Why don't the devs...

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Jack SinAssist, Apr 19, 2019.

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  1. Jack SinAssist

    Jack SinAssist Avatar

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    Play the game? They are working from home now. Why not require them all to actually play the game for an hour or two a day. This should be on non-gm clients and without cheating. I think you would see a ton of issues resolved quicker as devs see the bugs and how they impact player performance.
     
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  2. Jack SinAssist

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    I'm aware very few devs do play. Especially Vas Corp Por aka List :p And Chris has started delving more into the game. And Lord British has played more than any dev on the team.
     
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  3. Lancell Lancermane

    Lancell Lancermane Avatar

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    totally agree .. EVERY DEV should play from level one .. and not in God mode ... even a hour a day would be a HUGE difference ... i really wish the DEV would BE ONE OF US ..
     
  4. CICI

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    :)
     
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  5. Sentinel2

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    Most companies require their game developers to play x number of hours per quarter. Some per month. So they know what they have created. And whether it really meets their expectations. Or not.
     
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  6. Brass Knuckles

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    Yup!!



    I guarantee I’ve got more play time in just this year (2019) than the whole dev team over the life of the project. (Excluding Kor)
     
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  7. Vladamir Begemot

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    Chris tried. He got about 5 minutes into the Battle of Solace bridge and that was the end of that.
     
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  8. Brass Knuckles

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    Haha

    In all fairness @Chris did join our party for “The Meat Grinder” for about 15 mins.
     
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  9. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    they can't win with this, though. if you have each dev spending a couple of hours a day playing, they'll get "why aren't you getting more done?"
     
  10. Brass Knuckles

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    It’s a good point they need to find a good balance. It’s blatantly obvious they don’t have a great understanding from a players perspective on much of the game. It’s obvious watching the streams and hearing them talk that their actual play time is missing.

    With all that said I do feel like their hearts are invested in it. Chris is very passionate about the game.
     
  11. Feeyo

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    I wonder why..
     
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  12. Rufus D`Asperdi

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    He was trying to do in on-stream... the outcome was predictable.
    I support this idea. I would also add "With anonymous characters."
     
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  13. Dinsoo

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    Why don't the Devs let me eat avatars?
     
  14. oplek

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    Outta the way trees!


    Oh please, can we get some proximity transparency!
     
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  15. Vladamir Begemot

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    Terrible looking UI that loses your interest in moments and means you have to work hard at enjoying the story That's my guess.
     
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  16. Rufus D`Asperdi

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    I understand that people dislike the UI... I don't understand why... It's not the greatest, but neither is it Satan spawned...
     
  17. Vladamir Begemot

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    Specifically the NPC Dialog UI is actually Satan spawned. And that's what will lose someone in 5 minutes of play.

    We've all been around a while, it's easy to forget just how bad it is to read large pages of text in the chat window. But it's bad.

    They've spent a lot of time fixing quests but as long as the window into those quests is a frosted over 3x5 card, it's going to get panned.

    Imagine reading your favorite book through that window. Would it still be your favorite? Would you even finish? If ever page you had to scroll back up to refind your place? And part of the time a big CONTINUE button popped up, part of the time it didn't?
     
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  18. Rufus D`Asperdi

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    How would you suggest changing it?

    (It doesn't bother me... I understand that it bothers other people... quite a lot, evidently)
     
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  19. Vladamir Begemot

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    A larger (or resizable) window and the option for a bigger font would go a long way.

    As a rule, the dialog should never force the user to scroll back up. Nor should it have to be compressed into blocks of text to avoid that. There needs to be enough space that the largest piece of dialog delivered can be seen without scrolling up.

    If there are pieces of dialog so big that would make the window obnoxiously big (rather than obnoxiously small, like it is on a big monitor right now), then the CONTINUE button needs to function correctly.

    The CONTINUE button is actually so non-descript that, as giant as it is, I have and have seen others confused, trying to see the thing. That's because it just melds into the window without having anything setting it apart as a "button that needs clicking".

    By "works properly" I mean that despite the CONTINUE button's existence, there are still numerous places where you have to scroll back up. That should never happen.
     
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  20. redfish

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    IMO a lot of the UI is bad, honestly... The vendor UI is a bit confusing to a new player and even the merchant UI can use some work. The taming UI still has problems, they did make it better by disabling the schools the trainer doesn't train; but its still not that intuitive. The Friends window still has an annoying feature where if you click Friend, the button then changes to Unfriend so you can accidentally unfriend someone (and sometimes it just looks that way). Setting keyboard mapping is a pain with the big dump of settings you have to hunt and peck through. Personally, I think the way the inventory works is cludgy. And there's a lot more than can be improved.

    This is me speaking as someone who does UI design professionally.

    I've already pointed out many of the issues. There were a few I reported as bugs rather than as design issues because there are a few cases where the UI behavior works in buggy ways, but the people checking bugs didn't seem happy that they were reported as bugs.

    I've been meaning to do a post with suggested changes, but I have a lot on my table atm so it keeps being pushed back.
     
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