Woooo! Love the new district system. Love the tooltip when hovering over a district center.
Awesome! Glad I'm not the only one.
I get a disease notification every turn, though. My disease thingummy only lists the first one. http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=16866
Oops! I've added that to our list of stuff for today, thanks.
I'm not trying to put ptarth on the spot with that, and he makes a lot of extremely good points despite the fact that I (for the time being, at least) disagree with him on that specific topic. But I'm pointing this out solely because I know others are going to follow his line of thinking (which is super duper reasonable), and I wanted to just go ahead and link you to our conversation rather than having repeat that conversation multiple times. ptarth is an awesome guy and he may wind up being the one who is right in that particular discussion in the first place, but what that discussion does do is highlight my line of thinking on this particular topic.
Amusingly, the reason I've been so insistent, is that you aren't getting very many opinions. I'd love if there were more people talking about things. But there aren't. I'm concerned that you are thinking that people are thinking everyone is fine. I'd love to know I'm in the minority. However, I'm afraid I'm not.
Sure. Not having enough opinions is definitely a problem. And that is another reason I like to do staged betas in waves, by the way -- people often write up one impression and then leave, so if that's going to happen then I need those all throughout rather than all upfront. Anyhow.
I'm going to be descriptive here, I'm not making attributes of character, effort, or anything, just some empirical data. There have been roughly 10 forum first experience posts out of 30ish beta testers. The majority of testers provide some experience notes and then disappear into the woodwork. Possibly because they don't want to play it, possibly because they think its great, possibly because the other beta testers smell bad, I don't know why. Misery is our poster child. (I downloaded the mantis data and did some analysis of your beta testers. I have some interesting stats on that, that I should probably talk to you about after the beta is over and you have a 2 week period without panicking.) Here is a guy who really likes Arcen products and has put tons of effort into them, I don't need to tell anyone that, it is that obvious. He has 1 mantis entry and a handful of beta forum posts. This behavior is typical of the majority of beta testers for SBR. At last count 75% of the mantis entries are made by 6 people, compared to the other Arcen games which were around 50% of entries being made by 12 people in a similar time frame in the beta process. There are lots of possible reasons why, but that's out of scope of our argument. What we do know is that there isn't a lot of feedback being generated.
Yeah. this is true. Misery in particular is having some personal life issues, but your point is taken. His disappearance was of great cause of concern to me until I read that, but then I've seen other folks disappearing in ways that make me extra nervous, too.
In terms of why there are so few voices on this at the moment, I don't know. I have a feeling that early death spirals are a big part of it, and that's something we've yet to get completely under control. Clarity on early things has also been a big deal. Cinth and I have been speaking privately on that (for some reason), and he's expressed that the game is really fun, and then his list of grievances. So that isn't represented on mantis, not that that changes the overall picture much.
I also need to personally test more, and I just have not had time yet. That's... really not good. But hopefully after this Week of Cutting I will be able to.
While I'm at it, I'll also go and out say that, I've written up a ton of ideas. A large number are ABSOLUTE rubbish. However, some of them are pretty good. I am generally pretty good about spotting the ones that are good, and the ones that are the result of too much sugar (18 different ways to convert corpses into resources anyone?). Amusingly, I frequently browse the mantis seeing if anyone has posted about a specific issue. I'll sometimes find a related entry and wonder why this guy has such horrible sentence structure, grammar, and spelling, and then realize the author was ptarth. Amusingly nas1m has similar complaints. So it isn't necessarily the case that I'm right, but I have reasonable certainty about this one. I also have the problem in the amount of time it takes to format, organize, and understand an argument. I probably spend too much time on unimportant things and too little time on important things. So I apologize for the text. I'll put a nice bulleted list at the end to summarize.
I gotcha. I've written up tons of rubbish, too, for the record.
The question isn't about being right or not, for me -- it's more about taking things in stages and at least giving this a chance to fail if it's going to. If we need hard caps, it will become apparent pretty quickly I'd imagine, and then it's a matter of instituting said caps, which is a 30 minute job. My main umbrage is about going for the sledge hammer first, when we can at least try the ball peen and see if it does the job. If that isn't working, then fine, the sledge is right there.
Does that make sense? There were times in the past, particularly with AI War, where I stuck religiously to some idea or other -- Control Nodes were the most notable, but Manufactories also come to mind. Those were Really Bad Ideas on my part, both in terms of what those things were and in how I handled the response from players. I'd
like to think I've learned since then, though of course we're all always learning. At any rate, I honestly don't have a problem going for the sledge if it comes down to it. Even if the ball peen looks like it would work but would be a lot more effort to make work, it will die in favor of the sledge -- this is my week of Killing My Darlings in favor of being able to properly test the things that are more core to the game.
As for the beta - creator dichotomy, it is a odd position. If you've watched many public betas, you see a number of reoccurring horrible things. A typical one is that players start to take things personally, believing that the devs are ignoring them, specifically, and not making the game in their image. The quickest route to crazy hatred is via crazy passion. Likewise the devs start out with open hearts and minds, and they start to come under attack by people who think their opinions are more qualified and well thought out than they are. Because the ratio of rubbish thinking to good thinking is skewed (which it has to be, thinking is hard), the well is eventually poisoned and everyone metaphorically dies. I don't want that to happen. So I'm trying to answer questions that you pose, with specific information, and also not trying to lead a crusade. Because that's not going to help anyone. This is your house (or possibly a timeshare with Keith, Blue, Pablo, etc) and these are your new toys. We are honored to play with them, and we need to remember that. Along with that though, we need to be able to help you see what you need to see about your toys and how the lead paint is pretty, but isn't the direction we need to go.
Yep, I've seen that sort of thing all too many times, and that's part of why I love that community. I've never really seen that sort of thing here. I have no feeling from you that you're trying to lead a crusade. Even if you were to -- and feel free to do this -- start up a forum thread and get a ton of beta testers to all agree with you and present your findings to me, that's not a "crusade." That's information-gathering and discussion. My goodness that's a wonderful thing if that happens!
My comments about the whole "beta experience" were perhaps ill-timed, and I apologize if they came off as offensive (or defensive). That's not really how I meant it. More I meant it that when this beta started, certain things were Not Working Right. People got used to how those things were, and my fear was that when I fixed those, then people would freak out a bit. Having cities that are TOO large is really detrimental to the intended feel of this game, because that becomes super hard to manage, and it becomes too hard for AIs to wreck your stuff or you to wreck theirs. There's a sweet spot in the middle there somewhere. And having the player spread out into multiple sections of the map with certain-sized pieces of city is also a big goal, because those can be individually attacked/defended, as well as providing a basis for how to attack the enemy, too.
Anyhow. It may be that a hard cap that can be increased is needed on cities, and then the building crime only kicks in if you are somehow over your cap (for instance, by losing a district center, which I think would be one thing that would increase your building cap). Crime being a threat that you sometimes have to deal with is interesting. Having it be the sole force surrounding the game, not so much. Right now diseases are also way too central, and the AI is way too distant.
I guess my main thing is to try to get everything 80% of the way there, this week. For me, crime seems maybe 80% there, though I could be wrong. Given that, I want to ignore it for the rest of the week. Diseases need to get to 80%, then they go in the ignore bucket, too. Then the various buildings that nobody uses and that need to be repurposed. Then AI aggressiveness. Then diplomacy.
Then, ideally, there's a whole month of just getting everything up that last 20% all at once. Anything pre-80% represents a rather tectonic shift to some degree, whereas that last 20% is polish and balance and so forth, and that's where I want to get to. If you feel like we're in a place where there still needs to be a tectonic shift (to whatever degree), then that's a discussion we need to have this week, as much as possible. If we're in a polish/balance/long-term-player-issue area, then that's a discussion for next week.
I hope that makes some degree of sense. I will say that in terms of the forums, this has been our most active game since Valley 1 (and above that only was AI War) in terms of player engagement. So there is that, at least.
I know my feedback (although fairly prolific) tends to focus almost entirely on bugs and usability. Where I do comment on broader gameplay and design issues, it's usually part of someone else's ticket or conversation. I'm just not very good at game design to begin with and I tend to use up a lot of my mental energy on other things during the day. (I've never written up a "first impressions" post, because I've never had sufficient clarity of thought to do so until I know the game well enough that I've forgotten most of my first impressions.)
There's nothing wrong with the feedback I give, and it's a pretty common mix from what I've seen. The more detailed analyses of various issues are also useful, though, and I'd like to see more of those.
It takes all kinds, for sure, and yours are extremely valuable. There have been super valuable posts "even" from folks with only a post or two. I don't think ptarth was saying otherwise, but I see his point in terms of the objective metrics seeming to indicate lower engagement and/or high tester burnout/withdrawal from the game. That's something I try not to think too closely about at this stage, so that I can function.
But I think that the lack of documentation and things like disease being borked are probably
really big factors in a lot of the beta players stepping away for a while.
My hope is that they will come back, and/or that future waves of beta players will have increasing levels of engagement due to increasing balance, clarity, and documentation. If not, the future is extremely bleak for Arcen as a whole. And that's not something I can dwell on and function in any capacity, because it literally sends me into an all-day cycle of panic attacks. I can and have worked through those for days at a time (I have an anxiety disorder and so I know how to manage it to some degree when my meds aren't enough to cover the baseline), but it's not nearly as productive, which is a problem when timelines are tight. Also my quality of life, but so it goes.
Anyway, so my focus tries to stay on the game, and engaging with those players who are around, and when
I'm satisfied with it past a certain point then I hope others will be as well. There are certain things that I'm quite unhappy with in the game right now, and so I'm not surprised others are as well. So to some a degree of falloff doesn't surprise me or alarm me, because there are X number of issues that bother the heck out of me that I know need to be resolved. And if I had the time for more proper testing of my own -- like I'm supposed to be doing but am not but hopefully will be able to starting next week -- then I'm sure I would find more issues as well. The diplomacy thing is the main bit that I don't have what I feel is a clear line of sight to a likely solution on yet, but my dad is coming over on Thursday and he's an excellent sounding board for this sort of thing, and he and I are going to spend 4-6 hours hashing it out.
As for the beta - creator dichotomy, it is a odd position. If you've watched many public betas, you see a number of reoccurring horrible things. A typical one is that players start to take things personally, believing that the devs are ignoring them, specifically, and not making the game in their image. The quickest route to crazy hatred is via crazy passion. Likewise the devs start out with open hearts and minds, and they start to come under attack by people who think their opinions are more qualified and well thought out than they are. Because the ratio of rubbish thinking to good thinking is skewed (which it has to be, thinking is hard), the well is eventually poisoned and everyone metaphorically dies. I don't want that to happen. So I'm trying to answer questions that you pose, with specific information, and also not trying to lead a crusade. Because that's not going to help anyone. This is your house (or possibly a timeshare with Keith, Blue, Pablo, etc) and these are your new toys. We are honored to play with them, and we need to remember that. Along with that though, we need to be able to help you see what you need to see about your toys and how the lead paint is pretty, but isn't the direction we need to go.
This is something I've seen very little of in Arcenland. Chris is really great at explaining why bad ideas are bad (or why good ideas are unworkable or inapplicable) without giving offence and the community is one of the best I've seen.
Yep, I definitely want to make sure that nobody misinterprets anybody else either and that everyone treats everyone else in good faith. We all have the same goal here, really, and I want to make sure that nobody gangs up on ptarth (just in case). People ganging up on me is fine, because sometimes I do need to be beat over the head with something (the myopia of being the main designer can sometimes set in for sure). But I want to make sure that the community itself remains friendly and non-factional even if there are differences of opinion on this or that.
If it comes to a sharp enough divide on something that has passion on both sides, and it's possible, then I'll aim for a configuration option and just have done with it -- let people choose the way they prefer. The challenge then of course comes in finding the default option, heh.
Hopefully I'll have some time and brainspace later in the week to read through some of ptarth's ideas properly and form some opinions about them so I can tell both sides they're wrong and what the game obviously needs is an engaging cattle farm mechanic and music industry so there's justification for more cowbell.
Now I love you.
~snip~
Q*bert called. He asked for you to stop misquoting him. 
What terminology is that? I'm really curious now, because it's an unintentional back-brain thing whatever it is. I haven't played that game in AGES.
Players taking things to extremes is going to happen, just look at me and AI War
Yeah, the number of ships and game-breaking scale of things you were doing in that game have always been incredible. "Cinth broke the world again with 14 million more ships" was always an interesting sort of thing.
I love that sort of open-endedness, and I guess my whole point with the ball-peen hammer versus the sledge is that I'd hate to have a game that is so closed that it can be "solved" in one way. To me, that sort of game gets stale and repetitive after 100 hours or so. Obviously those first 100 hours have to be great in the first place, but I prefer something that has the longevity to go well beyond that, and the more freedom your players have, typically the better. Well, that paired with more and interesting obstacles. That's one place the game is falling down right now -- too many of too few obstacles, not enough of more kinds of obstacles.
@ptarth: Not every game or every build is going to resonate well with testers. I'm been fairly prolific over the years and yet there are some titles where you just don't see me. Oh and feedback happens. Mantis, forum, email, pm, and I'm sure some would just abuse his phone if they could. My first AIW beta, I had very little Mantis stuff, yet if you look at the patch notes for the beta, I'm all over it. You don't get patches the size of .850 and .840 without good feedback.
I think he does have a lot of valid points, though, and it is a concern I share. But you do make me feel a little better, so I like that.
Hmm, I read the discussion about hard and soft caps. I am pre coffee so I need to re read it again later to fully digest it, and I have to get more experience with the game to get a better understanding of the mechanics. I'm certainly not going to let that stop me from spewing out my ignorant opinion though!
I agree with both in ways. I do think Chris is right on the money with his philosophies on game design. Squash exploits, encourage creativity, but don't let the creative way become the one true way if it is generally unfun. A lot of game developers are afraid to do what is necessary to hit those goals, since it typically involves going against the wishes of their loudest players (players who make efforts to find exploits tend to be your most dedicated fans). Anyways, don't want to digress.
With this issue specifically it sounds like the soft cap is not particularly soft. A hard cap in soft clothing. This is not an issue in some games as long as that line is super obvious to the player. A particular example I can think of is the demense limit in crusader kings 2. You can go over it (it's not hard) but you really don't want to (it's not too soft) and you know where you are compared to it at all times. This allows flexibility to go over it temporarily when you need, and the solution to being over is obvious. Now, imagine if that limit was not known to the player (or, the player had to do a lot of digging and math to know they crossed it). Their empire would go to shit out of pretty much nowhere, and they would be frustrated.
I'm not saying that's what is happen ending in this game, but ptarths decryption makes it sound like a danger.
That... sounds extremely likely, actually. That's part of the risk even if I am doing the proper testing on my own, because I would know the limits and not cross them. Crime is also not localized, so having crime randomly just kneecap you in some place or another is Not Fun, I imagine. With AI War, with AIP, you would see things like the AI getting more aggressive in an unspecified way, and getting stronger, but you could at least control the gateways into your innards and try to protect them. You were testing your defenses and betting they would hold, in other words. That's not really a thing here. Hmm.
Part of the solution might be an interface issue to make it more clear what that limit is. Another part might be a mechanic tweak into how a player deals with the problem once they cross the line. I'm inclined to think that bulldozing buildings to improve your city is unintuitive and wrong feeling. I have to mull on this some more.
Yeah, I agree with both of those things. I also will have to mull more.
