Quote:
Originally Posted by akherat
Brad,
Thank you for the very political 'keep playing it will get better and cooler and wow' post. For all those that needed to see it, there are a lot more that don't. We know that things will improve over time and the game will get better. Many of us are willing to accept that and work through these initial issues. We don't need sunshine blown up our ass repeatedly.

You make this massive post, which directly addresses NONE of the original posters comments. We know there are bugs and issues with the game. We know there is balancing going on, and that people are going to bitch about it loud and proud, regardless of its necessity. We know things will get better.

What we do not know, and what everyone keeps asking for and getting this politically correct sunshine present to the cornhole instead, is what is being done to fix specific abilities for classes that are well known to be broken. DSC's have DPS issues and TONS of broken abilities at mid to high levels. As in they don't work at all. Click and nothing happens. Not bugged, not "oh my damage from this weapon/ability/thing is 70% of what it was last patch wah wah wah" - flat out completely broke. None of what has recently been patched in for this class actually "fixes" anything. Forgive my ignorance of how all of the inner secret workings of game development actually operate, but wouldn't it be a higher priority to fix abilities that are broken BEFORE tweaking class balance?

'
Keep in mind guys that we have a large team, broken up into art, programming, design, and management. And within those teams are specialists in different areas (say one designer works on classes, while another populates NPCs). Same goes with the other departments -- one artist may focus on terrain while another character models and animations. One programmer's expertise may be in graphics programming, while another game mechanics, and another server side functionality and performance.

What I'm getting at, and I've posted similar posts for the last 8 years it seems, but that's cool What I'm getting at is we can and *have* be able to focus on different things and work concurrently in different areas. Therefore we can tweak, balance, fix bugs, create or adjust art assets, optimize, etc, etc. all at the same time.

So the complaint that like I've said I've been hearing since the early EQ days that if we patch in, say, a tweak (be it positive or a dreaded nerf), that we are somehow not fixing bugs. They're *not* mutually exclusive. A development team is a group of specialists who work together collaberatively but each have their areas of responsibility. The days of Richard Garriott programming Ultima 1 by himself are long, long gone. Generalists are gone and specialists are in (although that collaberative aspect, being able to work well in a team, is very key -- while people may specialize, those that think they don't need to communicate or interact or brainstorm together at times get weeded out pretty quickly -- and the larger the team size, the more important this is -- I'd likely take a less talented person who could work together well in a team and collaberatively than a more talented person who was a loner or had an attitude and doesn't play well with others).

Anyway, I digress, but to be clear, just because A gets done doesn't mean other devs aren't working on B and then another individual or group working on C. Working concurrently is actually essential in games of this scope and scale.

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