask once the code base gets beyond hobby size. The personal connection people want with devs is the same connection people try to strike with artists when they are first starting out, and then they fail to realize that growth, real growth, means severing that connection in order to maximize output.

There's only really two instances where devs on a non-trivial code base should be in communication with users. Either when something breaks and particular users are affected, or during a development cycle where specific super users can either assist in requirements, or speed testing and sign off. Beyond that, if I'm managing a dev team, it's paying devs to waste time, where an effective project/business manager will do nicely.

[Teamoldguy]

If I were a dev, there’s about zero chance I’d post here. The DDO forums are the most toxic and unpleasant official forums I’ve ever been a part of. DDO devs and artists and producers would have a better experience on the DDO Vault and that’s really saying something.

(that’s not a compliment for the Vault, by the way)

These forums I find very mild and often well written even the moans. Must be our age group.
Should see the Frontier forums for Elite dangerous. That's toxic. Devs gave up on that ages ago. Even the "hey guys we have an update" posts are attacked.
So that said. Pop on on Devs. Love yo meet yas being a returning player from 8 years ago and a newbee on the forums.

[myliftkk_v2]

These forums I find very mild and often well written even the moans.

Given the brokenness of the product at times, these forums are downright benign.

I've watched software "partners" get sued out of existence over broken promises they didn't deliver on, so asking a company to deal with a little invective from users who hold no real organized power is the easy life. It's vastly simpler to deal with making users happy whose only recourse is language to express their displeasure, than hit getting the face with breach suits from far deeper pocketed litigants.

[droid327]

Not a reasonable ask once the code base gets beyond hobby size. The personal connection people want with devs is the same connection people try to strike with artists when they are first starting out, and then they fail to realize that growth, real growth, means severing that connection in order to maximize output.

OK Dr Manhattan lol...

It's. Ten. Minutes.

It's not going to be the end of the world. They aren't going to accomplish anything more in those 10 mins that will make or break a production schedule. If anything the break might help refresh their brain from staring at code for 8 hours.

You come off sounding like you want to chain them to the oars and just beat the drums to make them code code code for you. No breaks, no talking, slave! There is only work! The only break you get is death!!!

[Shincula]

I'm around! A lot of us needed some time to breathe after the Feywild expansion release (plus we just had the December holidays). Now I'm (personally) working on things that aren't quite ready for public eyes yet, like the upcoming Bow Combat Style changes. I'll be a lot more talkative once those are ready for prime time and I don't need to focus on giant grids of timing math so much.

!

Hey Steelstar, not sure if you have time but poison immunities ... items/augments aren't functioning ... the class granted poison immunities are mostly not working ... Protection from evil too ... is wonked too.

How about the raid? How about the lag that's ruining the user experience in the existing content? Updates on disabling portions of the game and/or quests due to the new event?

People, people, please! Did you not hear the man/woman/warforged? He needs time to breathe and is working on BOW CHANGES. Actual bow changes.

Have the archers not suffered long enough? Someone get this dev a massaging chair and some soothing nature sounds. Just remember Steelstar, relax and be one with the bow code. Legolas and Stroustrop be with you.

[LT218]

Steelstar can't work on all of those at once, and he's not the only dev in the game.

They're actively working on lag, and that was noted by him on discord.

Obviously, but that wasn't what I asked.

What I asked was, what about those critical issues currently plaguing the game? Is he working on any of those or does he have an update with some actual information and progress towards them? As others noted, aside from the usual weekly notices from Cordovan, he's the only dev who's been on the forums lately and the only thing he's actively discussed with more than one or two posts is the new archery tree.

If he's not the one working on them, who is and when might we hope to get some progress updates on these problems and more importantly, see some real improvement?


For reference, there have been 125 posts by SSG employees since 11/20/2021 (previous 3 months). If we filter out out the 102 posts by Cordovan since a) he isn't a dev and b) the majority of his posts are more announcement and community related rather than discussion of technical problems, that leaves us with 23 non-Cordovan posts.

Tolero (Brand/Commerce Manager) posted on 01-11-2021 about the store/marketplace update. That leaves us with 22 potential dev posts. Other things to note about Tolero's post:

• Her most recent previous post was on 06-27-2019. In other words, that is DDO's Brand/Commerce Manager's first post on these forums in 564 days... at least we know she's still alive.
• Her post makes no mention of the months-long issue facing players who are unable to buy expansions in the DDO store even though it would appear that is her area of responsibility based on her title.
• She acknowledges the inability of players to "gift" subscriptions or expansions after the store update and says "it is a thing on our radar" which is pretty vague and non-commital.

Severlin (Executive Producer) posted on 12/1/2021 to announce the acquisition by EG7, making that 6 total posts by him for all of 2020 and leaving us with 21 potential dev posts. Seems like an Executive Producer might have more than 6 things to communicate to the customer base in a year?

Artemist (content designer, psuedo dev in the context of this discussion?) posted on 11/23/2021 to acknowledge a reported bug and thank the player for bringing attention to it. Again, it seems really odd that nobody complained about this post. /sarcasm off

Zyrca (a dev) posted on 12/12/2021 to address a character transfer issue and referred the victim to SSG's top-notch Customer Service so their tickets can be auto-closed 5 or 6 times. At least Zyrca tried.

SSG_RedPanda (a dev) posted on 12/9/2021 to acknowledge a bug regarding Season Pass and VIP subscribers. Problem was stated as fixed and slated for the next patch shortly after. Nice! Interestingly enough, nobody complained about RedPanda's post. /sarcasm off

Knockback (senior dev) posted on 11/23/2021 to provide a few helpful hints to a player who interested in the waterfall in a mission. Again, nobody complained about this dev posting helpful details about something. This is madness! /sarcasm off

Steelstar (a dev) has 17 posts between 12/9/2021 and 1/24/2021 giving him roughly 80% of the 21 dev posts over the past 3 months. Over 50% (10 of 17) of Steelstar's posts were about the new archer tree with the remainder covering a couple of bugs and some miscellaneous chit chat.

So... over the past 3 months, not a single dev or other management level SSG employee has even mentioned terrible lag, the delays on the raid, what the parts of the game they had to turn off due to the new festival beyond one post from Cordovan saying "we're working on it (the lag)". SSG has been "working on" the lag for years. When are they actually going to make noticeable improvements on it?

When more than 50% of the dev posts in the past 3 months discuss a new tree and make virtually no mention of the ongoing problems in the game and missing content from the expansion, what exactly are we supposed to assume SSG's priorities are?

[Evean]

It's. Ten. Minutes.

You’re still not getting it. You expect 10 minutes of attention a week. Now multiply that by the number of users on the forums…

Try looking at things from a perspective other than your own.

[voxson5]

You’re still not getting it. You expect 10 minutes of attention a week. Now multiply that by the number of users on the forums…

Try looking at things from a perspective other than your own.

Why would it be 10 min per user on the forum? I think basic math could be revisited here.

Some of us have been waiting years to get some issues sorted or even responded to. Why should we wait that long with no communication? Why should the people (whom we understand make their income from this game's user base) be given an inch of leeway when it comes to open honest and timely communication?

Even look at the recent U48 expansion store page - https://store-new.standingstonegames.com/ddo/expansions

Key Features
New Adventures
Feywild is filled with dangers awaiting you in 13 Quests, a Wilderness area, new public zone, and a Raid!


It's still being advertised as including the raid. It's been over three months and we're still waiting for this.

[DonTheGreatOne]

All in all I have to say I am disappointed in the small amount of communication by SSG. The lack of communication is made even more obvious in comparison to the other game I play Path of Exile. Some may not be aware of the game but it an ARPG by a company called Grinding Gear Games. They roll out a new league every 13 weeks. This league will have all the changes they are making in the core game as well as a new league mechanic.

The latest league started on Jan 15th at 2pm EST. before the league rollout Chris Wilson the producer and lead developer of the game went on twitch and did a rollout interview with a POE streamer where he answered questions from the streamer and the people watching the livestream about the league. He was backed up by the other senior developers so if he did know the exact answer he was able to get it immediately. This is all after a week of announcements about the new league and the new skills and mechanics in the league.

Once the new league launched they started responding to the bug reports and feature requests made by users on the forums, Redditt and on discord. On the second day after the launch there was an issue with disconnects. GGG immediately made an very informative announcement of what the issues was and what they were doing to fix it. They almost immediately made some changes to limit the player issues and within a day had the problem resolved.

They started releasing small patches to either fix other minor issues or add feature changes that players requested. Most without restarting the servers. Every single patch was announced before hand on the forums, reddit and discord.

On day 5 of the launch they released a report of what they had done over the last 5 days and also explained what feature request they would not be implementing and reason for not doing so.

Also during this time there has been a constant responses to questions in the forum by the community manager, her team and the developers.

What has been the response by the players in the forums ...... Thanks GGG

That is how a company should communicate with its customers. If you are interested in a how they communicated when they had a big player issue on day 2 see the link below. And by the way the big issue for them was only slightly worse than whet we put up with every day here in DDO

https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile...h_the_servers/

[myliftkk_v2]

OK Dr Manhattan lol...

It's. Ten. Minutes.

It's not going to be the end of the world. They aren't going to accomplish anything more in those 10 mins that will make or break a production schedule. If anything the break might help refresh their brain from staring at code for 8 hours.

You come off sounding like you want to chain them to the oars and just beat the drums to make them code code code for you. No breaks, no talking, slave! There is only work! The only break you get is death!!!

It's never ten minutes. That's why positions that manage customer relationships exist (project/business/etc), but SSG doesn't have someone skilled at that, not in any recognizable sense. If they did, we'd all know it already.

It's also not in any way a break that improves development outcomes. I know what those are, and forums aren't them. So no, they are not productive for that either. Your model is an outdated vision of a forum as some kind of watercooler where devs should come to gossip. That's not how development productivity works, and it's not what developers should be doing when they do break, in order to improve as developers. The people I knew that worked like that, and I've known more than a few, they were terrible developers and always stayed terrible developers (although they didn't usually last in that position).

Lol, I know the theory and practice of development inside and out, the book kind, and the actual practice of it. Most of what you and others assume couldn't be more wrong about it, as it's mostly based off antiquated film representations or the bottom end of the software market.

[myliftkk_v2]

All in all I have to say I am disappointed in the small amount of communication by SSG. The lack of communication is made even more obvious in comparison to the other game I play Path of Exile. Some may not be aware of the game but it an ARPG by a company called Grinding Gear Games. They roll out a new league every 13 weeks. This league will have all the changes they are making in the core game as well as a new league mechanic.

The latest league started on Jan 15th at 2pm EST. before the league rollout Chris Wilson the producer and lead developer of the game went on twitch and did a rollout interview with a POE streamer where he answered questions from the streamer and the people watching the livestream about the league. He was backed up by the other senior developers so if he did know the exact answer he was able to get it immediately. This is all after a week of announcements about the new league and the new skills and mechanics in the league.

Once the new league launched they started responding to the bug reports and feature requests made by users on the forums, Redditt and on discord. On the second day after the launch there was an issue with disconnects. GGG immediately made an very informative announcement of what the issues was and what they were doing to fix it. They almost immediately made some changes to limit the player issues and within a day had the problem resolved.

They started releasing small patches to either fix other minor issues or add feature changes that players requested. Most without restarting the servers. Every single patch was announced before hand on the forums, reddit and discord.

On day 5 of the launch they released a report of what they had done over the last 5 days and also explained what feature request they would not be implementing and reason for not doing so.

Also during this time there has been a constant responses to questions in the forum by the community manager, her team and the developers.

What has been the response by the players in the forums ...... Thanks GGG

That is how a company should communicate with its customers. If you are interested in a how they communicated when they had a big player issue on day 2 see the link below. And by the way the big issue for them was only slightly worse than whet we put up with every day here in DDO

https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile...h_the_servers/

It's all in how you treat your customers.

Treat them as a necessary evil, welcome to the SSG forum state.

Treat them as a stakeholder, when appropriate, different experience entirely.